Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

Hashgraph is a new consensus algorithm that radically differs from proof-of-work as well as proof-of-stake consensus algorithms. While work on Hashgraph begun in 2012, it’s design is radically different from today’s blockchain architectures. The Hashgraph team claims that it has found an optimal consensus algorithm design that will be impossible to significantly improve upon.

We were joined by Mance Harmon, who is CEO of the Swirlds, the company developing Hashgraph. Our conversation covered the origin story of hashgraph, how it compares to existing consensus algorithms and how Hashgraph works.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/219

Over the past year, cryptoassets have exploded in popularity. From a mere $18bn at the start of 2017, the aggregate market cap of all cryptoassets recently reached $820bn as interest in Bitcoin and its cousins went mainstream. Jack Tatar and Chris Burniske joined us to discuss their new book ‘Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond’. It is one of the first systematic views on cryptoassets from a mainstream investor’s perspective.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/218

A significant part of the modern digital economy, is underpinned by machine learning models that are trained to perform tasks such as facial recognition, content curation, health diagnostics etc. Data to train machine learning models is the essential commodity of this century – a sentiment captured by epithets such as “”Data is the new oil””. Today’s dominant AI paradigm has companies focus their efforts on gathering data from their users in order to train models and monetise usage of the model. This model has many consequences such as loss of privacy for the user, consolidation of data in a handful of large companies, low access to data for startups and a fundamental impossibility of collecting sensitive data such as markers for depression.

Our guest, Andrew Trask, is building OpenMined – a platform that merges cryptographic techniques such as homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation and blockchain technology to create the ability to train ML models with private user data. OpenMined will allow AI companies of the future to develop models, have them trained on user data without compromising user privacy, and incentivise users to train their model. We walk through the OpenMined vision and its potential impact on AI business models and AI safety

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/217

Blockchain technologies are changing the way we think about data archival and storage. For instance, most database systems can only capture the current state of a data set. This means we must rely on secondary backup systems to ensure historical data can remain accessible, a stark contrast from what the most basic of blockchains provide out of the box. Database systems that offer immutability and historical context for data would be greatly beneficial for companies as it would make internal and external audits much less costly and time-intensive.

We’re delighted to bring you an interview with Flip Filipowski and Brian Platz. Flip is a veteran entrepreneur whose career spans 50 years, having worked for and founded some of the world’s largest software companies of the 80’s and 90’s. He is also the CEO of SilkRoad Equity and a Founding Partner of Tally Capital. Brian’s background includes having founded A List Appart in 1994, which is among the oldest and most influential web development blogs, and SilkRoad Technologies.

Flip and Brian join us to talk about their new company, Fluree. Their product, FlureeDB, is a scalable graph database which provides the benefits of blockchain technologies, such as immutability, replayability and fault tolerance. Currently, in development, the goal for FlureeDB is to support various consensus rules based on the network configuration: private systems, federated (or consortium) clusters, and fully decentralized public networks.

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This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/216

The prospect of providing digital cross-border payments for the world’s unbanked and underbanked population has always been one of the key use cases for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies can be seen as a way for people in developing countries to participate in the global financial market by allowing easy cross-border payments, cheap remittance transactions, and simplified lending options.

We’re pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and Founder of BitPesa. BitPesa provides companies in frontier markets with the financial infrastructure to facilitate commerce and payments, where traditional financial markets are known to be fractured and expensive. As an early Bitcoin company founded in 2013, BitPesa is now present in a handful of African countries and provides essential financial services to businesses, allowing them to send and collect payments, and perform quick and affordable Forex trades.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/215