Flavien Charlon: Openchain – Centralized Digital Assets Without Blockchains or Consensus

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Among the dividing themes in the Bitcoin space is the idea of public versus private blockchains. While some argue that private and permissioned blockchains can offer better scalability and lower latency for enterprises, others insist the Bitcoin blockchain will offer the best level of security and robustness longterm. Recently, projects have emerged that propose the best of both worlds by leveraging both off-chain and on-chain transactions.

This is the idea behind Openchain, an “open source distributed ledger technology, suited for organizations wishing to issue and manage digital assets in a robust, secure and scalable way.” Openchain uses a client-server model where there is only one authoritative validating node. Read-only observer nodes keep the central node honest by auditing transactions in real time. About every 10 minutes, a copy of the Ledger, and its transactions, is hashed and inserted into a Bitcoin transaction so that it can be fossilised in the blockchain.

We’re joined by Flavien Charlon, the one-man operation behind Predictious, Coinprism, the Open Transactions Protocol and now Openchain. We talk about this fascinating new software, which aims to offer enterprises a digital ledger protocol that is highly scalable while enjoying the benefits of the Bitcoin blockchain for immutability.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Flavien gives an update on Coinprism and his other projects
• The Openchain protocol and what it’s trying to achieve
• The technical architecture of Openchain and the client-server model it implements
• How Openchain uses the Bitcoin blockchain to “anchor” transactions into every block
• Openchain’s consensus model
• The ability for Openchain to interoperate with other ledgers and blockchains
• Flavien’s thoughts on what the ecosystem might look like in 10 years

Episode links:

• Openchain
• Openchain Docs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/102