 You're watching the Daily Decrypt. In currency competition, we trust. I am your host Amanda B. Johnson, and today's episode is brought to you by The Miracle. When we heard that Jonathan Bahae, Dweller of the Frozen North, had buried a blockchain hosting node under a bunker, our interest was peaked. As seems to be the continual case in this new land of open-sourced competition, Jonathan told us something completely out of left field. Here he is. All right. Well, Jonathan Bahae, I heard about you from a blog post that you had published the other day in which you were describing that in order to make, in this particular instance, the BitShares blockchain for which you are a node, a witness actually, you have buried your node under like a bunker or something. I don't even, what have you done, Jonathan? Well, I'm actually broadcasting from the what used to be CBC radio inside of a 64,000 square foot nuclear bunker data center. Previously, it was the emergency center for the Canadian government and it was decommissioned in the late 90s and since then it's gone through changing some hands, but it finally ended up in my hands. So it once served as one of the communication nodes for NATO and for the Department of Defense and the infrastructure because of that makes it well suited for high security data center operations. It was originally designed back in the 60s during the Cold War to house up to 350 people in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. And you, you own it now. You heard that now. Yes. Wow. Wow. So do you, okay. Do you run nodes or miners for any other cryptocurrencies at this time there as well? Well, right now we are doing some, we do have a mining pool that we're operating. It's currently in beta right now. It's called bunker mining. It was originally called mining BitShares. We took over that mining pool late or middle of last year and since then we've been developing it. We had to port it over when BitShares 2.0 came out and since then we've still been in beta but we are planning to come out with it publicly next month or two. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so let's talk about the kind of incidents that you are seeking to protect your node against using this bunker. What, what, what threats exist that you would even want to do that? Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, most people when they look at world events, some people think we might fall them into World War 3 in which case if any kind of nukes go off you have what's called an EMP blast. That's an electromagnetic pulse and what that does is I'll render all kinds of electronics useless. The blast from a nuclear blast, the EMP is much stronger than what could happen from a natural EMP event in which case in my article I talk about the threat that exists from the sun. All the time the earth is being bombarded by solar radiation and the earth has a stratosphere that actually protects us against that solar radiation and it causes the magnetic field of the earth to to flux and shift and this happens all the time. What happens though is that in the event where that that shield weakens or it actually shifts, we become subject to that electromagnetic field from the solar events in which case our electronics become useless. What happens is that they get hit and then any kind of modern digital electronics would actually be susceptible to the magnetic fields of rendering them useless. In the event that that happens we're basically blasted back to the 1800s. I hope you have candles and oil lamps to get around because you don't have flashlights, you don't have everything, all your electronics just die. Would something as simple as a Faraday cage protect these things or does one have to have a bunker like you do? No, a Faraday cage is effective especially in a solar radiation event. Not a lot of people are using Faraday cages to protect their equipment though. Only really anybody who's looked at risk management or looked at extreme cases would consider using a Faraday cage with their equipment. Well my goodness and so so is your how do you get like power to your bit shares node? I mean is it just within the bunker or is it like underground under the bunker? The power that comes to us is with the utility. We do have within the facility multiple generators which in the event that main power went out we'd be able to use those generators for backup. But the node is deep within the bunker so it is the bunker itself is a Faraday cage. It was built that way. It's also underground which also helps but within the bunker the communication node which was set up for NATO communications is actually a shielded infrastructure. The codename for it was Samson node and the reason they had that installed was because back in the day in the 80s basically computing was susceptible to radio interference and being able to pick up frequencies so that they could read data off of computers. And so building this hardened shell was to ensure that no data would escape from from that that particular place in the bunker. So it's almost like a building inside the building. So we got a Faraday cage. We got a shielded infrastructure and inside that that's where all the data is kept. Golly are you aware of anybody else who hosts crypto related infrastructure in a similar setup to you? No I'm not I was this this came up in a in a social channel actually. There's the prospects of hosting miners or a big operation like that within a bunker isn't very likely simply because most of the bunkers located around the world if they've been purposed for data centers are located in centers that are very high costs and power. Because of that and because miners of course you know they have to consider all these things it's not likely they're going to choose a facility like that to to put their mining equipment in. And the reason that cost of electricity would not so much be a factor in bit shares in particular is because it's delegated proof of stake right. So you are not you don't need to run an ASIC or any sort of proof of work energy intense miner to to be a witness in bit shares. That's right at the current transaction per section transactions that bit shares is running at. Most of the nodes can run with just a virtual machine or a cloud or a cloud instance. We can easily scale up to a dedicated server and so forth but the requirements for bit shares is very light and so because of that the power requirements aren't high so you can really host a bit shares node anywhere in the world without having to worry about the cost involved. So let's let's talk more about your being a well so the term in bit shares is witness but the equivalent in say a proof of work would be the miner the equivalent in a non-delegated proof of stake would be a staker but basically you are one of the people who generates the bit shares blockchain and that is what your full note is for you are one of the delegates. I believe they used to be called delegates before they were called witnesses. Is that right in bit shares? That's right. Yeah in bit shares 1.0 they were called delegates simply that it was a flat system where the delegate was elected. They would run the nodes and so forth. There was different things that happened in the past where a delegate didn't just represent a node sometimes the funds would go towards other things to support the network and so in this new iteration of 2.0 that broke out and we created different branches of delegations so now we have a committee we have witnesses and then we also have workers so the stakeholders are able to vote for the particular things that they support that are really exacted to the task of the people behind them so witnesses are technical people they are they are you know witnessing the blocks and they're making sure that the network is up. Workers can can be elected to do all kinds of multiple tasks a lot of them are developers who are working on bug fixes and improving the blockchain and then the committee their tasks are to basically handle situations in regards to the fees that are involved in the network so we make sure that everything is balanced and that that's all working good so I'm also actually on the committee in BitShares as well so I actually serve on two different branches within the blockchain within BitShares governance so then would it would it be an accurate simplification to say that witnesses are the ones elected to run the infrastructure workers are the ones elected to develop the code base and committee members are the ones elected to sort of I guess deal with anything that doesn't fall into one of the first two categories that's right well yeah they they really focus on I mean their power only goes into the fee structure within BitShares so they have direct control over being able to change that that part of the network okay and now these positions are as you said elected by stakeholders and in BitShares anybody who owns even one BitShares is a stakeholder that is that correct every BitShares counts for one vote that's right now if you don't feel like you want to be involved in the voting process or you just don't have time or you don't understand it we also have what's called proxy voting so instead of you having to keep up on all the details of the different things that are happening if there's somebody in the network who is a proxy that really is active within the community and understands what's going on and you like what they represent and what their their vision for BitShares is then you can point your stake towards their their proxy and every time they vote your stake is going towards that vote so it helps people to be involved in the voting process without having to worry about keeping up on everything and this is all cryptographically I just want to note this is all cryptographically done and executable from within the BitShares wallet I was just perusing through my own BitShares wallet last night and like yep there's the voting section and when I click on the voting section I can see all of the current worker and committee proposals that are currently you know up for a vote and then sure enough in the the the proxy section or whatever I can I can assign my BitShares to someone else who I think would make a more educated vote than I that's right it's all there within the wallet so the client gives you a graphical representation so it's very easy for the end user to be able to just within a few clicks be able to place their their votes or be able to assign to a proxy so now what what attracted you to BitShares I mean with this bunker and with this crypto savviness that you have why of all nodes out of all networks have you chosen to dedicate your time and energies to BitShares in particular well I was introduced to BitShares a couple years ago by another associate who was heavily into Bitcoin I've been following Bitcoin for almost ever since it existed I initially saw a lot of the issues with the infrastructure when I first looked at it I looked at ways that I could get involved I looked at mining but I never made that step and what do you think that the issues with the infrastructure were well it wasn't necessarily the infrastructure but the opportunity was was was very hard to understand there was mining there was being able to buy Bitcoins there was fluctuations in the markets and it just was really hard to grasp where you could get in there without such high risk and I didn't and I couldn't grab I couldn't find a way to really approach it and that that I was comfortable with so two years back about August 2014 I was introduced to BitShares well just after they had launched and I was actually working at their witness no technology it was still very early in development so I kind of put it aside but I decided back then that it looked like the whole system looked like it made sense so I took whatever Bitcoin I had at that time and I put into BitShares and then I stepped away for a few months and then I came back things had stabilized more and so I was more I was more excited about where was that at that point and I got heavily involved in the community at that time all right well that that is really everything that I wanted to know that is all you know is it safe to say that okay so if no one else has an operation like you have that if there were a sort of like EMP or other extreme event that you may have the last copy of the last blockchain in the world that is safe to say absolutely we're not just it's not just our infrastructure that makes us safe but it's also our location being in Nova Scotia Canada is very remote there's nobody looking to come after us out here but in terms of the blockchain and in terms of other blockchains after my article came out I actually got a bit of a response from people who have stake in other other chains and it's actually led me to create an initiative there's been a lot of discussion in BitShares lately about sidechains I'm sure you've heard about that and with that we've been looking at ways that we could by taking sidechain technology and connecting it to the BitShares decentralized exchange we have an opportunity at the bunker to be able to protect other bits other blockchains and then to be able to actually trade on the BitShares decentralized exchange completely secure so we created this initiative it's called blockchain bunker we created a website called blockchain bunker.com and what we're looking to do is to try to unify the blockchain world so that we can create sidechains and use the BitShares decentralized exchange as a means for them to have a decentralized exchange because today they're completely connected to nothing about centralized exchanges so they only have if something happens to that centralized exchange down goes their trading right so and also if anything happens to the you know a natural event that would occur down goes their network so the initiative came out of the article I actually put out from the response I got to take this sidechain opportunity as a way to be able to protect other blockchains out there and then also enable them so that they have the trading power of BitShares to back their their blockchain so this way we can help to bring more value to their chains and also protect them at the same time okay so are you telling me that as sidechains of BitShares copies of other blockchains say Monero dash dogecoin could be preserved as as sidechains of BitShares and protected in a bunker like yours in case of a disaster is that what you're saying exactly we want to try to bring that that same value to the rest of the blockchain community I'm gonna have to sit and think for a while about how that could work and about how you could extend the decentralized exchange built into BitShares to other networks wow I'm I haven't even thought about that enough to be able to ask you any questions about that and utilize more of your time and knowledge right here in this episode so I'm gonna go ahead and say thank you for your time and maybe would it be okay if I send you like a follow-up email at some point after I've like tried to wrap my head around this absolutely I'd be happy to answer any questions yeah all right excellent all right well you said it was at blockchainbunker.com what and is there what's the URL of your blog where you published the post where I published the post last week yeah or I guess just where I found your your initial announcement about bearing the node in the bunker I basically I'm just saying like do you have a blog or something that you'd like people it was posted on one of our company's blog sites at datasecurity node.com because that is where it is actually located but the post the primary post was done actually on my LinkedIn profile so it was done in the pulse yeah excellent all right well thank you for your time Jonathan Baha'i and have a great Nova Scotian day certainly you too take care bye bye bye today's episode is brought to you by the Merkle a cryptocurrency and blockchain news hub that is just as much known for its technical analyses as for its early issuance of scam warnings the Merkle has played consumer advocate by sounding the alarm on several questionable operations in the past these stories are all available at themerkle.com or get them fed to you social style via the Merkle's Twitter or Facebook page and my friends I'm happy to tell you that my AMA my ask me anything has been scheduled for Saturday March 26th at reddit.com slash r slash the daily decrypt so anytime that day stop on by and leave a question in the thread that you will find there. Cheerio govna have a good day. Hashocracy is the current governance model of many top cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Monero. There are two other top cryptocurrencies however which are not pure hash democracies one of them is a seeming evolution of hashocracy and the other is a complete overhaul of hash democracies