Support the show, consider donating: 17uszypdbeFaLgvmJAg23pLJYYhb5Wbp5z (http://bit.ly/2ar52EB) Blockchain smart contracts are self-executing contracts composed of computer code. These programs, which are executed by the entirety of the network, enforce the rules described within the code. Effectively, in this realm, code is law. And as we've seen recently, altering the outcome of that code after it has been deloyed, should we later realize that it was flawed or did not produce an intended result, can be messy. In addition, there are instances where human intervention can be necessary or even desirable. Take a mortgage agreement for example. Should a smart contract be entrusted with the responsibility of making a decision when the borrower can no longer make his payments? In cases such as this, subjective human intervention is be necessary. Scot Farrell and Claire Warren, lawyers at the global law firm King & Wood Mallesons, think that humans should not be automated out of every process. While code is logical and predictable, it cannot act reasonably or take into account certain unforeseen events. They have proposed DnA contracts (Digital and Analog), where automation can occur when absolute automation is possible, but where humans may intervene at the edges and provide input when needed. Topics we discuss in this episode: - What issues DnA contracts are trying to address - The basic concepts behind DnA contrats - The scenarios where DnA contracts may be valuable - Examples of DnA contracts applied to interest rate swaps and mortgages - How DnA contracts could be integrated with blockchain technologies - The impact of DnA contracts on legal services Links mentioned in this episode: - How to use humans to make “smart contracts” truly smart: http://www.kwm.com/en/knowledge/insights/smart-contracts-open-source-model-dna-digital-analogue-human-20160630 - DnA Contracts proposal on GitHub: https://github.com/KingandWoodMallesonsAU/Project-DnA Sponsors: - Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices http://jaxx.io - Hide.me: Protect your privacy and personal data with a free VPN account at Hide.me/epicenter Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/142 SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-142 Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Support the show, consider donating: 1NiAfwkdp5qsgy9NDGTFPabxpPhhAdR43L (http://bit.ly/1pKWtXT) One of the major drawbacks of Bitcoin is its low transaction throughput. Maxing out only a handful of operations per second, there have been many proposals to scale it up so that it can compete with existing distributed database technologies. As the blockchain's demand continues to increase, it's unclear if the Bitcoin protocol will ever be able to handle thousands, if not millions of transactions per second. BigchainDB is taking a different approach. Rather than trying to scale up blockchain technology, it starts with a big data distributed database, RethinkDB, and adds blockchain features and characteristics. Trent McConaghy, Co-founder and CTO of Ascribe and BigchainDB, joins us to talk about how this protocol may become to databases, what IPFS and Ethereum are to distributed filestorage and computing, respectively. Able to perform more than one million writes per second and capacities in the petabytes, BigchainDB has the ambition to become the world's public database platform. Topics we covered include: - A brief update on Ascribe since Trent was last on the show - The motivations behind BigchainDB and that problems it's trying to solve - How BigchainDB plans to solve the typical scalability bottlenecks found in blockchain protocols - BigchainDB's capacity, performance and latency characteristics - BigchainDB's consensus model, applied to RethinkDB - Potential application for BigchainDB, in both centralised and decentralised application stacks Links mentioned in this episode: - BigchainDB: https://www.bigchaindb.com/ - BigchainDB Whitepaper: https://www.bigchaindb.com/whitepaper/ - Ascribe: https://www.ascribe.io/ - Left Gallery: https://left.gallery/ - 23vivi: https://23vivi.com/ Sponsors: - Ledger Nano: Smart card security for your Bitcoins - Get 10% off your first order when you use the code EPICENTER at http://ledgerwallet.com Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/126 SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-126 Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc