Top 10 Takeaways from Consensus 2016, Day 1

By Lance Koonce

In no particular order:

• Nobody cares about Satoshi Nakamoto
• Someone should come up with a random company name generator that will combine other words with BLOCK, BIT, STACK, STREAM, CHAIN, COIN — it will save everyone a lot of time
• Like the TARDIS, the Marriott Marquis is bigger on the inside
• “Blockchain Technology” should be used to mean the blockchain + the stacks built on top of a blockchain (i.e., “blockchain” alone is the base)
• It’s conceptually helpful sometimes to separate the Bitcoin protocol (proof of work etc.) from the concept of a blockchain distributed ledger. And sometimes it’s not.
• No one — still­ — can define exactly what a smart contract is, in the blockchain context
• The experience of financial institutions reacting to blockchain technology can serve as a rough guide for other industry verticals
• There is still a gender diversity problem in blockchain development, but the women who are involved ROCK (see, g., Elizabeth Rossiello, Sandra Ro, Neha Narula, Meltem Dmirors, Elizabeth Stark)
• Machine-to-machine communication and smart contracts and AI will one day lead allow us to automatically negotiate/resolve new transactions based on pre-set preferences
• Everybody cares about Satoshi Nakamoto