Blockchain Scotland Meetup
Welcome to the Monthly Blockchain Scotland Meetup at the Bayes Centre in Edinburgh. The event takes place at the ground floor in the Bayes Theorem room.
17.00 - 17.30
Arrivals & Networking
17.30 - 17.35
Welcome from the host
17.35 - 17.55 "How to build a blockchain based framework for a community based circular economy" by Richard Houldsworth, CTO & Co-Founder at Xcavate
Significant value can be accrued by tokenising and fractionalising a range of real world assets like real estate. After a period of scaling, a vibrant secondary market can be established. Over time some of this value can be allocated to a sovereign geographic account, managed and spent by the population of that region on social issues, prioritised by the population.
17.55 - 18.10
Q&A
18.10 - 18.30 "Open Research Problems in Ethereum: A Governance Perspective" by Theo Beutel at Academic Secretariat, Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum’s hardest challenges aren’t cryptographic, they’re about human coordination across the stack: how thousands of independent actors make collective decisions without central authority. As AI concentrates knowledge infrastructure in fewer corporate hands, these governance experiments matter far beyond crypto. The protocol layer is well-resourced; the human coordination layer isn’t. This talk maps those open problems, explains how the Ethereum Foundation’s Academic Secretariat supports research across them, and how to get involved.
18.30 - 18.45
Q&A
18.45 - 19.05
Break with refreshments
19.05 - 19.25 "User-Operated Networks" by Evan Shapiro, Usernode Labs (remote)
This talk discusses our work on user-operated networks — networks where participation in consensus can scale to include not just dozens or hundreds of operators, but can grow to keep pace with the size of the community. I’ll describe the protocol we’re developing to enable this, by combining zero-knowledge proofs, verifiable credentials, and a new consensus architecture that enables participation on typical user devices such as mobile phones. Finally, I’ll walk through some examples of what this new type of network can enable: user-owned platforms, alternatives to proof-of-stake participation, and highly sovereign community networks where membership is based on verifiable credentials.
19.25 - 19.40
Q&A
19.40 Introductions + Announcements
20.00 Pizza, sushi & drinks
(incl. vegan options)
Networking and drinks until 9.30 pm in Bayes
21.30 - 23.00 Networking in the Pear Tree
Drinks and networking in the Pear Tree until 11 p.m.
At the pub they are offer drinks and dinner (until 10 pm).
Please join us to the Pear Tree where the discussions will continue.
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