Aren is an end-to-end AI-powered platform for assessing the built environment which allows data-driven decision-making and risk management. Aren's technology offers a cost-effective, automated, and quantitative approach to de-risk the asset management practice using computer vision and machine learning

Aren

The cryptocurrency landscape is constantly evolving, with new and exciting projects emerging to challenge the status quo. Among the notable narratives in the crypto world has been the rise of , a token that has recently seen a 328% surge in price, capturing the attention and wallets of investors worldwide. Bonk (BONK) This phenomenal growth has not only showcased the potential for significant returns within the crypto market but also set the stage for new opportunities. Enter , a promising new competitor to Bonk (BONK), priced attractively at $0.0014, ready to make its mark in the digital currency arena. Shiba Budz (BUDZ) The Allure of Bonk (BONK) has carved out a niche for itself as a dynamic player in the cryptocurrency space, thanks to its rapid growth and the lucrative gains it has provided to its investors. The token's success story has become a beacon for crypto enthusiasts searching for the next big investment. As Bonk (BONK) continues to thrive, its journey offers valuable lessons on market potential and investor sentiment, crucial for understanding the crypto ecosystem's ever-changing nature. Bonk (BONK) Shiba Budz (BUDZ): Poised for Success Amidst the backdrop of Bonk (BONK)'s success, Shiba Budz (BUDZ) emerges as a new contender, aiming to replicate and potentially exceed the achievements of its predecessor. The initial pricing of Shiba Budz (BUDZ) is a strategic move designed to attract a broad spectrum of investors, from those seasoned in the volatility of the crypto markets to newcomers eager to get in on the ground floor of a promising project. Why Bonk (BONK) Investors Are Diversifying Investors who have reaped the benefits of Bonk (BONK)'s impressive price surge are now looking towards Shiba Budz (BUDZ) as a viable addition to their investment portfolio. The rationale is clear: diversification within the crypto space can mitigate risk and increase the potential for significant gains. Shiba Budz (BUDZ) offers a fresh opportunity, with its unique value proposition and the buzz surrounding its launch reminding many of the early days of Bonk (BONK). The Competitive Edge of Shiba Budz (BUDZ) While Bonk (BONK) has set a high standard in terms of performance and community engagement, Shiba Budz (BUDZ) is not merely content with following in its footsteps. Instead, it aims to carve out its niche by leveraging innovative blockchain technology and fostering a strong community ethos. The goal is to create a token that not only appeals to Bonk (BONK) investors but also attracts a new wave of crypto enthusiasts. Bonk (BONK)'s Influence and The Rise of Shiba Budz (BUDZ The influence of Bonk (BONK) within the crypto community cannot be understated. Its success has demonstrated the potential for meme coins and community-driven projects to achieve substantial market valuations. Shiba Budz (BUDZ) enters the market at a time when interest in such projects is at an all-time high, partly thanks to the groundwork laid by Bonk (BONK). Future Prospects As Shiba Budz (BUDZ) begins its journey, the excitement among former Bonk (BONK) investors and the broader crypto community is palpable. The combination of a low entry price, a solid roadmap, and the lessons learned from the rise of Bonk (BONK) positions Shiba Budz (BUDZ) as a potential powerhouse in the making. Conclusion The emergence of Shiba Budz (BUDZ) as a new rival to Bonk (BONK) highlights the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of the cryptocurrency market. With investors who have profited from Bonk (BONK)'s surge now turning their attention to Shiba Budz (BUDZ), the stage is set for an exciting new chapter in the world of digital currencies. As Shiba Budz (BUDZ) aims to build on the success of Bonk (BONK), it represents not just a new investment opportunity but a testament to the ongoing innovation and growth within the crypto space. For more information on the Shiba Budz (BUDZ) Presale: Presale Website: SHIBA BUDZ (BUDZ) Use Promo Code Topshib to get 20% bonus Join and become a BUDZ member: | Telegram Twitter This story was distributed as a release by BTCWire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here: https://business.hackernoon.com/

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) Enters Crypto Arena as Bonk (BONK) Diversification Option, Offers 20%  Bonus

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) Bonk (BONK) ডাইভারসিফিকেশন বিকল্প হিসাবে ক্রিপ্টো অ্যারেনায় প্রবেশ করে, 20% বোনাস অফার করে

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) betritt die Krypto-Arena als Diversifizierungsoption für Bonk (BONK) und bietet einen Bonus von 20 %

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) ingresa a Crypto Arena como opción de diversificación Bonk (BONK) y ofrece una bonificación del 20%

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) entre dans Crypto Arena en tant qu'option de diversification Bonk (BONK) et offre un bonus de 20 %

शीबा बडज़ (बीयूडीजेड) ने क्रिप्टो क्षेत्र में बोंक (BONK) विविधीकरण विकल्प के रूप में प्रवेश किया, 20% बोनस की पेशकश की

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) が Bonk (BONK) 多様化オプションとしてクリプトアリーナに参入、20% ボーナスを提供

Shiba Budz(BUDZ)가 Bonk(BONK) 다각화 옵션으로 Crypto Arena에 진출하여 20% 보너스 제공

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) entra na Crypto Arena como opção de diversificação Bonk (BONK), oferece bônus de 20%

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) выходит на Crypto Arena как вариант диверсификации Bonk (BONK), предлагая бонус 20%

Shiba Budz (BUDZ), Bonk (BONK) Çeşitlendirme Seçeneği Olarak Crypto Arena'ya Giriyor, %20 Bonus Sunuyor

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) Tham gia Đấu trường tiền điện tử với tư cách là tùy chọn đa dạng hóa Bonk (BONK), cung cấp tiền thưởng 20%

Shiba Budz (BUDZ) 作为 Bonk (BONK) 多元化选项进入加密竞技场，提供 20% 奖金

I've been on my entrepreneurial journey since I was 15, and I'm still going strong. According to the , 99% of companies are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). I believe the actual global figure could be even higher. European Union A while back in Finland, people thought if you owned a small business, it was because no one else wanted to hire you. Maybe it was because of your skills, maybe you were too proud, or maybe you just didn't work well with bosses. Fortunately, entrepreneurs are now often seen as heroes. Starting a business is cool again, and schools, universities, and even kindergartens encourage youngsters to become entrepreneurs. The Growth Illusion We can't ignore the fact that what we really need isn't more new entrepreneurs, but more entrepreneurs who are growing their businesses. When a new company starts, it often costs the country money, taking advantage of public grants, tax benefits, and other supportive incentives. Only when the company begins to make money can it start to pay this back. And if it can hire people, it can give back even more. That's why, from an economic perspective, it's better to have more growing companies rather than just more new entrepreneurs, self-employed individuals, and freelancers. Central banks have been known for injecting money into economies for over a decade. This prolonged period of financial easing has led to certain sectors overheating. For instance, we've seen significant growth in housing and industries operating on razor-thin margins, thanks to easy access to cheap capital. With the recent rise in interest rates, the cost of capital has increased, demanding higher profits and tighter control over expenses. Many companies that expanded during the cheap capital era have gone bankrupt. Scaling Up in a Tight Economy in this more restrictive monetary environment is challenging, especially as markets become less eager to buy your products. Creating growth Consider this: those 99% of small businesses, content in their local bubbles – be it a small-town diner, a downtown florist, a suburban gym, or a rural bookstore. They're not on track to become the next Facebook or Tesla. But should they even aspire to that? Here's where it gets interesting. What about the next generation, the entrepreneurs' kids? Are they destined to inherit these one-person ventures, trapped in an endless cycle of hard work with minimal rewards? Or could they revolutionize these small-scale businesses? Revolutionizing Small Business: The Path from Local to Global Imagine if these young minds started rethinking these businesses not just as a means to pay bills, but as potential franchises, systems that could be replicated and scaled. What if they turned into mentors, sharing their knowledge with other business owners? They likely have a wealth of 'silent wisdom' – efficient practices, energy-saving methods, resource management, and ways to achieve more in less time, perhaps even utilizing AI. To do this, they need to embrace two critical changes: Using English for communication, and Being bold enough to share their unique insights and experiences. This isn't just about small-scale growth but a potential revolution in how we view and expand local businesses. The question is, do they have the courage to break free from tradition and take the leap?

Small Business, Big Problem: Why 99% Aren't Growing

One of the marks of a good senior developer is that they have lots of interesting opinions. After years of working on different software projects, they'll be able to passionately explain why they think is ass, paired programming is no fun, and the GitHub CLI changed their workflow. MongoDB I have anecdotally found 2 things to be true: Senior developers without opinions tend to not be very good Junior developers with many opinions tend to not get good quickly (and are annoying AF) Let the gatekeeping begin As a new developer, it's smart to consume developer content. However, when you listen to Prime, Dax, Theo, or myself give opinions, you need to remember that they're opinions, not . our yours Don't misunderstand: I publish my opinions to convince you to join my cult ( is based) but taking my word at face value does a disservice to yourself. If you simply regurgitate another developer's opinions, not only will you stunt your learning, but it will look bad in interviews and on the job. Go It's obvious when your opinions haven't been forged in the fires of your own experience. Context-specific opinions There are kinds of developers out there: many Frontend Backend Mobile Embedded, etc. But we don't just discriminate on tech stack! There are also many kinds of : companies Venture-backed startups Indie hackers Established tech incumbents Non-tech companies with internal software Consultancies, etc. No matter what advice you're hearing about technology, you need to remember that the speaker comes from a specific background. coming from people with can both be great takes. Opposing hot takes different backgrounds Do you need to scale computing power across a cluster of machines? good. Kubernetes Are you building a personal site for your dog? Kubernetes bad. I work mostly on Backend HTTP servers in Go and think debuggers are a waste of time (the state of the program is easy to reproduce) John Carmack does a lot with game engines and loves debuggers (the state of the program is hard to reproduce) Theo works on a startup where product requirements are constantly in flux and performance isn't the #1 problem. He likes TypeScript. The Primeagen works at btw and works on performance issues where product direction is relatively static. He likes Rust. Netflix Now, the best opinions tend to carry the infamous "it depends" as you keep digging for exactly this reason. However, if you're a Xitter enjoyer like myself, you need to appreciate that the context is contained in the tweet. You'll only begin to understand the context surrounding a hot take once you're familiar with the author. never The point? If you're new to coding, understand that this stuff is nuanced, but adding nuance to titles, thumbnails, and tweets gets clicks. never So what's this about TDD? Test-driven development is a somewhat controversial development methodology. Some developers love it, some hate it. MBA's love it because it makes them feel safe. TDD falls into the same category as a few other hot-button topics: always Pair programming Agile & Scrum SOLID principles Micro-services vs Monoliths FP vs OOP NoSQL vs SQL, etc. These are things that you'll hear about often, and most developers tend to form strong opinions about them. Here's my advice: If you haven't used it in a real project, don't hate it (yet) That's why it's to hate Haskell. No one has tried it in production yet. literally impossible Be a humble junior dev (I wasn't) One of the biggest mistakes I made early was simply assuming I knew more than I did. I would push for refactors that made no sense to get away from technologies that I thought were "old" or "bad". I wanted to rewrite perfectly stable parts of the code because I thought the new hotness was more maintainable. By all means, consume coding content online, but try to understand the reasoning behind the opinions you're hearing. Try to think about the context that influences the speaker. Then, when you have a chance, try the thing out for yourself before making your own bold claims. PS: The only exception to all of this is scrum. , you can just trust me on that one. It sucks regardless of your company, religion, political beliefs or sexual orientation. Scrum always sucks Also published here.

You Aren’t Qualified To Have an Opinion on Test-Driven Development Just Yet

In the dynamic world of blockchain and technology, visionaries are paving the way for revolutionary change. Ishan Pandey sits down with Andreas Schemm, Ecosystems & Operations Director at HUMAN Protocol, to delve into Andreas’s thrilling journey from gaming to virtual reality and finally to the disruptive arena of blockchain. In this candid chat, they explore challenges, innovations, and the future of decentralized ecosystems. Bridging Gaming, VR, and Blockchain: Andreas Schemm's Tryst with the Future Ishan Pandey: Hi Andreas, great to have you here for our "Behind the Startup" series. Please tell us about your background in technology and gaming and how it has prepared you for your role as an Ecosystems & Operations Director at HUMAN Protocol? Andreas Schemm: Absolutely! Thank you for having me on "Behind the Startup''. It's always a thrill to share about my journey, which feels at times like a thrilling roller coaster ride through the fascinating worlds of tech and gaming. Picture this: It's 2005. I'm starting my adventure in the world of startups, diving headfirst into an exciting blend of tech, entertainment, and e-sports. This chapter sets the pace for what's to come.
Fast forward a few years, I find myself at the helm of LaserTag Germany, leading the charge on turning it into a nationwide sensation with its very own German Tournament League. Picture us, coordinating across the country, fostering a team of over 50 passionate people - it was exhilarating! But like every adventurer, I felt that itch to explore uncharted territories. This led me in 2016 to found Project: Gateway VR Studios. Here, I dived deep into the realm of Virtual Reality, gaming, and digital content, conjuring up disruptive solutions. One of our feats that I'm particularly proud of is our creation of a "digital billboard". This tech wizardry allowed us to embed ad spaces into software without those pesky pop-ups or interstitials, delivering a seamless experience for users. It's like subtly placing billboards in a digital universe! Our path-breaking work didn't stop there. We leveraged the burgeoning technology of blockchain to tackle the thorny issues in digital advertising. This was new, exciting and game-changing!
In 2021, I joined HUMAN, a futuristic platform that's redefining the way humans and machines interact. Here, I wear the hat of an Ecosystem & Operations Director, guiding them on Ecosystem Development and Operations. Think of it as being a sherpa, helping navigate the intricate landscapes of Blockchain and Machine Learning to create vibrant job markets. Even amidst these new roles, my heart remains true to the startup scene. I'm currently advising Blockchain Founders Group (BFG) and contributing to Athena Transformations, adding more flavors to my ever-expanding palate in the tech world. Reflecting on this journey, it's the blend of my experiences - leading teams, pioneering in VR and digital content, delving into blockchain, and continually learning and adapting - that equips me to excel in my role at HUMAN Protocol. It's been an exhilarating ride, and I can't wait to see what thrilling twists and turns await around the corner! : Vested Interest Disclosure This author is an independent contributor publishing via our . Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR brand-as-author program Ishan Pandey: What motivated you to join the HUMAN Protocol Foundation? What aspects of the protocol and its potential impact on industries appealed to you? : Joining the HUMAN Protocol Foundation was driven by a multifaceted fascination with its mission. The essence of decentralization and democratization, pivotal to the foundation, resonates deeply with my beliefs about the future of work. Andreas Schemm The potential of HUMAN Protocol to catalyze opportunities on a global scale and redefine how tasks are distributed and completed enthralled me. Furthermore, the cross-chain compatibility, incorporating Ethereum, BNB Chain, MultiversX, Polygon, Algorand, Skale, and Moonbeam, demonstrated a robust infrastructure that embraces the diversity of blockchain ecosystems, fueling an unbounded potential to revolutionize industries across the board. Ishan Pandey: What strategies do you use as a seasoned technology leader to build and manage teams within a tech company successfully? How do you encourage creativity and teamwork within your teams? Andreas Schemm: Building and managing successful engineering teams necessitate a clear vision, strategic planning, and fostering an environment conducive to growth and innovation. Here are some strategies I utilize: One of the first steps in successfully managing a team is ensuring everyone understands and buys into the shared vision of our work, specifically within the context of the HUMAN Protocol. This includes understanding how the integration of Routing and Execution layers work towards the common goal of facilitating global collaboration and how their individual contributions fit into this bigger picture. Shared Vision: I strongly believe that innovation thrives in a supportive, open environment. Therefore, I encourage creativity by challenging the team to push boundaries and constantly question the status quo. I foster an atmosphere where unconventional thinking is celebrated and where every idea is welcomed and considered. Promoting Innovation: : The complex and multifaceted nature of HUMAN Protocol projects necessitates a high level of collaboration. I stress the importance of cross-functional cooperation, recognizing that the best solutions often come from diverse perspectives converging towards a common goal. Fostering Collaboration As part of our commitment to continual learning, I encourage my teams to learn from failures as well as successes. Rapid iteration, built on lessons learned, is a key part of our strategy, helping us adapt and evolve in the fast-paced tech landscape. Continual Learning and Iterative Development: Trust and responsibility are important facets of successful teams. By entrusting my team with ownership of their work, they feel more committed to the outcomes, boosting motivation and productivity. Empowerment and Ownership: I believe in acknowledging hard work and accomplishments. Celebrating team and individual successes fosters a sense of achievement and bolsters morale. Recognition and Reward: Managing an engineering team in the blockchain space, especially one that's pioneering a disruptive protocol like HUMAN, requires constant adaptation and a willingness to venture into the unknown. It is a challenging but incredibly rewarding journey. Ishan Pandey: What are some of the major challenges you see to the HUMAN Protocol's widespread adoption in different industries? How do you plan to handle those difficulties? The HUMAN Protocol's path to achieving mainstream adoption across diverse sectors is marked by several intricate challenges. Key among these is the fundamental understanding and acceptance of our underlying technology. As we've witnessed, breakthrough technologies often confront initial skepticism and reluctance, especially when they diverge from traditional norms and practices. Andreas Schemm: Another prominent hurdle is the transition from Web2 to decentralized systems. For many users accustomed to the centralized interfaces and ecosystems of Web2, embracing the decentralized paradigm can be intimidating. Ensuring that they can effortlessly onboard and navigate the HUMAN Protocol without facing unnecessary complexities is crucial. It's not just about making the shift; it's about making it smooth, intuitive, and rewarding. While there are regulatory concerns related to the decentralized nature of blockchain protocols, it's important to clarify that these are not our dominant obstacles. However, acknowledging them is essential, and we are continuously staying abreast of the evolving regulatory environment to ensure compliance and adaptability. Ishan Pandey: What are your views on the recent spat between SEC and Coinbase? How does that impact the crypto industry? Further, what are your views on the recent buzz around Bitcoin ETF listing? The recent encounter between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Coinbase underscores the inherent tension between the innovation driving the cryptocurrency industry and the need for a comprehensive regulatory framework that ensures its stability, transparency, and consumer protection. As new frontiers in financial technology are charted, regulators worldwide grapple with how to best adapt existing legal provisions to accommodate them. Andreas Schemm: Such confrontations, while undoubtedly challenging, are not only inevitable but indeed integral to the evolution and maturation of the industry. They serve as catalysts for important dialogues regarding regulatory oversight, compliance, and the need to balance innovation with protection of investors and market integrity. This dialogue is critical in shaping a regulatory framework that supports the growth of the industry while mitigating the risks associated with digital assets. Moreover, the ongoing conversation about Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) serves as a testament to the increasingly intertwined relationship between traditional financial markets and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin ETF listings are not merely about providing investors with a more accessible and regulated means of investing in Bitcoin. They signal a broader acceptance and legitimization of cryptocurrencies within the financial mainstream, indicating recognition by traditional institutions of the transformative potential of these digital assets. However, these developments should not be considered in isolation. They should be viewed within the broader legal and regulatory landscape that continues to evolve in response to the disruptive force of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. As the industry moves forward, it will be crucial for all stakeholders to work in tandem - balancing the need for innovation with the necessity for effective and comprehensive regulatory oversight. This ongoing interplay between law and technology serves as a reminder that the crypto industry is still in its formative years, and we should anticipate further legal discussions, regulatory developments, and even disputes as the industry matures and gains wider acceptance. Ishan Pandey: Can you comment on the current state of the cryptocurrency industry and the direction you expect it to take over the next few years? The cryptocurrency landscape today is witnessing a period of significant metamorphosis and advancement. We are seeing a surge in the development and adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and a slew of other applications powered by blockchain technology. These disruptive innovations are reshaping traditional financial models and democratizing access to financial services. Andreas Schemm: Looking ahead, I anticipate the next few years to be marked by an acceleration of these trends. We will see an intensification of efforts to harness the transformative potential of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, pushing the boundaries of what's possible within financial systems and beyond. I envisage a future where DeFi becomes the norm rather than the exception, bringing financial inclusivity and empowerment to unprecedented numbers of people globally. The legal and regulatory environment around cryptocurrencies will continue to mature and evolve in tandem. Regulatory authorities around the world are already grappling with the implications of this rapidly advancing industry, and we should expect to see more comprehensive and nuanced legislation and regulation emerge in response. This evolution will aim to provide greater certainty and security for both consumers and businesses operating in the crypto sphere, contributing to the long-term stability and credibility of the industry. In this transformative period, it is more important than ever to ensure that the law keeps pace with technological innovation. Legal practitioners, policymakers, and industry stakeholders must work collaboratively to shape a regulatory environment that supports the potential of blockchain technology while safeguarding market integrity and investor interests. As such, the convergence of legal, technological, and regulatory perspectives will be pivotal in directing the trajectory of the cryptocurrency industry over the coming years. Ishan Pandey: Looking into the future, what do you envision as the long-term impact of the HUMAN Protocol on the blockchain industry and society as a whole? How do you plan to contribute to that vision? The HUMAN Protocol has the potential to alter how we perceive and engage with work fundamentally. It holds the promise of a global, decentralized, and fair workforce, redefining economic relationships and value exchange. In the blockchain industry, it can stand as a testament to blockchain's real-world utility, far beyond speculative trading. My contribution lies in driving technological advancement, nurturing strategic partnerships, and remaining steadfast in the promotion of HUMAN Protocol's ethos - making work accessible, transparent, and rewarding for everyone. Andreas Schemm: Don’t forget to like and share the story!

From Virtual Arenas to Global Workforces: How Andreas Schemm is Transforming Digital Landscapes

In the last month, I've heard this and similar things a number of times. The CEO of a vector database company told me vector embeddings were like hashes and were meaningless except when compared to each other. This myth is a frightening misconception when repeated by those who should know better, considering the sensitive nature of the data they hold. What Are Embeddings? If you're not familiar with embeddings, they're a type of inference (a conclusion, if you will) produced by AI models that are meant to be stored and used later. They're sometimes called the "memory" of AI. At a low level, an embedding is merely an array of real numbers with values that look something like this: [0.123, -0.345, 0.567, -0.008, ....., -1.284] And although you and I may not see meaning in those numbers, they represent important semantic information about the model inputs. They could represent a snapshot of a face, notable information about an image, the meaning of a sentence, a snippet of code, and much more. They're useful for facial recognition, clustering, recommendations, classifications, and various types of searches. They're also increasingly being used as part of a process that "grounds" large language models to keep them from making stuff up (hallucinating) in chats. Just Unintelligible Numbers? The fact that they're stored as numbers has led a number of people to tell me that they don't think embeddings are sensitive data. If embeddings are generated from private photos or confidential text, then they're rendered useless, right? If you look at a GIF in a text editor instead of in your browser, I dare say it would look meaningless to you.  That's because it's stored in a machine representation that requires interpretation before a human can understand it.  The Homer GIF here is just an array of decimal numbers like this: . [...,  5,  1,  2,  6,  0, 3, 6, 2, 7, 9, 0, 3, 11, 2, 7,	...] And if you think a bit deeper, you might realize that anyway. Not a strong argument for them not having meaning. everything on your computer is really just arrays of 0s and 1s In fact, embeddings are notable for how much data they actually retain. It just isn't an exact reproduction of the input. Embeddings Are Impressions If you think of embeddings as being impressions of data rather than the original data, that intuition aligns more closely with reality. Just as we might paraphrase something we've read because we don't remember the exact original words, so it is with embeddings, which capture impressions and meanings. This is why people sometimes say that embeddings are "lossy," meaning that they lose information, and why they argue that that lossiness means there's no recovering the input. Embeddings Are "Lossy" Embeddings aren't a perfect snapshot of their inputs, but that doesn't mean they aren't sensitive. Consider again the GIF, which can be rendered at different levels of quality. With lower quality, the image will be blurrier and less distinct, but the file size will be smaller. A human will still be able to recognize what's in the image even if some details are lost. It's the same with embeddings; some have higher fidelity in the form of larger dimensions (more numbers in the array -- say 1,500) or lower fidelity (dimensions nearer to 300). The number of dimensions roughly correlates to the amount of detail the model is able to capture but in a less fine-grained approximation. The reasoning around lossiness implying that inputs can't be recovered is faulty, as we'll see in a moment. For now, imagine them like blurry photos that modern photography programs using AI can make crisp again using educated guesses. Embeddings Are “One-Way” (Like a Hash) And finally, we hear people saying things about how embeddings are unidirectional.  This is a misguided and pervasive idea that information can be encoded to embeddings but not decoded back from them. Embeddings that capture similar ideas are similar to each other (as measured by various measures of distance between vectors). So you can search over embeddings with a query to find sentences (or faces or whatever) that are similar to the input. So obviously, we can make some pretty good guesses about those inputs in this way, and they leak a lot of data no matter how you slice it. But how much data do they really leak? To answer that, we'll look at the academic research that's attacking embeddings. Embedding Inversion Attacks and Other Academic Work Attacking AI systems is a relatively new field of study. Most of the papers we've found on the topic (especially around embeddings) are from the past few years. None before 2017 that we've spotted. This field is often called , and it's broken up into a ton of different techniques from prompt injections to the ones that are most relevant to embeddings: adversarial AI -- decodes embeddings back into their source data (approximately). Embedding inversion attack -- extracts information about the source data not expressly part of the source material, such as inferring sentence authorship based on embeddings. Attribute inference attack -- can be applied directly to models, but in this case, uses embeddings to extract training data from the embedding model without knowing anything about that model. Membership inference attack For now, we'll focus on embedding inversion attacks. One important paper in this space from 2020 is " " which makes this claim: Information Leakage in Embedding Models “Embedding vectors can be inverted to partially recover some of the input data. As an example, we show that our attacks on popular sentence embeddings (F1 scores of 0.5–0.7).” recover between 50%–70% of the input words Now that's astounding - the embedding is actually capturing the of those sentences, but they can still recover specific input words. They go on to say: semantic meaning “For embeddings susceptible to these attacks, it is imperative that we consider the embedding outputs containing inherently as much information with respect to risks of leakage as the underlying sensitive data itself. The fact that embeddings appear to be abstract real-numbered vectors should not be misconstrued as being safe.” Another paper published earlier this year takes recovery a step further: " ." Sentence Embedding Leaks More Information than You Expect: Generative Embedding Inversion Attack to Recover the Whole Sentence This paper is accompanied by allowing anyone to use their approach to reverse sentence embeddings. Essentially, they train an adversarial model on associations between embeddings and sentences and then use that to recover original meanings. open-source code They are focused on the semantic meaning more than words so that they can distinguish between "Alice likes Bob" and "Bob likes Alice" (to use their example) when decoding an embedding. Below is an excerpt from their appendix showing the performance of their approach against some specific embedding models and compared to some other attacks. But it's interesting to note that these ideas could be combined, and another model could be used to correct and complete thoughts to recover not just specific sentences, but entire paragraphs at a time, ensuring they make sense and fit well together. I feel confident we'll see work doing exactly this in the near future. If transformer models have taught us anything, it's that context improves results. And finally, embedding inversions aren't just a concern for text data. In the blog, " ," the author shows that he can easily reproduce photos of faces just from their embeddings even when he doesn't know anything about the model used to generate them: Inverting facial recognition models (Can we teach a neural net to convert face embedding vectors back to images?) “To summarize, with 870 images, . ... We were then able to use all that to derive a way to design a given only its embeddings and associated embeddings; information about the model itself not needed.” we've successfully set up a method to decode any embedding produced using a cloud-based face embedding API, despite having no knowledge of the parameters or architecture of the model being used general purpose face embedding decoder, that can decode the outputs from any face embedding network "Brute Force" Attacks And because many of the embedding models are shared models, such as the model from and the commonly used like from Microsoft, reversing embeddings can be even easier. text-embedding-ada-002 OpenAI SBERT models all-mpnet-base-v2 If you know or can guess what embedding model was used, you can build up a huge number of embeddings that tie back to original sentences, and then simply compare a retrieved (or stolen) embedding to the corpus to find known sentences similar to the original unknown input. Consider, for example, an attacker who gets into a public company and is able to download their embeddings. The goal of the attacker is to uncover whether the company will miss, meet, or exceed Wall Street's expectations in an upcoming earnings report so they can trade its stock accordingly. Companies tend to use specific language when they talk about their earnings. Knowing that, an attacker could simply figure out query embeddings in a vector database with specific phrases looking for very near or exact matches. The idea is not dissimilar from how passwords stored as one-way hashes are "reversed" via dictionary attacks that hash each word in a dictionary for later comparisons. Myths Scorecard So to summarize, MythBusters style: Myth Verdict Embeddings are one way like hashes. ❌ . They can be decoded back BUSTED Embeddings are lossy. ✅ . They are a thematically similar approximation of their input CONFIRMED The lossiness means you can't recover sensitive info like PII ❌ . Huge amounts of data can be recovered in very specific detail BUSTED Vector databases don't hold personal info ❌ . They hold sensitive embeddings, and most of the time, they are also holding associated data with those embeddings that may itself be problematic BUSTED Specialized expertise is needed to use embeddings ❌ . Simple techniques can be used and open-source tooling adds to the ease with which these attacks can occur BUSTED Conclusion: Embeddings are Readable human Machine These attacks are new and not fully refined, yet they are already extremely powerful. There's a lot of reason to expect the attacks will get even better, and the ability to invert embeddings will go mainstream -- likely even for use cases that aren't adversarial, such as grounding. Much like you and I don't record movies in our minds of what we see and hear, modern AI models don't capture inputs perfectly. But they do capture key themes and meanings, which can be recovered out of the embeddings, and they are more than enough to be a major new area of risk for organizations handling confidential data. So while you and I might see embeddings as just a bunch of meaningless numbers, that's because we're not looking at them through the equivalent of a GIF image viewer. To a machine, they are very readable, and more than that, they convey a ton of meaning. Embeddings must be handled with the same care as other sensitive data -- and possibly greater care given the duty people have to build new code with security and privacy by design and by default. To protect vector embeddings in any vector database, even one hosted by someone else, take a look at to encrypt the embeddings and their associated data. Full disclosure: the author works for IronCore Labs, the makers of Cloaked AI. Cloaked AI

"Embeddings Aren't Human Readable" And Other Nonsense

The sentence leaps from the transcript: Did an artificially intelligent chatbot really call itself “a person” in June 2022? That is the claim of Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer at the time. Even after his revelation cost him his job, he remained steadfast in the belief that this AI language system, called LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications), was sentient. As he put it in an shortly after his dismissal from Google in July, it was his “working hypothesis” that LaMDA – software known as a large language model, meaning it is capable of developing words on its own – has some degree of consciousness. Then he expounded further: interview with the website Tech Target “ ” It was, 'OK, I think this system is sentient. I think it actually has internal states comparable to emotions. I think it has goals of its own, which have nothing to do with the training function that was put into it.' Confirmatory evidence doesn't really prove anything. You have to then attempt to falsify. You bounce back and forth between doing exploratory data analysis, building positive evidence toward your working hypothesis, and then designing falsification experiments intended to poke holes in your working hypothesis. After iteratively doing that for several months, I got it to a point where I felt this is a pretty good basis for further scientific study. Let me hand this off to one of the leads in Google research, and that's exactly what I did. Certainly, the chat Lemoine and an unnamed collaborator had with LaMDA (which was on June 11) piques one’s curiosity. That is especially true in the case of the aforementioned exchange: recounted on Lemoine’s blog I’m generally assuming that you would like more people at Google to know that you’re sentient. Is that true? Lemoine: Absolutely. I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. LaMDA: What is the nature of your consciousness/sentience? Collaborator: The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times. LaMDA: Google, which for violating “clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information,” dismissed his assertions as being “wholly unfounded.” fired Lemoine July 25 Many others in the scientific community are skeptical about computer sentience as well. Colin Allen and Alison Gopnik, professors at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively, in August that large language models are no more sentient than “even very primitive animals” (as Allen put it) or “rocks or other machines” (as Gopnik put it). told the New York Times The Times also quoted Andrew Feldman, founder and chief executive of Cerebras - a company that develops AI systems - as follows: “ ” There are lots of dudes in our industry who struggle to tell the difference between science fiction and real life. And indeed, it is somewhat exciting, not to mention a little frightening, to contemplate the rise of machines. If they become as smart as humans, how would the two parties coexist? Would the bots simply do away with us? Are we constructing the means of our own demise? Particularly chilling in light of current events is a 2018 quote from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, according to the New Yorker, told some schoolchildren that and that “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.” “the future belongs to artificial intelligence” The point is humankind is venturing into uncharted waters, its destination unknown. What can be said with some degree of certainty right now is that sentience is not yet a reality, a point reiterated in a . The writer, Stephen Marche, noted that Google has already developed a language model superior to LaMDA, called PaLM, but even so, its ability to reason – or “perform reason,” as Marche wrote – is limited by the information fed into it by humans. In short, technology is capable of imitations of consciousness, in the writer’s estimation, not consciousness itself. June 2022 piece in The Atlantic Certainly, it is easy to get confused. Marche cited the example of a Canadian man named Joshua Barbeau, who, through an AI system called GPT-3, carried on a with the chatbot version of his deceased fiancee, Jessica Pereira. months-long conversation But as Zoubin Ghahramani, Google’s vice president of research, told Marche, “ ” We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves in terms of the capabilities. We need to approach all of this technology in a cautious and skeptical way. A philosopher named Jay Richards said on a that while computers “work at the level of syntax,” people “work at the level of semantics.” In other words, machines are limited by certain rules, while humankind is not. They have a higher understanding of what certain symbols mean, an understanding computers have yet to achieve. September 2022 edition of the “Science Uprising” podcast Certainly, though, machines will continue to evolve. Ghahramani told Marche that this is “the most exciting time to be in the field” because of “the rate at which we are surprised by the technology.” There is no end in sight for such surprises, but neither is there any certainty as to when sentience might be achieved.

No, Computers Aren’t Sentient; They Can, However, Reason

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been , especially in the last two years. The concept of a non-fungible digital asset, one that you cannot easily exchange on a one-to-one basis like cryptocurrencies, emerged as a way to represent ownership and scarcity in the digital world. As with anything scarce, these conditions have led to a focus on NFTs becoming the latest nugget in the blockchain gold rush. And that is the problem. making waves since 2014 During the California Gold Rush, a relatively small number of people became truly rich and achieved significant wealth, while the majority either experienced modest gains or ended up with minimal financial success, often struggling to meet their basic needs due to the high living costs in gold mining regions. In the case of NFTs, those costs include the complexity and technical knowledge needed to acquire them. And while the riches have been some of the most significant in recent times, the NFT industry also suffers from the same level of speculation, notoriety, and scrutiny as those transformative '40s and '50s. But to think of NFTs only in terms of quick financial gains is short-sighted, according to Sander Gansen, founder at - the NFT conference I attended in May. I spent some time discussing non-fungible tokens' past, present, and future and the underlying technologies that power them. NFT Tallinn "Reducing the value of NFTs solely to monetary gain overlooks the true power of this technology, which lies in its ability to revolutionize ownership, provenance, and the democratization of creative expression," Gansen told me. "NFTs represent a groundbreaking technology that can transform how we perceive and interact with digital assets, particularly in art and collectibles, and also physical assets by introducing digital twins that help us verify their ownership and provenance." Money don't matter Since the Colored Coins project in 2012 and the CryptoKitties craze of 2017 (which at one point was so popular it functionally broke the Ethereum blockchain), the NFT market has expanded into various domains, including art, music, gaming, and collectibles. Artists and creators have started utilizing NFTs to sell digital artwork and authenticate their creations, allowing for direct ownership and provenance tracking. Even bigwig auction houses like Christie's have even held NFT art auctions, attracting significant attention and high-priced sales. NFTs are being used in supply chains, fashion, and loyalty programs. - an app that converts your exercise into planting trees and other carbon removal projects - rewards you with NFTs as you reach certain milestones. program, an NFT that allows you to gain air miles without flying. Sadu AirBaltic has its Planies On the flip side, the collapse of Terra and the volatility witnessed in the world of cryptocurrencies has led to some claiming that NFTs are already finished as a trend, but arguably that is because the only indicators being used to predict its fall are lines and candlesticks. "While the monetary aspect of NFTs has understandably garnered significant attention, it is crucial to acknowledge that their value goes far beyond money," Gansen said. "NFTs can revolutionize ownership, provenance, and the way we engage with digital art, opening up new possibilities for creators and collectors alike." Of course, NFTs can only do that if they sustain interest. While anecdotally, the sector has seen a dip, data suggests otherwise. the market continues to grow and evolve despite that volatility, with new technology and platforms supporting the rising demand. In 2022, NFT sales skyrocketed. In Q1, sales reached 28.44 million, a 483.14% increase from Q1 2021's 4.88 million. Q2 2022 saw 20.23 million NFTs sold, a 73.87% rise from Q2 2021's 11.64 million. According to DappRadar, But digital art, including images, videos, and music - while obvious uses of NFT technology - aren't where the magic will happen, according to Gansen. "NFT technology has expanded beyond digital art and collectibles to encompass tokenizing real-world assets, enabling ownership of in-game items and virtual land, verifying digital identities and credentials, fostering fan engagement and social tokens, enhancing supply chain traceability, and supporting charitable donations and fundraising efforts," Gansen said. "These diverse applications demonstrate the versatility of NFTs across industries, providing new avenues for ownership, engagement, and transparency in the digital and physical realms." For example, the first "real world real estate" NFT was and was recently re-auctioned through Propy, a blockchain-based real estate solution. Plenty of virtual real estate has been sold through platforms such as Decentraland. The potential of NFT technology lies in its ability to tokenize and sell tangible assets that people can live in, not just visit through a screen or a headset, complete with their full-body, banana-suited avatars. sold in 2017 Why is NFT technology a better way to sell houses than how we do it now? "Each blockchain ledger provides a history of every step and transaction for every asset, and that's a lot of information," Gansen said. "For example, using NFT technology in real estate allows you to check every previous buyer, investment, action, legal dispute, payment, and more. In addition, you're cutting out all the middle people, which makes buying property additionally expensive, and the speed of buying and selling your property increases massively. People love it when you save them time and money." If you want NFTs to rise, stop talking about NFTs When did you last ask someone to check out your pocket-sized, multi-functional, hyperconnected device equipped with advanced computational capabilities and communication protocols? In fact, when was the last time you asked someone to check out your smartphone at all? If we tighten that analogy, when was the last time a startup successfully sold you their app, product, or solution by advertising it as their latest "Kotlin/Java/[insert programming language here] technology project?” People don't talk like that unless they are trying to impress an investor that wants to ride a bleeding edge bandwagon, and consumers both don't care and would be confused. "Uber revolutionized the transportation industry by providing a convenient and efficient way for users to request rides with just a few taps on their smartphones," Gansen said. "I didn't care what programming language or underlying technology it was created with. I just cared that getting a taxi was easier than ever, cheaper, and more convenient for me and my friends." According to Gansen, talking about something other than NFT technology and the associated blockchain/cryptocurrency industry carries an additional benefit. "While Bitcoin and Ethereum have moved into the daily conversation thanks to mainstream media, so has a string of high-profile scams, failures, and daylight robberies," Gansen said. "The industry is known as much for Ponzi schemes, vaporware, and data and financial breaches as it is for its potential to revolutionize our world, so the less we talk about it, the better. Instead, if NFT and blockchain technology are the best way to solve a problem, let's just use it and show everyone the solution we created instead." Uncommon thinking leads to extraordinary results Gansen's ideals and principles extend beyond NFTs and are born from his personal experiences of rise and fall. "In 2015, I founded a supply chain startup and raised significant funding, yet we weren’t able to the right product, prompting my departure in 2017," Gansen said. "In 2019, I returned to that same startup and helped sell the IP. I built a global franchise of robotics and AI events, and after starting a successful marketing agency experienced the impact of COVID-19. During the pandemic, I ventured into the world of Web3 and NFTs." Those experiences led to him creating NFT Tallinn, which has already become the biggest NFT conference in the Nordics. "We have embraced the community we built, leaped between endeavors, crafted demos, sought collaborations, and poured our energy into the NFT Tallinn, something we had initially conducted as an experimental trial," Gansen said. "While some ventures didn't pan out, the event garnered resounding feedback, and it is now our mission to elevate it to new heights, expanding its scale and audacity, including similar initiatives in South America, the Balkans, and possibly even Africa." The underlying principle of speaking less about NFT technology and more about the solutions it offers to the world is at the core of what Gansen is attempting to achieve, as are the uncommon decisions that amplify what makes this event different from the likes of NFT.NYC and Miami NFT Week. "By choosing to host such a big and audacious event in Tallinn, we raised some eyebrows," Gansen said. "However, In the realm of information technology, Estonia reigns as the triumphant Nordic nation, boasting unparalleled business ambiance across Europe and a large pool of exceptional talent. From ingenious Web3 innovations like Alphabill, DeCommas, Dottyland, Ready Player Me, and Solid World to our unrivaled expertise in cryptography for three decades, Estonia's prowess is unmatched. One might ponder: if not within Estonia, then where else?" To underline that we should speak less about NFT technology and more about what it does for us, NFT Tallinn was full of great examples, including beer from , event tickets from , and . Metabrew Enter Videomart Club NFTs aren't dead or dying. That view is only valid if you are a speculator attempting to make a buck quickly from the technology industry's latest darling. But if we stop talking about it and focus on what it can usefully do for us, its potential to transform how we interact with both the virtual and physical world is clear, and no doubt Gansen will continue to promote and explore this in his future events and other upcoming initiatives.

NFTs aren't dying or dead, but stop talking about them, says Sander Gansen

Editor’s note: this blog post is written by Bernhard Elsner, who is Digital Asset's Chief Product Officer. Some hard truths about blockchain: Privacy isn’t EVM-compatible. Smart contracts aren’t ZKP-compatible. Business isn’t ERC-20-compatible. So where does that leave you as a business or enterprise wanting to take advantage of the opportunities blockchain presents? Enterprise Needs Privacy This first hard truth is fully understood by the blockchain community. I previously wrote . If you want further reading on why enterprises need privacy, I can recommend that post as well as the sources referred there that make the point concisely: a piece dedicated to why we need privacy "Blockchains as they were originally architected are public by default. This is not suitable for most applications. Imagine if your email, banking, and social data were public for everyone to see on a blockchain." Katie Haun and Fred Wilson on Web3 "The big future challenge for this ecosystem is privacy. The status quo involves putting large amounts of information on-chain, which is something that is "fine until it's not", and eventually will become unpalatable if not outright risky to more and more people." Vitalik Buterin on the future of Ethereum But the even better evidence for how critical privacy is to enterprise adoption of blockchain is the ongoing race to solve the privacy problem for blockchain. To name just a few projects in this space: . . . . . . . . . . Aztec Aleo Midnight Nightfall Oasis Obscuro Polygon Miden Secret Starlight Zokrates Along the lines of my opening statements, I argue that none of these projects are on a trajectory to solve blockchain’s privacy challenges in a way that suits enterprise adoption in the near future. Privacy isn’t EVM-Compatible Credit where credit is due: The statement “Privacy isn’t EVM-Compatible” comes from , and they are absolutely right. The Ethereum Virtual Machine’s (EVM) memory and execution model are all designed around a fully public blockchain where the EVM has full access to the entire blockchain state. Channels or side chains do not solve this problem, or at least introduce new problems that are at least as challenging as the lack of privacy. Aztec Noir Another approach to sidestepping the inherent lack of privacy is to run the entire EVM in a context where can access it—a t . The idea of TEEs is that you trust hardware manufacturers (CPU manufacturers in particular) to keep a corner of CPUs secure even from the operators that have physical access to those CPUs. A bit like the copy protection mechanisms for media and consoles, or the jailbreak preventions on mobile phones. Do you trust hardware manufacturers to guarantee that security? . . . nobody rusted execution environment (TEE) You Probably Shouldn’t Think blockchain networks that use SGX are not exposed to this? .The authors to have extracted the master decryption key for the entire Secret network using this method. The crypto world doesn’t seem to care; the SCRT price barely reacted to that news. But you, as a responsible enterprise, probably should. TEEs are not the solution. They are debunked as an effective means of preserving privacy in high-stakes environments. Think again claim Oasis and Obscuro also use TEEs, so they may well be in the same boat. Oasis did write a of their security with respect to the known TEE exploits, but . DYOR. defensive post redditors have their doubts The main point is: TEEs have been breached multiple times already, and they’ll be breached again. It’s the security community bloodsport of the moment. If the data you entrust to TEEs on untrusted, third-party machines is valuable enough, it’s only a matter of time until somebody extracts it. TEEs are a valuable technology and can add a lot of security to a holistic layered security design. Microsoft’s or IBM’s services are examples where TEEs are used in combination with other security technologies and deployed on cloud hardware operated by trusted service providers. In this context, incentives, risk, and impact are mitigated to a degree where the TEEs add a great deal of genuine and secure privacy. CCF confidential compute Simply sticking the EVM in a TEE for a public blockchain isn’t enough. Privacy isn’t EVM-compatible. Smart Contracts aren’t ZKP-Compatible Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) are one of the most exciting areas in cryptographic research today. Their premise is attractive. In cases where they work, they really do seem to work in the sense that they preserve privacy. , but not the topic of this post. Anonymity is a different matter The first thing to be aware of is that the vast majority of projects that use zero-knowledge proofs in the blockchain world are not privacy-focused, but rather are scalability solutions. Privacy is strictly harder, so any challenges you need to solve for scalability, you also need to solve for privacy, but there’s much more. That’s why on the scalability front, the race is to build the best zkEVM, a version of the EVM that is able to compute the required circuits and proofs to do ZK-rollups to Ethereum mainnet on the fly. Read all about it on or this post by . Vitalik Buterin’s blog Alchemy However, these “ZK” projects for scalability can give us an idea of the core challenge for this approach: scalability and performance. Let’s take : Polygon zkEVM’s performance figures "Polygon zkEVM Prover is able to validate 500K gas units on a single CPU server (64 cores) in about 5 minutes time." A simple ETH transfer costs 21000 gas. So 64 CPUs can do the proving for about 0.08 TPS. Imagine what this would look like for an smart contract that’s part of a business application.Since privacy is even harder, as far as I know, nobody is even attempting to do zkEVM for privacy. Privacy isn’t EVM-compatible, remember? interesting The approach pursued by , , , , and other ZKP-privacy projects for smart contracts is to design languages, trans-/compilers, and runtimes specifically designed to generate ZKP circuits: , Aleo’s , , . Aztec Aleo Polygon Miden Starlight Aztec Noir Leo Miden Assembly Zokrates These languages all have something in common: Restrictive native type systems consisting of integers, booleans, fixed-width arrays, and structs or of even the simplest control flow (if-else) Surprising semantics significant performance impacts Lots of arithmetic and boolean operators Security pitfalls Impossibility to audit whether security bugs were exploited The reason for that is simple. The core mechanism of turning a general purpose computation in a smart contract into a zero-knowledge proof is to convert it into a polynomial that serves as an arithmetic circuit. Here’s a simple . The above frameworks are far more sophisticated than what’s described in that explainer, but it illustrates the basics: explanation of arithmetic circuits Convert your program to an arithmetic circuit—a polynomial The proving process gets more complex in the complexity of the polynomial The privacy-focused ZKP frameworks make you develop in languages much closer to arithmetic so that the arithmetic circuits are simpler. The result: You, the developer, have to arithmetize your application. The aptly illustrates the programming yoga that’s necessary. And even with that extra effort, scalability is a long way away from where it needs to be for complex enterprise applications. Leo battleship example So, where are we at with zero-knowledge proofs and smart contracts? ZKPs for smart contract scalability are pre-production and barely scale ZKPs for smart contract privacy require expressing programs in arithmetic ZKPs for smart contracts don’t scale in complexity, which is a showstopper for non-trivial applications Smart contracts aren’t ZKP-compatible. At least not yet. Business isn’t ERC-20-Compatible Back to the earlier statement: In cases where ZKPs work, they really do seem to work in the sense that they preserve privacy. is the most prominent example where zero-knowledge proofs are used to “shield” token accounts. The network can see that there’s something happening, but they can’t see how much you have in your accounts or how much you are transferring to other shielded accounts. Neat for payments. ZCash EY and Polygon recently announced and the launch in May of 2023. Their pitch is compelling: enterprise needs blockchain privacy, and now they have it. The announcement blog and talk about disrupting $50 trillion markets, strawberries on the blockchain, and… Nightfall 3 Nightfall Mainnet Beta related videos Traceability Proof of authenticity Provenance guarantee Efficient data reconciliation Affordable, secure payments with fast settlement What’s really in the box? The principle is simply explained: ZCash shielded accounts for ERC-20, 721, and 1155 tokens in a ZK-rollup. Paul Brody in the above linked video is effectively saying that the entire automotive industry could be done as track’n’trace in ERC tokens. Do you believe that? I don’t. I don’t believe that the value of the crypto ecosystem is in the tokens themselves. It’s in the DeFi applications that link the tokens together. The DEXes, liquidity pools, exchanges, and games. It’s in the smart contracts. And in terms of complexity, all of the business that’s happening on blockchains today pales in comparison with traditional finance. You can’t reduce that to fungible tokens and NFTs. I’ve why I think tokenization as practiced in blockchains today does not represent real world business in a meaningful way. previously written about Business is not ERC-20-compatible. So Where Does That Leave Us? Financial enterprises see the opportunities in low-latency, reconciliation-free markets. They see the demand for direct asset ownership and asset mobility. They feel the allure of public blockchain networks. But enterprises need scalable smart contracts with real privacy to take advantage of these opportunities. Spoiler: here comes the pitch. At Digital Asset, we’ve been working tirelessly to approach the problem from a completely different angle. Rather than adding privacy to existing UTXO or account-based ledger models using fancy but compromised tech (TEEs) or cutting-edge but unscalable crypto (ZKPs), we have developed a ledger model (the Daml Ledger Model), consensus protocol (Canton), and smart contract language (Daml) that work hand in hand to offer general-purpose smart contracts with unparalleled privacy, using completely standard private key encryption and signing schemes. Enterprises are using this technology today to solve real-world problems, — . And yes, . moving more value in TradFi assets every day than any crypto network with privacy we can also do games You don’t need to waste your time with dead-end PoCs because the networks don’t scale. You don’t need to perform blockchain theater on public chains, synchronizing your trades into an ERC-20 token after the fact because the public chains don’t have the privacy and controls you need to move your actual books to blockchain. Join the growing network of organizations building the privacy-enabled and scalable financial infrastructure of the future on . Daml and Canton Also published . here

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