Support the show, consider donating: 18ZSe3qvW3rCc9ScS5BjQYmcPYPzuAJu5X (http://bit.ly/1Rp226M) We're joined by Brock Pierce, Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, investor and all around emblematic figure of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Brock tells his story, from his early beginning a entrepreneur in his teens, to the massively successfull video game industry businesses he built in the early 2000s. As Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, he gives us his perspective on how the Foundation's role has evolved over time and its areas of focus going forward. Brock also weighs in the recent debates around governance and block size. Topics covered included: - The lemonade-stand beginnings of Brock's entrepreneurship story - How he became involved in gaming and pioneered the sale of digital goods - The 400,000-strong professional gamer supply chain he built in China - His first contact with Bitcoin and the initial concerns he had - Blockchain Capital and how he ended up investing in dozens of Bitcoin startups - The blocksize debate and whether Bitcoin needs an explicit governance process - The future of the Bitcoin Foundation Links mentioned in this episode: - This Week in Startups with Brock Pierce http://bit.ly/1LASaYZ - The Finanser Interview with Brock Pierce http://bit.ly/22rSrEX - Blockchain Capital http://bit.ly/1Mj6iWT - Brock Pierce – Bitcoins Are The Digital Gold 2.0 http://bit.ly/1Zkc9gv Sponsors: - GTEC: Apply now to enter the GTEC Blockchain Contest and win prizes worth €50k epicenterbitcoin.com/gtec Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/123 SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-123 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: 1L19WwToTupNCiay9w4Zdg7uMwuU2isKDL (http://bit.ly/2jHyAwM) There is no doubt that proof of work, introduced in the Bitcoin white paper, has stood the test of time as a robust and resilient Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism. However, many issues may prevent Nakamoto Consensus from securely scaling over the long term. The risk of validator centralization, network forking, block scarcity and high energy costs required to mine a block have all been extensively debated with no realistic long-term solutions to date. A new paper titled "Algorand" attempts to addresses these problems. We're pleased to be joined by Professor Silvio Micali, a computer scientist at MIT, who is known for his work in many of the technologies blockchains rely on today. As one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs, he has been decorated with a number of prizes and awards, including the Turing Award, which he received in 2012 for his work in cryptography. Prof. Micali describes the concept of Algorand, an alternative approach to proof of work which offers high security guarantees while allowing the network to scale with demand. Relying only on a trivial amount of computation to validate transactions, Algorand also reduces the probability of network forks to near-zero. It uses novel mechanisms to select validators for blocks and enabling them to come to consensus on them. Topics discussed in this episode: - Professor Micali's fascinating career in the fields of computer science and cryptography - The technical limitations of proof of work - The ideal properties for a truly decentralized, secure and scalable cryptocurrency - Algorand's new approach to Byzantine consensus - Algorand's strong adversarial model - How validators are randomly selected by the network - How validators are chosen and how they arrive at consensus - How Algorand guarantees a low probability of network forks - How Algorand addresses the issue of scaling and block size - Algorand's roadmap and future plans Links mentioned in this episode: - Algorand White Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341v7.pdf - Algorand talk by Silvo Micali on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xauku8XWoSE - Silvio Micali - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Micali Sponsors: - Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices - http://jaxx.io This episode is also available on : - Epicenter.tv: https://epicenter.tv/169 - YouTube: http://youtu.be/a40Xt7GnPvs - Souncloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-169 Watch or listen, Epicenter is available wherever you get your podcasts. Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

At the Ethereum Devcon, Microsoft unveiled the concept of 'Ethereum Blockchain as a Service' (EBaaS). These are bespoke Ethereum-like blockchains running on Microsoft's cloud Azure. The service was developed in partnership with a startup called BlockApps. Here, I catch up with two co-founders of BlockApps, Victor Wong and Kieren James-Lubin, to find out answers to questions such as: What is Ethereum Blockchain as a service? Developer pain points BlockApps is attempting to solve. What kind of customers would they like to target? What are the differences between their free and premium offerings? How did a small startup such as theirs develop a partnership with Microsoft? How devs can get started with building on Ethereum like blockchains running on Azure? Check it out! Links: BlockApps: http://www.blockapps.net/ Microsoft release of EBaaS: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/ethereum-blockchain-as-a-service-now-on-azure/ - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to the podcast: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/ - Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Support the show, consider donating: 1JgH5r85kvDJWgRoAwZ9qDshth8N1Qviwf (http://bit.ly/2b9d4k0) One of the sectors which is ripe for disruption is the real estate industry. In the US for instance, a handful of historic and very powerful players operate what is known as MLS, or Multiple Listing Services, and hold unofficial monopolies on residential and commercial real estate listings. Brokers, who depend on these listing services to sell properties, agree that their incumbent positions have created a situation where fees have continued to rise, while little to no added value has been added for their users. Stephen King and Russel McLernon join us to explain RexMLS, a decentralized Multiple Listing Service built on Ethereum and IPFS. Currently in beta, the DApp would allow brokers to list properties at a very low cost, and be accessible to international markets, something which is lacking in the current model. Topics discussed in this episode : - The basics of MLS or Multiple Listing Services - What is RexMLS and the problems it is trying to address - The benefits of a decentralized MLS - The different technical components of RexMLS - Why they chose Ethereum and IPFS - The user experience of RexMLS - The product's roll-out phases - How users are incentivized to participate in the system - The RexDex token exchange and the token injection model - RexMLS's governance model Links mentioned in this episode: - RexMLS Website: http://www.rexmls.com/ - RexMLS Beta: http://live.rexmls.com - RexMLS White Paper: https://github.com/rexmls/whitepaper Sponsors: - Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices http://jaxx.io Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/145 YouTube: http://youtu.be/lANKJ3CNTpM SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-145 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