Bancor is a simple, but hard-to-understand protocol that enables price discovery and liquidity even for assets that aren’t actively traded. Co-Founder Eyal Hertzog joined us to explain how the Bancor protocol works and why they think it will play a key role in enabling a massive wave of small, but interconnected user-generated currencies. We dissected the workings of the protocol, its radical implications as well as the takeaways from their record-shattering, but controversial crowdsale. Topics covered in this episode: Eyal’s background in early internet startups The origin story of Bancor Why asset markets suffer from the double coincidence of wants problem The benefits of Bancor-based Smart Tokens How Bancor and BNT can create a liquidity network Why BNT benefits from network effects What went well and what didn’t go well about the Bancor Crowdsale Why Eyal thinks the price floor was a good idea Episode links: Bancor protocol Bancor Whitepaper Response to “Bancor is Flawed” – The Bancor Protocol Bancor at Coinfest 2017 in Amsterdam - YouTube Bernard Lietear, EURO architect discusses Bancor This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/194

Hebrew University academics Aviv Zohar and Yonatan Sompolinski joined us to discuss their research at the forefront of blockchain technology. We talked about their early proposals for scaling Bitcoin using the GHOST protocol, which later inspired Ethereum. And then we discussed SPECTRE and a new type of network based on directed acrylic graphs (DAG). DAGs abandon the blockchain data structure to allow constant generation of blocks that later get merged achieving block times of seconds and throughput many orders of magnitudes above current blockchain network. Topics covered in this episode: How Aviv Zohar wrote one of the first academic papers on Bitcoin in 2011 The GHOST protocol and how it could allow much faster block times The difference between what Ethereum built and the GHOST protocol Why DAG (Directed Acrylic Graphs) have massive advantages over blockchains Towards massive on-chain scaling and speed with the SPECTRE Protocol Their view on existing DAG-based networks like IOTA and Byteball Episode links: SPECTRE Medium Post SPECTRE (full paper) Accelerating Bitcoin's Transactions Inclusive Blockchain Protocols On Bitcoin and Red Balloons Aviv's Website Yonatan's Website This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/192