Blocktrak

 

I decided to fly to Las Vegas to attend Blockshow, a 2 day conference focused on the future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. It was a smaller show but had a good lineup of speakers like YouTube influencer and trader Tone Vays, Alex Mashinsky of Celsius Network, Jeremy Gardner who lead the first Ethereum ICO, Bobby Lee of BTCC, Nouriel Roubini who is an outspoken critic of Cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin and Initial Coin Offerings, and several Twitter influencers.

2 Days of Blockchain Discussion

I enjoyed some of the debates, particularly between Nouriel Roubini and Tone Vays regarding Bitcoin. Several months ago I attended “Fluidity” a small summit that took place at the historic Williamsburg Savings Bank in Brooklyn, New York and Nouriel was on stage debating Joseph Lubin of Consensys. He is very passionate about his beliefs and does not seems to believe in Bitcoin or Initial Coin Offerings. Tone Vays agreed with him regarding “Alt Coins” and ICO’s, because he is more of what they call a “Bitcoin Maximalist”. I have to say this debate was the highlight and I enjoy watching naysayers go up against the bulls.

Impressions of the Conference

Las Vegas is a good venue for conferences although in the summer its excruciatingly hot outside. Since we have been in a bear market for most of 2018, many conferences have suffered a downtick of attendees. This wasn’t the case for Blockchain week in South Korea, which had very high volume. Consensus which was held earlier this year in New York City was rife with FOMO (fear of missing out) and had an explosive number of attendees regardless of the high ticket price. I think we will continue to see a huge growth in the Cryptocurrency arena regardless of negative press about prices. I think Blockshow was very well put together, I liked the venue (Palazzo Hotel) the food was excellent, they had brought in a good line up of speakers and the attendees were interesting. I also enjoyed exploring Las Vegas a bit. As far as new projects included in the show, I can’t say anything really caught my attention this go around.

 

Since I began writing this Blog in August 2017, I’ve experienced an incredible journey in the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain world. I created this as a platform for me to write about and understand the projects I’ve invested in, and help other people I meet in the space understand in a simple format what these projects are trying to do. In 2013, I purchased my first Bitcoin. I didn’t do this as an investment, it was more of a collectable item to have for fun, a novelty item.

Oddly, we are now seeing this same principle with ERC-721 Tokens. It was cool to own a Bitcoin, but at the time it had a bad reputation. Little did the world know that Bitcoin would become an extremely controversial subject globally, challenging currencies in various countries and making front page headlines in highly respected publications like the Wall Street Journal. It became so important that countries in Latin America actually needed, and still need Bitcoin to access food supplies because of their own failed currency.

2013: Fast Forward a Few Years

The subject of Blockchain became red hot in 2017, and many enthusiast like myself emerged publicly at Meetups and at conferences. YouTube channels began sprouting up like wildfire, talking about ICO’s (Initial Coin Offerings) which essentially are crowd funded technology startups fueled by Cryptocurrencies. The first driver to these ICO’s was Bitcoin and later followed by Ethereum which at one point nearly challenged Bitcoin’s domination in Market Cap. I really see 2017 as the ICO frenzy year, because so many of these projects were popping up every week.

I enjoyed researching these new projects and pulling apart white papers to understand what these projects were aiming to do. Unfortunately, along with all of the exciting visions came many scams, with the intention of just taking peoples Ethereum and building nothing at all. I attended many conferences in China, Japan, Europe, Canada, US, etc and it seemed like every other person was launching an ICO or launching a Crypto fund.

When we hit November and December FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) became commonplace. People began throwing their money into Bitcoin and Ethereum, it was a lottery mentality. For those new people who entered the space hoping for massive gains, they ended up getting burned pretty bad. They left with a negative attitude towards Bitcoin while fewer left extremely wealthy because they had cashed out into Fiat currency. January 2018, the space had shifted gears. Social Media Influencers who gained a reputation during Cryptocurrency’s rise became extremely wealthy and built brands ushering new users into Crypto. Shortly after January, we entered a bear market and prices never seemed to go up again. Large numbers of enthusiast left and new ones began replacing them.

ICO’s still continued to raise large sums of Cryptocurrency for their visions and conferences kept expanding and expanding. CoinDesk’s Consensus global conference was packed to the gills! It seemed like more and more people were leaving their jobs in finance and law to enter the Blockchain space. The same people who gave me a Goldman Sachs business card were now handing me a Consensys card. For those who do not know what Consensys is, it’s one of the largest companies, if not the largest supporting projects being built on the Ethereum network and headed by Joseph Lubin, an early investor in Ethereum.

My Personal Take On The Space

I decided to quit my internet marketing career in 2017 and focus full time on crypto trading and building my network in the space. I have found this space to be thrilling and the diversity and variety of people I have met globally. I remember attending a Bitcoin Meetup in 2015, and it had a very small number of people there. The same one had over 1,000 attendees in December 2017, you could really feel the FOMO. At one point, I was even interviewed for New York Magazine to discuss my take on Crypto trading. Regardless of the ups and downs I have held on, staying heavily involved 7 days per week whether it’s attending conferences or meetups or discussing the markets in my chat groups. I still believe that Bitcoin is quite revolutionary, and I know that word is tossed around often. It can truly change the world and has incredible value. It’s also survived the test of time and has yet to fail. Could it someday? Who knows. I do believe in it and think it will continue to exist for a very long time. I am not the only one.

Regarding ICO’s, I have come across hundreds and hundreds of founders and with all due respect to them, I have to say that it only makes sense that a few of these projects will survive and actually build something meaningful. The biggest buzzword thrown around is “Decentralize” and given that, everyone should have the right to crowd fund their project. I think it’s the nature of a free market and everyone entering the Blockchain space should be aware of what they decide to invest in, or sell to the public. I have grown very skeptical of some of these projects but believe that some of these will be really exciting in a few years. I am looking towards a positive future for Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. Let’s build together!

 

We have seen a wide range of different proposals for Blockchain companies and FOAM is one of these projects that really stands out. One of their goals is to build a consensus driven map of the world using what they call “Proof of Location”. CSC or Crypto-Spatial Coordinates will be an open and interoperable standard for location in Ethereum Smart Contracts. FOAM wants to be the first mover pioneering location data in the Blockchain space. In an earlier post, I was discussing TrustToken and how assets like Real Estate could one day be Tokenized on the Blockchain. It only makes sense that location data will also be apart of this movement. The Smart Contract will be able to make an immutable claim to an address on the Blockchain and a corresponding location on the map. The use case makes total sense. As of now, Google provides maps of just about everywhere on this planet, in clear imagery. FOAM will be adding Beacons which will be established and mutually agreed upon via Token. Aside from FOAM, a couple of other projects have been working on this space such as “What3words” and “Open Location Code“. FOAM wants to create an open source standard for Blockchains that is free.

“The CSC is effectively a human readable representation of a pair of a geohash and an Ethereum address, together with an immutable pairing of the two on the blockchain.“ -FOAM

Proof of Location

One of the FOAM’s pillar beliefs is that people should own their own data, have the choice of whether or not they want to share that data. Right, most of our devices have GPS integration. This data is generally shared based on when and where we are. For example, if we enter a shop, that location data could be collected for further use in the future. Usually that would be for marketing purposes. FOAM is building The Spatial Index which is a visual Blockchain explorer, and Crypto-Spatial Coordinates, The open standard for location on the Ethereum Blockchain.

“Proof of Location allows users and autonomous agents to privately record authenticated location data at times of their choosing, and then reveal their personal information at their discretion, by presenting a fraud-proof location claim.” -FOAM

The Future of FOAM

The Spatial Index Web3 Architecture will be a sort of mix between Google Maps and Bloomberg Trading Terminal as put in their own words. I find the visual explorer to be the most engaging and exciting aspect of their designs. GPS, time, and data that will be packaged along with it will have a definite use case in the future and I expect to see a lot more from FOAM several years down the road. Interestingly, the project is launching out of New York City, in Brooklyn, which aims to be one of the pioneering centers of Blockchain technology. New York is a great place to start as there is plenty to map out.

One of the goals in the Blockchain space is to digitize real world assets such as real estate, US Dollar, Gold, Euros, Oil, Stocks & Bonds and more. This market is said to be worth over $250 Trillion Dollars. The Tokens would represent fractional ownership or control of the asset. Through trusted attorneys Smart Contracts would be created appointing ownership to those named in the Smart Contract and registered Ethereum addresses. This would create a legally binding document which could be enforced under penalty of law. TrustToken will also be issuing the “TrueUSD” Stablecoin which will be pegged to the USD, it is also the first asset to be launched on the TrustToken platform.

TrustToken, a Cryptocurrency will be the heart of the platform. It will:

• Pay fiduciaries who fulfill accounting requirements and interface with legal-financial institutions
• Align incentives between platform participants and disincentivizes bad actors
• Collateralize all SmartTrusts’ underlying assets

The TrustProtocol will be created to have an audit trail of fiduciary behavior for Smart Contracts, Escrow agreements, and assets. Given the nature of Smart Contracts and a lack of legal repercussions, it makes sense that to grow adoption, these elements will need to be added into the Blockchain ecosystem to protect them and their assets. It also makes sense to launch a Stablecoin that will protect investors or Cryptocurrency holders against massive volatility which is guaranteed at this point in the Blockchain space.

“Without legal penalties to offset misappropriation rewards, the risk of defection will rise with increasing asset tokenization Protocols, decentralized apps, and exchanges relying on tokenized assets are all at risk, Ultimately token holders need asset management that they can trust.” -TrustToken team  

Team & Partnerships

TrustToken is lead by CEO Danny An, who is based in San Francisco, California. Prior to starting TrustToken he was a Data Scientist at Kernel, a biotech company headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. He also spent 1 year at PWC in San Francisco as a product manager and analytics innovation accelerator. He received a BA from the University of Texas in Information Systems. Also onboard is Rafael Cosman who has a strong entrepreneurial background founding companies like Street Code Academy which raised $1M to educated communities in East Palo Alto for youth interested in Coding. He also worked at Google, and Kernel. He earned his degree in computer science from Stanford University in computer science. The third founder is Stephen Kade, who served as a project manager for Kernel from 2015-2017. He also has an entrepreneurial background founding a company called NeuroTech X in 2015.

Supporting TrustToken’s growth is Stanford Universities “StartX Fund”, prominent law firm Cooley, and renowned investment firm BlockTower. The combined team brings talent from major companies like Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, PayPal, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Wharton and more. TrustToken is currently finishing it’s final raise, and it will be interesting to see it’s development in the coming months.

One of the longest running problems in Blockchain is scalability and privacy. StarkWare aims to create computational integrity proofs. Computational proofs can be revolutionary in proving A or B. One example given was tracing the DNA to the actual perpetrator and proving that this is indeed the culprit and under the current system placing trust in a centralized authority such as an auditor, could be prone to human error. This also creates a scalability problem when information can not be properly verified at high speed and could create a single point of failure.

“Zero knowledge (ZK) proof and argument systems are automated protocols that replace human auditors as a means of guaranteeing computational integrity over confidential data for any efficient computation, eliminating corruptibility and reducing costs.” – StarkWare 

Computational Integrity

Blockchain offers incredible solutions to problems that currently exist in the world, but still the future development of Quantum Computing has caused some to be concerned about the strength of these chains long term. ZK (Zero Knowledge) replace auditors and guarantee computational integrity, they also reduce cost. It has been said that current ZK systems may not be prone to Quantum based attacks by large scale computers and this is one of StarkWares goals, to create a transparent and scalable system. Currently, the Cryptocurrency called “Zcash” integrates something called ZKsnarks, also known as Zero Knowledge Cryptography. It really stands for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge.” It proves possession of certain information without revealing that information. “Zero-knowledge” proofs allow one party (the prover) to prove to another (the verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself (Zcash). StarkWares solution to the Quantum Computing threat is called “ZKStarks” and I see this more of an upgrade to the current system offered.

Scalability & Privacy

As we shift into a new world of technology using Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Zcash, Monero, Litecoin, Dash, etc the Blockchain space is facing many issues with scalability and privacy. Smart Contracts are in plans to be implemented into just about every fact of society. All of this is actually quite revolutionary but the tech is not ready yet for wider adoption. We still need to enhance what currently exist for it to scale, we also face more problems when it comes to privacy vs transparency. Really, what StarkWare is aiming to do is improve upon ZKsnarks. It’s an enhancement to a system that has already been in the works for years and we will continue to see projects like this entering the space. We have yet to solve many of the problems with Cryptocurrency and projects like StarkWare can escalate adoption and use by the masses, while they have no idea what technology is behind it all.

Team

StarkWare is a team based in Israel headed by Eli Ben Sasson who is currently a professor of computer science at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He also was a post-doctoral researcher at MIT and Harvard University, after completing his PhD in CS at the Hebrew University. He was also a founding member of the Zcash project which places him in high esteem for his next project. Additionally he is joined by Alessandro Chiesa, a founding scientist of the Zcash company. He received BSc degrees in CS and in Math, and a PhD in CS, from MIT. Uri Kolodny, a fellow Alumni of MIT. Michael Riabzev, who has 14 years of software development experience, including at Intel and IBM Research Labs.

The team is also joined by a multitude of highly trained engineers and researchers. Some of the biggest names in the Blockchain space are backing StarkWare like Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital, Bitmain, Vitalik Buterin the founder of Ethereum, and Zcash. The project will not be launching any sort of ICO as the sale was closed privately in January to strategic investors. It will be interesting to see how this project develops over the next few years and will definitely be keeping an eye on it’s progress.