Base Layer

Mike Belshe, the CEO and co-founder of BitGo, joins us for the next episode of Base Layer. BitGo, is one of the market leaders in institutional-grade cryptocurrency investment services. Mike is the driving force behind BitGo’s product and business strategy for delivering security, compliance, and custodial solutions for blockchain-based currencies. Prior to founding BitGo, Mike was one of the first engineers dedicated to building Chrome at Google. He is creator of the SPDY protocol and lead author of HTTP/2.0, the internet protocol responsible for loading web pages today. In 2003, Mike co-founded Lookout Software, an email search company acquired by Microsoft, and has held management positions at several startups including Netscape, Good Technology, and Critical Path. Mike and I talk the current state of custody and what the future has for it, insurance and custody and much more. 

Alexander Zaidelson from Beam joins us on Base Layer for what I'm now calling "Privacy Week" after we had Monero on the episode prior. BEAM is a next generation confidential cryptocurrency based on an elegant and innovative Mimblewimble protocol. Users have complete control over privacy; user decides which information will be available and to which parties, having complete control over his/her personal data in accordance to his/her will and applicable laws. No addresses are stored in the blockchain; no information whatsoever about either the sender or the receiver of a transaction is stored in the blockchain. We discuss all of this, how it’s done (under the hood), discuss Pedersen commitments and much more.

Riccardo Spagni, the man, myth and legend at Monero joins us on Base Layer and it's a massive show! Not only is this a crash course in what Monero is for beginners it's also got updates and some great detail into what's happening at Monero. In addition this was a really important conversation as we've seen yet another massive data hack at a bank, with 100m records stolen. We discuss the tech that is involved in Monero (Ring signatures, RingCT and stealth addresses), commitments and much more. Also a great discussion for those trying to understand the differences in privacy coins like Monero to Bitcoin and Ethereum, among others. Listen and learn! 

Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, joins us on Base Layer for an amazing chat about Web 3.0 and much more. OV is an early stage investment firm who also advises some very early projects, having developed a thesis called the Convergence Stack which, in my opinion, dissects the decentralized/distributed stack the best out of anyone so far. We talk about that, about a world that exists in addition to Bitcoin and much more. 

Doug Petkanics joins us on Base Layer for a great overview of Livepeer which ~3/4th's of my guests have brought up a project to pay attention to! Doug is a multi-time Founder with Wildcard and Hyperpublic and has been focusing his attention for the last few years on Livepeer; live streaming services, such as YouTube and Twitch have seen tremendous growth in popularity in recent years. Broadcasting or building a streaming application however can be very expensive, as a result of payments to centralized transcoding and distribution companies. Livepeer aims to provide the infrastructure service layer for decentralized live video broadcasting. In doing so, it hopes to provide a cheaper, more scalable, censorship resistant solution that is more resilient without single points of failure. We talked about everything from the unplugging generation to their consensus methodologies and governance systems. Truly a great overview of a really important project. 

Patrick, the Founder of Qtum ($300M Market Cap), joins us on Base Layer and there's a lot to unpack on this one. Qtum wants to harness the best attributes of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to create a decentralized, well-governed smart contracts platform with the potential to iterate on existing consensus mechanisms and other protocol parameters. Qtum believes proof-of-work blockchain protocols like suffer from categorical scaling limitations such that proof-of-stake is if only by default a viable consensus model. Qtum plans to build the first robust proof-of-stake UTXO-based smart-contract network. They also have a Decentralized Governance Protocol which we discussed in addition to their full node count and more insight into their x86 Virtual Machine which aims to support C, C++, Rust, Python and other widely used programming languages, facilitating mainstream adoption of smart contract development. 

We welcome Dan and Ian on Base Layer to discuss the work they are doing at IDEO CoLab and their new Start-Up Studio. IDEO CoLab works very closely with their startups and projects; from 4-day sprints to multi-week projects, they start with an organization's hard problems and create experience prototypes that look 12+ months ahead of market. They also have some powerful corporate names behind them now including Fidelity, Deloitte and Amazon in addition to 50 new mentors they announced that range from some of the best investors in crypto to some of the best founders. In addition we also caught up with Dan to discuss #defi and his thesis around Superfluid Collateral. Not one to miss! 

Kyle Davies joins Base Layer to discuss the work being done at Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based fund specializing in emerging markets and crypto. Kyle used to work at Credit Suisse on the exotic derivatives equity desk before founding Three Arrows in 2012 in San Francisco with a partner, Su Zhu. They met at high school at Phillips Academy, studied math and economics together at Columbia University, and then worked together in Hong Kong. We discussed the broader market and what they are seeing in crypto today. 

Hugh from Nexus Mutual joins Base Layer for it's 50th episode! Nexus Mutual is building a decentralized alternative to insurance. They are using blockchain (Ethereum) to build a mutual (a risk sharing pool) to return the power of insurance to the people. It will allow anyone to become a member and buy cover. It replaces the idea of a traditional insurance company, because it is wholly owned by the members. We spoke about Nexus Mutual help users be covered for events like The DAO hack or Parity multi-sig wallet issues. This is a super interesting space evolving - one to listen to! 

Xiaohan joins us on Base Layer to discuss Meter and the state of stablecoins. Xiaohan has years of experience in tech from Microsoft, Sony to Motorola, and he brings those years of experience to work on "Reinventing Money for DeFi. Permissionless, Low Volatility, Fast, No Oracles; Enable Bitcoin to Achieve Its Original Vision". We discuss different stablecoins like Tether, Dai, Basis and more. Great conversation and one to learn from! 

Brooke joins us on Base Layer to discuss the Fund of Fund landscape as it relates to venture capital focused funds. Brooke is the Founder & Managing Partner of Hutt Capital, a blockchain venture capital fund of funds based in Portland, OR. Prior to Hutt, Brooke spent ten years across private fund, secondary and direct investing, most recently 4+ years with Greenspring Associates, a venture platform with >$8 billion under management where he spearheaded their blockchain and crypto efforts. Earlier in his career, Brooke held roles with Hamilton Lane and CTC Consulting. 

Mike Dudas joins Base Layer to talk about the early days of TheBlock to now becoming one of the "go-to" resources for news and research on crypto. We talk about the narratives that are currently discussed, from geofencing to Libra. We spend a good amount of time also discussing their work on Libra which was exceptional, learn more about their reporters who are breaking stories in the space better than main stream outlets and much more. 

Tom Jessop, the head of Fidelity Digital Assets, joins us on Base Layer for a special episode to discuss the over 5 year history of Fidelity's interest and experimentation in crypto and blockchain, leading to their entry into digital assets with their current platform;  in addition we also discuss their potential future roadmap. Fidelity's entry into the space is a pinnacle moment; an institution such as there's, with approximately $7T in assets under administration and their history & brand among Institutional Investors is so incredibly important. Tom came to Fidelity after 16+ years at Goldman Sachs with time spent at Chain prior to making his current move. We discuss their recent study which shows Institutional Investor adoption and gaining interest in the asset class. This is one NOT to miss and one to send to everyone you know. 

Tor Bair joins us on Base Layer to discuss Enigma; Enigma is building a privacy layer for the decentralized web. First researched at MIT, Enigma’s network of “secret nodes” can perform computations over encrypted data at scale without ever exposing the raw data itself. By finally enabling decentralized applications to use private and sensitive data, smart contracts built with Enigma become “secret contracts”, allowing developers to create thousands of new, valuable solutions.

Richard Muirhead & Max Mersch from Fabric Ventures join us on Base Layer. Richard is an accomplished founder and investor as well as Max; Fabric Ventures invest in Web 3.0 powering the shift towards human-centric computing. We talk about what that means and the new models of Web 3.0 including the tokenomics, where value accrues/valuation and more. A bunch of FV companies have already been on Base Layer like Casa, Blockstack, Keep and others. This is a great chat with really experienced investors in early stage infrastructure of digital assets.  

Michael Zochowski from Logos Network joins Base Layer to discuss how they building a novel transaction network designed for high scalability while maintaining decentralization and trustlessness by using innovations such as DAG's, "an efficient, post-blockchain data architecture built to accommodate the Internet of tomorrow", delegated proof of stake of (DPoS), ensuring optimal throughput while guaranteeing safety and sharding schemes, adding a second dimension of parallelism to transaction validation. Michael has years of experience in traditional finance and is bringing his knowledge of markets and computer science to blockchain.  

Pierre Rochard joins Base Layer for an in-depth conversation about the state of Bitcoin. Pierre has researched and written about Bitcoin since February 2013. He co-founded the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute in 2014 to curate the best primary source literature. In addition to developing Bitcoin software, Pierre is an outspoken advocate for Bitcoin's decentralized governance. In 2017 he began co-hosting the Noded Bitcoin Podcast. Pierre is widely recognized as an authority on the investment case for Bitcoin.

Matt Luongo from Keep joins Base Layer for our next episode and it's a great one! As Matt and the folks at Keep say: "Privacy and scalability are the two biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption of public blockchains. We’re tackling privacy by building a bridge between public blockchains and private data. We use keeps, or small off-chain containers, to secure and store this data. Keeps enables entirely new ways to work with private data." We learn about the implications there and how they are using zero knowledge proofs -- we also get one of the best analogies to understand zk proofs. This is a great one! Enjoy. 

Tal joins Base Layer today to discuss what Orbs is building in terms of a hybrid blockchain that could get enterprises big and small using public blockchains. We discuss Virtual Chains, Randomized Proof of Stake (RPoS) and much more. Tal has years of experience as an engineer at places like Wix and Kin/Kik, also serving in the Israeli military. 

Michael Dunworth, Wyre Co-Founder and CEO joins Base Layer to discuss what their 6 year old company is up to these days. For both individuals and enterprises alike, transferring money internationally serves as one of the most practical use cases for blockchain technology. By accelerating the speed and reducing the cost of international payments, blockchain can help businesses at every scale operate more efficiently and drive substantial spikes in revenue. Wyre uses proprietary blockchain technology to complete cross-border payments, cutting the time and expenses traditionally tied to banks and other financial institutions. While banks take up to 3 days and charge between 4-6% for international money transfers, Wyre completes transactions in less than six hours, charging less than 1%.