BlockchainGandalf

Lazy minting is not minting an NFT until you have a buyer. So now you don't even need to listen to the episode. Except, it contains a cake analogy, and is only a minute long, so perhaps you want to anyway.

In the last few days about $1.7 million in NFTs were stolen from OpenSea users, and there is quite a bit of confusion about how it was done. In this episode I talk about a number of "design decisions" in the Ethereum space, and their security issues. These include: token approvals, off-chain signing, how NFT decentralized exchanges work, and there is a bit about phishing emails thrown in for good...

Decentralization maximalists dream of a world in which everything is decentralized, and single players no longer dominate in particular sectors.  I think their dreams will never come to pass for two main reasons, which are discussed in this episode.  The audio for this episode comes from a video where I am wearing a hat. Because I can't be bothered to clip the last 20 seconds I talk abou...

Oh the wonderful things that a DAO can do! It can moo like a cow, moo moo. No, hang on, that's a Dr. Seuss book. The thing is, a lot of DAO use cases are probably better served by a multi-signature wallet than a DAO. But there are some where providing the ability for a diverse and unconnected group of people to vote on a regular or semi-regular basis as to how assets should be dispersed, is of val...

Fundamentally, a DAO is about automating voting processes in the context of a deterministic collective with assets. Or in less stupid language - it's a computer program thingy that controls some money and does what its owners tell it to when enough of them agree on what should be done. As it happens, voting is a complicated and subtle science, with plenty of empirical data for us to examine from t...

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are automated voting systems, which (sometimes) happen to have large sums of cryptocurrency assets at their disposal for their members to vote on. And by "vote on", I mean that the members (the people who have voting tokens for the DAO) get to decide where that money goes through a voting procedure. Unless the DAO contains bugs. In which case, a malici...

If you're having difficulties understanding DAOs, it may be that it's because you're thinking about companies from the perspective of an employee (which is what most of us are), rather than as an active shareholder or board member (which most of us are not). More on that in this episode.

Did you know that the first NFT was minted way back in 2014? Neither did I, but Anthony Day helpfully pointed me at an article about the problems currently surrounding it - https://www.ledgerinsights.com/sothebys-sued-over-quantum-nft-auction The artwork the NFT (or NFTs, as you will understand if you watch the video) points (or point) to is called Quantum, and looks like a British 20 pence piece...

"This item's metadata was permanently locked and stored in decentralized file storage." Those word can be found in the details presented for many of the NFTs listed on OpenSea.io. They make you think that your NFT can never change - the traits and the image are locked down forever, right? Wrong. In this episode I explain - using the Bored Apes Yacht Club NFTs and NFT contract as an example - how m...

How should a well-managed efficient NFT project be run in order to maximize the chances of success? There is a well-structured format to NFT projects these days (a road-map if you will) that every project now seems to follow. In this episode, I explain how Richard Piacentini and myself decided to throw the rule-book out of the window, and do the opposite pretty much every single step of the way. I...

A few days ago hackers made off with about a hundred thousand ETH due to a security flaw in a cross-chain bridge protocol called Wormhole. The protocol bridges assets between a number of chains, including Ethereum and Solana. In this episode, I explain how the heist was pulled off, using an analogy.

I've now talked to and heard enough reports from other smart contract developers who have encountered the same thing: web3 developers who don't understand one simple fact about the blockchain world. And if you don't understand that fact, even if you know how to write ethers.js or web3.js code in your React website, you're not really a web3 developer. Listen to this episode to find out what it is,...

No, this is not me advertising an open position. These are the kinds of job adverts I'm seeing in my inbox these days. The salary ranges may be more realistic than they were three months ago, but the job descriptions have expanded to the point where they are longer than my resume.  And there are probably only ten people on the planet who could both do the job, and who would want to. You can l...

Welcome to the NFT metadata persistence problem. Art NFTs and Collectible NFTs usually follow the same data pattern: the NFT points to a metadata file, which points to an image file. The problem is that if the metadata and image file are hosted on a third-party server, and that server disappears, then the NFT points to nothing, and its perceived value will drop. If the metadata and image file are...

In which our intrepid hero talks about why, despite having no use and conferring no real ownership of the artwork, NFTs are still booming.

OpenSea hasn't just offered the world a rather average looking NFT trading platform. It's also provided us with an excellent set of lessons concerning the risks posed by smart contracts and bad design. In this episode, I look at the recent problems they have faced, in which people's tokens are being bought at below-market prices and then instantly flipped for huge profits, due to a series of smart...

Collecting NFTs that point to artwork you like, and are part of a community you enjoy belonging to is lovely. But there is so much more that NFTs can do. We're already seeing NFTs gain utility features, such as giving you access to members-only Discord channels. In the future, I predict that NFTs will gain all sorts of other super-powers. But - problems arise when those super-powers are provided o...

Today I gave a lecture on Blockchain for the Emerging Technologies group at Tampere University.  The focus is less on how blockchain technology works, and more on the problems it aims to solve, and why it is significant, and so I talked more about the history, psychology and sociology of blockchain,  rather than going into computer science, cryptography, or consensus algorithms.  I...

You've got your project sorted - tokenomics, value proposition. community building, marketing, and smart contract development are all in place. But you need a company or person to build the front end for you. How do you determine whether they're competent or not when it comes to web3 work? In this episode I provide a simple practical checklist that you can use to make your decision, which is summa...

We all know that proof-of-work is energy intensive, which means that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum currently have to defend themselves against charges that the environmental damage they are causing is not outweighed by the current or future benefits they offer. This means that if someone sees no value in a decentralized currency/store of value/whatever the cryptocurrency is ... the...

What is the user experience for web3 identity going to be like? Initially, very much like the web2 experience is for users who are wise enough to use a password manager. Provided the web3 sites get their own ux designs in order. More on that in this expisode.

Okay, so Web3 uses asymmetric key cryptography as the basis for identity and authentication.  Why do we need the rest of blockchain then?  Answered in this episode. Well, it's an answer. Of course, given blockchain, it's not _the_ answer.

The three authentication mechanisms are: 1️⃣ Something you know 2️⃣ Something you have 3️⃣ Something you are But what about a fourth one: something only you can do? In this video, I look at the fundamental different between identifying yourself to a Web3 website using a blockchain wallet, and Web2 using a username and password. It has to do with asymmetric key cryptography. In part 2, I will talk...

In this video I talk about how I airdropped 100 DETS tokens to every single one of the 1.5 quindecillion Ethereum addresses. In the process I examine different layers of meaning in blockchain systems, from the raw ones and zeroes on hard disks around the network, through data structures, smart contracts, and right up to the presentation layer in the form of web3 that actually shows users what they...

I regularly read news reports in which it is plain that the reporter writing the report hasn't really understood what is going on the blockchain, DeFi or crypto world. And it's not their fault - they're trained writers, not blockchain experts. The problem is exacerbated by the number of analogies that have taken hold in the space. In this video I talk about this, using some of the bad analogies as...