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Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us once again to discuss the state of Ethereum and the efforts to innovate the protocol. We covered the takeaways from the DAO fork, switching to the proof-of-stake system Casper and how to think about blockchain interoperability.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/171

One of the key issues with blockchain networks is the lack of interoperability. In the early days of Bitcoin, blockchain interoperability was far from people’s minds. However, as new networks continued to emerge and gain traction, the ability to move assets freely from one blockchain to another has become a critical feature.

We’re joined by Jae Kwon, CEO and Founder of Tendermint, the team which is launching the Cosmos Network. Cosmos aims to build the internet of blockchains: A global network of blockchains, connected through hubs that allow trustless token transfer. Jae joined us to discuss the Cosmos vision, the underlying Tendermint consensus algorithm and upcoming fundraiser.

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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/170

There is no doubt that proof of work, introduced in the Bitcoin white paper, has stood the test of time as a robust and resilient Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism. However, many issues may prevent Nakamoto Consensus from securely scaling over the long term. The risk of validator centralization, network forking, block scarcity and high energy costs required to mine a block have all been extensively debated with no realistic long-term solutions to date. A new paper titled “Algorand” attempts to addresses these problems.

We’re pleased to be joined by Professor Silvio Micali, a computer scientist at MIT, who is known for his work in many of the technologies blockchains rely on today. As one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs, he has been decorated with a number of prizes and awards, including the Turing Award, which he received in 2012 for his work in cryptography.

Prof. Micali describes the concept of Algorand, an alternative approach to proof of work which offers high security guarantees while allowing the network to scale with demand. Relying only on a trivial amount of computation to validate transactions, Algorand also reduces the probability of network forks to near-zero. It uses novel mechanisms to select validators for blocks and enabling them to come to consensus on them.

Topics covered in this episode:

Episode links:

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/169