Zero Knowledge

Episode 57: Merklize this! Merkle Trees & Patricia Tries

December 26th, 2018  |  45 mins 44 secs

blockchain, blockchain 101, data structures, developers, merkle trees, tech education

In this week's episode, Anna and Fredrik dig into the topic of Merkle trees. We discuss the history of the concept, explore different kinds of Merkle trees, and touch on Radix trees & Patricia Merkle tries. We also look a bit at their usage in both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Episode 56: Get to know a Core Dev: Martin Holst Swende

December 19th, 2018  |  37 mins 10 secs

blockchain, core dev, developer, ethereum, programming, tech

In this episode, Fredrik sits down Martin, who is a Core Dev working on the Geth client and head of security for the Ethereum foundation. They chat about what got him into the space, his interest in security, and what he would recommend to other devs looking to get into the space.

Episode 55: ETHSingapore in review

December 12th, 2018  |  49 mins 21 secs

ethereum, ethsingapore, hackathon, hackers, tech education

In this week's episode, Anna interviews a number of participants at the ETHSingapore hackathon as part of the ETHGlobal series and tries to get a sense for how these hackers are approaching the space.

Episode 54: Digging into recursive zkSNARKs with Coda

December 5th, 2018  |  52 mins 10 secs

blockchain, coda, cryptography, recursive proof, tech education, zksnarks

In this week's episode, we sit down with Izaak Meckler & Evan Shapiro from O(1) Labs to discuss Coda, a blockchain using recursive composition of zkSNARKs to eliminate history. We discuss recursive zkSNARKs generally, what a recursive zkSNARK construction blockchain would look like, and the challenges in implementing this sophisticated scaling solution.

Episode 53: Get to know a Core Dev: Péter Szilágyi

November 28th, 2018  |  46 mins 30 secs

core-dev, developer-interview, ethereum

In this week's episode, Fredrik sits down with Péter Szilágyi, lead developer of go-ethereum, to talk about his background, what it means to be a Core Dev and some of the struggles of maintaining an open source project.

Episode 52: Vlad and Gav go head-to-head on blockchain governance

November 21st, 2018  |  1 hr 12 mins

blockchain, gavin wood, governance, on-chain governance, tech talk, vlad zamfir

In this week's episode, we are joined by a couple greats in the space, Gavin Wood and Vlad Zamfir, to debate the merits of on-chain vs off-chain governance.

Episode 51: Exploring Spacemesh with Julian Loss

November 14th, 2018  |  51 mins 28 secs

blockchain, proof-of-spacetime, protocol, spacemesh, tech education

In this episode, we sit down with Julian Loss, a researcher at Spacemesh, to explore DAGs, the Proof-of-Spacetime idea and the Spacemesh project.

Episode 50: Zooko talks Zcash on our 50th episode

November 7th, 2018  |  1 hr 27 mins

blockchain, cryptography, tech history, zcash, zcash parity, zero knowledge, zksnarks

In this special 50th episode, we invite our friend Zooko to the podcast to chat about his background and explore the history of Zerocoin and Zcash. We dig into the inner workings of Zcash, the trusted setup, the sapling upgrade, and what the future of the project might look like!

Episode 49: Blockchain 101: Cryptoeconomic Primitives and Staking

October 31st, 2018  |  1 hr

blockchain, cryptoeconomics, ethereum, game theory, pos, staking, tech education

In this Blockchain 101 episode, we sit down with Axel Ericsson of Vest to talk about Cryptoeconomic Primitives, incentive models, designing for smart equilibria, and staking.

Episode 48: Talking UX with Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto

October 23rd, 2018  |  57 mins 8 secs

blockchain, ethereum, etherwallet, mycrypto, tech talk

In this episode, we sit down with Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto, to discuss how the project got started and share some customer support horror stories. We also reflect on the challenge of building UX that works for people while maintaining the spirit of decentralization, and finally, where she sees the space developing.

Episode 47: Chat with Richard Craib from Numerai

October 17th, 2018  |  43 mins 19 secs

blockchain, decentralized, erasure, ethereum, hedge fund, numerai, predictions market

In this episode, we sit down with Richard Craib from Numerai to talk about crowdsourcing the role of a quant, how Numerai developed, their new Erasure project, DApp adoption in Ethereum and what it's like to build a hedge fund fulled by a crypto token.

Episode 46: Gavin Wood on Polkadot, Sharding and Substrate

October 10th, 2018  |  1 hr 5 mins

blockchain, polkadot, sharding, substrate, web3

We finally sit down with Gavin to go through a bit of what Parity has been working on with Polkadot and Substrate. We talk about Polkadot early history and who was involved and where the idea spawned, up to coding practices and where Substrate became a thing.

Episode 45: P2P messaging with Henri from Streamr

October 3rd, 2018  |  49 mins 20 secs

blockchain, messaging, networking, p2p, web3

In this week's episode, we sit down with Henri Pihkala from Streamr to talk p2p messaging and what it means. We cover topics like pub-sub, compare it to whisper, talk about the needs of different messaging systems.

Episode 44: Blockchain 101: Transaction lifecycle & the mempool

September 26th, 2018  |  57 mins 3 secs

blockchain, ethereum, mempool, tech education, transaction cue, transaction pool

In this episode, we are joined by Tomasz Drwięga from Parity Technologies to discuss the lifecycle of a transaction on the Ethereum network and how the mempool works.

We cover the transaction pool/cue/mempool

Episode 43: Hudson Jameson talks EIPs and Ethereum core decision-making

September 19th, 2018  |  53 mins 26 secs

blockchain, core devs, decentralised governance, eips, ethereum, governance

In this episode, Anna chats with Hudson Jameson about how he got involved in the space, the EIP process, and the challenges of decision-making in the decentralised space.

Episode 42: ETHPrize & Open Source Block Explorers

September 12th, 2018  |  46 mins 10 secs

In this episode, we sit down with Mitch Kosowski, director of product at ETHPrize, and Andrew Cravenho, project leader at POA Network. We cover ETHPrize bounties, the way that pain points in the community are identified, and the open source block explorer that POA Network is building with an ETHPrize bounty.