Missing Links

In this episode of Missing Links Stephen and Brock discuss the concept of Eigenlayer.  EigenLayer is a marketplace for decentralized trust, which allows ETH to be rehypothecated, or staked in multiple places without unstaking. This allows users to take advantage of double staking yield and secure multiple protocols. However, this also introduces new slashing risks. Listen as the guys dive into what is Eigenlayer, how it can be used and what are its advantages.

In this short bonus episode of Missing Links, the guys talk about starting a project in the Web3 space. They discuss how Web3 had a similar doom and gloom feel in the last crash and how far it has come since then. And how the recession is affecting Web3?

In this episode of Missing Links, the guys discuss about their trading experience and share a bit of info about a trading strategy they plan to use, with the help of tools that they are developing for their other projects.  They further get into using AI tools such as OpenAI and Merlin to help with trading, the key factors they look into before getting into a trade, the difference between traditional stock trading and crypto trading.  Listen as the guys talk about all this and how big companies and wealthy people over collateralize their assets to get loans.

Ethereum Improvement Proposals are a way of proposing new features to the Ethereum community. In this episode the guys dive deeper into more interesting EIP's.  The guys also reveal a major flaw with the main OpenSea contract and it's verification or a complete lack of it. They further discuss the implication of this flaw, if a smart contract can be fixed once it's deployed and what repercussions it can have for OpenSea in the future.

2022 was a tough year for crypto markets and at the end of the year investors were selling their Cryptos, NFTs and other digital tokens to soften the blows by taking advantage of Crypto Tax Loss Harvesting. This strategy involves deliberate selling of an investment that went down in its price and to take advantage of that loss to offset other investments where profits were made. Most investors sell and rebuy whatever they initially sold to still possess that investment after the start of new year.  So listen as the guys start 2023 by talking about what is Crypto Tax Loss Harvesting. How it works? What is taxable and not-taxable in crypto? And everything you need to know about this strategy. 

Winter just might have begun but for crypto, the whole of 2022 was ice cold. It was an eventful year for the crypto community to say the least, and almost all of it was terrible. Crypto took one hit after another starting from Terra and ending at FTX. This chain of events has probably led to The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Bill which if passed might be the end of crypto. The only good thing that came out of this year was The Ethereum Merge which went flawlessly. So listen as the guys take a look back at all the big events that happened this year and predict what to expect from Crypto and Web3 in the next year.

Proof of reserves has been discussed time and time again to avoid situations like FTX. But ever since FTX went down, the community has demanded that exchanges start making their proof of reserves public. And majority of the big centralized and decentralized exchanges have been publishing their proof of reserves keep in line with the customers' demands.  Proof of reserves is a method of verification by which investors can see that exchanges do indeed have 1:1 backing of their digital assets that they hold for their investors. The question remains could this action have prevented everything that happened with FTX and can it prevent something like this in the future. Listen as the guys discuss what is proof of reserves, how it works, different types of proof of reserves, will this bring the investor trust back in exchanges. And is it really that ironclad?

The tech world has been abuzz with OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. Users have been throwing all sort of questions at it and to its credit, it gives extremely convincing and detailed responses. ChatGPT is a beta version of sorts by OpenAI to build on their Natural Language Processing Technology and overall Artificial Language models, as they plan to launch the next iteration i.e. GPT-4 next year. So listen as the guys discuss how it works, what is it good at, what does it mean for the future of AI, and if it AI can work in tandem with blockchain in the future.

In this bonus episode, Stephen talks about the latest news from the Web3 space.  Stephen talks about the very interesting EIP-4337 which will change the way the Web3 community accesses external accounts such as Metamask. And Metamask might not even exist in the near future. Stephen also talks about XRP and how he believes despite all the hate that it gets, it can still be the main bridging mechanism between banks and crypto. He also talks about top Swiss banks adopting crypto and NFT projects by Nike & Warner media that can trigger the next bull run.

Ethereum Improvement Proposals or more commonly known as EIPs, are documents that provide information to the Ethereum community. EIPs describe a new feature for Ethereum, related to it's environment or processes. They are intended to be the main mechanism of proposing new features, gather input from the community and document the design decisions that go into Ethereum. Listen as the guys discuss. what is an EIP? how do they work? how are NFTs and EIPs linked with each other, an EIP that might help the NFT royalty issue and different types of EIPs that are currently in work or are being discussed in the Ethereum community. 

Bitcoin vs Ethereum has been long debated in the Web3 community with users taking hard stances in support of each. Both of these cryptocurrencies are on the top of all the other tokens that are available today but both of them at their core serve completely different uses.  Listen as the guys debate that in the future if mass adaption was going to be a thing, which of these tokens will serve a better role. Will only one survive? Or is there a place for both these tokens in the future?

The biggest news coming from the crypto world over the last week has been the sudden implosion of FTX. This has sent aftershocks in the trillion dollar crypto industry which will have repercussions beyond just FTX. Regulators have already been calling to introduce regulations related to crypto and exchanges for a long time but this whole episode will only make their case stronger. Not only investor confidence in crypto has a hit new low but it has left people wondering what is next for crypto and exchanges. The FTX meltdown started earlier this month when Binance put an announcement that they will be selling their holdings of FTT  (native token of FTX) triggering a panic in the market. Binance then agreed a bailout for FTX but instantly withdrew their offer in 24 hours. Since then FTX has filed for bankruptcy.  Listen as the guys get into the details of all the news and takes on this FTX saga. What does it mean for regulations? What theories the crypto community has about the internal workings of FTX? And how this whole episode will further cause crypto prices to tank? 

Artificial Intelligence as a concept has been a part of discussion for a good part of the last 3 decades. There have been major advances in AI and its uses over the years but recently those advances have increased exponentially. Every day new AI powered tools are being introduced into the market and it seems like an AI controlled future is becoming a reality more than ever. One such example is of GPT-3 by OpenAI which helps users create app or write code from natural language. And that's just one side of it. Over the last few years Tesla has been pushing out self driving cars which uses AI to make real life decisions. Other use cases include AI powered tools that create text, images and videos from minimal input from users. But still Artificial Intelligence is not yet at a stage where it's ready to take over the world as it still requires human interference to work effectively. Listen as the guys discuss if and when will AI will be self-learning, what are the major breakthroughs needed to propel AI to new heights. What role does hardware and software have in pushing AI to its real potential and will humans really become obsolete in the future. 

Part 1- Swarm "If the Ethereum blockchain is the CPU of the world computer then Swarm is the hard disk." Swarm is a native base layer service of Ethereum which acts as a decentralized storage and communication system. Swarm aims to provide a decentralized peer-to-peer storage that is decentralized, DDOS-Resistant and has zero downtime. A built in incentive system makes Swarm self sustaining and enables trading resources for payment.  Listen as the guys discuss how swarm works, how is it different from other web3 storage solutions such is IPFS and Filecoin and what are the advantages of using Swarm. Part 2 - GPT-3 OpenAI has recently given consumers the access to GPT-3, an autoregressive language model,  which allows them to build apps using AI models. It can perform a wide range of natural language task and Codex, translating natural language to code. The guys discuss the possibilities it opens up for building apps, how can we use AI for trading crypto and what projects are currently in works using AI.

In the the year 2021 users spent over $41 billion on NFT platforms. OpenSea was and still remains the most popular marketplace for NFT users and it alone was responsible for almost $15 billion of the total volume in 2021. We might be in a bear market now but the interest around NFTs hasn't wavered off by a lot.  So in this short episode of Missing Links Stephen and Brock talk about an NFT collection launched by Brock and his friends (Hot Dog Time Machine). They talk about different technical components that are involved in launching an NFT and what does the future look like for NFTs once this bear market subsides. 

After attending Devcon in Bogota, Stephen and Brock are back and this week they talk about Layer 3.  Vitalik Buterin co-founder of Ethereum has recently talked about what kind of L-3 is possible and what problems does this address.  https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/09/17/layer_3.html Layer-1 is the base block chain i.e. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.  Whereas Layer-2 is a roll up on top  of the Layer-1 i.e. Optimism and Arbitrum.  Layer-2 provides scalability and performance improvements by taking  transactions off the main chain without sacrificing on security.  So a concept that pops up over and over again is can we go up another layer and build a Layer-3 and provide more scalability on top of Layer-2.  Listen as the guys discuss if L-3 is really a possibility? Can we simply have a better L-2 without having a need for a L-3? If L-3 is the way forward for scalability on Ethereum  blockchain then what solutions it will provide. 

This week on Missing Links Stephen, John and Brock talk about Fiat on-ramps and off-ramps. Most financial apps built in web 3 require an on-ramp and off-ramp service to exchange currencies between fiat and crypto. With the adoption of cryptocurrency in the mainstream, governments and regulatory authorities had to step in to put in some laws to stop  illegal activities that may be carried out by the use of cryptocurrencies.  Know Your Customer or commonly known as KYC was put in place as a legal requirement to comply with the new laws. An effective KYC requires 3 things 1. Knowing customer's identity 2. Knowing their financial activities 3. Knowing the risk they pose All cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers are required to integrate KYC processes. There are some issues when it comes to KYC as each exchange and wallet requires their own KYC process, which is an issue that needs a solution if more people are to use cryptocurrencies as the main mode of payment.  Listen as the guys talk about the regulations around cryptocurrencies, the issues with the current KYC procedures and how it effects web 3 as a whole. 

In this Episode of Missing Links John, Brock and Stephen talk about data storage using IPFS, Filecoin and Arweave. IPFS is a protocol created by Protocol Labs to share and transfer verifiable data between a peer to peer network. Filecoin is a complimentary protocol  built on top of IPFS which incentivizes node operators to store data for a given period of time. Filecoin offers contract based storage to its users, where users have to pay a monthly fee in order for a network of nodes to store that data for an agreed amount of time. Arweave offers a completely different economic model to Filecoin. Arweave offers permanent storage for a one time up-front free. Listen as the guys discuss, how each of these protocols work, what are the pros and cons of each protocol,  how do they handle data and how do they incentivize miners to ensure availability and reliability of data storage.  

Cryptocurrency addresses are long strings of letters and numbers which are needed to send funds over Ethereum's network.  If a user wants to send funds they need to ensure that they type each letter and number correctly, as any mistake will lead to those funds being lost.  ENS provides a solution to this problem by converting these complicated long addresses into easily readable text. So just as the name suggests ENS or Ethereum Name Service gives a name to a blockchain address.  Listens as the guys talk about ENS, what it is, how it works, the ENS token and what is the future of ENS.

The Merge is the biggest and most anticipated upgrade in the history of Ethereum.  This marks the beginning of a new era for Ethereum where it transitions from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. In The Merge the Ethereum Mainnet will merge with the Beacon Chain but the guys think its less of a merge and more of a switchover.  In this Episode of Missing Links, John, Brock and Stephen the differences between proof-of-stake and proof-of-work. What are the security implications of The Merge? Will The Merge be a success for Ethereum? And what effects will it have on the crypto market?