Exclusive interview with Bloq CEO Jeff Garzik: Greed is the cause of The DAO tragedy

"There are four stages of blockchain development. The first stage is digital currency, such as Bitcoin. The second stage is digital assets, which are being studied by financial institutions to make modern money transfers more efficient. The third stage is smart property, where assets such as airplanes, ships or real estate can be put on the blockchain. The fourth stage is smart contracts..."

On the afternoon of June 23, the 2016 Blockchain International Summit was held in Beijing Renaissance Hotel. On the stage, former bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik gave a passionate speech, and the audience was nearly 700 blockchain enthusiasts and admirers from all over the country and even the world. But now, Mr. Jeff has become the co-founder and CEO of blockchain service company Bloq.

Back in May 2013, as one of the five maintainers of the Bitcoin core version software, Jeff was invited by the Bitcoin company BitPay to join its team with a high salary and work full-time.

In addition, Mr. Jeff founded Dunvegan Space Systems, where he proposed connecting computer services to satellites, loading the Bitcoin transaction data generated every day, and then sending these satellites into space. Unfortunately, this seemingly cool "Bitcoin Satellite" plan was eventually "deeply frozen" because it did not raise enough funds.

But he himself did not lose heart. In October 2015, Jeff co-founded Bloq with Bitcoin industry investor Matt Roszak. At that time, he commented:

“It’s a bitcoin company that’s closer to earth.”

In December, the Bitcoin community was caught up in a debate on capacity expansion. Mr. Jeff proposed that "2MB block capacity expansion" was the most appropriate solution. He believed that what the Bitcoin community needed was a hard fork, partly to eliminate the fear brought about by the hard fork issue.

“A hard fork would signal that we’re willing to grow, we’re willing to change, we’re willing to change the system. Not increasing the block size would be seen as we want to increase transaction fees, we want to drive people away from the system,” he said at the time.

However, the Bitcoin core developer team has not yet made it clear that it will adopt a hard fork expansion solution. More voices in the community prefer the expansion method of Segregated Verification (SW) + Lightning Network (LN). It seems that the core team is more willing to choose an off-chain expansion solution.

Later, Mr. Jeff published an article in his personal blog titled "The Bitcoin Economy is Changing."

Since then, we have rarely seen Mr. Jeff speak in the Bitcoin community...

We are very happy to see Mr. Jeff again at the 2016 Blockchain International Summit hosted by the Asian Blockchain DACA Association and co-organized by the Babbitt Blockchain Research Center.

After the speech, Mr. Jeff was about to leave the venue. I quickly ran up to him and said hello, "Hello, Mr. Jeff, I am from Babbitt... Can I take a moment of your time to interview you, just 10 minutes."

He raised his right hand and looked at his watch, as if he was in a hurry. Then he smiled and answered me:

"Okay, but only for 8 minutes."

Mr. Jeff had to rush to Hong Kong, so I didn't see him at the cocktail party in the evening.

"I'm Jeff, CEO and co-founder of Bloq. We provide blockchain solutions for enterprises, allowing enterprise users to deploy blockchain securely and quickly," Jeff introduced to me. This is a big change compared to the introduction in the early days of its establishment. Perhaps this is also a microcosm of the entire industry.

Recently, Bloq launched its first product, the blockchain operating system BloqEnterprise. Big names such as Gavin Andresen and Nick Szabo have also joined the company's advisory group, but there is not much information about the specific applications of this product.

Jeff told me:

“This is our software, download this blockchain operating system application, and you can immediately connect to public networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum, or you can connect to private networks. So if you want to build digital assets, DAOs, or you want to build some blockchain technology applications, such as movie tickets or points, our solution is what you want.”

Regarding the issue of Bitcoin expansion, Mr. Jeff’s views do not seem to have changed:

“This is an extremely complex debate. I think that in the future, developers, miners and users will come together to look at multiple solutions. One is segregated verification (SW), which is a promising technology that will increase the security of the Bitcoin network. There are also many users in the community who hope to have a hard fork expansion. I think in the next period of time, both solutions will be implemented on the Bitcoin network. I think there will be many expansion solutions in the future, not just one.”

Recently, the theft of The DAO has become a hot topic. Taking this opportunity, I also asked this Bitcoin master for his opinion. Mr. Jeff replied:

"This is a very new technology. Ethereum's task is far more complicated than Bitcoin's. It will take some time for Ethereum to achieve security because you still need to build new developer tools. You need to develop debugs, code analyzers, etc. All these developer tools must be built, and Ethereum is brand new, with a brand new language and a brand new development environment. This means a very bad thing for developers because there will be many vulnerabilities in the early stage. As for The DAO, it was a tragedy because this is a new technology and vulnerabilities are inevitable. The creators of The DAO did not set a safe funding limit. For example, if you raise more than $5 million or $10 million, you should stop accepting funds, so that the operation of the contract will be much safer. In fact, The DAO could have avoided this tragedy, but it did not do so, and other contracts will learn lessons from it."

If the above words make you think that Mr. Jeff has leaned towards Ethereum, then you are wrong. He specifically talked about network effects during his speech. At present, Bitcoin is still the most powerful blockchain. He is more interested in contract implementation methods such as Rootstock. "We are moving from the third stage to the fourth stage," he commented. (The interview video will be uploaded later)