More show notes soon!
- Vitalik Buterin on being an advisor for future ICOs:
1. This is me socially precommitting that I will not be an advisor for future ICO projects.
— Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) June 13, 2017
OH007 – Raiden
Augusto from Raiden Network core team, explains Raiden Network: extension to Ethereum which scales-out asset transfer capacity.
Hosted by Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya
Links:
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Repository https://github.com/raiden-network
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Lefteris’ short presentation at Ethdev from November 2016 https://youtu.be/JuVP4iDVkoQ?list=PLaM7G4Llrb7wPiT2G75tj2JQr8qg6P5hi
- Heiko’s presentation from devcon1 (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h791zjvf3uQ
OH006 – Zcash
In this episode Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya discuss zcash with Zooko. Unfortunately, Zooko’s voice was not recorded properly. We are sorry and will prevent this in the future.
Zcash dev wiki https://github.com/zcash/zcash/wiki/specification, a repo https://github.com/zcash/zcash and a user guide https://github.com/zcash/zcash/wiki/1.0-User-Guide
To get your head around zero knowledge proofs and zcash even better we also recommend two episodes recorded by our fellow podcasters Meher & Brian from a different podcast Epicenter: Ep116 with professor Eli Ben-Sasson and Ep122 with Zooko
Here is the paper that we mention “How to explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to your children”
Towards the middle of the podcast we talk about a practical way of making a nice and useful zcash node, which we intend to make IRL and will shortly publish some basic specs for it.
For the latest updates, you can check Oktahedron on Twitter and feel free to ping any questions to Dirk Jäckel & Ksenya.
OH005 – 33c3
This episode was recorded 2016-12-29 in Hamburg. We had a short chat with Ryan Taylor (@AdjyLeak), zooko (@zooko) and Meredith L Patterson (@maradydd) at 33c3.
In this short episode Zooko tells us a cute story of practical love letters hidden in blockchain transactions, Meredith highlights the importance of compilers in the world and Ryan mentions Alexandria library. It’s a bit of a teaser for the 2017, as some of it we will be covering in detail in 2017 on Oktahedron.
Recorded at Sendecentrum at Chaos Communication Congress with the guests: AdjyLeak, Meredith L Patterson, Zooko and that TBA guest with a nice podcasting voice, who spoke very little. Hosted by Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya of Oktahedron.
Thanx to Tim Pritlove for recommending Sendecentrum, instead of dragging all our audio equipment all the way to the Congress from Berlin, thanx to Chistopher who was so patient & helpful, and other guys at Sendecentrum . And a great big thanx to our wonderful sound guy in particular.
OH004 – Secure Scuttlebutt
This episode is about Secure Scuttlebutt – a database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols. Brought to you by @dirkjaekel @j32804 and our guest @dominictarr
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Scuttlebutt in slang usage means rumor or gossip, deriving from the nautical term for the cask used to serve water (or, later, a water fountain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt
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A gossip protocol is a style of computer-to-computer communication protocol inspired by the form of gossip seen in social networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol
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History of Scuttlebutt with Dominic Tarr https://www.gwenbell.com/dt-interview/
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Dominic Tarr http://dominictarr.com/ Twitter @dominictarr
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Secure Scuttlebutt consortium https://github.com/ssbc
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Peer-to-peer audio publishing and streaming application. Like SoundCloud but decentralized. A mashup of ssb, webtorrent and electron http://ferment.audio
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Decentralised git git-ssb https://github.com/clehner/git-ssb
OH003 – Swarm
Guest: Viktor Trón (@zeligf)
LINKS:
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Swarm guide - nicely organised Swarm documentation
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Ethereum Name System – ENS
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Decentralised Git using Ethereum and P2P content addressable networks (Swarm, IPFS, SSB)
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Short talk introducing Swarm at DAppHack, Berlin Nov 26th 2016
OH002 – Total Functional Programming
In this episode we are joined by Jack Pettersson.
We discuss computational models and how they relate to blockchains.
Do we want Turing-completeness, or is a weaker model more suitable?
Would a dumber (not a Turing complete) language would make smart contracts smarter (easily verifiable)? We talk about total functional languages and alternatives to accounts-based model. Should we look at the blockchain as a pure data store, possibly equipped with primitives such as map/reduce or similar?
Links:
- Meredith Pattersson talks about The Weird Machine https://archive.org/details/The_Science_of_Insecurity_
- Tau Chain http://tauchain.org/
- Idris: a general purpose pure functional programming language with dependent types http://www.idris-lang.org/
- Safer smart contracts through type-driven development byt ROBERT EDSTRÖM, JACK PETTERSSON http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939/234939.pdf
- Jack Pettersson and Robert Edström (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) present on a dependantly typed functional language for smart contracts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2uwUdzVD9I
OH001 – Concorde Effect
In this episode @heckerhut, @dirkjaeckel and @j32804 amongst other things discuss legal stuff in the universe of blockchains. Non of it can be considered legal advice. As an anonymous friend of mine put it: blockchain is a hot new cool thing for borderline legal shenanigans. Is it?
Some time passed after the DAO has goxed. We will need to mention it again, because it raised a lot of legal questions. What has happened since?
We also discuss crowdsales, smart contract which went bonkers (not the DAO one), reference to other podcasts touching on topics of law and regulations (see links below) and making predictions without regard to the possibility of danger involved in it. Here is a selection os links to articles and topics we have mentioned:
- White hat hacker team told off for moving salvaged ETC http://cointimes.tech/2016/08/12/etcdao-stolen-coins-frozen-by-exchanges-was-sent-by-ethereum-foundation-developers/ (by the way, I haven’t found the statement quoted in this article on the Ethereum Foundation announcement page)
- More about white hat group https://medium.com/@jackfru1t/the-robin-hood-group-and-etc-bdc6a0c111c3#.6d4b5wooa
- Dominic Williams about tokens and securities law https://medium.com/@dominic_w/on-protocol-tokens-and-securities-law-8e54d2237eee#.ll96uwj8n
- Sian Jones gave some regulatory update on Epicenter Bitcoin. EU regulations are not so restrictive towards fintech / virtual currency businesses? But what about crowdsales? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F-Z3rlOapk
- ESMA Discussion paper https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/library/2016-773_dp_dlt.pdf not so fun to read, but important in the regulatory space
- Big ETC-ETH debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj62bOedMVI&feature=youtu.be&t=4040
- Our guest Florian Glatz has also appeared on Epicentre defining a legal framework for DAOs https://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/125/ we tried not to repeat what was discussed on Epicentre and recommend that episode to anyone who is interested in law and decentralisation
- Some say smart poeple are little bit crazy, well, smart contracts can go totally nuts: GovernMental contract https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ghzhv/governmentals_1100_eth_jackpot_payout_is_stuck/?st=is7ctg5k&sh=46fc4c1b
Reads on Decentralised Autonomous Organisations selected by our guest Florian Glatz:
- Bitcoin as an unmanned company “Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics” https://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-robotics
- Florian’s prediction from 2 years agohttps://medium.com/@heckerhut/smart-contracts-platforms-and-intermediaries-c3d30f5182a6#.7u91ss6hl
- A Legal Analysis of the DAO Exploit and Possible Investor Rights https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/a-legal-analysis-of-the-dao-exploit-and-possible-investor-rights-1466524659
- DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Corporations) revisited by Daniel Larimer https://letstalkbitcoin.com/dac-revisited
- DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide by Vitalik Buterin (2014) https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-an-incomplete-terminology-guide/
- Bootstrapping A Decentralized Autonomous Corporation: Part I by Vitalik Buterin (2013) https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bootstrapping-a-decentralized-autonomous-corporation-part-i-1379644274
Show notes from a previous unpublished (perhaps censored?) recording:
- Article by Coindesk “How to sue The DAO Hacker” (before TheDAO attack) http://www.coindesk.com/sue-dao-hacker/
- Pre TheDAO atteck article by Coindesk “How to sue a DAO” http://www.coindesk.com/how-to-sue-a-decentralized-autonomous-organization/
General legal issues related to blockchains:
- “Beyond Bitcoin: issues in Regulating Blockchain Transactions” – long, but a very basic, with explanation how blockchain is different from what we have seen before http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3827&context=dlj
We have also mentionned that it might be safer to use other than Turing complete languages for smart contracts, because Turing complete ones are inherently undecidable, which makes it impossible to know what a “smart contract” will do before running it.
- Towards safer languages for smart contracts by Jack Pettersson, Robert Edström presented at DEVCON1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2uwUdzVD9I
- Using dependent and polymorphic types for safer development of smart contracts (master thesis) http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939/234939.pdf
Other links:
- Concept of a-legality was explored by Hans Lindah in the field of philosophy of law http://www.hanslindahl.org/
- Plantoid – a robotic plant, an old concept recently connected to the blockchain by David Bovill http://plantoid.cc/view/welcome-visitors/view/plantoid Currently Primavera de Filippi is working on the implementation http://projects.stwst.at/stwst48/plantoid-by-primavera-de-filippi-david-bovill-vincent-roudaut-and-sara-renaud/
This year EU Parliament published some stuff on virtual currencies. They are usually little bit behind the curve – while people are discussing the DAOs they are getting their heads around bitcoin. But hopefully EU people will be catching up fast.
- EU Parliament report on Virtual Currencies http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A8-2016-0168+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
- There is also a possibility to attend public hearings at EU institutions and hear what they have to say about regulations and how these regulations are coming into existence http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/econ/events.html
OH000 – Gox Early
Oktahedron is a podcast by Ksenya @j32804 and Dirk Jäckel @dirkjaeckel
We do not endorse any opinions presented here. This is just a selection of decent posts.
Overview
Very detailed overview of The DAO Attack, the exploit, soft fork & hard fork scenarios, including an awesome diagram representing of the architecture of the attack.
As it usually is with mainstream-ish media this article has some degree of approximation. We post it here just to see what the media says.
The Fork Dilemma
We were unsure what to think ourselves, whether to support or oppose the idea of either a soft or a hard fork. First feeling was to oppose the hard fork, as it undermines the idea of the immutability of the block chain. But after researching the topic more we could consider it as a good solution.
Statement in support of soft fork and rather heated discussion whether it will compromise the whole idea of the immutable blockchain:
Gavin’s response to The DAO attack. Both – verbal and practical by releasing a version of the Parity client which can support the fork.
A short post in support of the fork.
P2P foundation post with a slightly different perspective. Very positive, a bit hippie. Blockchains are still better than banks.
Insightful post from the Parity team, no sides really taken, just what can be done. Short an sweet. I might not always agree with posts coming from Parity team, but it usually has good reasoning.
Some points on legal aspects that we decided not to cover ourselves.
Very long, but interesting video, covering The DAO
Useful article on the complexity of using blockchain to encode complex public contracts (written by a lawyer and a blockchain guy)
The DAO Attacker
A number of “messages from the DAO Attacker” have been popping up here and there on the internetz. Non of them are proven to be coming from a person, nor a team of people who orchestrated the attack.
Ethereum can be considered beta, the DAO was definitely beta. Not even that.
Ethereum Homestead release is beta, according to Vinay Gupta, currently working at Consensys, previously Ethereum Foundation.
The DAO Disclaimer “The use of The DAO’s smart contract code and the Creation of DAO tokens carries significant financial risk, including using experimental software. “