January 27, 2020
Jalak joins us on Base Layer and it's an amazing discussion with an investor who has been active in the digital asset/blockchain world for over 6 years. We discuss the changing narratives from the early days to now, the geographic niche's of certain projects like Bitpesa vs what it takes for global adoption, Libra and DCEP as big stories of 2019 and the work she's doing with local politicians in NYC to make a "public Venmo" and much more.
January 21, 2020
Alex joins us on Base Layer to talk more about zero knowledge proofs and what they are doing at Matter Labs. Initially found by a tweet from Ari @ BlockTower, Matter Labs recently revealed their vision for ZK Sync: a trustless scaling and privacy solution for Ethereum based on ZK Rollup". We discussed that in heavy detail, including tx receipts but also addressed Matter Labs mission which they discussed in their blog: "A successful solution to the scaling problem in public blockchains is not only a matter of high transaction throughput. It must also be defined as the ability of the system to meet the demands of millions of users without sacrificing decentralization. The prerequisites of mass crypto adoption include high speed, low cost, smooth UX, and privacy." All this and more with Alex from Matter Labs.
January 19, 2020
Zhuoxun joins us on Base Layer to tell us all about dydx. dydx is building a decentralized exchange for margin trading and eventually derivatives. With dYdX users can trade, borrow, and lend any supported asset. dYdX is powered by smart contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain, which eliminates the need to trust a central exchange while trading. We discuss the overall maturation of DEX's and also spend time discussing how smart contracts & oracles factor in this very exciting aspect of DeFi. Capital markets are also maturing in digital assets; powerful financial products like margin and derivatives are essential. They empower traders to better manage risk, more efficiently allocate capital, and express more complex opinions on price and volatility.
January 15, 2020
Bart joins us for the 100th episode of Base Layer and it's truly an amazing conversation to listen to. Bart has a storied career following early stage technology and he talks about how he and his brother, both gamers, found themselves in Bitcoin and blockchains about 7 years ago. Via their family office they wanted to invest via funds that were following the technology but when they couldn't find the right one they started Blockchain Capital. After 80+ investments in the space we had a detailed conversation about the change in narratives, the technology, the people coming in, valuation and much more. Also we discussed Blockchain Capital's 2020 predictions which include the beginnings of what could be some sizable M&A. The predictions can be found here
January 12, 2020
Alan joins us on Base Layer to give us a great in-depth overview of the happenings at Radar; going from Relay which the team believes is the most secure way to trade ERC20 tokens directly from your Ethereum wallet; to Ion and Redshift which allows users to trustlessly swap assets between chains to Deploy which the team says is the easiest way to spin up and maintain blockchain infrastructure so you can ship faster with less. This was a great chat about the entire ecosystem Radar and the team are working on and you'll learn a lot!
January 9, 2020
Angela joins us on Base Layer today and it's one not to miss! We talk a lot about gaming, esports and this thesis about how over 2B people who play games could be the next wave of adopters of digital assets. We discuss the current state of the state of blockchain games, what they are working to build and why it's an important narrative.
January 6, 2020
What a show! The founder of Docusign, Tom Gonser, joins Sergey Nazarov for a follow up to our podcast about 2 months ago to further discuss smart contracts, the oracle problem and how Chainlink is addressing it, how enterprises large and small are looking at distributed & decentralized networks and so much more. This is a very special show - hearing from Tom who is an Advisor to Chainlink was amazing.
December 30, 2019
Harry joins us on Base Layer for a fun and interesting conversation about everything relating to Bitcoin mining and the work they are doing at Griid; we talk about next generation equipment, valuation and modeling, energy consumption and prices and most importantly the Bitcoin halving and what effect it could have on the mining community.
December 23, 2019
A great episode with Eli and Uri from Starkware! This is a special project focusing on cryptographic proofs using zero-knowledge, succinct, transparent and post-quantum secure processes. We had a really interesting conversation about zk's -- furthering helping listeners understand their impact. We also discussed quantum -- in light of Google's recent announcement - the cause and effect of quantum on encryption in blockchains. Lastly we discussed StarkPay vs Lightning. Must listen!
December 18, 2019
Max and Vadym join us from Geo Protocol who's mission is to empower the Internet of Value by creating a universal value transfer ecosystem. GEO Protocol is an open-source base layer protocol for cost-efficient, lightweight and infinitely scalable value transfer, merging blockchain and traditional finance worlds together. We talked about this notion of merging blockchain based assets with non-blockchain based assets, atomic swaps and this ability to coordinate among different exchanges in a new way without a lot of the friction from the past iterations. This one gets a bit technical but the team is creating some tech that is very exciting.
