
Blockchain at Berkeley - ca98am79
https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/
======
jameskegel
There's a lot of pessimism in the comments here, and I feel like I'm the only
one interested in where this will go. I can identify with what some of you are
saying, but it is still interesting regardless. Distributed tech has some of
the most fascinating projects right now. Here's a few examples:

Distributed file storage: Sia [1] and Storj [2] are both using blockchain tech
to form a dropbox-like atmosphere where you can rent space for as little as
2c/GB. Renters can rent out their extra storage, while miners can mine and
sell their units or use them on file storage to pay rent for their data.

Decentralized Content Platform: Steem-it. Very interesting concept here about
compensating content creators with the currency that the platform surrounds.
It bears somewhat of a resemblance to Reddit. [3]

Private yet fungible cryptocurrency: Monero (XMR) is a cryptocurrency on the
rise that has privacy baked in, with the ability to opt-in to making your
transaction public. It uses Ring Confidential Transactions [4] to mix the
transactions and reduce the chances of the participants being identified to an
almost 0 chance. It is ASIC resistant [5], has solid governance and dev team,
and can even be used on hardware wallets like Tresor with a bit of hacking
[6].

[1] -
[https://www.sia.tech/whitepaper.pdf](https://www.sia.tech/whitepaper.pdf)

[2] - [https://storj.io/storj.pdf](https://storj.io/storj.pdf)

[3] - [https://steemit.com/steemit/@panenka/what-is-steemit-and-
how...](https://steemit.com/steemit/@panenka/what-is-steemit-and-how-does-it-
work)

[4] -
[https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1098.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1098.pdf)

[5] -
[https://monero.stackexchange.com/a/138](https://monero.stackexchange.com/a/138)

[6] - [https://forum.getmonero.org/4/academic-and-
technical/2495/ex...](https://forum.getmonero.org/4/academic-and-
technical/2495/experimental-trezor-firmware-testing)

Disclosure: There could be some bias, because I'm long on all of these except
Storj, so I'm including sources that hopefully will allow you to make your own
decision without me being preachy.

~~~
nugget
I like the concept of Sia but wouldn't the coin value be 1) loosely tied to
Dropbox et al storage costs and 2) deflationary over time as storage costs are
continually decreasing?

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tudorconstantin
I think blockchain technologies have the potential to disrupt whole industries
and I'm glad to see that students at world renowned universities are backing
it up. There's a student group from MIT that works on something mysterious
related to litecoin: [http://litecoin.mit.edu](http://litecoin.mit.edu)

~~~
dekz
Interestingly enough, it is launching when BIP148 activates for Bitcoin.

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arthurcolle
'Blockchain' is literally the least interesting part of cryptocurrencies and
their applications. its a boring flat file structure that is an artifact of
needing many clients independently deriving a shared ledger, nothing more and
nothing less. the interesting part is how you can bootstrap issuance of a new
asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified
computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced}
units.

~~~
elmigranto
My layman understanding is that blockchain is literally singly linked list,
except of "nextNode" you have "parentNode" pointer (which actually checks that
parent is valid for "parenting" :)

The important part is how blocks get added over network, and decentralized
consensus of the addition. (Well, socioeconomic phenomenon of adding monetary
value to all that jazz is pretty cool too!)

~~~
avaer
There's a bit more to it. Proof of work hashing and ledger consensus rules and
difficulty targets and fee schedules and forks.

It's still all standard bachelor's degree algorithms, and I agree with the gp
that it's not the interesting part. The interesting part is using these
algorithms for social consensus on value.

~~~
kobeya
I disagree those are essential. Federated chains like Elements Alpha are also
considered block chains but lack many of those properties. I think it really
is the case that a "block chain" is merely a singly linked list with hash
linkages.

~~~
icebraining
But that's just an hash chain, it has existed for longer than the blockchain.
For example, all digital invoices in my country are hash-chained, to prevent
the merchant from swapping one for another, and this standard was published
before Bitcoin.

~~~
DennisP
That sounds interesting. What is the standard called? I'd love to read more
about it.

~~~
icebraining
SAF-T:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T)

It's not that special, each invoice gets assigned as hash of (invoice number +
total amount + date of emission + hash of previous invoice). Besides having to
send that XML file to the IRS each month with all the issued invoices, the
hash also gets printed on the invoice given to the client (paper or PDF), so
it gets tricky to change the past without getting caught.

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latenightcoding
Honestly, it just looks like a group of students piggybacking on Berkeley's
reputation to make some money doing blockchain consulting

~~~
akhosla
Hi there, I am one of the executives of Blockchain at Berkeley. Happy to see
we're getting some attention on here! I would love to clear some things up
about what we do. :)

We're a student group (mostly undergraduate) that runs somewhat like a non-
profit. We focus on all things related to cryptocurrency and decentralized
tech (more simply put, blockchain - that's at least how the world sees it).

In the case of consulting, no one is actually pocketing money for themselves.
While there is money involved, it is essentially a donation contract between
us and our clients. Everything goes back towards the organization and the
cause. We all work for free in that sense, and we reward the community with
what we earn where we can.

What we do for consulting is mostly on the lines of Ethereum smart contract
PoCs with front-ends. It's a lot of investment for a company to make their
engineers go out and do this themselves, but not unreasonable for some
students with a lot of motivation and decent programming knowledge to learn
and build. We don't ask for much so companies are happy to work with the group
of amazing students we have here to benefit the cause. ;)

Fundamentally, the whole thing is a learning experience for those who lead,
those who consult, and even those who teach. Everyone who's a part of us at
the end of the day is learning. We try to reach professional standards where
we can - we love the personal development aspect that grew from so many people
putting in their efforts to make the org a reality.

Blockchain at Berkeley does a few things beyond consulting - we run an
undergraduate cryptocurrency course during the school year and post materials
online (see blockchain.berkeley.edu/decal), we host events with well-known
industry speakers and workshops for the public to join which can be found on
Facebook, and we also teach executives about the technology in custom
sessions. We're also working on an Ethereum Dapp course which will be offered
Fall 2017 at UC Berkeley and will be recorded for the public with open sourced
materials.

You could say we're just trying to demystify buzzwords for the world!

If you have questions or are interested in talking, you can ping me
personally: akash@blockchain.berkeley.edu

~~~
atomical
Does anyone in your group receive ether or tokens from your work with
Ethereum?

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avaer
Tangential: is "blockchain" a Proper Noun? This page can't seem to decide.

I always thought this phenomenon came from journalists writing about
blockchains not understanding that a blockchain is a data structuture and not
a singular proper entity, but I give Berkeley more credit. So what's up?

~~~
QML
Blockchain @ Berkeley is a student-led group, so maybe that's why.

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x30u9340
Many elite schools have groups of students building organizations. Wake Forest
has an organization advised founders of Storj and Tilt, as well as alums
working at firms like Microsoft.

[http://wakefintech.club/](http://wakefintech.club/)
[https://articles.wakefintech.club/](https://articles.wakefintech.club/)

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koolba
I don't understand what this is. Is it a consulting company run by students?
Is it normal to be able to use the name (and sub domain) of your school like
this for a for-profit pursuit?

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adi2412
This doesn't seem to open in Firefox on OSX for me. Anyone else facing an
issue?

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theprotocol
The site runs abysmally for me (Firefox/Win10). It's on the verge of crashing
my browser.

~~~
richardknop
Ditto for me. Chrome on MacBook Pro is grinding to a halt.

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gfredtech
How do I join the slack team?

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Temasik
You guys should checkout the one they did on iota the blockchainless
cryptocurrency using direct acylic graph

