The Third Web

Matt Hale of Divvi is the first speaker in the second half of the conversation we began last week. Divvi is a Sydney based decentralized energy market startup. The huge scale of residential solar deployment makes Australia a uniquely appropriate environment for this kind of solution. We also look at the challenges of breaking into the highly regulated and cartel run infrastructure space. Secondly Luke Anderson, describes the dilemma of selecting blockchain as an appropriate solution to a problem. 

The Sydney Ethereum community is huge, possibly the largest geographically concentrated group of Eth heads in the world. It’s a geographical location well worth paying attention to.

Last week I was honoured with the privilege of representing New Zealand at the inaugural ISO/TC-307 Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies standards committee meeting. The event was hosted by the secretariat, Standards Australia. 18 nations attended.

While at the meeting, blockchain legend Nick Addison wrangled together a who’s who of blockchain entrepreneurs for a round table discussion. We convened in the media room at the international convention center. The group grew piecemeal over the course of three hours during which we discussed everyone’s projects and the state of blockchain in Australia. 

The attendees were:

Tim Bass of Block 8

Bok Khoo of the Internet, and Bok Consulting

Sam Brooks CTO of Veredictum

Russell Mclernon of Rexmls

Luke Anderson of Sigma Prime

Sergei Sergienko of Chronobank

Matt Hale of Divvi

I’ve split the conversation into two episodes so the next will be coming up soon. Before we get stuck in, I want to draw your attention to the Blockchain NZ conference and the Auckland and Wellington Blockchain Meetups. Things are gathering pace down here and with Vitalik soon to grace our shores with his presence, the whole country is abuzz. You can pick up conference tickets at a discount by following the link in this episode's notes at etherreview.info. I’ll be there and everyone will be invited to my place for a barbecue in the days following.

So let’s hear from they guys in Sydney. First up we have Tim Bass, on joint real estate investing, then Bok Khoo on decentralized exchanges and derivatives markets. After some general chat Sergei discusses Chronobank and Russell explains Rex before we move into discussions about usability, insurance and end user friendly key management. Finally

Sam outlines the processes behind the operation of Veredictum.

etherreview.info

Today we hear first from Joe Reed who won the Seattle IPFS / Ethereum Hackathon in February. His entry Matriarch expands on the ERC20 compliant Minime token, using it as a basis for crowdfunded MeDAOs. It’s an avant-garde idea and compliments his decentralized reddit project, Community.

Then Gabriel Mitchell of ethereumclothing.com raises the subject of branding in cryptocurrency. These interviews have been buried in my content bank for months now and it’s fun to sometimes unearth gems. Short interviews with people from the Ethereum community are great in that they yield insights that would not otherwise percolate to the surface of popular discourse. Also, it’s fun to plug community merch while having a productive conversation.

https://etherreview.info/

By now word of the Andreessen-Horowitz/Union Square Ventures investment in the digital asset hedge fund Polychain Capital was reached far and wide across the cryptoverse. Among other things, this interview with founders Olaf Carlson-Wee and Ryan Zurrer explores the questions that must be asked while establishing a long term crypto portfolio. Much of the discussion is especially pertinent in light of the recent ETH jump and fork concerns with Bitcoin.

Ever wished for a final login, a final app? The last user name you would ever need, the last thing you would ever need to download?

The Ethereum mobile client Status promises just that and it’s release is just around the corner. Founders Jarad Hope and Carl Bennetts join us to explain.

Nick Szabo’s blog Post: Money, Blockchains and Social Scalability

https://medium.com/r/?url=http%3A%2F%2Funenumerated.blogspot.co.nz%2F2017%2F02%2Fmoney-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html

etherreview.info

Charlie Shrem and Jason Granger explain the Mainstreet investment fund. A limited partnership which distributes it’s revenues to addresses associated with self verified token holders. A separate company, Intellisys, manages the fund.

The intricate problem solving required to create a legal token on the Ethereum blockchain that is backed by traditional investments, is fascinating.

Mainstreet started accepting funding on the 27th, so this episode is coming out a bit late. You can links to both Mainstreet and Intellisys in the episode notes.

etherreview.info

In Brief: On today’s episode Kenny Rowe joins to discuss:

Maker DAO Governance

The decision making around forks

DAOs in relation to stable value tokens

The double token model of stable token platforms

Community diversification as it relates to application development

The serfdom of the attention economy

Bitcoin on telephone poles

Friction in fundraising rails

The magic of technology

Kenny Rowe has been a part of the Maker DAO team since shortly after its inception. Initially a community organizer, Kenny has become more involved in the governance of Maker. This is the second time he has appeared on TER, the first being in early 2016. If you would like to learn more about Maker check out this episode. The Steemit article “Help Emma fight cystic fibrosis” can be found here.

Kenny’s good will and spirit of experimentation is infectious, and this is a particularly meandering and enjoyable conversation.

 

 Content: Kenny Rowe, Arthur Falls

etherreview.info

In Brief: Stas Oskin, Wings founder, explains how DAOs can be packaged for use by startups outside the blockchain space.

Learning from others mistakes, the team at Wings are building a platform with the ability to vet, fund and launch DAOs based on input from its community. The idea of decentralized due diligence is powerful and if the mechanisms perform as expected, we may see a more refined crop or projects emerging as a result. 

Especially interesting is Wings’ aspiration to use the ambitious RSK platform. While the project was delayed considerably, RSK intends to use Bitcoin’s blockchain and mining network combined with a group of trusted parties to secure sidechains. In particular, a sidechain operating the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Hopefully this will happen with the RSK launch this summer/fall, in the mean time, pressure from groups waiting to use the platform have resulted in an early launch on the Ethereum network.

Content: Stas Oskin, Arthur Falls

etherreview.info

In Brief: If there is one thing we learned in 2016 it’s that building a secure, stable, decentralized application is difficult. One of the responses to the problem has been the Open Zeppelin smart contract framework.

Open Zeppelin is really a community of developers 300 strong. Collectively they have built the framework over time in a similar fashion to Truffle or Dapple. In addition to maintaining the Open Zeppelin framework, the community audits smart contract deployments like the Golem, First Blood, and Wings token launches.

Content: Demian Brenner, Arthur Falls

etherreview.info

In Brief: From better signature schemes for blockchains, to quantum preparedness, to novel cryptography like zero knowledge proofs and threshold signatures, Dan Boneh takes us on a tour of cryptography in our age.

Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, Dan Boneh, has been working in the field of cryptography for over 25 years. During which time he has co-developed a signature scheme known as BLS Signatures. This was an opportunity to have some real questions answered, or more accurately, anticipated, by a master of the field.

* Signature aggregation: http://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/pubs/abstracts/aggsurvey.html

* Verifying Bitcoin exchange solvency: http://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/pubs/abstracts/provisions.html

* Non-crypto applications of quantum computing: https://research.google.com/pubs/QuantumAI.html

Post-quantum cryptography: https://www.amazon.com/Post-Quantum-Cryptography-Daniel-J-Bernstein/dp/3540887016/

Content: Dan Boneh, Arthur Falls

https://medium.com/the-ether-review

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