Blockchain 102 and The Dark Side of Blockchain

By now most people have heard of, and to a degree: understood, the core principles of Bitcoin and proof-of-work based blockchains. But the past few years have brought us a larger universe of related technologies, inhabited by “crypto“ enthusiasts. This talk will venture beyond the basic Bitcoin blockchain to explain more advanced (and/or simpler) projects, and skeptically evaluate their uses. Spoiler: There Are None. I will introduce a number of fascinating and intellectually engaging protocols and concepts, from Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI) to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), in a way that is both technically accurate and unflattering. As it will turn out, there really is not a single thing that can be solved with a blockchain that cannot better be solved in another way, except maybe for a single worldwide currency with low transaction rates and humongous externalized costs. Still, the things are out there, draw in extreme amounts of engineering and cryptographical prowess, an