The Metaverse Podcast - Decentralised Big Tech, with Leemon Baird of Hedera Hashgraph
Primer: Hedera is the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public network for the decentralized economy. In this episode of The Metaverse Podcast, host Jamie Burke speaks with Leemon Baird, their Co-Founder, about how he stumbled upon a mathematical problem that led to the development of Hedera Hashgraph.
Background
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Hashgraph
Has a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University
Has held positions as a Professor of Computer Science at the US Air Force Academy
Has been the Co-Founder of several startups
Hashgraph As A Distributed Ledger Technology
In a blockchain, there’s a chain. As it starts to branch off, branches are chopped off
Blockchains just mean Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) — a ledger
For Hashgraph, a whole lattice is created and placed in order
Hashgraph is fast, secure, asynchronous, and Byzantine fault-tolerant
What Led Him To This Problem?
Started as a hobby because he likes math problems
“And it wasn't that I wanted to make a better blockchain, I wanted to solve a fun math problem. I have a whole bunch of math problems that I play with for years. And sometimes I will literally go decades and just keep working on the problem. And I'll probably never solve it, but it's fun.”
- Leemon Baird
Was trying to convince himself that it was impossible to have speed and security at the same time
He thought about the problem over a few years
Realized that if you were to include hashes of the last 2 messages at the bottom of every message, all of the messages could be tied together:
The last message you received
The last message you created
This enables both speed and security
Started Hedera with his co-founder Mance Harmon
How Long Has This Problem Been In His Head? How Has It Been Informed By His Background And Experience?
💡 Leemon Baird has founded multiple startups. Has been involved in both research and commercial settings.
Has been doing research his entire life. Had fun solving math problems and algorithms
Started a number of businesses. Had to be careful about building businesses that are cool but have no real-world practicality
“The longest math proof I ever did was like 20 pages long. I’ve been publishing in math journal and it is 100% useless. No one will ever use it for anything.”
- Leemon Baird
Started thinking about this problem in 2012
In 2015, he realized that they could make a graph with hashes tying together a hash graph
Their Governance Framework
Their ledger is public and anyone can use it
Running a node requires permission
Their governance is decentralized
Have over 27 council members who are enormous organizations, top 10 universities in the world, and fortune 100 companies in different industries
Each serves as a check and balance on one another
How Do They Balance The Mix Of Council Members?
Has diversification in geographical location and industries
Has representation from tech, banking, telcos, and legal firms
“So do I trust a big tech company? Of course, I don't trust a big tech company. Do I trust a lawyer? I really don't trust a lawyer. But do I trust a diverse group like this, to be able to act as checks and balances on each other? Well, yeah, I trust that more than a dictatorship.”
- Leemon Baird
The Spectrum Of Use Cases That He’s Seeing In The Context Of The Metaverse
Use cases he has seen:
Financial remittances
Tokenization of assets
Tracking of COVID vaccines
Marketing
Looking at the provenances of diamonds, pharmaceuticals, and others
The Metaverse embodies all of the above. It is an ecosystem of worlds that are connected to one another
Users can do plenty of things with the Hedera consensus service:
Offload consensus and trust to Hedera
Has encryption to enable privacy
Communicate with others who use the same consensus service
Building The Metaverse On Hedera
Have Hedera Improvement Proposals (HIPs) where people can suggest new features or standards
Interested to go to Standard committees and getting Standards
Standards are needed for interoperability
Putting a lot of effort to make Hedera easy to use
Other ledgers could use a plugin that uses Hedera’s consensus service and encryption as a kind of hybrid model
Hedera could be used for anything — from tiny ad-hoc networks to giant public networks that are built for centuries
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