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.