QuantLayer Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

As software teams begin to migrate to serverless, they will require more in the way of serverless specific tooling: cost tracking, alerting, monitoring, and so on. Here, we look at a number of serverless tooling providers and discuss what they bring and how they will compete with traditional tooling services.

Topics:

• Installable versus Hosted Platform
• On Hosted Platform
• Tooling providers
  - CloudZero
  - Dashbird
  - Hasura GraphQL Engine
  - IOpipe
  - Iron.io
  - lumigo
  - Node Lambda
  - SCAR
  - Sigma
  - Stackery
  - Thundra
• On framework
• On security
  - Protego
  - Threat Stack
• On Installable Platform

Links:

Hosted Platform - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=hosted-platform&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Tools - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=tools&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Framework - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=framework&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Security - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=security&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Installable Platform - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=installable-platform&format=card-mode&grouping=category

Serverless has caused a massive shift in approaches to application design. On this episode, we explore what serverless gives teams, and the tradeoffs involved in going the serverless route. We cover players like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure, and what else is in store for the space.

Topics:

• What Serverless is
• On their benefits
• Monolithic versus microservices architectures
• How might development teams work on serverless applications versus traditional ones
• On tradeoffs of Serverless
• Business benefits of Serverless
• The drawbacks

Links:

Serverless - https://serverless.com
What is Serverless? - Squadex - https://squadex.com/insights/what-is-serverless/

On this episode, I speak to Zaki Manian from Tendermint. We get deep into the weeds of interoperability, his notions of interop between fast chains and fast and slow chains. We discuss the IBC protocol, which is a spec for adapters between different chains along with all the complexities when dealing with cross-chain communications. Moreover, we examine design and development principles when building product in this space, and the differences when building traditional software product. Zaki goes over some exciting projects that are building on Cosmos as well.

Topics:

• Who Zaki is
• Talking about interoperability
• Two classes of blockchains
• What is Cosmos trying to do
• Main issues when getting different chains to talk to one another
• Main design principles when setting out to design the Cosmos network
• Interesting projects he see people building with Cosmos
• Talking about consensus system and incentive system
• Minimal Viable Ecosystem Acceleration talk

Links:

Cosmos Network - https://cosmos.network/
Twitter - Cosmos Network - https://twitter.com/cosmos
Telegram - Cosmos Network - https://t.me/Cosmos_Network
Zaki's Twitter - https://twitter.com/zmanian
Minimal Viable Ecosystem Acceleration talk at MIT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqopwqXyURw
Cosmos SDK Tutorial - https://github.com/cosmos/sdk-application-tutorial
Cosmos Game of Stakes - https://blog.cosmos.network/game-of-stakes-closing-ceremonies-eddb71d3b114

We chatted with Aaron Blankstein, Core Engineer from Blockstack. Blockstack is a decentralized computing network, which makes it simple for developers to build blockchain-based applications. We learn about Blockstack’s incentive system, and what will be changing from v1 to v2. We discuss a few use cases of Blockstack, like the Blockstack Naming Service, or BNS. We also go over Blockstack’s smart contract language Clarity, and the broad tooling that will exist for developers working on the platform. We finish up learning about Aaaron’s fascination with augmented Reality and adversarial machine learning.

Topics:

• Who Aaron is
• How he describe Blockstack
• Centralized versus decentralized application architecture
• What is Blockstack's relationship with Bitcoin
• How does consensus work in Blockstack
• What is Blockstack naming system
• On Clarity smart contracts language
• Decentralized storage system called Gaia
• On authentication and how it works
• JavaScript tools
• Radiks
• Blockstack.js

Links:

• Clarity - https://docs.blockstack.org/core/smart/overview.html
• Blockstack forums - https://forum.blockstack.org
• Blockstack - https://blockstack.org/
• White Paper - https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf
• Papers - Blockstack - https://blockstack.org/papers
• Blackstack Docs - https://docs.blockstack.org/
• Aaron Blankstein Website - https://aaron.blankstein.com/
• App.co - https://app.co/
• The Blackstack Javascript - https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack.js/

We chatted with Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer from Interdax. Interdax is a next generation digital assets exchange with strong engineering roots in High Frequency Trading firms, traditional exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, market data and liquidity providers. This episode was a lot of fun. We talked about Charles’ background in traditional finance and a prior life as a derivatives trader. We then compare and contrast traditional and crypto derivatives markets. We also talk technical details of perpetual swaps and how they differ from other derivative products. Finally, we discuss the engineering underpinnings of the interdax platform and UX and UI considerations when building the product. We finish up discussing technologies Charles is excited about. Hope you enjoy this one.

Topics:

• Charles Phan's background
• On derivatives markets and trading
• Differences between derivatives markets in traditional finance versus crypto
• On Interdax
• What his role is at Interdax
• Building the Interdax

Book:

Dynamic Hedging by Nassim Taleb

Links:

• Interdax - https://www.interdax.com/
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/interdax

Ben DiFrancesco, software consultant and founder of scopelift, joins us on this one. Two things we really respect about Ben are his ability to break down complex technical topics and also his ability to be honest about what crypto and blockchain offer us. He’s at heart, a technologist, and his passion for and dedication to crypto is palpable. This conversation contains a bit of philosophy around Bitcoin and Ethereum, particularly around how polarized the two spaces have become. We get into Bitcoin and Ethereum’s respective reasons for existing and how they can work together, how developers can use these new digital primitives to build applications, and business opportunities in the space. We also cover DeFi, and how smart contracts enable Maker and Dai.

Always enjoy talking to Ben, and I hope you enjoy this one.

Topics:

• Smart Contracts & use cases that excite him
  
• BTC + ETH working together
  
• DeFi movement
  
• Crypto Primitives
  
• Quality of Web Dev versus Crypto tooling
  
• ETH and “rich statefulness” and what that means
  
• Some techs outside of blockchain and crypto that he is excited about

Links:

• Ben’s twitter: https://twitter.com/BenDiFrancesco
• Ben’s consultancy ScopeLift: https://www.scopelift.co/
• Newsletter: https://www.buildblockchain.tech/newsletter
• Podcast #1: http://quantlayer.libsyn.com/4-a-discussion-with-software-consultant-ben-difrancesco-on-building-great-blockchain-software
   - https://medium.com/@QuantLayer/building-great-blockchain-software-smart-contract-scaling-and-elixir-ae94687e34dd
   - https://usedai.org
   - https://github.com/apbendi/use-dai
• Philly Blockchain Tech Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Blockchain-Tech/
• Austin Griffith: https://twitter.com/austingriffith
• Mastering Bitcoin: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/
• Mastering Ethereum: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Contracts/dp/1491971940

We recap our attendance at the Blockchain Training Conference last week. We cover the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4)’s new certifications and their conference’s emphasis on developer and professional education. We also look at the slew of great talks on The Lightning Network, bitcoin privacy, and smart contracts.

Topics:

• What does C4 stands for
• Keynote w/ Pamela Morgan and Andreas M. Antonopoulos
• Announcement: Mastering the Lightning Network
• C4 and it's Purpose
• CBP Prep Course w/ Andreas
• Lightning Network Payment Channels Update w/ Renee Pickhardt
• Crypto for Creatives w/ Stephanie Murphy
• Clash of Expectations - UX and usability
• Bitcoin Privacy On and Offchain w/ Janine Römer
• Blockchain Analysis versus Surveillance
• Wyoming’s blockchain laws
• Law and the Lightning network - Peter van Valkenburg, Coin Center
• Joining the Lightning Network w/ Beatrice Leung, Project Manager at Radar
• Advanced Lightning Applications w/ Olaoluwa Osuntokun, CTO at lightning labs aka roasbeef

Links:

• CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) - https://cryptoconsortium.org/
• Standards | CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) - https://cryptoconsortium.org/standards/
• Blockchain Training Conference - https://blockchaintraining.org/home/home/
• Mastering Lightning Network Book on Github - https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook
• PrivacyTools.io - https://www.privacytools.io/
• That One Privacy Site - https://thatoneprivacysite.net/
• Developer Tools - Radar ION - radar.tech - https://ion.radar.tech/dev-tools
• Onboarding - Radar ION - radar.tech - https://ion.radar.tech/onboarding

Dr. Ed Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, he’s served as Chief Technologist at the FTC and Deputy CTO at the White House. He’s also the cofounder of Offchain Labs, a Princeton-based startup that’s focusing on 2nd layer smart contract solutions to improve scalability. This was one of our favorite conversations to date. We discuss smart contracts and their current problems. We discuss Arbitrum, Offchain Labs’ solution to the smart contract scaling problem which uses a system of validators to provide a guarantee to smart contract participants. Moreover, we discuss at length how their AnyTrust guarantee works, and why only a single validator is needed to maintain a working system. We also go through how an existing dApp can get ported over to Arbitrum. Finally, we talk high level tech themes: How technology and public policy are becoming more and more interconnected, how technology advising will become more and more important over time, and other technologies he’s really optimistic about. It’s a really packed episode. Enjoy.

Topics:

On the idea of "Bitcoin works in practice, but not in theory"
Smart contracts
Primary problems with smart contracts
Real world applications of smart contracts
What Offchain Labs is doing with smart contracts
Arbitrum & Validators
Porting Existing dApp to Arbitrum
Offchain business model
On blockchain
Academia to Industry
Advisor to Obama Administraion
On his co-authored paper titled, "A Cryptographic Escrow for Treaty Declarations and Step-by-Step Verification"
Optimistic technologies people don't know about

Links:

Coursera course:
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency
- http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs27philippe.pdf
Github: https://github.com/OffchainLabs
Whitepaper: https://offchainlabs.com/arbitrum.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EdFelten
Princeton website: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~felten/

We have Rob Zuber, CTO from CircleCI on. A lot of the projects we work on implement CircleCI, so we were super excited to speak to Rob. We talk about his background and how he became part of CircleCI through an acquisition. We also get into one of his favorite topics: language. Particularly the words that are used in projects, and how important they are for workflow. We also discuss “Domain Driven Design,” or the idea that when creating a layer of functionality, to keep it bounded within its domain so other layers don’t creep into it. This was an engineering heavy episode that was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy this one.

But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org.

We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10

Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10 (that’s Q U A N T L A Y E R and the number 10).

We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace.

Topics:

• Rob's background & early time at CircleCI
• Other technical problems they had to deal with
• On his favorite topics: Language
• Concepts he highlighted on his talked, "Words Matter: Ubiquitous Language and Throughput"
• Domain Driven Design
• On developer tools and product development around those tools
• On his blog: Predictions for 2018 from Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI

Books:

Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans
Implementing Domain Driven Design by Vaughn Vernon
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software by Erich Gamma

Links:

CircleCI: https://circleci.com/
Rob’s twitter: https://twitter.com/z00b
Predictions for 2018 from Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI: https://circleci.com/blog/predictions-for-2018-from-rob-zuber-cto-at-circleci/
“Words Matter: Ubiquitous Language and Throughput”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4LNezYjLLM
What it means to be remote-first vs. remote-friendly - https://circleci.com/blog/what-it-means-to-be-remote-first-vs-remote-friendly/
High performing engineering teams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E3f6v7zHP8
Devops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdxj5O-a58E
10 ways you’re doing devops wrong: https://circleci.com/blog/10-ways-you-re-doing-devops-wrong/

On this episode, we have Peter MacDonald and Joe Schnare from Wunderite, an insurance startup based in Boston. This was a really interesting conversation around how they are improving insurance workflows for agencies around the country through programmatic data aggregation. We talk about their backgrounds, get into the details of the black box industry known as insurance, and how they work with customers on product development. I learned a lot from this conversation. Enjoy.

But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org.

We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10

Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10 (that’s Q U A N T L A Y E R and the number 10).

We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace.

Topics:

• Peter and Joe’s background
• The reason why they are interested in insurance
• Broad problems overall with the insurance industry that Wunderite is solving
• Industry verticals that they're focusing on
• Couple case studies on insurance workflow before Wunderite, and how that changed after
• On their sales process and how they decide who to reach out to
• Some big wins they’re happy about and some learning lessons they would have approached differently
• On regulatory concerns
• On their business model
• Are they looking to raising capital
• What they're looking forward to next

Links
Wunderite - https://www.wunderite.com/
Wunderite Blog - https://blog.wunderite.com/
BNT presentation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H12tIa0EDY8