Why Altcoins are Technically Flawed with Nadav Kohen

 
 

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“You don’t want to use the blockchain unless there’s actually some kind of dispute; all cooperative transactions in the world can exist off of the blockchain and there’s no reason to actually use a blockchain for them”
— Nadav Kohen

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Location: Remotely
Date: Friday 25th June
Company: Suredbits
Role: Software Engineer

Bitcoin's proof-of-work blockchain solves a specific problem: achieving consensus of a distributed ledger without a central authority. Out of this decentralised network, new properties emerge like censorship resistance and probabilistic finality.

Bitcoin's success led to an explosion of altcoins, with most claiming to improve upon Bitcoin somehow, whether it's speed, privacy or scalability. However, blockchains are a delicate balance of specific tradeoffs, and these altcoins pale in comparison to Bitcoin's decentralisation and censorship resistance. 

While changing a parameter might seem to add functionality, it can also introduce unintended consequences. To resist influence and attacks, Bitcoin must remain decentralised by allowing for easy validation.

Can we achieve sufficient privacy and functionality on the second layer? And why are other consensus methods, like proof-of-stake, flawed?

In this interview, I talk to Suredbits software engineer Nadav Kohen. We discuss why blockchains must scale with second layers, proof-of-stake vs proof of work, and tradeoffs of privacy technology.

TIMESTAMPS

00:05:45: Introductions
00:07:27: The blockchain functionality
00:09:20: Blockchain consensus
00:11:09: Adding a block to the blockchain
00:16:27: Final settlement
00:17:43: Blockchain trade-offs
00:21:25: Ethereum trade-offs
00:25:40: Running an Ethereum node
00:29:51: Smart contract risks and rekt.news
00:35:20: Long-term Ethereum risks
00:42:40: Proof of work
00:48:09: Proof of stake
01:01:59: Lightning Network
01:05:26: Monero and fungibility
01:16:30: Discreet log contracts
01:22:16: Final comments

 

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SHOW NOTES

Connect with Nadav:

Mentioned in the interview:

Other Relevant WBD Podcasts:

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