devcon 5 / future of open hardware in a verifiable decentralised world
Duration: 00:22:18
Speaker: Matthias Tarasiewicz
Type: Talk
Expertise: Advanced
Event: Devcon
Date: Invalid Date
Backfeed
Matan Field presents on Backfeed (http://backfeed.cc), which develops resilient technology and new economic models to support free, large-scale, systematic collaboration.
devp2p
Ethereum's Alex Leverington presents on "devp2p", Ethereum's networking protocol.
Agreement Making in Solidity: A Legal Perspective
Bill Marino of Cornell Tech presents on Agreement Making in Solidity: A Legal Perspective.
The paradox of centralized tools doing accounting for decentralized finance
This talk is going to be about a paradox that has been prevalent since the early days of Cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies were made to empower the individual, to be their own bank and to enable financial freedom without having to rely on centralized institutions. The paradox lies in the contradiction that when people want to do accounting or analytics for this new financial system they happily turn to centralized tools. This act enforces the status quo of finance being managed by centralized platforms and goes against the spirit of decentralization, undermining everything we are building. The talk will present multiple examples of this paradox in the world around us, from the way people do analytics (Blockfolio e.t.c.), to the way they do tax accounting (Bitcoin Tax e.t.c.). There will be some theorizing on why this is the case and underline why this is bad for the ecosystem and exceptionally dangerous for the people who utilize such services. Finally potential solutions to this problem will be presented, showing how a tool that performs decentralized financial analytics, accounting and tax reporting should look like in order to respect user's privacy and fit in this new era of decentralized finance we are now entering.
Formal Semantics for Protocols
Peter McBurney presents on Formal Semantics for Protocols at Ethereum's DEVCON1.
Introduction to Consensus
Dominic Williams delivers a presentation on an "Introduction to Consensus".
Peers and Intermediaries in Indonesia’s P2P economy
While ‘peer-to-peer’ emerged as a technical term, growing traction means it is increasingly used to describe a wide variety of complex socio-economic transactions. Anthropologist Keith Hart observed that “A lot more circulates with money than the goods and services it buys. Money conveys meanings and these tell us how we make the communities we live in.” Arguably, the exchange of digital money also comprises far more than a simple financial transaction, and far more than can be summarised in an elegant acronym. Who are these so-called peers? Who are these (multiple) intermediaries, subtly obfuscated behind the ‘2’, and why do people rely on them? And what does disintermediation mean in such a context? This talk unpacks these questions, by drawing on ethnographic research on the use of digital payments in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It analyses the various relationships between different types of users and the power and responsibility that the intermediaries have in configuring socio-economic dynamics when developing technology. The talk shows how ‘access’ to financial services and technologies is neither a binary nor static category. Rather, providing a viable technological alternative to conventional financial services means supporting people’s ability to transition flexibly between forms of digital and tangible money.
Robotics under Ethereum computer control
Ethereum as a world computer is the best way to control big and complex cyber-physical systems like smart factories, sensors networks or drone bases. The decentralized computer doesn't have a single point of failure and that feature is important when we want to use autonomous robotics systems.
The importance of open assets and their support.
The Internet has a lot of open communities supported by goodwill. Open Source Software, Open Access papers, etc. But communities that have been supported by goodwill are often questioned about their sustainability. If the Open Source Software's system was not a massive ecosystem like today, would Ethereum have been born? This problem is still alive. We considered these communities as "assets" and launched a project to create an economy by securitizing. For assets that previously had no opportunity to be evaluated economically, Ethereum can create its chance. I want to talk about the importance of the many assets where goodwill are considered to be a single point of failure and our solutions to them.
The Invisible Obelisk: Marshall McLuhan and Media Studies on the Blockchain
The so-called Toronto School media theorists, including Harold Innis, Walter Ong, and, most famously, Marshall McLuhan, pioneered a new way of thinking about media and communication technology. For them, innovations like the telegraph and railroad were not merely faster ways of transmitting the same messages that had ridden horseback a century earlier. Instead, they were fundamental re-fashionings of the core of human life, changing the speed, size, and internal dynamics of society itself.Similar transformative potential has been claimed for blockchain technology, specifically for its ability to create unique, non-duplicable data objects. But little thought has been given to exactly whatkind of transformations we're talking about. The Toronto school gives us tools for thinking about the nature of this pending change in detail, such as McLuhan's work on 'warm and cool' media and Innis' work on 'time binding vs. space binding' media. This presentation will be based on this chapter draft: https://medium.com/@dzanemorris/the-invisible-obelisk-mcluhan-on-the-blockchain-part-1-70b668c3778e. It will argue that blockchain tech, because it is both digital and durable, is a truly novel sort of media technology. It will explore how it is different from what came before, and consider some implications for the future. This application was solicited by Maria Paula.