Posts Tagged ‘zeina’
Hardware Oracles: Bridging the Real World to the Blockchain
Cryptographically attestable anti-tampering sensors
To be able to securely report a reading (from any kind of sensors), the combination of the following is necessary:
- a cryptographic attestation of the sensor reading, authenticating the origin of the measure: each device has a private key signing outgoing payloads (with a nonce to avoid replays)
- an anti-tampering installation of the reader device, rendering it inoperable (by wiping the private key) in case of manipulation attempt (connect to another object, inject false stimuli, etc.)
These secure reading devices are called Hardware Oracles, and are the gateways from the physical work to the Blockchain realm.
Source: Hardware Oracles: bridging the Real World to the Blockchain
Read MoreBlockchain Oracles – BlockchainHub
Blockchains cannot access data outside their network on their own. An oracle – also known as data feed – is a third party service designed for use in smart contracts on the blockchain. They provide external data when needed and push it onto the blockchain.
Such conditions could be any data like weather temperature, successful payment, price fluctuations, etc. Smart contracts contain value and only unlock that value, if certain pre-defined conditions are met. When a particular value is reached, the smart contract changes its state and executes the programmatically predefined algorithms, automatically triggering an event on the blockchain. The primary task of oracles is to provide these values to the smart contract in a secure and trusted manner.
An oracle, in the context of blockchains and smart contracts, is an agent that finds and verifies real world occurrences and submits this information to a blockchain to be used by smart contracts.
There are four different types of oracles based on the type of use. We differentiate between software oracles, hardware oracles, consensus oracles and inbound and outbound oracles.
Source: Blockchain Oracles – BlockchainHub
Read MoreAnnouncing The Town Crier Service
Why do we need Oracles?
Smart contracts confined to on-chain data are like sports cars on local roads. They’re purring with latent power, but can’t do anything really interesting.
To unleash their potential, smart contracts need access to the wide open vistas of data available off-chain, i.e., in the real world. A financial smart contract needs access to equity, commodity, currency, or derivative prices. An insurance smart contact must be aware of triggering events such as bad weather, flight delays, etc. A smart contract allowing consumers to sell online games to one another must confirm that a seller successfully transferred game ownership to a buyer.Latent power waiting to be unchained…
Today, though, smart contracts can’t obtain such data in a highly trustworthy way. And they can’t achieve data privacy. These deficiencies are starving smart contract ecosystems of the data they need to achieve their full promise.
Source: Announcing The Town Crier Service
Read MoreThe $3.8bn Initial Coin Offering bubble is a huge deal. But it could break the blockchain | WIRED UK
There is a stick-it-to-the-man undertone behind this take on ICO: the idea that smart, independent teams are raking in millions from the anarchic crypto-crowd to take on blindsided VCs and bank-loving private blockchainers. And increasingly, ICOs are being used by companies outside of the blockchain field, such as messaging service Kik, which portrayed its upcoming ICO as a last-ditch attempt to compete with juggernauts such as Facebook.
Burke has no doubts where this leaves traditional investors. “The VC model is dead,” he says. “Over time people like us will stop being the main source of capital. VCs will become more like auditors. I’ve got people in ICOs saying, ‘We don’t need your money, what we want is your validation.’”
Still, Burke admits that, while this is the direction he sees ICOs evolving over the next few months and years, the current state of affairs is far from optimal.
For the time being, ICO’s real challenge is whether it can thrive without being a pain in the side for the blockchain ecosystem itself. ICOs are likely behind the recent spike in the value of ether — with investors buying the cryptocurrency in order to take part in token sales; ICOs might also be behind ether’s sudden 30 percent drop in value, as many ether-loaded projects are converting their ICO-generated ether into fiat currency to pay their staff.
And the Ethereum network itself — which less than one year ago went through a traumatic restructuring following the collapse of The DAO — is being put under strain by the ICO onslaught, as relentless, massive volume of transactions generated by token sales commandeer the ledger’s computing power.
But that is not necessarily a bad thing, Van Valkenburgh says. “It could be a way to battle-harden the network: there have been issues with transaction delays and scaling because of the popularity of ICOs put strain on the network,” he says. “But if the blockchain has to grow, ICOs are a good way to test the infrastructure.”
Source: The $3.8bn Initial Coin Offering bubble is a huge deal. But it could break the blockchain | WIRED UK
Read MoreMr. Blockchain Goes to Washington | CoinDesk
“It’s prudent for businesses to have a relationship with their representatives especially in a highly regulated environment like financial services,” said Boring, noting that this is especially true when a company’s business model overlaps with the jurisdiction of federal agencies.
Boring, a former congressional staffer herself, emphasized that constituent groups and businesses have significantly more pull with members of Congress than hired suits, adding that when groups travel significant distance to Washington, it helps add emphasis, proving how far they’re willing to go to make their case.
“No one has a stronger voice in Congress than a constituent,” she said, adding:
Source: Mr. Blockchain Goes to Washington – CoinDesk
Read MoreWTF is The Blockchain? | Hacker Noon
The ultimate 3500-word guide in plain English to understand Blockchain.
If you ever find someone feeling left behind and wondering, “WTF is the Blockchain?” you know where you can point them to.
Earlier the third-party/middleman gave us the trust that whatever they have written in the register will never be altered. In a distributed and decentralized system like ours, this seal will provide the trust instead.
Everyone who is the part of the Blockchain is eligible for rewards.
That’s how Bitcoin got into existence. It was the first currency to be transacted on a Blockchain (i.e. distributed registers). And in return, to keep the efforts going on in the network, people were awarded Bitcoins.
When enough people possess Bitcoins, they grow in value, making other people wanting Bitcoins; making Bitcoins grow in value even further; making even more people wanting Bitcoins; making them grow in value even further; and so on.
Source: WTF is The Blockchain? – Hacker Noon
Takeaway
Great explanation on how Blockchain works, including the game-theory that keeps it running.
Read MoreBlockchain Could Make the Insurance Industry Much More Transparent | HBR
… in the U.S. there is approximately $7.4 billion in unclaimed life insurance money from insured people passing away and their beneficiaries being unable to connect the dots. A blockchain-based registry could help address this challenge while retaining anonymity and improving security as a distributed public record. Part of the driver of these unclaimed funds is known as longevity risk: People living longer means more life insurance policies mature and the memory of who was insured and where physical policy documents may reside fades. Rather than being a threat to the industry, a blockchain-based public ledger would enable the rightful claimants to these proceeds to receive their due, rather than having these unclaimed funds be sold in a secondary market or stagnate.
Part of the reason insurers are wary of insuring tangible assets in developing markets is the fear of fraud and losses that cannot be validated. In these cases, the insurers’ right to subrogate, or go after the assets of others to recoup their losses, is largely unenforceable. A blockchain-based claims validation network can serve as a utility benefiting the entire industry by recording in a semipublic blockchain ledger the physical status of an insured asset, which in turn could help improve insurance penetration and adoption rates in emerging and developing markets.
Source: Blockchain Could Make the Insurance Industry Much More Transparent
Read MoreBlockchain: Massively Simplified | Richie Etwaru | TEDxMorristown – YouTube
Richie Etwaru, discusses the opportunity and implications of blockchain as a paradigm to slow/close the expanding trust gap in commerce. He unpacks blockchain to a level of simplicity to be consumed by those who are just starting to understand and explore the paradigm. He lays out a current state of commerce, suggesting that every company is currently at risk of being disrupted or incurring severe strain from a blockchain version of itself.
Every company in the world today, not just the intermediaries, are at risk of having competition from a blockchain version of themselves.
We are at the ground floor of a new paradigm in humanity that will change the human experience called Blockchain. The thing it is going to change is Trust.
Takeaway
Blockchain in one word: “Trust”
Read MoreWill Provenance Be the Blockchain’s Break Out Use Case in 2016? – CoinDesk
Much has been said about the blockchain as an ownership layer. But what exactly does that mean?
It means that blockchains represent ownership of an asset in terms of control over the data relating to that asset. In other words, only the current owner can authenticate a transaction that would cause that asset to be transferred to another owner.
This is provenance expressed in protocol form. The word “provenance” is derived from the French “provenir” which means “to come from”, and is used to describe the custodial chronology of an object.
Provenance is one of the backbones of economies, whether it relates to artifacts or real estate. There has always been a need to authenticate that a party actually owns an asset prior to any business dealing involving that asset, to ensure that the asset is “true” rather than stolen or faked.
In the past, trusted third-parties have traditionally played this role.
However, blockchains can streamline this function by serving as the infrastructure for registering and authenticating asset ownership between untrusting parties with common interests.
Source: Will Provenance Be the Blockchain’s Break Out Use Case in 2016? – CoinDesk
Read MoreIBM Think Academy: Blockchain, How it works
What is Blockchain? Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger for recording the history of transactions. It fosters a new generation of transactional applications that establish trust, accountability and transparency—from contracts to deeds to payments.
Frees up capital flows, speeds up processes, lowers transaction costs and most importantly provides security and trust. We believe that Blockchain will do for business what the Internet did for communications.
Source: IBM Blockchain
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