Morfin.io

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In case you missed the previous article ( ), I gave a very brief introduction on Homomorphic Encryption (HE), talked about library, and outlined some of the pain points of learning to use it. Part 1 Microsoft SEAL’s — you really have to spend a lot of time understanding the inner-workings of the library so I built to help you rapidly experiment with Microsoft SEAL using , the JavaScript package I wrote. tl;dr morfix.io node-seal It turns out you can use this library to build your own privacy-preserving applications, but there are alternatives available. This time around, I’ll compare my implementation to see how SEAL stacks up against another famous cryptosystem to give you some insight. : Paillier for simple applications, SEAL for complex applications Spoiler 📋 Feature Comparison It is important to know is not the only HE library — especially in the JavaScript world. Unfortunately, it happens to be the only homomorphic library available among a sea of homomorphic libraries in the JavaScript domain. node-seal fully partially Many of these alternatives leverage the . Therefore, I’ll make a brief comparison of Paillier vs SEAL even though it is not a truly fair comparison (PHE vs FHE). I’ll briefly go over the capabilities of each, abbreviating a plaintext as and a ciphertext as : Paillier cryptosystem plain cipher Paillier Add together ciphers Multiply a by a cipher plain SEAL Negate a cipher Add two together ciphers Add a to a plain cipher Subtract two together ciphers Subtract a from a plain cipher Multiply two together ciphers Multiply a by a cipher plain Square a cipher … We can easily see that SEAL is the clear winner in terms of features and I haven’t even listed all the different evaluation methods it supports. An important distinction is that while SEAL can homomorphically multiply two Paillier can only multiply a by a — but this is still very useful. For very simple applications Paillier maybe a better choice. ciphers cipher plain Encrypting values So far, we are talking about homomorphic evaluations on — this is where Paillier shines in terms of both algorithmic and spatial complexity. single values You simply encrypt a value and receive a : cipher cipher = encrypt( ) cipher // Pseudocode const 5 typeof // 'bigint' Homomorphic operations are rather fast on single values and each Paillier is just another , albeit a very large one — a . This is the reason why many Paillier implementations are dependent on support. cipher number BigInt BigInt How you would encrypt a value and receive a using SEAL: cipher plain = encode( ) plain cipher = encrypt(plain) cipher // Pseudocode const 5 typeof // ? const typeof // ? In SEAL, there’s an extra abstraction — you need to perform an extra step of your data before encryption. Needless to say, the underlying data is not a primitive type. encoding Parallelism What if you had a few items to encrypt? For example, say you want to encrypt a set of 10 numbers in an array. Using Paillier, you would need to iterate in a loop and encrypt each item, send this over to a server which would perform a homomorphic add or multiply, and return the result. No problem, Paillier computation is quick enough and the spatial requirements are still quite low. This works more or less efficiently. SEAL on the other hand actually works in almost the same way — at least when you’re using the . IntegerEncoder Now, let’s say you want to encrypt 1,000+ elements? We start to see Paillier break down in terms of performance. This is where SEAL shines in its amazing ability to all the numbers into a single using the . batch plain BatchEncoder What this means is instead of iterating in a loop for number of elements O(n) to encrypt or perform some HE operation you can do this in constant time O(1). SEAL can operate on all batched elements in parallel with no extra computational cost — also known as Single Instruction, Multiple Data ( ). n SIMD 🦾 : In SEAL, the number of elements you are allowed to encode using the is defined by the encryption parameters used to set up the encryption context. In a typical context, you would have a power of 2 for the number of elements. Ex: elements. Note BatchEncoder 4096 📦 The Setup The process is a bit different because where Paillier can directly encrypt numbers, SEAL requires us to first the data into a format it understands before you can encrypt it as mentioned above. It also takes a bit more understanding of how to set it up correctly. I’ll take one of the many Paillier implementations and show a full encrypt/decrypt example for both, skipping homomorphic evaluations. encode paillier-bigint paillier = ( ) * paillier ( () => { { publicKey, privateKey } = paillier.generateRandomKeys( ) cipher = publicKey.encrypt( n) decypted = privateKey.decrypt(cipher) })() // import paillier in node.js const require 'paillier-bigint.js' // import paillier in native JS import as from 'paillier-bigint' async // Create keys const await 3072 // Encrypt the plainText integer const 5 // Decrypt the cipherText const // decrypted === 5n Not bad! Now, let’s look at node-seal… node-seal { Seal } = ( )
( () => { Morfix = Seal() schemeType = Morfix.SchemeType.BFV polyModulusDegree = bitSizes = [ , , ] bitSize = encParms = Morfix.EncryptionParameters(schemeType) encParms.setPolyModulusDegree(polyModulusDegree) coeffModulus = Morfix.CoeffModulus.Create(
      polyModulusDegree, .from(bitSizes)
    )
    encParms.setCoeffModulus(coeffModulus) plainModulus = Morfix.PlainModulus.Batching(polyModulusDegree, bitSize)
    encParms.setPlainModulus(plainModulus) context = Morfix.Context(encParms, ) (!context.parametersSet) { ( )
    } keyGenerator = Morfix.KeyGenerator(context) secretKey = keyGenerator.getSecretKey() publicKey = keyGenerator.getPublicKey() evaluator = Morfix.Evaluator(context) batchEncoder = Morfix.BatchEncoder(context) encryptor = Morfix.Encryptor(context, publicKey) decryptor = Morfix.Decryptor(context, secretKey) array = .from({ : })
      .map( i) plain = batchEncoder.encode(array) cipher = encryptor.encrypt(plain) decryptedPlainText = decryptor.decrypt(cipher) decodedPlainText = batchEncoder.decode(decryptedPlainText) })() // Pick one for your environment // npm install node-seal // yarn add node-seal // // ES6 or CommonJS // import { Seal } from 'node-seal' const require 'node-seal' async // Wait for the web assembly to fully initialize const await //////////////////////// // Encryption Parameters //////////////////////// // Create a new EncryptionParameters const const 4096 const 36 36 37 const 20 const // Assign Poly Modulus Degree // Create a suitable set of CoeffModulus primes const Int32Array // Assign a PlainModulus (only for BFV scheme type) const //////////////////////// // Context //////////////////////// // Create a new Context const true // Helper to check if the Context was created successfully if throw new Error 'Could not set the parameters in the given context. Please try different encryption parameters.' //////////////////////// // Keys //////////////////////// const const const //////////////////////// // Instances //////////////////////// const // Create a BatchEncoder (only BFV SchemeType) const const const //////////////////////// // Homomorphic Functions //////////////////////// // Create an array of 4096 values const Int32Array length 4096 ( ) => _, i // Encode data to a PlainText const // Encrypt a PlainText const // Decrypt a CipherText const // Decode data from a PlainText const // decodedPlainText === array 😧🔫 Okay wow — there’s more you need to setup when using node-seal. Luckily for you, all your code can be generated using the on and there’s also documentation located at . You can find a little more information on vs in . a lot code generator morfix.io/sandbox docs.morfix.io BFV CKKS Part 1 Scheme Type I’ve selected because I want to just worry about integers and not floats. I’ve also selected to use the to take advantage of . My is set to which provides me with a good initial setup that can use the library to its full extent. Any less and I won’t be able to use some of the more advanced functions. Choosing this number also means I can encode/encrypt up to 4096 elements. BFV batchEncoder SIMD polyModulusDegree 4096 CoeffModulus The is tricky to explain. You will need to select a few numbers, but their sum cannot exceed a certain maximum (depending on your other encryption parameters). There are lots of ways to configure these values, the best advice I can give is to experiment with the defaults first and worry about optimizing later. I’ve selected the default values provided by the library helper function and hardcoded them. You can see some other configurations in . coeffModulus morfix.io/sandbox PlainModulus The is the gatekeeper of the upper and lower bounds of each value you encrypt. More precisely, the values are stored the . Without diving into the technical details, start with a value of and worry about this value when you encounter decryptions that fail after a certain magnitude. plainModulus modulo plainModulus 20 💾 Spatial Complexity Continuing on some of the tradeoffs for using SEAL over Paillier, there comes a time when you may want to save your application state including your encryption keys and to load at a later date. A simple serialize function can be made with Paillier by saving the key parameters and then re-creating the keys. Similarly, saving is trivial since there are a few ways to serialize BigInts. ciphers ciphers I’m using synchronous operations for the sake of readability here… fs genKeyPair = keySize => { keys = paillier.generateRandomKeys(keySize)
  privateKey = keys.privateKey
  publicKey = keys.publicKey BigInt.prototype.toJSON = { }
  fs.writeFileSync( , .stringify(privateKey), )
  fs.writeFileSync( , .stringify(publicKey), )
} loadKeys = () => { rawPrivateKey = fs.readFileSync( , ) rawPublicKey = fs.readFileSync( , ) privateKeyObject = .parse(rawPrivateKey) publicKeyObject = .parse(rawPublicKey) publicKey = paillier.PublicKey(
    BigInt(publicKeyObject.n),
    BigInt(publicKeyObject.g)
  ) privateKey = paillier.PrivateKey(
    BigInt(privateKeyObject.lambda),
    BigInt(privateKeyObject.mu),
    publicKey,
    BigInt(privateKeyObject.p),
    BigInt(privateKeyObject.q)
  ) { privateKey, publicKey }
} // Generate and save const async const // BigInt's do not serialize natively. // We're going to implement out own naïve serializer method // which just saves to a string of numbers. ( ) function return ` ` ${ .toString()} this 'paillier_private_key' JSON 'utf8' 'paillier_public_key' JSON 'utf8' // Load and instantiate const async const 'paillier_private_key' 'utf8' const 'paillier_public_key' 'utf8' const JSON const JSON const new const new return The problem with this approach is that there’s no standard serialization methods for most Paillier implementations leaving you to create your own custom wrappers — although for this case it is certainly feasible. Thankfully, SEAL includes serialization methods and for of the objects in their library allowing us to communicate much more easily with different library implementations. Let’s see what this looks like assuming some of the objects we are using are global in this scope: save load all genKeyPair = context => { keyGenerator = Morfix.keyGenerator(context) privateKey = keys.getSecretKey() publicKey = keys.getPublicKey()
  fs.writeFileSync( , privateKey.save(), )
  fs.writeFileSync( , publicKey.save(), )
} loadKeys = context => { sKey = Morfix.SecretKey() pKey = Morfix.PublicKey()
  sKey.load(context, fs.readFileSync(secretKeyName, ))
  pKey.load(context, fs.readFileSync(publicKeyName, )) { : sKey, : pKey }
} // Generate and save const async const const const 'seal_private_key' 'utf8' 'seal_public_key' 'utf8' // Load and instantiate const async const const 'utf8' 'utf8' return privateKey publicKey The serialized output can be configured to be a base64 string or a binary Uint8Array. These methods are also available on and . Deserializing automatically ensures the object is valid, making it versatile for many languages such as C++ or Python. plains ciphers very But there’s one drawback — the size… saved = encrypted.save() .log(Buffer.byteLength(saved, )) const console 'base64' // 91213 bytes ~ Yikes! That’s more than the size of a decently large BigInt for Paillier. The encryption keys are also considerably larger as well — especially when you’re using the more advanced functions that need . Consequently, this means more bandwidth costs over the wire. 89Kb a lot GaloisKeys 📊 Performance Now on to the good stuff! I have to say this is not a true comparison of Paillier vs SEAL, it’s rather a comparison of a particular library against another with arguably similar contexts. Unfortunately, there’s just not that much to compare it with so this is what we have for JavaScript. I’ve written a simple benchmark comparing the relative performance of each library. Disclaimer: I’ve configured Paillier to use a 3072-bit length which represents a 128-bit security context according to the . For SEAL 128-bit security is already set up by default (unless overridden) and I’ve selected parameters that reflect a common real-world use case. This is the roughly the minimal setup in SEAL required to perform all homomorphic evaluations (including the advanced functions such as rotations, dot product, etc.) Sure, you could optimize if your application doesn’t use any multiplications to squeeze out every last drop, but this represents a good starting point. NIST recommendation paillier-bigint Generating private/public keys: Done [ microseconds]
Running tests .................................................. Done
Average encrypt: microseconds
Average decrypt: microseconds
Average add: microseconds
Average multiply plain: microseconds 2285233 232081 229535 55 1409 node-seal /
| Encryption parameters :
|   scheme: BFV
|   poly_modulus_degree: |   coeff_modulus size: ( + + ) bits
|   plain_modulus: \
Generating secret/public keys: Done [ microseconds]
Running tests .................................................. Done
Average batch: microseconds
Average unbatch: microseconds
Average encrypt: microseconds
Average decrypt: microseconds
Average add: microseconds
Average multiply: microseconds
Average multiply plain: microseconds 4096 109 36 36 37 786433 5428 269 352 6438 1844 118 18647 2535 You can find the benchmark script . here Immediately you can see there’s a performance difference during encryption / decryption favoring SEAL, but another one favoring Paillier evaluations. Keep in mind I’ve only included a few of SEAL’s evaluation functions to keep this comparison more in line with what Paillier offers except multiplying together. This is an important distinction where you cannot perform this operation using Paillier and why it is called homomorphic. ciphers partially Node-seal vs Paillier-bigint: Key Generation (5428) vs (2285233) ~421x faster Encrypt (269 + 6438) vs (232081) ~232x faster Decrypt (352 + 1844) vs (229535) ~105x faster Add (55) vs (118) ~2x slower Multiply Plain (1409) vs (2535) ~2x slower — didn’t I mention SEAL supports batching? , this test is performing these operations on . Don’t believe me? Feel free to check out the . With that in mind, you can realize a speedup over Paillier: Wait a minute Yes 4096 elements all at the same time benchmark Encrypt (269 + 6438) vs (232081 * 4096) ~141,733x faster Decrypt (352 + 1844) vs (229535 * 4096) ~4,281,301x faster Add (118) vs (55 * 4096) ~1,909x faster Multiply Plain (2535) vs (1409 * 4096) ~2,277x faster 😎 : If you’re going to use more advanced functions with SEAL, you will need to generate relinearization keys which take about the same amount of space and time to generate as the public key. To perform rotations, you need Galois keys which take substantially longer to generate and are exceptionally large. Note If you want more in-depth benchmarking of node-seal, you can and simply run or . You will be surprised to find is actually than in addition to the results listed above! clone my repo yarn benchmark:bfv yarn benchmark:ckks CKKS faster BFV You can see the tradeoff of using SEAL — you get much better computational performance and functionality, but pay for it in spatial complexity. Conclusion There’s a lot to digest, but to summarize: When to use Paillier You in a network or memory-constrained environment are You only need to perform very simple homomorphic evaluations You’re not dealing with large amounts of encrypted data When to use SEAL You in a network or memory-constrained environment are not You need to run advanced homomorphic evaluations When you are computing on large encrypted datasets For environments that do not support WebAssembly, such as , you still have the option of choosing a pure JS implementation: or the deep import inside . Keep in mind the performance is quite a bit worse. React-Native paillier-pure node-seal Stay tuned for where I build a simple application using . No jokes this time. Part 3 node-seal Thank you for reading! Previously published at https://medium.com/@s0l0ist/homomorphic-encryption-for-web-apps-b615fb64d2a2

Homomorphic Encryption — for Web Apps 🧐 (Part 2)

Where Do I Start? I first learned about Homomorphic Encryption (HE) about 5 years ago. Since then, I have hell-bent on learning how to leverage it within my applications. Most of the libraries I found use many different flavors, or “scheme types”, and are written in low-level languages such as C++. This is mainly because of performance, but has the side-effect of being very hard to adopt. So how do we use a C++ library in a web app? Spoiler — WebAssembly. Hopefully by the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of how to use . I will briefly go over the some of the technical jargon and illustrate the pain points behind using HE followed by some alternatives. HE in Web Applications A Brief Background HE is a game changer for privacy. It allows for data to be manipulated decrypting it. The concept dates back to RSA encryption — yes, even RSA has the capability of HE functionality. However, it took quite some time before the industry saw a change. without limited In 2009, Craig Gentry’s was published and sparked the proliferation of libraries with different capabilities and varying performance. The rest is history. dissertation Looking for Libraries Today, many libraries can be found floating in the wild. I’ve listed a few prevalent ones and their respective supported scheme types, but there are notable others. : BFV, CKKS (C++) Microsoft SEAL : BGV (with GHS), CKKS (C++) HElib : BFV, BGV, CKKS, FHEW (C++) PALISADE : Ring-variant of GSW (C++) TFHE : CKKS (with bootstrapping) (C++) HEAAN Finding the right library and scheme type for your application involves a fair amount of research. What differences do these implementations have? What dependencies do they require — how can I use this in my app? How does a scheme type affect performance — or even more confusing, what limitations does a scheme impose on encrypted data? What the heck is bootstrapping and do I need it? Some of these questions need answers you even start designing a privacy-preserving application. before To get started I will talk about as it provided the best documentation when I was learning and is what I’m most familiar with. Full disclosure - I'm sponsored nor affiliated with Microsoft. I will simplify and make generalized assumptions so we can get on with it and not dwell on the details. Microsoft SEAL not very Working with Microsoft SEAL 😎 Let’s briefly cover how to encrypt data. First, you take an array (or a vector in C++), encode it to a special format to a , and then encrypt the to a . Homomorphic evaluations occur on . To get a value back, you need to decrypt and decode. plaintext plaintext ciphertext ciphertexts Pseudo code arr = [ , , ..] plain = encode(arr) cipher = encrypt(plain) evaluate.add(cipher, cipher) decrypted = decrypt(cipher) decoded = decode(decrypted) const 1 2 3. const const // Add the cipher to itself - element wise const const // `decoded` contains [2,4,6, ...] Whoa! Hold your horses — I skipped ahead and made this look easy. There are a few steps before you can even to this point. Here’s an overview of the library: get Dependencies None! Optional dependences are for compression and zlib Microsoft GSL Available schemes BFV — Allows you to operate on signed and unsigned integers CKKS — Allows you to operate on floating point numbers Basic differences and limitations BFV — The amount of data (array length) a cipher can hold is defined by the encryption parameters. Each element in the array has upper and lower bound set forth by the parameters as well. CKKS — Allows for larger bounds on each element in the array, but has half of the capacity (half the array size) to an equivalent cipher encrypted using the BFV scheme. It also only computes values. approximate Don’t worry if this is all foreign to you…bear with me… *Note on bootstrapping Bootstrapping allows for infinite homomorphic evaluations on encrypted data. Without it, there is a limit on how many evaluations (multiplications, etc.) you may perform on a cipher before it becomes impossible to decrypt correctly due to a factor. noise For now, it is hasn’t been implemented in SEAL; however it’s on their roadmap for CKKS. That being said, implementing bootstrapping can cause a significant penalty to performance, often an order of magnitude. In many cases, homomorphic algorithms for a given application don’t even need bootstrapping. A homomorphic algorithm without bootstrapping is called a algorithm. The number of levels of the algorithm (aka how many evaluations) is strictly defined by the encryption parameters you choose. leveled Choosing a scheme type The first step is to choose a scheme that is appropriate to your application. Do you require integers or can it afford a margin of error? BFV should be used when you absolutely need accuracy. CKKS has its own advantages, but introduces a bit of error in the decryption. With sufficient parameters the error can be reduced to well within acceptable limits — it’s just harder to learn at first. How do I chose appropriate parameters? Once you’ve decided on a scheme, now it’s time to define the parameters. This question is perhaps the most difficult to answer because it depends on factors. Then there are more questions: how do we test which ones work? Is there room for optimization? Do I have to build a new test application each time? many Yes, you might, but let’s go over a methodology. For now, ignore what these definitions mean. Choose a SchemeType — In my opinion,BFV is easier to learn overCKKS. At least, it is easier to see when your decryption comes out completely wrong. Start with a 128-bit SecurityLevel — Higher options are available, but come at the cost of reduced homomorphic operations. Just get it working — Start with a mid-level PolyModulusDegree (4096) and increase when you cannot successfully decrypt. Inversely, decrease it until you cannot successfully decrypt to optimize. Test upper and lower bounds — It’s upsetting when you’ve optimized for performance only to find out your decryption fails on certain values of your application. Fine tuning — Modify the bit-sizes for the CoeffModulus. Also use modulus switching (and/or rescaling for CKKS). (BFV only): Set the PlainModulus to a reasonable value of 20 and tweak when you encounter correct decryption up until a ceiling (or floor). This represents the upper and lower bound of each element in the array, but again this is affected by homomorphic evaluations. Wow — that’s a lot of things! Whats more disheartening is that these are rather terrible generalizations. There’s still a to learn about optimizing and we haven’t even started coding a simple example… 😑 lot Alternatives This is the problem which plagued me for days on end. Rather than having an immediate discussion on how to pick parameters, I will tell you a way where you can rapidly experiment on your own. I built an open-source library, , in JavaScript leveraging . I figured it would be quicker to write a test suite in JavaScript instead of C++. node-seal Microsoft SEAL It uses WebAssembly at its core with light bindings to work in or modern browsers 😎. The package already has zlib and intrinsics baked-in to make the performance close to the native library. Installing is as simple as npm install node-seal or yarn add node-seal— no need to compile anything and no dependencies. Node.js npm This is a great first step building web applications leveraging HE, but it still of quickly iterating on parameters to find what works and what doesn’t. doesn’t solve the problem Using HE in web applications With no solution, I did what any other developer would do — I built for that 🎉 an app I built to quickly test encryption parameters to see how they influence algorithm design and the decrypted results. Each step of the way is executed the same way as the native C++ library, this means most of the exceptions you will see reflect the run-time exceptions of the native library. You can create keys, variables, and even functions. When you’ve laid out an algorithm, simply execute them and watch the computations percolate down the page — all in 🙂. I’ve included a simple code-generator as well to help get started in JavaScript. Morfix.io real-time I’ve established HE is possible in client-side applications, but the next step is to process encrypted data. Now I have to build the server-side logic, right? Yes, you could — but you don’t have to. By becoming a user on my , you can create an API which operates under a set of parameters and public keys. No secret keys are needed unless you want to simulate decryption. beta platform How to start 👉🏻 Select encryption parameters ⬆️ Upload and assign public keys ➕ Create variables in the form of PlainTexts and CipherTexts ➕ Create a sequence of functions and assign variables accordingly 🚀 Execute and decrypt (with a non-persistent SecretKey) A helpful test bench simulates sending and receiving an encrypted request from the browser so you can focus more on building content rather than debugging. Oh and there’s also another basic code generator for Node.js so you can sending requests from your machine to the cloud and back 💪🏻. Conclusion Ultimately, learning HE is tough — there’s really no easy way around it. I’ve built a to help you get started with with either client or server-side applications. few tools ~All without ever decrypting your data~ A big shout out to the 🧠s at Microsoft SEAL!!! Stay tuned for where I build a simple application leveraging homomorphic APIs with . Part 2 JavaScript Thanks for reading! Previously published at https://medium.com/@s0l0ist/homomorphic-encryption-for-web-apps-a3fa52e9f03d

Homomorphic Encryption — for Web Apps 🤔 (Part 1)

How best can one make the Sling Bag title and its details, wrap below the image of the handbag, while on a small screen? This page is thanks to Bootstrap! <div = > <h3> Contact Information </h3> <form action="#">
                    <label for="fname" class="pt-4 pr-4"> First Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="First Name" class="w-50" id="fname" name="fname"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="lname" class="pr-4"> Last Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Last Name" class="w-50" id="lname" name="lname"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="telno" class="pr-4"> Phone No: </label>
                    <input type="number" placeholder="+254 722554294" class="w-50" id="telno" name="telno"> <br> <br>
                </form>
                <h4 class="pt-4"> Recipient's Delivery Address </h4>
                <form action="#">
                    <label for="idnumber" class="pt-4 pr-4"> ID Number: </label>
                    <input type="number" placeholder="Id Number" class="w-50" id="idnumber" name="idnumber"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="companyname" class="pr-4"> Company Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Company Name or Estate Name" class="w-50" id="companyname"
                        name="companyname"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="apartmentname" class="pr-4"> Apartment Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Apartment, Suite, etc (optional)" class="w-50" id="apartmentname"
                        name="apartmentname"> <br> <br>
                </form>
                <h4 class="pt-4"> Additional Information </h4>
                <form action="#">
                    <label for="moreinfo" class="pr-4"> <span class="more-info"> More Information: </span> </label>
                    <textarea name="moreinfo" id="moreinfo" cols="30" rows="5">
                </textarea>
                </form>
                <div class="complete pt-4">
                    <a href="index.html" class="btn complete-btn"> <span> Complete </span> </a>
                </div>
            </div>
            <div class="items-selected col-xl-5 col-lg-5 col-md-5 col-12">
                <div class="items-selected-title">
                    <h4> <a href="#"> Your Basket </a> </h4>
                </div>
                <div class="row media items-selected1 border-top border-bottom p-5">
                    <div class="col-xl-7 col-lg-7 col-md-7 col-12 media-left">
                        <a href="handbags.html"> <img
                                src="https://www.freepnglogos.com/uploads/women-bag-png/download-women-bag-transparent-png-image-pngimg-5.png"
                                class="media-object img-responsive w-75" alt="#"> </a>
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                    <div class="col-xl-5 col-lg-5 col-md-5 col-12 media-body">
                        <h4 class="media-heading text-nowrap">Sling Bag</h4>
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                        <p class="text-nowrap"> Quantity: 3 </p>
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                <div class="row media items-selected2 border-bottom p-5">
                    <div class="col-xl-7 col-lg-7 col-md-7 col-12 media-left">
                        <a href="handbags.html"> <img src="asset/images/moreimg1.png"
                                class="media-object img-responsive w-75" alt="#"> </a>
                    </div>
                    <div class="col-xl-7 col-lg-5 col-md-5 col-12 media-body">
                        <h4 class="media-heading text-nowrap">Hobo Bag</h4>
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                <div class="total pt-2">
                    Total: sh.6,500
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        </div> class "customer-details row" < = > div class "contact-information col-xl-7 col-lg-7 col-md-7 col-12" I created a div tag with class name customer-details. Inside customer-details, I have .customer-information set to col-lg-7 and .items-selected set to col-lg-5. Added class row to class media, in the .items-selected. Inside class media, I set the .media-left to col-lg-7 and media-body to .col-lg-5. As a result, the contents of the .media-body wrapped below the image in the .media-left. This saved me a lot of time and energy. How could I have achieved this using the CSS grid? I would have to write another code and wrap my code in class customer-details-new. The .customer-details-new has customer-details-new and items-selected-new. Use Bootstrap cards in the .items-selected-new. Then, give the images a class of card-img-top, so that the image appears on the top and the text wraps below the image. Then, in the media query of the desired screen size,  I set .customer-details to display none as shown below: <div = > <h3> Contact Information </h3> <form action="#">
                    <label for="fname" class="pt-4 pr-4"> First Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="First Name" class="w-50" id="fname" name="fname"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="lname" class="pr-4"> Last Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Last Name" class="w-50" id="lname" name="lname"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="telno" class="pr-4"> Phone No: </label>
                    <input type="number" placeholder="+254 722554294" class="w-50" id="telno" name="telno"> <br> <br>
                </form>
                <h4 class="pt-4"> Recipient's Delivery Address </h4>
                <form action="#">
                    <label for="idnumber" class="pt-4 pr-4"> ID Number: </label>
                    <input type="number" placeholder="Id Number" class="w-50" id="idnumber" name="idnumber"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="companyname" class="pr-4"> Company Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Company Name or Estate Name" class="w-50" id="companyname"
                        name="companyname"> <br> <br>
                    <label for="apartmentname" class="pr-4"> Apartment Name: </label>
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Apartment, Suite, etc (optional)" class="w-50" id="apartmentname"
                        name="apartmentname"> <br> <br>
                </form>
                <h4 class="pt-4"> Additional Information </h4>
                <form action="#">
                    <label for="moreinfo" class="pr-4"> <span class="more-info"> More Information: </span> </label>
                    <textarea name="moreinfo" id="moreinfo" cols="30" rows="5">
            </textarea>
                </form>
                <div class="complete pt-4">
                    <a href="index.html" class="btn complete-btn"> <span> Complete </span> </a>
                </div>
            </div>

            <div class="items-selected-new">
                <div class="items-selected-title">
                    <h4> <a href="#"> Your Basket </a> </h4>
                </div>
                <div class="card row p-3">
                    <a href="handbags.html"> <img
                            src="https://www.freepnglogos.com/uploads/women-bag-png/download-women-bag-transparent-png-image-pngimg-5.png"
                            class="card-img-top img-responsive w-50" alt="#"> </a>
                    <div class="card-body col-lg-5">
                        <h4 class="card-title">Sling Bag</h4>
                        <p class="card-text">Price: sh.700</p>
                        <p class="card-text"> Quantity: 3 </p>
                    </div>
                </div>

                <div class="card row mt-2 p-3">
                    <a href="handbags.html"> <img src="asset/images/moreimg1.png"
                            class="card-img-top img-responsive w-50" alt="#"> </a>
                    <div class="card-body">
                        <h4 class="card-title">Hobo Bag</h4>
                        <p class="card-text">Price: sh.880</p>
                        <p class="card-text"> Quantity: 5 </p>
                    </div>
                </div>

                <div class="total pt-2">
                    Total: sh.6,500
                </div>
            </div>
        </div> class "customer-details-new" < = > div class "contact-information-new" .customer-details { : grid;
  grid-template-columns: fr fr;
  grid-template-rows: repeat( , px);
}

.contact-information {
  grid-row: ;
  grid-column: ;
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.items-selected {
  grid-row: ;
  grid-column: ;
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.customer-details- { : none;
}

@media only screen and (max-width: px) {
  .customer-details { : none;
  }

  .customer-details- { : grid;
    grid-template-columns: %;
    grid-template-rows: px px;
  }
  
  .contact-information- {
    grid-row: ;
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    grid-row: ;
    grid-column: ;
  }
} display 3 2 2 500 1 1 1 2 new display 767 display new display 100 500 750 new 1 1 new 2 1 This is how it will look: As you can see, with the CSS grid, my code is longer with a media query. With Bootstrap grid classes, my code is less, neat with no media query. For this reason and many more, which we can discuss later, I prefer using Bootstrap grids compared to using CSS grids.

Why I Prefer Bootstrap Grid Over CSS Grid 

Python for Data Science: How to Scrape Website Data via the Internet's Top 300 APIs

The rise of peer to peer crowd-lending, tokenization and the slow death of bank Ray Dalio has summed it up pretty well in his latest post — “ ” — and in this . The World has gone mad and the system is broken interview with CNBC There is clearly a combination of opportunistic reasons, greed, quest for power and cronyism as to why the economics behind the narrative — despite its historical failure and well documented criticism — was sold to the masses by liberal lobbies and special interest groups, in bed with the politicians, during the last decades. bullshit trickle down This causes today not only major economical and financial imbalances, asset price distortions and a dramatic increase in income inequality not seen since the roaring ´20s, but also — more dangerously — a social breakdown which Dalio describes as, literally, a sliding towards a social/civil “war like environment”. Examples of civil unrest around the world are plenty to see, from the French , to Chileans and Lebanese people just to name the latest. are a of the EU banking crises in Iceland, Greece and Cyprus in the last decade. yellow-vests The recent bank runs in Lebanon déjà vu But plenty has already been written on that topic. I wish rather to focus on how — from bottom up (and not vice versa) — the market economy finds new solutions and creates new opportunities for investors to finance the production of goods and services without the economic aberrations of negative interest rates and outside the legacy banking system. The time value of money and the rise of p2p lending One of the capitalistic market fundaments is that the capital must be rewarded. There must be an incentive to save and invest your savings in the economy. This is achieved through market based interest rates that are paid to someone to lend his money. The weirdness of zero/negative rates — which is not by the way the result of market dynamics but rather the arbitrary and fraudulent manipulation of central banks — has torn apart the basic principle that “ ” (i.e. one unit of money today is worth more than one unit of money tomorrow). money has time value But what is likely missed is that — while such financial follies continue unabated — the real economy continues to work with the usual dynamics of a healthy capitalistic system where positive interest rates are determined by market participants in order to lend money to productive businesses. So far, entrepreneurs without a good enough credit standing, start-ups, SMEs or people not wealthy enough to post a collateral guarantee, had a very hard time financing their businesses or consumptions with the banks, although the financial system has been awash with the liquidity injected by central bankers globally. So, when banks stop doing what they are supposed to do (lend money) and people are not rewarded with adequate interest rates to keep their savings with the banks, they take their money out of the banks and start lending it to other people and businesses which cannot be otherwise financed by the legacy banking system. Call this or or , whatever pleases you. alternative non-bank lending peer to peer lending crowdlending Nowadays fintech is enabling the growth of a whole new breed of peer to peer lending platforms where lenders and businesses meet and determine market based interest rates to reward capital deployment. Some figures and data will give you a much better idea of what is happening unnoticed by many. A US$ trillion market The equity crowdfunding market is more known than the peer to peer lending market (crowdlending) and it has also a longer history. According to this global market was worth approx. US$ 7 billion in 2019. Less than . According to . Still nothing to be overly excited about. this research by Statista.com peanuts fundly.com, the equity crowdfunding industry is projected to grow to US$ 300 billion by 2025 Now let´s look at what the peer to peer lending sector is doing instead. it was worth US$ 9 billion at its very inception in 2014, the next year was already worth US$ 64 billion and . According to Statista.com it is projected to grow to a US$ 1 trillion industry by 2025. Now, that´s not peanuts estimates the current worth of the peer to peer US lending industry at CHF 38,7 billion and the Chinese market ten times that with CHF 345 billion. This 2019 PWC research The crowdlending market dwarfs the equity crowdfunding and its growth will very likely exceed the forecasted US$ 1 trillion mark. Source: PWC.ch More in this Business Insider report “ ”. A look at the non-bank and alternative lending industry in 2019 Explosive growth The following chart is worth more than words. is a Latvian Fintech company which was launched in 2015 to become a “ ”. Through their platform small investors can lend money to almost any sector of the real economy. You name it, agriculture, forestry, car loans, consumer loans, invoice financing, real estate mortgage loans etc. Mintos global marketplace for peer to peer loans Source: Mintos.com According to their data small investors had lent through their platform almost € 1 billion up to August 2018. Then, in the following 15 months — thanks to the new wave of zero/negative interest rates — the investments have more than tripled to € 3.8 billion. And this is not the only one. The likes of or or just to name a few, they all have their own market focus and all of them claim double or triple digit growth. crowdestor ablrate investly More importantly, looking at the published loan performances, I was surprised to see that . the disclosed default risk was in average quite low between 0,5% and 1,3% of the transacted volume, while the loan performance was quite high with an average interest rate return for lenders of approx. 11,9%** Source: Mintos.com This is the peoples’ response to the bankers’ fraudulent manipulations of interest rates, just like bitcoin is the response to the continued debasement of fiat currencies. While the banks are slowly - but inexorably - being deprived of their traditional social role as lenders, the people are taking control of their savings back in their hands. And before we know it . — a UK based fintech bank — is now opening crypto accounts next to traditional fiat accounts and also accepts crypto funds. those platforms will accept cryptocurrencies as it is already happening. They will operate through channels parallel to the legacy banking system, therefore reducing transaction costs and the transfer time of funds by using stablecoins and cryptocurrencies instead of fiat Revolut The Tokenization of p2p Loan Portfolios The next step will be to tokenize entire loan portfolios, so that a global, frictionless, secondary market for such loans will be born. : The tokenization of such loan portfolios will bring a number of important advantages (i) the within the token via smart contracts; programmability of the loan terms (ii) such as interest payments and principal reimbursement, as well as the deduction for the platform fees (some functions cannot be fully automated since the borrower must always initiate payments); the semi-automatic and instantaneous settlement and execution of the loan terms (iii) the and the rights to the underlying loan in the secondary markets; frictionless transfer of the token (iv) the possibility to , provided the token standard is compatible with such markets. This will also enhance the liquidity which is now limited to the bid and offer of that single platform, totally lacking interoperability. This also solves the current problem that if the platform becomes insolvent the whole secondary market (which is directly dependent on the platform) comes to a halt. Even if legally speaking the lender´s rights to the underlying loan are not impacted by an insolvency of the platform, without the platform performing its key intermediary role there will always be inevitable disruptions for the lenders; trade the token in several secondary markets (v) the of the private keys to the tokens in your personal wallet and therefore the reduction of the counterparty risk which will be then limited to the intrinsic risk of default of the borrower. Currently some platforms expressly claim that client accounts are kept segregated and that in case of insolvency of the platform such funds cannot be apprehended by the receivership; self-custody (vi) a currently needed and a reduction of the intermediary functions performed by the platform. Though some key functions, which cannot be automated, will still be performed by the platform such as: reduction of the paperwork - repossess collateral assets or enforce loan guarantees (personal or banking) or mortgages - chase the borrower for late payments/default - initiate debt recovery procedures in case of default. Conclusions For nobody, as far as I am aware, is tokenizing peer to peer loan portfolios yet, I have asked Giuseppe Morlino — founder of the tokenization start-up — why is it so: “ .” Stonize The finance sector has lagged behind in terms of digitization and this is probably due to the high level of centralization that has characterised it, at least so far. The reason why tokenization is a game changer in finance is because it democratizes access to liquidity and investment opportunities . In other words, the true value of decentralization in finance is democratization: DeFi (Decentralised Finance) implies DeFi (Democratised Finance). And peer to peer lending is just one of the best possible use cases. We are carefully looking at that sector and we are already discussing with Loan Originators to do just that. Our Stonize T3 Protocol (Trusted Token Transfer) provides a seamless compliance solution enforcing the rules governing the digital security on issuance and secondary trades and it is agnostic. Currently, it is compatible with the Ethereum, Stellar and Algorand ecosystems and it is ready to leverage more advanced decentralised permissionless blockchains, as they will emerge. This is our approach to contribute to the rise of DeFi, the Democratised Finance in the future and peer to peer lending in particular . If — this means that we can reasonably expect that few of todays´ traditional banks will survive this revolution. . The commercial banking model as we know it is dying before our eyes and the bankers do not see it only 7,6% of the banking CIOs agree with Morlino´s statement above — which considers blockchain disruptive for the sector The next 5 to 10 years will be a “ Blockbuster moment ” for the banking industry worldwide ********************************************************* ** Read carefully my disclaimers below. Do your own due-diligence before investing your money into any of the above mentioned platforms. Importantly, should you decide to lend your money, spread your investment across the highest possible number of loans to reduce the adverse impact of any possible default. Read carefully the terms and conditions for the loans and consider carefully the counterparty risks, default risks and any other risks represented by the proponent of the investment. #blockchain #bianconiandrea #crypto #thinkblocktank #bitcoin #fintech #peertopeerlending #crowdfunding #crowdlending *************************************************************** Legal Disclaimer : The website and the information contained herein is for general guidance only and it does not constitute legal advice. As such, it should not be used as a substitute for consultation with lawyers on specific issues. All information in this paper is provided “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or warranty of any kind, express or implied. Investment Disclaimer : The website and the information contained herein is not intended to be a source of advice or credit analysis with respect to the material presented, and the information and/or documents contained in this website do not constitute investment advice. © www.bianconiandrea.com — 2019

The Banks Have Gone Mad and the System is Broken 

Cryptocurrencies are prone to many different types of attack. As Bitcoin is over 11 years on the track, we know and were facing many different attempts on breaking its security. One of them is network partition attack. But what about the Proof-of-Stake algorithms? Have they solved some of the vulnerabilities of Bitcoin and its Proof-of-Work algorithm? Cryptocurrency protocols implemented as a top layer of TCP/IP stack in the so-called application layer. It can be said that cryptocurrencies directly use the entire TCP/IP infrastructure. If someone has control power over this infrastructure, they can hurt all application protocols. This is a general threat of all cryptocurrencies. A few weeks ago, after I started my path as an Algorand ambassador, I had an opportunity to . interview the leaders of Algorand foundation, Silvio Micali and Massimo Morini I asked them different kinds of questions including some more technical ones about network partition attacks, which interest me. Then I decided to go deeper into this topic. In my eyes, Algorand stands right in the middle of the blockchain trilemma triangle, when the scalability and security are not taking anything from a decentralization degree. Later on, in the article I try to compare Algorand's solution with another blockchain project, which seems to be very far with their development, Cardano. But my first look will go to Bitcoin and its approach to the protection from network attacks. What is a network attack? So, what the typical network attack is? Any decentralized system is susceptible to a network attack in which an adversary targets the communication links between users, making it difficult or impossible for users to interact. An adversary could partition the network into isolated pieces, so that members of one piece can only communicate with each other but not with members of other pieces. During a network partition, the network is completely asynchronous and the adversary has total control over who receives which messages and when. If the partition lasts long enough and the underlying blockchain didn't take this into consideration in its design, then the adversary may be able to convince different groups of users to accept different blocks at the same height in the blockchain. As a result, contradicting transactions will be accepted by different users, allowing the adversary to double-spend their money. Source: https://www.algorand.com/what-we-do/technology/security Bitcoin and network attacks Let’s firstly look upon Bitcoin and its solution on network attacks. At a high-level, Bitcoin is a randomly-established peer-to-peer network composed of thousands of nodes and tens of thousands of connections which rely on flooding to propagate transactions. As an attacker, being able to prevent the spread of information in such a network seems unrealistic, if not impossible. Bitcoin is surprisingly centralized from an Internet routing perspective: 20% of the Bitcoin nodes are hosted in less than 100 IP prefixes. To put this in perspective, there are close to 600,000 IP prefixes advertised in the Internet today. At the same time, few well-established ISPs (e.g. Hurricane Electric) naturally see a large fraction of the Bitcoin traffic. Together, these two characteristics make large-scale routing attacks surprisingly practical. Because of its centralization, partitioning the Bitcoin network and isolate 50% of its mining power only requires a small routing attack, one which is orders of magnitude smaller than the attacks routinely seen in the Internet today. Any malicious ISP with access to the Internet routing infrastructure can perform this attack which starts to be effective after only few minutes (according to our own measurements on the live network). Any ISP transiting Bitcoin traffic can delay the propagation of mined blocks (for up to 20 minutes), in a stealth way, even if she sees one direction of the traffic. Source: https://hackingdistributed.com/2017/05/01/bgp-attacks-on-btc/ Partitioning attacks With partitioning attacks, an attacker aims at splitting the Bitcoin network into (at least) two disjoint components such that no information (e.g. transaction) can be exchanged between them. To partition the network into two components, a network attacker intercepts all the traffic destined to all the Bitcoin nodes contained within one of the component and drops any connection to the other component. To intercept traffic, a network attacker relies on vulnerabilities in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the only Internet routing protocol used today, which does not validate the origin of routing announcements. These attacks, commonly referred to as BGP hijacks, involve getting a router to falsely announce that it has a better route to some IP prefix. By hijacking all the IP prefixes pertaining to the nodes in one component, the attacker can effectively intercept all the traffic exchanged between the two components. Once on path, the attacker can sever all these connections effectively disconnecting the two components. An animation of the attacks can be found on our website. Illustration of how an AS-level adversary (AS8) can intercept Bitcoin traffic by hijacking prefixes to isolate the set of nodes P = (A, B, C, D, E). Source: https://hackingdistributed.com/2017/05/01/bgp-attacks-on-btc/ The extreme centralization of Bitcoin from an Internet viewpoint makes partition attacks particularly effective as few IP prefixes need to be hijacked. Indeed, our measurements show that 50% of Bitcoin mining power is hosted in only 39 prefixes (i.e., in 0.007% of all Internet prefixes). This allows an attacker to isolate ~50% of the mining power by hijacking only these 39 prefixes. Much larger BGP hijacks (involving orders of magnitude more IP prefixes) are routinely seen in the Internet today. By partitioning the network, the attacker forces the creation of two parallel blockchains. After the attack, all the blocks mined by the side with the shorter chain will be discarded together with all included transactions and the corresponding miners’ revenues. Moreover, discarded transactions will be irrecoverably canceled if there exist other transactions in the prevailing branch of the chain which spent the exact same Bitcoins (conflicting transactions). Source: https://hackingdistributed.com/2017/05/01/bgp-attacks-on-btc/ Proof-of-Work blockchains are vulnerable to network attacks. If an adversary is capable of partitioning the communication network for a couple hours, due to the basic rule where the longest chain wins, he is able to double-spend coins, because the messages sent by set of users A to set of users B is disrupted. So, the adversary is able to construct the longest chain at this point. This is because blockchain is a communication protocol, which is executed over an underlying communication network. Adversary can then attack the communication network itself by obstructing routers or cables, or even the protocol by sending divergent messages through the network. If the gains from double-spend attack are exceeding the cost of that attack, this kind of attack definitely should not be ignored. How can Bitcoin be  prevented from network attacks? In the same article, you can find also the solution, how to prevent network attack for Bitcoin Fortunately, there are both short- and long-term countermeasures against network attacks. First, peer selections could be made routing-aware. Bitcoin nodes could, for example, aim at maximizing the diversity of the Internet paths seen by their connections to minimize the risk that an attacker can intercept all of them. Moreover, nodes could monitor the behavior of their connections to detect events like abrupt disconnections from multiple peers or unusual delays in block delivery. These events could serve as an early indicator of a routing attack and could, for instance, trigger the establishment of extra randomly-selected connections. Finally, solutions like end-to-end encryption would also help (especially against delay attacks). Yet, encryption alone would not be sufficient to protect against partitioning attacks as an attacker can still drop encrypted Bitcoin connections. Source: https://hackingdistributed.com/2017/05/01/bgp-attacks-on-btc/ Let’s consider an attack when an adversary prevents only block propagation and the delegation of hash-rate to pools is not affected. Block propagation is critical mainly for pools since they need to have the latest block(s) in order to maintain the longest chain. If part of pools gets separated from the rest of the network by the attack then from a certain block there will be two groups of pools that maintain their own blockchain and do not know about the competitive chain. Once the attack is gone both groups will be exposed to the competitive chain. Naturally, the longest chain wins. PoW prefers liveness over security. In the ideal case, there is always one block producer and many validators. There is no measure that would detect the attack and stop the blockchain progression. The rules are simple. Every valid block is a candidate for a permanent addition to the blockchain. In the case of the fork, the rule regarding the longest chain is applied. Thus, the risk of the double spend attack is always present if the network gets split. The routing attack prevention might not be necessarily implemented on the consensus level. It could be prevented on the networking level. Algorand approach on consensus Algorand is a decentralized blockchain platform for smart contracts with its native coin called Algo. It uses Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS) to conclude network consensus. Founder Silvio Micali called Algorand “Byzantine Agreement Protocol on Steriods” due its approach to security, scalability and level of decentralization. Algorand can tolerate malicious users as long as the supermajority of stakeholders are non-malicious. The protocol itself is very fast with finality of transactions within 5 seconds and requires minimal computational power per node. Verifiable Random Functions The main functional concept used by Algorand is Verifiable Random Function (VRF) for selecting the block proposer and the voting committee members. Verifiable Random Function is a cryptographic primitive similar to lottery that maps inputs to verifiable pseudorandom outputs. VRFs were introduced by Algorand founder Silvio Micali, Michael Rabin and Salil Vadhan in 1999. VRF is used in Cardano Ouroboros Proof of Stake consensus as well. Participation and ephemeral keys For participation in the consensus, users don’t use their spending keys, but for certain number of rounds generates a participation key. Besides the participation key, also collection of ephemeral keys is generated for each round. Those ephemeral keys are signed by the participation key and then the participation key is deleted. With one ephemeral key, the account signs a message for one corresponding round and that key is then deleted and can’t be used anymore. So, by using participation keys instead of spending keys, ALGO tokens of the user are secured even when the participation node is compromised. And deleting both participation key and ephemeral key after they are used prevents the blockchain from double-using the old keys. Algorand Consensus Protocol / Block proposal Algorand's approach is unique in that the block creation and validation are random due to Verifiable Random Functions (VRF). The Algorand consensus process takes three separate phases. 1. Proposal phase One ALGO account is randomly selected to propose a new block to the network. All the nodes of the network then start looping through online accounts with valid participation keys. The VRF, similar to a weighted lottery, determines if the account is selected to propose the next block or not. So, the accounts with more Algos have a higher probability to be selected. Once selected, the VRF output of the node proves that this particular account is a valid proposer of the next block. Block proposal in Algorand 2. Soft vote phase In this phase, the number of proposals is cut to one account, who got a chance to propose the new block. In this process, nodes are verifying the signed messages and validating the selection by using VRF proof. The account with the lowest VRF hash is set to propose the next block. This is happening within the fixed amount of time so once done, the only account is selected. Soft vote - 1st part In the second part of the soft vote phase, nodes run VRF for every participating account to check, if they were validated to participate in the soft vote committee. Chosen accounts will have a weighted vote based on the numbers of ALGOs in the account and those votes will be then propagated to the network. The votes with the lowest VRF block proposal calculated at the timeout will be then sent out to other nodes with their VRF Proof. For each step in the process new committee is selected. Soft vote - 2nd part 3. Certify vote phase A committee of 1000 verifiers is pseudo randomly selected to receive information about the new block. Then they verify its validity; they can mark the block as valid or invalid due to the potential problems with double-spending, overspending etc. If the majority agrees up on it, the block is added to the blockchain and this process lasting less than 5 seconds is repeated. In Algorand consensus is enough when a super majority of the verifiers are honest participants, then the block is to be certified. When the quorum is reached, the node is prompted to create a certificate for the new block and to write it to the Algorand blockchain. After that, a new round is initiated so the process starts again from the proposal phase of a new block. But if the quorum isn’t reached in a certifying committee vote by a certain timeout, then the network will enter the recovery mode. Certify vote phase Algorand Security Security is a must in Algorand blockchain, because without security, there couldn’t be a trust from participants to hold and transact assets with high value. The network agreement in Algorand is designed to withstand a long-lasting partition and quick recovery from it. Algorand prefers safety over liveness of the blockchain. In Algorand, an account participating on consensus protocol must be online. But by not using spending keys for the consensus participation, it is safe to be part of the consensus. So even if those participation keys are corrupted, the user’s funds remain safe. Algorand resilient against network partition attacks During a network partition attack on Algorand blockchain, the attacker isn’t able to persuade two honest nodes to accept two different blocks in the same round. Even when partition may last for a long and indefinite amount of time, this premise remains valid. Due to protocol settings, only one block can be certified and then written into the blockchain in a given round. Besides that, the transactions are then final immediately after writing into the blockchain and stays there forever. So, the subsequent confirmation like in the Bitcoin network is not necessary. Even though no blockchain can guarantee, that blocks are written to the blockchain during a network partition, Algorand is capable of recovering shortly after the partition is resolved. Then it also guarantees, that the new blocks will be generated at the same speed as before the network partition. Partition recovery mode in Algorand When the group of nodes see no progress for a while, the nodes then enter partition recovery mode. In partition recovery mode, the nodes are still continuing the consensus protocol. But besides that, they are periodically sending out recovery messages. During a network partition, these recovery messages are not propagated properly. However, recovery messages are again propagated rapidly as soon as the partition is healed. When the desired message threshold accumulates, the node states are reconstructed and the blockchain continues to move forward again. Algorand is then recovered almost instantly from network partition, which makes economically expensive to stall Algorand blockchain for the adversary. Algorand is non-forkable blockchain One more safety advantage to the network partition attack is, that the Algorand blockchain forking is virtually impossible due to protocol settings. So, the attacker of the network is not able to make a fork of the blockchain and try to propagate it somehow. The balances of the users remain safe all the time. Weaknesses of Algorand I can see one weakness as well in Algorand solution, or maybe better to say in this present situation. The token allocation of ALGO tokens in the first years is highly advantageous on behalf of the Algorand Inc. and the Algorand Foundation. While the attacker could somehow track those tokens or nodes, they might be vulnerable to the communication noise at some level. This is not the critical issue, but until the allocation of ALGO tokens would be more spread around the globe to their users, this is still a valid point of some kind of attack, but not necessarily a network partition attack. This problem should be solved with time and with the diversity of ALGO token allocation. Cardano approach to network partition attacks At the end of this article, let me give a look into Cardano network. Time is split into an epoch in the Cardano network and each epoch into slots. In every slot a randomly selected slot leader gets the right to produce a block. Nobody can deduce in advance who will be assigned to produce a block. The possibility of committing the routing attack is about the ability of the network to propagate a block. In the case that an adversary is able to split the network and prevent the propagation of blocks then naturally there will be maintained two blockchains in the two separate parts of the networks. If a slot leader fails to produce a block for any reason then the slot remains empty. It will happen during the routing attack. In every part some nodes will produce blocks and some not. Blockchain progression will be slowed down. After the routing attack the longest chain will win. As far as I know there is no special period when the network would recognize the attack and switch to a kind of recovery mode. Cardano network works similarly as PoW in the sense of block propagation. There is only one block producer in a given slot and all other full nodes are validators. There is nothing like a special committee that would validate a newly created block. However, there is a special relay network layer that is, hopefully, sufficiently robust to prevent the routing attack. Sources: https://www.algorand.com/Algorand%20Protocol.pdf https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/algorands-core-technology-in-a-nutshell https://www.algorand.com/what-we-do/technology/security/ https://hackingdistributed.com/2017/05/01/bgp-attacks-on-btc/ https://cryptodiffer.com/news/code-review-of-algorand-by-incodewetrust-team/ https://pixabay.com/

A Technical Q&A on Network Partition Attacks

Reasonable security through architecture As a web developer, I am often asked to build pages to collect basic users’ data. The first goal of every advertising campaign, for example, is to collect a large number of emails or phone numbers from people who could be interested in buying some service / product, in order to call them back, contact them, whatever. For many years, sadly but truly, nobody has really cared about how those data were stored in databases. They haven’t been considered “too sensitive” data, still their privacy should have been granted in some way. It was a grey area nobody has ever paid too much attention to. For many years Earth biggest companies haven’t even cared about encrypting , but this is another, possibly even worse, story. If you are interested in some speculation about password encryption and PHP, here’s . passwords of the users another article So guess those (and smaller ones) less sensitive information such as . how much attention companies have been paying to emails or phone numbers Today, after many leaks from famous and less famous companies, and after that kicked in here in Europe, some companies (most of them, to be honest) are starting to be aware of the risks related to storing a large amount of users’ data without any encryption. GDPR A typical , which I found in many old-school projects, is to collect names, mails and phone numbers and store them, , . bad scenario unencrypted in a database located on the same host of the web server This configuration exposes the project to many threats. Especially, if some attackers gain access to database, they can freely retrieve any data of all the users collected by the application. A would be to collect names, mails and phone numbers, them . better scenario encrypt and store in a database hosted on a server different than the web server The should be stored at least on the web server, . encryption keys never on the database The web server should be running a decent Web Application Firewall to keep it as safe as possible. The prototype that I am sharing with you stores the keys in a configuration file inside the public folder of your web server, to keep things simple and let almost everybody install and test the prototype in a super basic LAMP environment hosting. A safer approach would be to , for example. This goal can be reached with little effort for an average experienced developer, and it’s not part of this article. save the keys in a file outside your public folder if you can spend a little bit more on your project, but is to show how to , collecting data. Other, even safer, options are available this article’s goal provide a reasonable safe environment for your small low budget projects “not too sensitive” Obviously, if you are going to store credit cards, medical information, military intelligence and so on, you shouldn’t rely on this simple architecture. A basic working prototype made with PHP and MySql The main problem, when developing an application that encrypts data, is to check or search for those data, once they have been encrypted. We will follow the solution proposed by ParagonIE team in , trying to keep things as simple as possible. this article I will describe how to build a typical landing page that , but still allows us to with the same email or phone , before saving a new user. encrypts private data check if a user has already been stored Moreover, we will build a very basic admin panel (for testing purposes only), with a feature that allows us to in the database, . search for an email or a phone even if they are encrypted Before starting, I am assuming here that you are not using or any other PHP Framework for your small project, in order to keep this article as generic as possible. Laravel pretty that works just out of the box. You can find some information about it in its and in some interesting article . Laravel has a built-in encrypter/decrypter official documentation here This prototype relies on Sodium crypto libraries, which are included as PHP extensions in currently supported versions of PHP (7.1, 7.2, 7.3). To be sure, check your and look for this part. If you can see it, Sodium library is enabled on your server. phpinfo() You can download a on , and preview the . Do not use this prototype as it is in production environments. Use it freely to build your own encryption system and deepen your encryption knowledge. demo source code of my prototype github final result here Basic setup First of all we are going to build a simple html form that should look like this one below. We set all form fields as compulsory, using Bootstrap built-in validation. This form will post data to a script. And that’s it. save.php In folder you can find a , consisting of a single table named Here’s its structure. /_sql dump of the database “subscribers”. subscribers ( ( ) ,
  first_name ( ) ,
  last_name ( ) ,
  email ( ) ,
  phone ( ) ,
  privacy ( ) , ( ) ,
  ip ( ) ,
  email_hash ( ) ,
  phone_hash ( ) ,
  creation_date datetime ) = =utf8; subscribers PRIMARY ( ), email_hash (email_hash), phone_hash (phone_hash); CREATE TABLE id int 11 NOT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL char 1 DEFAULT NULL source varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL varchar 255 DEFAULT NULL DEFAULT NULL ENGINE InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET ALTER TABLE ADD KEY id ADD KEY ADD KEY To save those keys as a text, we need to encode them using function, as below. base64_encode() The table fields named and will store the encrypted data, while and are that we will use later to implement search functions on encrypted data. These two fields will store blind indexes, which are basically a keyed hash (HMAC) of the plain text email and phone number. email phone email_hash phone_hash two indexed fields We can import the file to our MySql/MariaDB database. In root folder we can find a little script called . Its task is to generate two random keys for our project. We only need to run this script once, take note of the keys and get rid of the script from our server. generate_key.php The scripts uses function to create the that we will use to encrypt data, and a used to generate a unique hash (the blind index) for email and phone number, in order to make those data searchable in our application. The lengths passed to random_bytes() as parameters are two constants needed by LibSodium to work properly later on. random_bytes() private key blind index key $private_key = random_bytes(SODIUM_CRYPTO_SECRETBOX_KEYBYTES); $index_key = random_bytes(SODIUM_CRYPTO_PWHASH_SALTBYTES); <?php // Generating your encryption key // Generating your blind index key To save those keys as a text, we need to encode them using base64_encode() function, as below. base64_encode($private_key); base64_encode($index_key); <?php echo ?> <?php echo ?> Once we created our , we can write them down in our configuration file, located in folder. If you downloaded the source code from git, you can edit line 50 and 51 of and rename the file as . Don’t forget to data on line 20–23, too. keys for the project /includes config-sample.php config.php add your database connection $private_key = ; $index_key = ; <?php // generate values using /generate_key.php script "" // INSERT PRIVATE KEY HERE "" // INSERT BLIND INDEX KEY HERE We can now publish the project to our web server and check that everything is working, by trying to submit a new subscription to the system. We should see a new record in the database table, as well as on the backoffice demo page. The backoffice page shows the encrypted value actually stored in the database for email and phone number on mouse over. Moreover, if we try to search for an encrypted email among the subscribers, we can find it quickly: A deeper look at the code To understand how this prototype works, we need to have a deeper look at our Data Access Object, in /includes/ dao.php function gets a string as a parameter, in our case email and phone number, and it creates a blind index using our previously generated blind index key and . This will be used of encrypted values in our database. Keeping encrypted values searchable is an interesting matter, well covered by by , where you will also find more advanced solutions. getBlindIndex() sodium_crypto_pwhash() blind index to perform a search this article ParagonIE Here’s the snippet of the function that deals with the creation of blind indexes in our database, to later store the keyed hashes in and table fields email_hash phone_hash {
    $index_key = base64_decode( ->index_key); bin2hex(
        sodium_crypto_pwhash( ,
            $string,
            $index_key,
            SODIUM_CRYPTO_PWHASH_OPSLIMIT_MODERATE,
            SODIUM_CRYPTO_PWHASH_MEMLIMIT_MODERATE
        )
    );
	} <?php public function getBlindIndex ($string) $this return 32 function writes a new record in subscribers table, , and to enable searches on them. Here’s where the encryption happens. The function retrieves the encryption key (l. 47 in ), creates two separate for encrypting email and phone number (l. 50–51), encrypts email and phone number using (l. 53–54) and encode them for safe saving to database (l. 56–57). Here’s a snippet of the funciton. insert() encrypting email and phone number creating two blind indexes dao.php nonces sodium_crypto_secretbox() { ($first_name. == || $last_name. == || $email. == || $phone. == || $privacy. == ) { ;
     } { $email_hash = ->getBlindIndex($email);
      $phone_hash = ->getBlindIndex($phone); $key = ->key;
      $key = base64_decode($key); $nonce_email = random_bytes(SODIUM_CRYPTO_SECRETBOX_NONCEBYTES);
      $nonce_phone = random_bytes(SODIUM_CRYPTO_SECRETBOX_NONCEBYTES); $email = sodium_crypto_secretbox($email, $nonce_email, $key);
      $phone = sodium_crypto_secretbox($phone, $nonce_phone, $key); $email = base64_encode($nonce_email . $email);
      $phone = base64_encode($nonce_phone . $phone); {
        $query = ->db->prepare( );
        $query->bindParam( , $first_name);
        $query->bindParam( , $last_name);
        $query->bindParam( , $email);
        $query->bindParam( , $phone);
        $query->bindParam( , $privacy);
        $query->bindParam( , $email_hash);
        $query->bindParam( , $phone_hash);
        $query->bindParam( , date( ));
        $query->bindParam( , $source);
        $query->bindParam( , $ip);
        $query->execute();
        $id = ->db->lastInsertId(); $id;
      } (PDOException $e) { ;
      }
     }
  } <?php function insert ($first_name,$last_name,$email,$phone,$privacy,$source,$ip) if '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' return false else // create blind index for encrypted searchable fields $this $this // get key for encryption $this // get nonce for encryption // encrypt data // encode data for saving into db try $this 'INSERT INTO subscribers (first_name, last_name, email, phone, privacy, email_hash, phone_hash, creation_date, source, ip) VALUES (:first_name,:last_name,:email,:phone,:privacy,:email_hash,:phone_hash,:creation_date,:source,:ip)' ':first_name' ':last_name' ':email' ':phone' ':privacy' ':email_hash' ':phone_hash' ':creation_date' 'Y-m-d H:i:s' ':source' ':ip' $this return catch //echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage(); //exit(); return false ?> Our data access object in has other methods for listing the records in subscribers and count them, but I will focus on two more methods. dao.php The first one is , the function that we need to encrypted . Here’s a snippet dec() decrypt data {
    $decoded = base64_decode($string);
    $key = base64_decode( ->key);
    $nonce = mb_substr($decoded, , SODIUM_CRYPTO_SECRETBOX_NONCEBYTES, );
    $ciphertext = mb_substr($decoded, SODIUM_CRYPTO_SECRETBOX_NONCEBYTES, , ); {
      $plaintext = sodium_crypto_secretbox_open($ciphertext, $nonce, $key); $plaintext;
    } (Error $ex) { ;
    } ( $ex) { ;
    }
  } <?php public function dec ($string) $this 0 '8bit' null '8bit' try return catch return "Cannot decrypt data." catch Exception return "Cannot decrypt data." ?> function gets an encrypted string as input, retrieve the encryption key, separate the nonce from the encrypted text and then decrypt it. dec() This function can be used while we loop our records from table, to decrypt data in our , (l. 125–126). Here’s a snippet that shows its (paginate your rows or your server will start sweating). subscribers backoffice demo page very basic usage <td>
  <span =" " - =" " =" :<? $ [' '];?>">
    <? $ -> ($ [' ']);?>
  </ >
</ >
< >
  < =" " - =" " =" : <? $ [' '];?>">
    <? $ -> ($ [' ']);?>
  </ >
</ > class moreinfo data toggle tooltip title string stored in database php echo row email php echo dao dec row email span td td span class moreinfo data toggle tooltip title string stored in database php echo row phone php echo dao dec row phone span td Looking at script, we can notice that before saving a new subscriber to database, we save.php check if a user with the same email or phone has already subscribed $email_hash = $dao->getBlindIndex($email); ($dao->exists_email($email_hash)) {
  header( ); ();
} $phone_hash = $dao->getBlindIndex($phone); ($dao->exists_phone($phone_hash)) {
  header( ); ();
}

$new_subscriber = $dao->insert($first_name,$last_name,$email,$phone,$privacy,$source,$ip); (!$new_subscriber) {
  header( ); ();
} {
  header( .$new_subscriber); ();
} // check if mail already exists if "location: index.php?e=email_exists" exit // check if phone already exists if "location: index.php?e=phone_exists" exit if "location: error.php" exit else "location: thankyou.php?id=" exit Function in check the existence of the same email by simply checking if the same blind index exists in email_hash field of the table. For better performance, we set an index on this email_hash field. Same logic occurs for function exists_mail() dao.php exists_phone() { (! ($email)) { ;
	} {
		$query = ->db->prepare( );
		$data = ($email);
		$query->execute($data);
		$all_mails = $query->fetchAll(); ($all_mails $row) { ;
		}
	} (PDOException $e) { ->logger->writeDbError($e->getMessage(), );
	} ;
} { (! ($phone)) { ; ();
	} {
		$query = ->db->prepare( );
		$data = ($phone);
		$query->execute($data);
		$all_numbers = $query->fetchAll(); ($all_numbers $row) { ;
		}
	} (PDOException $e) { ->logger->writeDbError($e->getMessage(), );
	} ;
} function exists_email ($email) if isset return true try $this "SELECT id  FROM subscribers WHERE email_hash=?" Array foreach as return true catch $this $this return false function exists_phone ($phone) if isset return false exit try $this "SELECT id FROM subscribers WHERE phone_hash=?" Array foreach as return true catch $this $this return false Once this function is clear, it is pretty straightforward to implement a in our demo backoffice page. See function in for implementation details. Obviously, the search will give you results only if the full email or full phone number is inputed, while are allowed. basic search by email or phone number listItems() dao.php no partial searches Final thoughts and warnings This article aims at showing how little effort is needed to meaningfully strengthen the privacy of your data in small / medium sized projects. The prototype described here must be taken as an opportunity to deepen our knowledge of encryption techniques and make it accessible to unexperienced developers and teams. As stated before, do not use this prototype in production environment, but play with it as much as you want.

How To Store Encrypted Data Collected By Your Web Application With PHP7 and LibSodium

August 12, 2019 “Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.” – Santosh Kalwar Trust is in short supply today. The lack of public trust in governments, institutions, and private companies is taking its toll on society in increasingly costly ways. In many cases, this erosion of trust hinges squarely on technological shortcomings and a . distinct lack of oversight From large scale hacks that compromise and personal to nation-states , the constant barrage of bad news makes it easy to feel helpless. Surely, there must be a better way. our identities email accounts without recompense undermining confidence in our democratic process Thankfully, blockchain technology and decentralized applications present an opportunity to restore public trust. The Road to Minimally Viable Trust A number of cutting-edge startups have created that empower self-sovereign, secure transactions by design. decentralized consensus algorithms https://pixabay.com/illustrations/fear-trust-away-straight-road-sign-441402/ Instead of relying on the carefully crafted branding efforts of centralized tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to build and maintain trust, blockchain technology makes vetting the source of truth transparent, accessible, and verifiable. This is the vein in which the groundbreaking blockchain platform, , operates: Algorand Don’t trust, verify. So, how does it work? How does Algorand compare to other borderless blockchain solutions like ? And what’s the benefit to users? In this article, we compare the goals, governance, and applications of Algorand vs. Libra to flesh out hype from hyperbole. It is the first article in an ongoing series. Facebook’s Libra Algos and Libras: Goals, Governance, and Consensus Algorand is a blockchain startup focused on Its goal is to create a decentralized infrastructure that extends the benefits of fast, cheap, and secure transactions to the global economy. This includes making payments in emerging markets far more accessible, affordable, and easy to use. “building trusted infrastructure for the borderless economy.” Libra’s mission sounds strikingly similar: To be fair, this is the of most blockchain networks. Make transactions better than the . But Algorand stands out in several important ways. “A simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.” modus operandi status quo Libra Talks the Talk What separates Algorand from Libra is the difference between vision, mission, and execution. Facebook sees cryptocurrency as an opportunity to grow its already massive global footprint. Its mission of wanting to connect and empower everybody seems to justify its means to an end. But not everybody is buying it. https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/18/facebook-libra/ This became readily apparent during the recent and hearings. Senators came prepared to ask difficult questions and made a lasting impact. While , who heads up Facebook’s Libra project and spoke on behalf of its wallet, stood firm in his prepared statements, many members of congress pushed back. Senate Banking Committee House Financial Committee David Marcus Calibra Crucially, regarding Libra’s intentions to keep Facebook’s user data and Libra’s financial data separate. Given Facebook’s to keep user data private – – Marcus’s carefully prepared statements fell short. The impact of broken promises runs deep. Chairman Crapo expressed reservations repeated failures even after committing to enhancing user privacy in court We see this again in Congressman Duffy’s remarks addressing the policy consequences of social and financial discrimination: Algorand Walks the Walk While both Libra and Algorand share similar goals, Algorand truly walks the walk. Algorand sees beyond money making. This is apparent in its design and proven in practice. https://cryptodiffer.com/algorand Algorand modeled its fundraising vehicles to mirror its mission, employing an open and transparent on-chain as a price discovery tool to establish the . Dutch Auction ALGO’s initial value At the end of the Algo Auction, . The live blockchain platform has continued to operate smoothly and without interruption since June 19th, securely delivering . Algorand launched its Mainnet 1,000+ transactions per second with a latency of less than 5 seconds Since launching, Algorand has continued to make prominent and practical partnerships with leading organizations, including , , and . This opens the doors to real-world business applications in verticals such as remittance, derivatives, and business intelligence. Algorand is more than just payment rails. It’s the onramp to trustworthy decentralized applications and economic transparency by default. Coinbase ISDA Flipside Crypto Money Making Money Several design decisions limit Libra’s goals and path towards execution. Foremost, the way in which the Libra Association establishes value for the Libra token has both regulatory and practical limitations. In general, money is made up of 3 constituent parts. Fiat currency consists of a unit of account (e.g. a dollar), a medium of exchange (e.g. a physical dollar bill), and a store of value (e.g. a physical dollar bill backed by the US government). What the Libra Association is trying to do is transform these 3 pillars into its own digital token called the Libra in order to transfer Libras across its own payment rails, the Libra Network. https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-well-do-the-top-stablecoins-perform-a-quantitative-analysis-c56d022719b A cornerstone of the Libra Association’s mission is to create a store of value commonly referred to as a . Stablecoins digitally represent value that already exists somewhere else, as in a digital representation of USD. There are that currently attempt to square this circle today. Each stablecoin exhibits its own unique features, benefits, and challenges. stablecoin a number of cryptocurrencies Libra is attempting to create a new digital currency backed by multiple fiat currencies and short-term government securities. It calls this 1:1 backing the . In theory, this multi-collateral peg will keep exchange rates low and make the Libra Reserve highly liquid. However, there are a number of obstacles that stand in the way of practical execution. For instance, how is the Libra Reserve governed? Libra Reserve Governing Libra with and without the SEC Some questions raised during the recent congressional hearings revolved around who owns what, and when. Given Facebook’s current problems with data privacy, these questions are warranted. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CIbDFmHqEIw/hqdefault.jpg While David Marcus made clear that some governance decisions will require a ⅔ supermajority of Founding Member votes to approve network changes, it was unclear what the scope, breadth, and depth of these decisions will be. At the moment, governing the decisions that the Libra Association can make. This presents a dilemma because the Libra Association is still forming its coalition of 100 Founding Members and the Founding Members will ultimately get to decide the rules of the road. Since Facebook decides who to extend membership to, it’s a governance catch 22 by design. there is no charter Looking Ahead In a fantastic , Wall St. veteran and Co-Founder, , predicted several trends that Libra’s congressional hearings would leave in their wake. Forbes editorial Wyoming Blockchain Coalition Caitlin Long Among them was the need for the Libra Association to grant Libra users interest generated from their investments in or purchases of Libra tokens. In its current state, Libra will generate interest for its Founding Member investors but not its users. The is currently made up of 28 Founding Members that are each worth at least $1 billion USD or paid $10 million USD to participate in the Libra Network. Their expectation is that they will accrue interest on their investments due to the nature of the Libra Reserve balancing a basket of assets and generating network fees. Libra Association By definition, that makes the Libra investment token a security, under the jurisdiction of the SEC. Since Libra users will need to buy in to the Libra Network as well, they should expect the same treatment. In the congressional hearings, this issue was left unanswered. Algorand’s Governance and Consensus Models On the other hand, Algorand is comprised of 2 main entities: , the business developing the permissionless blockchain platform. Algorand Inc. , the non-profit that governs and promotes Algorand Inc.’s mission. The Algorand Foundation Because Algorand’s blockchain platform is transparent and permissionless by design, Algorand cannot be gamed in ways that other permissioned blockchains like Libra are susceptible to – like social engineering or off-chain agreements made behind the scenes. This possibility was presented during the congressional hearings. Questions were raised about the of Libra’s Founding Members who sat on multiple boards together and shared financial interests in common. familiarity and established working relationships Part of Algorand’s mission is to engineer high performance protocols for long-term use and forwards-compatible applications. This involves a lot of planning, prototyping, and standardization efforts. Algorand has carefully crafted a team that separates governance from political and technical missteps. https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*XpXew5FWuUyfkpwkvvr1nw.png What I like about Algorand’s technical architecture is that it’s developing a blockchain solution that establishes network level trust from Day 1. Based on a consensus algorithm that ensures all parties are treated equitably, the Algorand blockchain empowers decentralized application developers using an open-source, permissionless codebase. This means that anybody can view the source code and build on top of the Algorand platform for free. Layer 1 Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) What’s more, Algorand has developed and submitted a to the , the standards organization responsible for developing open source internet protocols. aggregate the multiple rounds of signing needed to authenticate multi-party transactions into a shorter, succinct cryptographic signature. As a result, multiple transactions can be signed and authenticated securely in less time than when using existing signature schemes like or found in Bitcoin and . new BLS signature scheme Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) BLS signatures ECDSA Schnorr Bitcoin Liquid This design decision also enables to strengthen randomness and live network security guarantees. By designing a that uses , a standardized BLS signature scheme, and VRFs, the Algorand blockchain achieves and becomes resilient against adaptive attacks on-chain. This reduces the on-chain attack vector and opens up new possibilities for future decentralized applications like IoT. Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs) protocol and consensus algorithm Byzantine Agreement forward security Platform Building with Purpose https://www.sourcetoad.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/app-dev.jpg While this certainly isn’t the only cross-border blockchain project in town, both the team and technology behind Algorand are incredibly impressive. Founded by winning cryptographer, , and headed up by serial entrepreneur, , Algorand blends the best of both worlds – business and cryptography – in an industry where many build technology without practical use cases and applications. Turing Award Silvio Micali Steve Kokinos The startup also includes many economic experts, researchers, and leading cryptographers such as , , and , who have experience building distributed systems that deliver economically sound and provably secure applications. Notably, it’s Dr. Dan Boneh’s surname that puts the “B” in BLS signatures. Massimo Morini Tal Rabin Dan Boneh The design decisions that the team made upfront ensure that the Algorand network delivers trustworthy, reliable performance even under a large array of attack vectors. to be and resilient against attacks, , , and other attacks on network incentives. This means that the Algorand network will remain safe, secure, and live for users even under attack conditions common to many centralized and decentralized platforms. As the network evolves, the Algorand Foundation has committed to as well. Algorand was designed from the ground up Byzantine Fault Tolerant Denial-of-Service network threats partition attacks promoting economic equilibrium The Upshot of Political Fallout and the Upside of Open Source On the surface, Algorand and Facebook’s Libra share a lot in common. They both want to decentralize current financial services. They both want to democratize payments in a fair and equitable way. And they both want to enable frictionless, cheaper global transactions using blockchain technology. While both companies share a similar mission, their approach to creating and delivering value is vastly different. Right now Libra is a collection of whitepapers, expensive non-binding partnerships, and a new programming language called for enabling smart contracts. With significant push-back from multiple governments, regulatory agencies, and users of their current platform, Facebook’s Libra faces an uphill battle towards execution. Move Building trust takes time. Regaining it after a blunder takes effort and positive change. Facebook has broken its promise to preserve user privacy and security time and time again. Unfortunately, Facebook’s credo of doesn’t bode well for reestablishing lost trust. Especially as it moves into financial territory. “move fast and break things” https://www.franksonnenbergonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/image_27-ways-build-trust-relationship.jpg Algorand has created a Pure Proof-of-Stake blockchain that empowers qualified frameworks of trust. The elements that make Algorand transactions work are self-contained, self-signing, and publicly verifiable. This means that users can check that 2 + 2 = 4 and that 2 is actually 2 – not some other representation of 2 – without needing to just trust the organization governing their transactions. Algorand’s software is the source of truth. It is open source, public, and permissionless. Anybody can look under the hood and examine its inner-workings. This sets Algorand apart from Libra in a way that instills user confidence from the start. As blockchain and distributed ledger technologies continue to evolve, I believe we’ll see trends in decentralized applications develop which reaffirm Algorand as an innovative market leader. In the months and years to come, I believe we’ll see businesses and users prefer public, permissionless protocols governed by transparent non-profits like the Algorand Foundation over private, permissioned protocols made by pay-to-play consortia like the Libra Association. The path to verifiable transactions is bright and lit by transparency by design. Disclosure: I am an Algorand Ambassador. I do not hold any ALGO tokens.

Comparing Algorand and Libra: The Road to Decentralization

By Kees Wolters, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Mopinion It may come as a surprise to many of you how much effort is put into developing mobile apps nowadays. And why all the effort? If designed well, your app can give you the upper hand in the battle for market share. Note: the key words here are ‘if designed well’. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with all mobile apps on the market. Sure, they get the job done, but many of these apps still lack key features their users crave and a strong user experience. Fortunately, there is a remedy for these poorly designed mobile apps that will help put them back on top: in-app feedback. So Why is In-App Feedback So Important? Mobile apps have become the bread and butter for many businesses. After all, they can open new channels of revenue, enable you to provide more modern social media campaigns, introduce you to new marketing strategies and much more. But and it all starts with understanding what your users want. In such a highly competitive mobile market, providing a good user experience has become the key to survival. Especially now in 2018, where developers are up against additional technological challenges such as . Collecting in-app feedback will not only give you the insights you to need to boost user experience and the usability of your app, but also to keep your users loyal to your brand. with a great app comes great responsibility artificial intelligence and augmented reality There have been several recent innovations in the area of in-app feedback that also might be worth mentioning. For example, in-app feedback can now be collected in a variety of different ways, including Webviews, APIs and . Additionally, some feedback software offer a visual feedback feature, which gives mobile users the opportunity to submit screenshots along with their feedback. This is great for identifying bugs and usability issues right off the bat! SDKs Now, let’s take a look why you should be collecting this feedback in-app: Helps you provide a smooth and seamless in-app onboarding process When it comes to mobile apps, looks aren’t always everything. You can develop the best looking app in the store, but if your users can’t figure out how to use it, odds are they’ll leave and never come back. In fact, studies reveal that . This is obviously not something on your bucket list as a designer. 90% of all downloaded apps are used only once and then eventually deleted by users To prevent users from abandoning a mobile app, most designers create some sort of onboarding process. Not familiar? User onboarding is exactly how it sounds. It is a way of getting your users ‘onboard’ — or better acquainted — with your app. This includes showing them how to complete tasks and engage with the app in the easiest and most efficient manner. Luckily for mobile app designers, there are many ways to do this. Perhaps the most popular, however, is to create an interactive tour that walks your users through how to use the app. The onboarding process within the language learning app, is a great example of this. Alternatively, you can add tips on empty screens (not yet filled with data) or try gamification. For example, you could try using a spoiler that encourages the user to use the app more frequently so that they will be pushed to learn more and dig deeper. Aside from these examples, there are plenty of other ways to get your users up and running. For more tips, be sure to . Duolingo check out this article While the main purpose of these onboarding methods is to inform and prepare your users for your app, they also serve as ideal opportunities to learn more about your users, see which problems they’re facing or determine which steps are difficult for them to understand. With that data, you can start taking steps to eliminate any bottlenecks and start improving the process for future users. You can in various different ways. However, with user onboarding one of the most effective ways is by using activity-based feedback. This means that depending on how far your user has come in their onboarding, you can ask them why they’ve stopped moving forward or alternatively (if they completed the onboarding), what their overall experience was. collect feedback from your mobile app users 2. Enables you to prioritise your roadmap Many businesses in the process of building a new mobile app usually have tons of exciting features on their roadmap that they hope one day to implement. Responsive design, customisation, social media login, offline capabilities, speed, etc. Whatever it is, hold your horses! Lots of developers tend to get ahead of themselves here and . This can be not only overwhelming for your app users, but it can also cause quite a bit of chaos in the UX department. Try starting off slow and test as you go. start rolling out features all at once Insights obtained from collecting in-app feedback will provide you with an indication of which and which features could use a little TLC. For example, you can try using to find out where your users are focusing their attention. This knowledge will also help you prioritise your entire mobile roadmap so that you are better equipped to meet or even exceed the expectations of your users. Note: this will vary from app to app depending on the context of the app! features are highly valued by your users touch heatmaps 3. Helps you (consistently) monitor in-app performance Consistently monitoring your app’s performance is critical, especially when you are launching new features or plan to launch new features. After all, it’s technology… things can go wrong and not fixing them in a timely manner will put users off to your brand. Take it from . McKinsey Are you familiar with the ? According to this method, applying short feedback cycles before building a product (e.g. a mobile app) is the key to creating a successful product. By collecting feedback in cycles, you can continuously test how your app is performing and later make the necessary changes to enhance the performance. Lean Start-Up methodology 4. Lets you engage more with your app users (and in real-time) On top of providing you with deep insights into the customer journey and user experience, in-app feedback can also give you more detailed information about your users. For example, you can collect metadata from users such as demographics, browser type, OS and more. This data can then help you form personas. Try such as NPS or CSAT and you’ll be surprised to learn how powerful these insights can be. In fact, they will give you the chance to provide a more personalised experience for your users. cross analysing these personas with the other kinds of feedback results Not to mention, most feedback tools so you know exactly what’s going on in your mobile app all the time. collect this feedback in real-time 5. It can be a great financial investment, helping you save money even! That’s right. Last but not least is the financial benefit of having in-app feedback! After all, . developing a mobile app isn’t always a cheap project Think about it, adding new features and altering the existing ones can be quite expensive if these decisions are based on presumptions alone. By collecting feedback from customers who have experienced your app first-hand, you will be much better equipped to make meaningful changes to your app. In Summation These five reasons should be reason enough for you to understand why collecting in-app feedback is so important, but don’t forget about what comes after collection. The last step is to summarise, classify and analyse the results. This understanding of where you’re going wrong (or right!) will put you on the right track to adjusting your app roadmap and achieving a successful mobile app!

Top 5 Reasons You Should Be Collecting In-App Feedback

Let’s face it, software product design often takes a backseat to engineering: people just want to get things to work and then ship it! It’s not until after a product is in the market that the lack of design thinking and its importance becomes obvious. But design can give a product a competitive edge. It can increase adoption. And incorporating design thinking into a product development process consistently can make a team and company run smoothly. Fortunately, I was one of the software engineers, who was introduced to software product design early in my career. Hence, experienced the numerous benefits to incorporating it early on into a product’s lifecycle. Furthermore, I learned how to work with designers, and have a fully integrated product team, rather than engineering vs design vs product. I’ve been keen to showcase a number of these benefits and keep a watchful eye on new trends as they have emerged. Below you’ll find a roundup of Build episodes covering themes like: people looking to work with designers, become a designer, work on an existing software product’s design, or improve their team’s design process. Theme #1: Product Debt — What Is It And Why You Need To Prioritize Paying It Down You’ve heard of “tech debt”. The technical debt that gets accrued when a team races to ship a product and has to take shortcuts in engineering to make it happen. The same holds true for a product. Over time, a software product accumulates “product debt” as a result of cutting corners on the software product design. This is often prompted by the engineering team pushing back on what is and isn’t feasible given the timeframe. Moreover, they evaluate how much rework or additional work it is going to cost the engineering team. As this happens again and again, a product starts to exhibit clunky workflows. There are affordances that are inconsistent. Additionally, on-boarding maybe nonexistent, or a product’s features get buried. Moreover, as a product continues to grow, it impacts how users perceive the product, and interact with it. Hence, paying down product debt needs to become a priority to ensure a friendly user experience and product adoption. In this video, we talk to Leslie Yang who was formerly a Senior Product Designer at , about how to prioritize paying it down in every release. Pivotal Labs Theme #2: Product Redesign —What To Do Before You Redesign Your Software Product It’s tempting to want to jump into redesigning a product, especially if it’s laden with product debt, or you are trying to re-position your product or brand in the market. Planning out a redesign avoids it from becoming a runaway project. In this video interview, Leslie Yang is back and we explore things you need to consider before doing a redesign like: The hidden risks of jumping into a redesign and how to avoid them What happens when we redesign too many pieces of the product Plus the type of metrics you need to be tracking for each piece of the product you redesign Theme #3: Design Sprints — How They Help Fast-track Your Ideas And How To Get Your Team To Adopt Them These have gained in popularity thanks to Jake Knapp’s book . Sprints help design for the right problem, test out a feature, make sure it’s well scoped, and serve as a forcing function to put the product out for customers. Sprint Despite their popularity, there’s still a lot of pushback around adopting them. In the following two videos, Founder of and I discuss: Charbel Semaan Sprintwell What are design sprints When it makes sense to use them How they can benefit your overall product development process How to get your team to adopt them whether you’re working at a startup or larger company The #1 benefit to doing them Theme #4: Accessibility — Why Accessibility Needs To Be Prioritized In Software Product Design When designing products, we often think about usability: how easy to use a product is. But we often overlook another aspect of software product design: accessibility. Why do we overlook accessibility? It’s seen as a challenge to prioritize it given a company’s size and resources. Therefore, we may think accessibility makes sense for a big company. However, a startup that is getting off the ground just doesn’t have the resources to incorporate it. Well, actually that’s not true… In fact, accessibility maybe just the differentiator you need when it comes to software product design that is going to give your product a competitive advantage and increase adoption! In the follow videos, I interview Laura Allen, who is the Accessibility Program Manager at Google for Chrome and the Chrome operating system. You’ll learn: What accessibility is and how it’s different from usability How accessibility influences user adoption of products How companies will benefit by incorporating accessibility into product development process, priorities, and core values Examples of common accessibility issues that impact all of us at various moments in our lives How to do an accessibility audit for your product and the 4 important principles to consider each time Theme #5: Striking Out On Your Own—Becoming A Freelance Designer Tempted to strike out on your own? But worried about giving up the comforts of a company, by becoming a freelance designer? Of course, the transition brings up a lot of fears like being good enough, consistently attracting clients, and pay those pesky bills. In this video, I interview , who shares the following: Jessica Hische Steps you can take early in your career Why a day job can be immensely valuable and how to find one that is nurturing Why you don’t have to run a 10+ person design studio or a 100+ startup, and can be a solopreneur How to reconcile your client’s vision with your own creative desires How to get compensated fairly by conveying the price and value of your work Why learning tangential skills as a creative can be helpful when it comes to hiring Balancing side projects and attracting work with the day-to-day work that pays the bills Theme #6: Creative Confidence—How Practicing Creative Confidence Can Help You Embrace Risk When you design and share your designs with others like co-workers and clients you open yourself up, and that can be scary. You fear criticism, rejection, and failure. Hence, to get over it you have to get comfortable practicing creative confidence. In this video, and I discuss the following: Majo Molfino Why the fear of failure is bigger than actually experiencing failure Why we’re sensitive to feedback and how to remove the sting of it How to deal with criticism from ourselves, bosses, peers, and loved ones Why it’s important to create space between yourself and your creative work How to reframe self-promotion Theme #7: The Rise of The DEO—Creators Can Become Company Leaders DEOs (design executive officers) are replacing traditional CEOs. The main difference: DEOs embrace design thinking and imbue their company culture with it. Whether you’re a leader or aspire to be one, this episode will help you learn from a VP of Experience Design at Autodesk, how DEOs: Maria Giudice Are different from traditional CEOs Evaluate and take risks Are systems level thinkers Use their intuition to guide their decision-making Have cultivated a high level of social intelligence Get shit done! Co-create with their teams and manage different roles Give employees permission to fail Influence and shape a company’s culture through their unique leadership style Theme #8: Empathy—How To Use Empathy To Build Software Products Designers know the value of empathy as it relates to building products. But there are still a lot of misconceptions and misuses. In this interview, and I explore the various types of empathy, and how to practice it. Indi Young We dig into: Why Tom Gruber, the designer and co-founder of Siri, believes empathy is crucial to getting things done in tech companies. Why empathy need to extend to processes and building teams. How to translate our learnings from practicing empathy into actionable insights for our business. Why we’ve fallen in love with quantitative data. Why we need need qualitative data too — a deep understanding of our teammates and customers How empathy is a skill that can be learned and practiced. Theme #9: The Art vs Science of UX Design Why do some products standout and others that just get the job done? Is it who designs them, or is it something else? In this video, and I explore these questions, and discuss: Pauly Ting Why it’s hard to differentiate your product if you fixate on features and the science behind them Why most companies fail to make a meaningful connection with users A simple 4-step framework that helps you clarify your design and speeds up development time Enjoyed this post and want more? Help others enjoy it too by hitting the 👏🏽 ! What are some questions that came up or future topics related to design that you’d like to see me cover in future Build episodes? Let me know in the comments below! Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker . San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA .

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