Gautam Dhameja Podcasts

In this episode, we understand what is a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack and how it is relevant in context of blockchains. We also understand how DDoS attacks have negative impact on the functioning of blockchains. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or …

In this episode, we understand what is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and how it works in the Ethereum blockchain. We also look at how the EVM makes sure all nodes reach consensus while running on different kinds of hardware. It is recommended that you listen to the previous episode about virtual machines to better grasp the concepts in this ep…

In this episode, we understand what are virtual machines and how they are relevant in terms of blockchains, decentralized systems and consensus mechanisms. This will help build a foundation to understand other related concepts like EVM in later episodes. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss thi…

In this episode, we clarify what are Staking and Yield Farming, and how they are different from each other. Staking — Generally related to Proof of Stake systems. The block rewards get distributed to the stakers. If the block producer don’t follow the rules, stakers risk losing the stake and the rewards. Yield Farming — Generally related to DeFi. U…

In this episode, let’s find out how AMMs work, how the price and formulae for liquidity is determined, and what happens when the liquidity changes. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit episodes.blockshots.fm…

Initially, I wanted to do a double click on AMMs and how they work. But first I thought I should do a bit of a refresher with my new understanding of AMMs. In this episode, I have explained them with some new examples too. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get …

These days the term ‘Tokengating’ has been going around quite a bit. In this episode, let’s understand what tokengating is and how it works. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit episodes.blockshots.fm…

In the last episode, we understood how NFTs work. In this one, let’s explore top five use-cases of NFTs. From gaming to identity to real estate, let’s understand how NFTs could be used to represent several things on blockchains with full transparency. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this w…

In this episode, let’s understand how NFTs work and how different components come together to create them. There is a lot going behind the scenes from where the assets are stored to how they are linked with their token identity. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers o…

In the last episode, we learned about how zero knowledge proofs work. In this episode, let’s go a step further and explore some of their use-cases. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit episodes.blockshots.fm…

In this episode, let’s do a double click on Zero Knowledge Proofs. Let’s understand how they work and how they are implemented for blockchains. This episode goes slightly deeper into the ZK stuff, but still in a easy to understand language. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other s…

In the last episode, we touched on how rollups work. In this episode, we go a step further. Let’s understand what are Fraud and Validity proofs and how they are used in rollups. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit episodes.bloc…

In the episode 46 of Block Shots, we did a brief introduction of blockchain rollups. In this episode, we go a bit deeper into how rollups work and what components are involved in the block production and verification of rollup blocks. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscri…

You must have heard about the term Metaverse quite a bit in the last few months, ever since NFTs became famous. In this episode, let’s try to explore the most basic understanding of Metaverse and how does blockchain come into the picture. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other sub…

You must have heard this phrase quite a few times — Not your keys, not your crypto. Let’s find out, in this episode, what it actually means and how it effects you and your crypto currency holdings. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,…

Smart contracts are simply code stored and executed on a blockchain. But how do they work? What happens when a user sends a transaction to deploy or execute a smart contract? Let’s find out in this episode. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus …

Most of us are fans of computer or online gaming. In this episode, we discuss how blockchains make gaming more fun and fulfilling. They also allow different revenue streams though novel economic models in the world of gaming. Let’s explore. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other s…

In this episode, the topic is Soul Bound Tokens. In the most basic sense, they are just non transferable NFTs. However, SBTs open up quite a few interesting use-case cases for blockchains. Listen to the episode to learn more about what are Soul Bound Tokens and how they could be used in several blockchain applications. Vitalik’s blog post about SBT…

In this episode, we cover Directed Acyclic Graph or DAG. In blockchain, we have blocks as collection of transactions and the current block references the previous one, and a chain is formed. In DAG, we don’t have any blocks. Transactions directly reference previous transactions. The nodes verify the previous transactions by referencing them in new …

In this episode, we cover Inter-planetary File System (IPFS) and decentralized file storage protocols in general. We also take a slightly deeper look into how IPFS works. * NFT storage. Metadata storage of on-chain assets. * Distributed, cannot be controlled by single organization. * Censorship resistant. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This i…

In this episode, we cover Verifiable credentials. These are a standard to represent digital credentials that could be issued for an identity by an identity, and could be verified cryptographically. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,…

We need a standard for representing identity on decentralized systems to use our decentralized identity across several applications. Decentralized Identifiers or DIDs allow users and applications to represent and use identity related information in a reusable and app or platform agnostic manner. DIDs are described in a DID document. So, the main id…

Self-sovereign Identity paradigm refers to identities owned by people themselves without depending on centralized systems or organizations. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub are all centralized identity platforms. Identities created by these platforms are not exportable or usable across apps. Not in user’s control. Self-sovereign Identity (SSI) i…

In this episode, we cover Automated Market Makers or AMMs. Traditionally exchanges are based on order books. Buyers and sellers are matched with quantity and price in their orders. AMMs are different. They use a conversion formula for trades. They use decentralized liquidity pools for liquidity. Any user can send one asset and get another asset fro…

In this episode, we discuss Front-running of transactions in blockchains. It is the most common type of MEV. We also touch on Back-running and Sandwich attacks. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit episodes.blockshots.fm…

In this episode, we cover Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and how it works. Miners or Validators are responsible for selecting and including the transactions in a block. They are free to choose any transactions from the mempool. Miners can choose not to select certain transactions. They can also manipulate the order of transactions. This leads to M…

In this episode, we cover what makes Blockchains and decentralized systems censorship resistant. Centralized systems are owned or controlled by organizations. They could limit the usage of some actors depending on local laws. Decentralized systems are not controlled by any single party. They are made equal for everyone, based on the rules of the ne…

Blockchains are built for transparency and verifiability. Most of the data on a blockchain is publicly verifiable. For example, all transactions sent to bitcoin are public and anyone could query the balance of any account. Generally, this is not an issue because blockchain accounts are random strings and it is not easy to link an account to a human…

In the episode 3 of the podcast, I covered different kind of blockchain nodes and one of them is light client. In this episode, I’ll cover light clients in a bit more detail. Light clients are special in the sense that they allow more decentralization. Unlike full nodes, light clients do not process all the transactions and blocks. They only synchr…

There are different blockchains built to serve different kind of users and use-cases. Bitcoin is for peer to peer transfer of currency while Ethereum is a smart contracts platform. Flow is for NFTs while ZCash is for private transactions. What if applications and users on these blockchains need to interact or integrate with each other? Imagine a us…

A block is a collection of transactions and some metadata. Let’s take a look at how a block is produced. Let’s just assume that according to the algorithm we already have the node (validator or miner) selected to produce the next block. The first thing that this block producer node would do is to choose which block to build on. Remember blockchain …

Rollups are layer 2 blockchain scalability solutions where the execution of transactions is moved off the main blockchain. Basically, the layer 1 chain is used for keeping the ledger state and providing consensus, while the off-chain layer 2 framework — rollup-is used to execute the transactions and submit the updated state to layer 1. This approac…

Initially, there were only one kind of blockchain networks where ledger storage and execution of transactions both happened on-chain. These blockchains were not scalable because of the topics and reasons mentioned in some of the previous episodes. To achieve scalability and throughput, some solutions try to decouple or divide this work across on-ch…

When we talk about blockchain scalability — which has been the theme for some of the current episodes — we must understand how the block gas limit plays an important role in the scalability discussion. In general, for any public smart contracts blockchain, it is important to measure and charge for the resource usage while executing smart contract l…

Since its beginning, the Ethereum network has been using the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism. As we know, PoW consumes a lot of energy. Now the Ethereum network is moving to Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. The merge is when the switch from PoW to PoS is going to happen. Since the December of 2020, there has been a PoS network running in paral…

When it comes to blockchains, we use the terms performance, scalability, transactions per second (TPS) many times interchangeably. But these are all very different things. I recently read an article on a16z crypto where all these terms were nicely explained and clarified. I encourage you to read this article. https://a16zcrypto.com/why-blockchain-p…

In the last episode I spoke about blockchain scalability and how sharding is one of the ways to achieve that. In this episode, let’s do a double click on blockchain sharding. Sharding, in general, is a term associated with traditional databases. When a database grows too big, it could be divided into smaller databases across several servers based o…

Some of you must have seen on the internet that how Bitcoin and Ethereum and much slower than Visa and other centralized financial systems. The reason is blockchain scalability trilemma. Bitcoin and Ethereum have chose to be more secure and decentralized, and hence they have to give up scalability. In the last episode, I spoke about the Blockchain …

Blockchains are decentralized networks where all the data is stored and verified by all nodes. To make blockchains usable for real world use cases, they should process large amounts of data. But when all nodes have to process all the data for each block, it is not easy to process a lot of transactions quickly. Blockchains are also public and permis…

Blockchains are basically peer to peer networks of nodes. The chain progresses when majority of the nodes or peers agree on the state of the blockchain and the validity of the next block. What happens when these nodes don’t agree or when they misbehave? In a network of nodes, there could be a situation that some of the nodes are either offline, or …

The user or DApp composes a transaction with information like input parameters, cryptographic signature, and some metadata about the blockchain network and a serialized data object is created out of it. All of this happens outside the blockchain using Wallets or DApps. Transaction Submission This serialized transaction data is then sent to one of t…

Blockchains are peer to peer network of nodes. These nodes connect with each other and come to consensus on the state of the blockchain. All these nodes are basically computers running the blockchain node software. Let’s look at all the components of a blockchain node that come together to make it all possible. * Storage: This is the most basic com…

Blockchains form consensus when all the nodes agree on the data they process. This depends on the condition that the computation at each node should be deterministic. That means each node should arrive at the same output, for a particular set of inputs, no matter what hardware they are using. The deterministic nature of blockchain logic ensures str…

Blockchains are decentralized systems and are relatively slower than the centralized distributed systems. This is because decentralized systems have each node processing all the data so that they could not be hacked or influenced by a single point of control or failure. Processing all the data by all the nodes also makes things slow. In order to st…

Conventional distributed systems divide the load/work across many nodes (servers). For example, in an online banking system, when the users send their requests or transactions to the system, they are then sent to one of the servers to process them. This is how large banking systems are able to serve large number of users. They deploy many servers, …

Blockchains allow seamless and transparent distribution of tokens and these tokens can represent pretty much anything. It can be something of a financial value, identity, or right to vote that can be tokenized on the blockchain. Recall that to update the state of a blockchain, users send signed transactions, and based on the validity of these trans…

If we look at the dictionary definition of the term fungible, it says “being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind.” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fungible Let’s take an example. If you have a 1 dollar bill, you can exchange it for another 1 dollar bill. When …

Exchanges allow users to buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrencies. Just like we have stock and forex exchanges for buying and selling shares and foreign currencies, similarly we have exchanges for cryptocurrencies. In general, crypto exchanges allow buying and selling of cryptocurrencies using fiat currencies or stablecoins or other cryptocurrencie…

Cryptocurrencies are generally volatile. There are several reasons for that — low liquidity, speculation, and several other factors. There could be more reasons, but generally speaking, cryptocurrencies have been relatively more volatile compared to fiat currencies. This volatility does not help with the value transfer use cases of cryptocurrencies…

Central bank digital currencies broadly refer to the digital versions of fiat currencies. The fiat currencies are issued by the central banks of respective countries. These currencies are issued based on the economic conditions and needs for trade and commerce in a country. Previously, the fiat currencies were issued based on gold reserves. The pro…