Libsyn Directory

A Tour of Blockstack’s Decentralized Computing Network With Aaron Blankstein

Release Date: 09/30/2019

Bringing Traditional Tooling Services to Serverless

QuantLayer Podcast

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:...

AWS, GCP, and Azure: The Tradeoffs of Serverless Architectures

QuantLayer Podcast

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 - What is Serverless? - Squadex -...

Databases and NoSQL: MongoDB’s Approach to Companies with Scaling Data Requirements

QuantLayer Podcast

Relational databases versus NoSQL is of interest today given growing data requirements for businesses. Real-time, internet of things, storing geodata, financial data are examples where traditional relational databases don’t make the cut required for modern systems. We discuss the successes and failings of relational databases, and how MongoDB’s approach to NoSQL data structures allow them to serve specific customer problems with specialized solutions. We look at some customer case studies and finish up with their business model. Topics: What MongoDB is Their database Their overview What...

Cloud Computing at the Edge: An Overview of Fastly (FSLY)

QuantLayer Podcast

Edge computing is a topic that isn’t getting enough coverage. We’ve covered CDNs like CloudFlare before, but we wanted to look at Fastly, an edge computing player that went public early in 2019. On this episode, we cover edge computing topics like rapidly purged caching. We run through a few case studies of the value edge computing brings some of Fastly’s customers. We discuss major risks that the company might face and postulate on why we think they’re trading at a discount compared to other SaaS companies like CloudFlare ($NET) and Elastic ($ESTC). Topics: QuantLayer Mission...

Financial Services APIs and Silvergate Capital

QuantLayer Podcast

There has been a lot of interest around developer-first banking APIs recently. On this episode, we go over recent tech IPO Silvergate Capital (ticker $SI), which is a digital currency focused bank and settlement network. We discuss their business, particularly around digital currency initiatives and their Silvergate Exchange Network (or SEN). We get into the weeds of what it means to claim to be an API first financial services company. Enjoy the episode. Topics: On Silvergate Capital QuantLayer mission statement analysis Overview of Silvergate Capital Digital Currency Initiative Silvergate...

Chips, Chips, Chips: Canaan Mining, NVIDIA, AMD, ASICs, GPUs, AI and ML chipmakers

QuantLayer Podcast

Recently, there has been a lot of recent interest in customized semiconductors. Bitcoin mining has highlighted the interest in ASICs, or application specific chips, and as we move up the customized application layer stack, discussion of AI and ML chips becomes necessary. On this episode, we look at Canaan Mining, a chinese Bitcoin mining chip manufacturer. And we look at them in the context of growing trends in AI and ML chips. We compare and contrast AMD and NVIDIA and discuss the new growth in startups in the traditionally capital intensive space. We finish up with what you should be on the...

Discussing a Parallel Financial System with Barney Mannerings from Vega Protocol

QuantLayer Podcast

On this episode, we speak with Barney Mannerings, founder of Vega Protocol, which is a blockchain product initially focused on derivatives markets. Barney understands this space really well, and it was a pleasure talking to him about what he’s building at Vega. Broadly, we discuss the DeFi, or Parallel Financial System, space, and Barney talks to us about why he thinks this space is important. He explains how Vega, in many ways, augments and replaces some exchanges, and how it serves as an integration layer with other protocols. We finish up with some areas of tech that Barney is excited...

Datadog: A Developer Friendly Monitoring and Analytics Product or Ecosystem?

QuantLayer Podcast

On this episode, we dig into Datadog’s (Ticker: DDOG) IPO prospectus. We discuss their approach to analytics and monitoring, and how companies can benefit from using them. We look at a few case studies of how companies derive value from their product, and one in particular, that can generate value from its use. We also run through their developer-friendly offering and how quickly the product can be incorporated into a system. We spend a little time with their financials and then discuss our view of thinking about them as a product versus an ecosystem. Topics: What Datadog is Anecdotes of...

Content Delivery Networks, DDOS Protection and Bot Fighting: CloudFlare as a Web Performance and Security Company

QuantLayer Podcast

We go over the CloudFlare IPO prospectus, which calls itself a “Web Performance and Security Company.” We discuss their mission statement, their stated competitive advantages, risks they may face and a quick overview of their financials. Topics: The Web Performance and Security Company Cloudflare's mission Companies putting mission statements int their prospectuses How would an early stage startup use Cloudflare versus a Fortune 500 On "Our Industry" section On "Why We Win" section Disruptive Business Model Ease of Use Efficient Go-to-Market Model Product Innovation and Velocity...

How Ron Lichty Manages the Unmanageable: Topics on Software Management, Agile Processes, and Making Software Hum

QuantLayer Podcast

Software Consultant Ron Lichty joins us to talk about all things software management. Ron has a treasure trove of experience helping teams accelerate and amplify their software practices. We look at the history of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects. We talk about his time as a product manager at Apple and his work with Charles Schwab at the time they launched their electronic trading platform. Ron articulates his views on the different types of developers out there and how to motivate them. We finish up with a couple areas Ron is excited about: Blockchain and Virtual...

More Episodes

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/

TOPICS