In this episode our guest Pacu talks about the state of light clients in zcash, defi firehoses, and putting ancient zcashd to rest in favour of more modular architecture written in Rust.

Although we didn't have time to discuss how the magical cryptography happens in light clients, we did have a chance to gently touch the surface of ... attack surface topic & found out where to discuss this kind of stuff in more depth.

Links:

• Pacu

  • Twitter: https://x.com/thecodebuffet
  • Github: https://github.com/pacu

• Zcash R&D Discord (not the same as Zcash main discord) https://discord.com/invite/xpzPR53xtU (obtained Nov25) on https://forum.zcashcommunity.com If the link expired ask on forum again

• Lightwalletd https://zcash.readthedocs.io/en/latest/rtd_pages/lightclient_support.html

• Light protocol https://github.com/zcash/lightwallet-protocol

Shoutout & thanks to Recording Station & ZK AV Club people for recording equipment & other visible & invisible infrastructure at Devconnect. Also to Ligi for the tape & other various awesomeness

• Oktahedron reboot

• 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

Augusto from Raiden Network core team, explains Raiden Network: extension to Ethereum which scales-out asset transfer capacity.

Hosted by Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya

Links:

• Repository https://github.com/raiden-network
• 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

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.

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.

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

• 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

• 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

• History of Scuttlebutt with Dominic Tarr https://www.gwenbell.com/dt-interview/

• Dominic Tarr http://dominictarr.com/ Twitter @dominictarr

• Secure Scuttlebutt consortium https://github.com/ssbc

• Peer-to-peer audio publishing and streaming application. Like SoundCloud but decentralized. A mashup of ssb, webtorrent and electron http://ferment.audio

• Decentralised git git-ssb https://github.com/clehner/git-ssb

Guest: Viktor Trón (@zeligf)

LINKS:

• Swarm guide - nicely organised Swarm documentation
• Swarm landing page & public gateway
• Ethereum Name System – ENS
• Decentralised Git using Ethereum and P2P content addressable networks (Swarm, IPFS, SSB)
• Short talk introducing Swarm at DAppHack, Berlin Nov 26th 2016

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]](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

Oktahedron – Legal Issues in the Blockchain Universe

In this episode, @heckerhut, @dirkjaeckel, and @j32804 discuss legal aspects of blockchains.
None of this 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?

Topics Discussed

Some time has passed since The DAO was hacked. We need to mention it again because it raised many legal questions. What has happened since?

We also discuss:

• Crowdsales
• Smart contracts gone wrong (not The DAO one)
• Other podcasts touching on law and regulations (see links below)
• Making predictions without considering the risks involved

Selected Links

White Hat Hacker & ETC

• White hat hacker team told off for moving salvaged ETC
• More about the white hat group

Legal & Regulatory Discussions

• Dominic Williams on tokens and securities law
• Sian Jones regulatory update on Epicenter Bitcoin
• ESMA Discussion Paper – Not fun to read, but important in the regulatory space
• Big ETC-ETH debate
• Florian Glatz defining a legal framework for DAOs on Epicenter

Smart Contracts Gone Wrong

• GovernMental contract – 1100 ETH jackpot payout stuck

Reads on Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

Selected by our guest Florian Glatz:

• Bitcoin as an unmanned company – "Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics"
• Florian’s prediction from 2 years ago
• A Legal Analysis of the DAO Exploit and Possible Investor Rights
• DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Corporations) revisited by Daniel Larimer
• DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide by Vitalik Buterin (2014)
• Bootstrapping A Decentralized Autonomous Corporation by Vitalik Buterin:
  • Part I
  • Part II
  • Part III

Show Notes from a Previous Unpublished (Perhaps Censored?) Recording

• Coindesk article: "How to sue The DAO Hacker" (before The DAO attack)
• Coindesk article: "How to sue a DAO" (pre-The DAO attack)

General Legal Issues Related to Blockchains

• "Beyond Bitcoin: Issues in Regulating Blockchain Transactions" – Long but basic, explaining how blockchain differs from traditional systems

Safer Smart Contract Languages

We mentioned that Turing-complete languages might not be the safest choice for smart contracts, as they are inherently undecidable, making it impossible to predict their behavior before execution.

• Towards safer languages for smart contracts – Jack Pettersson & Robert Edström (DEVCON1)
• Using dependent and polymorphic types for safer smart contract development (Master Thesis)

Other Interesting Links

• Concept of a-legality explored by Hans Lindahl in philosophy of law: Hans Lindahl
• Plantoid – A robotic plant connected to the blockchain:
  • Plantoid Project
  • Implementation by Primavera de Filippi

EU Parliament & Blockchain Regulations

The EU Parliament has published reports on virtual currencies. They are usually behind the curve—while people discuss DAOs, they are still getting their heads around Bitcoin. Hopefully, they will catch up fast.

• EU Parliament report on Virtual Currencies
• Attend public hearings at EU institutions on regulations

Oktahedron Podcast

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 the architecture of the attack.
The Big TheDAO Heist FAQ

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.
Motherboard article on Ethereum and The DAO

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 blockchain. But after researching the topic more, we could consider it as a good solution.

Statement in support of soft fork and rather heated discussion on whether it will compromise the whole idea of the immutable blockchain:
Personal statement regarding the fork

Gavin’s response to The DAO attack—both verbal and practical—by releasing a version of the Parity client which can support the fork.
Attack on TheDAO: What will be your response?

A short post in support of the fork.
A Lesson in Humility

P2P Foundation post with a slightly different perspective. Very positive, a bit hippie. Blockchains are still better than banks.
EthereumDAO Hack Proves Better Banks

Insightful post from the Parity team—no sides really taken, just what can be done. Short and sweet. I might not always agree with posts coming from the Parity team, but they usually have good reasoning.
Our DAO Response

Legal Aspects

Some points on legal aspects that we decided not to cover ourselves.
Very long, but interesting video covering The DAO:
The DAO Video

Useful article on the complexity of using blockchain to encode complex public contracts (written by a lawyer and a blockchain expert).
Failing Fast vs. Failing Unnecessarily

The DAO Attacker

A number of “messages from the DAO Attacker” have been popping up here and there on the internet. None of them are proven to be coming from a person or a team of people who orchestrated the attack.

• [To The DAO and The Ethereum Community: F*** You](http://trilema.com/201

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Example Resource
• Helpful Article

Transcript

[Intro music]

Host: Welcome to the very first episode of My Awesome Podcast! Today we're going to talk about...

[Detailed transcript would continue here]