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On The Brink with Castle Island


May 3, 2021

Nicholas Gregory, CEO of CommerceBlock, joins the show to talk about their new statechain implementation, Mercury. In this episode: 

  • Origins of CommerceBlock
  • Nicholas' prior career in martial arts
  • Nicholas' underground MMA club in NY
  • Did Roger Ver take the most expensive BJJ lesson ever?
  • The purpose of CommerceBlock's Mainstay system
  • The difference between OpenTimestamps and Mainstay
  • How sidechains evolved from the original vision and where they are today
  • What can Bitcoin learn from Ethereum?
  • Nic's rundown of privacy-enhancing technologies
  • Centralized mixers versus coinjoin versus statechains for privacy
  • How statechains allows you to send a UTXO without an on-chain transaction
  • Trust drawbacks and caveats in using statechains
  • CommerceBlock's Mercury statechain implementation
  • Statechains as virtual opendimes
  • Synergies between statechains and Lightning
  • Nicholas' thoughts on Bitcoin scalability
  • Statechain timelines

Sponsor notes:

Copper is transforming how institutional investors engage with digital assets by developing award-winning custody and next-gen trading infrastructure. Headquartered in London, the firm is scaling rapidly across Asia and North America to bring its suite of products to a wider pool of institutional investors. To learn more visit copper.co or reach out on Twitter, @CopperHQ

Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.