By now most people have heard of, and to a degree: understood, the core principles of Bitcoin and proof-of-work based blockchains. But the past few years have brought us a larger universe of related technologies, inhabited by “crypto” enthusiasts. This talk will venture beyond the basic Bitcoin blockchain to explain more advanced (and/or simpler) projects, and skeptically evaluate their uses. Spoiler: There Are None.
I will introduce a number of fascinating and intellectually engaging protocols and concepts, from Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI) to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), in a way that is both technically accurate and unflattering.
As it will turn out, there really is not a single thing that can be solved with a blockchain that cannot better be solved in another way, except maybe for a single worldwide currency with low transaction rates and humongous externalized costs.
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InterviewStill, the things are out there, draw in extreme amounts of engineering and cryptographical prowess, and provide for interesting (and at times: hilariously funny) case studies.
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Original video was published with the Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed). Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiLnDe_bX6Y&t=164s