Dom Steil

On Agoric

Agoric’s composable smart contracts are written in JavaScript. They are secure based on Principle of Least Authority (POLA) and composable based on the Vat Model of the Electronic Rights Transfer Protocol (ERTP). Agoric’s long time goal is to move the diverse, vibrant world economy onto the decentralized web using safe smart contracts. Agoric is system for software agents participating in markets. Smart Contracts are a contract-like arrangement, expressed in code, where the behavior of the program enforces the terms of the contract without the need for a trusted enforcement agent.

Bot Development

When building a bot it is important to understand that you are abstracting away the UI with intelligent cognitive services. There is an abundance of web based services and applications that are locked into their own interfaces. We have arrived at a time where often we interact with apps without a UI. Why do I need a phone to call an Uber, can’t I just tell the uber bot in a Slack channel to pick me up from work and drop me off at the train. The bot needs two parameters: from and to.

Combinatorial Creativity through Technology

The right combination of people, capital, and technology in unison with definite purpose creates disruption, revolution and lasting impacts that shape the world. Every socio-economic, environmental, relational, and enterprise problem is a reflection of sentiment and belief. An acknowledgment of truth and a recognition of the necessity for action or non-action. An acceptance of, or an indifference towards a particular problem or game. Only when we question, and ask the right questions that are a catalyst for change in a particular way of doing things, can we change a particular circumstance in our favor. We need to exercise connective inquiry in every aspect of our life.

Serverless Containerization

Kubernetes and KNative are driving sequential, scalable and containerized build systems scoped within pods for state sharing.  Knative is a set of open-source components and platform level custom APIs installed on Kubernetes.

Corda Networks

Corda is a global network of nodes for enterprise-grade, real-time transactions and asset workflows. It is a platform for developing the next-generation of enterprise software where state and processes can be shared and uniform across multiple trusted entities leading to operational efficiency, speed and better customer experiences.

Deep Learning

This post is about Deep Learning and what I have learned about how to optimize deep learning models.

The Digital Denominator

The ability to transfer and hold value is intrinsic to human nature. The classic gold standard established a common denominator for countries to participate in international trade, investment, and finance. After World War II, the Bretton Woods monetary system reformed the gold standard and made the United States dollar the centerpiece of the global monetary order. This established a standard where the value of other currencies would float compared to the dollar which was pegged at 35 dollars per ounce of gold.

Digital Drive

How to become a founder in something, be the expert on it. Be the best. Gain as much specialized knowledge about that. Use digital channels to scale the bounty, leverage the internet. leverage screen space. The power is now in the software. In its ability to deliver content in agreement with a multitude of operating systems and browsers.

Digital Wage

The job market for current college graduates is at a crossroad. In our new digital age, as Marc Andreessen once said, “Software is eating the world”. The internet has emerged as the foundation for our rapid advancement in information technology and the tools and products built on top of it only continue to grow. Because of this rapid advancement, many companies have cannibalized their brick and mortar business models for new digital strategies. Once dominant companies that failed to adapt have been displaced by their digital counterparts (e.g. Amazon has substituted for Barnes and Nobles and Netflix has substituted for Blockbuster).

Ethereum and the EVM

The EVM is stack-based execution environment that uses Smart Contracts (similar to object-oriented classes) and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create dApps. When you are running a decentralized application (dApp), every instruction is executed on every node of the network. This means the operands for the instructions are taken from the stack, and it is also where the results are added. This is the low level assembly code of the EVM and the resulting flow-control functions that can be found in the Ethereum Yellow Paper. Items are pushed to the Stack and can be manipulated using POP (remove top item from the stack), SWAP (Swap item order on the stack / Limit of 16 elements), and DUP (copy and order new item on top of the stack).

Exponentially to Singularity

We are all aspirants in this process. We continue to create ways to experience our consciousnesses in an analog world through digital channels. What are the repercussions of such a rapid and  extreme broad movement towards digitization? We care more about ideas not things, mind not matter, bits, not atoms, and interactions not transactions. How will advancements such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Nanotechnology, Genomics, Robotics, Autonomous Organizations, change current socioeconomic systems, or furthermore make our current ways obsolete?

Hololens Development

The Microsoft Hololens enables an entirely new immersive experience with computing. There is yet another digital layer that we have the ability to tap into and build upon. It is profound when you deploy a holographic model from your 2D computer to the 3D world.

Interfirm Sales Automation

There is a repeatable insight that we have gathered over three years of working with Fortune 500’s on Digital Transformation projects; the next wave of enterprise software is driven through inter-firm sales automation leveraging shared global state, governance mechanisms and organizational incentives.

Interoperability Protocols

There is a repeatable insight that we have gathered over three years of working with Fortune 500’s on Digital Transformation projects; the next wave of enterprise software is driven through inter-firm sales automation leveraging shared global state, governance mechanisms and organizational incentives.

Lean Startup

Third Presentation and by far the most insightful was by Jerome Engel, Entrepreneurship Teacher at UC Berkeley. Jerry and Steve Blank have developed a model called the “Lean Startup”. I read an article about it in Niza a few weeks ago in the Harvard Business Review. Everything he talked about yesterday validated my thoughts about this model.

Lightning Network

This is a quick introduction to calling the Ethereum Virtual Machine using the web3 API, compiling Solidity Smart Contracts, and traversing content addressed data structures on the Interplanetary File System.

IPFS and the Merkle Forest

This is a quick introduction to calling the Ethereum Virtual Machine using the web3 API, compiling Solidity Smart Contracts, and traversing content addressed data structures on the Interplanetary File System.

DappScape Provisonal

Embodiments of the invention described in this specification relate generally to systems and methods for integrating and utilizing blockchain technology, and more particularly, to a method for integrating an event-driven enterprise platform with a blockchain ledger and a Salesforce and Hyperledger blockchain event integration engine. Companies of all sizes are trying to figure out how to connect their CRM platform to a distributed ledger or blockchain. The problem is that they have data silos that are not connected in any way to a shared replicated ledger. Other systems run in seperate silos. This integration engine allows multiple companies to use Salesforce as an interface for a replicated business network. Therefore, what is needed is a way to take Salesforce as an event driven platform and connect it to Hyperledger Fabric as an event driven blockchain protocol.

Multi-Protocol Blockchain Computing

lending is decreasing and lenders become more risk averse which leads to debt service repayments become more difficult. as debt service repayments decrease, credit-worthiness become more of a factor for net new loans. the credit that is available in the currency decreases, therefore there is a lack of income to service existing debt payments.

Corda Network Map Setup

Business Network Operators today have superpowers at their fingertips to run massive enterprise-grade business networks as an infrastructure provider in addition to the opportunity to develop application specific software to manage the networking and delivery of enterprise blockchain networks

On Bitcoin

By definition it is information creation in the purest form. It is quantum in that a bitcoin address exist in a digital layer thats function is created on a spent output and used on input. That act of transferring a bitcoin is that which creates the value.

On Debt Cycles

lending is decreasing and lenders become more risk averse which leads to debt service repayments become more difficult. as debt service repayments decrease, credit-worthiness become more of a factor for net new loans. the credit that is available in the currency decreases, therefore there is a lack of income to service existing debt payments.

On IBC

IBC is like TCP/IP for Blockchain Networks. Interoperability is a key component for developing the next generation of blockchain and cryptographic networks by having traversable and configurable chains that have metadata that is immutable but data that is mutable. Metadata can control governance structures, consensus algos, modifications for different type of blockchain transaction mechanisms and other types of modules. The inter-blockchain communication protocol is a catalyst for the polycentric interchain.

On IPLD

Content addressing is a true computational advancement in the way that we think about adding and retrieve content on the web. We can take existing databases and use the various parts of the IPFS protocol to build clusters of nodes that are serving content in the form of IPLD structures.

On Libra

Facebook announced it’s open-source Libra Blockchain and cryptocurrency today in it’s efforts to create a global financial transaction system. This is a game changer. One of the largest companies in the world just launched their own cryptocurrency and it will not be the last. Facebook is taking advantage of a decade of innovation and built on the learnings and innovation of other crypto protocols for state transitions, networking and consensus. It also comes without a lot of the technical debt that other projects have. It is a public yet centralized cryptocurrency and from a regulatory standpoint it is yet to be determined how regulators and central banks react to the new financial protocol.

The Other Side of the Coin

Electricity. Light, Vibes, and Energy It is an electrical universe. We are aspirants in it. All connected. Telepathy is real. Its profound. Energy always follows thought. Knowledge: To rightly direct force currents. Learn knowledge vs. Activity knowledge, knowing the difference is power. Idea to Product: Taste and Design. Zen. Simplicity.

The Rise of Rust and Blockchain

The Rust programming language is redefining the blockchain space very rapidly. It is my goal to learn this language through an evaluation of blockchain protocols, peer-to-peer networking layers and to understand how the concepts of ownership and modules will drive forward the industry as a whole.

Scalable Blockchain Protocols

There is a concept of polyglot persistence which essentially means certain databases are meant for certain reasons. You have SQL database, noSQL databases, graph databases, blockchains, distributed fault-tolerant consensus ledgers, CRDTS; all of these different types of protocols. They have different consensus mechanisms, data models, query languages, state change and message ordering models such as validators or orderers; but in order to effectively scale they need to be to interoperate and need to be able to complement each other.

A State of Mining

There’s something about setting up a computer that prints out a digital currency while you sleep. It could be knowing that you are turning electricity into a globally tradable commodity. It could be knowing that you have setup a small stake in a global socio-economic experiment much larger than yourself. Whatever it is, the concept of digitally “mining” something is captivating by nature. This incentivized distribution and transaction verification mechanism is the backbone of the Bitcoin network.

Means of State Replication

Decentralized and permissionless state replication as well as distributed application specific state replication are defining the next era of computing. Replication of data on distributed systems using leaders and workers, distributed micro-services and containers, peer-to-peer blockchain protocols, UTXOs, and digitally enforceable agreements and agents. Blockchain is the next generation database architecture for trust minimized computing.

Stateset

Stateset is a next-generation, secure, sales and finance automation platform for the world. There will be a collective oneness for all businesses where contracts, assets, capital, transactions and messages can be securely transacted freely without intermediaries or enforcement agents. Our vision for the enterprise software, SaaS computing and financial services industry is there will be an interoperable network of blockchains using a composable set of distributed b2b business and financial workflows that have a shared common global view between organizations.

Stateset Whitepaper

A statically generated progressive web application on top of an interoperable decentralized, replicated, authoritative global state machine with minimal trust between nodes would allow for the creation of a modern distributed enterprise sales and finance automation platform. Such a network would have many useful applications in eCommerce, finance, insurance, healthcare and more. We present Stateset, a distributed sales and finance automation network, and describe in detail how it achieves the goal of a globally distributed system shared between firms, providing a secure and state-of-the-art platform for managing sales and finance operations. Stateset is built on 10 fundamental technologies; Cosmos-SDK Blockchain Application Framework, a UTXO based State Machine, Tendermint BFT Consensus Engine, Trusted Executable Environments (TEE) for Private and Verifiable Computation, a Deterministic JVM (DJVM), IPFS for content addressed networking and storage, IBC for transport, authorization and ordering with other blockchain networks, Next.js React framework, Hasura GraphQL API Engine and Agoric.

Uniswap

In v1, v2: liquidity is distributed along an x*y=k price curve, with assets reserved for all prices between 0 and infinity.

Web3: Beyond Cloud Computing

lending is decreasing and lenders become more risk averse which leads to debt service repayments become more difficult. as debt service repayments decrease, credit-worthiness become more of a factor for net new loans. the credit that is available in the currency decreases, therefore there is a lack of income to service existing debt payments.

Zero To One

Today I finished the book Zero to One and I wanted to go over exactly what parts I highlighted and took note of, and what passages I wrote “THIS.” in the margin of. Overall I think the book is following the theme of the importance of asking the right questions. The author, Peter Thiel of the Paypal mafia, explains what questions and answers are necessary to successfully re-create the world we live in in order to preserve it for the future.

On Zero Knowledge Proofs

Honest computation through Zero Knowledge Proofs is a set of steps. It is this complex math and application of the cryptographic primitives that are ultimately provide proofs. Forms of Zero-Knowledge proofs provide post-quantum secure, scalablity and privacy improvements to blockchain based, game theory driven software applications that can provide an honest deduction of the steps taken to reach a provable outcome.