In this article I explore…what the Metaverse is, the differences between a closed vs. open metaverse, key principles for an open metaverse, and where crypto (DAOs, NFT, DeFi) fits in
In this article to start off the year, I cover how this crypto bull run is different from the ICO boom in 2017, what I would tell myself if I was entering the market for the first time, and predictions for 2021 (with emphasis on Ethereum, NFTs, and DeFi).
I wrote the bulk of this retrospective and then fell into the limbo that are the days between Christmas and New Years Eve before I could hit publish. It usually doesn’t take long for these reviews to reach the 10000+ word range because involves turning the microscope on all the major aspects of my life: noting the highlights, lowlights, and lessons learned. This year was no different. On the other hand, the year was pivotal in such a holistic way that I can anticipate looking back on my life years from now and referring to things as being pre- and post- 2020.
In 1999, David Bowie saw the internet as an “alien life form”. He saw that humanity was on the cusp of something both exhilarating and terrifying: it was a breakdown of the barriers between creators and their communities. Instead of a piece of art or information being broadcasted one-way to an audience, it was becoming more of a dialogue, where the thing that originates from a creator isn't finished until the audience comes in and add their own interpretation. From there the piece evolves, gets sampled and remixed in ways that the creator couldn't have possibly imagined. Bowie called this area where creators and their communities meet "the gray space in the middle": a powerful new area of engagement where the most interesting things happen, and he predicted that this space is what the 21st century was going to be all about…
The recent Twitter hack is the latest reminder that even top companies with the best security teams are not immune against bad actors and data breaches, so why let them handle our sensitive data when we don’t need to? In this article I introduce concept of operational security and how you might begin to identify the information that is out there about you, analyze the risk of this exposure, and deny adversaries from exploiting this data.
In late 2016, a pseudonymous character named Tom Elvis Jedusor showed up on the bitcoin developers’ chatroom and posted a tor link, which hosted a single file named MIMBLEWIMBLE, outlining a new design for a privacy-preserving, massively prunable blockchain. Tom Elvis Jedusor, as some may recognize, is the name of Voldemort’s given name in the French Harry Potter books. Tom Elvis Jedusor to this date has never logged into the chatroom again. In this article I explore how MimbleWimble works, the first live implementation of the protocol, and privacy in crypto.
The Lightning Network is a network of payment channels that was originally built on top of Bitcoin and has since extended to other blockchains. Individuals can open up peer-to-peer payment channels with one another and make many transactions without accruing the costs of on-chain fees whilst reaping the benefits of having a decentralized blockchain as an underlying layer of security. In this article we will explore how Lightning works, its use cases, and implications of the ability to do micropayments.
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, as stores of value, exist as math and code, secured through energy-intensive protocols like proof-of-work. For the masses to adopt a global, financially inclusive digital store-of-value, the network it runs on needs to be decentralized and secure. However when considering complex use cases beyond store of value, we also need to be able to transact at scale (speed).
Second-layer (L2) solutions like Plasma, Raiden, Lightning, TrueBit and RSK are exploring structures that anchor to a main blockchain as a root of trust, with scalability features implemented in higher layer(s). While many L2 solutions are building on a newer blockchain, what can we do to improve the scalability and programmability of bitcoin itself?
In this post I will be exploring how we may leverage the decentralization and security of the Bitcoin network to run decentralized applications at scale, and dive into the Rootstock project which is tackling this very problem.
Because the blockchain is decentralized and transaction data is distributed between nodes, there must be a way for the nodes to sync and agree on what transactions have already occurred. In other words, they have to be in consensus about what the blockchain looks like. This is is the first of a multi-part post on different consensus protocols: it discusses proof of work, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, mining, energy consumption, and scaling.
