Blockchain Soundbites #4
Soundbites from Counterfactual, Truffle Suite, EY and Crypto Asset Taskforce
It’s been a number of months since the last Blockchain Soundbites instalment, but I’m planning on making these posts a regular thing again as our subscriber list continues to grow, so please stay tuned if you find them interesting.
This edition features soundbites from the following leaders in the blockchain industry:
Liam Horne - Co-founder, L4 (Ethereum Software Consultancy)
Tim Coulter - CEO & Founder, Truffle Suite
Paul Brody - Blockchain Leader, EY
Crypto Asset Taskforce - Bank of England, HM Treasury, FCA
Liam Horne
Liam Horne is a prominent contributor to the Ethereum community, who is working on Conterfactual - which is an open source initiative to make secure Layer 2 applications easy to build on Ethereum - and ETHGlobal.
In an interview on 'Into the Ether' with Eric Connar, Liam used a very good analogy to describe the scaling issues faced by Ethereum. He referred to the mainnet as an adjudication layer, much like a judge in the real world who should only be consulted with when something bad happens e.g. a tenant trashing their apartment.
Layer 2 scaling solutions aim to obviate the need of referring to the adjudication layer (i.e. judge) for every minor transaction (e.g. a tenant signing the lease agreement, monthly rent being paid), and only be consulted when there is a protocol deviation - when a party doesn't do what they said they were going to do.
Check out the podcast here.
Tim Coulter
Tim Coulter is the founder and CEO of Truffle Suite, who provide a development environment and developers tools for blockchain dapps (decentralised applications) and smart contracts.
Tim was interviewed by the POV Crypto podcast where he discussed how his company is working to make building on blockchains easier and ‘delightful’ (like eating chocolate, hence the themed names of his tools).
He provided an overview of the 3 main tools they have which are: Truffle (helps with the development of smart contracts), Ganache (one click personal blockchain), and Drizzle (collection of front-end libraries that makes writing dapps easier).
Check out the podcast here.
Paul Brody
Paul is Ernst & Young’s Global Blockchain Leader and drives EY initiatives and investments in blockchain technology across consulting, audit and tax business lines.
In conversation with John Wolpert at the Ethereal NY conference, Paul explained the problem he sees with private blockchains and their ability to scale. He makes the point that everything we make, buy and consume crosses multiple industry boundaries, so trying to control everything within a private network is problematic.
Tokenising items/products and putting them on a public blockchain but making them private using zero knowledge proofs is the only solution that will scale in his opinion, and it is why EY has invested heavily in open source protocols that will facilitate this on the Ethereum blockchain.
Paul is the first to admit that the concept of enterprises executing contracts or doing transactions on a public network is a hard sell for CIOs. He compares the adoption of public blockchains to public clouds, which were first launched by Amazon in 2006. It took roughly 10 years for public clouds to be considered a safe and acceptable place for enterprises to store their data - he thinks it could be a similar timeframe for the adoption of public blockchains, but hopes it will be quicker!
Check out the video between John Wolpert and Paul Brody here.
Cryptoassets Taskforce
This soundbite is not from an individual but rather the UK Government on what their definition of a cryptoasset is. In March 2018, the Government launched the Cryptoassets Taskforce consisting of HM Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England.
The Taskforce created a report to provide an overview of cryptoassets and the underlying technology, to assess the associated risks and potential benefits, and to set out the path forward with respect to regulation in the UK.
The Taskforce has concluded that while Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is at an early stage of development, it has the potential to deliver significant benefits in financial services and other sectors in the future, and all three authorities plan to continue to support its development.
This report lays out a clear path to establish the UK’s policy and regulatory approach to cryptoassets and DLT.
Check out the report here.