Christoph Jentzsch. His background is in Theoretical Physics and he’s been part of the Ethereum project since 2014 as a lead tester. At the end of 2015, he co-founded Slock.it, working on decentralized sharing economy through the connection of blockchain and IoT (Internet of Things). One of the more famous projects that he was part of was the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – God Favorite online tool? — GIthub How many hours of sleep do you get? — 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Avoid the bug in the DAO”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Christoph to the show 02:20 – DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization 02:26 – It is a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain which aims at connecting people to pull their funds together and run small contracts 02:45 – It failed and all the people got refunded 03:10 – Christoph believes that Anthony Di Iorio is one of the founders of Ethereum 03:24 – As a lead tester for Ethereum in 2014, Christoph was responsible for driving tests 03:39 – Consensus tests are for client implementation 04:10 – Nathan’s analogy of cryptocurrency using railroad tracks 04:55 – Augur has launched their own token on top of Ethereum 05:18 – They created their own token of value in exchange of the virtual currency of ether 05:47 – There has been a lot of ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) lately and there has been opinions around them 06:03 – Bitcoin was always meant for virtual currency 06:09 – While Etherium has a virtual currency too called ether, its actual purpose is to be an open source platform to build decentralized applications or Dapps 06:22 – People now create simple Dapps issuing a token on the Ethereum blockchain to fund Dapps projects 06:32 – People thought DAO was an ICO but it wasn’t 06:35 – DAO has collected a hundred million dollars in ether 06:44 – After that, many ICOs have gone out 07:40 – There are only a few hundred people who send ether into their contract 08:11 – There was an article Nathan had read regarding Bitcoin’s current problem 08:28 – The main problem is public blockchains are not scaling 08:38 – In the protocol, one blockchain can only have 1 megabyte 09:04 – There is now a high demand that leads to a higher price 10:33 – Everybody can take part in the cryptocurrency game 11:45 – People can create their own blockchain but they’re missing the network effect 12:18 – There are some minors who control the network 12:48 – As long as there are users in the system, they don’t mind the minors 12:54 – Minors serve the blockchain, but Christoph believes the users are the ones in-charge 13:21 – After the DAO failed, there was a discussion of how things should be done 13:27 – Some are saying to split the blockchain into 2 versions: the new version is where people get refunded and the old version is the hackers who have the money 14:58 – There are now 2 Ethereum classes: ethereum classic and ethereum 15:19 – Christoph’s focus is now on Slock.it where they’ve built a decentralized sharing economy 16:02 – It is built over the public ethereum and they don’t have tokens 16:17 – They’re using ether as a payment 16:33 – Most startups are called ICOs and make their own tokens to fund themselves 16:40 – Slock.it is VC funded with a seed funding of $2M 18:06 – Slock.it isn’t currently getting any payment but they will in the future 18:38 – Slock.it collaborates with Innogy 18:51 – Innogy allows electric charging stations to connect with smart contracts in the blockchain 19:00 – A user can charge his car, making him enter the smart contract 19:10 – If you’re the owner of a charging station and you have an electric car, you can set the price for the station and offer it to public 20:05 – Noke padlocks can now be open and closed through Bluetooth and Slock.it has added a payment option where it can be opened by paying 20:34 – Slock