On 24 Feb. John Domingue, the Director of KMi, hosted a technical talk titled ‘Ethereum – A Blockchain Platform’ by Konstantin Kudryavtsev (Head of Technical Relations – Eth Core Ltd.) at the KMi Podium. It was well attended with representatives from several OU departments (i.e. Business School, MCT, Law etc.).
The highlight of this talk was Ethereum (www.ethereum.org) – an open source crowd-funded blockchain technology platform that has recently gained a lot of attention in the industry and media. Blockchain technology in particular is interesting because it offers an alternative model of network computing platform that is decentralised and trustless, the underlying properties that made Bitcoin popular.
Unofficially branded as Bitcoin 2.0, Ethereum claims to have overcome several deficiencies of the earlier Bitcoin technology so that it can be used for purposes other than just transferring currency. Recently, IBM and Samsung demonstrated how smart Internet of Things (IoT) devices based on decentralised platforms such as Ethereum can become autonomous and perform transactions by themselves. In this talk Konstantin presented an overview of Ethereum’s ecosystem, delved deeper into demystifying the platform with regards to what worked and what didn’t and finally provided some guidance on using ‘smart contracts’.
A recording of the webcast can be found at – http://stadium.open.ac.uk/2650
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