The Blockchain Journal Club: Recent Episodes
Ozeki Inc.
Stay up to date with the cutting edge in blockchain research. Each week, Carlos, Pericles, and guests provide a summary and in-depth discussion on a recent article or whitepaper.
How resilient are popular DeFi protocols such as Maker to malicious parties and market volatility? In this paper, Gudgeon et al., uncover governance attacks and market conditions which have the potential to undermine full DeFi systems.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdO1eOJ4nlw
In this episode we discuss a recent article outlining potential weaknesses in the popular DeFi protocols for decentralized cryptocurrency lending. Namely, the authors ask, if these protocols were used at the scale of centralized banking, is it possible that these protocols lead to similar catastrophic collapses?
For the first part, we describe the purpose and basic structure of DeFi protocols and provide some real world use-cases.
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.08099
Website: www.ozeki.io
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjBCPjBi_xM&feature=youtu.be
In this episode, we are joined by Jakub Sliwinski from ETH Zurich to discuss his recent article proposing an asynchrous blockchain without consensus. We go in depth on the theoretical foundations behind a peer to peer payments system which protects against double spend attacks without requiring expensive network synchronization.
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOCmkxPNXgU
Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.10926.pdf
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Email info@ozeki.io
This episode features a review article covering various problems in the healthcare industry that blockchain can help solve.
We go over the benefits and limitations of decentralized systems and discuss scenarios where blockchain is crucial, and where it might be overkill.
Paper: https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/24/6/1211/4108087
Email: info@ozeki.io
Website: ozeki.io
Twitter: twitter.com/ozekiinc
Instagram: instagram.com/ozeki.io
Facebook: facebook.com/ozekilabs
In this episode we look at a study which identified Ethereum wallets generated from vulnerable private keys, and uncovered the famous 'blockchainbandit' worth over 40 million dollars in his prime. We discuss how keys and addresses are generated in Ethereum, potential security risks, and speculate on the morality of wallet draining.
Paper: https://www.ise.io/casestudies/ethercombing/
YouTube: https://youtu.be/EOsGpEF1z5Q
Email: info@ozeki.io
Twitter: twitter.com/ozekiinc
Instagram: instagram.com/ozeki.io Website: ozeki.io
Brain wallets are Bitcoin secret keys that are generated from a person coming up with a memorable passphrase. They can be convenient and sometimes more secure. In this episode we discuss a paper which studies the prevalence of these types of wallets and quantifies the risk involved. We go over the concepts of Bitcoin addresses, public key cryptography, and wallet security.
Paper: https://fc16.ifca.ai/preproceedings/36_Vasek.pdf
Website: ozeki.io
Email: info@ozeki.io
Twitter: @ozekiinc
Facebook: facebook.com/ozekilabs
In this episode we are joined by guest and fellow PhD student, Simon Sehayek. We discuss a recent paper which proposes an asynchrous blockchain using a graph structure instead of a blockchain. This would allow the network to avoid proof of work and promises transaction finality.
We also go over some blockchain fundamentals including double spending and network consensus.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jmhJ2igzTkQ
Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.10926.pdf
Website: ozeki.io
Email: info@ozeki.io Twitter: @ozekiinc
In this episode of The Blockchain Journal Club, we discuss a recent paper which proposes an alternate way to adjust the difficulty in blockchain mining to guarantee more reliable block times.
The author tries to improve the responsiveness of mining difficulty to rapidly changing hash-rates. Most blockchain implementations are very slow to update mining difficulty. This can cause problems where powerful miners are able to control the difficulty and can end up crashing certain currencies.
Paper: https://ledgerjournal.org/ojs/ledger/article/view/195
Email us with suggestions: info@ozeki.io
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EKZcmOP1XiHOhEENrHoaL?si=19m2cSI0Sli9u4ScIqjQYw
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jjCrL0ic16w
Website: www.ozeki.io
In this episode we discuss a recent paper of ours "Difficulty Scaling in Proof of Work for Decentralized Problem Solving".
We'll be going over the basics of how mining is achieved in blockchains like Bitcoin and how various efforts have been made to leverage computational power towards solving scientific problems.
These problems can go from protein folding for drug discovery to neural network parameter searching.
We hope you'll enjoy this episode, and send us any questions and suggestions to info@ozeki.io.
Today's paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.00435
For more info visit: www.ozeki.io
This is a short intro and description to our new podcast: The Blockchain Journal Club.
Here, we'll be discussing one blockchain-related research article every week.
We'll be explaining the article to a broad audience and then focusing on the technical details in a free-form discussion.
To follow more of our updates, check us out at www.ozeki.io
Thanks for listening!
Pericles & Carlos