The State of Blockchain Technology

Bitcoin and Ethereum have been in the news a lot lately but the underlying platform offers an even bigger potential for the future of technology. In this talk, I'll briefly cover the state of art in Blockchain technologies and how different companies are using it.

Transcript

1. The State of Blockchain Tech
   Arpit Mathur
   Comcast Labs
   

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2. The Digital Money Challenge
   • Make digital transactions of
   value
   • Without central identity store
   • Prevent double spending
   without a trusted third party
   holding balances of everyone
   Alice Bob
   $ 5 $ 2
   $ 4 $ 3
   $ 1
   

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3. Lifecycle of a Bitcoin Transaction
   • Wallet declares transactions to a network of miners
   • Miners verify each transaction and if its valid collect it
   • Miners create a Block for the blockchain with all the transactions they know about
   • Miners compete for the opportunity to write to the blockchain by trying to solve the mining
   puzzle (Proof of Work)
   • First miner to find the answer to the puzzle writes to the blockchain and wins 12.5 BTC
   • In case of multiple winners, the next set of winners can decide which fork to build on top of
   

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4. Components of the Bitcoin
   Solution
   Wallets:
   • User identity using Public
   Key Cryptography.
   • Wallets create Transactions
   moving bitcoins from 1 wallet
   to another which are signed
   with private keys and sent to
   addresses based on public
   keys
   Miners:
   • Verify transactions on the
   network and “try” to write to
   the global ledger
   • Any miner that gets chosen
   to write to the blockchain is
   rewarded 12 bitcoins (Block
   Reward)
   Blockchain
   • A decentralized distributed
   database that is used to
   maintain a continuously
   growing list of records,
   called blocks. Each block
   contains a timestamp and a
   link to a previous block
   

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5. A digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another
   cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly.
   What is a Blockchain
   

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6. Source: Redefining Security with the Blockchain by William Mougayar
   Blockchain =
   Technology + Game Theory
   

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7. Decentralization and Internet 2.0
   CENTRAL NODES PRONE TO COMPROMISE
   ( DDOS, HACKING, STATE ACTORS)
   MIDDLEMEN
   LIMITED BUSINESS MODELS
   

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8. Blockchains
   
   • Trust without a central
   trust provider
   • Remove intermediaries
   • Permanent
   • Transparent
   
   • Slower
   • Proof of work can be
   expensive
   • Permanent
   • Transparent
   

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9. The Future
   

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10. Core Technology
    

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11. Alt Chains
    • Bitcoin network is getting slower
    • Increasing the block size will help but one blockchain for entire world is not
    feasable
    • Different chains could be optimized for different things
    • Susceptible to 51% attacks
    • Is it worth it for the miners?
    

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13. Sidechains
    

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14. Permissioned chains
    • Known identity of participants
    • Faster
    • Defined Governance
    

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15. Alternte Consensus Mechanism
    • ✅ Proof of Work
    • Proof of Stake
    • Proof of Activity
    • Proof of Burn
    • Proof of Capacity
    Source: Alternatives to Proof of Work
    

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16. Coins: Collectable, transferable
    access tokens
    

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17. Applications
    

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18. Computing
    

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19. Smart Contracts
    

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20. File Storage
    

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21. Entertainment
    

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22. Sharing Economy
    

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23. Education and Certification
    

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24. Venture Capital / Crowdfunding
    

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26. Go forth and Code
    

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