StarkWare is solving two of blockchain’s biggest issues, scalability and privacy, using STARK technology and zero-knowledge proofs. Listen to learn how StarkWare and their new product StarkExchange work, the future use-cases of this technology, and how StarkWare plans to move the source of truth from big trusted parties back to the end-users. ##Addressing the two problems of blockchains StarkWare wants to solve scalability and privacy on blockchains with no trusted set ups and no hidden factors in a transparent and blockchain-compatible way. The goal is to do this as a technology provider, without minting another token and trying to become another internet money, but by providing the technology as a layer two initially to the ecosystem and potentially later on at layer one. StarkWare has developed a full proof-stack using STARK technology to generate and verify proofs of computational integrity. A STARK is a proof, a mechanism that makes you confident that a statement is correct. A simple analogy would be to compare it to a grocery receipt, in that it convinces you that the total sum you should pay is correct. ##Use case: StarkExchange One product StarkWare hopes to have live on mainnet before year’s end is their scalability engine for exchanges, StarkExhange. The basic concept is a very simple one: an exchange creates batches of trades and sends them to StarkWare on the back end in batches of trades. StarkWare then compresses them and computes proofs attesting to the integrity of these trade batches, and the only thing they send back to the blockchain is a STARK proof, which can then be verified on-chain by anyone interested in doing so. The StarkExchange is a great example of how StarkWare can help with the scalability and privacy properties of a transaction. Beyond the exchange of currency, it can help with layer one scalability and with speeding up payments later down the line and ensuring fair trading. ##The big vision for StarkWare Over the next decade, StarkWare’s vision is about enabling individuals to own back their information and self-custody trade, interact, and assert things about their financial status. The current state of things is that the world operates largely on trust-based systems, in which we rely on ‘trusted parties’ like governments, large corporations, banks, etc. to protect our confidential information. StarkWare wants to move the source of truth from big trusted parties back to the end-users. A vibrant developer community is essential to build a host of tools to enable this vision, and the team also understands that achieving this grand vision is a long process, but it’s one they are dedicated to and passionate about. Key takeaways:  StarkWare is building a full proof-stack that allows blockchains to be more scalable, secure, and private; There are many applications for this technology including allowing users to trade their digital assets on centralized exchanges from a non custodial wallet; The StarkWare team is world class, and their technology could prove to be one of the most important innovations in the blockchain space. 

StarkWare is solving two of blockchain’s biggest issues, scalability and privacy, using STARK technology and zero-knowledge proofs. Listen to learn how StarkWare and their new product StarkExchange work, the future use-cases of this technology, and how StarkWare plans to move the source of truth from big trusted parties back to the end-users. ##Addressing the two problems of blockchains StarkWare wants to solve scalability and privacy on blockchains with no trusted set ups and no hidden factors in a transparent and blockchain-compatible way. The goal is to do this as a technology provider, without minting another token and trying to become another internet money, but by providing the technology as a layer two initially to the ecosystem and potentially later on at layer one. StarkWare has developed a full proof-stack using STARK technology to generate and verify proofs of computational integrity. A STARK is a proof, a mechanism that makes you confident that a statement is correct. A simple analogy would be to compare it to a grocery receipt, in that it convinces you that the total sum you should pay is correct. ##Use case: StarkExchange One product StarkWare hopes to have live on mainnet before year’s end is their scalability engine for exchanges, StarkExhange. The basic concept is a very simple one: an exchange creates batches of trades and sends them to StarkWare on the back end in batches of trades. StarkWare then compresses them and computes proofs attesting to the integrity of these trade batches, and the only thing they send back to the blockchain is a STARK proof, which can then be verified on-chain by anyone interested in doing so. The StarkExchange is a great example of how StarkWare can help with the scalability and privacy properties of a transaction. Beyond the exchange of currency, it can help with layer one scalability and with speeding up payments later down the line and ensuring fair trading. ##The big vision for StarkWare Over the next decade, StarkWare’s vision is about enabling individuals to own back their information and self-custody trade, interact, and assert things about their financial status. The current state of things is that the world operates largely on trust-based systems, in which we rely on ‘trusted parties’ like governments, large corporations, banks, etc. to protect our confidential information. StarkWare wants to move the source of truth from big trusted parties back to the end-users. A vibrant developer community is essential to build a host of tools to enable this vision, and the team also understands that achieving this grand vision is a long process, but it’s one they are dedicated to and passionate about. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>StarkWare is building a full proof-stack that allows blockchains to be more scalable, secure, and private;</li> <li>There are many applications for this technology including allowing users to trade their digital assets on centralized exchanges from a non custodial wallet;</li> <li>The StarkWare team is world class, and their technology could prove to be one of the most important innovations in the blockchain space.</li> </ul>

StarkWare: Scalability and Privacy for Blockchains

What if launching an application on the blockchain was fast, simple, and user-friendly? Today, we are joined by Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, a community operated cloud platform which aims to enable developers to write, test, and deploy scalable, decentralized applications in minutes. Listen to learn about how the protocol works, the potential use-cases and what they’re currently experimenting with, and the exciting things we can expect to see from NEAR in the future. ##What is NEAR? NEAR Protocol is a community operated, developer-friendly cloud built on a proof-of-stake public blockchain. Their vision to move from centralized clouds and applications to a world in which developers can build applications that communicate with each other and where users control their data. For example, if a developer builds a social app and launches it on this platform, anyone else can build new user interfaces and use the users’ data from this app for other apps with the users’ permission. ##Why NEAR? The blockchain is a core component of NEAR. What this allows you to do is start building things that are operating around money and assets, which is what blockchain is really good at right now. It provides a fully trustless system. But the existing blockchains, as NEAR sees them, are largely unusable. So if you, as an engineer, want to build a real application, it’s extremely difficult to build, and then at launch users often struggle with usability. NEAR wants to enable an engineer who doesn’t know anything about blockchain but wants to build an application to be able to come to the platform and build an app in one day, or ideally faster. ##The future of NEAR The potential for building on NEAR is huge, and at the moment they are focusing on games, as gamers are beginning to realize it’s possible to own their own in-game assets, and although the concept has not yet hit the mainstream, it is growing in popularity as more and more people become aware of it. NEAR is also doing a lot of experimentation right now, so far with a lot of user-generated content, which is still in the early stages. As the protocol becomes more stable and secure, they plan on expanding to start enabling developers to build decentralized finance applications. You can visit BuiltWithNEAR.com to see the different kinds of applications built using the protocol. Key takeaways:  NEAR Protocol aims to be the most developer-friendly blockchain, with ambitions to be a community operated cloud platform; NEAR is using a proof-of-stake consensus but has a sophisticated governance model; NEAR plans to launch mainnet in summer 2019, and you can follow the team’s progress at NEARProtocol.com 

What if launching an application on the blockchain was fast, simple, and user-friendly? Today, we are joined by Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, a community operated cloud platform which aims to enable developers to write, test, and deploy scalable, decentralized applications in minutes. Listen to learn about how the protocol works, the potential use-cases and what they’re currently experimenting with, and the exciting things we can expect to see from NEAR in the future. ##What is NEAR? NEAR Protocol is a community operated, developer-friendly cloud built on a proof-of-stake public blockchain. Their vision to move from centralized clouds and applications to a world in which developers can build applications that communicate with each other and where users control their data. For example, if a developer builds a social app and launches it on this platform, anyone else can build new user interfaces and use the users’ data from this app for other apps with the users’ permission. ##Why NEAR? The blockchain is a core component of NEAR. What this allows you to do is start building things that are operating around money and assets, which is what blockchain is really good at right now. It provides a fully trustless system. But the existing blockchains, as NEAR sees them, are largely unusable. So if you, as an engineer, want to build a real application, it’s extremely difficult to build, and then at launch users often struggle with usability. NEAR wants to enable an engineer who doesn’t know anything about blockchain but wants to build an application to be able to come to the platform and build an app in one day, or ideally faster. ##The future of NEAR The potential for building on NEAR is huge, and at the moment they are focusing on games, as gamers are beginning to realize it’s possible to own their own in-game assets, and although the concept has not yet hit the mainstream, it is growing in popularity as more and more people become aware of it. NEAR is also doing a lot of experimentation right now, so far with a lot of user-generated content, which is still in the early stages. As the protocol becomes more stable and secure, they plan on expanding to start enabling developers to build decentralized finance applications. You can visit <a href="http://BuiltWithNEAR.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">BuiltWithNEAR.com</a> to see the different kinds of applications built using the protocol. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>NEAR Protocol aims to be the most developer-friendly blockchain, with ambitions to be a community operated cloud platform;</li> <li>NEAR is using a proof-of-stake consensus but has a sophisticated governance model;</li> <li>NEAR plans to launch mainnet in summer 2019, and you can follow the team’s progress at <a href="http://NEARProtocol.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NEARProtocol.com</a></li> </ul>

NEAR Protocol: Community Operated Cloud

What if there was a way retain total privacy with your digital transactions? Today’s guest is Daniel Lehnberg, a core developer for Grin, an exciting new cryptocurrency that launched earlier this year. Join us for a look at how Grin aims to be the first private electronic cash, how it compares to Bitcoin, and the important impact this technology could have on democracy. ##Cash-Like Cryptocurrency Grin is a new cryptocurrency with the goal of becoming a global, digital cash. This means there is no transaction history, and you can retain total privacy with no permanent record of your sent and received payments. Grin’s conception story is similar to Bitcoin in that it has pseudonymous founders and developers, there is no company behind it, there was no pre-mine, and there is a vibrant community of early adopters and developers supporting the ecosystem. The protocol and the implementation itself takes pride in being very simple and minimalistic by design. It’s a fresh take on how to do private and electronic cash. ##How Grin is Different “Grin’s aim is to be better money,” says Lehnberg, and the focus is on delivering that idea of electronic cash-like transactions. In order for electronic transactions to be cash-like, they shouldn’t have a memory. That’s the focus of the coin and why the emphasis is on privacy. There are other privacy projects trying to solve similar problems, but the difference with Grin is that the amount of information that goes on the chain is very little. There is no amount, no address, and no metadata beyond a link of cryptographically blinded inputs and outputs. ##The Potential of Electronic Cash Electronic transactions have revolutionized the way we make payments and how we transact between borders around the world, but it has required us to sacrifice many of the benefits of cash. With the current way electronic transactions work, we must allow third parties to become privy to our transactional information and we must also establish gatekeepers to make decisions about who has access to this global financial system, who will be allowed to transact, and how. Electronic cash like Grin has the potential to have an important impact on democracy and individuals’ abilities to protect their own liberties. Key takeaways:  Grin is a 3-month-old crypto asset that aims to be digital cash; Unlike Bitcoin’s fixed supply schedule, a new Grin will be created every second; Grin has seen developer-led community support, and has an early but vibrant community 

What if there was a way retain total privacy with your digital transactions? Today’s guest is Daniel Lehnberg, a core developer for Grin, an exciting new cryptocurrency that launched earlier this year. Join us for a look at how Grin aims to be the first private electronic cash, how it compares to Bitcoin, and the important impact this technology could have on democracy. ##Cash-Like Cryptocurrency Grin is a new cryptocurrency with the goal of becoming a global, digital cash. This means there is no transaction history, and you can retain total privacy with no permanent record of your sent and received payments. Grin’s conception story is similar to Bitcoin in that it has pseudonymous founders and developers, there is no company behind it, there was no pre-mine, and there is a vibrant community of early adopters and developers supporting the ecosystem. The protocol and the implementation itself takes pride in being very simple and minimalistic by design. It’s a fresh take on how to do private and electronic cash. ##How Grin is Different “Grin’s aim is to be better money,” says Lehnberg, and the focus is on delivering that idea of electronic cash-like transactions. In order for electronic transactions to be cash-like, they shouldn’t have a memory. That’s the focus of the coin and why the emphasis is on privacy. There are other privacy projects trying to solve similar problems, but the difference with Grin is that the amount of information that goes on the chain is very little. There is no amount, no address, and no metadata beyond a link of cryptographically blinded inputs and outputs. ##The Potential of Electronic Cash Electronic transactions have revolutionized the way we make payments and how we transact between borders around the world, but it has required us to sacrifice many of the benefits of cash. With the current way electronic transactions work, we must allow third parties to become privy to our transactional information and we must also establish gatekeepers to make decisions about who has access to this global financial system, who will be allowed to transact, and how. Electronic cash like Grin has the potential to have an important impact on democracy and individuals’ abilities to protect their own liberties. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Grin is a 3-month-old crypto asset that aims to be digital cash;</li> <li>Unlike Bitcoin’s fixed supply schedule, a new Grin will be created every second;</li> <li>Grin has seen developer-led community support, and has an early but vibrant community</li> </ul>

Grin: Global Digital Cash

What is blockchain simulation? When launching a public blockchain, it’s essential to think through and understand the  incentives, behavioral economics, and crypto economics prior to going live, and the most accurate way of doing that is through simulation. On this special episode, we’re joined by both Gauntlet and Computable Labs to discuss what both companies are doing in the space and how they’re working together. ##Gauntlet - Blockchain Testing, Analysis, and Simulation Decentralized governance is difficult. Once something is live on the mainnet, large scale changes become difficult if not impossible to make, so developers need to think through the incentives, behavioral economics, and crypto economics before the actual launch. Gauntlet is a platform for blockchain testing, analysis, and simulation. They want to help teams iterate faster in the crypto space and for consumers and users of these platforms to have increased confidence in these protocols. “Statistical modeling can help you understand where your system breaks down and allow you to test possible fixes,” says John Morrow, Head of Product at Gauntlet. “We want to be a trusted partner throughout the development lifecycle to help people build these decentralized systems.” ##Computable Labs - Fair Data “Right now, we have this essential surveillance economy,” says Bharath Ramsundar, Co-Founder &amp; CTO at Computable Labs. “People are stripped and exploited to gather data. They don’t see any fair rewards for it.” What Computable Labs wants to do is help reverse and control this process, making it more fair for everyone who participates. The first and critical guarantee for the protocol is giving users the ability to delete data, and the second critical guarantee is ownership. The Computable Labs team believes that all participants should have a voice. ##Working Together Computable Labs is working through design iterations and progressively getting closer to being ready to launch. Working with Gauntlet has facilitated this process and allowed them to really drill down and test what the protocol feels like. “It’s been awesome working with the Gauntlet team,” says Bharath. “Simulation and having an actual instability emerge organically from the analysis has really been insightful for us.” Key takeaways:  Decentralized systems create new challenges for protocol developers, smart contract developers, and asset holders that are not seen in traditional development and investing. Gauntlet is building a blockchain simulation and testing platform that leverages battle-tested techniques from other industries to emulate interactions in crypto networks. At Computable Labs they are building an open source technology to make it not just possible, but also profitable to trade and exchange data. 

What is blockchain simulation? When launching a public blockchain, it’s essential to think through and understand the incentives, behavioral economics, and crypto economics prior to going live, and the most accurate way of doing that is through simulation. On this special episode, we’re joined by both Gauntlet and Computable Labs to discuss what both companies are doing in the space and how they’re working together. ##Gauntlet - Blockchain Testing, Analysis, and Simulation Decentralized governance is difficult. Once something is live on the mainnet, large scale changes become difficult if not impossible to make, so developers need to think through the incentives, behavioral economics, and crypto economics before the actual launch. Gauntlet is a platform for blockchain testing, analysis, and simulation. They want to help teams iterate faster in the crypto space and for consumers and users of these platforms to have increased confidence in these protocols. “Statistical modeling can help you understand where your system breaks down and allow you to test possible fixes,” says John Morrow, Head of Product at Gauntlet. “We want to be a trusted partner throughout the development lifecycle to help people build these decentralized systems.” ##Computable Labs - Fair Data “Right now, we have this essential surveillance economy,” says Bharath Ramsundar, Co-Founder &amp; CTO at Computable Labs. “People are stripped and exploited to gather data. They don’t see any fair rewards for it.” What Computable Labs wants to do is help reverse and control this process, making it more fair for everyone who participates. The first and critical guarantee for the protocol is giving users the ability to delete data, and the second critical guarantee is ownership. The Computable Labs team believes that all participants should have a voice. ##Working Together Computable Labs is working through design iterations and progressively getting closer to being ready to launch. Working with Gauntlet has facilitated this process and allowed them to really drill down and test what the protocol feels like. “It’s been awesome working with the Gauntlet team,” says Bharath. “Simulation and having an actual instability emerge organically from the analysis has really been insightful for us.” Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Decentralized systems create new challenges for protocol developers, smart contract developers, and asset holders that are not seen in traditional development and investing. Gauntlet is building a blockchain simulation and testing platform that leverages battle-tested techniques from other industries to emulate interactions in crypto networks.</li> <li>At Computable Labs they are building an open source technology to make it not just possible, but also profitable to trade and exchange data.</li> </ul>

Gauntlet and Computable Labs: Blockchain Simulation and Fair Data

UMA stands for universal market access, and UMA’s co-founder Hart Lambur, along with the rest of the team, wanted a name that reflected their bigger vision and what they’re trying to do, which is create universal market access for financial products. ##A decentralized financial contracts platform UMA is a decentralized financial contracts platform that believes financial markets should be universally accessible. UMA is designed to power the financial innovations made possible by permissionless, public blockchains like Ethereum. They just launched their first product, USStocks, an S&amp;P 500 tracking token, which is being traded and listed on a decentralized exchange, DDEX. This product is not accessible to people in the US, nor is it marketable to them. It’s for users without access to the US equity markets, but who want exposure to the broader S&amp;P. It’s designed as an ERC20 token that will, behind the scenes, track the S&amp;P 500 performance. You buy it on an exchange, you own it, and you get that performance. There’s no dApp you need to interface with, nothing you need to do, you just get this asset exposure. ##Synthetic derivative The underlying concept of UMA is a synthetic derivative. A classic synthetic derivative in the fiat world is effectively a legal agreement between two counterparties. For example, you might want to go long the S&amp;P 500 and I might want to go short it, and so we enter into a legal agreement where I pay you the upside and you pay me the downside, and we settle up in a year’s time. This is a useful financial innovation because it lets the two parties trade the S&amp;P 500 synthetically, with nothing more than this legal agreement. But classic synthetic derivatives aren’t a globally accessible option; you would have to be very wealthy or an institution to have access to this type of over-the-counter derivative. UMA has taken this concept and embedded it into this token structure to make it globally accessible. ##An important infrastructure layer UMA is an important piece of infrastructure. The products they want to see created in the short term would look like an S&amp;P 500 token that’s long, an inverse token—one that lets you bet on the stock market going down—and leveraged versions of that. They’d like to see the same thing exist for all the other major market indices, like NASDAQ, FTSE 100, different countries’ exchanges, gold and oil, and any other real world assets that people show demand for. UMA can also use the exact same infrastructure and do the same thing with crypto products, such as Bitcoin and all the other major crypto coins, so these are the initial products they’d like to see get to market quickly. Key takeaways:  UMA is a decentralized financial contracts platform, built to enable Universal Market Access, hence the name; Synthetic assets are incredibly important for the evolution of open finance, because they make financial markets more accessible. Now anyone in - the world can be exposed to the US stock market. That’s profound for citizens of developing countries; UMA is the infrastructure layer that will allow anyone to both create and trade synthetic assets. It will be exciting to see what people create now that you can trustlessly tokenize long, short, or leveraged exposure to real world assets. 

UMA stands for universal market access, and UMA’s co-founder Hart Lambur, along with the rest of the team, wanted a name that reflected their bigger vision and what they’re trying to do, which is create universal market access for financial products. ##A decentralized financial contracts platform UMA is a decentralized financial contracts platform that believes financial markets should be universally accessible. UMA is designed to power the financial innovations made possible by permissionless, public blockchains like Ethereum. They just launched their first product, USStocks, an S&amp;P 500 tracking token, which is being traded and listed on a decentralized exchange, DDEX. This product is not accessible to people in the US, nor is it marketable to them. It’s for users without access to the US equity markets, but who want exposure to the broader S&amp;P. It’s designed as an ERC20 token that will, behind the scenes, track the S&amp;P 500 performance. You buy it on an exchange, you own it, and you get that performance. There’s no dApp you need to interface with, nothing you need to do, you just get this asset exposure. ##Synthetic derivative The underlying concept of UMA is a synthetic derivative. A classic synthetic derivative in the fiat world is effectively a legal agreement between two counterparties. For example, you might want to go long the S&amp;P 500 and I might want to go short it, and so we enter into a legal agreement where I pay you the upside and you pay me the downside, and we settle up in a year’s time. This is a useful financial innovation because it lets the two parties trade the S&amp;P 500 synthetically, with nothing more than this legal agreement. But classic synthetic derivatives aren’t a globally accessible option; you would have to be very wealthy or an institution to have access to this type of over-the-counter derivative. UMA has taken this concept and embedded it into this token structure to make it globally accessible. ##An important infrastructure layer UMA is an important piece of infrastructure. The products they want to see created in the short term would look like an S&amp;P 500 token that’s long, an inverse token—one that lets you bet on the stock market going down—and leveraged versions of that. They’d like to see the same thing exist for all the other major market indices, like NASDAQ, FTSE 100, different countries’ exchanges, gold and oil, and any other real world assets that people show demand for. UMA can also use the exact same infrastructure and do the same thing with crypto products, such as Bitcoin and all the other major crypto coins, so these are the initial products they’d like to see get to market quickly. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>UMA is a decentralized financial contracts platform, built to enable Universal Market Access, hence the name;</li> <li>Synthetic assets are incredibly important for the evolution of open finance, because they make financial markets more accessible. Now anyone in - the world can be exposed to the US stock market. That’s profound for citizens of developing countries;</li> <li>UMA is the infrastructure layer that will allow anyone to both create and trade synthetic assets. It will be exciting to see what people create now that you can trustlessly tokenize long, short, or leveraged exposure to real world assets.</li> </ul>

UMA: Decentralized Financial Contracts

Executing large orders of digital assets is really difficult. Tagomi makes it simple by combining institutional grade services with superior execution technology for digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Join us as we chat with Marc and Kevin from Tagomi to learn how their products provide operational ease and reduce trading costs for institutional investors. ##Electronic agency brokerage in the digital asset space Tagomi connects to multiple liquidity sources and allows clients to place larger and more sophisticated trades using multiple liquidity sources. They also automate the settlement and clearing piece working with partner banks and allowing clients to deposit and custody with them as well, using integrated third parties. Tagomi is never on the other side of the bet, and they have the ability to do everything in the client’s interest and be fully aligned. Part of their transparency is generating post-trade reports, showing clients how trades are executed. ##Tagomi and the crypto landscape Tagomi is a big part of the progress that’s being made and is building important infrastructure for crypto to mature and professionalize into an institutional asset class. They are innovating the space with the ability to do things electronically as well as on an agency basis, providing a brokerage solution that can really bring together the trade execution, settlement, and custody pieces. ##The exciting roadmap for Tagomi For the future, Tagomi will be looking to add more tokens and cover more exchanges to increase the liquidity they have access to, offering the full suite of financing activities you would see with a traditional prime brokerage. Their goal is to add more features while providing the same kind of seamless experience that people have with them today, and they’re working very hard to give clients the kinds of participation they expect to have with their assets. Key takeaways:  Executing large orders of digital assets is really hard and Tagomi makes it simple by automating best execution and settlement; For crypto to mature into a credible asset class, infrastructure like Tagomi is critical to making trading, settlement, and custody more professional and institutional; Tagomi has an exciting product roadmap, including adding more tokens to the platform, integrating more exchanges, and adding more financial features like shorting and staking. 

Executing large orders of digital assets is really difficult. Tagomi makes it simple by combining institutional grade services with superior execution technology for digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Join us as we chat with Marc and Kevin from Tagomi to learn how their products provide operational ease and reduce trading costs for institutional investors. ##Electronic agency brokerage in the digital asset space Tagomi connects to multiple liquidity sources and allows clients to place larger and more sophisticated trades using multiple liquidity sources. They also automate the settlement and clearing piece working with partner banks and allowing clients to deposit and custody with them as well, using integrated third parties. Tagomi is never on the other side of the bet, and they have the ability to do everything in the client’s interest and be fully aligned. Part of their transparency is generating post-trade reports, showing clients how trades are executed. ##Tagomi and the crypto landscape Tagomi is a big part of the progress that’s being made and is building important infrastructure for crypto to mature and professionalize into an institutional asset class. They are innovating the space with the ability to do things electronically as well as on an agency basis, providing a brokerage solution that can really bring together the trade execution, settlement, and custody pieces. ##The exciting roadmap for Tagomi For the future, Tagomi will be looking to add more tokens and cover more exchanges to increase the liquidity they have access to, offering the full suite of financing activities you would see with a traditional prime brokerage. Their goal is to add more features while providing the same kind of seamless experience that people have with them today, and they’re working very hard to give clients the kinds of participation they expect to have with their assets. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Executing large orders of digital assets is really hard and Tagomi makes it simple by automating best execution and settlement;</li> <li>For crypto to mature into a credible asset class, infrastructure like Tagomi is critical to making trading, settlement, and custody more professional and institutional;</li> <li>Tagomi has an exciting product roadmap, including adding more tokens to the platform, integrating more exchanges, and adding more financial features like shorting and staking.</li> </ul>

Tagomi: Crypto Prime Brokerage

What if you could earn interest on your Ethereum holdings using a decentralized network that removes any barriers to entry? Rocket Pool wants to allow users to do just that. There’s no need to worry about maintaining an extensive staking infrastructure. Just plug and play. Our guest today is CTO and co-founder of Rocket Pool, David Rugendyke. Join us to learn about Rocket Pool’s features and services, when you can expect to starting using the network, and what David thinks about proof of stake versus proof of work. ##Ethereum transitioning to PoS Many people are familiar with the way current mining pools work. With Bitcoin you can put a computer to work to validate transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, and in return for that you are awarded in Bitcoin. Ethereum is transitioning to a new way of doing this called proof of stake (PoS), which will allow users to earn interest on their Ethereum holdings by essentially keeping a computer online to validate transactions. ##A decentralized, easy-to-use staking service Rocket Pool is being designed as a way to help you earn interest on your Ethereum holdings by eliminating a few of the initial barriers to entry, such as cost and setting up your own node. The minimum amount required to earn interest on Ethereum through the proof of stake mechanism is 32 Ether, which is currently somewhere around $3500. What Rocket Pool allows you to do is pool your Ether together with other users and overcome these barriers to entry and earn interest on your Ethereum in the meantime. ##The future of Rocket Pool You can expect to begin using Rocket Pool when the new Ethereum 2.0 is rolled out later in 2019 or early 2020. In the meantime, you can visit Rocket Pool’s website at RocketPool.net to get started by reading their white paper, checking out their open source code on GitHub, and interacting with their public beta release. Key takeaways:  When Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake, users will be able to earn a yield on their Ethereum; Rocket Pool hopes to be the leading staking service by offering an easy-to-use interface and non-custodial solution; Rocket Pool anticipates to be up and running by the end of 2019, and you can visit RocketPool.net to begin learning how their staking services work. 

What if you could earn interest on your Ethereum holdings using a decentralized network that removes any barriers to entry? Rocket Pool wants to allow users to do just that. There’s no need to worry about maintaining an extensive staking infrastructure. Just plug and play. Our guest today is CTO and co-founder of Rocket Pool, David Rugendyke. Join us to learn about Rocket Pool’s features and services, when you can expect to starting using the network, and what David thinks about proof of stake versus proof of work. ##Ethereum transitioning to PoS Many people are familiar with the way current mining pools work. With Bitcoin you can put a computer to work to validate transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, and in return for that you are awarded in Bitcoin. Ethereum is transitioning to a new way of doing this called proof of stake (PoS), which will allow users to earn interest on their Ethereum holdings by essentially keeping a computer online to validate transactions. ##A decentralized, easy-to-use staking service Rocket Pool is being designed as a way to help you earn interest on your Ethereum holdings by eliminating a few of the initial barriers to entry, such as cost and setting up your own node. The minimum amount required to earn interest on Ethereum through the proof of stake mechanism is 32 Ether, which is currently somewhere around $3500. What Rocket Pool allows you to do is pool your Ether together with other users and overcome these barriers to entry and earn interest on your Ethereum in the meantime. ##The future of Rocket Pool You can expect to begin using Rocket Pool when the new Ethereum 2.0 is rolled out later in 2019 or early 2020. In the meantime, you can visit Rocket Pool’s website at <a href="http://RocketPool.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RocketPool.net</a> to get started by reading their white paper, checking out their open source code on GitHub, and interacting with their public beta release. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>When Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake, users will be able to earn a yield on their Ethereum;</li> <li>Rocket Pool hopes to be the leading staking service by offering an easy-to-use interface and non-custodial solution;</li> <li>Rocket Pool anticipates to be up and running by the end of 2019, and you can visit <a href="http://RocketPool.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RocketPool.net</a> to begin learning how their staking services work.</li> </ul>

Rocket Pool: A Simple, Decentralized Ethereum Staking Service

CoinList

Whether a token issuer wants to launch a private sale with 10 investors or a public sale with 10,000 investors, the goal of CoinList is to help that issuer succeed by managing capital formation and building community. A trusted platform CoinList is a trusted platform for running compliant token sales. CoinList’s infrastructure has supported over $400 million in investments for over 30 token sale projects since August 2017. Some of the projects that have run token sales on CoinList include Filecoin, Origin, Props, and Blockstack. President and co-founder Andy Bromberg has been in the space for a long time. He was excited about Bitcoin early on at Stanford, where he founded the Stanford Bitcoin Club in 2013, and he has insightful perspectives on the crypto ecosystem. Managing token sales and handling compliance “In the token space there is a lot of innovation happening at the legal structure level,” says Andy, “and you’ve got to get comfortable with how that’s happening, or trust someone that is an expert in that to understand the diligence there.” CoinList today offers four services that center around two pillars. The first pillar is capital formation, sales and fundraising, for which they offer a basic or full-service option. CoinList doesn’t believe that the logistics of a token sale should be a core competency for token issuers. They should be focused on building a product and building technology, and not focused on the minutiae of running a sale. Engaging the community The second pillar is building community. For this they also have two products. One is their Airdrops product, and the other is CoinList Build, their hackathon product. The Airdrops product is about conducting compliant airdrops, giving away tokens to users to help bootstrap networks. CoinList Build, a product to help projects host online hackathons, was also just launched. “One thing we kept hearing from token issuers was, we need help building a developer community,” says Andy. They recently ran their first hackathon with 0x, and developers all over the world participated. People have created some incredibly high quality projects in just one month, and CoinList will be awarding meaningful prizes to the best. Key takeaways:  CoinList is the trusted platform for running compliant token sales; Token projects face an incredible amount of regulatory uncertainty and compliance when launching a token sale and are strongly advised to work with a platform like CoinList to launch compliantly; Coinlist is successfully launching new community building projects, including the recent platform to manage developer hackathons. 

Whether a token issuer wants to launch a private sale with 10 investors or a public sale with 10,000 investors, the goal of CoinList is to help that issuer succeed by managing capital formation and building community. A trusted platform CoinList is a trusted platform for running compliant token sales. CoinList’s infrastructure has supported over $400 million in investments for over 30 token sale projects since August 2017. Some of the projects that have run token sales on CoinList include Filecoin, Origin, Props, and Blockstack. President and co-founder Andy Bromberg has been in the space for a long time. He was excited about Bitcoin early on at Stanford, where he founded the Stanford Bitcoin Club in 2013, and he has insightful perspectives on the crypto ecosystem. Managing token sales and handling compliance “In the token space there is a lot of innovation happening at the legal structure level,” says Andy, “and you’ve got to get comfortable with how that’s happening, or trust someone that is an expert in that to understand the diligence there.” CoinList today offers four services that center around two pillars. The first pillar is capital formation, sales and fundraising, for which they offer a basic or full-service option. CoinList doesn’t believe that the logistics of a token sale should be a core competency for token issuers. They should be focused on building a product and building technology, and not focused on the minutiae of running a sale. Engaging the community The second pillar is building community. For this they also have two products. One is their Airdrops product, and the other is CoinList Build, their hackathon product. The Airdrops product is about conducting compliant airdrops, giving away tokens to users to help bootstrap networks. CoinList Build, a product to help projects host online hackathons, was also just launched. “One thing we kept hearing from token issuers was, we need help building a developer community,” says Andy. They recently ran their first hackathon with 0x, and developers all over the world participated. People have created some incredibly high quality projects in just one month, and CoinList will be awarding meaningful prizes to the best. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>CoinList is the trusted platform for running compliant token sales;</li> <li>Token projects face an incredible amount of regulatory uncertainty and compliance when launching a token sale and are strongly advised to work with a platform like CoinList to launch compliantly;</li> <li>Coinlist is successfully launching new community building projects, including the recent platform to manage developer hackathons.</li> </ul>

CoinList: A Trusted Platform for Compliant Token Sales

How do decentralized applications get data from underlying sources and transform it in meaningful ways? Yaniv Tal is the Project Lead at The Graph, a new decentralized query and indexing protocol for Web3 making data easily available to developers using GraphQL. ##Getting data from blockchains is difficult Anyone building smart contracts on a blockchain like Ethereum will need to access specific data with queries, and to do those kinds of queries, indexes are needed, which will be application specific. The founders of The Graph realized early on when building on Ethereum that this indexing later was a missing part of the stack, and people were creating their own proprietary indexing servers. They felt that this really broke many of the benefits that you would want out of building with Web3, and so they built The Graph. ##The Graph and GraphQL The Graph is a query and indexing protocol for Web3 that indexes data from blockchains and storage networks to make it easily available to developers over GraphQL, a query language developed in open source by Facebook. For example, if you’re building a marketplace protocol, and you have different listings of things people want to buy and sell, your frontend application needs to give users a way to filter, sort, and paginate for specific kinds of data. The Graph makes this functionality much easier than building your own custom solution. ##Eliminating data silos Data silos are everywhere in Web2. Databases trap data: you need to have access to the physical servers if you want to access that database. Yaniv believes that providing open access to this data that people need to build applications is one of the next big evolutions in building software systems that will enable humanity to coordinate and cooperate on a larger scale. It’s also essential to provide both developers and users guarantees that the data will continue to be open, stable, and verifiably correct. All of these guarantees are important for building more and more systems on top of each other on a stable foundation. Key takeaways:  Getting data off blockchains today is difficult; The Graph is a decentralized platform for querying data that uses GraphQL, a query language developed in open source by Facebook; The Graph can help eliminate data silos by providing a powerful API to get exactly the data you need in a single request, seamlessly traversing and combining multiple data sources. 

How do decentralized applications get data from underlying sources and transform it in meaningful ways? Yaniv Tal is the Project Lead at The Graph, a new decentralized query and indexing protocol for Web3 making data easily available to developers using GraphQL. ##Getting data from blockchains is difficult Anyone building smart contracts on a blockchain like Ethereum will need to access specific data with queries, and to do those kinds of queries, indexes are needed, which will be application specific. The founders of The Graph realized early on when building on Ethereum that this indexing later was a missing part of the stack, and people were creating their own proprietary indexing servers. They felt that this really broke many of the benefits that you would want out of building with Web3, and so they built The Graph. ##The Graph and GraphQL The Graph is a query and indexing protocol for Web3 that indexes data from blockchains and storage networks to make it easily available to developers over GraphQL, a query language developed in open source by Facebook. For example, if you’re building a marketplace protocol, and you have different listings of things people want to buy and sell, your frontend application needs to give users a way to filter, sort, and paginate for specific kinds of data. The Graph makes this functionality much easier than building your own custom solution. ##Eliminating data silos Data silos are everywhere in Web2. Databases trap data: you need to have access to the physical servers if you want to access that database. Yaniv believes that providing open access to this data that people need to build applications is one of the next big evolutions in building software systems that will enable humanity to coordinate and cooperate on a larger scale. It’s also essential to provide both developers and users guarantees that the data will continue to be open, stable, and verifiably correct. All of these guarantees are important for building more and more systems on top of each other on a stable foundation. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Getting data off blockchains today is difficult;</li> <li>The Graph is a decentralized platform for querying data that uses GraphQL, a query language developed in open source by Facebook;</li> <li>The Graph can help eliminate data silos by providing a powerful API to get exactly the data you need in a single request, seamlessly traversing and combining multiple data sources.</li> </ul>

The Graph: A Decentralized Query Protocol

What is a crypto index fund? Tune in as our guest, Hunter Horsley, CEO and cofounder of Bitwise, discusses how crypto index funds work, the firm’s Bitcoin ETF application, and how it could potentially impact the space if it gets approved. ##Bitwise is the first cryptocurrency fund Bitwise is the leading provider of index funds in the crypto space. They launched the first cryptocurrency index fund in 2017, and they have both index products as well as beta products. Based in San Francisco, the Bitwise team combines modern software expertise with deep asset management experience, coming from firms including Facebook, Wealthfront, and BlackRock. They produce a top ten exposure that rebalances monthly that doesn’t have a strong opinion about how the future will play out, but allows you to participate in whatever that ends up being. ##Bitwise facilitates institutional buyers There are amazing tools that are oriented toward self-directed individual investors, which, in the US, represents about $3 trillion in assets. But there is a much bigger market opportunity. Bitwise is paving the way for more institutional capital to invest in crypto assets. Americans who invest their savings with a professional advisor represent around $20 trillion in assets. Pensions and endowments in the US represent about $24 trillion in assets. Those audiences today don’t have the best set of solutions available. They have a different set of needs than the individual investor, and that’s what Bitwise is focusing on. ##Bitcoin ETF application In January 2018, Bitwise filed its application for a Bitcoin ETF, which would be a very positive catalyst for the industry. What would it mean for the industry if this gets approved? ETFs and mutual funds are the main ways that most investors participate in different asset classes. Mutual funds in the US manage somewhere around $15 trillion in assets. ETFs have been rapidly growing over the last decade, and are somewhere around $4 trillion. What’s different about mutual funds and ETFs is they can serve any investor. “It expands the audience you can serve, and it plugs into existing infrastructure.” Key takeaways:  The size of the institutional investor base is orders of magnitude larger than the retail investor base, and institutional investors have yet to come into crypto; Bitwise is the first cryptocurrency fund and filed an application to launch the first Bitcoin ETF; With Bitwise, investors can rest assured their assets have proper custody, reporting, and oversight; If interested in investing with Bitwise, check out their website at www.BitWiseInvestments.com 

What is a crypto index fund? Tune in as our guest, Hunter Horsley, CEO and cofounder of Bitwise, discusses how crypto index funds work, the firm’s Bitcoin ETF application, and how it could potentially impact the space if it gets approved. ##Bitwise is the first cryptocurrency fund Bitwise is the leading provider of index funds in the crypto space. They launched the first cryptocurrency index fund in 2017, and they have both index products as well as beta products. Based in San Francisco, the Bitwise team combines modern software expertise with deep asset management experience, coming from firms including Facebook, Wealthfront, and BlackRock. They produce a top ten exposure that rebalances monthly that doesn’t have a strong opinion about how the future will play out, but allows you to participate in whatever that ends up being. ##Bitwise facilitates institutional buyers There are amazing tools that are oriented toward self-directed individual investors, which, in the US, represents about $3 trillion in assets. But there is a much bigger market opportunity. Bitwise is paving the way for more institutional capital to invest in crypto assets. Americans who invest their savings with a professional advisor represent around $20 trillion in assets. Pensions and endowments in the US represent about $24 trillion in assets. Those audiences today don’t have the best set of solutions available. They have a different set of needs than the individual investor, and that’s what Bitwise is focusing on. ##Bitcoin ETF application In January 2018, Bitwise filed its application for a Bitcoin ETF, which would be a very positive catalyst for the industry. What would it mean for the industry if this gets approved? ETFs and mutual funds are the main ways that most investors participate in different asset classes. Mutual funds in the US manage somewhere around $15 trillion in assets. ETFs have been rapidly growing over the last decade, and are somewhere around $4 trillion. What’s different about mutual funds and ETFs is they can serve any investor. “It expands the audience you can serve, and it plugs into existing infrastructure.” Key takeaways: <ul> <li>The size of the institutional investor base is orders of magnitude larger than the retail investor base, and institutional investors have yet to come into crypto;</li> <li>Bitwise is the first cryptocurrency fund and filed an application to launch the first Bitcoin ETF;</li> <li>With Bitwise, investors can rest assured their assets have proper custody, reporting, and oversight;</li> <li>If interested in investing with Bitwise, check out their website at <a href="http://www.BitWiseInvestments.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.BitWiseInvestments.com</a></li> </ul>

Bitwise: The First Cryptocurrency Index Fund

Join Zach DeWitt as we highlight the best emerging projects in crypto through unbiased and exclusive interviews with blockchain technology founders. Token Talks intends to make the cryptocurrency ecosystem more accessible by connecting thought leaders and entrepreneurs with mainstream companies, consumers, and investors. This podcast is produced by Wing Venture Capital (aka “Wing”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every month and discussions include ICOs, altcoins, decentralization, token economics and the future of digital currency in tech. Visit www.wing.vc for more details.

Castle Island Ventures is an early-stage venture fund with a focus on equity investments at the pre-seed or seed level into companies that are building in and around permissionless blockchains. Listen to hear from some of the smartest investors in the space--co-founders and managing partners of Castle Island, Nic Carter and Matt Walsh--as they discuss current trends, predictions, and what they’re looking out for. Pick and shovel oriented businesses Castle Island has the view that permissionless blockchains are a new paradigm with infrastructure still needed for support. Infrastructure to them means things like key management, custody services, exchange technology, data companies--what they call “pick and shovel oriented businesses.” “I think most people can agree that there’s a level of this plumbing that just needs to exist in order for any of these things to be successful,” says Walsh, “for an institution to get comfortable holding these assets and giving their customers access to them.” Altering the topology of the internet Carter says key management is “underrated,” and he believes “it can generalize far beyond just custodial management of cryptocurrencies.” In a world of a bifurcated internet--the surveilled internet and an alternative internet--end users will choose to opt out of the surveilled internet and restore their own ability and discretion to manage their data. “I think there will be a startup that emerges to do that,” says Carter, “a general, altering-the-topology-of-the-internet system. I think that is a really big idea and we’re looking at those startups right now.” What makes a world class crypto investor? One of the things the Castle Island partners emphasize the most is being connected back to the development community. “We both try to really focus on building our networks and building our understanding in those communities,” says Walsh, “and we have some great advisors to Castle Island that are really deep in that world.” It’s about “great relationships with the elite cryptographers and engineers that are actually building the networks that all of these startups rely on, indirectly or directly,” says Carter. Key takeaways:  Castle Island Ventures believes that some of the most compelling investment opportunities in crypto are around public blockchain infrastructure and applications; Nick talks about the importance of public-private key management and how there might be some very large businesses built around this industry; In addition to looking for infrastructure and application businesses, Nick and Matt are bullish on non-sovereign, censorship-resistant store of value, with Bitcoin currently in the pull position to become this global store of value. 

Castle Island Ventures is an early-stage venture fund with a focus on equity investments at the pre-seed or seed level into companies that are building in and around permissionless blockchains. Listen to hear from some of the smartest investors in the space--co-founders and managing partners of Castle Island, Nic Carter and Matt Walsh--as they discuss current trends, predictions, and what they’re looking out for. Pick and shovel oriented businesses Castle Island has the view that permissionless blockchains are a new paradigm with infrastructure still needed for support. Infrastructure to them means things like key management, custody services, exchange technology, data companies--what they call “pick and shovel oriented businesses.” “I think most people can agree that there’s a level of this plumbing that just needs to exist in order for any of these things to be successful,” says Walsh, “for an institution to get comfortable holding these assets and giving their customers access to them.” Altering the topology of the internet Carter says key management is “underrated,” and he believes “it can generalize far beyond just custodial management of cryptocurrencies.” In a world of a bifurcated internet--the surveilled internet and an alternative internet--end users will choose to opt out of the surveilled internet and restore their own ability and discretion to manage their data. “I think there will be a startup that emerges to do that,” says Carter, “a general, altering-the-topology-of-the-internet system. I think that is a really big idea and we’re looking at those startups right now.” What makes a world class crypto investor? One of the things the Castle Island partners emphasize the most is being connected back to the development community. “We both try to really focus on building our networks and building our understanding in those communities,” says Walsh, “and we have some great advisors to Castle Island that are really deep in that world.” It’s about “great relationships with the elite cryptographers and engineers that are actually building the networks that all of these startups rely on, indirectly or directly,” says Carter. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Castle Island Ventures believes that some of the most compelling investment opportunities in crypto are around public blockchain infrastructure and applications;</li> <li>Nick talks about the importance of public-private key management and how there might be some very large businesses built around this industry;</li> <li>In addition to looking for infrastructure and application businesses, Nick and Matt are bullish on non-sovereign, censorship-resistant store of value, with Bitcoin currently in the pull position to become this global store of value.</li> </ul>

Castle Island Ventures: Investing in Infrastructure

The internet has fundamentally changed our lives, but along with the many benefits, what kinds of challenges has it created? For Dawn Song, founder and CEO of Oasis Labs, the issues of security and privacy are a top priority. She and her team of world renowned, top security researchers and professors from Berkeley and MIT are developing new technologies to address many of these challenges. Listen to learn how Oasis could radically change how our personal data is secured and shared, eliminate data silos, and enable developers to build privacy-preserving applications without specialized knowledge or expertise in privacy and security. The Importance of Privacy Security and privacy are a big concern for most of us. We continue to see large-scale security breaches in which companies are losing data for hundreds of millions of users at a time, and almost everyone has been affected. To solve this problem, Oasis is building a privacy-first smart contract platform. Oasis will combine secure software and hardware to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts that are both highly scalable and secure. Eliminating Data Silos We have a lot of valuable data. One example is our medical data, but it is very difficult for medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies to gain access to medical data to help them conduct medical research, find better cures for diseases, and prolong life. Oasis wants to protect users and data privacy, and also at the same to extract value out of data, which means eliminating unused data silos and creating data enablement--enabling new applications and new capabilities that have never before been possible. Empowering Developers Another one of Oasis’ main goals is to make it easy for developers to build privacy-preserving applications without the expertise and specialized knowledge of a security or privacy expert. Rather than spending the time to become experts, for example, on learning how to use secure hardware, developers can focus on building their smart contract, and they can specify their desired security and privacy requirements. Key takeaways:  In addition to scaling limitations, one of the primary concerns around today’s general purpose smart contracting platforms is the lack of privacy-- preserving technologies; Oasis is a software and hardware platform that will have improved scalability and privacy-preserving smart contracts; Privacy-preserving smart contracts that scale have the potential to eliminate data silos by improving the coordination and access controls around - our most sensitive digital user data. 

The internet has fundamentally changed our lives, but along with the many benefits, what kinds of challenges has it created? For Dawn Song, founder and CEO of Oasis Labs, the issues of security and privacy are a top priority. She and her team of world renowned, top security researchers and professors from Berkeley and MIT are developing new technologies to address many of these challenges. Listen to learn how Oasis could radically change how our personal data is secured and shared, eliminate data silos, and enable developers to build privacy-preserving applications without specialized knowledge or expertise in privacy and security. The Importance of Privacy Security and privacy are a big concern for most of us. We continue to see large-scale security breaches in which companies are losing data for hundreds of millions of users at a time, and almost everyone has been affected. To solve this problem, Oasis is building a privacy-first smart contract platform. Oasis will combine secure software and hardware to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts that are both highly scalable and secure. Eliminating Data Silos We have a lot of valuable data. One example is our medical data, but it is very difficult for medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies to gain access to medical data to help them conduct medical research, find better cures for diseases, and prolong life. Oasis wants to protect users and data privacy, and also at the same to extract value out of data, which means eliminating unused data silos and creating data enablement--enabling new applications and new capabilities that have never before been possible. Empowering Developers Another one of Oasis’ main goals is to make it easy for developers to build privacy-preserving applications without the expertise and specialized knowledge of a security or privacy expert. Rather than spending the time to become experts, for example, on learning how to use secure hardware, developers can focus on building their smart contract, and they can specify their desired security and privacy requirements. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>In addition to scaling limitations, one of the primary concerns around today’s general purpose smart contracting platforms is the lack of privacy-- preserving technologies;</li> <li>Oasis is a software and hardware platform that will have improved scalability and privacy-preserving smart contracts;</li> <li>Privacy-preserving smart contracts that scale have the potential to eliminate data silos by improving the coordination and access controls around - our most sensitive digital user data.</li> </ul>

Oasis: A Privacy-First Smart Contract Platform

What does it mean to bundle your tokenized assets? And what are the potential benefits? Felix Feng is the founder and CEO of Set Protocol, a platform to create, manage, and purchase baskets of tokenized assets. Rather than buying five different tokens and paying a gas fee to purchase those tokens individually, with Set, you can bundle all five of those tokens and buy them in a single order. Decentralized Finance Felix is most excited about crypto’s potential to transform the financial services industry, and the possibility of the current financial rails being rebuilt in a decentralized manner. The cost to build your own financial services company has decreased from millions of dollars to being free to anyone who can code. This is because these primitives and protocols are permissionless and free to use. People can start building using these tools today. As the world becomes increasingly more digital, creating a new financial tooling set to interact with those assets will be really powerful, and this process can be uniquely enabled by crypto. Baskets of Tokenized Assets Anything that can be represented as an ERC20 token can be put into a basket. A Set itself is an ERC20 token, which means it interoperates with the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Sets are fully collateralized, which means that they’re backed by the underlying components trustlessly in a smart contract. In addition to that, a Set is defined by its components and units. Felix and the Set team believe this is going to unlock many different types of Sets that will be created in the future. Anything that anyone can imagine can be combined essentially, because they’re democratizing the ability to put together these bundles, which was originally only enabled and allowed by traditional financial institutions. Set Protocol Now and in the Future Currently the easiest way to get a hold of a Set is on an exchange like Radar Relay, but they also have a consumer-facing application called TokenSets, on which you can explore the current existing Sets. The team will be launching a new version of the protocol in early 2019, and in conjunction with that launch, they will be launching an updated TokenSets, in which users can define and create their own sets, issue sets, and do some other advanced functionality as well, though it is designed to be friendly for non-technical users as well. Key takeaways:  Felix is most interested in crypto’s potential to transform the financial services industry; Set is an important layer in the decentralized financial stack, along with other protocols like 0X, Dharma, Compound, and dYdX; Set is going after the $4 trillion currently invested in ETFs by allowing tokenized assets to be bundled in creative ways. 

What does it mean to bundle your tokenized assets? And what are the potential benefits? Felix Feng is the founder and CEO of Set Protocol, a platform to create, manage, and purchase baskets of tokenized assets. Rather than buying five different tokens and paying a gas fee to purchase those tokens individually, with Set, you can bundle all five of those tokens and buy them in a single order. Decentralized Finance Felix is most excited about crypto’s potential to transform the financial services industry, and the possibility of the current financial rails being rebuilt in a decentralized manner. The cost to build your own financial services company has decreased from millions of dollars to being free to anyone who can code. This is because these primitives and protocols are permissionless and free to use. People can start building using these tools today. As the world becomes increasingly more digital, creating a new financial tooling set to interact with those assets will be really powerful, and this process can be uniquely enabled by crypto. Baskets of Tokenized Assets Anything that can be represented as an ERC20 token can be put into a basket. A Set itself is an ERC20 token, which means it interoperates with the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Sets are fully collateralized, which means that they’re backed by the underlying components trustlessly in a smart contract. In addition to that, a Set is defined by its components and units. Felix and the Set team believe this is going to unlock many different types of Sets that will be created in the future. Anything that anyone can imagine can be combined essentially, because they’re democratizing the ability to put together these bundles, which was originally only enabled and allowed by traditional financial institutions. Set Protocol Now and in the Future Currently the easiest way to get a hold of a Set is on an exchange like Radar Relay, but they also have a consumer-facing application called TokenSets, on which you can explore the current existing Sets. The team will be launching a new version of the protocol in early 2019, and in conjunction with that launch, they will be launching an updated TokenSets, in which users can define and create their own sets, issue sets, and do some other advanced functionality as well, though it is designed to be friendly for non-technical users as well. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Felix is most interested in crypto’s potential to transform the financial services industry;</li> <li>Set is an important layer in the decentralized financial stack, along with other protocols like 0X, Dharma, Compound, and dYdX;</li> <li>Set is going after the $4 trillion currently invested in ETFs by allowing tokenized assets to be bundled in creative ways.</li> </ul>

Set Protocol: Bundle Your Tokenized Assets

We’ve all heard of the blockchain, but what is blockmesh? Spacemesh is building a novel, layer-one protocol with the aim of developing a blockmesh operating system accessible to anyone. Listen as Spacemesh CEO and cofounder Tomer Afek explains how the Proof of Space Time (PoST) consensus protocol is built around the notion of fairness, and what that means in the creation of a decentralized, programmable cryptocurrency. ##Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of Space Time Rather than using Proof of Work (PoW) like Bitcoin, which has scalability and energy wastefulness issues, or Proof of Stake (PoStake) like Ethereum, which comes at the cost of compromised decentralization and security, Spacemesh is using a different type of consensus called Proof of Space Time (PoST). Proof of Space Time is being designed to allow participants to store data on their computer over a period of time. This essentially means that the kind of proof users will provide is that they have contributed to the security of the network by storing this data. ##Is Mesh the New Chain? The idea around Spacemesh’s version of blockmesh technology is that every layer of nodes points backward to its previous layer. In this way, there is a mesh which is growing but has a clear notion of all the layers. The first thing the block writes is what layer it belongs to. In order to achieve total ordering of all the blocks, there needs to be a consensus about which block is in which layer. Then the ordering inside each layer can be done by each party on its own side by calculating the hashes. By agreeing on which block is in which layer, there is total ordering of all the blocks, and this is a very powerful idea, as it has the potential to allow far beyond what the chain can offer. ##Spacemesh Aims for Fairness and Efficiency Spacemesh is focused on fairness, as it intends for its Proof of Space Time consensus mechanism to run on any computer, while making it resistant to powerful mining chips called application-specific integration certificates, or ASICs. The idea is that anyone who has a computer with some free drive space at home is welcome to download the software and leave the computer open with a certain amount of hard drive allocated to Spacemesh. From that point onwards, that person will start to make coins for the contribution to the security of the network. Those coins will be contained in a wallet, and the user will then be free to use or sell those coins at any time. Key takeaways:  According to the Spacemesh team, Proof of Work blockchains suffer from known scalability issues and massive energy waste that compromise their long-term viability, and Proof of Stake solutions resolve the scalability concerns, but at the cost of compromised decentralization and security; Spacemesh is focused on creating a new protocol and token for money use-cases, such as store of value and payments that has a decentralized and fair distribution, meaning anyone can download the Spacemesh software and start earning Spacemesh tokens; Spacemesh aims to create money that is energy efficient, highly decentralized and democratic, and fair, as no player is too small to participate in the Spacemesh protocol consensus mechanism and earn tokens. 

We’ve all heard of the blockchain, but what is blockmesh? Spacemesh is building a novel, layer-one protocol with the aim of developing a blockmesh operating system accessible to anyone. Listen as Spacemesh CEO and cofounder Tomer Afek explains how the Proof of Space Time (PoST) consensus protocol is built around the notion of fairness, and what that means in the creation of a decentralized, programmable cryptocurrency. ##Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of Space Time Rather than using Proof of Work (PoW) like Bitcoin, which has scalability and energy wastefulness issues, or Proof of Stake (PoStake) like Ethereum, which comes at the cost of compromised decentralization and security, Spacemesh is using a different type of consensus called Proof of Space Time (PoST). Proof of Space Time is being designed to allow participants to store data on their computer over a period of time. This essentially means that the kind of proof users will provide is that they have contributed to the security of the network by storing this data. ##Is Mesh the New Chain? The idea around Spacemesh’s version of blockmesh technology is that every layer of nodes points backward to its previous layer. In this way, there is a mesh which is growing but has a clear notion of all the layers. The first thing the block writes is what layer it belongs to. In order to achieve total ordering of all the blocks, there needs to be a consensus about which block is in which layer. Then the ordering inside each layer can be done by each party on its own side by calculating the hashes. By agreeing on which block is in which layer, there is total ordering of all the blocks, and this is a very powerful idea, as it has the potential to allow far beyond what the chain can offer. ##Spacemesh Aims for Fairness and Efficiency Spacemesh is focused on fairness, as it intends for its Proof of Space Time consensus mechanism to run on any computer, while making it resistant to powerful mining chips called application-specific integration certificates, or ASICs. The idea is that anyone who has a computer with some free drive space at home is welcome to download the software and leave the computer open with a certain amount of hard drive allocated to Spacemesh. From that point onwards, that person will start to make coins for the contribution to the security of the network. Those coins will be contained in a wallet, and the user will then be free to use or sell those coins at any time. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>According to the Spacemesh team, Proof of Work blockchains suffer from known scalability issues and massive energy waste that compromise their long-term viability, and Proof of Stake solutions resolve the scalability concerns, but at the cost of compromised decentralization and security;</li> <li>Spacemesh is focused on creating a new protocol and token for money use-cases, such as store of value and payments that has a decentralized and fair distribution, meaning anyone can download the Spacemesh software and start earning Spacemesh tokens;</li> <li>Spacemesh aims to create money that is energy efficient, highly decentralized and democratic, and fair, as no player is too small to participate in the Spacemesh protocol consensus mechanism and earn tokens.</li> </ul>

Spacemesh: A Blockmesh Operating System

Figure

Mike Cagney, co-founder and CEO of Figure, is applying blockchain technology to traditional financial services in compelling new ways. Listen to learn how Figure and its new native blockchain Provenance are changing the way consumers access home equity products, and what exciting things are in store for the future of the financial services industry. ##Faster and Cheaper Home Equity Products with Figure Figure is an equity release business, offering an alternative to a traditional HELOC (home equity line of credit). With Figure, you can have a home equity line of credit in less than five minutes and be funded in less than five days, which is much faster than the four months it takes that process in the traditional market today. Figure is launching two products, one being a home equity line of credit and the other an alternative to a reverse mortgage called a buy-rent-back, and both products are being originated native on blockchain. ##Provenance, a New Native Blockchain What’s unique about Figure is that it operates on its own native chain. Provenance is a standalone blockchain, and the token native to Provenance is called Hash. The Hash token will receive a pro rata revenue share of the loans issued and securitized on the blockchain. Figure is a traditional financial services company that interacts with the Provenance blockchain. From a consumer perspective, you won’t see the blockchain, it’s abstracted to you, but over time you receive the benefit of a lower cost because of the improvement in technology. ##Unlocking $100 Billion of Opportunity The primary use cases for this today are faster and cheaper loan origination, but by eliminating the intermediation of the trustee, the custody, and the administrator functions that have existed historically, the team at Figure believe the blockchain has the potential to unlock $100 billion of opportunity across fixed income, equity, and commodities. According to Mike, there is “a tremendous opportunity to really transform, in a way that we haven’t seen in over fifty years, how the financial ecosystem works with blockchain technology.” Key takeaways:  Figure is a financial services company that will offer faster and cheaper home equity products to consumers; Figure will abstract a way to use the blockchain technology to the consumer, but will integrate with a new native blockchain called Provenance; Offering faster and cheaper loans is a practical use case for blockchain technology that is going after a $100 billion plus market; Mike is one of the smartest minds in financial services, and it is exciting to see him adopt blockchain technology with the Provenance blockchain. 

Mike Cagney, co-founder and CEO of Figure, is applying blockchain technology to traditional financial services in compelling new ways. Listen to learn how Figure and its new native blockchain Provenance are changing the way consumers access home equity products, and what exciting things are in store for the future of the financial services industry. ##Faster and Cheaper Home Equity Products with Figure Figure is an equity release business, offering an alternative to a traditional HELOC (home equity line of credit). With Figure, you can have a home equity line of credit in less than five minutes and be funded in less than five days, which is much faster than the four months it takes that process in the traditional market today. Figure is launching two products, one being a home equity line of credit and the other an alternative to a reverse mortgage called a buy-rent-back, and both products are being originated native on blockchain. ##Provenance, a New Native Blockchain What’s unique about Figure is that it operates on its own native chain. Provenance is a standalone blockchain, and the token native to Provenance is called Hash. The Hash token will receive a pro rata revenue share of the loans issued and securitized on the blockchain. Figure is a traditional financial services company that interacts with the Provenance blockchain. From a consumer perspective, you won’t see the blockchain, it’s abstracted to you, but over time you receive the benefit of a lower cost because of the improvement in technology. ##Unlocking $100 Billion of Opportunity The primary use cases for this today are faster and cheaper loan origination, but by eliminating the intermediation of the trustee, the custody, and the administrator functions that have existed historically, the team at Figure believe the blockchain has the potential to unlock $100 billion of opportunity across fixed income, equity, and commodities. According to Mike, there is “a tremendous opportunity to really transform, in a way that we haven’t seen in over fifty years, how the financial ecosystem works with blockchain technology.” Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Figure is a financial services company that will offer faster and cheaper home equity products to consumers;</li> <li>Figure will abstract a way to use the blockchain technology to the consumer, but will integrate with a new native blockchain called Provenance;</li> <li>Offering faster and cheaper loans is a practical use case for blockchain technology that is going after a $100 billion plus market;</li> <li>Mike is one of the smartest minds in financial services, and it is exciting to see him adopt blockchain technology with the Provenance blockchain.</li> </ul>

Figure: Home Equity on the Blockchain

Ledger

What are the advantages of using a hardware wallet to secure your crypto assets? Thomas France, co-founder of Ledger, wants to make it easy for average users--as well as power users--to safely generate and manage their keys offline in a secure environment. Listen as Thomas explains the simple steps to using Ledger and why it’s the most popular hardware wallet in the world, with over one million devices sold across 65 countries. ##Why choose a hardware wallet? With hot wallets and cold wallets the pros and cons are really about the spectrum between usability and security. A hot wallet is anything in which your keys are exposed to the network, and a cold wallet is one in which the keys are never exposed to the network. Hot wallets are usually much more accessible and easy to use than cold wallets, which are of course typically much more secure. The hardware wallet is an external device that is solely dedicated to managing your keys that you can integrate with different types of software wallets, which makes it a good compromise on the spectrum between usability and security. ##Ledger is the most popular hardware wallet in the world Although in the beginning Ledger was very Bitcoin-oriented, it now supports over a hundred cryptocurrencies. Having sold over one million devices worldwide across 65 countries, Ledger is the most popular hardware wallet on the market. The market is growing, and many new wallets have their own specificities. Ledger recognizes the potential of working with these other wallets as partners rather than competitors. There are many specified wallets with whom they can integrate to ensure the private key management can be done on Ledger. ##Ledger has options for both retail and enterprise users Ledger’s mission is to supply a secure and easy-to-use solution for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and their newest products, Ledger Live and Ledger Vault, are making crypto asset management easier for a wider variety of users. Ledger Live is a software wallet, acting as the main interface for retail users to manage their crypto assets in an easy and friendly way, giving users the ability to import multiple accounts for multiple cryptocurrencies in offline mode. Ledger Vault is an enterprise grade cold storage solution that allows users to generate keys securely and create governance and spending policies to meet specific business security and flexibility needs. Key takeaways:  It is important to understand our self-custody options when it comes to cryptocurrencies, and a hardware wallet is a popular option Ledger is a leading hardware wallet that has sold over a million wallets Ledger has recently launched new product lines including its consumer Ledger Live product and its more enterprise focused Ledger Vault product 

What are the advantages of using a hardware wallet to secure your crypto assets? Thomas France, co-founder of Ledger, wants to make it easy for average users--as well as power users--to safely generate and manage their keys offline in a secure environment. Listen as Thomas explains the simple steps to using Ledger and why it’s the most popular hardware wallet in the world, with over one million devices sold across 65 countries. ##Why choose a hardware wallet? With hot wallets and cold wallets the pros and cons are really about the spectrum between usability and security. A hot wallet is anything in which your keys are exposed to the network, and a cold wallet is one in which the keys are never exposed to the network. Hot wallets are usually much more accessible and easy to use than cold wallets, which are of course typically much more secure. The hardware wallet is an external device that is solely dedicated to managing your keys that you can integrate with different types of software wallets, which makes it a good compromise on the spectrum between usability and security. ##Ledger is the most popular hardware wallet in the world Although in the beginning Ledger was very Bitcoin-oriented, it now supports over a hundred cryptocurrencies. Having sold over one million devices worldwide across 65 countries, Ledger is the most popular hardware wallet on the market. The market is growing, and many new wallets have their own specificities. Ledger recognizes the potential of working with these other wallets as partners rather than competitors. There are many specified wallets with whom they can integrate to ensure the private key management can be done on Ledger. ##Ledger has options for both retail and enterprise users Ledger’s mission is to supply a secure and easy-to-use solution for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and their newest products, Ledger Live and Ledger Vault, are making crypto asset management easier for a wider variety of users. Ledger Live is a software wallet, acting as the main interface for retail users to manage their crypto assets in an easy and friendly way, giving users the ability to import multiple accounts for multiple cryptocurrencies in offline mode. Ledger Vault is an enterprise grade cold storage solution that allows users to generate keys securely and create governance and spending policies to meet specific business security and flexibility needs. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>It is important to understand our self-custody options when it comes to cryptocurrencies, and a hardware wallet is a popular option</li> <li>Ledger is a leading hardware wallet that has sold over a million wallets</li> <li>Ledger has recently launched new product lines including its consumer Ledger Live product and its more enterprise focused Ledger Vault product</li> </ul>

Ledger: Secure Hardware Wallets

Antonio Juliano, founder and CEO of dYdX, wants to add another layer to the decentralized financial stack, and dYdX is doing this by building a protocol that lets you go short or get leverage on any cryptocurrency. Listen to learn how dYdX makes decentralized financial derivatives and margin trading possible, and what the future may hold for the crypto counterpart of the most massive market in the world. ##The Decentralized Financial Stack Derivatives are far and away the largest market in the world, usually at about 10x the spot market. With cryptocurrency, the spot market is somewhere in the billions. You would expect the derivatives market to be somewhere in the tens of billions, but it’s not, which makes it a potentially massive and unrealized market. And that’s something Antonio and the dYdX team are really excited to tackle. ##A Margin Trading Protocol dYdX is a protocol for decentralized financial derivatives and margin trading. The first thing they’re building is a margin trading protocol that lets you go short or get leverage on any cryptocurrency--for now, Ethereum-based cryptocurrency--without trusting anybody that you’re trading with Interacting with dYdX can be as simple as investing in one of the margin tokens--for example, a short ETH token--or as sophisticated as creating smart contracts and becoming a lender to the dYdX platform. ##The Future of dYdX dYdX is not just a margin trading protocol.They think of themselves as a protocol for all types of financial derivatives, and they are working on multiple future protocols. An options protocol or other protocols that sit on top of the options or margin trading protocol are some things we might expect to see from them in the future, and the ultimate goal to take over most of the derivative and margin trading volume for cryptocurrency in the next 5 to 10 years. Key takeaways:  Antonio believes the most interesting area in crypto is the financial stack that is currently being built out dYdX has recently launched a margin trading protocol with the ability to short assets and go leveraged long dYdX has future plans to launch an options protocol to write, buy, or trade options on any token 

Antonio Juliano, founder and CEO of dYdX, wants to add another layer to the decentralized financial stack, and dYdX is doing this by building a protocol that lets you go short or get leverage on any cryptocurrency. Listen to learn how dYdX makes decentralized financial derivatives and margin trading possible, and what the future may hold for the crypto counterpart of the most massive market in the world. ##The Decentralized Financial Stack Derivatives are far and away the largest market in the world, usually at about 10x the spot market. With cryptocurrency, the spot market is somewhere in the billions. You would expect the derivatives market to be somewhere in the tens of billions, but it’s not, which makes it a potentially massive and unrealized market. And that’s something Antonio and the dYdX team are really excited to tackle. ##A Margin Trading Protocol dYdX is a protocol for decentralized financial derivatives and margin trading. The first thing they’re building is a margin trading protocol that lets you go short or get leverage on any cryptocurrency--for now, Ethereum-based cryptocurrency--without trusting anybody that you’re trading with Interacting with dYdX can be as simple as investing in one of the margin tokens--for example, a short ETH token--or as sophisticated as creating smart contracts and becoming a lender to the dYdX platform. ##The Future of dYdX dYdX is not just a margin trading protocol.They think of themselves as a protocol for all types of financial derivatives, and they are working on multiple future protocols. An options protocol or other protocols that sit on top of the options or margin trading protocol are some things we might expect to see from them in the future, and the ultimate goal to take over most of the derivative and margin trading volume for cryptocurrency in the next 5 to 10 years. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Antonio believes the most interesting area in crypto is the financial stack that is currently being built out</li> <li>dYdX has recently launched a margin trading protocol with the ability to short assets and go leveraged long</li> <li>dYdX has future plans to launch an options protocol to write, buy, or trade options on any token</li> </ul>

dYdX: Decentralized Derivatives and Margin Trading

Avichal Garg, co-founder and managing partner at Electric Capital, says programmable money is currently the most valuable segment of the cryptocurrency market. Listen to find out how the team at Electric have developed their crypto investment strategy, and why programmable money is at the foundation of this strategy. ##Who is Electric Capital? Electric Capital is a digital asset management firm, founded by Avichal Garg, prominent angel Elad Gil, and Curtis Spencer, that invests in both liquid and illiquid tokens that are emerging stores of value and rooted in novel technology. Electric takes positions in tokens and ecosystems that have real technologies, real teams, and real go-to-markets that have the potential to create value in the next decade. ##Programmable money Electric’s thesis centers around investment in programmable money, specifically stores of value such as Bitcoin, privacy coins like Monero and Zcash, and smart contracts for financial platforms, including Ethereum. Programmable money has a lot to offer--the ability to store value in a digital medium, the ability for code to own and control money, and the ability to have private and anonymous transactions--and the team at Electric believe these are fundamentally interesting technologies that will unlock trillions of dollars of value globally. ##Why programmable money? Electric Capital draws a line between money crypto and tech crypto with their investment strategy. In the current debate about which of these is the more worthwhile investment, Electric Capital has chosen the money side of things. Three main reasons for this decision include the huge total addressable market that money has, the greater widespread adoption for it right now, and the real utility today as opposed to some of the more nascent technologies that are still in the early stages. Key takeaways:  Electric Capital believes that the most compelling investment opportunity in crypto today is in programmable money. Electric define programmable money as potential monetary stores of value, including Bitcoin; as private transactions, including Monero and Zcash; and smart contracts, including Ethereum. Electric believes that programmable money is the most promising segment because it is useful today with no significant technology blockers and because the market size for programmable money is potentially in the trillions of dollars, so investors may generate significant returns from today’s valuations. 

Avichal Garg, co-founder and managing partner at Electric Capital, says programmable money is currently the most valuable segment of the cryptocurrency market. Listen to find out how the team at Electric have developed their crypto investment strategy, and why programmable money is at the foundation of this strategy. ##Who is Electric Capital? Electric Capital is a digital asset management firm, founded by Avichal Garg, prominent angel Elad Gil, and Curtis Spencer, that invests in both liquid and illiquid tokens that are emerging stores of value and rooted in novel technology. Electric takes positions in tokens and ecosystems that have real technologies, real teams, and real go-to-markets that have the potential to create value in the next decade. ##Programmable money Electric’s thesis centers around investment in programmable money, specifically stores of value such as Bitcoin, privacy coins like Monero and Zcash, and smart contracts for financial platforms, including Ethereum. Programmable money has a lot to offer--the ability to store value in a digital medium, the ability for code to own and control money, and the ability to have private and anonymous transactions--and the team at Electric believe these are fundamentally interesting technologies that will unlock trillions of dollars of value globally. ##Why programmable money? Electric Capital draws a line between money crypto and tech crypto with their investment strategy. In the current debate about which of these is the more worthwhile investment, Electric Capital has chosen the money side of things. Three main reasons for this decision include the huge total addressable market that money has, the greater widespread adoption for it right now, and the real utility today as opposed to some of the more nascent technologies that are still in the early stages. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Electric Capital believes that the most compelling investment opportunity in crypto today is in programmable money.</li> <li>Electric define programmable money as potential monetary stores of value, including Bitcoin; as private transactions, including Monero and Zcash; and smart contracts, including Ethereum.</li> <li>Electric believes that programmable money is the most promising segment because it is useful today with no significant technology blockers and because the market size for programmable money is potentially in the trillions of dollars, so investors may generate significant returns from today’s valuations.</li> </ul>

Electric Capital: Investing in Programmable Money

If cryptocurrencies were more stable, would more people use them? Nader Al-Naji, CEO and Co-Founder of Basis, believes price volatility is the biggest barrier to more widespread use, and his answer to this is Basis: a new cryptocurrency with an algorithmic central bank designed to keep the price of Basis stable and usable around the world. Listen as Nader explains how Basis is different--and more scalable--than other stablecoins. ##A Basket of Goods Many stablecoins are said to be “pegged” to the US dollar, and Basis plans to start out with this as a guide also. However, the long term goal with Basis is to create a cryptocurrency that maintains a stable purchasing power against a ‘Basket of Goods,’ or the everyday purchases of the average person. If people are confident in the purchasing power of a currency over time, they are more likely to accept and use the currency for things such as structuring a loan or paying wages. ##Why use Basis? People with access to stable, conventional currencies might be perfectly content continuing to use those currencies. However, those whose only available currencies are devaluing by 5-10% each year would benefit from access to a more stable currency. Basis could also be used as a tool by crypto traders on exchanges as a way to keep their assets stable. ##The ‘Holy Grail’ of Cryptocurrencies Stablecoins are often called the ‘Holy Grail’ of cryptocurrencies, because they combine the benefits of a cryptocurrency--such as security and instantaneous, low-cost sending--with the stability of a traditional currency. Basis gives anyone with an internet connection access to a stable currency. Although there is still some work to be done to reach the long term goals of Basis, the future is promising. Basis has a brilliant team, expert advisors, and more funding than any other stablecoin to date. Key takeaways:  There are many benefits to cryptocurrencies, but the volatility may be a major friction to widespread adoption. Basis is a stablecoin project that uses an on-chain, algorithmic central bank to stabilize its price. The stablecoin market is becoming increasingly competitive with new projects emerging, but Basis has the most scalable model and is the most capitalized stablecoin project to date. 

If cryptocurrencies were more stable, would more people use them? Nader Al-Naji, CEO and Co-Founder of Basis, believes price volatility is the biggest barrier to more widespread use, and his answer to this is Basis: a new cryptocurrency with an algorithmic central bank designed to keep the price of Basis stable and usable around the world. Listen as Nader explains how Basis is different--and more scalable--than other stablecoins. ##A Basket of Goods Many stablecoins are said to be “pegged” to the US dollar, and Basis plans to start out with this as a guide also. However, the long term goal with Basis is to create a cryptocurrency that maintains a stable purchasing power against a ‘Basket of Goods,’ or the everyday purchases of the average person. If people are confident in the purchasing power of a currency over time, they are more likely to accept and use the currency for things such as structuring a loan or paying wages. ##Why use Basis? People with access to stable, conventional currencies might be perfectly content continuing to use those currencies. However, those whose only available currencies are devaluing by 5-10% each year would benefit from access to a more stable currency. Basis could also be used as a tool by crypto traders on exchanges as a way to keep their assets stable. ##The ‘Holy Grail’ of Cryptocurrencies Stablecoins are often called the ‘Holy Grail’ of cryptocurrencies, because they combine the benefits of a cryptocurrency--such as security and instantaneous, low-cost sending--with the stability of a traditional currency. Basis gives anyone with an internet connection access to a stable currency. Although there is still some work to be done to reach the long term goals of Basis, the future is promising. Basis has a brilliant team, expert advisors, and more funding than any other stablecoin to date. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>There are many benefits to cryptocurrencies, but the volatility may be a major friction to widespread adoption.</li> <li>Basis is a stablecoin project that uses an on-chain, algorithmic central bank to stabilize its price.</li> <li>The stablecoin market is becoming increasingly competitive with new projects emerging, but Basis has the most scalable model and is the most capitalized stablecoin project to date.</li> </ul>

Basis: A Stable, Scalable Cryptocurrency

What if you could verify the entire blockchain from your smartphone? Izaak Meckler and Evan Shapiro are cofounders of Coda, a new cryptocurrency protocol that reduces the size of the blockchain from gigabytes down to the size of a few tweets. Izaak and Evan explain how cryptocurrency can be more accessible to everyone: ##The Tradeoff Between Scaling and Decentralization Today, if you want to verify a transaction on a cryptocurrency, you need to first download a full copy of the blockchain. Izaak points out that this works fine in the early days of a network, but quickly becomes impractical over time as the blockchain becomes longer and grows in size to hundreds of gigabytes. ##A Succinct Blockchain Coda is a new cryptocurrency protocol that solves this problem by compressing the entire blockchain. Using the recursive composition of zk-SNARKs, Coda eliminates the need to store or download transaction history in order to verify the blockchain. Because this ‘succinct blockchain’ is more efficient than others, Izaak explains how this impacts the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. ##Accessible to Everyone As Izaak describes it, a SNARK is a tiny certificate verifying that a computation was run correctly. You can think of it as a stamp of approval, which is guaranteed by cryptography to be unforgeable. This technology will enable nearly any internet-connected device to verify balances and transactions. Blockchains are more than just tools for creating new monetary systems. Listen to hear how Izaak and Evan believe the potential use cases for widespread verifiable computation go beyond the realm of cryptocurrency. Key takeaways:  In most blockchains there is a real tradeoff between scaling and decentralization. Coda is a new cryptocurrency protocol that reduces the size of the blockchain from gigabytes down to the size of just a few tweets. The Coda network uses zk-SNARKs to compress the entire blockchain into a tiny snapshot and then sends around that snapshot instead. This means that no matter how big the blockchain gets, or how many transactions are performed, the cost to verify transactions and data remains constant and inexpensive, making Coda accessible to everyone. 

What if you could verify the entire blockchain from your smartphone? Izaak Meckler and Evan Shapiro are cofounders of Coda, a new cryptocurrency protocol that reduces the size of the blockchain from gigabytes down to the size of a few tweets. Izaak and Evan explain how cryptocurrency can be more accessible to everyone: ##The Tradeoff Between Scaling and Decentralization Today, if you want to verify a transaction on a cryptocurrency, you need to first download a full copy of the blockchain. Izaak points out that this works fine in the early days of a network, but quickly becomes impractical over time as the blockchain becomes longer and grows in size to hundreds of gigabytes. ##A Succinct Blockchain Coda is a new cryptocurrency protocol that solves this problem by compressing the entire blockchain. Using the recursive composition of zk-SNARKs, Coda eliminates the need to store or download transaction history in order to verify the blockchain. Because this ‘succinct blockchain’ is more efficient than others, Izaak explains how this impacts the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. ##Accessible to Everyone As Izaak describes it, a SNARK is a tiny certificate verifying that a computation was run correctly. You can think of it as a stamp of approval, which is guaranteed by cryptography to be unforgeable. This technology will enable nearly any internet-connected device to verify balances and transactions. Blockchains are more than just tools for creating new monetary systems. Listen to hear how Izaak and Evan believe the potential use cases for widespread verifiable computation go beyond the realm of cryptocurrency. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>In most blockchains there is a real tradeoff between scaling and decentralization.</li> <li>Coda is a new cryptocurrency protocol that reduces the size of the blockchain from gigabytes down to the size of just a few tweets.</li> <li>The Coda network uses zk-SNARKs to compress the entire blockchain into a tiny snapshot and then sends around that snapshot instead. This means that no matter how big the blockchain gets, or how many transactions are performed, the cost to verify transactions and data remains constant and inexpensive, making Coda accessible to everyone.</li> </ul>

Coda: Accessible Blockchain Verification

Love this podcast. Zach is, King Of All Coins!

Very Good

Great content on some of the best projects in crypto

Awesome

Join Zach DeWitt as we highlight the best emerging projects in crypto through unbiased and exclusive interviews with blockchain technology founders. Token Talks intends to make the cryptocurrency ecosystem more accessible by connecting thought leaders and entrepreneurs with mainstream companies, consumers, and investors. This podcast is produced by Wing Venture Capital (aka “Wing”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every month and discussions include ICOs, altcoins, decentralization, token economics and the future of digital currency in tech. Visit <a href="http://www.wing.vc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.wing.vc</a> for more details.

Token Talks – Interviews with the Best Projects in Crypto

Zach had an awesome talk with Axel Ericsson, a cofounder at 1protocol, focusing on providing proper incentives to both token holders and miners on blockchains. Although a work still in progress, 1protocol’s Vest system aims to allow all players to collaboratively supply work for staking protocols. Here’s what Axel, a new Thiel Fellow, had to say: ##Staking protocols are the future Moving away from opportunity cost to participate in a blockchain to a staking-based incentive system allows for much better alignment of values in a decentralized, trustless system. Axel believes that most systems that can be modelled as market protocols will move to staking protocols as a result. ##It will be tricky to make Consensus protocols currently has a number of problems, such as the “nothing at stake” problem, where forgers in proof-of-stake-based blockchains don’t need to use resources to create new blocks that would be accepted by the majority of participants in the blockchain. Axel notes that a number of participants in the blockchain world have come up with some solutions to this, but acknowledges that work remains. ##Democratization of blockchain With Vest, more people can participate in blockchain technologies without having to provide a complex computer system with redundant power supplies and redundant Internet. Axel is very excited to be working towards opening up blockchains to more of the world! Key takeaways:  The future will be defined by staking protocols Proof-of-stake remains a challenge, but It promises a democratization of blockchain technology 

Zach had an awesome talk with Axel Ericsson, a cofounder at 1protocol, focusing on providing proper incentives to both token holders and miners on blockchains. Although a work still in progress, 1protocol’s Vest system aims to allow all players to collaboratively supply work for staking protocols. Here’s what Axel, a new Thiel Fellow, had to say: ##Staking protocols are the future Moving away from opportunity cost to participate in a blockchain to a staking-based incentive system allows for much better alignment of values in a decentralized, trustless system. Axel believes that most systems that can be modelled as market protocols will move to staking protocols as a result. ##It will be tricky to make Consensus protocols currently has a number of problems, such as the “nothing at stake” problem, where forgers in proof-of-stake-based blockchains don’t need to use resources to create new blocks that would be accepted by the majority of participants in the blockchain. Axel notes that a number of participants in the blockchain world have come up with some solutions to this, but acknowledges that work remains. ##Democratization of blockchain With Vest, more people can participate in blockchain technologies without having to provide a complex computer system with redundant power supplies and redundant Internet. Axel is very excited to be working towards opening up blockchains to more of the world! Key takeaways: <ul> <li>The future will be defined by staking protocols</li> <li>Proof-of-stake remains a challenge, but</li> <li>It promises a democratization of blockchain technology</li> </ul>

Vest Protocol: Staking Pools and Tokenization

Zach had a great chat with Nadav Hollander, the founder of Dharma, a generic protocol for tokenized debt agreements. It’s pretty exciting stuff. For a long time, the blockchain community has been talking about the technology’s potential to enable vast suites of new, decentralized financial services. Dharma, which continues to undergo development, will provide a means to allow for tradable debt agreements on top of a blockchain. Now on the Ethereum mainnet in a closed beta, Nadav, a former Google engineer, had a lot to say: ###Dharma aims to be like Ethereum, in a way Ethereum provides a powerful decentralized computing system for individuals around the world to use; a very influential platform. Just as Ethereum is the standard for decentralized computation on blockchain, Dharma hopes to provide the standard for debt agreements on blockchain, with third-party developers coming up with ways to layer new functionality on their platform. ###There are a lot of amazing financial primitives being worked on Although given an opportunity to focus on his own company during the podcast, Nadav made sure to note the excellent technical work going on in the broader blockchain community, such as trustless asset swapping projects. These projects will end up meeting the demands of major financial institutions, and then interact with consumers across the world. ###Dharma’s focusing on the technology first, value capture second Nadav isn’t worrying at the moment about choosing a profit scheme for Dharma. He’s confident that the company is building a technology that will inevitably become a vital part of the financial landscape. Although the Dharma team has a lot of ideas on how to generate value, at the moment they are content to build something of value that a community can form around. Key takeaways:  Dharma aims to be like Ethereum, in a way There are a lot of amazing financial primitives being worked on, and Dharma’s focusing on the technology first, value capture second  Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

Zach had a great chat with Nadav Hollander, the founder of Dharma, a generic protocol for tokenized debt agreements. It’s pretty exciting stuff. For a long time, the blockchain community has been talking about the technology’s potential to enable vast suites of new, decentralized financial services. Dharma, which continues to undergo development, will provide a means to allow for tradable debt agreements on top of a blockchain. Now on the Ethereum mainnet in a closed beta, Nadav, a former Google engineer, had a lot to say: ###Dharma aims to be like Ethereum, in a way Ethereum provides a powerful decentralized computing system for individuals around the world to use; a very influential platform. Just as Ethereum is the standard for decentralized computation on blockchain, Dharma hopes to provide the standard for debt agreements on blockchain, with third-party developers coming up with ways to layer new functionality on their platform. ###There are a lot of amazing financial primitives being worked on Although given an opportunity to focus on his own company during the podcast, Nadav made sure to note the excellent technical work going on in the broader blockchain community, such as trustless asset swapping projects. These projects will end up meeting the demands of major financial institutions, and then interact with consumers across the world. ###Dharma’s focusing on the technology first, value capture second Nadav isn’t worrying at the moment about choosing a profit scheme for Dharma. He’s confident that the company is building a technology that will inevitably become a vital part of the financial landscape. Although the Dharma team has a lot of ideas on how to generate value, at the moment they are content to build something of value that a community can form around. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Dharma aims to be like Ethereum, in a way</li> <li>There are a lot of amazing financial primitives being worked on, and</li> <li>Dharma’s focusing on the technology first, value capture second</li> </ul> Full show notes at <a href="http://wing.vc/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://wing.vc/</a>

Dharma: Tokenized Debt Agreements

Zach had a great chat with Joshua Stein, the CEO of Harbor, a company building a decentralized, blockchain-based protocol for issuing and trading securities. With a strong focus on legal compliance (Josh has worked for years as a lawyer), Harbor brings a legitimate solution to the future needs of private equity on the established Ethereum platform. Here’s what Josh had to share with us: ##There’s a market opportunity for compliance-focused tokenized securities While Harbor has a few competitors, Josh stresses how integral legal compliance is to the company’s offer. When lots of money is at stake, it’s important to ensure that all transactions are above board. Harbor aims to bring that quality to decentralized securities trading. ##Decentralization opens up international possibilities Other blockchain-based efforts in this space aggressively tie investors and traders to a platform and jurisdiction. Harbor plans on building compliance across multiple jurisdictions, allowing for greater liquidity and a larger pool of investors for your project. ##Faster, cheaper, and easier Real estate investment trusts can be great vehicles for growing wealth but there are limitations to what you can do with them, and take a long time to get involved with. WIth tokenized securities, you have a greater ability to chop up equity interests, and can get a stake much more easily. Key takeaways:  Compliance-focused tokenized securities are the future Build decentralized platforms to capture a greater market, and Low-friction transactions are always a great sell  Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

Zach had a great chat with Joshua Stein, the CEO of Harbor, a company building a decentralized, blockchain-based protocol for issuing and trading securities. With a strong focus on legal compliance (Josh has worked for years as a lawyer), Harbor brings a legitimate solution to the future needs of private equity on the established Ethereum platform. Here’s what Josh had to share with us: ##There’s a market opportunity for compliance-focused tokenized securities While Harbor has a few competitors, Josh stresses how integral legal compliance is to the company’s offer. When lots of money is at stake, it’s important to ensure that all transactions are above board. Harbor aims to bring that quality to decentralized securities trading. ##Decentralization opens up international possibilities Other blockchain-based efforts in this space aggressively tie investors and traders to a platform and jurisdiction. Harbor plans on building compliance across multiple jurisdictions, allowing for greater liquidity and a larger pool of investors for your project. ##Faster, cheaper, and easier Real estate investment trusts can be great vehicles for growing wealth but there are limitations to what you can do with them, and take a long time to get involved with. WIth tokenized securities, you have a greater ability to chop up equity interests, and can get a stake much more easily. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Compliance-focused tokenized securities are the future</li> <li>Build decentralized platforms to capture a greater market, and</li> <li>Low-friction transactions are always a great sell</li> </ul> Full show notes at <a href="http://wing.vc/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://wing.vc/</a>

Harbor: Tokenized Private Equity

Today, Zach sits down with Robert Leshner, the CEO and founder of Compound, a protocol that creates money markets on the Ethereum blockchain. Compound will allow users and distributed applications to systematically earn interest or borrow assets on-chain in a trustless, transparent, and predictable way. Robert’s insights point to crypto’s increasing importance within the financial system: ##Crypto is Transforming How Finance Works Robert points out three major advantages to cryptographic assets over assets in the legacy financial system.  First, asset owners are truly sovereign over what they own. Second, users have the ability to move large quantities of cryptographic assets anywhere in the world instantaneously and for free. And lastly, anyone can program assets without needing permission.  ##The Demand to Tokenize Assets Assets from the existing financial system are trickling into crypto as these advantages become more apparent. Robert hypothesizes that over time, there will be a larger quantity of tokenized real assets than assets that are crypto-native. As interest and participation in cryptocurrency broadens, the need for a safe and secure protocol for lending and borrowing becomes more apparent. ##The Compound Money Market Protocol Compound is an open-source protocol for algorithmic, efficient money markets on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s similar in many ways to a money market for any currency, but unlike traditional money markets, it’s frictionless (interest rates are algorithmically optimized), completely open source, and provides security to its users by requiring borrowers to provide collateral. Users can keep their assets in the Compound protocol for any length of time, long-term or short-term, and earn a prevailing interest rate, which is set based on supply and demand, and which fluctuates over time. Key takeaways:  Crypto assets are awesome, according to Robert, because they are programmable, offer control, and are liquid. Every currency and security that exists today will eventually exist in cryptographic form. Compound is an easy to use and secure money market. Instead of requiring borrowers and suppliers to negotiate terms directly, the Compound protocol algorithmically optimizes interest rates based on supply and demand. 

Today, Zach sits down with Robert Leshner, the CEO and founder of Compound, a protocol that creates money markets on the Ethereum blockchain. Compound will allow users and distributed applications to systematically earn interest or borrow assets on-chain in a trustless, transparent, and predictable way. Robert’s insights point to crypto’s increasing importance within the financial system: ##Crypto is Transforming How Finance Works Robert points out three major advantages to cryptographic assets over assets in the legacy financial system. <ul> <li>First, asset owners are truly sovereign over what they own.</li> <li>Second, users have the ability to move large quantities of cryptographic assets anywhere in the world instantaneously and for free.</li> <li>And lastly, anyone can program assets without needing permission.</li> </ul> ##The Demand to Tokenize Assets Assets from the existing financial system are trickling into crypto as these advantages become more apparent. Robert hypothesizes that over time, there will be a larger quantity of tokenized real assets than assets that are crypto-native. As interest and participation in cryptocurrency broadens, the need for a safe and secure protocol for lending and borrowing becomes more apparent. ##The Compound Money Market Protocol Compound is an open-source protocol for algorithmic, efficient money markets on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s similar in many ways to a money market for any currency, but unlike traditional money markets, it’s frictionless (interest rates are algorithmically optimized), completely open source, and provides security to its users by requiring borrowers to provide collateral. Users can keep their assets in the Compound protocol for any length of time, long-term or short-term, and earn a prevailing interest rate, which is set based on supply and demand, and which fluctuates over time. Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Crypto assets are awesome, according to Robert, because they are programmable, offer control, and are liquid.</li> <li>Every currency and security that exists today will eventually exist in cryptographic form.</li> <li>Compound is an easy to use and secure money market. Instead of requiring borrowers and suppliers to negotiate terms directly, the Compound protocol algorithmically optimizes interest rates based on supply and demand.</li> </ul>

Compound: An Ethereum Money Market Protocol

Zach had an interesting discussion with Kendrick Nguyen, a co-founder of Republic, a company that enables non-accredited investors to purchase equity in startups. One of their focuses is crowdfunding of cryptocurrency-based and blockchain-based companies. With hopes to become the industry standard for crowdfunding in this space, Republic puts its money where its mouth is, using token tech to power its platform. Kendrick was enthusiastic, with a lot to say: ##Republic hopes to become the Amazon of crypto fundraising Just as Amazon is the “standard” platform for electronic commerce for much of the world, Republic aims to cement a position as the platform of choice for crypto-based startups to raise funds from a variety of investors, whether they are accredited or non-accredited. ##Republic provides rigorous vetting of companies Over 90% of all applications to be listed as a startup seeking funding on Republic are rejected. Republic selects only those companies that it has thoroughly inspected. Campaign pages have lots of information for potential investors to comb through to make sure their money is put to good use, including white papers, decks, and videos. ##Republic wants more people to learn about cryptocurrencies Kendrick was bursting with enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. He knows there’s lots of anxiety and confusion in the crypto space, but he believes that crypto and blockchain technology are here to stay. He encourages listeners to buy at least a few dollars of a cryptocurrency as a way of dipping their toes. It’ll be a fun learning experience! Key takeaways:  Republic hopes to become the Amazon of crypto fundraising Republic provides rigorous vetting of companies, and Republic wants more people to learn about cryptocurrencies  Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

Zach had an interesting discussion with Kendrick Nguyen, a co-founder of Republic, a company that enables non-accredited investors to purchase equity in startups. One of their focuses is crowdfunding of cryptocurrency-based and blockchain-based companies. With hopes to become the industry standard for crowdfunding in this space, Republic puts its money where its mouth is, using token tech to power its platform. Kendrick was enthusiastic, with a lot to say: ##Republic hopes to become the Amazon of crypto fundraising Just as Amazon is the “standard” platform for electronic commerce for much of the world, Republic aims to cement a position as the platform of choice for crypto-based startups to raise funds from a variety of investors, whether they are accredited or non-accredited. ##Republic provides rigorous vetting of companies Over 90% of all applications to be listed as a startup seeking funding on Republic are rejected. Republic selects only those companies that it has thoroughly inspected. Campaign pages have lots of information for potential investors to comb through to make sure their money is put to good use, including white papers, decks, and videos. ##Republic wants more people to learn about cryptocurrencies Kendrick was bursting with enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. He knows there’s lots of anxiety and confusion in the crypto space, but he believes that crypto and blockchain technology are here to stay. He encourages listeners to buy at least a few dollars of a cryptocurrency as a way of dipping their toes. It’ll be a fun learning experience! Key takeaways: <ul> <li>Republic hopes to become the Amazon of crypto fundraising</li> <li>Republic provides rigorous vetting of companies, and</li> <li>Republic wants more people to learn about cryptocurrencies</li> </ul> Full show notes at <a href="http://wing.vc/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://wing.vc/</a>

Republic: Trusted Token-based Fundraising

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