Archives for March 2018

I attended the Token2049 conference in Hong Kong that took place March 20th-21st. The lineup featured well known founders like Vinny Lingham (Civic), Max Kordek (Lisk), Martin Köppelmann (Gnosis), Charles Hoskinson (Cardano), Jimmy Song (Bitcoin Core contributor & Blockchain Capital), Jack Lu (Wanchain), Loi Luu (Kyber Network) and an AI Bot called Sophia. The forum also included several other speakers from different fields in the space. The venue was inside of the Kerry Hotel which is a more modern construction in the Kowloon region of Hong Kong. It overlooks Hong Kong island from across and is quite spectacular. I spent much of this time talking to leaders in the space and gaining insight into the future of Blockchain, and learning about emerging trends, I also heard quite a few ICO pitches given that I am investing in Blockchain projects.

Jimmy Song, Bitcoin Core contributor gave a presentation about “Antifragility” and why he believes Bitcoin has lasted the test of time, and will continue to grow stronger after each attack. He cited examples over the years of how Bitcoin “died” and how it re-emerged once again. It was an encouraging talk to those who believe Bitcoin has a future ahead of it.

Pavel Bains of Bluzelle gave a talk about his project and taking on giants like Google & Amazon for his decentralized file storage startup. I wrote an older post about Bluzelle here.

Simon Dixon of “BankToTheFuture” gave an inspiring talk on his future predictions of the market, which had a very positive spin. His company, calls itself the largest global online investment community of professional investors investing in financial innovation and technology. They also appear to have an endorsement from Sir Richard Branson, Billionaire and famous entrepreneur.

There was a panel discussion with Crypto hedge funds like Apex (Arij Nazir), Michael Bucella (BlockTower Capital), Alex Sunnarborg (Tetras Capital), Jen Wieczner (Fortune Magazine), and Lewis Fellas (Bletchley Park Asset Management) They discussed why all Tokens should be classified as securities, their takes on a variety of ICO projects launching, and how they see the market. Arij of Apex was quiet bullish stating that he potentially saw a multi Trillion market cap. I think that would definitely stir some enthusiasm with investors. Currently, the market has taken quite a hit from it’s ATH in December. We also saw some spikes in January and February. Fear struck with SEC warning shots being fired and the market seemed to tank. These conferences can inspire new enthusiasm but it’s up to the project founders to deliver their promises and grand visions. I believe that the future of Blockchain is bright, that ICO’s will continue to raise large sums but the dynamics will change. I think Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin still retain a high value around the globe and it will continue to do so. We will also see growth in other Cryptocurrencies in the coming years.

I attended the “Battle of the Cryptos New York City” on March 13th, and heard from some of the most influential voices in the space. This included large digital asset funds like Pantera, Blockchain founders like CEO of Overstock Patrick Byrne, founder of Polymath Trevor Koverko, Anton Golub of Lykke, Jeffrey Tucker and many others. The general sentiment was of course positive towards the future of Blockchain assets. Tucker gave an insightful speech into the reason why he was skeptical of Bitcoin several year ago, and how he eventually learned to understand the technology behind it. I think this also applies to the masses, who are slow to adapt to new technologies. I always tell people I meet at conferences that education is the most important aspect. Sometimes the users themselves become to immersed in the tech that they forget about this.

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne presents his speech at the Battle of the Cryptos in New York City. He is launching a project called tZERO (t0) which will be a “Distributed Ledger platform for capital markets.” His speech entailed the changing landscape of Wall Street and fund raising.

Hashgraph Presents at Playstation Theater in New York City

Hashgraph launched a major event at the Playstation theater. In attendance was over 1,000 members of the Hashgraph community, anticipating news on the projects latest developments. I have to say, the event was incredibly impressive. Aside from the gourmet donuts hanging on the wall in a Hashgraph style layout, “Hedera” was introduced. It will be a Coin with an astounding array of features which I will cover in another Blog post.

One of the key benefits Hedera offers is high transaction speed along with security and Smart Contracts. Scalability is the most discussed topic in the Blockchain space, how to solve this issue along with interoperability with other Blockchains. However Hashgraph is not a Blockchain, it is a Graph. It will be doing something much different than a Blockchain. Leemon Baird, the co-founder and CTO also gave a presentation and a more in depth discussion about how it will all work. Currently, Hashgraph has hundreds of developers around the globe experimenting with projects and several plan to launch Tokens soon. The project also has over 200+ “Ambassadors” worldwide hosting events and bringing in new development. Personally, I can see Hedera Hashgraph becoming a global influence one day.

 

One of the biggest concerns voiced in the Cryptocurrency community is scalability. How fast can we send transactions using these Digital Currencies? Is it possible to pay for simple items like a cup of coffee with Bitcoin or Ethereum in seconds? Raiden Network aims to fix this scalability problem. Right now, it’s just a research project with some active code on GitHub. As a matter of fact, most of these Blockchain protocols are research projects that one day may actually become real live working systems. Given the excitement of this new space, I have seen countless ICO’s launch (Initial Coin Offerings) promising to change the internet world forever. But will it really happen? If it does happen, who will be the first to implement the technology they put on these extensively long and complicated Whitepapers with even longer roadmaps.

“The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution for performing ERC20-compliant token transfers on the Ethereum blockchain. It is Ethereum’s version of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, enabling near-instant, low-fee, scalable, and privacy-preserving payments.”

Use Cases

• Retail Payments – particularly in developing countries
• P2P Cash – I personally believe the next generation will rely on Internet Money
• Micropayments – Particularly with IoT (Internet of Things) related devices/infrastructure
• Decentralized Exchanges – Currently most exchanges are centralized

The Technology Behind It

Raiden Network uses “Balance Proof” meaning it creates a binding agreement enforced by the Ethereum Blockchain. It is a private transaction, and only those who are participants may have access. Raiden states that this network does not require fees to operate on, however intermediary services may want to charge small fees, however given the population of users, I can imagine these fees would be extremely competitive. It is not clear to me what these intermediary networks are currently. Raiden is making the claim that whether the transaction is large or small, it will essentially be treated the same. The person who is transacting on the Raiden network will instantly receive the value sent to them as opposed to the OnChain transaction which will require Block time and a Miner to confirm this transaction. They even compare it to the speed of sending a text message. Raiden aims to create unlimited scalability by having a large user base. Currently, the limit is capped on most Blockchains. Behind all of this is a Cryptographic Hash lock, which prevents the balance to be credited to the end user until the other party confirms they received this payment. I do like this projects concept, and I think it’s worth paying attention to it’s development.

 

Ethereum is the most widely used network for developing ERC-20 compliant Tokens for Blockchain development projects. Countless ICO’s (Initial Coin Offerings) have been launched on the platform since it’s inception. However there have been some critics of Ethereum claiming deficiencies such as premature security, network scalability, congestion, cost of transactions, supply cap, etc. Some have claimed that its simply a platform for launching ICO’s and has not proven its worth yet. This would anger most Ethereum supporters, but the sentiments are real.

Emerging startups have declared they have better solutions and DFINITY is one of these. They are calling themselves a “public decentralized cloud computing resource” with unlimited capacity and extremely low costs for using the network compared to the likes of Amazon web services. We are also seeing similar startups like Bluzelle throw Jabs at Amazon as well. While Amazon enjoys world domination, I have seen many of these Blockchain startups compare their projects to Amazon because of it’s centralized nature, and decentralization is now a buzz word for marketing.

DFINITY wants to be a fast, secure and scalable Blockchain computer. “DFINITY network involves a top-level Threshold Relay chain that produces randomness and progresses with minimal “reorganizations” while addressing many of the technical vulnerabilities that have bedevilled the industry such as “selfish mining” or “nothing at stake”.

DFINITY’s Threshold Relay Chain applies what is called BLS or Boneh-Lynn-Shacham Cryptography. This allows a user to verify that a signer is authentic. While most people reading this have absolutely no idea what this means, in simple terms – generate a Key, sign the key, and verify the key. If you wish to delve further into what DFINITY is talking about you can read this more complex reference here.

Speed, Scale, Intelligence

DFINITY consistently states that it will be a faster and more scalable network. It compares Bitcoin & Ethereum’s 60 and 10 minute finality and makes the claim of 5-10 seconds for it’s own network using the Threshold Relay Chain. It states, that it can have unlimited computation unlike Ethereum. DFINITY says that it will implement algorithmic decentralized intelligence, what this is in simple terms is a sort of voting platform that is not prone to human corruption. This also includes increased security and upgrades to the network. They call it the “Blockchain Nervous System” and it acts as a sort of mastermind computing brain.

Interoperability (connecting with foreign networks) has been a major flaw in Blockchain technology. How will these networks connect with each other to work in harmony? We have seen claims from multiple Blockchain startups such as ICON Foundation and Wanchain. DFINITY wants to solve this with multi network systems which would link the pubic and private networks together through their own solution.

Execution

DFINITY is headed by Dominic Williams, who received his BA in computer science from Kings College in London. He appears to have a strong entrepreneurial background founding several companies like Smartdrivez, an online storage solution in London, System 7, an SaaS platform, Airdocs, a remote file sharing product, Fight My Monster, a game for children which claims to have pioneered a distributed computing technology, String Labs, which is a “crypto studio, incubator & investor” based in Palo Alto, California. They are currently developing DFINITY. The DFINITY team itself is fairly large with a wide range of skills and experience. I do think that this is one project to pay attention to. It’s very ambitious but it could very well end up working. Only time will tell. It has been said that many of these Blockchain startups can suffer a slow death, hopefully DFINITY can deliver on these grand plans.