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Bitcoin's approach to solving the double spending problem is to make a collusion and attack on the network prohibitively expensive. One of the main factors that will determine Bitcoin's chance of survival in the long-term is whether the behavior that maximizes the profits of miners contributes to or sabotages the health of the network.

The game theory that determines this is complex and our understanding of it still incomplete. But research is increasing and two people who have been at the forefront of this work are Emin Gün Sirer, a professor in computer science at Cornell University, and Ittay Eyal, a post-doc at the same department.

They joined us for a fascinating discussion of their work on 'selfish mining', the incentive structure that underlies Bitcoin and their recent positive conclusions from the Miner's Dilemma. 

Topics covered included:
        - Emin Gün Sirer's early interest in cryptocurrencies and work on a cryptocurrency to incentivize bittorrent users in 2004
        - What selfish mining is and how miners could profit from withholding blocks
        - How an attacker would execute a selfish mining attack
        - Why the miner's dilemma implies that the equilibrium might be small mining pools
        - Why the lack of security of clients and servers is holding back adoption

Links mentioned in this episode: 

- Selfish Mining paper (PDF): http://bit.ly/1DsCgEK
- Miner's Dilemma blog post: http://bit.ly/1EcdbSe
- Miner's Dilemma paper (PDF): http://bit.ly/1djBsgj
- Hacking, Distributed: http://bit.ly/1A4YTyJ
- Meni Rosenfeld's paper on mining pool reward systems (PDF): http://bit.ly/1djBFQL


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- Buy and sell alt coins instantly with http://ShapeShift.io

Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/076


Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture.
 
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EB76 – Emin Gün Sirer & Ittay Eyal: From Selfish Miners To The Miner's Dilemma

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Before 2013 few people paid attention to Bitcoin and blockchain, yet even back in the 1990s a vibrant group of prioneers pursued the vision of financial cryptography and digital cash. One of these was financial cryptographer and software developer Ian Grigg, who today works as an architecture consultant for R3.

Grigg joined us for a discussion of the history of the digital cash, Bitcoin and his work on Ricardian Contracts, which foreshadowed today's smart contracts.

Topics covered included:
- The origin story of financial cryptography
- DigiCash and the startup scene around it in the 1990s
- Ricardian Contracts and why contracts are central to digital assets
- Ricardian Contracts vs blockchain

Links mentioned in this episode: 

- Ricardian Contract Paper http://bit.ly/2cOnQsU
- Financial Cryptography Website http://bit.ly/2dM4men
- Financial Cryptography in 7 Layers http://bit.ly/2d9GRXT
- R3CEV http://bit.ly/2dVJiRX
- Brown, Carlyle, Grigg & Hearn: Corda - An Introduction http://bit.ly/2dmtPLP

Sponsors: 

- Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices http://jaxx.io
- BitFiniti Conference in Miami Beach Oct 30 - Nov 2: Go to bitfiniti.com/epicenter for discounts on registrations and presenter packages

Show notes: http://epicenter.tv/151
YouTube: http://youtu.be/wokvO1ptE1k
SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-151


Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

Epicenter Bitcoin

151 – Ian Grigg: Ricardian Contracts And Digital Assets Prehistory

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As content becomes more and more abundant and immediately available at our fingertips, our limited attention is a barrier for those whose business it is to attract and harness it. In this context, large (social) media companies understand that attention is a scarce commodity, and, as has been demonstrated, those who control attention wield enormous power over our society.

We're joined by Greg Meredith, CTO of Synereo, to talk about how this new Blockchain platform rebuild the attention economy. In a sense, Synereo is to attention, what Bitcoin is to money, in effect, removing intermediaries from the transaction between those who have attention, and those who wish to attract it. Greg, also gives his insights on how functional programming languages could allow for verifiable computational smart contracts. 

Topics discussed in this episode:

- Greg's background as a mathematician and his work on Microsoft's BizTalk Process Orchestration
- How he transitioned into the crypto-currency space
- What is Synereo and what the project is trying to achieve
- Greg's thoughts on the attention economy and how it is fundamentally broken
- Synereo's technology stack
- How Vlad Zamfir's Casper consensus algorithm influenced Synereo
- Rholang, Synereo's functional smart-contracting language
- Synereo's economic model and product roadmap

Links mentioned in this episode: 

- Synereo: https://synereo.com
- Synereo White Paper: https://github.com/synereo/synereo.github.io/raw/master/whitepapers/synereo.pdf
- Logic as a distributive law: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.02247v2.pdf
- Quit social media by Dr. Cal Newport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk
- Deep Work by Dr. Cal Newport: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692

Sponsors: 

- Ledger Nano: Smart card security for your Bitcoins - Get 10% off your first order when you use the code EPICENTER at http://ledgerwallet.com
- Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices http://jaxx.io


Show notes: http://epicenter.tv/154
YouTube: http://youtu.be/0jRNSEt-D9A
SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-154


Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

154 – Greg Meredith: Rebuilding The Attention Economy From The Ground Up With Synereo

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Writing his college thesis on Bitcoin in 2012 and becoming Coinbase's first employee in 2013, Olaf Carlson-Wee has been at the forefront of cryptocurrency for many years. Recently, he left Coinbase to start Polychain Capital, a hedge fund focused solely on investing in cryptocurrencies and protocol tokens. Olaf joined us to discuss his journey in the industry and the investment thesis behing Polychain. 

Topics discussed in this episode:
- How Olaf Carlson-Wee became Coinbase's first employee
- The investment thesis behind Polychain Capital
- Why protocol tokens represent a huge investment opportunity
- The current state of tokensales
- Why the blockchain crowdfunding campaigns will start resembling VC deal structure
- His view on the state of the Bitcoin network and community

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Polychain Capital: http://polychain.capital	
- Beyond Bitcoin: The future of cryptocurrencies - The Signal: https://blog.mixpanel.com/2016/07/27/blockchain-technology-olaf-carlson-wee/
- Bitcoin Will Never Be a Currency—It's Something Way Weirder | WIRED: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bitcoin-will-never-currency-something-way-weirder/
- The Golden Age Of Open Protocols – AVC: http://avc.com/2016/07/the-golden-age-of-open-protocols/
- Blockchain Tokens and the dawn of the Decentralized Business Model: https://blog.coinbase.com/app-coins-and-the-dawn-of-the-decentralized-business-model-8b8c951e734f#.rl4mv6p98
- Fat Protocols | Union Square Ventures: http://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols
- a16z and USV invest $10m in new digital asset hedge fund: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/09/andreessen-horowitz-and-union-square-ventures-invest-10-million-in-new-digital-assets-hedge-fund/#2e6f5ce95e97
- The future is a decentralized internet | TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/08/the-future-is-a-decentralized-internet/

Sponsors: 
- Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices - http://jaxx.io


Watch or listen, Epicenter is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

173 – Olaf Carlson-Wee: Polychain Capital and the Rise of Protocol Tokens

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Years into the great Bitcoin scaling debate no solution is in reach. Neither bigger blocks nor Segregated Witness have anywhere near consensus support. With the conflict escalating, a Bitcoin fork has become a real possibility.

Electrum Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us to discuss the state of the Bitcoin scaling debate. We discussed Bitcoin Unlimited, ASICBoost, SegWit activation without miner support and how a Bitcoin fork could play out. Possible outcomes include that Bitcoin Unlimited gains a majority of hashing power and starts mining bigger blocks. In the event of a fork, a proof-of-work change could be done to defend the minority chain from miner attacks. And lately a proposal was brought forward to activate SegWit without the support of the hashing power.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- ASICBoost and its potential role in the conflict
- How a Bitcoin fork could happen
- How to split coins in case of a fork
- How UASF could be used to activate SegWit without miner support
- Requirements for UASF to be safe
- How Electrum would handle a fork

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Electrum Bitcoin Wallet: https://electrum.org/#home
- ASICBoost – Hacker Noon: https://medium.com/@samcole_74219/asicboost-655a73d48ae4
- Bitcoin's New Controversy: The AsicBoost Allegations Explained - CoinDesk: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-new-controversy-asicboost-allegations-explained/
- Timo Hanke on ASICBoost and SegWit Non-Activation: https://twitter.com/timothanke/status/849896505653706753
- From AsicBoost to UASF: Greg Maxwell on Bitcoin's Path Forward - CoinDesk: http://www.coindesk.com/asicboost-uasf-greg-maxwell-bitcoins-path-forward/
- [bitcoin-dev] Thomas Voegtlin: Soft Fork Threshold Signaling Proposal: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/014146.html
- UASF Working Group: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/uasf/
- [bitcoin-dev] Greg Maxwell: I do not support the BIP 148 UASF: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/014152.html
- Thomas Voegtlin: Electrum, SPV Wallets And Bitcoin Aliases — Epicenter: https://epicenter.tv/episode/069/

Sponsors: 
- Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices - http://jaxx.io

This episode is also available on :
- Epicenter.tv: https://epicenter.tv/179
- YouTube: http://youtu.be/18QdbsSo8T8
- Souncloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-179

Watch or listen, Epicenter is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

179 – Thomas Voegtlin: Blocksize, Bitcoin Unlimited, ASICBoost and Activating SegWit

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Anyone who has ever started a company knows just how tedious that process that can be. Whether it's establishing a shareholder's agreement, defining the company's constitutional structure, raising funds, or transferring shares, corporate governance procedures remain largely paper-based, requiring validation from multiple stakeholders, and their lawyers. Blockchain technologies, and specifically smart contracts, provide the rails upon which these processes can be digitized and streamlined, reducing operational costs, eliminating errors and automating menial tasks.

Manu Thanabalan, CTO of Otonomos, joins us to discuss how his company is leveraging smart contracts to accelerate incorporation and automate corporate governance. Otonomos provides the tools and services which allow for anyone to start a company in any of the jurisdictions they support. Using their platform, founders are able to define board members and issue shares, while captables are kept up-to-date in real-time. Day-to-day governance mechanisms and standard procedures such as voting and share transfers are automated through a smart contact, which complies with local jurisdictional regulation. 

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Mano's background as a quantitative trader and how he transitioned into blockchain
- The fundamental problem Otonomos is addressing
- How we may be able to unlock a tremendous amount of value by liberating shares currently locked in private companies
- Leveraging smart contracts to automate standardized corporate legal procedures
- The types of constitutional rules which can be digitized and automated with smart contracts
- The ability to simplify accounting and auditing with Otonomos
- The Otonomos technology stack
- The current state of Otonomos and their product roadmap

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Otonomos Website: http://otonomos.com

This episode is also available on :
- Epicenter.tv: https://epicenter.tv/180
- YouTube: http://youtu.be/i7e_ORfk-Lg
- Souncloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-180

Watch or listen, Epicenter is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

180 – Mano Thanabalan: Simplifying Incorporation & Automating Corporate Governance with Otonomos

Epicenter is a podcast about the technologies, projects & people driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sebastien Couture and Meher Roy. Every week, we find the most interesting people in the industry for in-depth discussions about their projects, ideas and stories.