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by russdpale 2505 days ago
blockchain and silicon valley don't really play too nice together, which is why you see so much chain dev done outside of the valley in places like Seattle, NYC or Switzerland.

SV is stuck in its silo's, content to be spymasters of their peers for the five eyes.
1 comments
SkyMarshal 2505 days ago
Silicon Valley is one of the major hubs of blockchain development. And not everyone on HN is from SV.
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russdpale 2505 days ago
No, its really not compared to other places. What projects are you thinking of?

There aren't as many SV people here as there used to be, but the community is still skewed that way.

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SkyMarshal 2505 days ago
Yes, it really is compared to other places. I don't have the time or energy to dig up a comprehensive list, but the tip of iceberg would be Berkeley & Stanford blockchain research groups, Blockstream (HQ in BA), Cosmos (engineering lead in SV), Dfinity (Palo Alto, SanFran, Zurich), Protocol Labs (IPFS, Filecoin, HQ in SV), O(1) Labs (HQ in SV). Just a small sample of some of the highest quality technical projects in the industry. And several of the largest cryptocurrency VC funds are based there - A16Z Crypto, Paradigm, Polychain, Metastable Capital, and a bunch of others.

SV's tech industry is far from dominated by blockchain as it may be in other places, which may make blockchain seem relatively small there. But it's a bigger and more robust scene than most other places.

https://cbr.stanford.edu/

https://simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/proofs2019-boot-camp (berkeley has several sites, not sure which best to link, but their speciality is in Zero Knowledge crypto applied to blockchain)

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russdpale 2503 days ago
Huh, you make some really great points. I didn't realize some of those products were based out of there.

> SV's tech industry is far from dominated by blockchain as it may be in other places, which may make blockchain seem relatively small there.

That is also a great point! I didn't even think about that, thanks for the eye opener.

With that said, it does seem like this place is extremely skeptical of blockchain. I figure its the SV legacy types that probably lurk around here still.

I actually did a blockchain at Berkeley online class. It was great, I think it was through Coursera iirc.

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SkyMarshal 2491 days ago
Yeah there are a lot of skeptics here too, and rightfully so imho. Scams abound.
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