The Fundamentals of Blockchain

The FinTech Center presented Dawn Talbott at The Graves School of Business on Saturday, October 19, 2019 from 9am to 1pm.

Dr. Talbott has over 20 years of finance and technology experience. Most recently, Dawn joined the RiskSpan SmartLink Lab where she provides consulting on Blockchain and DLT implementation strategies. Prior to this, she analyzed emerging technical capabilities within the Freddie Mac Single Family Innovation Laboratory and establishing its “BlockLab”. As a FinTech expert, she is familiar with risk analytics, simulations and a wide range of debt, equity and derivative instruments designed for both public and private markets.

Fundamentals of Blockchain Workshop Speaker Dawn Talbott discussed:

• The need for blockchain
  • Identity Theft
  • Human Trafficking
• How to select architectures and components of blockchain
  • Identified weakness and potential research challenges
• When and why to use specific consensus algorithms
  • Identified algorithms that may be of interest to academic researchers
• Tokens, currencies, and wallets
  • “Kenya & Tokenized Real Estate”
• Evaluation tools and identifying potential weaknesses
  • Identified knowledge gaps potentially of interest to academic instructors
• Human considerations
  • “Hiring you was a mistake”
• Design tools and how they can help alleviate human fears
  • Identified design hurdles that may benefit from academic analysis
• The future of finance
  • “Vanguard”
• Oracles, APIs, timing and smart contracts
  • Grid+
• Smart Contract language selection criterion
  • Identified challenges that may benefit from academic contributions