Decrypt Asia - Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Podcast

We managed to catch the very busy Ella Zhang, Head of Binance Labs, on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore to get all the scoop about Binance Labs, what her team has been up to and what they plan to achieve going forward.

Tune in to hear about:

Ella’s very interesting background and how she came to be a part of Binance Labs

Mandate of Binance Labs

Three key pillars - incubation, fellowship and direct investment

Fellowship - https://medium.com/binance-labs/introducing-the-binance-labs-fellowship-270521d2e99d

How does the incubation program work?

Season 1 of Binance Labs incubation: https://medium.com/binance-labs/season-1-binance-labs-incubation-program-buidlers-season-1-ec34b601ccd

Season 2 of Binance Labs Incubation: https://www.binance.com/en/blog/342988062870470656/Binance-Labs-Reveals-13-Startups-in-its-Incubation-Program

What is the investment focus and how has the team’s investment thesis evolved over a period of time

How does Ella think about overall portfolio construction

Drawing from the lessons of the popping of the 2000 internet bubble and outlook on the industry going forward

Following our discussion with Matic Network, we speak to the CEO of Skale Labs which is also trying to build a layer 2 solution to solve the problem of Ethereum Scalability.

Tune in to hear about:

Evolution of enterprise software - on-premises > cloud > open-source

Importance of community for open-source software

Implications of AWS going down and how Blockchain technology plays in ensuring 100% uptime

Ethereum Scalability

Why Skale Labs chose to go down the side-chain path

What is a network of side chains and what are elastic side chains?

Consensus mechanism for each of the network of side chains

Interactions between the side chains and the main chain

DApps building on Skale Labs and Skale Innovator Program

Plans for Asia

Competitive landscape for scalability projects

Following our discussion with the Zilliqa team, we decided to speak to another Blockchain Protocol that is trying to solve the problem of Scalability through Sharding. Hear Nick White, one of the co-founders of Harmony, tell us about what is unique about their Project as well as the IEO that took place recently on the Binance Launchpad.Tune in to hear about:What is sharding?Difference between Transaction Sharding and State ShardingHow does Harmony achieve State SharingHow does the overall Harmony Network look like?How does Staking work in the Harmony ecosystem, what are the rewards and what does it take to be validator?GovernanceWhat DApps are building on Harmony, what is the process to port over from Ethereum or another Blockchain to Harmony?Binance token sale and roadmapPlans for Asia

We speak to Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar, CEO and co-founder of Rootstock or RSK (https://www.rsk.co/) and RIF Labs (https://www.rifos.org/). Rootstock, most famously, is known for putting smart contract functionality on the Bitcoin Blockchain.Tune in to hear about:Diego’s interesting background and how he got into cryptoWhat Rootstock is and the concept of Merge Mining?How Rootstock helps the Bitcoin miners by generating additional returns for them (related to the concept of Merge Mining)?Why should DApps build on RSK?What is RIFOS and how did it come about?Why is RIFOS important - note, it integrates things like storage, name service, data feeds, etc to make it easier to develop DAppsRootstock’s plans in AsiaDiego’s mantra for surviving in crypto - The rougher the weather is, the calmer you have to be

We speak to Dan Shin, Co-founder of Terra (https://terra.money/). Prior to Terra, Dan is most notably known for being the Founder and Chairman of TMON (http://www.tmon.co.kr). TMON or Ticket Monster is a Unicorn out of South Korea which was started in 2010 and had a mobile first approach to e-commerce.

Now Dan is launching a stable coin that aims to drive adoption through his experience and networks in the e-commerce industry.

Tune in to hear about:

Going on the mainnet and what that’s like (funnily, we spoke a couple of hours after Terra hit mainnet)

Different kinds of stable coins why Terra took the algorithmic route

How Terra is trying to drive REAL ADOPTION

How Terra maintains price stability and the role that Luna token plays in that

What is Seigniorage and how Terra is benefiting from it

Go-to market strategy through Terra Alliance comprising Carousell (https://sg.carousell.com/), Qoo1o (https://www.qoo10.sg) etc. + incentives to use Terra

How the user journey for using Terra token would look like on e-commerce platforms

Tech aspects - Building on Tendermint (https://www.tendermint.com/), on boarding validators

Dealing with Regulatory aspects including the failed Basis project (https://www.basis.io/)

Partnerships with Tomochain (https://tomochain.com/), Klaytn (https://www.klaytn.com/) etc

Given the recent conversations about the Government of India banning Crypto again (https://www.coindesk.com/indian-government-again-discussing-ban-on-cryptocurrencies-report), we decided to speak to the co-founders of Blockchained India (https://blockchainedindia.com/), an organisation trying to spread the word of crypto and drive conversations around crypto-regulations

Tune in to hear about:

How Blockchained India came about and how it’s structured

What are the chapters and what are their mandates

What is India DApp Fest and how that came about

Key projects based out India including Nuo (https://www.nuo.network/), InstaDApp (https://instadapp.io/), Matic (https://matic.network/)

Update on crypto regulations in India and the stance taken by the Government of India and Supreme Court of IndiaNotable things taking place in the Indian Crypto Ecosystem

FYI Blockchained India is also organising India Dapp Fest (https://www.indiadappfest.com/) which seems like a promising event

In this episode, we speak top Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder and COO of Matic Network. Matic js one of the leading projects coming out of India and most notably, will be having its token sale on the Binance Launchpad (https://launchpad.binance.com/) in April 24, 2019

Tune in to hear about:

Sandeep’s story and how Matic came about

Digging into Scalability at the Layer 1 (Sharding) and Layer 2 solutions (state channels and sidechains/plasma)

Where does Matic fit into the picture? Digging deep into sidechains, plasma including the difference between the two

How does Matic’s consensus mechanism work

USABILITY - big focus for Matic and how they’ve leveraged Wallet Connect (https://walletconnect.org/) - open protocol for connecting Wallets to Dapps

Kind of DApps Matic foresees being built on their platform and some existing partnerships including with Decentraland (https://decentraland.org/)

The very frustrating and difficult journey of being one of the first few projects coming out of India especially from a fundraising perspective

What that means for Indian entrepreneurs working in this space

Following our interview with #Hashed from Korea, we speak to another Asian Fund Manager - Jason Fang from Sora Ventures who shuttles between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Fascinating insights about how he went about setting up his fund and what’s happening in China

Tune in to hear about:

His background and starting his career at Fenbushi Capital

Interest in crypto from Family Offices in Asia and fundraising efforts in crypto

Transition from primary into secondary markets in late 2018/2019

Structuring of the fund

Investment thesis and portfolio construction

Focus - Gaming, Entertainment, Incubation of one project every year

Concept of sidepockets in hedge funds to do illiquid investments

What’s happening in China?

What the brand Sora Ventures stands for?

Work with https://alphaslot.io and https://mith.io

We record this episode in an empty locker room that we found on the sidelines of Deconomy 2019 (a Crypto and Blockchain conference in Seoul, South Korea). We speak to Baek Kim who is an Investor at one of the most widely known crypto funds globally, #Hashed.

In this episode, we are also joined by John Riggins who heads up BTC Media’s (https://b.tc/) Asia efforts and who will be a regular host on the Decrypt Asia podcasts.

Tune in to hear about:

Baek’s background, how he got into crypto and how Hashed came about

Involvement with Kakao’s Blockchain subsidiary called GroundX and their Blockchain called Klaytn (https://www.klaytn.com/)- note Kakao has 50m+ users for their banking, mobility, beauty verticals with more than 95% penetration rate in South Korea (total population of South Korea around 52m)

Involvement with the hugely successful messaging app Line’s Blockchain initiative called Link (https://link.network/)

Difference in #Hashed’s strategy in Asia and USA

Fund structure of #Hashed and investment strategy

Key priorities and goals of #Hashed in the near term

Thoughts on where the industry is headed

In this week’s episode, we speak to Xinshu Dong, the CEO of much talked about Blockchain protocol Zilliqa. Tune in to hear about:

• Xinshu’s background, how Zilliqa came about and the backstory behind how the name came about

• What sharding is and why this method was chosen to solve the problem of scalability

• How Zilliqa stands relative to its competitors such as Ethereal, Dfinity and Algorand

• Zilliqa’s network design and sample transaction

• Discussions around the recent main net launch including performance, who is building on Zilliqa and how to port over to Zilliqa

• General outlook on the Blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem