Brian Fabian Crain - Epicenter Bitcoin

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Overview•New Cryptographic Currency / Protocol

•Competitor to Colored Coins, Mastercoin & BitShares

•Smart Contracts & Decentralized Autonomous Corporations

•Fundraising Period: Starts Saturday February 1

Wednesday, January 29, 14

DACs

•Corporation = group of people operating under set of rules

•Autonomous Corporations

•Mission, Goals, Operations => Code

•Get rid of people/central point of failure => DAC

Wednesday, January 29, 14

DACs

•Could implement an Autonomous Corporation now, but who controls server?

•Decentralized -> gets rid of point of failure

•Capacity to think

•Capacity to hold capital & do economic transactions

Wednesday, January 29, 14

DACs

•Shareholders

•Pay Dividends

•Engage in economic activities

•Hire people & pay salaries

Wednesday, January 29, 14

DACs

•David Johnston (Mastercoin):

”Decentralized Applications will one day surpass the world’s largest existing software corporations in utility, user base, and network valuation due to their superior incentivization structure, flexibility, transparency, resiliency, and distributed nature.”

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Self-Stabilizing Currency

•Data Feed: USD-XCOIN Exchange Rate (set to 1)

• If XCOIN loses value -> monetary supply decreases

• If XCOIN gains value -> monetary supply contracts

•=> cryptographic USD-linked currency

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Other Attempts•Colored Coins:- Specific bitcoins as tokens for some asset

•Mastercoin:- Application layer on top of bitcoin

•ProtoShares / BitShares:- separate blockchain/currency to realize DACs

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Ethereum•Own blockchain & currency

•Simplicity, Universality

•Core unit: Contracts

•Generalized computing platform vs specific application

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Contracts•Autonomous Agent - Lives on blockchain

•Elements: Address, Balance, Code

•Gets activated by sending money to address

•Can run code, send transactions, change memory, even modify its own code.

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Contract Exampleif tx.value < block.basefee * 200:

stop // if the fee is too low abort

if contract.storage[tx.data[0]]:

stop // if address is already registered abort

contract.storage[tx.data[0]] = tx.data[1]

// otherwise store name & address

// tx.data[0] ~ name

// tx.data[1] ~ phone number

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Ether• Currency is used to pay transaction fee & computation fee

• 60-day period - start on February 1

• 1 bitcoin => 3,000 ether issued (1st week)decreases to 1,500 by the end

• 2,000 Investor - 450 founders (vested) - 550 organization

• Capped at 30,000 BTC

• Controversial...

• Higher Investment -> Worse

Wednesday, January 29, 14

Resources

•Blog Post

•Resources

•Podcast (Episode 3 & 4)

epicenterbitcoin.comWednesday, January 29, 14