Emin Gün Sirer is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University and Co-director of IC3 (Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts)

He has made numerous contributions to both Bitcoin & Ethereum. His research spans, networking, distributed systems, and operating systems.

Professor Sirer created Karma – the first cryptocurrency to use a distributed mint-based proof-of-work – 6 years before Bitcoin existed.  

In this episode, we discuss:

• Emin’s invention – Karma – the first decentralized cryptocurrency pre-dating Bitcoin
• The pros and cons of Segwit2x (which has now been abandoned)
• Little-known aspects of Bitcoin’s architecture and history such as the Bitcoin Relay, Falcon, and Fiber networks, selfish mining, the lightning network, sidechains, and much more
• We also discuss some of the relatively unknown academics who contributed the theoretical foundations to what we now know as Bitcoin