Join us to learn about opportunities and developments on the Chia blockchain. Nic currently leads K32 Ventures and is the co-founder of Circuit, an on-chain collateralised stablecoin protocol. He was formerly CEO of Prime Factor Capital and is a DeFi veteran, with a PhD in Maths from Oxford.

The ubiquitous rise of GPUs is more than just an advancement in gaming; it's a revolution in computing paradigms. This lecture delves deep into the world of GPUs, elucidating their transformative role in today's digital era and their nuances. It will include a historical overview, tracing the evolution of GPUs from mere video display controllers to powerful parallel processors, their unique architecture, the challenges of GPU programming, and some suggestions on their possible future applications.

Whether you're a CUDA expert, professional, or merely curious, this lecture will aid with your understanding of a technology that's shaping the digital world. Led by Eito Miyamura, founding member of HomeDAO.

Two frontier fields meet at a crossroad: Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and Machine Learning (ML). The confluence of cryptographic advancements and increasingly data-driven decisions may revolutionise how we handle privacy, security, and intelligence in the digital age. ML thrives on vast datasets, fueling advancements in AI that dictate everything from financial forecasts to medical diagnostics. Simultaneously, ZKPs, a cryptographic technique, allow one party to prove to another that a statement is true, without conveying any specific information, thus preserving data privacy and safety.

ML models can be trained on sensitive data without ever accessing the data itself. This marks a leap towards robust data privacy without compromising the computational integrity and intelligence that ML offers. ML models could be trained with more data and more sensitivity at the same time. We will begin with a primer on ZKPs and ML, setting the stage for a deep dive into integration challenges, research areas, and real-world applications, from healthcare & finance to deepfakes & surveillance.

This lecture will be led by Manuj Mishra, who built ZK Microphone at ETH CC and is actively building in ZKML, with a focus on provenance.

What additional complexity does a hardware product entail? What are the main contrasts of these products to ‘trad’ software & crypto, and what do they have in common?

Join us to discuss the risks of path dependency and the importance of architectural foundations. These insights apply both to the creation of software products/incentive mechanisms within these products, and the more general enterprise of building a startup, led by Joe Rowell (PhD. Robotics), a newly-admitted resident member. He most recently built a legged robot, leveraging SLAM to enable the mapping of new environments and complex navigation to perform a range of tasks. He is also a competitive bodybuilder.

Why do the interests of venture capital funds and founders tend to misalign after a certain point? What are the priorities of a venture capital fund, and how do certain nuances and often hidden factors affect their behaviour? Are VCs ‘the enemy’, or just another stakeholder whose concerns need to be properly understood? Josh Lavorini will discuss all of these topics and more, combining diverse experiences from a recently-acquired, early-stage startup, a seed-stage venture fund in NYC, a fund-of-funds vehicle, and a Series A-stage fintech to give a holistic view of the market.

Meet HomeDAO members and investors at the London Business School for ‘First Look’, a relaxed, informal demo day for some of the UK’s most exciting projects, co-hosted by Lattice, a leading early-stage web3 fund.

Arbitrage is a commonly used term in crypto and financial markets more generally. It is the source of many fortunes and require an opportunistic, incisive mindset. How can arbitrageurs escape competition and find arbitrages in hidden areas? How should one think about the world in order to discover these lucrative opportunities? What kind of skills and aptitudes should one hone in order to become proficient at this? Manuj Mishra, resident member of HomeDAO and recent winner of ZK Lambda and ETH CC, will discuss all of these topics and more at the first HomeDAO lecture of Michaelmas Term 2023.

A private event for HomeDAO members and alumni, hosted at HomeDAO HQ

HomeDAO will be welcoming partners from a16z crypto, Jay and Elizabeth, as they settle into their new home in London. Dinner and drinks kindly hosted by a16z crypto in Knightsbridge. Invite only.

To celebrate a fantastic conference and a year of groundbreaking successes for HomeDAO members, we hosted a formal dinner at Balliol College, Oxford, for HomeDAO member to engage with companies and individuals at the frontiers of crypto, including the founders of Starkware, Aave, Euler Finance, Aztec, Tezos, Nickel Digital, Tagus Capital, GSR, Mango Markets, Ethereal Ventures, Geometry and many other industry leaders.

HomeDAO will be out in full force for what’s shaping up to be one of the biggest events of the year, the 2023 Oxford Blockchain Conference.

We’ll be joined by the founders of Aave, Nickel Digital, Tezos, Starkware, ZCash and many others, with top VCs, hedge funds and builders all in attendance. The venue is the Oxford Town Hall, and there will be a number of panels featuring industry leaders, on a range of topics from VC and markets to ZK and the legal landscape. Sign up here!

Lee-Ho, former founding engineer at LiteCoin, exited founder, YC W21, YC W23, advisor at Global Founders Capital, and now full-time angel investor, joins us to share his experiences on raising money from investors.

What do Cirque du Soleil, Airbnb, Uber, Uniswap, AT&T and Apple all have in common?

Inspired by venture firm NfX, Mohamed Baioumy provides the answer, examining the nuances of network effects and defensibilities in the internet age.

Konrad Kopp returns to dissect the analogies and aphorisms of one of the most explosive thinkers of the modern era, Friedrich Nietzsche, in the context of entrepreneurship and, perhaps counterintuitively, commercial self-actualisation. Konrad is an exited founder currently working on his second venture, and in a past life studied Philosophy at Oxford, which, combined with his native German tongue, should bring some interesting insights to the work of one of the world’s most (in)famous philosophers.

Alex Cheema, former head of DeFi at Portofino Technologies and founder of Script Finance, will discuss direct applications of Zero-Knowledge proofs with a specific focus on their use cases in a financial setting. Alex has won several prizes for his work on ZKPs, including most recently at ETH Tokyo, where he built Tanuki, a privacy-centric wallet-scoring app that leverages ZKs.

Outdoteth delivers a masterclass on the technical and commercial intricacies of building and launching a DeFi app: from designing and auditing a codebase to finding product-market fit and building a strong, scalable community and attracting LPs. He boasts a wealth of experience from Caviar, an NFT AMM, and Putty, an on-chain OTC options platform.

Orlando Fraser leads a workshop on designing efficient on-chain protocols, touching on EVM internals, bridges, rollups, ZK proofs and more.

Eito Miyamura gives a high-level overview on AI, RL and their applications to blockchain technology.