Project Medici at The Bitcoin Center

Overstock.com + Counterparty = Project Medici

Overstock's CEO Patrick Byrn announced last year that his company had begun working with two members of the Counterparty team to build the world's first legal (read regulated) securities exchange built on top of the blockchain. The technical details have not yet been made publicly available, but the team working on the project, code named "Project Medici", is exceptionally technically capable, perhaps one of the most capable teams on the planet, and Byrn seems confident that the only hurdle that could be an issue at this point is regulatory. I've been to a few meetups at the Bitcoin Center before, but this is the first time I've had a chance to write about one of them. The purpose of the center is, almost exclusively, to provide a hub for the NYC Bitcoin community. This means weekly meetups, open working space, high profile project presentations and speakers, as well as pretty much anything else you could think of that could possibly include some aspect of digital currency. Judd Bagley, Overstock's director of communications, presented at the Bitcoin Center yesterday on project Medici. For the most part it wasn't anything that hasn't been said elsewhere, and the crowd would have appreciated it if a developer were present to answer the more technical questions, but there were a few things to note: Medici is primarily targeting naked short selling enabled by the DTCC Though marketed as a distributed open system, this will be a semi-closed system operatedbtransparentlybat a profit by Overstock. Overstock will maintain strict control of who is allowed to issue tokens on this network (unlike the pure Counterparty system which allows for almost complete token autonomy.) Drinks were had, chairs were in short supply, and the crowd was intensely nerdy. Some audience members were very critical of the Medici system, but for the most part there was a sense of cautious optimism in the room. Everyone has been hoping for something like this for a while, and, while it seems like a long shot, this just might work.

Chicago Geekfest: Rust & Mozilla @ Groupon

Rust

Mozilla's Systems Language hits 1.0 alpha and takes a trip to Groupon in Chicago

For the past few years Mozilla has been working on a systems language to take the place of C. That should raise some eyebrows. C has been the foundation of low-level level programming since well before I was born, and to those of us newbies not in the loop on the academic side of the programming world, replacing C may sound like a longshot.

Lars Bergstrom of Mozilla

The goal, says Lars Bergstrom, is to eliminate data-races and crashes caused by ownership (for any value there can only be one variable with access to it at any given time). I'm not a low-level guy, so I'm pretty fuzzy on the details, but his project at Mozilla, servo, is a web browser written in the language. It looks like it has gotten a lot of attention lately (224 watchers and over 3800 stars at time of writing), so if you're interested in getting involved with the language through an open source project, this would probably be a good community through which to enter the Rust world.

Lars' presentation was really solid, I think. While I can't speak to his knowledge of the technical side of things, I hope that his Ph.D. in Computer Science is enough validation of his proficiency that I don't have to. He presented the language's primary attributes in a clear way with a few live coding examples, and announced that the language has largely moved past its (extreme) early volatility, and was now in a 1.0 alpha stage, with a final 1.0 to be released within 12-16 weeks.

For more info on rust, check out the language page at rust-lang.org

Groupon Meetups

First of all, yes this is in Chicago, so unfortunately Groupon's Geekfest meetups aren't going to be accessible to most readers. But, if you happen to be on a trip through the city, check their schedule here and see if they're talking about something that interests you.

As always, there was good food provided. The room we were in was long, with multiple screens for viewing the presentation, and an excellent audio system. There were 91 people on the rsvp list for this one, though I think there may have been a few more than that in attendance. I get the feeling that these events were the idea of a Groupon employee, are hosted primarily for the benefit of employees, and are opened to the public as a way of engaging and enriching Chicago's tech community (so props to you Groupon, keep doing what you're doing).