Coindesk Selection: Top 10 Blockchain Figures and Events in 2016

Editor’s Note: If you want to review the changes in the Bitcoin and blockchain fields in 2016, you might want to take a look at who the leaders and innovators were this year and what they did.

Recently, foreign media CoinDesk ranked the top ten most influential people in the blockchain industry. The basis for this was a reader survey of the website, which received more than 2,000 responses.

Since November , CoinDesk has been asking readers which big shot has the greatest impact on blockchain in their opinion. Compared with the "Top 10" in 2015 , the results of the survey are both unexpected and reasonable. According to Leifeng.com ( official account: Leifeng.com ) , many big shots are on the list for the first time this year. The fact that the leaders of an industry can change to such an extent shows that it is in the stage of evolution.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top ten people and events in the blockchain this year with Leifeng.com.

10. Perianne Boring

It’s no secret that getting a new bill through Congress can be a long wait. But Perianne Boring , the beauty who serves as president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, has an unparalleled ability to get things done in Washington. She’s worked in Congress and has been a reporter for RT and Forbes. She has a huge influence on fintech issues in Congress—selling blockchain technology to members of the House and pushing for related legislation.

Under her leadership, the Digital Commerce Association made smart contracts a policy focus this year and held a symposium earlier this month. It attracted officials from the CFTC (U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and FINRA (U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) to attend.

If 2016 was the year when Washington began its in-depth discussion on digital currency and blockchain, Perianne Boring was the torchbearer leading the way.

9. Chris DeRose and Junseth

Chris Derose and Josh Unseth (nicknamed ' Junseth ') are two of the experts on the podcast ' Bitcoin Uncensored ' . This year, their acerbic comments and eloquent rhetoric have stirred up huge controversy and muddied the waters for the entire industry.

They received applause from some in the community and condemnation from others. But creating controversy may be their goal. But the two have also been accused of sexism in their remarks, such as the interview with Perianne Boring, which may have undermined the message they really wanted to convey.

Bitcoin Uncensored has had some high-profile interview subjects: convicted Ponzi schemer Trendon Shavers , Neo & Bee CEO Danny Brewster . But when the show moves away from the attack interview, it reveals a surprising depth.

For example, on a recent episode, the two hosts set out to uncover a Ponzi scheme on Craigslist. It turned out that the well-intentioned sailboat sales were paid for in Bitcoin — a demonstration of what a rare thing Bitcoin is: a combination of a blockchain and a working economy.

Agree with it or not, DeRose and Junseth ’s unique Bitcoin podcast (not to mention its hour-long shows) has in fact become a new force in the industry this year.

8. Richard Gendal Brown

As the CTO of R3CEV , he is a significant force this year.

The New York-based company is the new technology driving force behind a consortium of more than 40 banks that has been testing distributed ledgers for the past year and a half. Brown led the consortium’s release of the code as open source, open to criticism and contributions from industry insiders.

Brown acknowledged that the work is far from complete, but said releasing the code as open source is a big deal for the company's programmers.

For him, it ’s not just Corda ’s code that makes 2016 so important . In April, Brown published his paper on the technology, promoting his view that blockchain, on its own, is not enough to solve many of the problems facing today’s banking industry.

In fact, Brown believes the time is more ripe for innovation in the way institutions share information than in the way they make payments.

While Corda as a platform still has a long way to go, its conceptual foundations are already having a huge impact on the trajectory of the industry.

7. Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

The father-son duo are the authors of the seminal 2016 book, Blockchain Revolution. Don and Alex Tapscott have become important voices in pushing the technology into mainstream finance.

Attend any major industry conference and you will see one of them giving an in-depth speech on the broad prospects of blockchain. Interested readers can check out Don Tapscott ’s TED speech.

Besides, their work is not just about writing books and giving speeches.

Earlier this year, Don helped to promote the establishment of Muskoka Group . This group is composed of CEOs of major blockchain companies in the world . It aims to explore government public governance around blockchain and try to drive the participation of municipal officials. In this way, people may see the transformation of government under new technologies in the future.

6. Pieter Wuille

He is the co-founder of Bitcoin company Blockstream and one of the main developers of the open source Bitcoin Core (Bitcoin Core wallet). This year, Pieter Wuille has been the main driver of Bitcoin development.

A casual glance at his GitHub account shows just how influential he is. According to Bitcoin.org , Wuille is by far the second most prolific Bitcoin contributor, behind Bitcoin Core maintainer Wladimir van der Laan .

But Wuille is the initiator of the Segregated Witness ( SegWit ) project, which is ambitious to expand the transaction block space . The old way has prompted contemptuous and harsh discussions about the Bitcoin community.

In response, SegWit supporters and those who advocate raising the data limit per block have started a debate. Wuille’s speech at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong last year kicked off the debate.

This year, SegWit went from testing to release. The work Wuille and others did on this project laid the foundation for the main development trajectory of Bitcoin in 2017. For Bitcoin developers including Wuille , 2017 will be a critical year.

5. Adam Ludwin

In September 2015, financial services giants Visa and Capital One participated in a $30 million round of funding for Chain . By the end of last year, Chain had successfully transformed from a Bitcoin API developer to a blockchain company targeting enterprise customers.

Just one year later, the partnership with Visa resulted in the company’s biggest achievement to date, with Visa announcing the launch of a blockchain-based payments service in 2017 .

Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain , is the core guide for Visa to enter the blockchain game. In cooperation with Visa , Capital One , Fidelity and State Street , Citibank and other companies, he released Chain OS 1 , an open source, licensed blockchain draft. Now, it has been renamed Chain Protocol , which is the most ambitious product released so far.

This year, central banks around the world are working hard to promote the exploration and testing of their digital currency systems. Adam Ludwin gave a blockchain PPT presentation to representatives of central banks from various countries.

4. Satoshi Nakamoto

This mysterious figure with a Japanese name was the anonymous developer (or team) of Bitcoin, who oversaw the early development of Bitcoin until he left the project a few years ago without any credit or fame.

But last year, Australian scholar Craig S Wright claimed that he was the mysterious developer behind Bitcoin. This became the headlines in the industry and swept the Bitcoin industry that year.

By May 2016, Craig S Wright reappeared in the public eye. He announced that the motivation for this appearance was to prove that he was Satoshi Nakamoto . But then he said that he did not have solid evidence to counter the accusation of impersonation.

Months later, Craig S Wright ’s story was largely forgotten. While the financial community, by and large, was resistant to fully embracing Bitcoin, his role in mainstreaming blockchain in the eight years since Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper was published is undeniable.

3. Andreas Antonopoulos

Ask the average industry insider who is Bitcoin’s main thought leader and ambassador, and the name you’re most likely to hear is Andreas Antonopoulos .

He is the author of Mastering Bitcoin and a frequent speaker on the topic. His personal influence can be seen from his travels around the world - he is either preaching to Bitcoin enthusiasts around the world or trying to convince skeptical bank managers.

In 2016 , Antonopoulos began to dabble in other blockchain projects: he commented on big events like the DAO collapse; he proposed the concept of a “decentralized arbitration and mediation network” inspired by the New York conference ; and he announced his next book in October: “Mastering Ethereum ” .

In 2014 , he was ranked number one on the "Top Ten". This year, he is back on the list.

2. Vitalik Buterin

A year ago this time, months after the Ethereum crowdsale ended, its founder, Vitalik Buterin, was focused on portraying a positive outlook as he battled rumors of missed deadlines.

Looking back at 2016 , Coindesk believes that the development of Ethereum can be described as bumpy.

Vitalik Buterin remains the undisputed leader of the open-source project, having spearheaded Ethereum’s second major release, the ambitious Homestead , and also led the industry’s chaotic response to the DAO debacle.

From tribulations to triumphs, 2016 was a defining year for Ethereum, and the events that took place during this period shaped what it would become in the future.

An attendee at the Ethereum developer conference DevCon2 said that 2016 is the year of hands-on development. Without Vitalik Buterin leading the way, Ethereum would not be here today.

“For the first year, everything was just a pipe dream,” said Carlos Buendia Gallego, a technology consultant . “Now we are starting to build the real thing.”

For Buterin and company, 2017 will be the year to “build real stuff,” based on the experience of 2016 , whether the situation is better or worse.

1. The DAO Hacker

Like last year, the identity of the top 10 figure this year is unknown.

The blockchain world was rocked this summer when the hacker who attacked The DAO took advantage of a code token that one observer described as a “come and take the money” scheme.

The ensuing chaos ultimately led to a rewriting of Ethereum’s history. Investors rushed to exchange DAO coins for ether. But for some people involved in Ethereum, this incident made them taste the bitter fruit - this led to the rise of the competing project Ethereum Classic ( commonly known as the second concubine).

Eventually, some of the stolen funds — via the ethereum classic blockchain (which has no way to undo the theft) — will be re-transferred and should end up in the hacker’s pocket.

The DAO hack received the highest number of votes among all survey participants , which is likely a reflection of the impact of the incident, which exposed a critical vulnerability in the smart contracts of Ethereum-based projects.

This incident also exposed the inherent risks of smart contracts, and programmers have learned a lesson from then on: a tiny code defect can have catastrophic consequences.

via .coindesk