The Challenges of Disrupting the System with Blockchain

About this Episode

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?