Plasma is a new type of scaling solution that Karl is helping to develop, and Phil tries to tear it apart. Phil also introduces the topic of storage rent, which is an uncomfortable truth we'll have to face sooner rather than later.

We sit down and try to dig through and define what Plasma is, what the pro's and con's are and what potential use-cases the technology has.

Unfortunately, the second half of the storage rent conversation was lost, but what's there is still valuable enough to share. Hopefully we can get another episode with Phil to dig deeper into the topic.

Karl Floersch

Phil Daian

Plasma

This week we sit down with JP Smith from the software security firm Trail of Bits. Trail of Bits started as a traditional infosec company doing audits and R&D. Over the past year, the company has been getting into doing audits and building tools for the blockchain space.

We talk about what audits are and how to think about them, how you should work to secure your smart contracts using Trail of Bits tools along the way and share some stories and conversations from the world of security.

Links to some of the tools talked about in this episode:

• manticore
• ethersplay
• echidna
• not-so-smart-contracts

Fredrik has a chat about consensus algorithms with Parity Technologies in-house consensus expert Robert Habermeier. We cover what a consensus algorithm is and how they work. We try to explain some common terms like safety and liveness, what a fork choice rule is and how real-world constraints like networking play a role in your algorithm design.

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Robert Habermeier

In this episode, we do a deep dive into the DFINITY protocol project and their recently released whitepaper. Using a randomness beacon, DFINITY aims to achieve an efficient and fair PoS system with strong safety and liveness guarantees. We speak with Robert Lauko, a Research Associate working on the project, about the ongoing development of this new blockchain, the Blockchain Nervous System and DFINITY's approach to on-chain governance.

DFINITY Website: https://dfinity.org/

DFINITY Github: https://github.com/dfinity

The gang catches up on what's been going on in the blockchain world for the past month, sharing some nuggets of learning around bloom filters, Proof of Authority, upcoming events, the Dfinity paper and some comments on what all the fuzz around this ERP is.

In this episode, we talk about what it takes to be a blockchain developer. Fredrik shares some of his insights and interviews Gavin Wood, co-founder of Parity and Ethereum, about how he got into this space as well. We also dig into what properties a good blockchain developer should have.

In this episode, we sit down with John Palmer and Marcus Molchany to discuss their new project Pragma, a tool designed to make deploying smart contracts much easier for developers who are new to the space.

We also delve into programming languages and the role of testnets and talk about the challenges of staying agile and testing assumptions when you're dealing with immutable technology.

Check out withpragma.com

In this episode, we will be talking with Liz Steininger, the CEO and MD of Least Authority - a Berlin based company focused on building an affordable, ethical, usable, and lasting data storage solution. They are dedicated to Free and Open Source software, end-to-end cryptography, user-friendly interfaces, and a sustainable economic model.

We sat down to discuss her experience with decentralised communities, the challenges of open source technology and how the blockchain dev community will likely develop over the next few years.

In this episode, we invite André, a Parity dev, to join us in a review of the latest activity in Parity and the general blockchain space. We cover bootnode infrastructure, database issues, the updated yellowpaper and more.

Part 2 in our series on decentralized storage: Solutions. In this episode, we look at the problems decentralised storage are trying to solve, interesting projects trying to tackle these problems and some of the implications. We also have a look at what properties you should keep an eye out for when looking at decentralized storage solutions and what you may want to consider before jumping into mining.

Links to some of the things we talk about in this episode:

• Storj
• IPFS
• Filecoin
• MaidSafe
• Sia
• Bluzelle
• BigchainDB