Base Layer

Muneeb Ali joins us on Base Layer to break down why Internet 1.0 is "broken", how we got to where we are, what Blockstack is, how it can scale and be performant and much more. Muneeb earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from Lahore University of Management Sciences in 2003. He then went on to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University, from which he obtained a Master of Arts in Computer science in 2011, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science in 2017. Muneeb co-founded Blockstack with Ryan Shea in 2013 while enrolled at Princeton, and the company partook in the Y Combinator Summer 2014 cohort. 

A special episode of Base Layer with Silvio Micali and Steven Kokinos from Algorand. Algorand removes the technical barriers that for years undermined mainstream blockchain adoption: decentralization, scale, and security. Their consensus mechanism is permissionless and pure proof-of-stake. It ensures full participation, protection, and speed within a truly decentralized network. Silvio, on the faculty at MIT, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983, is the co-inventor of probabilistic encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Verifiable Random Functions and many of the protocols that are the foundations of modern cryptography. Steven, a serial entrepreneur, most recently co-founder and Executive Charmain of Fuze, where he was responsible for corporate strategy. This is one not to miss! 

In one of the most important episodes on Base Layer to date we speak with Marcos Veremis, Managing Director at Cambridge Associates. CA, as of 2018, had $389 billion in assets under advisement of some of the largest endowments, family offices and pensions. They are considered in many ways the gold standard for investment consulting, outsourced portfolio solutions, research services and tools and performance monitoring across various asset classes. In Q1 of 2019 Marcos and his team published Cryptoassets: Venture into the Unknown; a paper detailing "although the crypto industry remains in its infancy, we think institutional investors should begin exploring it" - an amazing statement from the likes of CA. We discuss the paper, the work that went into it, why they wrote it and what the future may look like in the space. 

Tim joins Base Layer to discuss Staked and the state of the state of cryptoasset staking. Tim has spent 20 years starting and operating technology companies. Most recently, Tim founded Y-Combinator-backed Think Gaming, a SaaS data platform focused on mobile games. Staked operates the most secure, performant, and cost-effective block production nodes for decentralized PoS protocols on behalf of institutional investors. We learn about the competition in Staking as a Service, the yields, margins and much more. 

A 2-1 episode with one of the most sought after founders and investors in crypto - Joey Krug. We discuss Augur first, the prediction marketplace he helped found that is providing a new way for people to use the Wisdom of the Crowd to predict outcomes of political events, event hedges, weather forecasts and much more. We then delve into what investment themes Joey and the team at Pantera and working this year into 2020 - focusing more on scalability issues to make blockchains run more optimally. 

Alexander Skidanov from NEAR Protocol joins us on Base Layer for a not to miss episode. NEAR is a scalable smart contract platform that supports decentralized applications of almost any kind. Alexander is a highly accomplished developer starting at Microsoft and became Engineer #1 at memSQL. We discuss what NEAR is building in relation to language type, sharding, consensus methodologies and much more. Do not miss this one!

Sky Guo joins us on Base Layer to discuss how Cypherium is a highly scalable and robust smart contract platform. Their hybrid design features a joint Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus mechanism that can achieve thousands of transactions per second without sacrificing decentralization. We discuss enterprise adoption of blockchain and much more.     

On the 30th episode of Base Layer we have Tyler Spalding, Co-Founder of Flexa which aims to enable retailers to take control of their own payments by reducing costs, overhead, and fraud through frictionless, instantaneous, and reliable blockchain-based settlement; and Lasse Clausen, Founding Partner at 1KX, a token angel fund with the thesis of extrapolating Bitcoin's success to embed cryptoeconomic incentives into everything; transactions, computation, storage, prediction, power.

Daniel Kim of SFOX joins Base Layer; SFOX, San Francisco Open Exchange, is the easiest way to access the digital currency market. There solution provides access to high liquidity and the ability to trade large volumes. We discuss the current liquid market, when "Institutional Investors" are coming in, if they haven't already; we also talk a-lot about the research they produce. Great discussion!

Zaki Manian, founder of SkuChain, Head of Tendermint Labs and too many other things to put in notes here joins Base Layer today to discuss the state of the state of Cosmos and Tendermint and why they are so important to the growth of the crypto ecosystem; in addition to we discuss why he got into the space in the first place. We discuss why he founded SkuChain after spending lots of time reviewing the legacy financial system and seeing sophistication but cracks in the system (i.e. people still needing to use fax machines). Great deep conversation. Listen and enjoy!

Steven McKie joins Base Layer to discuss the early days of crypto; making his own future via crypto and Bitcoin; starting his own fund Amentum which is investing in the new iterations of "the internet" via Handshake and Namebase and new models to incentivize content providers like you and I produce daily via Cent. A great, thorough review from someone who has seen it all!

Diogo Monica, Co-Founder of Anchorage joins Base Layer to discuss their custody solution that has a lot of people in the ecosystem buzzing. Diogo spent years at Square before founding Anchorage, leading the platform security team that was used to move over $80B in annualized volume. He has a BSc, MSc and Ph.D in Computer Science and has built a solution marrying the best of hot and cold storage technology. One not to miss!!

Alex Adelman, Co-Founder of Lolli joins us on Base Layer -- Lolli is an amazing on-ramp for the non-technical/finance folks; it's a rewards program with over 750 retailers like Walmart, Gap, CVS and more. We talk to Alex about building this company, why create this on-ramp to Bitcoin; what inspired him and his team after selling their company to Ebates/Rakuten and much more. Not to be missed!

David and Dominik, the founders of IOTA, join Base Layer to discuss IOTA, a cryptocurrency they designed for use in the internet of things, enabling secure sales and trading data streams, with no need of transaction fees and miners to maintain operations. We discuss the differences of the Bitcoin blockchain to IOTA, scalability issues and much more.

Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital joins Base Layer today to discuss the history and evolution of crypto infrastructure - from wallets and exchanges to much more robust financial tooling projects. We also discuss new marketplaces being created, void of the middleman and how mini-Coinbase's could pop up, servicing their local geographies, working with their local regulators. Great episode!!

Jeremy Welch, the founder of Casa Inc joins us on Base Layer to discuss his companies growth, building and shipping nodes during "crypto winter", why he built Casa in the first place, "being your own bank" narrative and much more. Additionally we do our weekly Signal to Noise discussing some recent deals in the space and what he listens to -- Jeremy takes the cake for most original choice there! Enjoy!

Monica joins us from Kadena today to give a master class (unintended) on the difference between public and private blockchains; her journey from aspiring opera singer to investment banking and then working as one of the key engineers at Kadena which is working with Fortune 100 companies to implement their hybrid blockchain solutions. A great conversation, not to be missed!

Avichal Garg joins us on Base Layer for Episode 20!! Avichal has so much experience in technology, coming from Google, Spool (a startup he co-founded) and Facebook. Recently he launched Electric Capital to invest in Programmable Money; we discussed the blockchain not bitcoin narrative, their massive Dev Report, on the talent continuing to come into crypto and much more.

Lily Liu, the Co-Founder of Earn.com joins us on Base Layer. Lily's past experience in traditional finance at firms like McKinsey & KKR-Capstone were discussed, her work helping build a hospital in China to her involvement in Earn.com which eventually got acquired by Coinbase, her views of Bitcoin and much more were topics of our chat.