ReddSpark

Maladex (Part II) – fragmented liquidity, price curves, and scalability

Part 2 of my walk through of the Maladex whitepaper where we look at several innovative features, from a fragmented liquidity pool, dynamic price curves, and an efficient and fast architecture that takes advantage of Cardano’s design Link: https://youtu.be/K5_q7nfeqsM

Maladex (Part 1) – Intro to DEXEs, Liquidity, and disrupting TradFi (video)

In this video I take you through sections 1-3 of the (very detailed!) Maladex whitepaper. If you don’t understand things like what a DEX or a liquidity pool is, or want to get a taste of how Maladex wish to disrupt the finance industry then this video is for you. Watch here

Cardano Scalability (video)

Follow up to my Avalanche vs Cardano blog post, in which I discuss Cardano’s self healing, increasing TPS on L1, and fast finality. Watch here

Forecasting hierarchical time series using deep learning in a commercial setting

Note: This article was originally written for another purpose but I thought I’d publish a copy on my blog too. A recent paper by Mancuso, Piccialli, and Sudoso, titled A machine learning approach for forecasting hierarchical time series (May 2021) showed success in hierarchical time-series forecasting in the Italian retail sector. Experiment setup The purposeContinue reading “Forecasting hierarchical time series using deep learning in a commercial setting”

Avalanche vs Cardano

Should you own any AVAX? Avalanche has been rising up the crypto charts lately and I thought I’d take a deep dive on how the protocol works. Specifically I wanted to know how it compares to Cardano and whether it meant Cardano was already outdated as some were already saying. Disclaimer Now as a disclosure,Continue reading “Avalanche vs Cardano”

IOHK’s tour of Africa

Note: This is a slightly abridged version of what was originally published on my YouTube channel As you probably know, Charles Hoskinson and IOHK have been doing a tour of the African continent, discussing potential blockchain based solutions with a number of world leaders. The most recent tweet from Charles said “We signed an MOUContinue reading “IOHK’s tour of Africa”

The state of machine learning and AI (Part I)

I thought it time I returned to some of my other areas of interest prior to discovering cryptocurrencies. And I thought I’d kick it off by doing a round up of what the current state of machine and AI research is. Before diving in, let’s start with setting the background. Background Machine learning is anContinue reading “The state of machine learning and AI (Part I)”

Public blockchain based digital IDs could be a game changer

When it comes to a good use of blockchain technology, digital identities are near the top of the list. While the DeFi world is all about anonymous trading and (likely) shady practices, the RealFi (real world finance) world, as well as the Enterprise world, require companies knowing who they are transacting with and whether someoneContinue reading “Public blockchain based digital IDs could be a game changer”

Show me the DApps

I’ve seen an increasing level of frustration in the Cardano community over the price of Ada. A lot of people were expecting a boost given the implementation of smart contracts and the announcements from the Cardano summit at the end of September. In my mind, we won’t see significant price increase till we have actualContinue reading “Show me the DApps”

The coming of the Cardano Age

Cardano has been making headlines for different reasons lately. After shooting up to become the third biggest crypto project in terms of market cap, behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum, it then found itself embroiled in a debate about whether it can handle concurrent transactions (short answer is yes). After a multi-year wait, Cardano is setContinue reading “The coming of the Cardano Age”

A brief technical review of Algorand

After going deep down the rabbit hole on Bitcoin’s UTXOs, Cardano’s EUTXOs, and Ethereum’s Accounting based model, I became curious to see how Algorand operated. I’d heard some pretty good things about the project and wanted to know more. So in today’s post we shall take a brief look at some of the technical aspectsContinue reading “A brief technical review of Algorand”

Plutus Explained: Minting Policies

Welcome to the Plutus Explained series of blog posts where I seek to explain the Plutus programming language, in an accessible manner. In this post we will cover a minting policies. You may find it helpful to read about native tokens beforehand. This post accompanies Week 5 of the Plutus Pioneers program. A minting policyContinue reading “Plutus Explained: Minting Policies”

Plutus Explained: Understand the Doc

Welcome the Plutus Explained series of blog posts in which I explain the Plutus programming language in an accessible manner. Today we will take a look at one page of the Plutus documentation and seek to get comfortable with everything that’s on there. Being able to navigate the documentation of any programing language is oneContinue reading “Plutus Explained: Understand the Doc”

Plutus Explained: How native tokens are defined

Welcome to the Plutus Explained series of blog posts where I seek to explain the Plutus programming language, in an accessible manner. This post accompanies the Plutus Pioneer week 5 video. (2-5 minute mark) First of all each UTxO has both an Address and a Value (i.e. quantity). In EUTxO, each UTxO also has a Data too, though weContinue reading “Plutus Explained: How native tokens are defined”

Is Haskell / Plutus hard to learn?

Click here for the YouTube version of this blog post. Today will be talking about a question I have been asked a lot. Is Haskell, the programming language behind Cardano smart contracts, hard to learn? Now before I dive into it, I think it’s important that I let you know what my general level ofContinue reading “Is Haskell / Plutus hard to learn?”

Crypto Explained: Hashing

Welcome to the Crypto Explained series of blog posts where we explain technical terms in an accessible manner. In this post we will be discussing hashing. Hashing is a very important technical concept that I feel everyone, technical and non-technical people alike should learn. I will explain it like this. Hashing is essentially a digitalContinue reading “Crypto Explained: Hashing”

Crypto Explained: The UTxO Model

Welcome to the Crypto Explained series of blog posts where we explain technical terms in an accessible manner. In this post I’ll explain the UTxO model, the accounting model that underpins Bitcoin and Cardano. Transaction outputs are either spent or unspent Imagine you have a 5 dollar bill in your pocket. But instead of dollarContinue reading “Crypto Explained: The UTxO Model”

Pool Wars III – My experience as a stakepool operator

This is the last article of the Pool Wars series. If you haven’t read Pool Wars I and Pool Wars II already I suggest giving them a read. We’ve explored why you should delegate to a small stake pool, how to find a small stake pool, and that pools with less than 10m ADA offerContinue reading “Pool Wars III – My experience as a stakepool operator”

An overview of DeFi – A threat to traditional finance?

In this post we’ll take a look at DeFi (Decentralized Finance), a burgeoning area of cryptocurrency application, which could upend traditional finance. Here we will go through some of the most popular types of DeFi space applications. Decentralized Exchanges Decentralized Exchanges or DEXes are currently the most popular cryptocurrency use case. They allow users toContinue reading “An overview of DeFi – A threat to traditional finance?”

Pool Wars II – How to delegate to a small pool

This is part II of my previous blog post on why you should pick a small pool to delegate to. If you haven’t already, I suggest giving it a read. Since that time I’ve had two months of learning what it’s like to be a small pool operator, to the point that I will haveContinue reading “Pool Wars II – How to delegate to a small pool”