Relay Chain

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Chrissy Hill, General Counsel, and Alica Schiffhauer, Legal Operations Specialist, from Parity’s legal team. This episode focuses on the legal side of Web3 and all that it entails, including the challenges of working within compliance for a codebase with no existing legal precedent.

They discuss the unique aspects of working within Web3 law, such as needing a working knowledge of complex technology, blockchain-specific terminology, staying on top of evolving blockchain regulation, as well as their recommendation to become familiar with the legal side of the blockchain space. In addition, you'll learn how legal teams support Web3, by bridging the gap between national laws (to avoid what happened with FTX, for example), identifying and mitigating risks, and how accountability works for breaches of the law within a decentralized system.

Links

Parity Technologies

Highlights

00:50 The journey from Web2 to Web3 legal

07:30 Working for a legal team in a blockchain company

17:50 Challenges as legal professionals within the blockchain space

25: 45 How Parity and the wider ecosystem benefits from legal knowledge

27:00 Compliance for a codebase with no exciting legal precedence

32:00 Open source licensing 101

37:00 DIsadvantages of open source licensing

40:45 Deciding on GPL as the license for Polkadot and Kusama

44:30 How to learn more about DOT morphing into software

47:00 Cross-ecosystem collaboration across legal teams

50:20 Code is law philosophy vs. rule of law

Special Guests: Alica Schiffhauer and Chrissy Hill.

In this episode, host Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Joe Petrowski (Common Good Parachains Team Lead, Web3 Foundation) to talk about common good parachains (aka system level parachains), the layer-1 Polkadot blockchains dedicated to core functionality that benefits the entire Polkadot ecosystem. Since Statemint, dedicated to asset and NFT functionality, launched as Polkadot’s first common good parachain, many more have been in development. This episode explores how common good chains are evolving and what this means for the Polkadot ecosystem, from the new Collectives parachain, evolving NFTs on Statemint, to the upcoming Bridge Hub parachain, and many exciting projects coming out of the ecosystem.

During this talk, Petrowski describes how common good parachains are elected, categorized, onboarded, and eventually made available to users. He highlights the importance of the Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM) for system-level parachains, and those which are ready to launch once XCMv3 is deployed. Finally, during the analysis of parachain transaction validation and finalization, we discover the eye-opening benefits of moving core functionality off the relay chain; Polkadot could support far more than 100 parachains, with far fewer than 1,000 validators needed to process transactions with the same security guarantees as before.

Links

Highlights

Special Guest: Joe Petrowski.

This week we have the second half of the conversation between Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) and 0xbrainjar, founder and CEO of the Polkadot parachain Composable Finance. Composable and sister parachain Picasso on Kusama allow smart contracts built on different languages and different chains to connect, enabling cross-chain DeFi applications and more.

If you missed part 1, have a listen here.

In part 2, they talk more about Mosaic, Composable’s transfer availability layer, and XCVM, their cross-consensus virtual machine. They look at how Composable approaches cross-chain bridging and communication, interoperability with ecosystems outside of Polkadot, and thinking outside the box for cross-chain applications beyond what’s already been done before.

Links

Highlights

Special Guest: 0xbrainjar.

Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined this week by 0xbrainjar, founder and CEO of the Polkadot parachain Composable Finance. Composable and sister parachain Picasso on Kusama allow smart contracts built on different languages and different chains to connect, enabling cross-chain swaps and more. By simplifying and unifying DeFi (Decentralized Finance) with new interoperability standards, the project is accelerating this technology into the mainstream.

This talk covers Composable's solutions for developers and end users. 0xbrainjar describes building with Substrate and the new pallets they created, the native functionality of Composable and Picasso, and the various products and DeFi primitives they offer.

Additionally, 0xbrainjar discusses cross-layer NFT transfers, building oracles for price manipulation resistance, achieving protocol-owned liquidity, bootstrapping DeFi and what could be considered ‘DeFi 3.0'.

Links

Highlights

Special Guest: 0xbrainjar.

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by OriginTrail’s Tomaž Levak (co-founder) and Žiga Drev (co-founder). OriginTrail is a Substrate-based blockchain that recently won a parachain slot on Polkadot. OriginTrail developed the world’s first Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) to organize humanity’s most important assets, making them discoverable, verifiable, and valuable, often referred to as 'the google of Web3'.

This talk explores the real-world use cases of OriginTrail, and how through the synergy of knowledge graphs and blockchains, DKG forms the "semantic layer of Web3", enabling Web3 builders to organize, discover, and verify anything. It’s similar to the technology used by major Web2 giants like Google and Amazon to power their services.

The OriginTrail team explain how they moved into Web3 and achieved mainstream adoption, starting out on Ethereum as one of the first and most promising blockchain projects to address supply chain use cases, and evolving into a multichain decentralized knowledge network. They also discuss the OriginTrail parachain, enhancing the DKG with Substrate, unleashing network effects through Polkadot, collaborating with parachains, and how you can participate in OriginTrail, from running nodes to interacting with the community.

Links

OriginTrail

Highlights

02:00 What is OriginTrail?

04:45 Who’s using the Decentralized Knowledge Graph

07:00 What does OriginTrail solve?

10:30 Inception and expansion of OriginTrail

15:50 Existing across multiple blockchains

19:15 How OriginTrail works with the DKG

26:20 Forming the semantic layer of Web3

31:04 The OriginTrail parachain

40:15 Shout out to DKG Community members

43:20 How OriginTrail is being used

51:20 Breaking in to the mainstream

01:01:15 The Trace Alliance

Special Guests: Tomaž Levak and Žiga Drev.

This week Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Cassidy Daly, token design and research specialist at Centrifuge, a Substrate-based blockchain that recently won a parachain slot on Polkadot. Centrifuge aims to bring an archaic financial system into the Web3 space, enabling users to unlock financing for their real world assets by bringing them on-chain.

Daly describes why the team chose Substrate to build Centrifuge and its canary network Altair, and why Centrifuge became a Polkadot parachain: to reconcile issues with Ethereum including scalability and fees, and the difficulty in maintaining an ETH bridge. They also discuss bringing the Tinlake DApp from Ethereum over to Centrifuge to tap into the specialization between interoperable parachains and drive efficiencies, lower the cost of financing and guarantee the custody and ownership of physical assets on-chain.

Useful Links

Highlights

Special Guest: Cassidy Daly.

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Yubo Ruan, founder of Parallel Finance, a lending solutions provider designed to increase liquidity and acceptance on the Polkadot network. Parallel Finance is a Polkadot parachain and its sister network Heiko Finance is a Kusama parachain.

This episode begins with an introduction to Parallel Finance and its tech stack. They also discuss how Substrate helped Parallel launch a parachain in 7 months, and how the project is disrupting DeFi through a unique take on lending design and building user interaction interfaces (necessary for interoperability in DeFi).

Links

Parallel Finance’s website

Substrate Builders Program featuring Parallel Finance

Highlights

01:53 How to launch a parachain in 7 months

03:30 What is Parallel Finance?

05:40 Substrate modules and tech stack upgrades

08:00 Validator participation requirements

11:34 Heiko use cases and the Security Module

14:20 Increasing engagement in governance

21:50 Parallel Finance products

29:38 Staked tokens can participate in governance

31:15 Borrowing based on your collateral

33:30 Auction lending and crowdloans

42:48 Value proposition between networks: Parallel Heiko and Parallel Finance

45:27 Participation in the Substrate Builders Program

Special Guest: Yubo Ruan.

This week, Joe Petrowski (Technical Integrations Lead, Web3 Foundation) is joined by Jamie Burke, CEO, and founder of Outlier Ventures, an accelerator that supports the development and growth of emerging technologies, including Polkadot. They are currently running a Polkadot accelerator through their Base Camp program.

Burke describes what he set out to achieve by founding Outlier Ventures in the context of the current internet where platforms are vulnerable to state capture and coercion and are biased against users. With these flaws in mind, the pair discuss the optimal Web3 tech stack with ‘sovereignty first’ as a core design principle and building a permissionless financial system in the context of the Metaverse.

The conversation moves on to the Metaverse as a framework for the direction of Web3 where value and identity are transferred and owned by the user. They discuss how to navigate this realm in terms of technology, finance, and culture, and how this aggregate economy would enable a more open metaverse across lots of different use cases, from music to gaming, the creator economy, and more.

Links

Polkadot Base Camp

The Open Metaverse OS

Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff

The Master Switch, Tim Wuh

The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age (1997, with James Dale Davidson)

Highlights

00:57 Introduction to Outlier Ventures

07:00 User-centricity in Web3 and the Metaverse

11:55 Use cases of NFTs encourage blockchain adoption

18:00 Creating a Web3 Stack to enable a more open Metaverse

21:05 The success of NFTs in the gaming industry

28:40 Integrating into a digital economy to be part of the Metaverse

33:50 Introducing digital scarcity to digital assets = enabling property rights

38:10 Reworking economics primitives

41:25 Free markets, the sovereign individual and fluidity collectors

51:40 Commodification and financialization of data with blockchain technology

54:30 Data unions to empower individuals on Polkadot and Kusama

56:28 How can the Metaverse compete with physical nation-states?

1:05:00 Web3 stack for a better Metaverse user experience

1:10:00 Outlier Ventures support for the Polkadot ecosystem

Special Guest: Jamie Burke.

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Polkadot Integration Specialist, Parity Technologies) is joined by Subsocial’s founder and Polkadot Ambassador Alex Siman, and Zachary Edwards, Subsocial’s content lead and community manager. Subsocial is an open protocol for decentralized social networks and marketplaces, and this episode explores the world of social networks on blockchain, through the eyes of the Subsocial team.

They provide an overview of their platform and its architecture and discuss their growth strategy, targeting the non-crypto-native masses by creating a better user experience than Web 2.0 versions like Facebook. This means tackling censorship and moderation, prioritizing user sovereignty, and decentralized marketing. Finally, they consider what the metaverse could look like, and Subsocial’s part in it, and future plans to integrate with Polkadot and Kusama projects.

Links

Highlights

Special Guests: Alex Siman and Zachary Edwards .

In this episode, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Robonomics Software Architect Sergei Lonshakov. Robonomics is an open-source internet of things (IoT) platform. It provides ways for humans to communicate with robots, and for robots to connect to each other and the internet. Started on Ethereum in 2015, Robonomics is now aiming to be a parachain on Polkadot, with a view to work across both ecosystems. The team also publishes scientific research on the frontier between IoT, blockchain, Ethereum, Substrate, and Polkadot.

The pair discuss real use cases of robotics, from those currently available, e.g., in smart cities, to futuristic possibilities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Along the way they talk about Mars colonization, digital twins and robot art. Lonshakov also presents Robonomics Web Services (RWS) and the development of the Robot Operating System (ROS), a framework of ready-to-work packages that enable engineers without blockchain experience to create robotic systems that connect to blockchain.

Links

Highlights

Special Guest: Sergei Lonshakov.