Icahn Enterprises appoints Andrew Teno as CEO, resulting in a 9% drop in stock price.

Icahn Enterprises slumps amid announcement of new CEO, asset value drop | Seeking Alpha

Icahn Enterprises L.P. said Wednesday that its current chief executive, David Willetts, will become CEO of Pep Boys, the automotive aftermarket service chain...

Icahn Enterprises CEO to become head of Pep Boys - MarketWatch

A leadership change at Icahn Enterprises sparked volatility in IEP stock, confirming that the bears are still targeting the conglomerate.

IEP Stock Falls as Icahn Enterprises Names New CEO | InvestorPlace

It is quickly becoming more involved in a well-known U.S. airline.

Why Icahn Enterprises Stock Rose on a Down Tuesday for the Market @themotleyfool #stocks $IEP $JBLU

Get the most recent info and news about Icahn Enterprises on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

Icahn Enterprises L.P., through its subsidiaries, operates in investment, energy, automotive, food packaging, metals, real estate, and home fashion businesses in the United States and Internationally. The company's Investment segment operates various private investment funds. Its Energy segment refines and markets transportation fuels; and produces and markets nitrogen fertilizers in the form of urea ammonium nitrate and ammonia. The company's Automotive segment is involved in the retail and wholesale distribution of automotive parts in the aftermarket; and offers automotive repair and maintenance services. Its Food Packaging segment produces and sells cellulosic, fibrous, and plastic casings for the processed meat and poultry industry. The company's Metals segment collects, processes, and sells ferrous and non-ferrous metals, as well as processes and distributes steel pipe and plate products. Its Real Estate segment is involved in the rental of office and industrial properties; construction and sale of single-family and multi-family homes, lots in subdivisions and planned communities, and raw land for residential development; and golf and club operations. The company's Home Fashion segment manufactures, sources, markets, distributes, and sells home fashion consumer products. Icahn Enterprises L.P. was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

Icahn Enterprises

I discovered the idea of a few months ago through the brilliant talks of Microsoft Researcher Glen Weyl which are now captured in . Some of the concepts behind have permeated into the blockchain world as Vitalik Buterin . Last week, Butterin and Weyl together with Harvard economist Zoë Hitzig that explores many of the ideas of the Radical Markets theory a bit deeper. Titled, “ ,” the method enables groups to allocate funds for the maintenance of public goods and services without becoming vulnerable to traditional challenges such as the “free-rider” problem. Central to Buterin-Weyl thesis is the idea of Quadratic Voting(QV) as a mechanism to make decisions in societies. While the principles behind QV are mathematically appealing, I found them really hard to implement in the current generation of utility token protocols. However, I found QV incredibly relevant to the nascent space of security tokens. Radical Markets the book of the same title Radical Markets embraced the concept in a blog post published a paper Liberal Radicalism: Formal Rules for a Society Neutral among Communities A good part of my Saturday was spent going thru the math in Buterin-Weyl’s paper and exchanging emails with a couple of thought leaders in the security token space about the relevance of QV to crypto-securities. It turns out that the principles behind QV can be used to address some of the imminent, and often ignored, governance challenges that we desperately need to tackle in the security token space. and I believe is one of the main barriers preventing security tokens to be embraced by large institutional investors. I’ve written about the topic of governance and security tokens before Voting, Governance and Security Tokens Activist investors are one of the most extreme examples of voting dynamics when comes to public equities. Some of the biggest names in Wall Street such as Icahn Enterprises(Carl Icahn), Elliott Management(Paul Singer) or Greenlight Capital(David Einhorn) have made their names and fortunes by running activist campaigns. In the activist model, an investor silently acquires a small but influential position in a company and then goes public proposing a series of changes that should benefit the company’s shareholders. Ultimately, the goal of the activist is to force a shareholder vote about the proposals in order to implement drastic changes in the target company. While I am not a big fan of activist investors, they are an example of a segment of the market that has taken full advantage of the voting mechanisms in public equities. Similarly, security tokens need to enable voting as a first class citizen of the platforms in order to attract mainstream investors. Voting dynamics play a key role in the lifecycle of a security token. Let’s take the canonical example of a crypto-security that represents a pool of real estate leases and pays a dividend to token holders on a quarterly basics based on the performance of the underlying asset. If designed properly, many decisions about the behavior of that security token will be subjected to the vote of the token holders. While tier-1 blockchain protocols are confronted with voting decisions in areas such as protocol changes or transaction verification, security token protocols should enable the implementation of voting and governance rules that reflect market, industry and regulatory dynamics. Identity as the Great Equalizer Part of the reason that makes voting so challenging in utility token protocols is the fact that they operate under pseudonymity or anonymity conditions. In the absence of true identity representations for the token holders, consensus protocols need to rely on complex mathematical puzzles to ensure the integrity of transactions. Security tokens don’t have that issue as identity is a key requirement of the issuance of securities in the form of regulations such as know-your customer(KYC). The fact that the identities of security token holders are known at any given time, opens the door to the implementation of simpler voting protocols such as However, many of the ideas behind PoA rely on the parties in a voting decision acting honestly which we know is not always the case when comes to security tokens. proof-of-authority(PoA). Quadratic Voting The idea behind quadratic voting(QV) are as simple as elegant. Conceptually, QV looks to quantify the intensity or preference of each vote instead of just focusing on the qualitative aspect of it(in favor or against). In the QV scenarios, each voter is issued a group of “voice credits” that they can use to influence the outcome of a voting decision. When confronted with a voting decision, each person can buy votes for or against a proposal by paying into a fund the square of the number of votes that he or she buys. This model assigns a non-linear correlation between the cost of voting and the outcome of a decision. For instance, let’s take a QV scenario in which the voters are issued a 10 voting credits each. The cost of the first vote will be 1 credit, two votes will cost 4, three votes will cost 9 credits and the cost will continue to increase quadratically correlated to the number of votes. If a voter is interested on buying more than 3 votes, then they need to purchase additional credits. The voting is “quadratic” because the total amount you pay for votes goes up proportionately to . n n² The beauty of quadratic voting is that the cost of buying votes increases very rapidly which prevents all sorts of malicious behaviors. Additionally, quadratic voting operates on environments in which the identities of voters is well-established which imposes all sorts of social reputation constraints. Quadratic Voting and Security Tokens Quadratic voting(QV) provides many interesting ideas that are relevant to security token protocols. At a basic level, we can envision a model in which security token holders are issued an additional utility token that can be used for voting purposes. Issuers will submit voting proposals to the network and token holders with voting rights can use their utility tokens to express their intent. To buy a specific number of votes, the security token holder will have to spend the square of that number in utility tokens. There are many different models that can be used to implement QV in security token architectures. The dual security/token structure is one that I like as it maintain the governance aspect of a security token network isolated from the security tokens themselves. Avoiding Collusion in Quadratic Voting Quadratic voting(QV) certainly prevents some of the traditional attacks on utility token models such as double voting or the same person using multiple anonymous addresses. However, QV is still susceptible to other forms of attacks such as collusion in which multiple voters conspire to achieve a specific outcome. For instance, holders of a real estate security token can collude to receive a bigger dividend payment any given quarter. There are two ideas I think can be effective to deal with collusion in QV scenarios. Borrowing some ideas from consensus protocols such as DFINITY, we can implement a model in which the network nominates a random number of voters for each voting proposal. In that scenario, the colluding parties can’t be sure if they will be allowed to vote on a specific decision. An even simpler solution to the topic of collusion in QV was proposed by Glen Weyl in a talk a couple of years ago during a . Weyl believes that there are two factors that will prevent collusion in a QV scenario: talk at the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago a) The quadratic nature of the voting will make any collusive behavior immediately obvious. b) Its likely that the number of voters colluding will be significantly smaller than the total number of the population. With those two factors in mind, Weyl believes that voters can spot a collusive behavior and simply vote for the opposite outcome. This approach banks of behavioral economics instead of voting algorithms. Certainly clever. QV is one of the simplest and most interesting algorithms I’ve seen to enable complex voting rules in blockchain scenarios. While QV might have some applications in utility tokens, I believe it has an enourmous potential in the security token space. Hopefully we will see some of the QV ideas incorporated into the next generation of security token platforms.

Liberal Radicalism and Security Tokens: Quadratic Voting as a Governance Protocol

Let's learn about via these 77 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Decentralized Web /Learn Repo 1. dWeb Goes Mainstream: 7 Websites that are Better on the Blockchain You can now update your settings in Chrome or Firefox to connect to blockchain domains. Check out these seven examples to use for your decentralized websites. 2. Essential Guide to Building a Decentralized eCommerce Platform with React and Solidity (Part 1) The demand for Web3.0 solutions is at an all-time high, but there isn't enough material available to usher in the army of developers required to fill the job op 3. The Illusion of Decentralization Back in the 1990’s, then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan used the phrase “irrational exuberance” to describe the rapid and relentless rise of stock markets amidst a preponderance of data that should have tempered market mania. Setting aside Greenspan’s role in stimulating such “irrational exuberance” via interest rate driven monetary policy, it seems as though his phrase is ripe for recycling when looking at the current fever for “decentralization”; particularly, decentralization as it would apply to blockchain, Web 3.0, and cryptocurrencies. Can blockchain as a foundation of Web 3.0 really be decentralized? 4. A Man Who Fell To Earth: Decentralized Software is Here to Stay The Man Who Fell To Earth : The future of human curiosity is decentralized and open source. 5. Browsers Are the Gatekeepers of The Decentralized Web The internet that most of the world sees is essentially identical. It’s called DNS, and most people understand this system to be the "legitimate" internet. This system is run by ICANN, a non-profit charged with determining who has the right to launch a domain extension (like a .com). 6. An Introduction to Skynet's Homescreen for Managing DeFi and DWeb Apps Interview David Vorick CEO of Skynet Labs about trends, pitfalls, why it’s important to own the data and how Homescreen's going to change the way we use the Web 7. Decentralized Web (DeWeb Tokens) 101 – The next big thing? Over the last years, but especially the last months, DeFi (Decentralized Finance) emerged to a popular and highly hyped niche within the crypto space. 8. 4 Entrepreneurs are Betting Big on Polkadot: Meet Their Projects Touted by some as the “Ethereum Killer”, Polkadot has over 250 projects building on it’s ever-growing ecosystem 9. The Main Challenges of Decentralization Decentralization stands in opposition to centralization and is currently rapidly breaking into the world order of the modern world. 10. The Decentralization Era [Part 1]: The History of Decentralization Why decentralization will allow a more fair and decent allocation of wealth, information, and opportunities. 11. 4 Reasons Why Artists Should Create Art NFTs Many artists hesitate to create NFTs, here's why they should. 12. Decentralized Digital Identity: Is it the Future of the Web? Why is Decentralized Digital Identity the future of the web? Blockchain-based identity 13. 3.6 Million Websites Went Offline Due To a Fire: Decentralization Prevents That Recently, the cloud computing company and hosting provider OVH has had  a fire that caused nearly 3.6 million websites to go offline. Some of the websites effected was a government site for the French government, and even a cryptocurrency exchange. According to Reuters, many of those sites were told to, "activate their disaster recovery plans following the blaze." 14. Decentralized Media in the Web3 Era You will discover how Web 3 can improve the future for media users and media buyers within 3 minutes. 15. Democratic Internet: Decentralized Web Gives More Control to Users Picture this:  The internet is no longer neutral. It has been taken over by large corporations who can now control what we see and what we don't on social media 16. Explaining Decentralized Storage to Your Grandma Have you ever been visiting your grandparents and tried to explain tech concepts, like decentralized storage? 17. Lonero Needs the Hackernoon Community's Help Hello World! It is about time, time that we asked you guys for help! I'm not talking about e-begging. What I'm talking about is that we want to stage a new site on StackOverFlow, but nobody knows about our proposal yet! 18. IPFS – The New Internet's Protocol IPFS can be seen as a new decentralized Internet infrastructure on which various applications can be built in a secure & resilient way. 19. A Promising Future with More Opportunities: Decentralized Internet Interview with Kushagra This interview is part of the #Decentralized-Internet writing contest! 20. Clarion: A Project for Freedom of Expression Let's dig in this new decentralized project about social media. 21. Inery Aims to Eliminate Entry Barriers to Web3, Blockchain Web3 Infrastructure is seriously lacking in one department - data systems. Inery addresses the issues of centralized data management 22. 'Decentralization Fosters Group Cohesion': Interview with Devendra Singh Khati Decentralized internet interview with Devendra Singh Khati. 23. Outside The Bitcoin Echo Chamber: Here's Why I'm Not Stacking Sats I spent a year and $10,000 on Bitcoin so you don't have to before I stopped.
Here’s what I learned about buying crypto and Bitcoin living up to the hype. 24. SHACAL-2: A Poem Like density launch, bandwidth's ascent steps past the satellite's single geostationary hall, the stage's third and one of disintegrated constellations... 25. #Decentralized-Internet Writing Competition 2021: November Results Announced! Hey Hackers! This is the second last announcement of the HackerNoon Decentralized Internet Contest, 2021. 26. #Decentralized-Internet Writing Contest: May/June Results Announced Hackers rejoice! Here we are again with the #Decentralized-Internet writing contest winners for the month of May and June! 27. Importance of a Gratitude Journal Gratitude works its magic by serving as an antidote to negative emotions. It’s like white blood cells for the soul, protecting us from cynicism, entitlement, anger, and resignation. — Arianna Huffington, Thrive. 28. Decentralized Web Writing Competition 2022: January Results Announced! Welcome to another announcement of the HackerNoon Decentralized Web Writing Contest! 29. Major Updates and Going over Lonero's Goals for 2021 A summary of some of Lonero's biggest updates during 2020 and plans for 2021 regarding progress. 30. What is the Difference Between Web2 vs Web3 In this article, we will discuss the major differences in Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. 31. Here’s Everything That Web2 Developers Need to Know About Web3 Web3, by definition, is a decentralized online ecosystem built on the blockchain intended to bring about a new generation of networked societies and commerce. 32. What Does a Decentralized VPN Look Like? As far as the Internet is concerned one of the most significant hot-button issues has got to be the issue of privacy and restrictions. Currently, everyone seems to have an opinion over the prospect of providing restrictions and keeping other people from having access to some portions of the Internet-technology which, ideally, should have been for us all. 33. How Blockchain Technology Can Improve DevOps Practices in Web3 Current DevOps tools and practices can help develop applications on top of blockchains, and a more mature blockchain adoption can improve the DevOps practices. 34. Deeper Network's Connect And IDO Launch: the Latest News Deeper Network, which is building the decentralized internet infrastructure for the Web 3.0, has broken Indiegogo records by raising over $1 million to become the most successful blockchain project in the history of the crowdfunding platform. 35. What Good is a Metaverse in Which You Do Not Truly Own Your Assets? If you can tokenize a deed of ownership, why not tokenize documentation like driver licenses, passports, insurance policies, memberships, etc? 36. DeFi Isn’t the Only Place Where Innovations Are Happening DeFi has been the leading narrative in the crypto space in 2020 with its pulsating innovation and stellar growth. Not only has the entire concept of financial services been turned on its head but we've also witnessed some of the speediest development in tech of all time. In the savage unforgiving decentralized landscape, competition is fierce and protocols are required to iterate almost daily to survive. 37. Eliminating Polarization in Web3 A decentralized Sybil-resistant social media network could soothe the polarization issue and clarify how the community truly thinks and feels 38. Is Building a Real-Time Blockchain Infrastructure Possible? Blockchain has gained popularity to remain on the tongue-tips of the majority. However, will this innovation change the manner in which we execute later on? 39. Why The Metaverse Is Already Broken (And How To Fix It — Chapter Two) Let's dive straight into Chapter Two of why the metaverse is broken and let's find out if we can fix it! 40. DeData Studios: Helping Users Take Back Control of Their Data Gone are the days when big tech companies like Meta decide when and how to monetize your personal information. Or are they? 41. The Personal Platform: The Next Big Thing? Momentous technologies often look useless. Especially information-related technologies. Why did we need the printing press, when most people were illiterate? Plus, the priest could already read aloud from a hand-copied Bible. Why did we need the personal computer, when people already had filing cabinets, type-writers, and TVs? Computers were for wealthy corporations. 42. An Introduction to Web5: A New Decentralized Web Venture Web3 Vs Web5 | Web3 To Web5 Evolution: Web5 Development the New Decentralized Web Venture. Web5 or Web3 which is better? 43. Why the Decentralisation of Data Is Crucial in Today's World Decentralizing data management is the process of collecting, storing, organizing, retrieving, and processing data. 44. What Does 2020 Hold for Decentralized Social Networks? The race for the next decentralized social network has officially begun, following this tweet from Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey. 45. AllianceBlock is Launching On-Chain  Trustless Identity Verification Alliance Block's Trustless Identity Verification (TIDV) addresses the issue of trustless distribution of authenticated data. 46. List of Awesome Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Projects I probably don’t need to introduce you to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) or Open Finance. DeFi is here to change traditional finance, creating an open ecosystem of financial products. It’s here to stay. 47. TheOoL DAO: Web3 Darknet The Oracle of Liberty DAO or TheOoL.net is a super secure, censorship resistant and distributed information ecosystem. 48. The Digital Identity Phantom Menace Is decentralization of your digital identity possible, or is it yet another delusion being promoted by Web 3.0 cheerleaders? 49. #Decentralized-Intenet Writing Contest: December Results Announced With the December announcement, HackerNoon & Everscale bring you a surprise gift. We are extending the decentralized internet writing contest for 3  months. 50. Where You Can Go To Create Value And Earn Money With The Blockchain There are websites you can use to build your reputation and stack cryptocurrency by working on Blockchain projects both as a bounty hunter or contributor. 51. How To Decentralize Virtual Communities? The widespread use of social media has changed the way we communicate, however, not everyone thinks these changes are positive. For example, the lack of strict moderation of social media content has contributed to the spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 outbreak.Even before COVID-19, many users were unsatisfied of how social media platforms were addressing disinformation, censorship, privacy, political neutrality, user control, and malicious activity. Decentralized social networks and communities are more flexible than centralized ones, but they provide more opportunities for the disadvantages that are suppressed in centralized communities. This is the small paradox of decentralized communities. 52. "Technology is much more advanced than that of 10-year-old blockchains," says Mr. Grygoriy Sytenko Grygoriy Sytenko, the CEO of crypto wallet OWNR Wallet, gives an insider’s view on what’s going on in the niche of Decentralized Finance. 53. Everything You Don’t Know About the Evolution of Web: Web1.0 to Web3.0 From web 1.0 through 2.0, things are about to turn around as a transition into the third phase of the web is unfolding. 54. GraphQL, the Universal Query Protocol, and the Free TON Blockchain What is the universal query protocol GraphQL  and its application in modern blockchain platforms on the example of Free TON 55. "DApps!" A New Buzzword, or Here to Stay for Good? For the last few months, there’s been a new hot topic in crypto circles: DApps!  Even as someone with a beginner’s understanding of blockchains, cryptocurrencies and its related environments, I hadn’t heard of the term ‘DApp’ until quite recently. But ever since, I’ve been deeply intrigued by them and their potential to change the way we perceive and interact with apps. 56. Social Media Networks are Coming to the Blockchain Learn what decentralized social media networks mean, how they work, and what benefits they offer to users. 57. Our Social Media is Broken & No One Knows How to Fix It While I sit down to write, like any procrastinating writer of our times, I look for excuses that will keep me from the task at hand. It could be the windows and the weather (perhaps I need a pullover) or the more modern version of it – social media. 58. A Simple Guide to Understanding DAOs And Why They are a Force in 2022 To understand what a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) means is to dissect the three keywords: decentralization, autonomy, and organization. 59. The Rising Tempo: An Intro to Music NFTs Find out about the rise of music NFTs, why musicians are minting Music NFTs, and how the music industry could be transformed with platforms like HEN Radio. 60. Evolving Web2 to Web3: 3 New Approaches from 3 New Companies It’s time for Web2 to evolve to its next stage: Web3. 61. When you’re blocked online, can you just DIY your own internet? The internet is public infrastructure that has been highjacked by corporations and governments. Let's change that. 62. Decentralized Web vs DFINITY: Comparing 2 Decentralization Flavors Decentralized web project vs. DFINITY project - 2 decentralization implementations; a 'little' secret discovered; comparing - identity, network, communication. 63. Aleph.im: Recap of 2020 2020 was quite the year and this is especially true for aleph.im and the wider crypto space that saw significant growth and interest... 64. A Learner's Introduction to The Decentralized Internet The decentralized internet is a topic of discussion for every internet user. Find out why Web 3.0 is most talked about and why it is significant in tech. 65. Decentralized domains on the EOS blockchain: An Overview How to run a website on EOS blockchain 66. How To Fix Everything That's Wrong With the Internet What do Google, Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Uber and a phone book have in common? They are indexes — searchable lists of stuff. Google is a list of keywords mapped to the websites they appear in. Facebook is a list of profiles, posts, private messages, events and other types of information. Youtube has users, videos and comments. Amazon: merchants and items. Uber: drivers, customers and ride requests. 67. Decentralized Metaverse Versus All-in-one Web3 Hub Comparing the significance of decentralized metaverses and web 3 hubs in the evolution of decentralized technology. 68. The Beautiful Double Helix of High Responsiveness and Decentralized Storage in the Web3.0 Era However, as Web3 technology evolves and matures, it will support deeper verticals such as manufacturing, engineering and smart cities. 69. Getting Started with Infura's Ethereum API [A Step by Step Guide] Infura provides developers and enterprises with simple, reliable access to Web3 tools and infrastructure. Our Ethereum and IPFS API suite serves and supports thousands of decentralized applications every day. 70. Three Constraints of the Metaverse Is the Metaverse going to end up little more than the video chat of the 21st Century, or does this idea, like Meta's most recent avatars, have legs? 71. Kickoff Your Application With js-libp2p I want to welcome you to libp2p! This guide will walk you through setting up a fully functional libp2p node, so that you can take control of the spacecraft 🚀 from that point on and build your application. 72. How to Set Up Aleph.im Virtual Machines Nearing the end of 2021, most blockchain dApps still have large parts of their stack that are centralized. With Aleph VMs, you can decentralize the rest. 73. Ankr's Kev Silk Discusses Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of Decentralization The decentralized web brings with it some interesting challenges and opportunities. 74. What is Web 3.0 and Why Do We Need It? (Podcast Transcript) What is Web 3.0 and why should you care? 🤨 Amy Tom talks to Jaro Šatkevic, Head of Product at Mysterium Network, about the evolution of the web and Web 3.0. 75. Fake News Vs. Censorship in the Battle for the Internet In 2020, world events like the US general election and COVID-19 pandemic have shown us how both censorship and misinformation can become a political weapon. With lessons learned, how do we balance freedom of speech in 2021? Decentralizing online governance may be the answer. 76. Realigning Online Incentives Written with help from Nir Kabessa and Professor Dan Rubenstein. 77. Build Your First Dapp on Tezos Everything you need to know to create a simple Dapp on Tezos Thank you for checking out the 77 most read stories about Decentralized Web on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

77 Stories To Learn About Decentralized Web

Disclosure: This article is a new article, largely based on the Provide Technologies Blog and whitepaper Secure Communications Using Blockchain that I co-wrote and published on September 11, 2019. Today’s internet operates on underlying protocols and services invented in the 1960s during the first stage of the public internet. Based on a standard model for networking that serves only to establish connectivity, it is highly susceptible to centralized control, surveillance, and manipulation—and fails to protect user privacy or data security. These weaknesses created the ‘hackerpocolypse’ that is currently underway. Permeable and largely in plain text, the internet has become a haven for bad actors. Centralized in many areas, it also is considered fragile. According to , this cybercrime haven will cost businesses in excess of $6 trillion annually by 2021—twice the cost since 2015. Cybersecurity Ventures The Cost of Data Breaches Breaches are becoming more frequent and expensive. A now, and more than 6 million records are breached every day. cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds With 70% of data being created by individuals, and 80% of data managed by companies, the frustration over how our data is managed is becoming untenable. Governments are now interceding, creating legislation to push companies to protect customer data better. Last year, the EU implemented . Next January, the will go into effect. These regulations compel businesses to treat consumers as sovereigns of their own data. They need the right to be forgotten. They need to own their data destiny. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) The Cost of Securing Data Yet, we continue to build systems that perpetuate information architectures and transport mechanisms that centralize data and their supporting networks. This is an increasingly expensive proposition. According to , businesses spend up to 14% of their IT budget annually—if there are no breaches— . Deloitte securing data that is still unsecure Since 2013, just were “secure breaches” where encryption was used and the stolen data was rendered useless. 4% of breaches Yet, organizations continue to pour money to secure their data the hard way. Large financial companies like JP Morgan Chase spend over $600M a year. For US taxpayers, combating cybercrime will cost the Department of Defense $9,642M—up 10% from 2018. These costs do not include the actual costs of breaches. In 2019, the average cost to US businesses affected by a data breach rose to $8.19M, up from $7.91M in 2017. The was $3.92M. For financial services businesses, the is particularly steep—averaging of $18.3M. global average cost per data breach costs of cybercrime , with a full third of enterprises over 1000 employees spending over $1M US per year to comply. Compliance costs are also skyrocketing Modernizing Secure Communications with Blockchain This is why it is time to modernize internet communications and application architecture to be secure and sovereign by default—to comply with standards, and to meet the true purpose of customer demands. It will require work, but it will stop us from the evil game of whack-a-mole with cybercrime, and allow us to return focus to normal operations. The good news is, the advancements of the past decade in blockchain and decentralization paved the way forward where a new, publicly accessible, fair platform to modernize secure communications is now possible. The whitepaper Secure Communications using Blockchain discusses these weaknesses and solutions in greater detail. The Path to Fixing the Internet To embrace this new, publicly secure internet will not be free. However, thanks to the principles and technologies developed under the blockchain and decentralization banners, components are built, and protocols and services are proven. To summarize the points in the whitepaper , the changes needed span the 4 areas of the Internet Protocol Suite: Packetization, Addressing, Transmission, and Routing. Secure Communications using Blockchain Currently centrally managed under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization, a centralized DNS registry poses a single point of failure for the internet. There are just 13 authoritative name servers (root zones) managing the public internet, and one centralized registry. If any one fails—and they have—URLs could be unresolvable globally. Plus, centralization creates an expensive gatekeeper for registering and maintaining active URLs. Problem 1—Packetization: Domain Name System (DNS) is centralized. Projects like the  ​ are establishing a decentralized network of DNS servers that utilize cryptoeconomic incentives to coordinate consensus on the association between names and certificates. Handshake will not to replace all of DNS, but will replace the rootzone file and the root servers with more open and democratized (read: cheaper!) alternatives. This will make DNS uncensorable, permissionless, and free of centralized gatekeepers such as ICANN. Solution 1: Decentralized, open alternatives to DNS. Handshake Protocol All communications through the internet use IP addresses. Ranges are fully owned by ISPs, and are easily traced through a single entity responsible for registering IP ownership. Since the majority of communications are direct, they are easily traceable to the neighborhood level, and often with a phone number and a name. Proxies, onion routing, or VPNs can be used to mask ownership, but even those can still be porous. Problem 2—Addressing: IP addresses are too easily traceable. Decentralize addressing federates messages across a multitude of nodes and can be designed to obscure specific addressing by using the blockchain as a message bus. Encrypted messages are published broadly on a busy blockchain network and only users with a corresponding key can decrypt and read them. With substantial volume, tracing message patterns becomes improbable rendering surveillance and manipulation improbable. Redundancy of messages across nodes also serves to improve deliverability and fault tolerance. Solution 2:  Protect IP addresses using public blockchain as a message bus. Most message communications today are hosted. Whether hosted by your company or in the cloud, hosted email and chat makes it easy for the user. With little to set up, low prices, and someone else managing the headache, hosted services are attractive. However, the nature of creating a centralized repository for information also positions an administrator to be able to access and possibly divulge information, posing serious concerns for privacy and civil liberties. As always, centralization also creates a single point of failure. Problem 3—Transmission: Hosted messaging lacks privacy and creates a point of failure. Well-architected blockchain-based messaging can dramatically enhance user privacy. With the infrastructure to send and store encrypted messages distributed across a blockchain and distributed file systems, no single party would have the ability to read each user's messages. Additionally, traditional messaging systems are “receiver-based,” in that the recipient gets to decide how long messages live and how they are shared. A blockchain based system can change this to be “sender-based” where the sender decides how long a message can persist or be shared during addressing, making messages truly private and secure. Solution 3: Self-sovereign message transmission with blockchain. All IP traffic routing goes through an ISP. Therefore, it can be interrupted or delayed through hijacking or constraining just a few IP prefixes, creating a point of failure for connectivity. This is how national firewalls are created. Additionally, routing protocols socialize information in plain text, creating ample opportunity for interception, and the possibility for cache poisoning, including at the DNS level. Problem 4—Routing: ISPs are centralized choke points. Routing needs to adopt modern security protocols where each connection point securely peers with every other point, regardless of ISP host, using decentralized authentication. This untethered-to-ISPs architecture could also support a public voting mechanism that establishes global consensus for socializing and optimizing routes. However, one of the biggest benefits for communications across a decentralized network remains that routing becomes compartmentalized and makes end-to-end surveillance improbable. Solution 4: Secure routing through decentralized blockchain. The Path Forward for Secure Communications Secure messaging communications using blockchain presents a tremendous opportunity to create a better, safer internet. These tenets create an open, trustless environment that will allow users to communicate freely and safely by default. Importantly, it also builds in standards for data privacy and security that are essential for operating in today’s digital age. While these applications, protocols and services need to be assembled—and there is still work to be done, we are now officially in the age where we can construct and secure applications that will eliminate many of the costs, central points of failure, and opportunities for surveillance and manipulation. If you’d like to understand how you can modernize your communications infrastructure with blockchain, check out the whitepaper Secure Communications using Blockchain or contact Provide Technologies at hello@provide.services .

How Blockchain Will Fix Internet Communications

Let’s face it. The good old days of hacking are over. You may remember that period when cybercrime was the work of underfunded individuals operating on their own. Traditional cyber security measures were usually more than enough to block attacks and protect networks and users. What’s more, criminals’ core motivation, money, made their behaviors easy to predict. Thinking about it retrospectively, it wasn’t that bad, right? Today’s landscape is less straightforward. Perpetrators are organized and have access to funding and manpower to make enterprises and economies tremble. Financial incentives behind data breaches meet political ambitions. And new categories of devices mean new entry points for attacks. With thousands of threat events recorded every second and no sign of ceasefire, 2019 might be the best year to take a fresh look at cybersecurity. So what’s hot and an effective use of one’s security budget? And what’s odd and may not be a good fit for you? This post looks at some innovative cybersecurity practices, considering both the pros and cons of each of them. Threat Hunting Why wait for threats to dismantle your IT infrastructure when you can chase them instead and avoid damages? That’s the principle behind threat hunting, the practice of isolating attacks that common security protections are not capable of detecting by themselves. What’s strong about this practice, besides its rhetoric, is that it can be a significant cost-avoider. Cybercrime has an , and the number of recorded security breaches is going up double-digit year after year. So clearly, more work is necessary besides installing firewalls and antiviruses. average annual cost of $11.7M Still, it’s advisable to approach this technique with a healthy dose of skepticism, such that it doesn’t become a cover-up. For instance, why is it that so many hacks and scams slip through the cracks? What can be done to reinforce organizational security processes and reduce the need for hunting overall? Also, how are threat hunting operations going to be run? You may hire internal specialists who can then spend time and tailor efforts to your particular IT network and assets. Or you may rely on external experts working with several clients at once and, therefore, with a broader perspective on emerging threats and the capacity to think outside the box. Either way, for proper hunting to take place, you will need investigative instruments to carry threat intelligence and detect system vulnerabilities. These tools shall allow you to gather reliable data about the security configurations of your servers, domains and IP addresses, SSL certificates, and more. They should as well enable you to check whether any of your websites may contain malicious content — in the form of dangerous file extensions, bugged contact forms, or something else. AI-Powered Cybersecurity Putting an end to repetitive and boring work. Automating time-consuming tasks. Processing information at speed inconceivable for human beings. These are some of artificial intelligence’s promises you have surely heard about, and they sound encouraging in a cybersecurity context where talent shortage and limited security budgets are recurring constraints. Without much or any supervision, trained machines could automatically spot signs of attacks such as abnormal network activity and . Or they could consistently review all files that have been uploaded or modified in search of malevolent code or scripts designed to, for example, steal confidential information or compromise databases. domain spoofing While that sounds like a big boost in efficiency compared to carrying these security activities manually, artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword. For instance, cybercriminals could launch bogus attacks at scale with the purpose of mistraining machines before radically changing their approach and go undetected. Furthermore, the chances are that hackers will be more agile and faster to adopt the latest AI-based processes to execute their fraudulent pursuits than most organizations — making artificial intelligence a threat as much as it is an asset to better cybersecurity. Domain Name Monitoring Criminals need an online presence to proceed with most scams, and that typically involves registering one or several domain names to host a website or sending emails. The good news is that registrars, as required by ICANN, must collect specific information to identify registrants including their contact details and physical location before allocating web addresses. That data, known as WHOIS records, is then made public and become useful in a variety of ways. For example, email users who received a message from an unknown sender can review details regarding the corresponding domain. Was registration done recently? If so, it might be a sign of fraud as scammers don’t wait long to move forward with phishing and spoofing attempts. Is information diverging between records and other touchpoints? WHOIS data is verifiable and immutable, whereas domain owners can claim anything on their websites or elsewhere and change it later on. But there are several issues with domain information. A big one is the scattered nature of WHOIS data since there is one separate record for each address — making it impractical for organizations whose employees’ interact with hundreds of websites and recipients on a daily basis. Another challenge is that scammers may not provide accurate information about themselves during the registration process. These problems are mitigated, however, once information is integrated into the form of databases. In that case, it’s possible to run an analysis for thousands or more domains simultaneously. Patterns and connections between malicious domains also emerge when data is centralized, even if the contact details provided for individual records are fake. — Hacking and scamming threats have not become easier to handle over the years, and innovative cybersecurity practices continue to emerge with the hope to tackle them. But no innovation is a silver bullet, and with each new approach comes both advantages and downsides to consider on the way toward better cybersecurity.

The Hot and the Odd: A Critical View on Innovative Cybersecurity Practices for 2019

271 Stories To Learn About Ethereum

Surprising but true. When the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the release of new gTLDs, cyber attackers seemed to have taken the opportunity to ride along and use these to more effectively evade detection. It didn’t take long before some of the new gTLDs, unfortunately, obtained a shady reputation. While the new gTLDs comprise a relatively small portion of the total gTLD space, they accounted for almost half of all domains that have ties to security incidents. This is one of the highlights of the . June 2019 Domain Abuse Activity Report An Alarming Trend In June 2019, of the 967,155 domains identified with ties to security incidents, 487,677 used older or legacy gTLDs. The remaining 479,478 sported the less commonly used or newly created gTLDs. In the May 2019 report, of 1,479,535 total domains tagged as security threats, 809,354 used legacy gTLDs while 670,181 used new gTLDs. As the security threats stemming from domains with legacy gTLDs went down by 4.28%, those from domains with new gTLDs rose by the same amount. This is an indication of the rise in new gTLD use for malicious activities. Among the 479,478 domains tied to reported security incidents, 362 of the newly created gTLDs were implicated. Identify Threat Sources with Domain Monitoring Tools The statistics mentioned above can be troubling to any business, particularly those handling not just corporate but also customer data. Identifying malicious domains to counter risks is critical before threats can cause irreparable damage. Organizations need a comprehensive source of accurate domain intelligence to stop threats. can help them identify who is behind a domain and figure out what possible motivations they have for trying to gain access to a network. Enterprise-grade WHOIS data feeds It’s a known fact that phishers and all kinds of cyber attackers install a failsafe in case their primary entry point into a target network is detected and consequently blocked. Potential victims, therefore, need to make sure that they identify all related threat sources. They need access to that would help them determine connections between potential attack vectors—a common registrant, company, email address. Only in this manner will they be truly able to avoid compromise. domain monitoring and search tools As evidenced by emerging trends, an expansive threat intelligence source can aid organizations in enhancing their security against threats enabled by the availability of new gTLDs. Though blocking all domains from accessing your network is a bad idea (you could be penalizing nonmalicious users as well), you can still beef up your company’s security posture by enhancing your new gTLD monitoring capability. Care should still be taken to verify every single domain’s intent. Conducting extensive research on a site is necessary but could be a tedious process. Opting for domain monitoring tools that provide the right amount of information on a timely basis without the hassle of purchasing new hardware to run them may be key. In that regard, integrating readily available that can serve as rich data sources into existing security solutions for verification purposes can lessen the amount of time, and effort security teams will spend on making manual comparisons. This also helps avoid human errors that stem from making hasty assumptions on the nature of a domain. enterprise APIs Safe Web navigation doesn’t translate to avoiding all domains that use the new gTLDs. What it entails is making sure that all the sites and pages employees access are not malicious. Jumping to conclusions can have dire consequences as well, such as losing a potential customer who just happened to use a new gTLD whose reputation was unfortunately affected by the work of cyber attackers.

Domain Monitoring: Combatting Threats Brought by New gTLDs

Businesses can’t afford to lose millions of dollars because of malicious domain names used in all types of domain-related attacks including domain name squatting, business email compromise (BEC) frauds or, more generally, spoofing and phishing scams. That said, having proper domain & threat intelligence sources like WHOIS is key to protecting one’s organization from such cyber risks. In fact, WHOIS data can proactively support the early identification and follow-up investigation of suspicious domain registrations and their owners. Why is that? is an inherent part of the domain name system, served from distributed databases of registries and registrars via the incumbent WHOIS protocol and the new RDAP. Today, WHOIS records are still essential pieces of information linking a domain to its owner. WHOIS data However, the direct use of the WHOIS protocol and its database has many obstacles (i.e., amount and frequency limitations, absence of historic records, etc.). It also only supports limited types of queries and does not allow, for example, reverse WHOIS searches. For these reasons, various WHOIS data providers with more practical and thorough offerings have emerged; and here is a list of the best WHOIS domain name search and lookup tools that can help protect users and organizations as a whole. Tool #1: & WHOIS Search WHOIS Lookup WHOIS and WHOIS are straightforward research tools from WhoisXML API, the former being part of . Search Lookup Domain Research Suite Both enable users to quickly retrieve key data points for a particular domain, such as its age, creation and expiration dates, registrar, owner, administrative and other contacts, and more. WHOIS Search and WHOIS Lookup are one of the best WHOIS search tools in the market today, as the company’s long-standing relationship with registrars has allowed it to yield mostly complete WHOIS records for its users. Tool #2: Reverse WHOIS Search Reverse WHOIS Search (https://drs.whoisxmlapi.com/reverse-whois-search) is another handy tool from WhoisXML API’s Domain Research Suite. It allows users to discover all domains associated with a particular WHOIS record. For example, you can use a phone number, an email address, or a company name as a query term to retrieve a list of connected domains and WHOIS records. The volume of results that this tool can churn out is outstanding, making it easy to do background checks on domain owners and websites. The database has over 6.7 billion historical WHOIS records collected over the past ten years. Tool #3: Bulk WHOIS Lookup As far as features go, does the job of looking at a large number of domains. It is an enterprise-grade tool that allows users to search for the WHOIS records of up to 500,000 domains or IP addresses at any given time. Bulk WHOIS Lookup It accomplishes this via a single RESTful API query over HTTP or HTTPS. The output comes in a well-parsed format of one’s choice (JSON or XML). Users get 500 free WHOIS checks upon registration, which is ideal for small business operations. Tool #4: Whois.net Owned by NTT America, Whois[.]net has been around since 1999. To use the tool, users have to enter a domain to retrieve its WHOIS record. The research tool also claims to let users search domains by IP address. Results are returned in a matter of seconds and provide users immediate information on whether domains are available for registration or are already in use, followed by their corresponding WHOIS records. Tool #5: Whois Lookup DomainTools is a known provider of lookup and data loss prevention (DLP) solutions for personal and enterprise use. Its is pretty decent as well and its outputs reveal related IP addresses and the number of sites hosted on a particular server. Whois lookup tool Tool #6: Whois Domain Lookup is a service offered by domain registrar WHOIS. It provides relevant information on a domain, including its registration status, expiration date, and name servers, just like the other tools on this list. It is predominantly featured on WHOIS’s homepage so that domain buyers can use it. Whois Domain Lookup Tool #7: ICANN Lookup Last but not least is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number . It provides users a simplified overview of a domain’s WHOIS record. (ICANN)’s Whois Lookup tool In its query results, ICANN shows users the queried domain’s internationalized domain name version, name servers, and authoritative name servers. It also shows whether a domain has Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) enabled or not. --- The domain threat landscape has evolved at an unprecedented pace and businesses need to keep up. Fortunately, new advances in cybersecurity have made domain intelligence more accessible to organizations of any size. The abovementioned products are some of the best WHOIS domain name search and lookup tools that can aid IT professionals in protecting their companies from cyber risks.

7 Best WHOIS Domain Name Search and Lookup Tools to Support Security Research and Investigations

Las 7 mejores herramientas de búsqueda y búsqueda de nombres de dominio de WHOIS para respaldar investigaciones e investigaciones de seguridad

We are at a historic turning point. We are witnessing technology disrupt the concepts of money and value. In particular, the way in which money and value are transmitted from one point to another. While what we expect is new and different, we can get a grasp of it by considering another technological evolution that happened not so long ago — the internet. The Internet began as many LANs that operated independently of one another. In the 1960s and 70s, computer manufacturers and service providers thought it was a good idea not to interoperate their systems with those of competitors. That served well in terms of locking in customers. However, it soon ceased to be a viable strategy. The lack of interoperability was a problem in particular because data flow was curtailed. There was a huge need and push from end users to link LANs. However, aside from the lack of desire by service providers to enable integration, another major obstacle existed: how to manage and secure the large centralized network that would emerge. The solution was to decentralize the internet, and to make this possible the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) — or TCP/IP — were created. TCP/IP is a suite or a family of data transfer protocols — agreed sets of rules — that guide the transfer and sharing of data files over peer-to-peer networks. They make the communication between two end nodes on a network possible without a central control point. Even where there is no direct link between a source node and a target node, communication can go through one or more intermediate nodes in what is known as multi-hopping. The protocols allowed the internet to grow into what it is today. With agreed standards by all stakeholders, anyone could design and produce software, hardware or a network, and be sure that it would work or integrate with the existing one in the ecosystem. Now, how does this relate to money and value? For efficient, effective, secure and cost less movement of value over the internet to happen, a similar suite of protocols is necessary. It is important that players in the payment and value transmission space have a common suite of protocols. So far, huge technological strides have been made towards that goal. And we may be close to seeing a level of achievement in money and value movement similar to what has happened with information. But significant work remains to be done. Centralized payment systems The digitization of money and value is not a new concept. It goes as far back as the 1960s when banks started experimenting with computers and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). As with the internet, it began on centralized trust-based models. It has, however, taken longer to transition to decentralized peer-to-peer models — or trustless models. Meanwhile, society has continued to embrace value and money in the digital form. released in October 2017 by BNP Paribas, a leading commercial bank, and Capgemini, a consultancy firm, indicated that the annual global increase of the number of transactions settled through digital payment methods was over 13%. Research Some countries such as China are experiencing an annual increase as high as 30%. And some, like Sweden, have already achieved as high as 80% settlement of transactions through digital payment methods. But if the true potential of digital money and value is to be realized, the current model of huge trusted intermediaries holding and maintaining transaction ledgers or databases has to change. That is because centralized digital money and value systems come with several critical weaknesses. These include: Insecurity The security of databases in servers is guaranteed only through access control. However, these databases are often hacked or breached and unauthorized access gained. Annually, commercial banks, financial institutions and individuals lose millions of dollars to hackers. Some of the latest recorded incidents include the 2016 Bangladesh Bank cyber heist, where close to US$100 million was syphoned from an account the Federal Reserve Bank of New York maintained for the Bangladesh Central bank. This was done through fraudulent messaging via , the network that banks use to pass transfer payment instructions. SWIFT While this kind of theft does not occur often, especially in the case of major financial institutions, the mere existence of this risk demands huge budgets for security. It is projected that the annual global budget for online security will cross US$170 billion in 2020. Data regarding the amount the banking sector spends on security is difficult to come by. However, Brian Moynihan, CEO at Bank of America Corp., disclosed that his bank — the second largest lending institution in the US — spent over US$400 million on cybersecurity that year. in a 2015 interview This cost can be found in the accounting books of all financial institutions — and it is always translated and passed on as fees to the customers. Expensive In addition to the security cost, trusted intermediaries have to take care of payroll, cost of hardware and software, electricity bills, auditing bills and other cost items. And since they are profit-making entities, they have to add a mark up to these costs. All of these are passed on to customers in the form of fees and commissions. For example, if you are a small online enterprise and you accept payment through PayPal, you will be charged a fixed rate of about US$0.30 for every transaction. In addition, you will pay 4.4% of the amount involved, depending on whether the transaction is cross-border. Then you will pay a virtual terminal fee of 3.1%, currency conversion fee, card usage fee — and the list goes on. This results in the services and products being very expensive. As a result, remains unbanked due to the fact that those who form this group are too poor to afford financial services. more than a third of the global adult population Lack of privacy In using most centralized payment systems, users agree to have data about them held not only by the intermediary that serves them, but also other entities. Even more alarming is the question of how this data is used beyond the customer’s control. The databases which store the personal data are honeypots for hackers. Access to this data can enable attackers to steal not only assets attached to the individuals the data belongs to, but also their identity. It’s also the case that data is not only stored by the primary service provider. Any other entity the primary service provider interacts with in the process of serving its clients often ends up acquiring sensitive user data and storing it on their own servers. This creates multiple leak points for user data. This data can also be used by trusted intermediaries themselves to deny users services. This comes in the form of censorship on various grounds, some objective and others subjective. It’s also important to note that as economies adopt digital payment methods and become cashless, users are losing the cash element; the ability to pass money from one hand to another without exposing the transaction details to entities other than the two parties involved. One outstanding characteristic of physical notes and coins is enabling users to spend their money without leaving a trail that leads to their doorstep. This element of money is still required, at least in some instances. Low speed While it takes seconds for a message to travel from one corner of the globe to another, it can take days for money, even in digital form, to travel the same distance. The lack of speed in the movement of money and value adds to the slow movement of international trade. For example, if you are in Europe and want to make an import from China, the communication to your supplier will be instant. However, they might not start the shipping process until they receive payment, which will take several days. This is despite the fact that, just like your communication with your supplier, the money will travel in digital form. However, the money will have to go through your local bank, to the central bank of your country, through a correspondent and liquidity provider bank in Europe, through a correspondent and liquidity provider bank in China, through the Bank of China and then it will show up in your supplier’s account at their local bank. The delay is often caused by poor interoperability between the different platforms the money has to pass through. In some cases, manual processing is required to complete the transaction. The peer-to-peer payment dream The dream of being able to send and receive money through the internet without intermediaries — or replicating cash online — has existed for decades. It has been a subject in scholarly literature going as far back as 1983 when David Chaum published his paper ‘ .’ Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments In 2009, a person or group of persons going by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto ushered in the era of peer-to-peer payment. Satoshi solved the double spend problem and launched Bitcoin, an electronic cash system that could function without the need for intermediaries. The protocol that powers Bitcoin, often referred to as , makes it possible for users on a network to maintain a transaction ledger through consensus. It is a trustless model because there is no overarching authority to maintain the transaction ledger. blockchain Because the network has no central control point, the payment method is highly censorship-resistant. In particular, blockchain comes with the capacity to solve some of the biggest challenges that digital payment systems have had over the years. It fixes security by storing data in the form of time-stamped files that would require an impossible amount of computer power to change. It also brings into the picture the use of high-level cryptography to secure transactions. Of course, the blockchain ecosystem has had its own share of hacks where, in some instances, tens of millions of dollars have been stolen. It is, however, important to point out that in most or all these cases, it was blockchain assets being stolen from centralized systems — i.e exchanges and trading platforms. The blockchain has also made it possible to send value from one corner of the globe to another within seconds. The older blockchains like Bitcoin take up to a few minutes to settle payments, but newer blockchains exhibit the capacity to complete transactions in a matter of seconds. Last but not least, some blockchains offer the capacity to transmit money that can be used as cash in an online environment. It is this that is making it possible to spend money online without leaving digital footprints that lead to your door. technology The blockchain is certainly a game changer — but a few things about it have to be fixed. When the technology first emerged, anyone who cared to study it and see it for what it was couldn’t help but be impressed. It seemed poised to change society the way the internet did. And indeed, in every industry you look at, there is a blockchain application being built to solve one problem or another. Fast forward to 2018 and few would disagree that blockchain can be the technology that disrupts and revolutionizes finance, manufacturing, the service industry and society in general. At least, it can if its most glaring weaknesses are fixed. The lack of interoperability The main problem blockchain technology faces at the moment is interoperability and the building of second layer networks. There are over 5,000 blockchains in existence today and they perform various functions. Each one of them is like a local area network (LAN) of the 1970s that does not communicate with others around it. They are closed off because there is no industry-wide standardization of protocols. If they could all interoperate, moving different crypto assets and converting from one to another could be fast, cheaper and more secure, especially as there would no longer be a need to rely on risky centralized exchanges. Even if the current financial system adopts blockchain, but each with its own private or public blockchain, not all of the challenges facing the current siloed systems will go away. In fact, the situation with cross-border and inter-bank transactions might remain the same as it may require time-consuming processes for money or value to move from one blockchain to another. The reasons for the lack of interoperability between blockchains are various but the ones that stand out are the lack of agreed standard protocols to make it possible, as well as the fact that different blockchains have different goals when it comes to how data is handled. They are also built using different languages, protocols and consensus mechanisms. The internet faced the same issues in its early days. This necessitated the creation of bodies tasked with forming, maintaining and updating the TCP/IP protocol standards. These include the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which formulates general policies on the management and development of standards, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which conducts necessary engineering research, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages IP addresses, domain names and port numbers. However, stakeholders in the blockchain space might not have to set up bodies to enforce the rules of engagement. The technology has already demonstrated that a decentralized governance structure is possible to achieve. Possible solutions: Distributed Channel Networks The crypto and wider financial technology (fintech) industry have begun to look at a future of interoperability among different payment platforms, both centralized and decentralized. A huge component of this new ecosystem is creating multi-hop channels for the flow of value and money. This is possible through peer-to-peer network mapping so that even when there is no direct link between two users or payment platforms, value or money can go through connecting intermediaries that are guided by robust protocols. These intermediaries will not have the authority to manage a centralized ledger as we have with centralized digital payment service providers. Their primary function will simply be to pass payment instruction data. And they might not even have the ability to interpret the contents of the data they pass to and from different users and payment platforms. It’s also important to note that a sending or receiving node could serve as an intermediary for transactions by others on the network. The components of this multi-hop system have begun to take shape. They include trustlines and state channels. Trustlines One way platform-agnostic payment channels can be achieved is through the implementation of the concept of trustlines, a means of connecting different digital payment platforms — both blockchain and server-based. The system functions by relying on a network of users on different blockchains and digital payment platforms who trust one another to issue and settle IOUs (I Owe YOU) between one another. That means one user can borrow from another, who trusts them, then issue a token acknowledging the debt. Participants can create a large network of users who trust one another in the form of chains. This means that two users who do not trust each other can transact through a common intermediary with whom they both have a trusting relationship. If, for example, John wants to send money to Aisha but they do not trust each other, he sends the money through Alice, who they both have a trustline with. Because of the need to protect user value, the architecture itself is vastly more technical than the example described above, and smart contracts play a significant role in its design. Several projects are building protocols to support trustline transactions across networks. They are blockchain-agnostic and put more emphasis on the user-to-user transaction, regardless of the payment platform they are favouring. One project that stands out in this regard is . It is building an ecosystem for trustlines with supporting features such as network mapping and user addressing support. GEO protocol Another is , which seeks to provide a platform through which users can move value between fiat and cryptocurrencies by using IOUs issued on blockchains between users trusting one another. Trustline Network State channels The concept of state channels entails having payment lines opened between counterparties that allow them to transact as many times as they want but settling only the first and last transaction on the blockchain. Counterparties using a state channel do not have to trust each other. That is because their interaction is guided and executed by a form of smart contract. Users can open multiple state channels with many others. This allows for infinite scaling of the blockchain. The primary implementation of state channels has been achieved through the , which Bitcoin and Litecoin have deployed. This solution seeks to decongest blockchains and as a result, reduce the cost of sending and receiving money. There is even more potential in state channels as a means to link and interoperate different blockchains. Lightning Network protocol Another project that is implementing trust-free, secure and private off-chain transactions through state channels is the . It seeks to extend the benefits of state channels to the deployment and running of a wide range of decentralized applications (dApps). Celer Network project The end product As cash dies off around the globe, it is becoming important to explore ways to afford users speed, security and privacy at the lowest possible cost with the digital payment methods that are taking over. Fortunately, the components for achieving ideal digital payment platforms are already available. In fact, they are being implemented and used independently of one another. One could view these platforms as competitors and hope that one or more of them will eventually win the battle and become the dominant service. But there is another option — having them communicate with one another and allow value and money to be agnostic of them. The latter option is the ideal scenario, as we know by looking at what happened with the internet. To create a peer-to-peer movement of value across different payment platforms, a protocol that enables integration, atomicity and scalability is required. It also has to allow the use of lightweight devices and provide a robust device addressing and identifying the system. The end result will be similar in structure to that used for sending and receiving email, where the email service that sender and receiver use is irrelevant. These interoperable protocols will provide components similar to TCP/IP, but for the purpose of sending money and value across centralized and decentralized payment platforms. Follow GEO Protocol at: [ | | | | | | ] Medium Twitter GitHub Gitter Telegram LinkedIn YouTube

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