By: Hamdi Allam and Wesley Graham

Background: Four days ago Coindesk published an article speaking to the “stalling” of the Plasma scaling solution. This article, written by plasma implementation team, FourthState Labs, reflects upon Coindesk’s claims from an implementors perspective.

What is Plasma?

With confusion arising over the multitude of plasma implementations present in the Ethereum ecosystem today, we believe it is first important to step back and redefine Plasma for the uninformed reader.

Major Discoveries

• Blockchain hubs are emerging in the Bay Area (UC Berkeley & Stanford) and Internationally (Israel & Singapore)
• Computing platforms have received major interest from professors and investors
• Privacy & Scalability remain as key concerns

The Importance of Academia

By: Wesley Graham and Ronen Kirsh

Technological limitations associated with scalability, privacy, and interoperability currently limit much of today’s most important blockchain infrastructure. Many investors believe that the solutions to these limitations will be sourced from the world of academia: home of cutting-edge discoveries and many leading cryptography and distributed systems experts.

As such, this article provides a glimpse into the progress being made by the world’s most talented blockchain researchers, academics, and thought leaders. We clarify what projects are being built, what schools are leading the charge, and where some of the next waves of contributions will be emerging. …

By Wesley Graham and Kingsley Edwards

Getting listed on a crypto exchange can be a make-or-brake moment in the widespread adoption of your token.

Exchanges are often the on-ramp for users to access your ecosystem, and dictate how widespread the distribution and utility of your token will be. They also mark an important signifier of community acceptance and project validity — as if you can pass an exchange’s screening and due diligence procedures you will often significantly increase public perception of your token.

Simply put (if you have a great project), getting listed on an exchange = increasing your valuation.

The problem, however, with getting listed on an exchange is that everyone in the crypto world already knows of their importance. …

By Wesley Graham and Robert Greenfield

In an industry where diversity of thought and infrastructure are foundational to success it is awfully difficult to onboard someone into the blockchain world.

Even at the most basic level, infrastructure components like dApps and exchanges are simply “too complicated”, “too technical”, and “too volatile” to allow for any semblance of mainstream adoption.

For example, if you told your parents or grandparents to set up a bitcoin wallet and send you their address right now what would their answer be?

What Robby and I would like to propose are a series of “things” needed to solve blockchain’s ‘commercial adoption’ problem — centered around developing usable infrastructure that solves specific purposes in scaling the token economy. …

This article continues from my prior “Best Of” Blockchain series. It’s 1 part analysis, 1 part synthesis, and 1 part strategy for any and all looking to capitalize on the blockchain revolution — both today, tomorrow, and for years to come.

The Prelude: Pioneers and their importance in defining generational progress

“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.” — Albert Einstein

Today’s “generational” progress doesn’t come from where it used to. Gone are the days of earth-shattering revelations coming from the desks of grey-haired businessmen — we are now seeing a redistribution of innovation stemming from those we expect it from least: cryptographers, futurists, and libertarians. …

According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2017 more than $4 billion was raised through means of ICO. This number is growing daily, with reports of upwards of $2.3 billion being raised over the last 3 months alone.

These numbers to any traditional investors are staggering: VC’s, Fund Managers, and Angel Investors everywhere are scrambling to understand exactly how to define and find the winners in this new, tokenized economy.

As this scramble has progressed the ICO market has began to face heightening levels of uncertainty and doubt, with notable cases of scams, frauds, and ponzi-schemes plaguing the news and crowding the ICO space for genuine, well thought out projects. …

According to a recent study by Deloitte, 92% of the 26,000 blockchain-based projects that have been created over the last two years are now dead.

After first hearing of this, I had to ask myself: how did this number get so out of hand?

This article attempts to articulate exactly what caused this issue, aiming to help us passionate blockchain enthusiasts avoid starting a project that becomes a part of the 92%.

Building a Good Blockchain Use Case From the Ground Up

For those who are still unfamiliar on the basics of how blockchains function, I would highly recommend first reading the “Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies & the New Decentralized Economy: Part 1 — A Gentle Introduction” article written by Blockchain at Berkeley’s Ashley Lannquist last year. …