RelayNode NYC #19 - September 16
Welcome to RelayNode NYC Area edition! The NYC blockchain ecosystem is growing rapidly. Our goal is to harness its energy and innovation for the benefit of New Yorkers and provide a weekly curated list of interesting content, upcoming events, and local jobs.
Some personal thoughts from this week…
Last week, I attended #DeFiSummit in London. Although I enjoyed meeting many other DeFi/Open Finance enthusiasts and hearing various panels, the highlight was undoubtedly executing a pilot transaction with Paperchain -- the first tokenization of earned but unpaid royalty payments. We advanced $60K in music streaming revenue using Paperchain's pricing algorithm, the Centrifuge Tinlake platform and MakerDAO (etherscan transaction here and live financing here). Paperchain’s customer was paid their August streaming revenue on September 10, instead of October 31.
Paperchain is a media analytics company and non-bank loan originator. The company prices the daily analytics data of digital media platforms across streaming providers (e.g. Spotify, Apple Music etc.), allowing media companies to immediately recognize and advance forthcoming revenue. Paperchain’s mission is to solve the problem of expensive capital and long-pay cycles in the media industry through a new model of decentralized lending and programmable banking.
To be able to borrow on-chain Paperchain used Tinlake. Tinlake is a set of smart contracts that enables borrowers to draw loans against non-fungible assets, such as invoices, royalty payments or warehouse receipts. This is done by issuing an ERC20 token against all of the collateral locked up in the Tinlake contract to be used within Multi-Collateral Dai. Anything that can be represented on-chain as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) can be financed using the Tinlake infrastructure. The NFT is an on-chain representation of an individual real-world asset which becomes tradeable, assignable and easily fundable. Tinlake is built and operated by Centrifuge, an open protocol for the financial supply chain.
The funding was provided by the Maker Foundation. The Maker Foundation is the entity which builds the smart contract platform on the Ethereum blockchain that backs and stabilizes the value of Dai, a collateral-backed cryptocurrency, with a value stable to the U.S. dollar. Its platform allows users to lock assets into a Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) and draw the Dai token for this CDP in a ruleset determined by the MKR token holders. In the coming months, the Maker Foundation will release Multi-Collateral Dai, a version of Dai collateralized with multiple asset types. The Maker Foundation believes that unlocking the value of real world assets (non-blockchain native) is an important step in scaling Dai to a global audience.
Many lessons learned (to be recapped in future blog posts) and still some steps to go to full automation and productization, but this pilot transaction is the first step towards real-time payments for media companies and unlocking the $100B trapped across the media ecosystem in accounts receivables.
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RelayNode NYC is curated by:
Advisor @ Paperchain fmr Associate @ Techstars' Blockchain Accelerator, Co-president @ Wharton FinTech
Director of Community & Growth @TQ Tezos, ex-Head of Growth @Stellar/Lightyear, Side Hustle @Dystopia Labs
Things to read
Funding & Exits
Blockstack PBC, a decentralized computing network and app ecosystem, announced it successfully raised $23M across its SEC-qualified Reg A+ and Reg S token offerings from more than 4,500 individuals and entities.
CasperLabs, an open-source blockchain platform working to improve Ethereum 2.0 scalability based on research by Vlad Zamfir, raised $14.5M in a Series A led by financier Terren Peizer via his personal holding company Acuitas Group Holdings, with participation from Arrington XRP Capital, Consensus Capital, Blockchange Ventures and Axiom Holdings Group, among others. The funds will be used to speed up product development and bring more engineers on board.
Dapper Labs, the gaming company behind CryptoKitties, raised $11M in financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Digital Currency Group, and CoinFund. The company also announced new partnerships with leading entertainment publishers such as Warner Music Group and Ubisoft.
Open Finance / DeFi
Dmitriy Berenzon, Research Partner at Zenith Ventures, provides an overview of synthetic assets and explains why synthetics are crucial to the maturation of the cryptoasset market. Meanwhile, UMA launched a platform to create tokens that can track the price of “anything,” from foreign exchange rates to stock prices.
Coinbase announced it has contributed $1M worth of USDC to both Compound and dYdX, as part of its new USDC Bootstrap Fund. Unlike Coinbase Ventures, which invests in startups and takes an equity stake, the bootstrap fund will add to protocols’ lending pools and return interest when counterparties borrow from it.
In the latest episode of Unchained, Sebastian Sonntag, the new CEO of LocalBitcoins, and Mika Impola, software developer at LocalBitcoins, explain how the peer-to-peer bitcoin trading company has changed over time, the range of payment options available amongst sellers on the site, and how peer-to-peer trading differs from country to country.
Layer 1
Dapper Labs announced its own blockchain platform, called Flow, designed for scalable decentralized computation and superior user experience.
The founder of Zelle, Mike Kennedy, joins InterStellar as their CEO. The Stellar Development Foundation also recently announced plans to airdrop 2 billion XLM tokens to users of privacy-focused chat app Keybase over the next 20 months.
Sean Bowe, an engineer and cryptographer at Electric Coin Company (ECC), has discovered a technique, named Halo, which achieves practical zero-knowledge recursive proof composition without the need for a trusted setup. The Electric Coin Company is exploring the use of Halo for Zcash to both eliminate trusted setup and to scale Zcash at Layer 1 using nested proof composition.
Telegram released the code for its TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain on a test network portal.
The team behind Enigma, a privacy focused layer 2 solution for Ethereum, introduced a new coin mixer to help shield Ethereum transactions.
The EOS network experiences overloads resulting in no extra bandwidth available on a free basis due to an exploit of the EOS gambling game EOSPlay.
Other
Linda Xie, Co-Founder at Scalar Capital, pens her views on decentralized identity and reputation.
The Stanford GSB Center for Social Innovation released its 2019 Blockchain for Social Impact report. The report focused on organizations in the following key sectors: Agriculture and land rights, Climate and the environment, Digital identity, Financial inclusion, Governance and democracy, and Health
Highlighted Industry Jobs (non-exhaustive list for NYC / remote):
If you would like to highlight jobs or internships in future editions, please email links here.
Filecoin - Community Manager
Gemini - Various
Civil - Software Engineer (Backend)
Paxos - Strategic Partnerships
Paperchain - Data Engineer
ConsenSys - Various
Chainlink - Developer Evangelist
Chainalysis - Various
The Block - Operations Associate
Messari - Various Marketing / Engineering
Ripple - Director, Institutional Markets
LedgerX - Biz Dev / Engineering
Pantera Portfolio Co - Various
Alkemi - Smart Contract Architect
SeedInvest (Circle) - Capital Markets Associate
R3 - Various Engineering
Events this week:
CM NYC Featuring A Fireside Chat W/ Wasim Ahmad, Chief Crypto Officer, Vault12 (Free)
When: Monday, September 16, 2019, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Where: Lounge At The Rose Hill Hotel, 34 E 32nd Street · New York, ny
Vault12 is the first personal crypto security solution to secure, store and protect crypto assets, safely from anywhere in the world. Unlike conventional approaches that rely on centralized cloud storage or on local storage, Vault12 brings together the decentralized and distributed power of blockchain to secure crypto assets. By harnessing a customer’s trusted personal network, crypto assets are encrypted, split and distributed on a mesh of mobile devices, dramatically reducing the chances of hacks or accidental loss.
UMA: Intro to Decentralized Finance & Financial Derivatives on the Blockchain(Free)
When: Monday, September 16, 2019, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Where: WeWork Dumbo Heights, 81 Prospect St · Brooklyn
The Flatiron School // Access Labs are proud to support the Ethereum Blockchain Devs Study Group. This is a regular gathering for Blockchain Devs of all levels to learn, present, work on in collaboration with one another or on solo projects in this fast-growing field. Our community is a welcoming space where any Ethereum and decentralized ledger related question is fair game, be it beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
6:30pm -7:00pm Intro to #DeFi, or Decentralized Finance
7:00 - 7:30pm: Intro to financial derivatives on the blockchain and demo of UMA’s infrastructure
7:30pm -8:15pm: Workshop to create synthetic assets on testnet
8:15pm - 8:30pm: Workshop to create synthetic assets on testnet
8:30pm - 9:00pm: Q&A
Second Annual Blockchain and the Law Conference (Free)
When: Monday, September 16, 2019 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)
Where: Cardozo School of Law, 55 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Blockchain technology is poised to transform the financial services industry and raises significant regulatory issues. Join us at Cardozo Law School for a unique conversation with current top federal and state regulators to discuss current challenges facing blockchain technology, virtual currencies and the law. A reception will follow the program.
BitDevs: Socratic Seminar 96 (Free)
When: Monday, September 16, 2019, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Where: NYU Stern, 44 West 4th Room 1-70 · New York, NY
If you can't make it to the main event please join us at BBar and Grill around 9:30PM. Thanks to our friends at NYU Digital Asset Forum and Chaincode Labs for food, refreshments and event space. Discussion topics: Please see our link aggregator for a list of potential discussion topics. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments section below. A final list will be posted the day before the event. https://www.zotero.org/groups/691739/devsny/items/collectionKey/A8LUFGXV
Blockchain LatinX August Community Gathering at NYC Blockchain Center (Free)
When: Tue, September 17, 2019, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Where: NYC Blockchain Center, 54 West 21st Street, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10010
The theme for this month is secure multiparty computation. It might sound a little dry, but multiparty computation or MPC for short is a technology that is being applied to everything from key management in crypto trading to long term smart cities solutions.
Blockchain and the Legacy Financial World - What would Satoshi say? ($6)
When: Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Where: Axoni, 156 5th Avenue, 7th Floor · New York, NY
In this session we discuss what makes DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology - to which blockchain is a subset) attractive for the financial world. What becomes possible? What if institutions would use the public blockchain? What are the risks of joining or missing opportunities to innovate?
IBM Developer Event: How to Write, Debug, and Test Smart Contracts (Free)
When: Wed, September 18, 2019, 6:30 PM – 8:45 PM EDT
Where: NYC Blockchain Center, 54 West 21st Street, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10010
SmartContracts are the programmatic way to determine what transactions are written to the blockchain. There are many ways to write these in Hyperledger Fabric today. Understanding how to design, develop, test, and deploy SmartContracts can be difficult to do correctly. IBM Blockchain Platform’s Visual Studio Code extension makes the creation of SmartContracts easy by streamlining the process of developing, testing, and deploying a local Hyperledger Fabric Network.
Introduction to Decentralized Exchanges (Free)
When: Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 7:00 -- 9:00 PM
Where: 142 W. 57th Street, New York, NY
During this meetup we'll talk about Ethereum, smart contracts and how they are used to build decentralized exchanges. We'll learn about what decentralized exchanges are and how they have the potential to revolutionize how securities are traded. Then we'll take a look at Metro, a project that I have been working on during nights and weekends that attempts to provide a central location to validate and settle trades on the Ethereum network using these three protocols allowing the trading of tokens, debt instruments and options on the blockchain. During this talk we will cover the following technologies: Ethereum, 0x, dYdX, and Dharma.
[Whitepaper Wednesday] Decentralized ID Specification (Free)
The Decentralized ID Spec is a W3C specification for permissionless digital identity. We'll talk about how it works and what it might mean for developers and users.
NYC / XRP Part II: The Blockchain Strikes Back (Free)
When: Thursday, September 19, 2019, 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Where: 265 W 37th St, 265 W 37th St · New York, NY
Promo Video: https://starwarsintrocreator.kassellabs.io/#!/BLmlBCI5_0daxXsjxJOL. This month's meetup will be in a Tech Talk format, with the feature presentation being: "An Intro to XRP". Light refreshments will be provided and the group will have a chance to socialize & network before we start the slides. Afterwards we may go out to a bar or restaurant, so don't run off!
Upcoming events
CryptoMondays NYC Fireside Chat with Zac Prince, CEO of BlockFi (Free)
When: Monday, September 23, 2019, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Where: Lounge at the Rose Hill Hotel, 38 E 32nd St, New York, NY 10016
This CryptoMondays NYC will feature a Fireside Chat with Zac Prince, Founder & CEO of BlockFi, which offers a suite of financial products that enable cryptocurrency holders to put their crypto to work. The company services customers worldwide, including 47 U.S. states, with interest-earning accounts and low-cost USD loans backed by crypto. BlockFi is backed by leading institutional investors.
Tezos Developer Workshop: Tezos in Capital Markets (Free)
When: Tue, September 24, 2019, 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Where: NYC Blockchain Center, 54 West 21st Street, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10010
Digital assets are beginning to drive evolution in capital markets. Institutions and investors are now taking the same structures that have been developed over hundreds of years in the global financial industry (equities, bonds, derivatives, etc.) and are representing them in code. Participants will learn how to deploy and interact with smart contracts representing security tokens on the Tezos alphanet.
Security Token NYC - Networking Event (Free)
When: Thu, September 26, 2019, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Where: Sunset Terrace at Chelsea Piers, 61 Chelsea Piers, #2nd Floor, New York, NY 10011
An informative panel discussion will take place, featuring Security Token Academy Professional Members -- attorneys specializing in securities, securities regulation, corporate and commercial finance. Panelists include:
David G. Adams, Senior Associate at Clifford Chance
Aryeh Friedman, General Counsel at SeedInvest
Jason P. Gottlieb, Partner & Chair, White Collar and Regulatory Enforcement at Morrison Cohen, LLP
Robin Sosnow, principal of Sosnow and Associates PLLC
Building Crypto & Bitcoin Trading Apps with Python ($10 – $99)
When: Monday, September 30, 2019, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Where: MiT National Land Services, One Penn Plaza · New York, NY
This is an intensive full day loaded with learning and knowledge transfer, a course in building a crypto trading system using Python. You will walk away with a deep understanding of the skill needed to build these apps, core business concepts, how to work with exchanges, websockets, 0x exchanges, machine learning and more. We'll use libraries like pandas, matplotlib and NumPy to build a trading system and analyze trade data, time series and charting. Python experience is not required but basic programming experience is.
Speaker: Professor Jamiel Sheikh is a graduate professor at Columbia, NYU and CUNY, where he teaches blockchain, performance management and data science respectively. He has an MBA from Columbia University, BBA from Baruch College and is completing an MS in Artificial Intelligence from Georgia Institute of Technology.
NYC BigApps Blockchain Demo Day ($10)
When: Thu, October 3, 2019, 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
Where: Urban Tech Hub @ Company, 335 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017
NYC BigApps Blockchain culminates the ongoing Innovation Challenge into a final Demo Day! Join us for a full day of pitches and networking, featuring our cohort of 10 startups and a showcase of other incredible projects in the NYC blockchain community.
Mondo.NYC music festival & global music / tech business conference ($99 - $598)
When: Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 4:00 PM – Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 5:00 PM
Where: Williamsburg Hotel, Brooklyn, 96 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn, NY
Mondo.NYC is the first music festival and global business conference focusing on the intersection of emerging music discovery, blockchain and other frontier technologies, and how these new applications and economies will significantly impact both music and tech industries. Emerging artists, innovators and industry insiders will connect and collaborate with fans in a mission to advance human creativity in an ever-changing world.
Notable Conferences
September 16-18 - Shanghai Blockchain Week & 5th Global Blockchain Summit (Shanghai)
October 18-19 - Eurasia Blockchain Summit (Turkey)
September 23-25 - CryptoSprings (Palm Springs)
Sep 30-Oct 1 - Korea Blockchain Week (Seoul)
October 5-6 - Cryptoeconomic Systems (Boston)
October 8-11 - Devcon 5 (Osaka, Japan)
October 8-10 - World Digital Mining Summit (Germany)
October 12 - MinerSummit 2019 (China)
October 15-16 - Crypto Invest Summit (Los Angeles)
October 19-20 - The Lightning Conference (Berlin)
October 21-23 - ACM: Advances in Financial Technologies (Zurich)
October 23-24 - CordaCon (London)
Oct 28 - Nov 3 - SF Blockchain Week (10% off with RelayNode)
November 4th-5th - Stellar Meridian (Mexico)
November 12th-13th - Capital: Global Coinmarketcap Conference (Singapore)
