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In this wide-ranging and eye-opening discussion, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Lesley Czuma, Head of Business Development at Equilibrium, a cross-chain money market combining pooled lending with synthetic asset generation and trading. They discuss the massive potential of Web3 and DeFi to radically impact global systems of organization and power, to disrupt monopolies, and bring benefits to those marginalized by the current economic paradigm. They also dive into what Equilibrium is building and the role played by Polkadot and Substrate, the blockchain-building framework from Parity Technologies. Links: Equilibrium website Equilibrium on Twitter Equilibrium on Telegram Highlights: 02:00 - Web3’s potential effects on global systems of power and monopolies 10:30 - What Web3 can learn from political unions and nation states 16:40 - Web3’s impact beyond infrastructure builders 24:09 - Replacing legacy systems vs integrating with them 28:15 - Equilibrium’s mission 30:50 - Equilibrium’s role in the Polkadot ecosystem 33:35 - Equilibrium’s roadmap Key Quotes: “It’s not a coincidence that Web3 is sometimes compared to a borderless global society where people have the same chances.” “This tech jump that we’re observing right now is catapulting new actors onto the world stage and forcing established monopolies to rethink their business models in order to stay on their toes, and it actually ends up being a little bit like a system of checks and balances” “If the previously rich and advanced industrialized societies had the say on the world stage, together with some leading brands, I think there’s a clear trend that this new technology with blockchain is actually empowering individuals with no particular means, especially those have been disempowered until now.” “Some of the large brand names, let’s say in credit cards, are keying into the process and realizing that if they don’t start taking blockchain seriously then they’re going to lose out.” "As the scope in adoption of blockchain and DeFi grows, it’s automatically going to draw in more people from different walks of life. The mainstreaming is going to happen in the same way that it did with the dotcom revolution. You’re going to have blockchain apps becoming so essential that no one is going to be able to ignore them anymore.”Special Guest: Lesley Czuma.

Polkadot and Web3 take center stage in this week's episode. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Zoé Meckbach, a senior Polkadot ambassador and blockchain technology and cybersecurity advocate. They discuss the Polkadot and Web3 communities, the Polkadot ambassador program and what it’s like to be an ambassador, and some of the exciting things happening in the space. Links: Zoé Meckback on Twitter Polkadot Ambassador Program Highlights: 02:03 - From Google to blockchain 09:20 - What is the Polkadot Ambassador Program? 20:15 - Exciting developments in the Polkadot ecosystem 26:10 - Web3 and freedom of speechSpecial Guest: Zoé Meckbach.

This week we look at the intersection between journalism, freedom of the press, and technology. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Harlo Holmes, Director of Digital Security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. They discuss the role of journalism in a free society, the contemporary media landscape, the Snowden revelations, surveillance, the role of technology and privacy, the political implications of technology development, and best practices for whistleblowers. Links: Freedom of the Press Foundation Website Freedom of the Press Foundation Twitter Press Freedom Tracker Highlights: 0:40 - Intro to Holmes and FPF 03:30 - Edward Snowden’s impact 09:08 - Journalism’s role in a free society 11:43 - The change in media today 16:31 - Technology’s role in journalism 19:27 - How to use technology without being exploited 23:27 - The influence that programmers have 29:42 - Blockchain experiments 34:42 - Best practices for whistleblowers Key Quotes: “Journalism’s role in society is as old as the printing press itself…. People have the right to know what’s going on. You can’t make informed decisions if you don’t know what’s going on.” “Certain media sources are more skewed towards obfuscating rather than illuminating, and there has always been a challenge for individuals to find news sources that they can trust.” “Historians will look at the rise of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as a turning point in the way that the media has had to reevaluate its reach, reevaluate its funding model, and reevaluate how it presents itself to the public at large in order to secure its reach. This is quite a shift in the material of media itself.” “People don’t necessarily realize that because the more digital aspects of our engagement are incredibly easy to parse, that opens us up to being entirely surveilled very easily and automatically” “You have a profile, everybody is profiled based off their patterns of behavior on the internet however they interact with it, and you pretty much don’t live a day in your existence without interacting and without contributing to this profile.”Special Guest: Harlo Holmes.

This week we look at proof-of-stake blockchain node infrastructure with the space’s leading solutions provider, Bison Trails. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Aaron Henshaw, CTO and cofounder of Bison Trails, which pioneers blockchain node infrastructure and lowers the barrier to entry across multiple networks, including Polkadot, Cosmos, Eth 2.0, Near, Celo, and more. They discuss how and why Bison Trails was founded, the current state of node infrastructure, risk management, and possibilities for future development. Links: Bison Trails Website Bison Trails on Twitter Aaron Henshaw on Twitter Highlights: 02:14 - How Bison Trails came to focus on proof of stake 06:12 - Bison Trails background 08:22 - Node infrastructure setup 10:12 - Similarities/differences between protocols 12:06 - Monitoring, alerting, and availability guarantees 16:36 - Node infrastructure risk and mitigation 22:44 - Blockchain infrastructure beyond staking 28:37 - Future opportunities for node providersSpecial Guest: Aaron Henshaw.

This week we dive into cross-network compatibility and interoperability between Polkadot and Ethereum. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Derek Yoo of Moonbeam, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain built on Substrate for Polkadot. They discuss Moonbeam and how it works, the role of smart contracts on Polkadot, the difference between Moonbeam and Ethereum layer-2 solutions, and the future of cross-network interoperability. Links: Derek Yoo: https://twitter.com/derekyoo Moonbeam: https://twitter.com/MoonbeamNetwork Purestake: https://twitter.com/purestakeco Highlights: 06:27 - What is Moonbeam? 08:15 - Why Moonbeam is more than just an EVM implementation 12:16 - The difference between Moonbeam and an Ethereum-Polkadot bridge 15:40 - How parachain solutions compare to Ethereum layer-2 solutions 18:17 - The role of smart contracts on Polkadot 20:36 - Where the EVM fits in to Polkadot 24:44 - Motivation for also deploying Moonbeam to Kusama 30:05 - How different networks will work together 33:22 - Current state of applications on Moonbeam Key Quotes: “The power of Substrate is definitely the magic here. I think people don’t appreciate how powerful a framework on Substrate is. We’ve worked with some teams that are building a blockchain from scratch, and that’s a 20-30 person engineering effort….It’s a dramatic difference when you use a framework like Substrate.” “Part of our attraction to Polkadot is this ability for different chains to leverage each other’s specialized services.” “[Kusama] is a pretty key competitive advantage to Substrate-based projects. This ability to move, maintain momentum and respond to what’s happening….You can have larger competitors but if you’re able to move faster and respond faster you can get a big competitive advantage.” “[Interoperability] is more in changing people's minds than it being a technical problem. You’re always going to get a bit of tribalism at play in this space…but we’re drawn to the interoperability idea because it opens choices for developers to take advantage of the best that any given chain has to offer.”Special Guest: Derek Yoo.

This week we talk to the Parity's head of security Kirill Pimenov about the shortcomings and potential of blockchain, open-source software and DLT. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Kirill Pimenov, head of security at Parity Technologies. The disruptive nature of blockchain has attracted many great minds from many backgrounds, and Kirill Pimenov's wealth of experience and knowledge clears up some of the hype and promises of blockchain regarding its relationship to power, raising capital, and freedom. Links: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work - Phillip Rogaway Banana Split - Shamir Secret Sharing for people with friends Highlights: 01:40 - Mining a Bitcoin block in 2010 03:02 - The ethics of open source 04:15 - Kirill's introduction to programming 10:05 - Blockchain as the field where money meets engineering 13:25 - The Silicon Valley version of the American Dream 15:30 - Blockchain is the first non-military application which pays people enough 16:45 - "The thing you're supposed to decentralize is power" 23:06 - What underlying principle led to the internet to being this way? 27:01 - How can users have a say in the way systems work? 32:07 - If you optimize for profit, you get immoral, profit-maximizing machines 36:52 - Can a decentralized system be corrupted? 43:05 - DLT and blockchain is short-sighted right now 50:12 - We haven't figured out how to beat the current financial system yet 52:18 - We can never build a fair system without humans in the loop 57:10 - Who are your role models?Special Guest: Kirill Pimenov.

This week we talk to the Acala Network team and learn about the Acala Network and their Sovereign Wealth Fund. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Dr. Antonia Chen, Chief Econominst and Co-founder of Laminar and Acala, and Ruitao Su, CEO and Co-founder of Acala and Laminar. They are working on a governed protocol that enables decentralized finance applications on blockchain, allowing everyday users to join the DeFi revolution by leveraging the Acala stable token to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund and other defi applications. Links: Regaining confidence in Decentralized Stablecoins - Ruitao Su Building a Decentralized Sovereign Wealth Fund Laminar Website Acala Network Website Highlights: 01:00 - How is the Acala stablecoin different from MakerDAO? 04:50 - Deploying custom logic to interact with the Acala stable token 05:12 - Homa: how your funds can do more 08:00 - What is the decentralized Sovereign Wealth Fund? 10:55 - How the Sovereign Wealth Fund can generate returns 15:30 - A comparison to traditional sovereign wealth funds 16:59 - The Sovereign Wealth Fund as a parachain and beyond 20:53 - The many functions of tokens on Acala and Polkadot 25:05 - A digital society with Acala on Polkadot and Web3 26:12 - How will people use the many different protocols of Polkadot and AcalaSpecial Guests: Antonia Chen and Ruitao Su.

This week we talk to the Acala Network team and learn about their ventures in DeFi on Polkadot and Ethereum. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Dr. Antonia Chen, Chief Econominst and Co-founder of Laminar and Acala, and Ruitao Su, CEO and Co-founder of Acala and Laminar. They are working on a governed protocol that enables decentralized finance applications on blockchain, allowing everyday users to join the DeFi revolution by having margin trading, synthetic assets, stable coins, and integrated money markets all on the Polkadot network. Links: Regaining confidence in Decentralized Stablecoins - Ruitao Su Building a Decentralized Sovereign Wealth Fund Laminar Website Acala Network Website Highlights: 01:36 - What is Defi and how does it compare to traditional financial markets? 03:20 - What makes Defi more "fair" than traditional finance? 05:40 - What new things are possible with defi on blockchain? 10:20 - The limitations of DeFi 15:01 - 3 Protocols on Laminar: Margin trading, Synthetic assets and Integrated Money Markets 19:40 - 3 protocols on one chain or three? 21:15 - The issues with tokens on Ethereum 23:12 - Polkadot's shared security enabling better tokens / Why parachains are advantageous to smart contracts 26:05 - Dual-launch on Ethereum and Polkadot 30:04 - Going live on PolkadotSpecial Guests: Antonia Chen and Ruitao Su.

This week we dive deep into the economics of cryptocurrencies, proof of stake scenarios, and Polkadot's application of security, interoperability and token economics. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Stefanie von Jan, an economics lecturer at the FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management in Munich, Germany. Her interests in Austrian economics, Blockchain technology, and token economics led to her providing her expertise with founders and academics, and now shares her latest insights about Bitcoin and Polkadot with us. Links: Polkadot: Shared security or Single point of failure? Medium Blog from Stefanie von Jan Highlights: 02:15 - What makes blockchain economics unique? 03:50 - The Bitcoin token model 06:05 - A Keynesian cryptoeconomic model? 07:43 - Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake 11:16 - How do we measure the value of a decentralized protocol? 13:42 - Are tokens tied to the value they intend to provide? 16:20 - Value competition of protocols and the applications on them 22:20 - What do Proof-of-Stake attack scenarios look like? 25:12 - Token security for Polkadot parachains 31:20 - The governance of parachain tokens 34:15 - Sound rule systems for parachainsSpecial Guest: Stefanie von Jan.

This week we talk about layer-2 scaling and quick and easy deployment of Dapps. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Christine Perry of SKALE labs, a layer-2 solution that augments applications and transactions built on public blockchains such as Ethereum. They discuss the developer experience on Ethereum and SKALE, interesting blockchain use cases, and why layer-2 is the solution for creating usable and powerful Dapps. Links: SKALE network SKALE blog with Christine SKALE blog regarding BLS signatures and Intel SGX Highlights: 1:50 - The major problems for Dapp developers 3:40 - Enabling developers to run smart contracts on SKALE 4:42 - How SKALE speeds up development and throughput 5:55 - Why is layer-2 the solution? 8:02 - The role of layer-2 with Ethereum 10:08 - What are the best use cases for blockchain? 12:14 - SKALE's approach to applications on blockchain, and interesting use cases 15:45 - A layer-2 network with consensus! 20:32 - Beyond Ethereum: How SKALE is blockchain-agnosticSpecial Guest: Christine Perry.

This week we meet at the intersection of blockchain, climate action, smart cities, finance, and IoT. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Anita Mujumdar of Evercity, a blockchain-based platform to aid in financing sustainability projects to meet the UN’s 2030 climate action goals. They discuss climate finance, decentralized robot economies, using measurement and data to build the sustainable smart cities of tomorrow, and how Substrate and Polkadot are helping make Evercity’s mission a reality. Links: Evercity Website DAO "Integral Platform for Climate Initiatives" Anita’s presentation at COP25 Robonomics website Climate Change Coalition - Digital Finance Sub0 Online Substrate Developer and Community Conference Highlights: 02:10 - What is climate finance? 06:50 - Sustainable cities approach 12:30 - What a sustainable city looks like 17:15 - Pilot programs 20:20 - Robonomics platform 25:35 - Role of DAO & blockchain 28:15 - Why decentralize climate finance? 31:00 - Trends outlook 32:15 - Why build on Substrate/Polkadot 34:50 - Launch plan *The dates of the events mentioned in the podcast may have shifted due to coronavirus pandemicSpecial Guest: Anita Mujumdar.

What can we learn from the failures of Web2 idealism? How do we build systems that continue to reflect Web3 ideals as business models scale into the future? In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Shira Frank, co-founder of Maiden, the first global user research lab dedicated to forging a path to mainstream blockchain adoption. They explore the importance of building Web3 systems with proper research into possible downstream risks so as to create true change and offset imbalances of wealth, power, information, and agency. Links: https://twitter.com/shirabfrank https://twitter.com/maidencrypto https://maiden.global/ https://sub0.parity.io/ Highlights: 01:25 - From Middle-East politics to blockchain 09:45 - How Maiden started 12:00 - Failings of Web2.0 idealism 14:00 - How Web3.0 can avoid the same mistakes 15:55 - Sense making and the role of user data 22:01 - What is a blockchain “user’? 24:00 - The role of education 29:55 - How to make protocol change decisions 34:49 - Importance of diversity in the space Key Quotes: “The biggest problem we have to solve, in so many ways, blockchain or not, is how do we make decisions that are collectively intelligent for the whole?” “I don’t think the general Web2 or tech community actually solved inclusivity or diversity.” “We know what happens when decentralized protocols scale. So we have no excuse to not include major threat and risk mitigation at the very beginning of choices we’re making about how we are introducing products, what kind of products we’re building, and what kind of business models and incentives we’re putting into those products.” “We talk in blockchain a lot about autonomy or self-sovereignty. And I’m always curious, can you be sovereign if you’re not even aware of why you’re making the choice you are?” “Today institutions make money by taking agency away from people. I would imagine we create something where institutions make money by giving people agency over their assets. So what would it look like if people were making money by giving you agency over your money? Giving you agency over your data? If the more agency you were given the more money and scalability there was in this protocol.” “I think it’s worth thinking about at the protocol level. Just like with the internet, what should have been done early on to protect against the aggregation of power that happened at the application layer and the company level?”Special Guest: Shira Frank.

How do you place a value on a more open, transparent, and representative web? What will be the true impact of blockchain technology and what motivates VC investments in the space? In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Jasmine Zhang of IOSG Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in the blockchain space. They discuss the future of web 3.0, the impact that open finance and prediction markets will have on society, the potential impact of Polkadot and Substrate, and the broader blockchain investment scenario. Links: IOSG Website IOSG on Twitter Jasmine Zhang: Jasmine@iosg.vc Highlights: 01:25 - Why invest in web3.0? 04:26 - How can web 3.0 fit into web 2.0 business models? 10:00 - How blockchain applications will democratize finance 13:06 - How prediction markets will influence society 24:33 - How do you determine the valuation of a protocol? 29:20 - Value of Substrate 31:11 - Why come from China to Berlin for investment? Key Quotes: “[Web 2.0] definitely brings more convenience to our daily life, and you feel like you cannot really live without these applications. On the other hand you also feel like, at the end of the day, they’re all platforms. And platforms create value by connecting the service providers and the end users. But they also try to maximize their profit and can one day expand their commission fees from the two sides. You’re kind of taken advantage of by them in a certain way. They sell at you into every part of your life and then they become super huge, they become like giants—more money, more data, more capital that is generated by us, the end users. And they they can use all of these resources to keep building their monopoly.” “Web 3 is a new way, more personalized way that you share your data. To be your own boss of your data. So you have ownership of your data. Is going to be more open, more transparent, and more fair.” “A centralized authority will never beat the efficiency of a decentralized economy. Because knowledge is unevenly dispersed among the whole of humanity. Only if you can combine them can you have a better decision to be made.”Special Guest: Jasmine Zhang.

Why is the “black art” of accounting still stuck in the 20th century, and how can blockchain technology make it more efficient? In this episode, Joe Petrowski (research analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Chris D’Costa and and Toufiqur Chowdhury of Totem Live Accounting, a blockchain-based accounting system. They discuss why today’s accounting practices are so inefficient and how blockchain technology can improve them. Find out how Totem is innovating accounting for the 21st century, how the project fits into the Polkadot ecosystem, and why the team decided to build on the Substrate blockchain framework. Links: Totem on Gitlab Chris D’Costa: chris.dcosta@totemaccounting.com Highlights: 01:23 - Accounting & accounting software explainer 05:00 - Problem Totem is solving 07:74 - Totem active vs. passive users 13:00 - Dealing with different jurisdictions 15:20 - On- vs off-chain data 19:10 - How Totem fits into Polkadot 20:35 - Why use Substrate to build Totem? 23:15 - Current state of Totem development 24:16 - Totem’s native token 27:00 - Inefficiencies of current accounting practices 31:41 - Similarities between accounting and programming 35:20 - Why blockchain is perfect for accounting 46:20 - What’s ahead for Totem Key Quotes: “Generally people think of accounting as being a bit of a black art.” “Accounting is one of the spaces that doesn’t get much love in the tech world. You don’t see many startups that are doing anything really innovative in accounting.” “It’s crazy that a lot of this gets done manually when a lot of these accounting rules are formally specified. If you can put it in a formal specification then you can write instructions for a machine to do it.” “Global corporations are in desperate need of having their own currency. It sounds crazy but it’s true.” “Trust is one of the issues…but there’s also the issue of things that just get overlooked. This happens not just in small companies but also in big companies as well. Invoices don’t get paid, or they get sent to the wrong department, or somehow they just got missed. And large companies as well as small companies spend a lot of manual effort to put that back together again.” “In Substrate you can upgrade the runtime, so that helps us with continuous development, upgrading the system, making the changes that are required. If we had a smart contract it would have to be redeployed completely.”Special Guests: Chris D'Costa and Toufiqur Chowdhury.

What are the challenges in integrating off-chain data into blockchain smart contracts with oracle systems, and how might secure, oracle-powered DeFi create meaningful social impact? In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Sergey Nazarov from Chainlink, a decentralized oracle system bringing external, real-world data to blockchain-based smart contracts. Oracle systems like Chainlink are a necessary part of decentralized finance (DeFi), for which off-chain data such as market prices are used to trigger smart contract functions. We discuss the inherent challenges in integrating off-chain data with end-to-end security guarantees, the barriers to building smart contracts that go beyond tokenization, Chainlink use cases, the promise of blockchain for social impact, and how Chainlink is planning a Polkadot integration. Highlights: 01:04 - Chainlink overview 07:20 - Oracle weakest link problem 14:45 - Chainlink use cases 17:40 - How to trust off-chain data 22:53 - Social promise of blockchain 41:00 - Chainlink Polkadot integration Links: https://twitter.com/SergeyNazarov https://chain.link/ https://docs.chain.link/docs https://twitter.com/chainlink Key Quotes: “The thing to remember is, what you’re doing when you’re making DeFi products or smart contract insurance is yes, you’re making a smart contract because you’re using on-chain logic, but you’re also expanding what you define a smart contract as. And that expansion into this off-chain realm of data delivery or randomness, for fraud-proof gaming or any other set of off-chain resources, needs to be equally secure if you expect that contract to hold large amounts of value.” “The guarantees that society provides around ownership, when compared with Bitcoin guarantees, are laughably weak.”Special Guest: Sergey Nazarov.

What is the role of privacy in the modern age, and how do we go about protecting it? How can new technologies help shield us from the rise of surveillance capitalism? In this episode, host Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) speaks with Claudia Diaz, Associate Professor and researcher at K.U. Leuven and Chief Scientist at Nym, an open-source, decentralized, permissionless protocol providing full-stack privacy infrastructure. We discuss the recent history of public perception on privacy, how to balance the trade offs between technology’s benefits and its use for mass surveillance, and how Nym is building infrastructure that protects our privacy rights by default. Highlights: 01:24 - Claudia’s history 02:19 - 9/11 and the erosion of privacy 06:20 - Snowden’s impact in US vs EU 08:15 - Defining privacy and how to protect it 17:46 - Surveillance capitalism & opaque systems 21:11 - Balancing tech benefits and privacy 22:25 - How privacy technologies can help 24:03 - Transparency & information asymmetry 25:00 - Benefits of blockchain vs other technologies 27:29 - What Nym is building 39:50 - Anonymity vs privacy Links: Claudia Diaz @ K.U. Leuven Nym on Twitter Nym website Nym on Telegram Key Quotes: “This idea of individual control—my data, I decide—while I understand it is compelling, I think it’s a bit limited. My view is I think we need to build systems in a way that we just don’t have this exposure by default.” “I believe that information is power” “I think privacy is very political intrinsically” “One of the problems when you start talking about all the privacy threats is that you almost want to just disconnect yourself from the internet and throw away your phone….But that’s not the point. I don’t think we should be regressive and go back to some ideal past.”Special Guest: Claudia Diaz.

How do you design an effective universal basic income scheme on the blockchain? What are trusted execution environments, and how can they be used to enhance privacy? In this episode, host Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) speaks with Alain Brenzikofer of encointer, a blockchain-based universal basic income (UBI) system, and Supercomputing Systems, which is developing the SubstraTEE trusted execution environment (TEE) framework. With encointer, Brenzikofer came up with a novel way for personhood to be established so that people can’t game the UBI scheme: time-synchronized meetups called ceremonies. Encointer is also potentially the first cryptocurrency project innovating local, geographically-based currencies. With SubstraTEE, Brenzikofer is working to improve the privacy, scalability and interoperability of Substrate-based blockchains by off-loading state updates into TEEs. Highlights: 00:57 - What is encointer? 04:00 - How to model a UBI system 06:37 - Proportional transaction fees 08:05 - How encointer ceremonies work 10:37 - Innovating local cryptocurrencies 14:50 - Privacy and trusted execution environments 22:52 - SubstraTEE 30:27 - SubstraTEE target user base 38:35 - Current state of SubstraTEE and roadmap Links: https://encointer.org/ https://github.com/encointer https://github.com/brenzi/substraTEE Key Quotes: “One thing special about encointer is that I’m not intending to have transaction-based fees. I want to have proportional fees. That means there is no issue with micropayments in developing countries for example. Because if you look at the transaction fees of bitcoin and ether as well, the transaction fees can be as high as a day’s income or even worse.”Special Guest: Alain Brenzikofer.

In this episode, hosts Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) and Phil Lucsok (Product Communications Manager, Parity) speak with Wei Tang (Core Developer, Parity) about his work on several Ethereum- and Substrate-related projects. They discuss Tang’s experience working on Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Substrate, including innovative proposals for account versioning, backwards compatibility, and bridging and merging different Ethereum chains, as well as the future of ETH 2.0 and the broader Ethereum community. Tang is known amongst his peers as an exceptionally gifted and prolific developer, having built the SputnikVM Rust implementation of Ethereum from scratch just by reading the Ethereum yellow paper (without looking at other clients), and having created the Substrate EVM implementation in just a few days. Highlights: 00:57 - Why open source and Rust 03:30 - Building an Ethereum VM implementation from scratch 05:53 - SputnikVM and ETC 08:22 - Ethereum account versioning & backwards compatibility 15:10 - EIP 2225: bridging and merging different Ethereum chains 20:00 - Multi-client transaction validation for Ethereum 25:00 - Contentious EIPs and improving governance 26:52 - Shasper and implementing Ethereum 2.0 on Substrate 31:57 - ETH 2.0 challenges and roadblocks 34:07 - Substrate EVM 37:19 - Solri and Kulupu: Substrate meets proof-of-work Links: Wei Tang on Twitter Wei Tang on Github Key Quotes: “I really like working for open source because you are essentially building a community.” On EIP 2225: “Currently it’s really easy to create a chain split…you just disagree on something and it just forks. But if the disagreement disappears, if the community decides to come together again, there’s currently no way to merge those blockchains together again. You can split but you can’t merge. I just think that’s a bad thing.” “Currently we rely too much on the people factor for governance. Everything is a human procedure….What I always want to propose is that we should add more automated processes into this.”Special Guest: Wei Tang.

What are the benefits of tokenizing regulated assets, and how might it revolutionize the world of finance? In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research, Parity) is joined by Adam Dossa, Head of Blockchain at Polymath, a security token platform currently building a custom blockchain on Substrate called Polymesh. They discuss the world of tokenized securities and the promise this area of decentralized finance holds for democratizing global wealth creation. Dossa also explains Polymath’s reasoning for moving from Ethereum to Substrate, including the unique benefits of the blockchain building framework. Highlights: 01:35 - Benefits of tokenizing securities 07:51 - How to verify the underlying asset 12:52 - ERC-20 vs Polymath’s ERC-1400 token standard 16:44 - Limitations of Ethereum 18:14 - Polymath’s white label solutions 19:57 - Operating in multiple jurisdictions/Polymath modules 23:39 - Moving from Ethereum to a custom Substrate blockchain 26:48 - Benefits of Substrate’s GRANDPA consensus mechanism 28:55 - Benefits of Substrate’s forkless upgrades 31:00 - Users and use cases Polymesh 42:51 - Interaction between modules and smart contracts 47:00 - Progress status of Polymesh Links: Polymath website Learn more about Polymesh Polymath on Github Polymath on Twitter Key Quotes: “Financial infrastructure should be transparent and accessible. It should be more like a public good than siloed, private infrastructure.” “Whilst Ethereum is great, there’s a saying: ‘You can please some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time.’ Ethereum is a general purpose blockchain, it’s not optimized for any specific use case. In our particular domain of regulated securities, there are some choices which are not optimal.” “You have this huge, trillion-dollar regulated securities market globally. If you can bring those assets into DeFi, that’s like DeFi times a hundred. You have all these interesting, varied asset classes and you can start to use those as collateral. Instead of using Ether as collateral, you can take your Apple shares, your Tesla shares, or some basket of shares and use those as collateral.”Special Guest: Adam Dossa.

What is it like to develop on the Substrate blockchain building framework, and what resources are available to developers? How different is it from developing Ethereum smart contracts? In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research, Parity) is joined by Shawn Tabrizi and Joshy Orndorff from the Developer Experience team at Parity Technologies, where they help developers building or interested in building on Substrate, regardless of experience level. Highlights: 01:12 - What is Substrate? 02:18 - Substrate Seminar open collaborative learning call 07:08 - Substrate Off-Chain Workers 16:29 - Substrate Developer Hub 17:17 - Developing for Ethereum vs. Substrate 25:15 - Substrate Kitties 27:35 - Substrate maintenance/upgrades 33:13 - Current developer experience Links: Substrate Developer Hub Substrate Seminar Substrate Technical Riot Chat Substrate Stack Overflow Key Quotes: “If you want to build a blockchain and you don’t want to build every single piece from the ground up… then you can use Substrate and you can take all of the common parts from our standard implementations, and the only thing that you have to code is the part that’s unique to your blockchain.” “If you’re part of Substrate Seminar, you can actually get access to the latest features right as they come out of the gate.” “Substrate is an ecosystem.” “Smart contracts aren’t the only way to get your logic on a blockchain.” “We want to make Substrate the best platform for blockchain innovators.”Special Guests: Joshy Orndorff and Shawn Tabrizi.