Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Blockchain And Cryptocurrency

Tarun Chitra, cofounder and CEO of Gauntlet, describes how his company enables crypto teams to run through simulations to see how their design choices will affect the project once it is trading. Using the cofounders' background in quantitative finance and high-frequency trading, Gauntlet uses tools from behavioral economics as well as game theory, plus real-world information such as exchange data to model outcomes after 100,000 blocks. We discuss how it makes its assumptions, how proof of stake differs from proof of work, and how the initial token distribution can affect the eventual concentration of tokens. He also reveals what design choice tends to have the greatest impact, as well as what main factor crypto teams aren't  thinking about that they should be. Plus, he talks about his involvement in the launch of Facebook's Libra project, and gives us his thoughts on the design choices Facebook made regarding the consensus algorithm, programming language and the structure of the coin. See the full show notes