Ep 68 Bitcoin2019 with Xan Ditkoff - Blockstack

Xan Ditkoff, Growth at Blockstack 

On episode 68 of LAB Radio, Blockstack's Head of Growth, Xan
Ditkoff chats with your host Chris Groshong from Bitcoin2019. We
discuss how great the conference was and what made it
special. 


Blockstack Xan, as I am respectfully dubbing him, has an
interesting path that led him into the crypto world. Coming
from New York to Silicon Valley in 2015 was a bit of an
adjustment. However, he knew the solutions being worked on there
were going to help impact more people globally than anything he
could do in a world of suits. When he found the Crypto and
Bitcoin Community in 2015 he knew this was the industry he was
meant to be in.
  "To me, decentralization is a means to an end." -Xan
Ditkoff 

 


His motivation stems from wanting to be a part of a
transformative technology revolution. When he first learned about
Bitcoin he knew how much it could solve and simplify the
internet's hodgepodge of technologies with it's securities
vulnerabilities and privacy issues. He views Bitcoin and
Blockchain technology as a tool that helps people associate
features, like opt-out privacy they are used to in the physical
world instead of the opt-in privacy we experience in the digital
world.  


 


Having an understanding of how banking and US capital markets
operate helped him connect the dots very quickly. Bringing things
full circle, an energy and infrastructure project Xan worked on
is adding bitcoin mining and hashing as a service for an
additional revenue stream. 


 


 


Blockstack is a decentralized computing platform and app
ecosystem. They have a developer toolkit to allow apps built on
Blockstack to require the use to give permission to access
certain personal data. That personal data is controlled by each
user and is never stored by a centralized service.


The origins of the project come from Princeton stemming back to
2013-14 and have passed through Y Combinator. When Xan joined
they were just starting to onboard projects and over the course
of the first year they learned a lot. Currently they have over
140 projects built or being built on Blockstack.


A large part for the increase in development is an incentive
called App Mining. It rewards developers or teams that have used
their technology from a pool of 100 thousand dollars. This is
allowing people to test new value propositions or business
fundamentals that may not have previously been achievable with
current systems. They even audit the apps on their network to
make sure they're not misaligned or inappropriately handling user
data.


  
In this episode Xan Ditkoff shares with us:  

 Why self sovereign identity is important?

How Blockstack approaches its users identity
security.  

A walkthrough of how to use the Blockstack platform

What he would change about the industry



 


 


Xan is most excited about the Blockstack new smart contracting
library more of which can be learned by checking out their new
whitepaper. Their library will utilize Rust.


In a more perfect world Xan wishes for an increase of cross
collaborative efforts. 


 


 The "Can't Be Evil" contest.


 


 


Further Reading and Resources:


 


  Xan Ditkoff, Growth at
Blockstack | LinkedIn | Twitter 


 


 


Blockstack | Website | Twitter | Facebook |
Linkedin | GitHub