The Future of Distributed Applications and Ethereum's Blockchain | Andrew Keys
Hidden Forces
Demetri Kofinas
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2017
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Market Forces segment of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas covers all things blockchain related with Andrew Keys of Ethereum's Consensus Systems. Andrew's role at consensus is to help cultivate an ecosystem of distributed application development – everything from payment processing, contract transfers, distributed computing, and even the future of the internet as we know it. Building on the innovation, adoption, and possibilities of Bitcoin, Andrew Keys has immersed himself over the last several years in what many people are calling Bitcoin 2.0 – otherwise known as Ethereum – and has become one of the world's go-to business ambassadors for blockchain technology and the Ethereum protocol.
In today's conversation, we explore the explosive growth of the cryptocurrency industry – where it's been, what it looks like today and its potential to shape our collective future. "This is ultimately about the move away from a centralized system for organizing society towards a decentralized one that is more appropriate for the technological present," says Demetri Kofinas. Indeed, the question of centralization versus decentralization is central to the framework of blockchain technology. For all of recorded history, human beings have achieved scale through a bureaucracy. Empires, nation states, and corporations are all built upon layers of authority and thickets of bureaucracy. Blockchain manages to overcome this by shifting the burden of validation from the center to the periphery. In other words, no central authority is required in order to approve any transaction or mediate any dispute among users of the blockchain protocol. There is no need for third-party verification (TPV).
If you have been looking for a great resource for learning more about Ethereum or the blockchain, then you have come to the right place. One of Andrew Keys' main tasks as head of Global Business Development for Consensus Systems is to help educate potential users of this technology on how it all works. You won't be disappointed.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's up everybody? Welcome to this Market Forces segment of the Hidden Forces podcast. I have someone really awesome in studio today, Andrew Keyes from Consensus Systems. Andrew, how you doing? |
| 0:11.3 | Great. Thanks for having me. It's great having you here, man. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So before we get started, why don't you tell our audience a little bit about you so they know, like you and consensus, |
| 0:21.6 | and then we'll get into kind of the media conversation? |
| 0:23.6 | So I guess professionally, I grew up on Wall Street for all intents and purposes. |
| 0:28.6 | I worked at UBS and investment banking, and I worked at a hedge fund that dealt specifically with life insurance, |
| 0:35.6 | and I co-founded a revenue cycle management system where essentially I learned about how bad |
| 0:41.3 | all the payment processes are in insurance and in banking. |
| 0:46.3 | And at the same time, basically, Bitcoin happened. |
| 0:48.9 | And Bitcoin was really cool. |
| 0:50.4 | It solved the double spend. |
| 0:53.1 | Essentially, if I sent you a Bitcoin, I couldn't send that to somebody |
| 0:55.9 | else. And there were advancements in mathematics and computer science. But essentially, we couldn't |
| 1:01.1 | add business logic. We couldn't have, if this consideration happens, then we're able to make a payment |
| 1:08.4 | else, no payment. |
| 1:22.1 | And I researched the space and I thought it was relatively immature until I found what I would consider in the next generation of this technology. |
| 1:23.2 | You said when was this? |
| 1:24.2 | Did you say? So I began researching Bitcoin probably 2011, 2012, and it really started 2009. |
| 1:32.1 | Right. |
| 1:32.5 | So pretty early in the space. |
| 1:34.5 | But I didn't really jump in to the space until I met a gentleman by the name of Joseph Lubin, who was actually one of the co-founders of the Ethereum Protocol. |
| 1:44.3 | And I met him at the first ever meetup of Ethereum in New York. |
| 1:50.1 | And once he explained the implications of this, essentially that we could have a peer-to-peer |
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