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

After years of what has seemed like an endless debate, bitcoin may be at a crucial turning point in its relatively short lifetime. The question network scalability has divided the community into several factions which are seemingly irreconcilable. However, in just a few weeks, the future of bitcoin may be decided as miners and users throw their support behind one of many proposals to propel the bitcoin network into a new era.

Bitcoin Developer and Principal Architect at Paxos, Jimmy Song, joins us to discuss the different scalability proposals for which miners are currently signaling their support. Among others, Segregated Witness (BIP 141), Emergent Consensus (Bitcoin Unlimited) and SegWit2x (The New York Agreement), are gaining significant traction among miners. Will one of these proposals gain majority support, allowing for the network to upgrade with relative ease, or will we enter a situation where one proposal is backed by a strong minority of users, potentially forking the network into two?

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/189

Token sales, often called Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), are exploding in popularity. Seemingly each week a new record is hit with huge sums being raised by alpha-stage projects in almost no time. William Mougayar, an investor, author and blogger, who has been at the forefront of the token sale movement joined us to unpack the most dynamic trend in the blockchain ecosystem. We cover the great promise of token sales in disrupting venture capital and changing how startups are build and grown. We also address the apparent irrationality of valuations and what distinguishes a responsible from a reckless token sale.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/188

With most of the world’s computing power concentrated in Internet companies’ data centers, the Internet has become a very centralized place. The Golem project aims to build the sharing economy of computing power. This “global, open sourced, decentralized supercomputer” will function thanks to the combined power of a massive network of machines, from personal laptops to whole data centers.

We’re joined by Julian Zawistowski and Alex Leverington, CEO and P2P engineer at Golem. We discuss how Golem hopes to create a more balanced distribution of computing power for the Internet.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/187

Our regulatory expert Siân Jones joined us to discuss her work on a regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology (DLT) for Gibraltar. We discuss how the framework differs from other efforts and aims to attract rather than curtail blockchain businesses. We also covered why the rapid changes require the flexibility of a principle-based approach to regulation. Finally, we discussed current trends around ICOs and how they could be impacted by regulation.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/186

The saying goes: if you’re not paying for it, it’s likely that you’re the product. And with the rise of targeted ads, user behavior tracking, and alike, more and more users are turning to ad blocking software to protect their privacy and improve their browsing experience. In the last 25 years, the content monetization and Internet advertising industries have evolved to become complex ecosystems with multiple intermediating layers between users, publishers, and advertisers. This has created a situation where user’s rights are constantly violated and where little accountability exists.

We’re joined by Brendan Eich, Founder, and CEO of Brave. As an early Internet pioneer, Brendan created Javascript while working at Netscape in the mid 90’s, and helped found the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation, where he served as CEO for several years. Brave is a new desktop and mobile browser which blocks ads and tracking by default. This has the advantage of drastically improves page load times while protecting users’ privacy. But Brave is much more than just a browser. Their team will launch the Basic Attention Token, which will serve as the currency of attention marketplaces between publishers, advertisers, and users. With the ambition to turn the Internet advertising industry on its head, this new attention economy marketplace will eliminate the need for unneeded intermediaries, provide publishers with new content monetization models and remunerate users when they chose to share their data with advertisers.

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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/185