In this episode of Deeply Intents, I talk to Shoaib Ahmed, researcher and engineer for Cycles Money / Informal Systems. We begin the episode with Shoaib's background, including his time working on SlockIt. Thereafter, we begin to unpack Cycles Money, discussing the concept of bringing liabilities on-chain, examples of debt-clearing cycles, and different types of settlement. Later, we discuss QuanTEEum, a new research paper published by Shoaib. Here we discuss the notion of quantum money and a marketplace for decentralized quantum compute. We conclude the episode by discussing the Cosmos ecosystem and trade-offs between building products and protocols.

Timestamps

(00:00 ) - God was a protocol designer
(02:28 ) - SlockIT experience
(03:53 ) - Gödel's incompleteness theorems
(10:19 ) - CoFi & Speculation resistance
(16:43 ) - Cycles Money
(22:26 ) - Bringing liabilities onchain
(29:49 ) - Walking through a cycle example
(33:57 ) - Settlement
(37:00 ) - Atomicity and blockchains
(42:24 ) - Quartz, remote attestations & ZKPs
(45:28 ) - Product
(53:10 ) - QuanTEEum and One shot signatures
(58:31 ) - Endgame: decentralized quantum compute
(1:03:58 ) - Quantum Money
(1:09:55 ) - The Cosmos ecosystem
(1:12:23 ) - Protocol design vs. product 

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.