Today’s episode features a conversation between Ari Paul - the cryptocurrency investor and co-founder of BlockTower Capital who also serves as its Chief Investment Officer - and Muneeb Ali, co-founder & CEO of Blockstack PBC.

Ari and Muneeb cover a variety of crypto developments from both a Political Science and Distributed Systems Engineering perspective. They focus particularly on the issues of scaling networks like Ethereum, whether sharding is a holy grail or not, the challenges of digital asset custody, and more.  

Show Notes
0:41 Muneeb: "How we met through Naval..."
2:33 There aren't many industries or asset classes where you can show up and be talking with the leaders almost immediately.
4:13 Muneeb: "What are you up to these days?"
7:10 Muneeb: "I'd love to get your Poli Sci perspective on a complex system being directly interacted with by users versus a very simple base layer being built on top of."
8:19 Ari: "One thing you see throughout time is some form of federalism."
10:31 Muneeb: "Imagine a mainframe computer for the entire world... it's not scalable by definition."
12:19 Muneeb: "Should you even be trying to attempt sharding at the blockchain layer?"
14:19 Muneeb: "Nodes would need near global information... which kind of kills the purpose of having shards in the first place."
16:52 Muneeb: "There's this notion - if you’re interacting with the blockchain - that smart contracts are the only interface available."
19:04 Muneeb: "Imagine a word processor... what parts do you want to hit the blockchain layer?"
24:24 Ari on how development of solutions like sharding gets going.
26:50 Muneeb: "We recently got pulled into some of the Ethereum scalability research... and recently did this public review of Casper's CBC."
29:04 Ari: "It's very frustrating to me when I discover the religion in politics of crypto."
30:03 Muneeb: "Sometimes people will ask me 'How is your Gaia storage system different FileCoin?'"
32:58 Ari: "Are you going to be integrating any Craig Wright innovations into Blockstack?"
35:34 Ari: "When you're playing poker, you want to play rational actors."
36:11 Ari: On custody and the value of vanishing.
37:07 Muneeb: "I do think [custody is] something that more and more people will start worrying about as our assets are in crypto currencies."
40:11 Ari: "Something that scares me in an existential sense: all tech is breakable."
42:30 Muneeb: "We really believe in the ability to exit."
45:32 Ari: "My concern is in the asymmetry."
47:57 Muneeb: "Look at SSL: maintained by one individual, then Heartbleed happened."
49:24 Ari: "I think it's wonderful we’ve had some Proof of Work attacks on the Ethereum Classic network... that's antifragile."
49:59 Ari: "The financial system doesn't worry about this because there's the fallback to legal."
50:57 Ari: "Andreas Antonopoulos would say Bitcoin is uncensorable because the network can block bad actors, but..."
51:28 Goodbyes.
51:52 Credits.

Today&rsquo;s episode features a conversation between Ari Paul - the cryptocurrency investor and co-founder of BlockTower Capital who also serves as its Chief Investment Officer - and Muneeb Ali, co-founder &amp; CEO of Blockstack PBC.
Ari and Muneeb cover a variety of crypto developments from both a Political Science and Distributed Systems Engineering perspective. They focus particularly on the issues of scaling networks like Ethereum, whether sharding is a holy grail or not, the challenges of digital asset custody, and more. &nbsp;
Show Notes
<ul>
<li>0:41 Muneeb: "How we met through Naval..."</li>
<li>2:33 There aren't many industries or asset classes where you can show up and be talking with the leaders almost immediately.</li>
<li>4:13 Muneeb: "What are you up to these days?"</li>
<li>7:10 Muneeb: "I'd love to get your Poli Sci perspective on a complex system being directly interacted with by users versus a very simple base layer being built on top of."</li>
<li>8:19 Ari: "One thing you see throughout time is some form of federalism."</li>
<li>10:31 Muneeb: "Imagine a mainframe computer for the entire world... it's not scalable by definition."</li>
<li>12:19 Muneeb: "Should you even be trying to attempt sharding at the blockchain layer?"</li>
<li>14:19 Muneeb: "Nodes would need near global information... which kind of kills the purpose of having shards in the first place."</li>
<li>16:52 Muneeb: "There's this notion - if you&rsquo;re interacting with the blockchain - that smart contracts are the only interface available."</li>
<li>19:04 Muneeb: "Imagine a word processor... what parts do you want to hit the blockchain layer?"</li>
<li>24:24 Ari on how development of solutions like sharding gets going.</li>
<li>26:50 Muneeb: "We recently got pulled into some of the Ethereum scalability research... and recently did this public review of Casper's CBC."</li>
<li>29:04 Ari: "It's very frustrating to me when I discover the religion in politics of crypto."</li>
<li>30:03 Muneeb: "Sometimes people will ask me 'How is your Gaia storage system different FileCoin?'"</li>
<li>32:58 Ari: "Are you going to be integrating any Craig Wright innovations into Blockstack?"</li>
<li>35:34 Ari: "When you're playing poker, you want to play rational actors."</li>
<li>36:11 Ari: On custody and the value of vanishing.</li>
<li>37:07 Muneeb: "I do think [custody is] something that more and more people will start worrying about as our assets are in crypto currencies."</li>
<li>40:11 Ari: "Something that scares me in an existential sense: all tech is breakable."</li>
<li>42:30 Muneeb: "We really believe in the ability to exit."</li>
<li>45:32 Ari: "My concern is in the asymmetry."</li>
<li>47:57 Muneeb: "Look at SSL: maintained by one individual, then Heartbleed happened."</li>
<li>49:24 Ari: "I think it's wonderful we&rsquo;ve had some Proof of Work attacks on the Ethereum Classic network... that's antifragile."</li>
<li>49:59 Ari: "The financial system doesn't worry about this because there's the fallback to legal."</li>
<li>50:57 Ari: "Andreas Antonopoulos would say Bitcoin is uncensorable because the network can block bad actors, but..."</li>
<li>51:28 Goodbyes.</li>
<li>51:52 Credits.</li>
</ul>

The Stacks Podcast is an on-going deep dive into the world of crypto networks with Blockstack PBC's CEO, Muneeb Ali, Head of Growth, Patrick Stanley, and Media Partner, Zach Valenti.

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