Friday, February 17, 2017

The Worlds Most Advanced Cryptocurrency Software, BitBay Makes Itself Visible

 

BitBay, the cryptocurrency software suite offering unbreakable smart contracts was keeping a low profile for some time but has now resurfaced; stronger than ever. The creator and soul developer of BitHalo/BlackHalo David Zimbeck has worked effortlessly the past two years to create the most advanced and secure wallet in cryptocurrency space. The software suite is capable of supporting an entire smart contracting interface with decentralized markets and other features.
A BitBay community member comments,
"How is it that a single developer can deliver such an incredible suite when entire teams of coders have a hard time even delivering a functional wallet? How on earth has this project gone unnoticed, and why is it not in the top 10 coins in the world?"
Unbreakable Smart Contracts
Unlike many other platforms, BitBay is not vaporware. It is a feature rich platform that offers unbreakable smart contracts for important real world applications. The BitBay contracts are far superior to other smart contracts as they are secured by collateral deposits from both parties, which makes it unbreakable. In the event of a default by one of the parties, their collateral funds will be burnt, making it illogical for them to cheat or exit the contract with the intention of defrauding the other.
The smart contracts system on BitBay eliminates arbitrators, biased third parties, escrow and even fees. Without any middlemen, it can create coins for cash contracts like a decentralized "LocalBitcoins", where cash payments are completely trustless. It can also be used to create "employment contracts", "decentralized eBay-like delivery contracts" (to ensure prompt delivery of working products), and even "barter contracts" that allows people to create a "wish list" and trade any item off that list.
The user-friendly templates on BitBay enable users to create smart contracts by just entering few details. The platform currently has a handful of templates in place, with more to be added shortly. In David Zimbeck's words, all one has to do is use their imagination to create a custom template for any deal they want. The platform's "Cash for Coins" template has already been successfully used by many to automate buying process and complete cash deals without needing escrow or middlemen. The platform will soon release a "buy/sell anything" contract template with reverse and regular auctions support. It will also include a variety of shipping choices.
Decentralized Marketplace
BitBay had a decentralized marketplace almost a year before "Open Bazaar". BitBay's completely anonymous market is built right into the client, and it allows users to create their own public and private markets. Or they can just check different contracts already available in the main market. The BitBay software allows communication between users by supporting email with end to end encryption like Thunderbird and it also supports Bitmessage for a more decentralized option.
Other features on BitBay include "Pay to Email" which uses steganography to hide payments within photos sent to recipient's email. The feature, originally created for tipping purposes has various other applications as well. Even the wallets' two encrypted keys can be hidden within images using David's steganography based feature. These keys can then be used on two different computers to sign transactions – a feature that lays the foundation for "Cold Staking", which will be utilized in both BitBay and BlackHalo. The Cold Staking feature will be almost impossible to crack because the computers used to sign your transactions can be in completely separate locations. BitBay will also make allowance for "exotic spending" such as "locktimes". In addition to the "dead man's switch", "parking of coins", "burn" and other spending types, it also supports automated joint accounts for business partners and spouses. The BitBay platform can also translate to 92 different languages.
About BitBay
BitBay has so far created a whole cryptocurrency ecosystem with its own functional market economy. All these things have turned BitBay into a powerful cryptocurrency software suite that can take on other cryptocurrencies. The platform enjoys a vibrant community that is regularly attracting and training new users. The "contract faucet" created by one of the team members is currently giving away coins using a unilateral "Guarantor" contract to whoever accepts it.

Friday, February 10, 2017

The Augmentor’s Game

 


Augmented reality technology was a sweet surprise to humanity when it came out. We could now experience stuff on a level never thought of before. People everywhere bought augmented reality headsets and made it all the rage. However, there were only some basic games and videos and that made the overall augmented reality experience a bit understated. Not anymore! Here comes The Augmentor’s Game which is a game that uses augmented reality in all its glory and immerses the use in an experience never before seen on any other platform.

About the game:
Consisting of 50 rare creature, the Augmentor’s Game is a 3D modeled fantasy game with the rare creature called simply as the Augmentors. Each Augmentor has a skill set including a variety of spells, movements and attacks. These Augmentors have an extensive back story that provides the immersive experience a user of an augmented reality headset looks for. They have their own origins, can be trained and even traded or swapped between other players. The creators, Michael Deon and Kyle Haffendon looked to create an augmented reality game based on and connected on the Bitcoin blockchain and they have succeded. This is evident from the fact that the game received positive compliments from the Sharks at Shark Tank and even received funding from one of the sharks.

Investing in the game:
When the creators of the game went on Shark Tank, little did they know they would not only receive funding but also the approval of Vinny Lingham, an ace in the Bitcoin sector and a supporter of the blockchain based start-ups. Along with Vinny, Gil Oved, board member at Growtech Venture capital, is also investing in the startup in hopes that it will become as popular as it is supposed to be. This was proved again at the ICO of the Augmentor’s Game which began on January 30st of 2017. During the length of the 30-day ICO , the DTB tokens will be available In a ratio of 15000DTB:1BTC. The developers are very confident about raising the required money of $1million to develop the game. Even if it fails to do so, the money raised will be more than adequate to develop an alpha version of the game that will be developed by May 2017 and will show fans all over the globe why this is worth investing!

Augmentors ICO information


http://www.augmentorsgame.com/token-sale
The Augmentors ICO raised over 700 BTC already.

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Augmentors is an augmented reality turn-based battle game and is free to play! Once you have one of the portals, you can download the free app and summon your creature into the world and start doing battle.
There will be two generic portals provided for download for players to print from the website. The two portals will represent “Player 1” and “Player 2”.
In the beginning of the game, you will be greeted with a selection of free creatures to choose from. Tap on your portal to select one of the creatures to summon & call your own and begin your journey as one of the Destined.


Goal & vision

The end goal of the Augmentors game is to be a cross platform (iOS & Android) augmented reality game that allows users to summon creatures into the real world to battle against your enemies and foes.

Creatures

Augmentors is backed by the Bitcoin Blockchain. Each creature and relic is assigned a unique Counterparty Token ID. Creatures and relics will each be issued in finite amounts that will be locked, assuring no more will be issued in the game. Once they are all sold, that’s it! All Asset IDs will be transparent and viewable to the public, showing issued amounts and the locked status of each asset. You can trade or sell your creatures with other players in the app or through the online Creature Store.

Relics

Each creature will have its own set of unique attacks and abilities, but it doesn’t stop there. There will be unique items called relics, which act as “boosters” for creatures in the game. They will be obtainable at special events, or be given as rewards for quests completed in the game or purchased from the online Creature Store.

Databits

We have created 100 000 000 (one hundred million) Databits in total, allocating 70% of that towards a Token Sale (which forms part of a crowdfunding campaign). The remaining 30% will be split and used to create awareness, promotion and development for the game. The Databits will be locked, meaning no more Databits can ever be issued thereafter.



Get rare creatures & relics

To acquire rare creatures and relics you will first need to have the Augmentors in-game currency Databits (obtainable through the crowdfunding sale) as well as a compatible counterparty wallet. You can then visit the online Creature Store or other creature resellers to purchase them using your Databits.

Own your creatures

Augmentors is backed by the Bitcoin Blockchain. Each creature and relic is assigned a unique Counterparty Token ID. Creatures and relics will each be issued in finite amounts that will be locked, assuring no more will be issued in the game. Once they are all sold, that’s it! All Asset IDs will be transparent and viewable to the public, showing issued amounts and the locked status of each asset. You can trade or sell your creatures with other players in the app or through the online Creature Store.

Trade and sell assets

You will be able to trade/ Sell creatures easily within and outside the Augmentors game app furthermore we will have a feature engaging special battles that allow users to battle for keeps – winner takes all (Like how marbles were played back in the day). All you will need is a compatible counterparty wallet that contains your DataBits or any other Augmentors game assets inside of them. Freely trade them on the exchange or at your own accord using your wallet or swopbot Game assets in Augmentors will all be assigned a unique Counterparty token ID. Assigning Counterparty tokens to game assets allows them to be traded/ sold freely within or outside the game on the Blockchain.

The exchange

The exchange for 1 Bitcoin (BTC) will be 15 000 DataBits (DTB). People, who have bought DataBits (DTB) during the Token Sales or from another player after the end of the Token Sales, will be able to trade their DTB on the blockchain and exchange them for other cryptocurrencies. Or they can use them to purchase some of the Augmentors blockchain-based creatures, relics & skins. Our creatures will be sold via “swapbots” – automated trading vending machines – which send the chosen creature when they have sent the right amount of DTB. Then they can summon their creature in the Augmentors game, or trade/ sell them on the blockchain.



The Augmentors ICO aims to raise $1 million, required for completion of the game. During the 30-day ICO ending on 28 Feb 2017, DTB tokens will be available in a ratio of 15000DTB: 1BTC and drop by 1000 every 5 days.
Even if the platform fails to raise the required $1 million by the end of the stipulated timeframe, all funds raised will be directly put to use for developing the Alpha version of Augmentors, set for release by the end of April 2017 on Google Play Store and the App Store.











Being rewarded with creatures in Rookie level will not subject it being a Rookie forever. Rookie creatures will have the ability to level up all the way to Hero/ Villain Status if trained & pushed to that level. All creatures on launch that aren’t part of the crowdfunding sale in the game will start on Rookie Level.
All creatures can achieve the God title, but only by beating another God creature in battle. Once a God creature has lost, it will lose its God title and drop back down to Hero/ Villain. Only the 3 Legendary Naturally Born God creatures sold in this token sale will never lose their God title. They are the originals of the game, they can never lose their God title.
Every creature will be backed by the Blockchain, allowing users to truly own their assets within and out of the game. The DataBits that backers have purchased during the Crowdfunding sale can be used to buy new game items, sold or exchanged for any other cryptocurrency.


Join Our Community Here:

SLACK: http://augmentorsgame.signup.team
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/AugmentorsGame
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/augmentors
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgVMOJzZRU_6ZKW-OthznSw
WEBSITE: http://www.augmentorsgame.com/


Augmentors ICO


FAQ



Will money be held in Escrow?

Two of the three advisors for this campaign are going to be custodians of the ICO money. They will have control over if/when the funds are released. If they are not happy at any stage of the development of the project. They will be entitled to withhold funds from the team or return them to the backers. The two custodians are Vinny Lingham(ranked 6th of Top 100 blockchain insiders) http://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/blockchain-top-100. The other custodian is [b]Llew Claasens[/b], who is the executive director of the Bitcoin foundation. These are both well respected members of the community.

Will the ratio 1BTC = 15 000DTB change?

Like most ICO's Augmentors has implemented a tiered system. The first day of the ICO will be the cheapest. It is 1:15000 DTB plus an extra 20%. After day one, the ratio will adjust has indicated above and on http://www.augmentorsgame.com/token-sale-ico

Will the game definitely be made?

Like any project, we can never guarantee that a final game will be released; however, through our pre-sale ICO, we have already raised enough funds (45.2BTC) to complete the Alpha version of the game. Secondly, as discussed above, we have very well respected members of the Bitcoin community monitoring this project. They will ensure that no money is spent recklessly and will advise the project, giving it the best possible chance of succeeding.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Underrated Technologies

 



Our society has reaped the rewards from the industrial revolution, as well as the first wave of technological revolution that came right after it. Some of the technology types we use today are awe-inspiring, even though we have started to take them for granted. Technology is awe-inspiring in every way possible, and this list will go over the top 4 most underrated technologies.

#4 FIBRE OPTICS

What makes fibre optics so intriguing is how this technology dates back all the way to the year 1840. At that time, Alexander Graham Bell developed the technology to transmit voice signals over an optical beam. We later came to know this technology as the "telephone", or "landline" as it is often referred to in this day and age.

In the Internet world, fibre optics have only just begun to gain mainstream traction. Higher internet speeds allow us to share and gather information more quickly, although fiber optics are not available in every part of the world just yet. Since these cubes or are immune to electrical interference, they are perfect for computer networking in general. Moreover, a fibre optic connection is considered to be more secure.

#3 NANO ROBOTS

The term nano robots can be found in better sci-fi novels and TV shows these days. Contrary to what most people would believe, however, nano robots are very real and already exist among us. To be more precise, these robots are often used to determine drugs to the correct part of the body of patients suffering from terminal cancer. A very powerful technological feat that should not be underestimated by any means.

#2 THE INTERNET OF THINGS

A lot has been said and written about the Internet of Things, despite this technology still being in the very early stages of mainstream traction. Objects who can communicate with other devices over the Internet is a very novel concept, yet it also poses quite a few security challenges. Rest assured a lot more news will come out of the IoT sector in the coming years, as more of these devices will make it into mainstream homes and locations all over the world.


#1 PROSTHETIC LIMBS

In the year 2017, it almost seems straightforward to replace a missing limb with a prosthetic version. Up until a decade ago, such a concept was impossible to comprehend, as losing an arm or a leg would mean that functionality would be lost to us forever. Thanks to major advancements made in health care, prosthetic limbs have become a normality in recent years, mainly because they are starting to look very real.

Moreover, the early generations of prosthetic limbs were never designed to let its users "feel" anything in the traditional sense. This situation has come to change as well, thanks to DARPA's hard work of implementing neurotechnology. With realistic-looking prosthetics which become more powerful in functionality as time progresses, the future of prosthetics is looking very bright.


Monday, February 6, 2017

PRO Commerce - Coin Back Rewards

 


A new and promising project is the upcoming PRO Commerce Project. In essence the project is about getting Rebates and Crypto currencies into 1 platform. Something which is not new, because the INCENT project is also about that, however the PRO project has a different approach in achieving their goals. Their platform will be the main field where the project and business model should excel and make the project a success.

The platform

The goal of the PRO Platform is to create awareness and engagement, something which by just offering rebates is not sufficient, however holding PRO makes the user also an spectator and the team behind Pro believes this will make a difference in the way users will be committed and engaged in the project. By holding the coins they will eventually use the coins to speculate and use it.

The app within the platform itself consist of 4 main components which according to the team will add a tremendous value to any business, making it the main app to use in comparison of various marketing strategies.

Business Development
Through PRO businesses can expand and take full advantage of the economic shift happening in commerce through cryptocurrency.

Education
PRO's intuitive learning system will reward businesses for learning about the advantages of cryptocurrency and much more.

Brand Awareness
Companies that accept PRO as a form of payment will gain exposure in the cryptocurrency community and as a result it will bring awareness to their brand.

Advertising
PRO's cutting edge advertising and marketing strategies will help increase a company's customer base and help raise their bottom line.

The project is divided into 2 key phases where both consumers and merchants will be surprised with high-end tools, to grow and sustain their PRO commitment and eventually enable PRO to go mainstream.


PRO Rebates & PRO Solutions

In this phase user friendly customer applications will be built. By doing this the masses will be enabled to earn, hold and eventually adopt their crypto coins in their everyday life. Being able to spend them on the fly, whenever and wherever they need.

There will also be applications built for merchants which is called the Solutions APP, because not only consumers will be able to earn PRO. To grow their merchant base, a dedicated group of merchants Is important, so they too have the opportunity to earn PRO and integrate the features of PRO in their day to day business operation.



PRO Exchange & PRO Merchant

The phase 2 will start with an exchange application where consumer will have the option to convert their fiat currency into PRO or bitcoin and vice versa. Having a dedicated exchange maintained by the operations makes it centralized, however it’s a great step into usability.

When the exchange is ready, the Merchant application will be built, the goal of this application is to giver merchants the option to accept PRO payments as well as bitcoin payments.




More information can be found there:
https://www.procommerce.io/
https://www.facebook.com/procommerceinfo
https://twitter.com/ProCommerceInfo
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1747896.0

Thursday, February 2, 2017

QTUM - Decentralized Applications, Smart Contracts and more

 
After the release of Bitcoin, Stratis and Ethereum, a fourth crypto currency created for business known as QTUM has been released by a Singapore registered organization. This is an open source, decentralized project which has combined advantages of various other public chains. Use of the Bitcoin Core 0.13 made the wallet synchronization faster. It is a Blockchain system that will allow internet users to experience the value of Blockchain, as this will allow contracts to be managed through wallets. Like Bitcoin, QTUM is meant to focus on the Decentralized Application (DAPP) and the Smart Contract market. As the scripting language of Bitcoin Core was expanded, smart contracts could be executed as part of an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO).

Built on Linux platform makes QTUM compatible with both Mac and Windows 64 bit and allows all its access to all types of users. MingW and Msys2 led to a lot of library issues which made the developers to shift it to Linux. By providing a means of value transfers with the help of Ethereum Smart Contracts, this crypto currency will changed the way social network, commerce and finance industry have been functioning according to it's whitepaper. This has also encouraged many banks to apply for the Blockchain alike patents. Currently, QTUM is being testing with another feature, called BiSMTP, which is likely to be added.



POS

The QTUM’s 3.0 POS (Proof-of-Stake) model allows its operations from a normal laptop or PC, eliminating the requirement of complicated applications. Unlike POW models, POS requires a fraction of energy which makes it reasonable in terms of money and more environment friendly, bringing it in the reach of a common man. There were certain security issues that have been eliminated by upgrading the Blackcoin POS.

Only a massive log output allowed the developers to fix the errors in the technology as some errors in the code led to communication issues. In order to keep it easy for the old users of Bitcoin, every segment of the originally created Bitcoin has been made compatible with this new release of QTUM. The initial test network has 10 nodes, where each node was funded with pre-mined coins. QTUM has become smoother with the upgrade to the Bitcoin Core 0.13, as it only downloaded the block headers instead of the entire Blockchain which is a very time consuming task, since it holds gigabytes of data and is no way user friendly.

POS Issues

The partial download of the POS block was also fixed with this upgrade. However, the transition phase led to errors in the wallet transactions. There were certain other stability issues that are being generated with the testing networks.

To QTUM or not to QTUM?

QTUM is a business friendly platform that will take the Blockchain technology to the next level. It will not only provide the evidences of the transactions, but the activity log will remain with them for the entire lifespan. My personal view is there is a market for this kind of blockchain, be it a main chain or just a sidechain, in the end business will want to step in to this magical world we call crypto currency...

More information:


Website: https://qtum.org
Source code: https://git.qtum.org/qtum/ Source will be available soon
Twitter: https://twitter.com/QtumOfficial
QQ group: 518192421
Slack channel: https://qtumslack.herokuapp.com/


Thursday, January 26, 2017

ChronoBank - A currency backed by time

 

"The Uber of Time"

Chronobank project, is a blockchain project whose main purpose is to interfere with the recruitment industries, it's aimed at giving an alternative to traditional financial systems and makes use of the latest developments in blockchain technology with a purpose of creating a change in short term recruitment within major professions.

The main purpose of this particular project is to create a difference to the way people view work and are rewarded for their work without using the traditional financial institutions, It targets professions such as cleaning,building, industrial, warehousing ,freelancers among others.

Sergei -  the co-founder of Edway Group - explains ChronoBank as
"It is a platform that aims at making individuals paid according to the work done government dictates they are worth."

LABOR-HOUR-refers to wages paid hourly in the host country. Labor is greatly available for every individual to access but the problem is that it is less valuable. This is where labor hour tokens come to play and tokenize the resource because they are inflation-proof and have zero volatility as compared to bitcoin. Labor hour is sustainable as compared to backed coins and it's accessible all the time through labor hour debit card.

Labour-Hour features
1. Stable tokens - Chronobank gives its users labor hour tokens with a stable value thus protecting them from cryptocurrency volatility.
2. There is transparency in all the stages
3. Labor hour debitcards with labor hour tokens that can be gotten any time.
4. There is transparency in all the stages of labor hour processes while using the platform
6. Labor hour tokens are connected to national average hourly wages that have low volatility and stable growth and makes it easy for the user.

LaborX is a decentralized market place where people will sell labor hours to anyone. Labor tokens will be used as an alternative to flat currencies thus enabling individuals to be rewarded for their work without making use of the cryptocurrency's signature volatility risk.

The web has been designed in such a way that labor hour tokens can be exchanged with labor time making it easier for use. Each chronobank participant is given reputation that enable them to get remuneration that matches their skill level. An individual with a good reputation on the work done previously will have a higher price for work done hourly. The initial reputation is given based on the persons experience in the partner company from the first stage of the chronobank project.

Average reputation will be given to individuals who have never participated in the system in the previous capacity, apart from that, a lot of care is taken so that the user increases their credible results and maintains it at the top level. It can be compared to the Uber business that brought a revolution in the transport sector and the Upwork revolutionaire platform which changed freelancing.



Now with the ICO being on a great way to achieve the goal, it's the question if and how the ChronoBank approach will succeed. Bringing a crypto token in a blockchain full of employers and jobseekers may be overkill, or it could just be the way it should have been all the time.

The future will learn us about this.

Author: CryptoBjorn, 542698

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Anonymous Currencies Might Limit Financial Access

 


A recent report states that Bitcoin isn’t anonymous enough, and to an extent, the report is correct. While part of Bitcoin’s reputation has been built on the notion of privacy, the truth is that the blockchain records every transaction in real time, and nothing can escape its shuttering technology. In the long run, no matter how private Bitcoin claims to be, there always seems to be an open window to one’s financial history.

But one has to wonder if this isn’t a bad thing. Two of the cryptocurrency world’s most recent additions, Zcash and Monero, tout complete anonymity for those looking to remain duly private, but there seem to be issues emerging from the backend, and many investors and crypto-enthusiasts are having a hard time deciding where they stand.

First off, let’s look at criminal activity. Anonymity is often showered with praise, but when something is completely hidden like this, it can potentially give rise to back-door dealers looking for ways to exploit any lagging visibility. Monero, for example, is often labeled as the most popular cryptocurrency amongst drug purchasers on the dark net. Many regulators arguing against the notion of completely anonymous digital currency trading feel that the situation is likely to give rise to another Silk Road, only this time, things may be a little harder to shut down.

Zcash is another financial entity that claims to offer new waves of privacy. Again, good for some, criticized by others. Zcash recently hit new heights on cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex, hitting the $2 million per coin mark, but many argue whether this was real or caused by error or platform manipulation. If that’s the case, there’s certainly cause to worry. It was this same kind of manipulation that fired bitcoin into the $1,000 range in 2013 prior to the sudden collapse of Mt. Gox.

Lastly, the likelihood that a government or legislative system would ever be willing to regulate or fully allow the trading of anonymous currencies is particularly slim. While this may sound positive at first (cryptocurrencies were designed to offer independence), access to digital currency for third world and developing nations could wind up limited in the near future. It’s precisely because Bitcoin isn’t fully anonymous that it probably has the highest chance of ever going mainstream and reaching acceptable terms on a global scale.

As consumers, we have to ask ourselves which we’d prefer – true anonymity, or higher monetary access? The independence these currencies claim to provide is what gives us such a choice in the first place.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Memphis Residents Now Have Their First Bitcoin ATM

 


The city of Memphis will now have a Bitcoin ATM as the firm Coinsource installs three new machines in the state of Tennessee. The company is the largest Bitcoin ATM provider in the U.S. and has averaged over one installation per week in 2016.

Memphis Bitcoin ATM One of Three in Tennessee

logo2-id-fa176b8a-9aee-44f6-9ad5-4672e628e52e-300x300Memphis, in Tennessee’s southwest, will get its first Bitcoin automated teller machine. Additionally, the company Coinsource installed two Bitcoin ATMs in the city of Nashville. Coinsource has established 60 Genesis Coin brand cryptocurrency ATM across the U.S. since its inception.

“The demand for bitcoin ATMs has never been higher than it is today. The most rewarding part of our job is to answer the call when requests come in for new locations, so it is exciting to make history in Tennessee,” said Coinsource CEO and co-founder Sheffield Clark. “Our reach in the South is growing. So far, we have 60 machines across eight states, and look forward to gaining a foothold in even more new cities around the country.”

Bitcoin ATMs in Tennessee via Coin ATM Radar
U.S.-Based Coinsource Will Soon Focus on International Expansion

Coinsource CEO and Co-Founder Sheffield Clark According to Coin ATM Radar, there are 482 installed Bitcoin ATMs throughout the United States. Coinsource, which Clark founded in February 2015, owns a large share of these devices. Bitcoin ATMs have provided people with easier access to cryptocurrency using cash. Additionally, with an automated teller machine that dispenses bitcoin all users need is a wallet to store the funds.

Coinsource says its mission is to make “buying and selling bitcoin as immediate and natural as withdrawing or depositing fiat from a traditional ATM.” The company claims it has first-class customer support and some of the lowest transaction fees in the market. The company aims to continue to be a forerunner amongst American Bitcoin ATM providers and will soon reveal its blueprint for inter

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Ethereum Smart Contract Issues Frustrate Developers with Fatal Bugs

 
Only weeks after the execution of a hard fork to mitigate various DoS (denial-of-service) attacks, the Ethereum network and its developers are struggling to deal with yet another major flaw. This time, major issues in regards to smart contracts have emerged, which have rendered the efforts of decentralized applications in the Ethereum network purposeless.

On November 1, the Ethereum development team and the founder of Solidity warned users and developers against a bug that allowed variables to be overwritten in storage.
Variables in a smart contract are agreements made between two or more parties. Thus, if an attacker can gain access to the storage and alters the variables, crucial agreements in decentralized applications can be affected and funds may be extracted, which may pressure developers to discard previous smart contract-based projects to recompile contracts.


Ethereum developers including Ansel Lindner stated that the development of an Ethereum application is failing to operate because of this bug.
"Imagine spending a year building an app for eth, just to find out the thing doesn't work," wrote Lindner.

He further noted that much like the memory bugs in Geth that continued to negatively affect the network for weeks, the recent smart contract bug will most likely lead to a series of other potentially fatal bugs.
"I could agree that it's a molehill on the side of a big mountain of other similar potentially fatal bugs," Lindner added.

Reitwiessner explains that luckily, Ethereum multi-signature wallet contracts are not affected. However, contracts containing two or more contracts will high likely be affected.
"The following contracts may be affected: Contracts containing two or more contiguous state variables where the sum of their sizes is less than 256 bits and the first state variable is not a signed integer and not of bytesNN type," Reitwiessner wrote.
Reitwiesnner recommended developers to deactivate and remove funds from already deployed smart contracts and compile new agreements using the Solidity release 0.4.4. Failure to do so may result in the loss of funds and may hugely impact decentralized applications that rely on these contracts.

To date, the Ethereum development team have discovered 10 vulnerable Ethereum smart contracts, 7 of which were exploitable.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Stolen Bitcoin? Anti-Theft Feature Gets Second Life on Sidechains

 

At its core, bitcoin is about giving users better control of their money.

Often called "programmable money", bitcoin has scripts that limit how future bitcoin transactions can be spent (and that control variables like who can spend them). One such script ensures the correct person is spending the bitcoin by checking if the correct signature was used before unlocking and sending the funds.  This week, Blockstream core tech developer Russell O'Connor revealed he's been testing a couple of new scripts on an Elements Alpha sidechain (which is pegged to the bitcoin testnet) that could add new functionality.

Called "covenants", the new style of scripts potentially opens up possibilities for how bitcoin users can control, or restrict, spending of their money — possibly for their protection. (This is an idea that was previously explored by researchers Malte Möser, Ittay Eyal, and Emin Gun Sirer). One use case for these scripts is to help users rein in their coins in the case of a hack (an all too common occurrence in bitcoin).

When asked what he thinks of the new covenant work, Eyal said it was potentially a boon to bitcoin users who may be worried about losing their bitcoins or otherwise having them compromised or stolen.

Extending bitcoin's scripts
The idea is notable as a script that can limit how bitcoins can be spent hasn't been implemented in bitcoin before, a fact noted by Eyal.

In particular, there are two new covenant scripts that Blockstream explored, each of which take parameters and outputs whether the script is valid, or whether or not the transaction is currently spendable based on its restrictions.
It's worth noting that bitcoin's scripting system is currently quite simple for security's sake. There aren't limitless rules in bitcoin right now because new additions can be potentially dangerous and developers note that they take time to test.

This is where sidechains may come in handy, although they are not yet pinned to the main blockchain.
Bitcoin startup Blockstream has been working on these interoperable blockchains for experimenting with new features that could potentially be added to bitcoin since June of last year, and this is an example of how these new chains can be used to test new features.

These new proposed opcodes may work as the foundations for new functionalities, ones that could even come to help stop bitcoin exchanges and users from losing stolen funds.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Walt Disney Company Goes Big On Blockchain With Dragonchain

 

The Walt Disney Company is #71 of the top 2000 companies in the world ranked by Forbes. It has an annual revenue in the tens of billions of dollars, assets near 100 billion dollars, and recently developed a keen interest in blockchain technology for use within its massive organization, which includes online retail, television endeavors, and, of course, their world-famous theme parks.

 

The most obvious benefit of a blockchain system is easier tracking of inventories, sales, shipments, and even people in the case of the parks, but Dragonchain innovates on existing blockchain implementations. According to their design document, they introduce something called “context-based verification.” Their blockchain will have various types of nodes, and a “level 5” of these nodes will interact with an existing public blockchain like Bitcoin, notably providing a “public checkpoint” or “proof of existence” for the blocks within the permissioned ledger.

 

The other levels of the Dragonchain should be noted for understanding. The first level is the business node, which will process transactions and be able to determine whether a transaction is approved or declined. Level two is an enterprise verification node, which can determine the validity of data submitted by level one nodes. The purpose of the level three nodes is to ensure requisite diversity of sources of information – it acts as a check against errant nodes which may be compromised, for one thing. Dragonchain also calls for a third-party verification/“independent witness” of data at its level 4 nodes, to whit:

 

Another feature of the Dragonchain is that it will not have a singular currency at its heart in the way that Bitcoin does. Instead, they believe that if a base currency were to be required within an organization, then a separate node should manage it. For the purpose of the Dragonchain, though, a multitude of currencies should be considered.

 

And most interesting about this is that the Dragonchain will apparently support multiple cryptocurrencies inside a private blockchain transaction, using their transaction class header field. At least at the outset, the network will use Bitcoin-based cryptographic addressing and cryptography. Part of the logic behind this is to make use of existing infrastructure, including Counterparty and hardware wallets for verification purposes within the organization.

 

Blockchain of Blockchains

Different organizations will have different purposes for Dragonchain, but one thing that may make it very useful is its ability to act as a “blockchain of blockchains.” In this way, various third-party providers can bring to market solutions based on Dragonchain or to integrate competitively with existing Dragonchain implementations. Or, perhaps easier to imagine, third-party vendors can come up with interesting applications, such as methods of tracking inventory, event attendance, line congestion at theme park attractions, and more.

 

 

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Smart contracts for bitcoin

 

 

As we approach the release date for the SEGWIT (Segregated Witness) update to the blockchain, we were pleased to see a complete update from the BitcoinCore team about how this update will affect the network, what will change and where are we going to proceed in the future.

 

For those of you who don’t know what SEGWIT is software that is used to produce transactions for which it separates the TxID transaction signatures from the rest of the data, thus Segregated Witness. This allows miners to place the transaction signatures outside of the block-chain.

 

Pros and cons

There are benefits that we will immediately be able to enjoy once the update has been complete. The first benefit is that malleability will be ultimately eliminated, and third-parties won’t be able to interfere with the transaction process, and transaction ID’s will be hidden from everyone, while at the same time allowing the transaction software to calculate the transaction without reference to the witness. This update will open up development paths for Bitcoin, by eliminating security holes and lowering the complexity of smart contracts for Bitcoin.

 

The second benefit is that capacity of transactions will modestly increase. New-style blocks can hold more data than current versions, which means that the amount of transaction data will increase per block. That doesn’t mean that witness data is stored off-chain, but rather following this soft-fork, the data will start being signed on the new-style blocks (which include the old-style block and extra space).

Overall this update will simplify things for developers to produce new features for Bitcoin use and it improves the efficacy of running full nodes. We are happy to see that long-term benefits will come out of this update.

 

According to the blog post that the BitcoinCore team released on June 24th, 2016, SEGWIT has been extensively tested by Bitcoin developers, and this was necessary because of the way SEGWIT changes parts of the Bitcoin system. One of the most important change happens to the consensus rules that full nodes use to agree on the current state of the ledger. That shift is the primary reason for such tests to be performed, because if we come to a position where the network stops agreement on the current state, Bitcoin transactions become dangerous.

 

Other notable changes happened to the peer-to-peer code that’s used by the network to distribute blocks and transactions. (This was all included in the 0.13.0 BitcoinCore Update, but it’s not going to happen be accepted on the main network until at least ver. 0.13.01) SEGWIT blocks and transactions are different from previous versions, so it’s important that the network is capable of distributing both SEGWIT and old-style data.

The complete update added about 7800 lines of code to the proprietary software, with the majority of lines relating to the SEGWIT capabilities. A large part of the code update related to the automated testing system, which enabled Bitcoin developers to test out the features on a separate network extensively, promptly called “testnet”.

SEGWIT was initially implemented by the Elements Project, led by Pieter Wuille. This initial implementation was happening in April through June of 2015. It was never intended for the main blockchain but is actually considered a side-chain. A few months later in October 2015, Luke Dashjr describes a method that allows SEGWIT to be implemented by using a soft-fork and they team up with Wuille to work on the implementation that is going to be completely compatible with the main blockchain.

 

The first version of this new code comes out in December 2015, close to the end of the year. (New year, new updates!) It’s implemented and tested extensively for the whole duration, ranging from the beginning of the year to August 23rd, 2016, when the BitcoinCore team launched the update.

 

Within this update, SEGWIT is completely implemented, but it’s sitting there in a passive state, only used for testing purposes. Like I mentioned before, it will become operational with the next update! The Bitcoin Core developers are finally convinced that implementation of SEGWIT will not cause any adverse effects and it won’t negatively influence Bitcoin, it’s value and reliability.

 

SEGWIT won’t change a lot about how you perceive Bitcoin transactions happening, well… There is one pretty perceptive change, but I’m sure you’re not going to mind it.

 

Transaction fees are going to get a little bit cheaper.

I’m sure we all can appreciate spending a little bit less on our transactions. But wait, what about Bitcoin smart contracts?

Yes, I’ve mentioned them. Well SEGWIT will not introduce any smart contracts, but it’s the first step allowing the development of the capability to support these.

 

It solves a crucial problem that currently is affecting the creation of smart contacts and script functioning. It opens up the doors to new development paths and creates new opportunities that were previously inaccessible due to security loopholes and visibility of transaction identifiers. In the future, smart contracts and scripts will use MAST, an acronym for Merkalized Abstract Syntax Trees.

 

A short description of MAST is that it allows the creation of conditional Bitcoin scripts to be utilized. For now, it’s being reserved for the extremely tech-savvy people, the developers to use these tools and potentially make them available to Bitcoin users. MAST is going to be available for use following the SEGWIT update in the future.