CircleID: Blockchain Latest Blockchain related postings on CircleID en Copyright 2019, unless where otherwise noted. 2019-11-19T08:12:00-08:00 CircleID 130 45 What Does Blockchain Have to Do With Voting? Apropos of recent news stories about a blockchain-based voting system that was hacked before its first election, someone asked: "Perhaps final recognition that a lot of blockchain is hype? Or simply an interesting side-story?"

A blockchain can ensure that the lies you see are the same lies that were published, but that doesn't have much to do with voting.

Voting has a very peculiar security model — you need to verify that each person voted at most once, you need to count all of the votes for each candidate, and you need not link the two. A lot of very bad voting systems are built by people who wrongly assume that its security model is similar to something else, which it is not.

An obvious example is Diebold who built voting machines that worked like ATMs, which was a disaster, since the way you audit ATMs depends on the details of each transaction being linked to the person doing it.

Paper ballots have a lot to recommend them. It's easy for poll workers to observe that each voter puts one ballot into the box, they're relatively easy to count (we use mark sense machines here) and compared to the spaghetti code in direct recording machines, they're quite tamper resistant.

Written by John Levine, Author, Consultant & Speaker

2019-08-23T08:45:00-08:00 internetblockchain
Thoughts on Libra Facebook has announced its Libra cryptocurrency. This is good news for cryptocurrencies and market-incentivized networks. I worry that Libra's financial inclusion might come with an attendent loss of privacy or autonomy.

After months of speculation, Facebook on Tuesday announced Libra, a cryptocurrency with the mission of enabling a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.

That's a worthy goal. But, as you'd expect with almost anything Facebook does these days, there was a lot of reaction ranging from skepticism to outright opposition.

As Chair of the Sovrin Foundation, I've had a lot of people ask my opinion on Libra.


One thing that I like about Libra is that it's not just a Facebook coin, which is what I had imagined when I first heard about it. Rather, Libra is a Swiss-based organization, and Facebook is just one of (eventually) 100 members. Voting in Libra is stake-based, so that doesn't necessarily mean Facebook will just have 1% of the voting power. They could have much more depending on their stake.

An independent, multilateral governing organization is a good design choice. I have no evidence that Sovrin Foundation served as a model in any way, but that choice is aligned with the governance model we've pioneered with the Sovrin Governance Framework.

That said, there's a big difference in the governing model of Libra and Sovrin. Libra is very clearly an industry association. The governance is controlled by the organizations who stake it, and these organizations will be making decisions about how Libra operates based on what's good for them. Sovrin Foundation, on the other hand, is NOT an industry association because we want Sovrin to support Identity for All, rather than identity in the service of a few large companies.


Facebook will play a big role in the success of Libra. With 1.7 billion users, they can incorporate Libra into their apps and make it useful for payments on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and beyond. They won't need exchanges — they are their own exchange. Libra can become useful for lots of people very quickly as a medium of exchange inside Facebook's ecosystem. That ignores a lot of other use cases outside of Facebook, but clearly, this is a Facebook play and their user base is a large reason others have joined in.

That kind of reach will be huge for cryptocurrencies in general because it will get people used to the idea of using crypto. When lots of people have Libra coins, other utility tokens will be incentivized to build in support for exchanging Libra for their tokens. Libra could become a common currency for various projects.

And we can't ignore the validation this gives to the idea of tokens in general. As Erik Voorhees said on Twitter: "Zoom out for a second and realize how far this industry has come. The biggest companies in the world are now launching cryptocurrencies. BOOM." Crypto is now mainstream.


The Libra Whitepaper includes this paragraph:


That's all it says, so it's hard to know what exactly it means. The first question in my mind is what do they mean when they say "identity"? Are they thinking in traditional digital identity terms where identity is mostly about authentication and maybe KYC around a small set of attributes? They give no clues that they are considering anything beyond that. I hope they're not thinking of tying Libra addresses to some correlatable identifier since that will be a privacy nightmare.

Second, there's already a number of open identity standards. They don't say why they think they need to develop another one. Of course, the common mindset among most corporate types is that identity is a silo that you build yourself, so it may be nothing more considered than the default view.

Third, portable, digital identity exists now in Sovrin. There's no reason, of course, that Sovrin's identity metasystem can't serve as the basis for identity in Libra. And there are many reasons why it should. Sovrin provides a flexible, open, and public metasystem that can easily serve as the foundation for the identity services a system like Libra would need to support financial inclusion without surveillance. Financial inclusion shouldn't come at the cost of privacy.


Of course, this is just the announcement. The launch isn't for another year and lots will change as Libra moves from the drawing board to reality.

Overall, I see Libra as a good development. One that will push the crypto space forward and drive adoption. Rather than destroying other cryptocurrencies and tokens, Libra augments them and validates them. Every coin or token has to live or die on the basis of its utility and Libra doesn't change that. The world needs multiple tokens because they represent the means of exchange in a particular network and provide market incentives in the context of that network. Libra is a big step toward a world where market-driven networks are the norm. That's a good thing.

Written by Phillip J. Windley, Author & Consultant

2019-06-20T14:54:00-08:00 internetblockchain
Trademark Owners Beware – There's a New Brand Identifier to Worry About You might not understand how crypto-currencies or blockchain wallets work, but Facebook's announcement this week is a clear signal that these new technologies will soon become ubiquitous. Facebook's introduction of its own crypto-currency to its 2 billion users means mass adoption of crypto-currencies and digital wallets are on the horizon.

This has implications that trademark owners need to be aware of.

When the world wide web first emerged in the '90s, I was busy building large-scale searchable databases for trademark lawyers. We quickly added domain name data as they emerged as new trademark identifiers for brand owners. Fast forward to 2019 — there are new brand identifiers fast emerging to support crypto-currency and other blockchain applications.

Just as the rapid growth of the world wide web and the emergence of domain names outpaced trademark policing efforts of brand owners in the '90s, so too are crypto-currencies and blockchain applications moving faster than brand owners can keep up.

One example is blockchain digital wallets for sending and receiving payments. These are represented as long unreadable strings such as: "1FloatSFTRjhEeobR5637HET76bprJK23T".

These blockchain wallet identifiers are cumbersome to share. What is needed are human-friendly readable names. Essentially, blockchain wallets need domain names.

The creation of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1999 helped to bring some order to the free-for-all in the early days of the web. Not only did ICANN introduce retail competition to Network Solutions and more choices other than .COM, but the governance body also introduced Rights Protection Mechanisms, such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the Trademark Clearinghouse to help protect brand owners.

However, blockchain developers are not waiting for acceptance from ICANN. Instead, they are creating their own version of the DNS without the regulatory oversight of ICANN.

This entails the creation of new top-level-domain extensions, such as .ETH, .ZIL and others. None of these extensions are recognized by ICANN and therefore are not in the DNS root zone file nor in the Public Suffix List utilized by web browsers and maintained by Mozilla.

But the workaround is simple. As millions of bitcoin users already know, web access to blockchain applications is as simple as adding a browser extension or plug-in to Firefox or Chrome. There are even browsers such as Opera and Brave that now make the blockchain accessible by default.

Facebook might not utilize a blockchain domain extension and its crypto-currency and blockchain wallet may ultimately fail. Nonetheless, its offerings will help accelerate overall global awareness and actual use of crypto-currency and blockchain wallets.

We've identified over a dozen active blockchain domain extensions, including: .BIT, .COIN, .EMC, .ETH and .ZIL. With these blockchain domain names, sending and receiving crypto-currencies are now as easy as sharing a human-readable wallet such as Shoes.ETH or News.ZIL instead of a long unreadable string. To the end-user, these URLs are as easy to enter into the browser as EnCirca.COM.

The biggest of these blockchain domains is clearly .ETH, the extension for the Ethereum blockchain. Two years ago, Ethereum conducted an experiment by launching .ETH domain names that were seven or more characters in length. Nearly 300,000 .ETH domain names were registered. This zone count is higher than 98% of the recent 1,200 ICANN domain extensions.

Ethereum is now back with another domain launch this summer. This time, they are releasing short character .ETH domain names that are from three to six characters in length. They are also charging an annual "rent" for all domain names.

Another blockchain domain to watch is .ZIL, based on the Zilliqa blockchain. Venture capitalists have invested millions to help develop the .ZIL domain extension, which is promising to enable websites to stay beyond the reach of government censorship. .ZIL is currently in the midst of a Trademark Sunrise Period that allows trademark owners to protect their marks ahead of a land-rush. Unlike the typical ICANN regulated domain, the Trademark Clearinghouse is not involved in .ZIL.

The lack of Trademark Clearinghouse involvement is just one way that ICANN regulated domains and blockchain domains are very different.

  • The blockchain is designed to ensure privacy. Owners of blockchain domains are anonymous unless they decide to reveal themselves. There is no public WHOIS database that can be relied upon. There is no one to send a Cease & Desist letter to.
  • The blockchain is decentralized. This means that there is no single court or authority that can shut it down. Trademark owners can't go to a court to force a takedown or transfer using the IN REM process.
  • The blockchain is immutable. This is another way of saying that blockchain transactions are nearly impossible to reverse. Thus, a brand owner cannot force the cancellation or owner transfer of a blockchain domain name without the consent of the owner.
  • The Rights Protection Mechanisms developed under ICANN do not apply to blockchain domains. This means no UDRP, no Trademark Clearinghouse, no downloadable zone file, etc.

Blockchain domain extensions will likely proliferate as more and more companies unveil their blockchain wallets and currencies. Clearly, trademark enforcement for blockchain domains is going to be much harder compared to ICANN regulated domains.

Of course, governance for blockchain domains will likely continue to evolve, just like ICANN regulated domains have. New Rights Protection Mechanisms may eventually emerge to help brand owners reclaim or blacklist blockchain domain names from the inevitable cyber-squatting that will occur.

But in the meantime, trademark lawyers should be vigilant about monitoring these emerging brand identifiers and be proactive in policing their trademarks from this new threat.

Written by Thomas Barrett, President - EnCirca, Inc

2019-06-19T21:34:00-08:00 internetblockchaindomain_managementdnsdomain_namesicannbrand_protectionnew_tlds
Facebook Announces Global Digital Currency, Financial Infrastructure Built on Blockchain Technology Facebook shows a sneak peek of what using Calibra will be like.

Facebook today announced a newly formed subsidiary, named Calibra, to provide financial services. The first product Calibra will introduce, according to the company, is a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency Facebook has created on top of a blockchain technology. The wallet is expected to launch in 2020 and available in Messenger, WhatsApp as well as a standalone app.

As easy as text message: Facebook says Calibra will let people send Libra to almost anyone with a smartphone, "as easily and instantly as you might send a text message and at low to no cost." Company is also hoping to eventually allow people and businesses be able to use the platform to pay bills with the push of a button, buy coffee and ride local public transit without needing to carry cash or a metro pass.

The privacy thing: Facebook has indicated, as might be expected, that it will take steps to protect users' privacy. Quoting from today's announcement, the company says: "Aside from limited cases, Calibra will not share account information or financial data with Facebook or any third party without customer consent. This means Calibra customers' account information and financial data will not be used to improve ad targeting on the Facebook family of products."

"European regulators are already pressing Facebook about its cryptocurrency." Colin Lecher reporting in The Verge: "European officials quickly called for scrutiny of the plan, raising concerns over whether the project was sufficiently regulated. ... A German member of the European Parliament expressed similar concerns [stating] Facebook was at risk of becoming a 'shadow bank' and that companies 'must not be allowed to operate in a regulatory nirvana when introducing virtual currencies.'"

2019-06-18T10:59:00-08:00 internetblockchain
Cybercrime Innovation: Tackling Emerging Threats and Vulnerabilities What keeps CISOs up at night? For hundreds of senior company leaders across countries and industries, the steady growth of cybercrime is one of their biggest concerns. Consequently, organizations spend more money than ever to mitigate the risks and consequences of data breaches, despite a new wave of attacks being on its way as we speak.

2019 has already proven a year during which cryptojacking and AI-generated phishing has gained ground. We have written a comprehensive article about the upcoming security threats titled 2019: New Vulnerabilities Increase Threat Levels, and in this post, we are going to take a closer look at some of them.

Increase in Attacks Leading up to Elections

So far this year, we have experienced the calm before the storm of major elections worldwide, bringing with them the growth of hacking attempts against organizations, political parties, and, perhaps, even the voting system itself. One can, therefore, expect an increase in efforts to protect, educate, and secure businesses and state organizations against these influence-seeking attacks.

Data is the key enabler here with threats possibly coming from social channels, applications, and various communication systems. Therefore, companies will have to ramp up their threat intelligence programs by using such tools as threat intelligence platforms to distinguish unreliable sources from those that are real and have a better understanding of the threat landscape.

AI-Generated Images and Videos

The latest advances in artificial intelligence have allowed scientists to create imaginary faces with stunning realism. Also known as a "deepfake", the technique is capable of producing fake images and videos of a person that can be difficult to discern. This could be another technology that hackers can exploit in the near future.

In fact, AI-generated phishing campaigns are already happening, and it won't take long for threat actors to start using highly realistic photos or videos en masse to support their malicious deeds. They may even use the technology to manipulate stock prices, for instance, by publishing fake news of a CEO announcing the financial demise of his or her company.

Cryptocurrency Abuses

Cryptojacking is a relatively new digital threat that is plaguing the world of cryptocurrency. The process works when a hacker inserts a piece of code in computers or mobile devices, which then uses up their resources to gather digital currencies. So just like in many cyber attacks today, the main motive of threat actors here is financial gain.

Cryptocurrency abuse is capable of taking over web browsers while compromising various systems. The main danger is that the malicious cryptojacking viruses that hackers use are designed in such a way as to remain hidden for as long as possible and, therefore, cause more damage. However, software like threat intelligence platforms can be utilized to analyze suspicious behaviors in a company network and counteract the threat.

Attacks from the Cloud

Agencies that host the data of other organizations on their servers are appealing targets for hackers. By getting past their defenses, perpetrators not only can gain access to the IT entire infrastructure but most importantly are free to reach out and grab sensitive clients' data that are stored there.

Major companies like Google and Amazon can spend money to invest in cybersecurity fortifications heavily, but even that doesn't mean they are immune from being breached. However, smaller cloud computing firms should be even more alert against threats as malicious individuals are most likely to focus on them in the first place, expecting that their security protocols are considerably weaker.

* * *

From the potential of AI being abused to state-sponsored cyber threats, organizations have indeed had many concerns so far in 2019. By focusing on technologies that can enhance their digital protection, companies stand a better chance of minimizing the consequences of cybercrime and Threat Intelligence Platform can help in this regard.

2019-06-07T07:35:01-08:00 internetblockchaincloud_computingcyberattackcybercrimecybersecurity
A New Project Called Handshake Wants to Decentralize DNS, Says It's Unlike Previous Attempts An entity called the Handshake Network claims its newly developed open source project offers advantages over the traditional naming and signature systems. Using blockchain technology, Handsahke says it can avoid the security vulnerabilities of conventional DNS, including DDoS attacks on name servers and cache. While this is now exactly a novel idea, Steven McKie, a developer, and investor for Handshake, says unlike previous attempts that tried to replace DNS, this effort is meant to work with the existing DNS. "Handshake can work with the existing TLDs (e.g., com, net, org) to ensure existing names continue to work as expected," says the website. "Handshake manages this by deprecating the need for the root DNS servers. Right now, anyone can point existing TLDs towards their respective nameservers. Eventually, we hope to provide the names currently associated with TLDs using Handshake's core protocols and are actively working to facilitate that. In addition to this, major privacy and security-focused TLDs such as onion are given first-class support within the Handshake system."

2019-06-06T10:48:00-08:00 internetblockchaincybersecuritydnsdomain_namesnew_tlds
Internet Outfits Including Facebook, Telegram and Signal Are Rolling Out New Cryptocurrencies Some of the leading internet messaging companies including Facebook, Telegram and Signal are moving ahead with plans to provide mainstream consumers digital coins. Nathaniel Popper and Mike Isaac reporting today in the New York Times: "The internet outfits ... are planning to roll out new cryptocurrencies over the next year that are meant to allow users to send money to contacts on their messaging systems, like a Venmo or PayPal that can move across international borders. The most anticipated but secretive project is underway at Facebook. The company is working on a coin that users of WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, could send to friends and family instantly, said five people briefed on the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements."

2019-02-28T11:27:00-08:00 internetblockchain
Cryptominers Infected 10x More Organizations Than Ransomware in 2018 A new security report reveals cryptominers infected ten times more organizations than ransomware in 2018, but only one in five IT security professionals were aware their company's networks had been infected by mining malware. Despite an 80% fall in cryptocurrency values, the newly released 2019 security report by Check Point, says 37% of organizations globally were hit by cryptominers in 2018, and 20% of companies continue to be hit every week. Additional noteworthy highlight from the report:

— "Threat risk of cryptominers underrated by organizations: when asked what they rated as the biggest threats to their organization, just 16% stated cryptomining, compared with DDoS attacks (34%), data breaches (53%), ransomware (54%) and phishing (66%). This is concerning, as cryptominers can easily act as stealth backdoors to download and launch other types of malware."

— "Malware-as-a-service rises: the GandCrab Ransomware-as-a-Service affiliate program shows how amateurs can now profit from the ransomware extortion business as well. Users keep up to 60% of the ransoms collected from victims, and its developers keep up to 40%. GandCrab has over 80 active affiliates, and within two months in 2018 had infected over 50,000 victims and claimed between $300,000 and $600,000 in ransoms."

2019-02-07T16:28:00-08:00 internetblockchaincyberattackcybercrimecybersecurity
DNS Inventor Impressed With Innovative Effort Behind .LUXE TLD to Integrate DNS With Blockchain The company running the new .LUXE top-level domain (TLD) recently issued an update on its progress with the innovative effort to tie the TLD with blockchain. Minds + Machines Group Limited (MMX) reports that 11 domain registrars have "agreed to implement the API, developed exclusively for MMX, that allows .luxe names to be easily, and securely, associated to items on the Ethereum blockchain by registrar customers." Additionally, MMX reports that users of a specific blockchain proaduct or service can now purchase their .luxe name and pair it to that product or service at the point of use without having to make a separate journey to a registrar to buy their .luxe name and complete the association of the name with the underlying product or service.

This is the first genuine piece of DNS related innovation says Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the Domain Name System ("DNS"): "The prospect of integrating DNS with distributed ledger technology/ blockchain, for example, what MMX is proposing in .luxe, is the first genuine piece of DNS related innovation that I have seen in the last decade that has the possibility to be truly transformative. I very much look forward to monitoring its progress and potentially collaborating in innovation-based projects with the Company."

2018-12-13T14:03:00-08:00 internetblockchaindnsdomain_namesnew_tlds
Where’s the Blockchain Killer App? Maybe It’s Buried Underneath All the Hype! "Our approach, as it turns out, echoes others in the field who question whether the benefits of Blockchain add value above and beyond existing technologies, or accrue to stakeholders beyond the donors that fund them."

This article on ICTworks really brought all the feelings I've been having about Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) to the fore.

In recent times, I've been struggling to determine where blockchain has demonstrated its immensely promised value, delivered true market or stakeholder value, or disrupted an existing ecosystem. And thus far, what I keep coming up with is that "blockchain is truly a solution searching for a problem." Most of all, many of its enthusiasts and proponents are generally conceptual thinkers and/or snake oil salespersons who have little to no experience delivering secure, integrated, complex systems.

My confidence in blockchain is not low because Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) started with so much promise as an innovative way to secure capital for startups, but quickly morphed into get rich quick scams that relieved thousands of ill-informed crypto enthusiasts of their collective wealth. I am not a blockchain skeptic because Bitcoin seems like nothing more than a vastly inferior way to consume massive amounts of electricity in pursuit of an energy-wasting, climate changing, speculative investment commodity (and one which fails spectacularly as a payment system). I am actually willing to concede that the combination of immense capital and technical effort being channelled towards Blockchain projects will ultimately yield results. At present, the space is just really noisy and most approaches are deeply flawed.

Interestingly enough, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Butelin, believes that Blockchain will never have a killer app. In 'The Value of Blockchain Technology', he maintained:

"There will be no 'killer app' for Blockchain technology. The reason for this is simple: the doctrine of low-hanging fruit. If there existed some particular application for which blockchain technology is massively superior to anything else ... then people would be loudly talking about it already. ... And so far, there has been no single application that anyone has come up with that has seriously stood out to dominate everything else on the horizon."

Then why are we focusing so many resources on the technology I am forced to ask? Experts and pseudo-experts have touted several 'revolutionary' use cases for Blockchain: digital gold, micro-payments, smart contracts, digital identity, medical records, digital currencies, tokenized securities, intellectual property, IoT, online gaming, and the list goes on and on. Cryptocurrencies, once thought to be the surefire, can't-miss application for Blockchain, have been tanking in the marketplace for obvious reasons such as scaling challenges, regulatory pressures, security issues and general user accessibility. The insanity around ICOs and use of Blockchain has seen companies formulating such a huge catchall for what the technology can achieve that they've regularly ventured into the realm where secure, clustered databases are quite simply a more effective solution. Sigh!

But let's circle back to security for a brief moment. While the blockchain itself is pretty secure if properly executed, this doesn't mean that it has no vulnerabilities. One of the key issues is that the technology is relatively new, and there are not sufficiently experienced developers who know how to properly secure blockchain solutions. Issues with scaling also have to be considered (i.e. transaction complexity and volumes can easily compromise an improperly designed blockchain system). Additionally, in the absence of adequate IT governance, risk and control, third-party interfaces (e.g. exchanges, wallets, fintech partners, payment processors, smart contracts, etc.) are easily the weakest links in the Blockchain ecosystem. We have seen more than enough instances where poorly hardened systems connected to the blockchain have resulted in theft of financial assets. The decentralized nature of blockchain platforms makes it even more challenging to respond to security deficiencies, given that consensus (time and energy) needs to be achieved to fork a particular implementation of the blockchain. This is not always achieved in a timely manner.

I am not saying that blockchain doesn't potentially have real, valuable use cases. As previously stated, there are some extremely bright individuals working on developing blockchain systems and platforms, and oodles of capital funding their work. Hopefully, while I still have breath in my lungs, I will see a Blockchain product or service that is truly life-altering. But so far, there's enough evidence to state with confidence that blockchain has been mostly bluster and little benefit. More specifically, 10 years in there is no industry where this technology has rendered its competitors obsolete. There have been thousands of great ideas (and thousands more that have been not so great), but where the rubber hits the road, execution has been incredibly poor. Maybe, just maybe, blockchain's killer app already exists and we just haven't realized. Or it's simply never coming.

Written by Niel Harper, Managing Director

2018-12-12T17:18:00-08:00 internetblockchain
The .BEST New gTLD: Second Interview This is a one hour podcast giving all details about what the .BEST social network is going to be and how users will be able to generate an income from it.

100,000,000 users

Yes, you read that correctly, we're talking about a potential of 100,000,000 million users by 2022, and that means millions of ".best" domain names. In this major project, two ventures are identified: the .BEST registry itself, which comes as the tool to develop an innovative social network.

Details are given

Cyril Fremont gives lots of details on how his social network, focusing on reviews, is going to be different from Google Reviews, Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisors. If one would be tempted to think that ... well, "that's just going to be another social network", then, I strongly suggest to listen carefully the part of the interview on the decentralization of this network. I already interviewed Cyril Fremont in July 2018 and did not pay attention to this but the fact that this social network is decentralized answers a very important legal question: registrant's data will be hosted in their country of residence. GDPR, are you listening?

Unexpected questions

Another interesting aspect of this interview is that Cyril Fremont met with 6 high-tech experts on several subjects from different industries: questions were not written in advance and these specialists hit him with unexpected questions such as:

  1. How will you pay people?
  2. How will you ensure that reviews won't be fake?
  3. How will you have users to come to that network?
  4. How do you finance such a project? (And you will learn about: An ongoing $10,000,000 operation to finance the bootstrap of the social network; An ICO of $20,000,000 to finance the next stage of the social network.)
  5. How is the team built around this innovative project and… a few names are given.

I suggest to listen to his answers in this podcast (in French). The social network will be launched in January 2019.

Written by Jean Guillon, New gTLDs "only".

2018-09-20T10:06:00-08:00 internetblockchaindomain_namesregistry_servicesnew_tlds
Getting on with Digital Transformation: Three Steps to Making Strategic Technology Choices In a recently published Uptime Institute Survey, Uptime Institute found that organizations operating data centers are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit professionals skilled in security, networking, and hybrid technologies. This realization comes at an interesting time, as the monolithic business infrastructure built over the last two decades is now entering a period of transformation.

In some ways, this reminds me of the prelude to the millennium some 20 years ago. At the time, everyone decided to embrace the Internet and tackle the Y2K problem all at once. This led to a shortage of Internet experts and information technology professionals skilled in the Y2K problem, giving way to one of the biggest technology booms to date.

History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes

As far as general market dynamics are concerned, everyone doing the same thing at the same time tends to lead to a boom. While the Information Technology and Communications industry has been drumming the importance of the digital transformation trend for several years now, the progress to date has been lackluster. However, with the awareness of digital transformation hitting the mainstream, it is now beginning to seem like things are about to change.

Once the mainstream market starts moving forward, there will be two problems that organizations have to address: the shortage of knowledgeable staff and the complexity of the next-generation business platforms. Both issues come with significant strategic implications, because getting things wrong and missing the train may lead to a competitive disadvantage.

Therefore, all organizations must try to come to grips with understanding how to position with the technology dimensions of the digital transformation. To get started, here is a list of three key considerations that should be weighed in before making decisions.

1. As an organization, do we really have the know-how and the resources to do this on our own?

Engineers love solving challenging problems with interesting technologies. So, their first instinct is to develop things in-house. Yet as the technology that powers the digital transformation is becoming increasingly complex, there is a growing gap between what in-house engineers do and do not know.

In this situation, it is often advisable to work with partners who have already been on the learning curve for a few years. Even for organizations that can afford to invest tens or hundreds of millions on these initiatives, having knowledgeable partners is a great way to reduce the Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and to speed up the time-to-market for the agile business platforms of tomorrow.

2. Do we understand that complex working systems are invariably developed from simple systems?

The development of complex systems should always be started by building a simple system that works. While a new paradigm such as agile business infrastructure may make it tempting to design everything from a clean slate, this typically leads to designs with layers of excess complexity that do not meet the untrained eye.

Leveraging the existing infrastructure to the fullest extent is often a much better approach because when done right it will shorten the project lead times, cut the costs and ensure business continuity. For example, hybrid multi-cloud architectures are a wonderful way to augment the legacy infrastructure with automation and public clouds.

3. How long can we afford to wait?

Experience tells us that transformational information technology undertakings often involve delays and budget overruns. This is generally caused by designs that introduce hidden layers of complexity. Therefore, instead of relying on internal efforts to learn the ropes, a much better strategy is to implement a blueprint architecture developed by a consortium of vendors having prior experience working with automation initiatives of similar scale. The market may be new, but there are industry pioneers out there who have already been there, seen it and done it.


As digital transformation makes progress, organizations will have to decide how to address the impending change. New technologies are an excellent way to enable new business models and processes, but they come with new levels of complexity that the specialists experienced in the traditional technologies may not fully acknowledge. To address this issue, most organizations are best off by partnering with companies that have already paid their dues and spent some time on the learning curve.

Written by Juha Holkkola, Co-Founder and Chief Technologist at FusionLayer Inc.

2018-09-05T08:52:00-08:00 internetblockchainbroadbandcloud_computingdata_centerinternet_of_thingsmobile_internetnetworkstelecom
Blockchain, Cryptocurrency Channels Considered by European Interests to Bypass U.S. Sanctions Bitcoin's unreal hype has obscured that it is mostly used to facilitate drug deals, ransomware, tax evasion, and even the occasional murder for hire. After the 60% price drop, demand for bitcoin mining gear has fallen so much TSMC has to lower sales estimates for 2018. (That's good news for telecom. Qualcomm and probably others are close to going into production on 5G chips at TSMC. But Apple has bought up so much of TSMC's 7 nm capacity that chip quantities could be severely limited until well into 2019 unless TSMC demand drops.)

Now, Austrian Ambassador in Tehran Stefan Scholz has suggested it could be a powerful boost to the European intent to bypass the U.S. economic blockade. That could provide demand for $billions of bitcoins.

Financial Express quotes Scholz, "One of the ways for safeguarding European interests in Iran is to tap the digital payment methods and cryptocurrency channels." He added, ”unorthodox and innovative measures" were being considered to allow banking transactions to continue. We are all in this together, since the EU is facing a net loss of 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion) in lost trade with Iran next year."

Blockchain is potentially good stuff, routing around institutions in a sometimes useful way.

The illustration from Vint Cerf is right that few if any need blockchain when a database suffices. However, Jonathan Askin is persuasive that blockchain makes interesting disintermediation practical, maybe even community alternatives to Facebook/Google. Bitcoin fools distract from real uses.

Several Nobel Laureates think Bitcoin is a scam and Ponzi scheme. I'm pretty sure they are 90% but not 100% correct.

From Baidu, some of what they are doing with Blockchain. (Source:

Super Chain Product Introduction

What is a super chain?

The Super Chain is a blockchain 3.0 solution that Baidu plans to open source with powerful network throughput and high concurrency for general smart contract processing. Based on the pluggable consensus mechanism, DAG parallel computing network and stereo network, it truly breaks through the technical bottleneck of the current blockchain and paves the way for the wide application of blockchain. In addition, XuperChain's maximum compatibility with Bitcoin and Ethereum is friendly to blockchain developers and has a low migration threshold. The global deployment of XuperChain is the foundation of XuperChain's credibility. Supernodes with powerful performance participate in the competition of accounting rights to ensure the efficiency of the whole network operation; while other lightweight nodes act as supervisory nodes, monitoring supernodes to perform their duties, thus forming a more credible autonomous blockchain operation. system.

Product operation

The Superchain is a blockchain operating system that supports the operation of a large number of parallel blockchains. Each blockchain supports intra-chain concurrent and sidechain technologies. Analogous to the traditional operating system has processes and threads, then in the definition of the super chain, the parallel chain is the process, the side chain is the thread.

The superchain proposes the concept of supercomputing nodes, using supercomputers and distributed architectures to solve blockchain network computing power and storage problems. At the same time, the DAG network is combined with the side chain and parallel chain technology to realize the core technology that makes maximum use of parallel computing power. The network form of the entire superchain is as follows:

How to use

The superchain manages the entire superchain network through a root chain. The root chain can be upgraded to any consensus mechanism through voting mechanisms, including but not limited to POW, POS, etc.

The functions of the super chain mainly include: creating parallel chain and super chain network management. Anyone wants to use the superchain network, it just needs to call the interface of the root chain and create a block of its own. When creating, you can specify a consensus mechanism. Any call to the Root API interface and functionality requires fuel consumption. When creating a blockchain, you can specify the Genesis block parameters to determine the creation rules.

User-created blockchain capabilities

1. Each application has an independent chain instead of sharing a chain like the application on the Ethereum

2. Has a complete blockchain computing power, do not need to share computing power with others (there is no such an application service coexisting soaring, resulting in the entire super-chain network 瘫痪 situation)

3 Can develop their own consensus mechanism and mining incentive strategy

4. Can write their own smart contracts and have independent resources to run

Developer ecology

We will open up the superchain ecosystem to help developers quickly create blockchain applications. The Superchain will provide the underlying support and developer tools that enable enterprise and individual developers to focus on application innovation and feature development, making it easy to get the business up. A series of support plans will be launched to promote the block-level application of the blockchain, and work together with developers to create a super-chain application ecosystem.

Open source plan

In July 2018, Baidu's internal open source

2, 2019, Q1 open source to the whole society

Written by Dave Burstein, Editor, DSL Prime

2018-07-21T14:39:00-08:00 internetblockchainlawpolicy_regulation
Blockchain's Two-Flavored Appeal A recent story in Medium describes yet again quite well why blockchains don't solve any real problems: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future.

So what is their irresistible appeal?








Written by John Levine, Author, Consultant & Speaker

2018-05-07T05:55:00-08:00 internetblockchain
Digital Transformation in Five Minutes: What, Why and How Digital Transformation (DX) is picking up speed. According to a recent announcement by IDC, the market is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.9% to reach a whopping 321 billion dollars by 2021. In 2018 alone, IDC expects that 326 billion will be spent on transforming how people and things communicate.

Based on these numbers, it looks like Digital Transformation has become the real deal. The chances are it will have a tremendous impact on how our societies work and play going forward. Yet it seems that there is some ambiguity as to what Digital Transformation really is, how it came to be, and what actions organizations should take to embrace it.

The Short History of Digital Transformation

Over the last 20 years, most of the things we use on daily basis have been digitalized. Our communication methods have changed from analogical to digital. Much of our day-to-day activities including work is nowadays carried out electronically. Yet at the same time, the underlying processes have not changed drastically.

Looking at the productivity growth in the Western economies, the advances started winding down already some 30 years ago. Even digitalization and the growth of the Internet have been unable to change this pattern. As these two phenomena were expected to increase productivity, many economists have been taken by surprise.

What I believe has transpired is that the law of diminishing returns caught up with the industrial processes and business models of the post-war era. Despite all the digitalization efforts, we have reached a productivity plateau where improvements to the existing processes have become costlier than the productivity gains that they realize.

But while the productivity gains eroded, something else changed. With on-going advances in new technologies such as cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), we have created new enablers that can be used to implement rethought processes that leverage the digitalized assets and media at our disposal. Essentially, it is the creation of these new processes and business models that Digital Transformation boils down to.

Making Digital Transformation Happen

With all the buzz going around on Digital Transformation, it sometimes reminds me about an old joke about teenage sex. Everyone is talking about it; no one knows how to do it; everyone thinks that everyone else does it; so everyone claims they are doing it too. At the end of the day, though, there are a few simple steps that can be taken to improve the chances of a successful transformation:

  • Focus on people. Like with all changes of large magnitude, they do not happen without engaging people. Therefore, before embarking on a Digital Transformation journey, we should be extremely clear on the why and what driving the change. With no concrete goals and little motivation, any transformation initiatives are likely to be watered down into a series of incremental improvements.
  • Define the business processes. Once the what and the why have been clarified, the next step in the transformation is to define the how. As this will essentially becomes the source of one's competitive advantage, majority of the input should come from within the organization. This ensures that transformational activities are based on challenges and opportunities specific to the organization. Once the how is defined, it also makes it easier to obtain the required buy-in, once the transition is on its way.
  • Implement the framework. After the what, why and how have been laid out, the time is right for designing a business platform that enables the rethought processes and business models. Since predicting the future is hard, one of the most important considerations here is to ensure that selected systems have been designed to meet the agility, the scalability and the interoperability requirements of tomorrow.

Considering the technological advances over the last couple of years, we now have the foundation in place to take the leap forward. The biggest obstacles holding us back are our imagination and the creativity in how we harness the new technologies. By being willing to let go of existing business models and processes, we are able to rethink new ones that will create unprecedented levels of prosperity and well-being for the decades to come.

To me, this is really what digital transformation is all about. Enjoy the ride.


2018-04-23T09:35:00-08:00 internetaccess_providersblockchainbroadbandcloud_computingcybersecuritydata_centerinternet_governanceinternet_of_thingsmobile_internetweb