Klir is introducing a powerful way to manage regulatory compliance data so that water utilities can better mitigate the true risks to the environment and our health

Klir

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Hey everyone! and just like you, I’ve been fascinated with the recent progress of artificial intelligence. Realizing that I needed to stay abreast with all the developments happening, I decided to embark on a personal journey of learning, thus was born! With this series, I will be learning about LLMs and share ideas, experiments, opinions, trends & learnings through my blog posts. You can follow along the journey on HackerNoon or my personal website . In today’s article, we’ll be looking at the case study of how Klarna leveraged Gen AI and what other companies can learn from it. , I’m Nataraj 100 days of AI here here How is Klarna using generative AI? There are lots of ways generative AI is being used by companies, and we have explored some of them . In case of Klarna, they launched an AI customer support assistant that is available 24*7 and supports 30+ languages. They launched the assistant using Open AI as their LLM provider. If we have to guess, they have finetuned it using their own customer support interaction data set that they have collected over the years. in a previous post What features does the Klarna AI assistant support? The assistant is designed to handle wide range of questions related to refunds, returns, payment-related issues, cancellations, disputes, and invoice inaccuracies, ensuring swift and effective solutions. Like any tech feature, its available 24*7 across all geographies. For customers who want to know what they can afford and not afford, it also provides info related to purchase power, spending limits and the reasons why it exists. All the info of a customer account is with the assistant to help any questions related to it. Is the new AI assistant effective? Its cool to say that we have used gen AI and see the stock pop up, but the real question is, does the feature deliver value to the company. And from the numbers, it looks like it is beating expectations. Here are some of the numbers. Two-thirds of all customer service chats are handled by the assistant, which is an impressive 2.3M conversations. Customer satisfaction same as human conversations. 25% drop in repeat inquiries Estimated to drive $40M in profit improvements to the company. What are the takeaways from Klarna’s gen AI assistant? Its clear that generative AI is being adopted and creating value for companies at all stages. Customer support will get more effective and cheaper. If the new assistant is handling two-thirds of all conversations, it means the next set of companies which start their customer support teams will not require the same number of people in their teams. And this also means the existing customer support teams might be larger than needed. We will see a lot of growth stage startups follow Klarna to boost their profitability and reduce expenses. For companies like Klarna whose stocks are down due to the concern of profitability, companies with similar concerns will start to look at leveraging AI to cut costs and boost profitability. Open AI’s board drama didn’t effect its trust among companies to use them for production scale deployments. When Sam Altman was fired and re-hired at Open Ai, one of the concerns was that this would reduce the trust among developers to use Open Ai to create AI applications. When a large public company publishes such a case study its clear that the board drama at Open Ai didn’t effect Open AI’s abilities. Expect more companies to announce improvements because of using gen AI technology in fields outside customer support. More case studies using generative AI will come from more public companies showing how they are leveraging Ai. This is a function of every company wanting to get a piece of the AI narrative and the fact that gen AI features are actually delivering on value. If you are a company with large data set related to customer support, you should explore creating an AI assistant for support interactions. That’s it for Day 19 of 100 Days of AI. I write a newsletter called Above Average where I talk about the second order insights behind everything that is happening in big tech. If you are in tech and don’t want to be average, . subscribe to it Follow me on , or for latest updates on 100 days of AI or . If you are in tech you might be interested in joining my community of tech professionals . Twitter LinkedIn HackerNoon bookmark this page here

100 Days of AI, Day 19: Klarna’s AI Chatbot and The Rise of Generative AI in Startups

এআই-এর 100 দিন, 19তম দিন: ক্লারনার এআই চ্যাটবট এবং স্টার্টআপে জেনারেটিভ এআইয়ের উত্থান

100 Tage KI, Tag 19: Klarnas KI-Chatbot und der Aufstieg der generativen KI in Startups

100 días de IA, día 19: El chatbot de IA de Klarna y el auge de la IA generativa en las empresas emergentes

100 jours d'IA, jour 19 : le chatbot IA de Klarna et l'essor de l'IA générative dans les startups

एआई के 100 दिन, दिन 19: क्लार्ना का एआई चैटबॉट और स्टार्टअप्स में जनरेटिव एआई का उदय

100日間のAI、19日目: KlarnaのAIチャットボットとスタートアップにおける生成AIの台頭

AI 100일, 19일차: Klarna의 AI 챗봇과 스타트업에서 생성 AI의 부상

100 dias de IA, dia 19: AI Chatbot de Klarna e a ascensão da IA generativa em startups

100 дней искусственного интеллекта, день 19: чат-бот Klarna с искусственным интеллектом и рост генеративного искусственного интеллекта в стартапах

100 Gün Yapay Zeka, 19. Gün: Klarna'nın Yapay Zeka Sohbet Robotu ve Yeni İşletmelerde Üretken Yapay Zekanın Yükselişi

100 ngày của AI, Ngày 19: Chatbot AI của Klarna và Sự trỗi dậy của AI sáng tạo trong các công ty khởi nghiệp

人工智能 100 天，第 19 天：Klarna 的人工智能聊天机器人和初创企业中生成式人工智能的兴起

MR. KIRKPATRICK, Q.C.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick had been reading aloud till Lady Cumnor fell asleep

In an insightful and interesting Q&A conversation, Hackernoon contributor Brian Wallace interviews Nachum Kligman, co-founder & CEO of Book Like a Boss, an online booking platform. #1. What do you currently do and what’s your favorite part about it? I am the co-founder & CEO of Book Like A Boss, a booking platform that makes it simple for anyone to sell a service in less than an hour. We launched in 2017 and have tens of thousands of users in over 100 countries. My favorite part is when we get unsolicited 5-Star reviews from our customers or when I’m on a Demo with a customer and they just say “Wow”. It makes all the hard work and challenges worth it when you know you are having a positive impact on a person and their business. #2. What are you currently excited about at BLAB? We recently announced the launch of our Enterprise Product. We launched as a solution for individuals and in 2021 we released our company plans for those with medium sized businesses from 3-300 employees or sales reps. We have now released the ability to white label and blend into other existing platforms and can handle from 5,000 to millions of users. With this launch we also announced a partnership with Duda, a leading Website Builder with over 20,000 Agencies as customers and powering more than a million active websites. You can now turn any Duda website into a booking system for appointments, memberships, selling services, events and more. You can read more about that : here #3. How did you get started with your Tech Career? My first tech experience was an idea I had back in 1998. It was my first start-up, a company I called FunRaze - The Fun Way to Raise Money. It was a platform that enabled companies to donate products to a charity of their choice. They would receive free publicity and a tax write off for their donation. We would then post the item on our site where anyone could put in $1 or more depending on the item and at the end of the auction we would randomly choose a winner from everyone that entered. We would take a 15% platform fee for every auction and it was the perfect win/win/win situation. I had celebrities lined up to get involved and raised some initial funds and had a large law firm taking care of all the legal work for a percentage of the company. Unfortunately, after 4 months, the law firm told us the bad news and that what we were trying to do was illegal and considered gambling. We would need to get a license for every county in every state for every auction, basically an impossible task. This was 25 years ago. I was shocked back in 2012 when Omaze was the first to introduce what I tried to do back in 1998. The way they got around the legal issue was that they had a way for anyone to enter any of their auctions for free without needing to purchase a ticket. They way the government couldn’t call it gambling if you could enter for free and only pay for additional tickets or because you wanted to. I didn’t think this was a good business model and it seems they are having some issues now in the USA. #4. Tell us more about the things you write/make/manage/build! I love taking ideas from nothing and bringing them to life. In 2002 I started an Interoperable Instant Messaging company called IMVITE. I was the first to put an RSS feed into a messenger and created a built-in mall with a built-in affiliate program. I left in 2005 over a disagreement with my partners. I wanted to take our messenger and integrate with our own Social Network. My partners didn’t think Social Networking would be anything so I left. I then started a company called Qoof, a video shopping player. There are 4 technology patents in my name for coming up with the idea to put overlays on top of videos. I left in 2010 when an investor gave me an ultimatum, either allow him to buy 85% of the company for $500k (there was a downturn in the markets and we needed funds) or fire my 12 employees and close up shop. I sold my shares and was left with less than 4%. So I left the company after saving them and the company later exited under the name Viewbix based on my ideas to turn the company around. Then I had a few more projects as most good entrepreneurs, mostly failures with a couple of successes until I came up with the idea for Book Like A Boss at the end of 2015. I pitched my partner on the idea and we launched in June 2017. It’s been my biggest success to date and has been mostly bootstrapped with tens of thousands of happy users all around the world. #5. What’s your favorite thing about the internet? It’s probably what everyone would say, but the truth is the ability to keep in touch with old friends and family is unparalleled. The ability to share videos, photos or just a simple hello to let people know you care is something that was not so simple 20 years ago. Now with a click of a button you can share your children’s birthday party pics with your family all over the world. #6. What is your least favorite thing about the internet? Definitely the addiction. There is always another email, another message, another article, another customer service ticket waiting to be answered etc.. I try to get back to people as fast as possible, especially to my employees who are waiting for answers from me. I find it hard to just totally turn off my phone for deep work or even for family time. I’m getting better at it, but I still look back at quieter times when you actually had to speak to someone in person and you would be able to give your undivided attention. #7. If you were given $10 million to invest in something today what would you invest in and why? Is it cliché to say my company? Lol. Truth is there is a HUGE game changing project I would like to do that involves AI and the way we communicate with those we need. I don’t want to say more right now, but I hope to break ground on this project in 2023. #8. What’s something you’re currently learning or excited to learn? I’ve been following the online newsletter industry for about a year now and I love the new software companies (shoutout to Beehiiv) that are coming out as well as the courses and newsletters about newsletters. I don’t have the time to start one right now, but I do love picking up tips and seeing how people are becoming successful. It’s all in the list! #9. Would you rather travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? Give reasons for your answer. For sure 10 years in the past. Everyone wishes they could change something from their past that would create a brighter future. Why go 10 years ahead and miss out on things you could have changed as well as all that time spent with loved ones and friends.

Pioneering Online Bookings: A Talk with Nachum Kligman, CEO of Book Like A Boss

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. I'm Kirill Balakhonov, working at Chainstack.com, a leading Web3 infrastructure provider. As the Lead Product Manager, I specialize in our recently launched product, Chainstack Subgraphs hosting, which focuses on blockchain data access and indexing. Prior to this role, I spent five years in the Data Science field, where I developed and trained various computer vision neural networks and large language models. I have a strong passion for exploring new technologies, programming, and prototyping everything on my own. I adore my family, which consists of my wife, a 5-year-old son, and a pug dog. Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? It was the first part of a three-part series called " ." This series came after years of developing telegram bots solely for my own usage, which proved to be very helpful in various cases. I am truly inspired by the idea of having a group of intelligent helper bots that can handle certain tasks on my behalf. How to Create a Telegram Bot to Monitor Your Service Uptime in Python (Part 1: Instant Metrics) Although I can't recall all of them, there were some exceptionally useful bots that continue to assist me in my daily life. They read numerous telegram channels and only send me the most interesting and relevant content. Additionally, I have several personal ChatGPT-powered telegram bot assistants, a news navigator bot, pet projects alerting&monitoring bots, and bots for sharing community links, amongst others. Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I write a lot about programming. I really like the format of zero-to-hero tutorials because I always learn best using this type of material, considering it the fastest approach to learning anything. Additionally, I write about Web3/blockchains/smart contracts development, which is also my top interest in the technological business field. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) Usually, I write about a project that I have just implemented to showcase my work and share the results with the developer community. The routine is simply to describe something that I have had experience with. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? The biggest challenge for me is finding time to write after I come up with an article idea. I have so many ideas in my head that I can't possibly put them all on paper, as it would take up a significant amount of time. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? To be honest, I'm not really focused on career goals. The main thing for me is to have an interesting time and the opportunity to develop myself. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? I love walking, eating delicious food, and spending time with friends. Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? I love snowboarding, traveling, and watching TV shows. What can the HackerNoon community expect to read from you next? It would be great to write more about the real development of decentralized applications in simple language, from a first-person perspective, and for beginner developers. Web3 is an area that fascinates me from various angles, as a creator of developer tools, interesting and useful content, and as an avid learner of new technologies. What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers? This is an excellent place to study, learn new things and share experiences. Thanks for taking the time to join our “ ” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Meet the Writer Thank you for such a wonderful platform!

Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Kirill Balakhonov, Web3 Product Lead @ Chainstack

Conozca al escritor: colaborador de HackerNoon, Kirill Balakhonov, líder de producto de Web3 @ Chainstack

Rencontrez l'écrivain : Kirill Balakhonov, contributeur de HackerNoon, chef de produit Web3 @ Chainstack

लेखक से मिलें: हैकरनून के योगदानकर्ता किरिल बालाखोनोव, वेब3 प्रोडक्ट लीड @ चेनस्टैक

ライターのご紹介: HackerNoon の寄稿者、Chainstack の Web3 プロダクト リードである Kirill Balakhonov

Conheça o escritor: Kirill Balakhonov, colaborador do HackerNoon, líder de produto Web3 @ Chainstack

Gặp gỡ người viết: Cộng tác viên của HackerNoon Kirill Balakhonov, Trưởng nhóm sản phẩm Web3 @ Chainstack

来认识一下作者：HackerNoon 的贡献者 Kirill Balakhonov，Chainstack 的 Web3 产品负责人

, the highly-anticipated Web 3 game, has recently rolled out its Beta, and the way it's been rolled out is raising some eyebrows in the gaming community. The Beta version of the game could soon be available on the Epic Games launcher and includes Epic online services already, leading many to speculate about a potential collaboration between Kiraverse's parent company, , and . Kiraverse Param Labs Epic Games Epic Games, the developer of the popular game Fortnite and the creator of the Unreal Engine, has been making waves in the gaming industry with its aggressive push into the world of blockchain and NFTs. It's worth noting that the inclusion of Epic online services in the Beta version of Kiraverse is not a coincidence. Epic Games has been making a big push into the world of blockchain and NFTs, and the company's Unreal Engine is the most advanced and widely used game engine in the industry. The inclusion of Epic's services in the Beta version of Kiraverse could be a sign that the two companies are working together to bring NFTs to life in the game. Many players and fans in subreddit have been discussing this potential collaboration, with some even speculating that the partnership could be announced in the coming months. Some of the from went , drawing attention to the potential collaboration. r/superstonk posts r/superstonk viral At this point, it's unclear what exactly the relationship between Param Labs and Epic Games is, but the inclusion of Epic's services in the Beta version of Kiraverse is certainly intriguing. The gaming industry is rapidly evolving, and it's becoming increasingly clear that blockchain and NFTs are the future of gaming. A collaboration between Param Labs and Epic Games would be a major step forward for the industry, and it's something that many players and fans are eagerly looking forward to. It's worth noting that, as of today, there's no official confirmation about the collaboration between Param Labs and Epic Games. However, the inclusion of Epic's services in the Beta version of Kiraverse and the speculations from the community are indeed raising curiosity and excitement among players.

Is Epic Games Partnering with Kiraverse?

“Things are only impossible until they’re not.”–Captain Jean-Luc Picard Congratulations Captain! 🎉 🎉🎉 You have won the following award/awards: - 1st place https://www.noonies.tech/2022/programming/2022-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-functional-programming - 2nd place https://www.noonies.tech/2022/programming/2022-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-golang What does it mean for you to win this title? I’m really excited to win this category! I’m writing in 3 languages: JavaScript, Java and Go, and two of them provide an opportunity to write with the FP approach. How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2023? Well, I guess I need to write more articles on this topic. BTW, here is the next one: https://hackernoon.com/inheritance-vs-composition-using-a-role-playing-game-in-javascript-as-an-example What goals are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2023 (whether it be through company initiatives or your personal journey)? I’ve just relocated to the US, it is not the best time to find a job as you can guess, all these layoffs and hiring freeze. Fortunately, I found a job! Which trend(s) are you most excited about in 2023? Share your reason. I’m curious about what will happen with crypto. The world is changing, the market is going down right now and it might be a perfect time for a crypto to grow. At the same time, the previous year was a crypto winter. 2022 had been crazy, especially in Tech - what with layoff, web3 fraud, and AI! Which trend are you most concerned about? What solutions can you think of? Be as brief or as detailed as you like. This year is rich with all layoffs so far. It is about 70k employees were affected by it. Probably the IT world is going to change and become better. Share your biggest success so far and/or your biggest failure so far. I think the biggest success so far was gaining an O1 visa for “Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement”. I’m really proud of being a software engineer, and it is exciting that the US government thinks that I’m good at it! We would love your feedback on HackerNoon as a tech publication! How has your experience been with us? HackerNoon is an amazing platform where people can share their knowledge. Ease of use and design make it probably the best platform for writing articles. Any words of wisdom you’d like to share with us? I’m always writing an article about the topic I’ve just learned. It is like notes that help to refresh the memory of some difficult or just not-so-obvious problems and solution to it. And of course, it helps a lot for all people that are looking through the internet for a solution to such problem. So please, if you’ve learned something new - right an article about it, cause it probably helps the next engineer to find the answer faster!

Meet Noonies 2022 Winner Georgii Kliukovkin of the Category Functional Programming

On September 15, 2022. Ethereum, the second largest crypto in the world, successfully transitioned from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm via the Merge update. This transition has sparked a lot of debate about the pros and cons of these algorithms. This blog will take an unbiased look at both PoW and PoS. What is PoW? Governance is simple in a centralized ecosystem – you have a central board of directors or a CEO making all the big decisions. However, how do you implement robust governance in a decentralized model? You will need to trust the participants to consistently do a good job. However, any model that relies on “trust” can’t be that efficient and reliant. Plus, seeing how crypto protocols deal with millions and billions of dollars, it is even more crucial to have a trustless and robust governance process that can be easily replicated. In particular, Nakamoto wanted an algorithm that fulfilled the following criteria: The consensus process itself should be really tedious. Proving that you have reached the correct conclusion using the consensus should be simple. Successful participants should be rewarded for their efforts. Malicious participants must be punished for working against the protocol. Last but not least, the algorithm must provably solve double-spending. Double-spending is an issue where the same crypto coin can be spent on two (or more) completely different transactions simultaneously Keeping all these in mind, Nakamoto devised a consensus mechanism called proof-of-work. This is how the algorithm works: Users wishing to participate in PoW must buy mining equipment like GPUs and ASICs. The users, aka “miners,” will then use their GPUs and ASICs to solve cryptographically-hard puzzles. If they can successfully solve this puzzle, they get the right to add a block to the blockchain and earn block rewards. Before adding the block, the miner must propagate their block throughout the network to validate their work. The act of block validation (or “showing proof of your work”) is relatively straightforward. Miners use real-world computational power and electricity to participate in the mining process. The degree of difficulty of the process is directly related to the number of active miners in the protocol. The overall cost of mining is also directly related to the difficulty of the process. How PoW Prevents double-spending? As we mentioned earlier, preventing potential double-spending attacks is one of the core functions of PoW. So, what is a double-spending attack? What you see in the diagram above is a “fork,” basically a split in the chain. So, a user can potentially spend the same coin in the main chain and the forked chain. As you can imagine, this could cause massive confusion. Think of it like this. Imagine that you spent your BTC buying a house in the blue chain and the same coin purchasing a car in the red chain. Which one of these transactions should go through? For malicious miners who may look to discredit Bitcoin, creating random forks and deeming the majority of the transactions completely useless may be the best way to go about it. So, does PoW completely negate forks? No, it doesn't. However, PoW makes forking extremely expensive and impractical. For example, if a malicious miner decides to take over the Bitcoin blockchain through a fork, it will be challenging for them to do so against the combined might of the rest of the miner network. To do so successfully, they need to have control of over 51% of the network’s mining power (or hashrate). This is also known as a 51% attack. When an entity has control of over 51% of the network hashrate, it can basically create multiple random forks and rewrite the entire system. However, in a PoW system, it becomes exceedingly expensive to conduct a 51% attack. For example, in Bitcoin, it costs ~$750,000 to conduct a 51% attack for just 1 hour. But PoW has a big problem PoW’s biggest problem is that it is inherently extremely wasteful. Check out this chart: Bitcoin consumes more electricity than Noway and Bangladesh! However, what about its carbon footprint? Now, what about its carbon footprint? As per reports, Bitcoin is responsible for annually! That’s the same as countries like Jordan and Sri Lanka. This wastefulness of PoW has attracted a lot of negative criticism. This is why several protocols have started opting for proof-of-stake (PoS), a significantly cleaner alternative. 22-22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions What is PoS? Proof-of-Stake makes the mining process completely virtual. In 2012, Peercoin became the first coin to implement PoS. Following that several other cryptocurrencies like Cardano, Algorand, and, most famously, Ethereum followed suit. Each coin has its own unique implementation of PoS. However, for your understanding, let’s give you a simplistic overview of the entire process: Instead of buying ASICs and GPU, you need to lock up a certain amount of tokens as a “stake” within the system. Your “mining power” depends on the amount of stake you lock up within the protocol. The more stake you have, the more your chances of validating a block and getting a block reward. While traditional PoS isn’t exactly faster than PoW, it simplifies the integration of scalability techniques like sharding. The entire process is virtual and doesn’t require you to waste resources. Ethereum Merge and PoS On September 15, 2022, Ethereum deployed the Merge update and transitioned from PoW to PoS. Ethereum’s staking algorithm is called Casper, and its signature feature is the “slashing mechanism.” Slashing is how Ethereum prevents the blockchain from forking. To participate in Ethereum’s PoS, you must stake at least 32 ETH, which is a significant amount. Furthermore, if you act against the system and attempt to fork the chain, your stake will get slashed, meaning you will lose a substantial amount of your own money. This has been designed to ensure that the validators are economically incentivized to always act in the system's best interests. However, like most PoS algorithms, Ethereum’s Casper also has a significant weakness. The biggest problem with PoS The biggest problem with the majority of the PoS algorithms is their overdependence on just one token. This leads to the following issues: The system favors early adopters who may have gotten a big bag of native tokens for cheap. Being dependent on a “stake-as-trust” system could have protocol-breaking implications in a cross-chain ecosystem. Let’s say you transfer BTC from Bitcoin to Ethereum to access certain DeFi apps. If the value of BTC is higher than the stake, then the validator is incentivized to act maliciously. How KIRA mitigates these issues with MBPoS native consensus stands for “Multi-Bonded Proof of Stake.” With MBPoS, you can stake multiple assets simultaneously and participate in the consensus process. With MBPoS, you may stake real-world assets like fiat and commodities and popular crypto assets like BTC, ETH, DOT, and even NFTs. The revenue generated can be shared among all your staked assets, increasing the value proposition of each token. KIRA's MBPoS Here’s a quick overview of MBPoS: By enabling the staking of multiple assets, KIRA resolves potential trust issues. MBPoS guarantees transaction finality and fast block times. By allowing multiple tokens, MBPoS creates a fairer system that doesn’t overtly reward early adopters.

Looking Into Ethereum’s Merge And How KIRA Circumvents PoS’s Biggest Weakness

have developed a Defi-focused wallet with the ability to store and mint non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Users will also be able to connect directly with Defi protocols including yield farms and liquidity pools. Kirobo The decentralized application (Dapp) development company is working on a set of DeFi security and usability services. They aim to make Defi more accessible and user-friendly to regular people, funding this initiative with a $5 million investment from Digimax in 2021. NFTs & Defi: Two Rapidly Growing Crypto-Based Markets Only a small handful of crypto enthusiasts knew what non-fungible tokens (NFT) were at the start of 2021. However, according to the most recent figures, about had been spent on NFTs by the end of that year. This makes the market for digital artwork and collectibles nearly as valuable as the entire art industry. $41 billion Decentralized Finance (Defi) has also grown considerably, reaching a market size of by February 2021. $72 billion Both of these markets are expected to grow even more as the crypto space continues to attract mainstream attention. With this increased adoption comes the need for tools that can be used within this sub-industries of the blockchain space. We have browser-based solutions like MetaMask that can be used for minting and storing NFTs, as well as storing tokens for use with Defi tools. However, due to phishing attacks, compromised PCs, and user error, a sizeable amount of MetaMask users have lost their funds. To combat some of the issues, Liquid Vault was developed by Kirobo. The wallet gives users the ability to cancel transactions and create a backup wallet. What Is Liquid Vault? Liquid Vault is a security-focused, non-custodial crypto wallet with Defi functionality. The wallet enables users to interact with Defi protocols, as well as store cryptocurrencies and digital assets. The wallet also enables users to store and mint NFTs on their wallets. Digital content associated with a token can be viewed through a digital album, without having to leave the wallet. Liquid Vault’s Features Features of the Liquid Vault include: Users can create a backup wallet that will seize control of the Vault after a predefined period of inactivity. Backup - This feature distributes assets from the vault to designated "heirs", providing a non-custodial solution to crypto inheritance upon death. Inheritance - Users can connect the Liquid Vault to any external dApp with Wallet Connect capabilities. Dapp Connect - An “undo button” for crypto transfers. Enables users to cancel a transaction until the moment the counterparty confirms it with a password sent through a separate channel. Safe Transfer - Users can avoid DEX slippage by trading directly with other holders at your own prices. Swaps - Holders of Kirobo NFTs have the opportunity to have their transaction gas fees refunded by staking KIRO. No-gas trading - Dapp Connect Users can also connect to smart contracts on most blockchains via Dapp connect, this enables users to access Defi services including: Yield farming protocols such as Compound and Aave Decentralized exchanges (DEX's) and staking platforms like Uniswap and SushiSwap Decentralized apps (dApps) including NFT marketplaces, DEX's, and more The feature is similar to the Wallet Connect feature on the MetaMask wallet. The Outlook for the NFT Market While most individuals are focused on picking the finest NFT-related projects to invest in and perhaps profit from, other thought leaders are considering what NFTs could imply for society as a whole. "It's non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that will drastically transform human civilization and culture," says analyst . He and others envision fair communities created on decentralized platforms that use NFTs as governance tokens to allow users a say in community growth. Andrew Steinwold Investment bank Jeffries believes the NFT market could be worth over by 2025. $80 billion The Future of Decentralized Finance According to data from , Defi’s Total Value Locked increased from $700 million in December 2019 to $20 billion by the end of 2020, and is currently at $204 billion. Defi Llama Defi will eventually replace the existing financial system, with its outdated and expensive layers of intermediaries. This is despite the fact that Defi currently holds only a fraction of the trillions of dollars held by traditional banks. Bulls believe At this early moment in the cycle, much like in the early days of e-commerce, it's difficult to predict exactly how the landscape will appear. However, given that the total addressable market is in the trillions of dollars and that access is currently difficult for non-crypto natives, growth will almost certainly continue. Adoption will spread as access becomes easier in the areas of liquidity providing, yield farming and non-custodial exchanges. Conclusion While I believe NFTs will continue to draw attention, particularly in relation to the metaverse and blockchain-based games, I believe the DeFi area will continue to show massive growth. DeFi has grown in maturity over the last year and continues to be a cutting-edge industry. Investors will continue to be attracted by the high yields, and RDeFi will take Defi to the next level, increasing adoption and liquidity. As these two industries grow, so will the need for non-custodial protocols and tools.

Kirobo Brings NFT Minting to Crypto Wallets via Liquid Vault

As an instructional designer, after carefully crafting and delivering the instruction is it essential to ascertain how effective it was in achieving the identified goals and aims. One of the most effective ways to do this is by applying Kirkpatrick`s 4 Levels of Evaluation. Table of Contents: What is the most effective way to evaluate learning? Reaction Learning Behaviour Results Kirkpatrick’s Model of Evaluation for Classroom evaluation Thank you, Donald Kirkpatrick What is the most effective way to evaluate learning? The purpose of an evaluation is to establish to what extent a goal was met, in order to do this effectively Donald Kirkpatrick developed a four-level system of evaluation called the Kirkpatrick Model of Evaluation.  According to Kirkpatrick’s model, evaluation is a series of steps that begins at level one and move layer by layer to level four with each level providing valuable information to ascertain the effectiveness of the entire training program. The four levels of evaluation are  namely; Reaction Learning Behaviour Results https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ThFfgocqrc Reaction At this level, the data captured is the participant's reaction to the training experience. The goal is to understand or determine how satisfying, engaging and relevant the experience was for the learner. At the core of this level is measuring participants’ engagement   This is achieved through smile sheets or feedback forms.  Some questions that can be asked at this stage include: Were the training activities engaging? What are the three most important things you learned from this training? Did the training session take into consideration your learning style? Was the training worth your time? Learning In level two, the goal is to establish to what degree knowledge was acquired by the participants as a result of the training. In simple terms, this level of evaluation is aimed at measuring what the trainees learned and did not learn. To effectively evaluate at this level it is best to administer a pre-learning assessment and a post-learning assessment, this will enable you to determine to identify where the learning occurred and where learning did not occur. Behavior This is a high-value evaluation that helps instructors improve training materials or structure. At this stage, the focus is whether people are behaving differently after the training. A change in behavior is generally an effective metric for determining how effective training was. However, it has been established that the work environment can negatively affect employees’ behavior, thus if after training no behavioral change is recorded a review of the environment should be the first point of call.  This level of evaluation requires time in order to be effective. Some questions to ask during this evaluation include: Did the trainees apply the knowledge from the training? Has there been any behavioral change since the training? Results Level 4, measures the direct impact the training contributes to the success or development of the program in its entirety. At this level, the effectiveness of teaching is being measured ** Kirkpatrick’s Model of Evaluation for Classroom evaluation Kirkpatrick`s model of the evaluation was created for training targeted at the workplace, but it has been applied within classroom settings to improve knowledge acquisition, retention and application. The sequential review of learning is very essential in the constant development and structuring of learning outcomes and materials. When Kirkpatrick’s model is applied to the classroom level 1 measures how engaging the teaching methodology is in knowledge retention for the students. Level 2 establishes the level of knowledge retention, this is typically performed using tests and exams. This level tells you  how much was understood or misunderstood and where more explanation Level 3 determines whether students can apply the knowledge garnered during the learning experience. Stereotypically this is measured by applying the knowledge to a real-life situation however, most of these situations are presented in form of hypothetical situations not practical situations thus reducing the effectiveness of this level of evaluation. Level 4, the assessment is conducted on the institutional level, the goal here is to ascertain if the predetermined learning outcomes were achieved.  Unfortunately, Level 3 and Level 4 are not actively practised in schools and It is clear that they would make a world of difference in the structure of the learning experience. Thank you, Donald Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick’s model of evaluation created a step-by-step mode of evaluation that continually assesses whether learning is taking place. It has been established that learning occurs on different levels therefore evaluation is a concurrent and recurring activity. This model has the potential to positively influence the development of education systems in the digital age, so Thank you, Donald Kirkpatrick! More in Instructional Design https://app.hackernoon.com/stats/understanding-conditions-of-learning-gagnes-9-events-of-instruction https://app.hackernoon.com/stats/13-instructional-design-models-explained-a-complete-guide-for-beginners https://app.hackernoon.com/stats/understanding-conditions-of-learning-gagnes-9-events-of-instruction

Understanding 4 Levels of Evaluation: A study on Kirkpatrick's Instructional Design Model

According to , only 5% of crypto entrepreneurs are female. Today I decided to interview one of them. Please meet Milana Valmont, founder and CEO of , the first Layer 1 network that enables market access to any digital. Read more about her journey in crypto, an idea of KIRA, DApps market, the current pitfalls, trends, and the future of DApps. Crypto Head research KIRA Please share with us your background or story My background is in finance. I graduated from Fordham University with a degree in economics and psychology and I worked in corporate finance in New York. First as a Private Equity Analyst then as an Investor Relations Manager. I joined the blockchain space in early 2017. I have worked as a project manager for Adcoin.com and served as an adviser for Sentinel dVPN. In 2018 I joined Knoks platform as head of the strategy, and by mid-2019 I dedicated my full attention to KIRA as CEO. When and how did you discover crypto? When did you join this industry? In early 2017 I talked to my friend who was a cyber security expert and we were discussing Bitcoin and Ethereum. He told me that he was trading cryptocurrencies but I didn't have a lot of background in it, so I started to learn more about buying cryptocurrencies and how different technologies worked in blockchain and why they are important. I joined a couple of crypto Slack and telegram groups and became more involved within the community. I started to get more involved in the space when I became a community volunteer for Binance exchange when Binance was first starting out in Tokyo, which was around May 2017. Later that year I quit my corporate job in New York and started focusing more professionally on crypto. What are you working on right now? Right now I'm working on KIRA. I'm the founder and CEO. KIRA is Layer 1 Network that allows users to deposit and stake any assets whether it's any cryptocurrencies or real-world assets issued in the digital form. All tokens staked on KIRA remain liquid and are represented 1 to 1 by transferable derivatives held trustlessly by the stakeholders themselves. Through KIRA's unique offering stakeholders would be able to benefit from the block and fee rewards generated by the network, as well as leverage stake their assets on multiple PoS chains and DeFi platforms simultaneously. To summarize: KIRA  is an L1 network capable of scaling value at stake without limiting the liquidity of users tokens. KIRA rose up out of the idea to connect crypto assets with the real-world economy Why did you decide to build a decentralized network for DApps? How was the idea of KIRA born? Co-founder & CTO Mateusz Grzelak and I were both a part of the Interchain ecosystem for a few years before we started KIRA. We shared a vision that there's not going to be a single masterchain network that scales infinitely and provides all features that you might imagine. I think it was more rational to assume that in the long term it will have thousands of projects interconnected together and just in the world with thousands of smaller companies on the internet offering their services rather than just one large single website like Amazon. So we wanted to utilize Web3 structure and make sure that people utilize 100% of their capital with the minimum possible risk involved without fears of liquidation, fears of market volatility and we didn't want those people to just sit on their asses. KIRA rose up out of the idea to connect crypto assets with the real-world economy so that people can stake whatever assets they have in the digital world and earn rewards in a safe manner. What does Multi-Bonded Proof of Stake (MBPoS) mean? It’s a proprietary consensus that we created. As you probably know Bitcoin uses Proof of Work consensus that allows scaling of security with the growing hash rate but is unable to scale transaction throughput and does not offer finality. You are also likely familiar with Proof of Stake that now a lot of projects like Cosmos and Polkadot use. However, that consensus offers scalability of transactions and finality does not scale the security well. We’ve created a customized consensus which is called Multi-Bonded Proof of Stake (MBPoS) and which allows you to get the best of both worlds by allowing staking of multiple assets to secure the network without locking up the capital The consensus further puts the power directly into the hands of individual network participants who can decide which DApps they want hosting on KIRA thus ensuring their own security while offering maximum possible utility for the end-users. Instead of the network getting secured by just one token which is not secure at all because it centralizes over time in hands of a few as its value fluctuates unpredictably on the market, people can stake stablecoins and even digitized real-world assets such as NFTs representing the real estate. Furthermore, because voting power and stake are NOT correlated with each other then no one can circumvent the consensus by hoarding or stealing digital tokens. Effectively you can quantitatively measure the security of the chain as the value at stake is distributed among a possibly large number of unique (non-Sybil) validators who operate the chain. All this brings clarity to the definition of what a “secure” means in the context of decentralized networks. What’s Initial Validator Offering (IVO)? How does it work? IVO is a crowdfunding platform. It works by enabling any validator or any project to deploy crowdfunding on KIRA where delegators (your investors) can earn that new token or mint the new NFTs without spending or locking up their existing capital. If you want to invest in the project right now there are crowdfunding platforms for Initial DEX Offering (IDO) so you send USDT or Ethereum and in return, you get tokens you invested in. With the KIRA crowdfunding platform, it’s going to be different. The project that is raising money will host an IVO on KIRA by operating or partnering with existing validator nodes and the investors who are interested in acquiring new tokens will delegate their assets to the IVO validator/s. It doesn't matter if it’s USDT, Bitcoin or Ethereum so they delegate the asset and get rewarded with a new token. And if they decide that the project isn’t performing as they expected they can undelegate the asset and they still get to keep the token that they earned as a reward. It reduces the risk for investors to invest in projects as instead of exchanging your valuable asset such as stablecoins, NFTs or Ethereum for the new illiquid token, you can just stake your existing coins without losing custody or liquidity. What problem is KIRA going to solve? The key problem is the lack of security in the context of many small networks existing within the internet of blockchain to offer access to the Web3. The security assumptions of all currently existing Proof of Stake networks only work when the network exists in a vacuum like entirely alone. Cross-chain applications utilizing small PoS chains as their backbone consensus stop being secure when large values of assets are deposited to them. When the value of deposits from outside of the network exceeds the native value at stake the network operators become incentivized to misbehave - fork the chain and steal all deposits. Imagine sending $1B to the small chain with just a few validators and only $10M at stake vouching for the honest operation of the “dApp”, the incentives of $990M pose a huge risk of validators collusion to cheat. Please note that we also have to consider attacks where someone acquires a majority of stake/voting power in such a disadvantaged chain - as the costs of performing the attack (slashing) become justifiable. One of many examples of such exploits is . centralized exchanges voting on governance proposals to help wealthy individuals acquire a “decentralized” platform The key problem is the lack of security… KIRA solves such security issues because there is no cap to the value at stake that can vouch for the chain security as well as there is no correlation between voting power and the wealth of any individual in terms of the native/governance token. No one can steal, hoard, borrow the coins or collude with just a few individuals to circumvent the consensus and everyone can transparently measure if the value at stake is sufficient for their own deposit to be safe. In KIRA there is no limit in terms of how many validators can be part of the network. However, each one of them must be an individual (non-Sybil) as the voting power is split equally between each one of them. The social consensus of validators is used to ensure that each of the individuals operating the chain is indeed an individual. It's a totally different approach to consensus. We're not utilizing artificial token to secure our network and plutocratic government principles which makes the issue of security even more prominent. KIRA uses real-world and any type of digital assets to secure itself, allowing stakeholders to benefit from the transaction fees and block rewards. All the accumulated value vouches for the honest operation of the chain and deployed their dApps. Who are the key users of your solution? The key users of our solution are those who are interested in generating passive income from staking and operating nodes on the network. The idea of staking is pretty big and it's not just staking, farming, but also staking any assets that you wish to use. There is a lot of hype around NFTs. What can you do with NFTs rather than buying them for speculative purposes and hoping that they will increase in value? If you have any NFT collection you can stake them on KIRA and earn rewards on top of the floor price increase. Of course under the condition that the network governance whitelists the NFT collection on KIRA because it adds a lot of community (fee revenue) or security benefits to the chain. So basically it’s retail and anyone who is interested in staking or running validator nodes. As soon as KIRA L1 is live our focus will be on enabling L2 dApp hosting to attract retail users, that is existing DeFi  & CeFi consumers. When our native crowdfunding system is launched it's going to be not just retail who want to earn benefits and rewards from staking, but also investors who are interested in investing in other projects through staking and the projects themselves which are interested in using our crowdfunding platform to raise capital. What’s the current situation with DApps market? Any pitfalls? Yeah, there are a lot of pitfalls. I think the main problem with DApps is the lack of trust and quality. DApps running on the Proof of Stake are often secured by a small validator set or one single governance token and that creates a huge security threat. Anyone can launch their code and very rarely any of it is vetted by any third parties. All this creates potential issues not only for the end-users but also for the network operators themselves that might find themselves in the jurisdiction that might suddenly prohibit the operation of certain applications such as DEX’es without KYC in the USA. KIRA tackled all the mentioned pitfalls and is designed with the future-proofing of the Web3 ecosystem in mind. The main problem with DApps is the lack of trust and qualit From the social point of view, I see a huge hype around NFTs. Eventually, projects like Ethereum utilized the usage of NFTs as a speculative value. I think a lot of projects become redundant as well. What trends will we see in the near future? In terms of the trends people who will go towards projects that are: first of all, quantitatively trustable and secure which involves securing the network and decentralization of the governance allow you to have custody over your assets and decisions, you don't have to go through million different steps and risk your capital in order to generate passive income and are legally compliant, but not in the way that is disinter changed to the user. What’s the next stage of DApps development? The Layer 2 scaling solutions will definitely bring the breath of the fresh air, responsiveness, low fees, accessibility, and user-friendliness to the crypto ecosystem. All that while eliminating a centralized middle-man and the gatekeepers deciding who can access which financial products and who can not. I also see the tighter global regulations coming for the network operators and even the developers themselves as the world slowly becomes to normalize crypto as an intangible part of our daily lives.

The Usability of DApps Should be as Simple as Venmo: Interview with Milana Valmont, CEO of KIRA

Hey Hackers! I’m Kirk Borne and I’m the Chief Science Officer at AI startup DataPrime, and I am founder and sole owner of Data Leadership Group LLC. First of all, a huge thank you to the HackerNoon community and staff for nominating me for a 2021 Noonies award! I’ve been nominated in the following category, please do check out the award page and vote: Data Science Influencer of the Year: https://noonies.tech/award/2021-data-science-influencer-of-the-year As someone in the data science industry, I believe that the most exciting technology of the present age is edge intelligence (edge computing with AI) because edge sensors are being deployed rapidly everywhere (that’s observability). The most efficient and effective way to derive the quickest insights and fastest value from these sensors is to move the intelligent algorithms to the data at the point of data collection. Learn more about my thoughts and opinions on these topics and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below. 1. What do you do and why do you do it? (tell us your story) I love learning about the world (and the Universe, as a card-carrying Ph.D. astrophysicist,) through observation and data and to model the things that we see in order to characterize and predict how they work and evolve (including colliding galaxies, plus also any other dynamic interesting thing that moves through space and time, like customers, marketing campaigns, cyber actors, machines, engines, sports, financial markets, supply chains, logistics, health apps, etc.), and then use the data and modeling to increase our understanding of these things through scientific testing of our data-inspired hypotheses. I also love teaching people about this stuff. I believe that data science is not a math skill but a life skill. 2. Tell us more about the things you create / write / manage / build! I am very active on social media, primarily Twitter and LinkedIn. I consider Twitter my micro-education platform, where I share knowledge, new trends, new developments, new algorithms, new applications, and ideas associated with emerging digital technologies of all sorts. I write blogs, lots of blogs -- on my own blog site and on Medium, and for many other venues. rocketdatascience.org I give talks (conferences, webinars, podcasts), lots of talks. I do a lot of mentoring, training, and strategy consulting. I also do a lot of knowledge-sharing and social promotions on LinkedIn of things that I have seen and am excited about. I have created several different university courses and taught most of them for many years. Well, I love creating and sharing knowledge -- that’s it, in a nutshell. Also, going back a few years, I did many years of research in astronomy and astrophysics -- you can find my research articles on Google Scholar. 3. How did you end up on your current career path? Do you like it? I became enamored with space and astronomy as a young kid. First, it was the pretty pictures, then I wanted to know how it worked. I learned early on about math, science, data, computing (and that I was really good at that stuff) -- and that took me to a BS in Physics and a PhD in astronomy, then to 20 years as an astrophysicist at NASA, then 12 years as Professor at GMU (teaching data science, computational science, and a little astronomy), then 6 years as Executive Advisor and the first Data Science Fellow and first Principal Data Scientist at a major strategy consulting firm, and now in my current part-time freelance roles. It’s science, math, computing, data, and modeling all the time, from age 9 to my startup/freelance/influencer activities today. I feel like the proverbial kid in a candy store nearly every day. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. 4. What tech are you most excited or passionate about right now and why? I see connections across many technologies, especially how they are inspired by data, informed by data, driven by data, and deliver innovations through data. That includes AI, autonomous systems, AR, VR, digital twins, blockchain, IoT, etc. That all brings the focus back to my deep interest right now with edge intelligence (AI and sensors at the edge), observability (the strategic placement of these edge sensors), dynamic data-driven application systems, and the corresponding data-driven job creation and value creation. 5. What tech are you most worried about right now and why? I guess I am a “glass half-full” sort of an optimist. I recognize the risks and the rewards. I teach about these things, both the negatives and the positives. My favorite class that I created and taught at the University was Data Ethics. That’s because this subject touches all sides of the technology equation: the tech, math, the data, the modeling, the science, and the humanity! I do worry that a lot of these integrated views of our technologies are not taught in schools, and people only encounter them later, outside of school. That goes for both the risks and the benefits (both sides, not just one side or the other) -- a balanced approach to learning and applying our tech is essential. 6. If we gave you 10 million dollars to invest in something today, what would you invest in and why? I would invest in training programs for people who are not in the usual training pathways, who are being left out (or feeling left out) of the tech revolution (for all sorts of reasons). That includes displaced older workers (victims of ageism), returning veterans, stay-at-home parents returning to work, recovering addicts, released prisoners, people with serious depression (COVID-induced or otherwise), and people suffering imposter syndrome. My motivations for doing this grew even stronger when my younger brother died of a drug overdose 5 years ago after being terminated from his lifelong job, being at an age where he felt like he had nothing more to offer the world, and he then turned to drugs to escape those feelings, ended up in prison, then ultimately released from prison with nothing to turn to except his drugs again. I now wish I could have had more time and resources to prove to him (like I showed many of my students) that it is possible for almost anyone to learn these new techie things -- if the jargon and “magic” is removed, and they start to realize they can learn it once they start exercising and strengthening their innate natural-born learning muscles. I taught calculus-based data science to math-phobic science-phobic freshmen at the university, without ever mentioning the word ‘calculus’ until they had learned it. When I told them what it was, they were stunned, delighted, motivated, and excited to learn more and to consider a completely new career path in STEM that they never ever imagined for themselves. I ran two successful(!) pilots of this in NYC two years ago for “people on the street” -- teaching some statistics, data science, and that “data is not a 4-letter word.” 7. What are you currently learning? I am learning more about time management. Ha! I have many activities going full-speed every day, and I need better time management skills. More technically, I am learning about blockchain, decentralization, VR/AR, and how those things are changing business, economies, entertainments, personal finances, and so much more! Of course, I am learning specifically about where those things intersect with AI, machine learning, analytics, and data science. Why? Because it’s all about the data, the math, the science, and the modeling for me. 8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given someone? I don’t know about that. Maybe the best advice given to another is the advice that others have given me, that helped me immensely -- I had to learn it the hard way, and so I hope to advise others before they are forced to learn it the hard way. That includes these pieces of advice: How to get over fear of public speaking in front of a live audience: . “You would be surprised how little other people think about you" How to finish a project when you are a perfectionist (i.e., how to finish it when you believe that anything less than 100% perfect is a failure): “Any job worth doing is worth doing poorly” (because, for me as a perfectionist, doing a job at 99% is a poor outcome, which was the wrong mindset when trying to meet real-world job demands and deadlines) -- this is another way of saying “Getting it done is better than getting it perfect.” -- you hear that a lot in sports, but it applies to techies too -- and it helps to overcome imposter syndrome. You’ve learned this stuff. You can do it. You have every right to be doing this, even if you think you are surrounded by geniuses (which is what I was thinking as a young scientist at Caltech). Trust what you’ve learned and what you know. You just might be the smartest person in the room. If you are a PhD candidate, defending your doctoral dissertation, there’s a very good chance that you are indeed the smartest person in the room -- on that day, on that particular topic. You own it! “Trust your stuff” 9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Refer to my response to the previous question. (Oh, by the way, referring people to other things you’ve done is another great piece of advice received.) About HackerNoon’s 2021 Noonie Awards The annual Noonie Awards celebrate the best and brightest of the tech industry, bringing together all who are making the Internet and the world of tech what it is today. Please be sure to , nominate, and vote for the people and companies who you think are making the biggest impact on the tech industry today. check out our award categories The 2021 Noonies are sponsored by: , , and . Thank you so much to these sponsors who are helping us celebrate the accomplishments of all our nominees. bybit Dottech Domains Avast

‘Data Science Is Not a Math Skill but a Life Skill’: Noonies Nominee Kirk Borne

The Kirby games franchise is charming and surprisingly filled with depth, but it never managed to reach the level of fame that other Nintendo titles gained. Despite this, it’s a series that’s still going strong today, with its coming in March 2022. most recently announced title Kirby games deserve more recognition, and it’s interesting to see just how much recognition they’ve truly gained to this date. To honor some of the best titles in the franchise, here are the top 10 Kirby series games ranked by how much they sold. it’s difficult to find truly accurate lifetime sales data for the whole Kirby series. The sources for this data might not be entirely reliable, so feel free to double-check the listed numbers if they don’t seem right to you. Side note: The Top 10 Kirby Games Ranked by Sales 10. Kirby’s Return to Dream Land 9. Kirby’s Epic Yarn 8. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land 7. Kirby’s Pinball Land 6. Kirby: Squeak Squad 5. Kirby’s Dream Land 2 4. Kirby Triple Deluxe 3. Kirby Super Star Ultra 2. Kirby Star Allies 1. Kirby’s Dream Land 10. Kirby’s Return to Dream Land (Wii) - ~1.79 Million Copies Though it ended up changing the landscape of Kirby games for years to come, Kirby’s Return to Dream Land only makes it to number 10 on this list. It was the first console-made Kirby game to feature full multiplayer alongside extra modes and challenges, and many of the improvements and changes it made to the series are present today. Despite its placement, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Kirby fan that wouldn’t consider this game to be one of the best in the series. 9. Kirby’s Epic Yarn (Wii) - ~1.85 Million Copies Kirby’s Epic Yarn isn’t actually much of a Kirby game. Without copy abilities or even being able to inhale enemies, this game offers a more lighthearted take on traditional Kirby gameplay. It’s an even more kid-friendly version of an already kid-friendly series...but as a result, it has some of the best charm and most relaxing atmospheres you’ll find in any video game. 8. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA) - 2.1 Million Copies A remake of the NES title, Kirby’s Adventure, this game featured updated graphics and new game modes to draw in fans both old and new. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land’s changes were pretty miniscule overall, but an already fine game with updated visuals didn’t need much more to reach over 2 million copies sold. 7. Kirby’s Pinball Land (GB) - 2.19 Million Copies This is honestly an odd one to see here. Kirby’s Pinball Land was pretty much just pinball with a Kirby skin over it. It release on the Game Boy, and also the console the first-ever Kirby game released on. Simple games like these had great appeal on handheld systems, so that could be at least one reason this spinoff found such success. did one of the best-selling handheld consoles ever 6. Kirby: Squeak Squad (DS) - ~2.2 Million Copies Kirby: Squeak Squad is, in the context of the Kirby series, a little weird. It featured an in-game view of Kirby’s stomach where items and treasure could be stored, as well as unique mouse-like enemies known as the Squeaks. It’s also the first game - and so far, the only game - with copy abilities like Animal and Metal. Though it hasn’t been as much of an influence on the series as other games, it had some creative ideas that certainly helped it rise to its level of success. 5. Kirby’s Dream Land 2 (GB) - 2.36 Million Copies As the sequel to the first-ever Kirby game, Kirby’s Dream Land 2 manages to crown itself as part of the top 5 best-selling games of the series. Being the first game to feature animal buddies and the fan-favorite Dark Matter antagonist, Dream Land 2 offered a new perspective that other titles couldn’t quite measure up to. It might not be the most iconic game, but its spot in the top 5 was well-earned. 4. Kirby Triple Deluxe (3DS) - 2.61 Million Copies This game built off of Return to Dream Land, downsizing its content to match a handheld system’s scale while also refining it to make the entire experience even more fun. Kirby Triple Deluxe featured new copy abilities, 2.5D level structures, and - in this writer’s opinion - some of the best music of any game out there. Fans of this game should check out Kirby: Planet Robobot if they haven’t already; it didn’t make the list, but it’s a perfect companion piece to a fantastic title. 3. Kirby Super Star Ultra (DS) - ~2.9 Million Copies A remake of the original SNES title, Kirby Super Star Ultra ended up being more than just a prettier game. Not only did it feature updated music and graphics, it included entirely new bosses and story content. Some of this content became a staple in newer games, making Super Star Ultra a must-play for anyone even remotely interested in the Kirby series. 2. Kirby Star Allies (Switch) - ~3 Million Copies As the latest mainline title, the success of Kirby Star Allies gives high hopes for the series’s future. Featuring characters from previous games and more expansive gameplay options, Star Allies brings the tried-and-true Kirby formula to one of its highest peaks yet. 3 million copies might not seem like a lot compared to other franchises. For example, that number might only come somewhat close to . However, it’s a number the Kirby series can be proud of...especially when considering the gap in total sales between second and first most-sold games in the Kirby franchise. the top 10 best-selling Zelda titles 1. Kirby’s Dream Land (GB) - 5.13 Million Copies Having been alluded to throughout this list, Kirby’s Dream Land is the first and most successful Kirby game ever. Kirby wasn’t even fully pink by this time - his appearance on the box art was based on the gray palette of the Game Boy. Despite the series only finding its feet, Kirby’s Dream Land became a success that hasn’t been replicated by the series even today. With renewed interest in the series thanks to the success of Star Allies, and a brand new style of gameplay in Kirby and the Forgotten Land, this list might end up blown away before long. The Kirby series of games is one filled with unique ideas and interesting possibilities for the future - both inside and outside the titles themselves. References: Kirby for Series - Sales, Wiki, Release Dates, Review, Cheats, Walkthrough (vgchartz.com) Kirby (series) - Wikipedia Kirby | Video Game Sales Wiki | Fandom Nintendo software and hardware sales data from 1983 to present | Install Base (installbaseforum.com) All images taken from Unofficial Kirby Wiki

Top 10 Kirby Series Games Ranked by Sales

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your  background. I’m Kyle Kirwan, co-founder, and CEO of Bigeye. Before starting Bigeye with my co-founder Egor Gryaznov, I was one of the first analysts at Uber and went on to become a product  manager in their Data Platform group. I launched the company’s data catalog, Databook, as well as other tooling used by thousands of their internal data users. Those tools helped users with data discovery, quality, freshness, lineage, and other metadata challenges. Egor and I met on Uber’s Experimentation Platform team which I co-founded. We developed the first set of data pipelines used by product teams across the company to analyze A/B test outcomes. What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do? Bigeye is a data observability platform that helps data teams make sure all the data their organization depends on is fresh, high quality, and reliable. We automatically collect metadata and use anomaly detection techniques to flag problems in the data and help them solve them before they turn into outages. What is the origin story? While at Uber, Egor and I got to work on a bunch of different data platform problems: building analytics products like dashboards and data pipelines, managing the data warehouse and building our own tools for working with data. As the organization blew up in size, we had to keep solving new types of problems to keep everyone fed with the data they needed: warehouse cluster synchronization, pipeline testing, data discovery, understanding which teams contributed what amounts to the infra bill, and the list kept getting longer. The company was ~200 people when I joined in 2013 and 10,000+ people when I left in 2018. A fairly large portion of the company could run their own queries, build their own dashboards, write their own pipelines, etc. The Data Platform group existed to provide that heavily self-service-oriented model — similar to the “data mesh” concept that’s gaining traction now. My product area within that group was metadata: giving users tools for finding, understanding, trusting, and managing the couple hundred petabytes of data on the platform. Bigeye is the result of experiencing a bunch of these challenges from different angles — as the analyst, as the pipeline owner, and as the maker of tools — and then talking to people who left the company and missed the tooling they used to take for granted. After I kept hearing, “I really miss tool X,” I went out and interviewed a bunch of data teams and found that freshness, quality, and reliability were at or near the top of everyone’s “pain list” so we decided to start working there. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? We’re a team of data people creating tools for data people, and everyone is excited about building the tools of the future. Everyone brings a very no-bullshit mentality and a lot of curiosity when it comes to thinking about the things we can build for customers. Because we’ve been in the trenches, we are a great team for these problems. I’m confident we’re the only ones in the space who have seen both what it’s like to deal with these problems when your data warehouse is a single Postgres box and also what it’s like with thousands of users and tens of thousands of tables replicated across several datacenters. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I’d probably be hacking together some data tools somewhere else! At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? Helping customers solve tough problems so they can make magic with data. Customer usage has doubled four quarters in a row and that’s a great indicator of how much our customers are relying on Bigeye. We measure basic usage by how many total observations we make on their data for them. More customers, measuring more data attributes, on more of their data, more often, is what creates more usage. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? It’s really all about customers. Every new logo is an immense source of pride. Nothing is better than getting a Slack or a text from a customer saying that Bigeye just caught an issue that would have otherwise taken days to spot and fix. What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why? We love using Linear to build Bigeye. It’s really a game-changer for productivity. We also love playing with other products in and around data: I actually just hooked up Confluent, Rockset, and Redash last night to get a toy real-time analytics dashboard up and running. We also already run a bunch of other tools internally like dbt, Astronomer, and some other stuff. The day I have to completely give up playing around with new data products will be a sad one. I don’t know that I’m worried much about any new technologies. One thing I do worry about is jargon, and how it can get deliberately complicated by vendors to confuse customers and better position their own products. I think it’s a net negative for the industry because it slows down our collective understanding in exchange for gains that go to a single company. What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform? I love a publication that caters so much to a technologist audience. As tech and software engineering and data science gain more awareness in general society I think it’s important to have a publication that maintains such a focus on practitioners. What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself? You actually do love backpacking, you just need to go to Yosemite to realize it. Go! Go now! What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing? Experience is a double-edged sword. You get the benefit of having ingrained patterns that help you short-circuit product challenges, or key in on things customers say that implicate solutions they aren’t aware of yet, and things like that. But it also comes with your own biases based on the environment you were in when you assimilated those patterns into your thinking. That’s a tradeoff you’ve already made and can’t entirely undo. The earlier you can understand your own bias /precision reality, the better you can help your customers. Vote for Bigeye for . Startup of the Year, San Francisco

'Experience is a Double-edged Sword': Kyle Kirwan, CEO of Bigeye

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. My name is Mikhail Kirilin, and for the past 7 years, I've been involved in PR, editorial, and communications in one way or another. I am from Barnaul, Russia. Now I live in Cyprus, Limassol. Previously, I worked as head of PR at MuseScore, and now I work with one of the largest fintech companies. I am into indie games, write some electronic music at my leisure, and listen to jazz-influenced hip-hop. Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? I've been studying hedge funds and their inner workings. Twelve hours of research resulted in from public sources. a piece that mentions various revelations by employees and fund managers Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I write quite rarely because my main activity is related to editorial work. More often than not, I edit other people's texts and do all the related work with a team of 24 authors. Topics of interest to me: social engineering, various aspects of the fintech software market, product thinking, and PR. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) Like any project, you must first decompose the objectives, do the research, set goals. More often than not, good material is obtained when either personal or research experience is accumulated to the extent from which a conclusion can be drawn. The writing process itself is unremarkable. A day, even without copywriting, I write about 28,000 characters - asynchronous communication, correspondence, work with documents. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? Working in the fintech industry was a big challenge for me as a humanitarian. I barely got a C in algebra at school. Therefore, the task is both complicated and simplified at once: until I understand the topic of the material thoroughly, the text will not work. Any obscure product that requires a lot of hours of research is a challenge. But any challenge brings results and some new knowledge. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? I'm not planning any career goals. In PR there are enough tactical and strategic goals, one of them I can name - to raise brand awareness of the product. Of course, there are KPIs and all the necessary tools to work with the data. There are more down-to-earth but ambitious goals. These are to achieve the publications in the industry's tier 1 media. If you look at the big goals, I see the prospect of creating my own PR agency. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? I like to spend a few days stuck in video games. Lately, I've been really into Frostpunk & Horizon: Zero Dawn. Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? I read science fiction. I don't have much free time, so hobbies are usually substituted for some household chores. What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? I might write something about data-driven PR. There will also be new stories about fintech, hedge funds, and data science. Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Huge greetings to our ! Barnaul Digital Community

Meet the Writer: Mikhail Kirilin Did 12 Hours of Research for His Latest Piece

(Welcome Startup Founders! See example interviews -→ ) here HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background. I have been an entrepreneur for many years - I like to “fix” things by trying to solve problems with technology. Originally I am educated in a bank, but that was honestly way too boring, but I guess it was a good basic education. Later on, I did an MBA and read 1000s of pages in large books. But to me, the best way to learn is to get started in real life, the experience you get cannot be read in books. What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do? Our company is called FortKnoxster. We are a cybersecurity company focused on the crypto space. Our platform offers private communications, digital wallets, DeFi features, etc - all in one secure encrypted app. A one-stop crypto platform. What is the origin story? We wondered why nobody had built a one-stop super-secure encrypted platform, which contained ALL you need in terms of default encrypted communications, calling, storage, etc. So we decided to fix the problem. Later on, we added non-custodial wallet, crypto onboarding, and other DeFi stuff - and we have a few other cool features coming up soon. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? What’s not to love?! We are working in many time zones and there is always something going on. Our team consists of some of the best cybersecurity engineers available and we have so many things on the drawing board we are looking to develop in the future. Unfortunately, cybercrimes, hacks, and online crimes are exploding daily, so we are for sure going to be busy in the years to come. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I would be building something else. I love to innovate and get ideas into action. For me, it's more of a hobby/lifestyle than work. There are so many options out there to change/disrupt what is. I guess it has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur than now. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? We have managed to build a platform from scratch, which our users like and appreciate. Every day we get nice messages from happy users, that’s really rewarding and motivating - that’s a success in our book. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? Great question - we are super happy that we have users in over 180 countries and growing. Also, daily we see more and more usage of our platform. With the wallet and DeFi features to be launched very soon, we are confident that our traction will get a solid boost. What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why? Blockchain and the many advantages it brings are the most exciting to us right now. Blockchain technologies - and related spin-offs will change a lot for the better and it will disrupt almost any industry in the future. Other technologies like AI, Robotics, and quantum computing are for sure also interesting and will be part of our future lives. What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform? We have been happy users of HackerNoon and find your articles and fresh approach really inspiring - great job! What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself? Follow your passion and do not listen too much to others. Everything is possible with the right mindset and hard work. Just do it! What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing? What tends to surprise me is the speed of new technologies emerging, it’s hard to keep up with all the possibilities it brings :) Vote of FortKnoxster as the Startup of the Year, Gibraltar

Startup Interview with Niels Klitsgaard, CEO & co-founder, FortKnoxster, Gibraltar

Ishan Pandey: Hi Kiran, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind Rocket Vault Finance? Hey Ishan, thanks for having me over. Delighted to be on Hackernoon and share more details about the exciting stuff we are developing at Rocket Vault. Kiran Mannam: I come from the Financial Services domain and have spent more than 17 years working with various financial institutions across the globe, understanding their complex problems and providing solutions to address those. The average retail investor entering the Crypto/DeFi landscape is confused. There are more than 8,000 different cryptocurrencies on the market. Following the market, development takes too much time and effort when done manually. By the time one comes to a conclusion, the best opportunity is already lost. Rocket Vault started with a simple idea to simplify the value of investing in crypto assets for the common person. We wanted to develop a product that is really simple to use from an end-user perspective and handles all the complex parts behind the scenes that minimises risks and maximises returns and most importantly, lets you be at peace while Rocket Vault works hard for you 24x7x365 days. Ishan Pandey: ‘Stablecoins’ are crypto-assets that aim to maintain a stable value relative to a specific asset or a pool or basket of assets. What role does Machine Learning Algorithms play in minimising losses and maximising gains? The best part about Rocket Vault trading system is that it adopts a data-driven approach and keeps the “emotion” quotient away. Kiran Mannam: The trading-based AI engine is fed with data from global exchanges and it applies data modelling techniques and statistical analytics to analyse the data. Using advanced AI predictive analytics & Machine Learning pattern recognition algorithms identifies the risky assets and avoids them and thereby minimises risks. It also identifies the best-performing assets and diversifies the portfolio across multiple high performing assets ranging from 500-800, which is not possible to achieve manually. The algorithm also keeps monitoring the investments in real-time to keep booking profits from time-to-time at optimal levels. Another advantage is that the profits generated are compounded automatically, thereby maximising gains. Ishan Pandey: Can you explain how Smart Vaults work and how these strategies help increase the return rate? (Technical explanation, code, trading modules, front-end etc.) Our Smart Vault grabs the various short term opportunities using AL/ML trained models using the Combination of Anomalies in volume and time-series data patterns irrespective of bull or bear market conditions. Kiran Mannam: If you notice our LIVE order alerts in the telegram channel, for every Sell order, the time difference between (BUY Low & SELL High) or (Sell High & Buy Low) varies between minutes, hours or max days. Rarely you will find a prediction that lasts weeks or months. Our trading algorithm is not designed to predict an asset’s price moment for a very long-time frame, like months or years. Each prediction targets smaller profits with a high probability of being truly positive and with a limited risk of being a false positive. The predictions work on a probability theory where we are counting on true overall prediction with smaller profits in a short time frame and more accumulated profit in a long period of time which is a unique competitive advantage of our product. Using a short term time frame prediction strategy along with a balanced asset allocation strategy, the algorithm eliminates the risks involved irrespective of bull or bear market conditions in the long run. This is the reason why the payout structure is also quarterly. Currently, the true prediction rate stands at around 85% and as the AI engine keeps learning from data, it keeps getting smarter and leads to more accurate predictions in the future. Ishan Pandey: I read that you have been developing, testing & executing “Smart Vault” strategies which essentially replace an experienced fund manager by building intelligence into the trading system. Do you think that AI traders are going to rule the market? Further, what does this mean for retail investors who don’t have the resources to build AI-based trading algorithms? You have rightly pointed out that many retail investors don’t have sufficient resources/infrastructure to capture all the market opportunities by using the latest technology available out there.  Our motivation is to create a pool for retail investors, which we would offer a free service just by holding RVF tokens and trading algorithm will take care of grabbing all such opportunities and sharing the profits back to pools. Kiran Mannam: AI traders already impacting the financial world, be it Equities, Fx or Bond Markets and Crypto would be no different. Regarding replacing a fund manager, generally fund managers are equipped with a lot of data that would help them decide how much to invest, book profit/disinvestment, etc. All these decisions are taken manually with the help of data and a lot of experience gathered over a period of time. We follow a similar approach. All decisions are data-driven, backed by historical data and completely automated in making value investment in the long term. We need to feed various data sources to AI engines for a better decision-making process. I believe we will see many advancements in value investments going forward in the following years. Ishan Pandey: As opposed to trading bots that require a significant amount of user input and decision-making, Rocket Vaults are automated smart vaults that hold cryptocurrencies in a pool, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. How safe are these smart vaults in terms of Client protection and what is the technology framework? We have been developing the Vault Strategies since early 2019 and actual testing started from late 2019 - early 2020. It has gone through many testing phases. All these times while we are developing our product, we have incorporated an effective feedback mechanism that controls vault’s behaviour in extreme scenarios using separate control engines, which we refer to as “Treasury Management Engine”, “Asset Rebalancing Engine”, “Monitoring Engine” among others that monitors the Vaults to handle all possible scenarios. Kiran Mannam: I recommend taking a look at the white paper on our website for an in-depth understanding of different engines’ role. Ishan Pandey: What kind of impact do you think will The Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act have on Stabelcoins in the US Market? I believe the STABLE act would significantly increase regulation and supervision of stablecoins, treating them more like traditional brick-and-mortar banks under U.S. law. I believe some level of regulation is good for the greater adoption of digital currencies. We have been watching the space closely and being compliant is a top priority for us. Kiran Mannam: The trading algorithm is not limited to stablecoins vaults as such. We do have plans to launch ETH, BTC and other vaults too going forward. The user is free to choose which Vault services he would like to avail. Whichever token the user deposits, the rewards are distributed in the same token. Ishan Pandey: What factors can affect the APY of an algorithm? Further, when coding trading algorithms, what things should developers keep in mind? Well, investors love the crypto space because of one main reason: “high volatile behaviour”. If the whole crypto market stays calm, there is not much scope to predict the vault, impacting the APY. So market volatility is one of the factors that decide the APY. Kiran Mannam: Our main focus while developing AL/ML strategies is primarily to improve the predictability based on historical data while adapting to the current market conditions. And we never rely on a single strategy that could potentially be outdated with new market conditions. Keep adjusting the AI training models and adjust the hyperparameters that reflect the current market conditions. It is recommended to have some risk management in place, alerting the right team when the system sees red flags. Ishan Pandey: According to you, what new trends are we going to see in the Stablecoins market moving forward? Kiran Mannam: The number of stable coins in circulation surged by 500% in 2020 — cementing their reputation as “one of the most-used payment networks in the world.” Looking ahead, I believe that the value of dollar-backed stablecoins will surpass $150 billion and also, there could be more stable coins joining the likes of Tether and USDC. The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions.
 The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc.
 The writer does not have any vested interest in the company.

Building AI-Based Trading Algorithms - An Interview with Kiran Mannam, CEO at Rocket Vault Finance

Ishan Pandey: Hi Kirill, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup” . Please tell us about yourself and the story behind FuelGems? While in undergrad doing business at UC Berkeley, I realized there is no better job than cleantech startups because they help people and the environment and make money. Kirill Gichunts: With this in mind, I went on a career journey to build my knowledge base. I joined a Silicon Valley startup which achieved an exit. Then I did investment banking where I worked on deals worth over $2 billion. Later I became a partner at a venture capital accelerator fund (part of a $3.5 billion investment company), invested in over 15 startups, and achieved an exit. After this, I began operating in the cleantech space and was fortunate to meet a group of truly brilliant scientists. We joined forces, and FuelGems was born. I was the driving force for the business side, and they were the driving force for the technology.  It was a perfect mix of business and science, and after extensive and groundbreaking R&D, we were able to give life to this incredible product and bring it to market. Ishan Pandey: According to you, what is the future of energy after COVID-19 and how is it going to impact industries worldwide? Energy is the driving force of all economic sectors. While there has been an economic slowdown due to COVID-19, with time markets will recover, and the energy space will rebound and grow. Kirill Gichunts: Even today, cars, ships, trains, and trucks are still heavily used to transport goods and raw materials. Ishan Pandey: How can fuel nanotechnology reduce greenhouse gasses and emissions? The nanoparticles that we designed were shown to increase engine efficiency while reducing fuel consumption by 9%. Kirill Gichunts: Our nanoparticles enable more fuel molecules to burn inside the engine and release more energy rather than escaping the combustion process as pollutants. We showed a of by 9%, by 15%, and by 6% and by 50%. reduction CO2 CO particulate matter reduced unburnt hydrocarbons Besides, our nanotechnology improves lubricity and keeps fuel fresh. Ishan Pandey: Organizations want to be sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint. According to you, what is the potential quantifiable upside of nanoparticle additives for ride-sharing, supply chains, and logistics companies? Our technology enables us to manufacture nanoparticles at a very cheap cost. Only a tiny amount of our nanoparticles is needed to treat a massive amount of fuel. Kirill Gichunts: Unlike some nanoparticles that are added to fuel are toxic, the nanoparticles that we have developed are completely safe because they are made from carbon. Given the low price and safety of FuelGems’ technology, it can be used extensively in the $3.5 trillion fuel market. This means that our nanoparticles can be added to fuel at the refinery level, used for fleets, ride-sharing companies, and in any mode of transport using diesel, gasoline, or biofuel. FuelGems could potentially expand the fuel additive market by $5-10 billion or more. Think of our product as Intel. The same way Intel is inside computers, FuelGems is inside the fuel. Ishan Pandey: What is the market size and who are the key vendors in the fuel additives market? The fuel additive market is over $45 billion. Kirill Gichunts: Ethanol replaced MTBE to improve gasoline’s cleanliness and is currently added as 10% of gasoline in the US. The ethanol market in the US is over $40 billion annually. Research shows that the classic fuel additive market is about $6 billion. The key players are Afton Chemical Corporation, Innospec, and The Lubrizol Corporation and few others are Chevron Oronite, Evonik, BASF, Lanxess, Dorf Ketal Chemicals, Infineum, Cummins, Huntsman Corporation, ENI, Dow, and QAFAC. It’s interesting to note that ethanol produces less energy than gasoline; however, when FuelGems is added to ethanol, its performance level is par with gasoline. Ishan Pandey: According to you, what are the key factors driving the fuel additives market? Further, what would be the impact of electric cars' adoption on the consumption of oil worldwide? Stringent environmental regulations drive the need to make fuel cleaner and increase fuel additives' demand. Also increasing the number of cars and trucks will increase fuel consumption as well as fuel additives. Kirill Gichunts: Research shows that electric vehicles will replace gasoline and diesel cars by about 30% by 2050, thus driving down oil consumption. Overall, the decline in light vehicles will make a dent in the $3.5 trillion fuel market. Even if the market shrinks to $2.5 trillion, it is negligible for FuelGems because at this size it is still enormous. Ships, trains, aeroplanes, trucks and heavy machinery will likely be powered by gasoline or diesel. From a cleantech perspective, electric cars are as clean as the electricity they use. Over 60% of the world gets its electricity from coal and natural gas and about 20% from nuclear power. Thus, electric cars are powered mostly by coal and nuclear. Moreover, the coal and natural gas that produce the electricity for electric vehicles spew about 0.6 pounds of CO2 per mile into the air, while gasoline-powered cars release about 0.7 pounds of CO2 per mile. Using FuelGems fuel additive would make gasoline cars almost as clean as electric cars. Ishan Pandey: In the Netherlands, organizations are now storing CO2/carbon underground on the ocean floor. Do you think this experiment is safe and a sustainable idea? This looks like a novel concept in the initial experimental stage. Much more data on the practical implementation is needed. Kirill Gichunts: Other promising approaches are available, such as converting CO2 to graphite or using biofuel instead of fossil fuels—plants convert CO2 to oxygen. All of these approaches need to be implemented right away, in parallel, to make an impact. FuelGems is ready to go today, providing excellent possibilities for environmental and economic benefits for diesel, gasoline and biofuel users. Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company. Interviewer - Ishan Pandey.

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