At the american anti-corruption act we set a standard for local, state, and federal laws that fix our broken elections, stop political bribery, and end secret money

RepresentUs

representus

This one’s for the Web3 hacktivists who are seeking ‘true’ decentralization! Y’all are free to express, rant away, and write your hearts out on your anger against the monopoly and manipulation of centralization over our space - the Web3 space that should be truly decentralized. Āut Labs and HackerNoon are glad to announce ! The Opt Out writing competition series grants $9000 in USDT to the best web3 writers, and it expands over three (3) main themes for nine (9) months - making it one of the longest writing contests in the history of Web3. the Opt Out Writing Contest What do we mean by Opt Out? it’s a call to all web3 "hacktivists" and thinkers who dare to question and challenge the status quo, the societal construct where we live in. Using decentralized technology and collective autonomy to shake its very foundations - made of bureaucracy, institutions, and authoritarian legacy. It combines the core principles of decentralized technologies, inviting hackers and writers to push them forward - exploring these concepts from a creative and/or technical standpoint alike. We start by opting out of a system that doesn’t represent us, and after 9 months, we arrive to define a whole new #system shaped through collective autonomy. is designed for writers to share their views and knowledge in a genuine, spontaneous way, in a variety of styles - spacing from creative writing to technical-scientific essays, to brand new mechanisms and system design. Offering solutions, perspectives and stories for moving towards collective action and societal change. Opt Out We’d mostly like to see: Including dystopian short stories and other speculative narratives. Creative Writing: Welcoming both academic and political essays that offer insight or critique. Essays: Covering topics like DAO, SSID, DID, IAM, VC, new or existing Web3 primitives, models and proposals for systems like enforceable systemic autonomy. Technical Analyses: About Āut Labs Āut is a collective building decentralized standards for self-sovereign Identity (SSID, IAM), Reputation and Communities (DAOs, Hacktivists, Network States, etc.). ​ A laboratory of experimentation, pushing the boundaries imposed by the status quo. Our protocols are designed to implement autonomy and personal freedom at a systemic level - in an effort to accelerate the transition from hierarchical power structures, to self-organizing forms of coordination. Opt out of the system that doesn’t represent you! Theme # 1: Opt out of a System that doesn’t represent you The Contest Starts Now! Decentralized technologies are designed to implement “unstoppable, self-enforcing rules (and logic)” at a systemic level - pretty much the very definition of Autonomy. And yet, a quick buck or a brief moment on the spotlight, constantly draws us back - with enthusiastic disclaimers about “crypto main adoption.” 💡 Reminder: we won't take back our rights by " " dialoguing with institutions. Opt out goes in opposite direction, and it’s a way to genuinely reclaim the ethos behind decentralized technologies, communities, and economies. Decentralization gives us the chance to rebuild a more human society from the ground up - from financial systems to governance and the very concept of “state.” We have the responsibility to use that chance, and do something with it. So don’t settle. Don't negotiate. Don't compromise. Opt out of a system that doesn't represent you. By “ ”, we commit to more than a mere gesture – we are opting out of a system that doesn’t represent us, and in turn we're accessing a web of trust, where connections and actions are verifiable and intentional. opting out There are three main topics of this theme with $3k (in USDT) rewards for the top 6 writers: : You have the freedom to write on autonomy in art, tech, decentralized systems, collectives, and DAOs. #autonomy You can write on the history of identity, identity in the digital space, the evolution of identity, the impact of web3 and decentralization on identity, and more! : #identity ‘To Sybil or not to Sybil’, ‘self-sovereignity in action’, ‘balancing self-sovereignty and collective responsibility’, - there are many ideas you can write on. #selfsovereignity: Our friends at Āut Labs have prepared with more context on these topics and more ideas for your creative juices flowing! this detailed writing prompt for web3 hacktivists Prizes for the Contest #1: Opt out of a System that doesn’t represent you A total of $3,000 (in USDT) is up for grabs, with $1,000 for each Tag: #autonomy, #identity, and #selfsoverignity Prizes Breakdown for Each Tag 1st: $750 in USDT 2nd: $250 in USDT The Writing Contest by Āut Labs: Guidelines and FAQs Opt Out Who Can Enter the Contest?​ Anyone over the age of 18. There are no location restrictions. Can I Write Under a Pen Name? Yes! You can use your real name on your HackerNoon profile, a fake name, or even create a persona to write under. How Can I Enter the Contest? 1. Signup or login with your Web3 wallet. Details . here Log into HackerNoon with your Web3 wallet to submit your entry. Use to enter the contest. this template Write your piece and ensure it aligns with the chosen topic. Each entry must include the topic-specific tag (e.g., #autonomy, #identity, etc.) along with the general competition tags (#optout). Post your story on Twitter using the #āut and #OptOut hashtags and tagging @opt_au and @hackernoon. Can I use AI to write a story? ​Sure, you can! We will notice it, though, and you will be disqualified 😇 Humans can write beautifully - and we can’t wait to read beautiful human submissions. How Long Will the Contests Run?​ The contest consists of 3 themes and will run for nine months. We will announce the shortlisted top ten stories every month. The final results and winner for each round will be announced at the end of each thematic contest. This is the announcement of the first writing contest in the series. ​ Active Contest Contest #1: Jan 9th - April 9th, 2024 Finalists Announcement: Every Month Winners Announcement: April 2024 Contest #2: April 10th - July 10th, 2024 Finalists Announcement: Every Month Winners Announcement: July 2024 ​ Contest #3: July 11th - October 9th, 2024 Finalists Announcement: Every Month Winners Announcement: October 2024 Can I submit more than one entry to the contest? Of course. Each story submission shall be considered a new entry into the writing contest. How are the winners selected? Each month, we’ll take the top 10 story submissions that receive the most eyeballs (real humans, not bots!). We will announce the shortlisted top ten stories from every month. The editors will vote for the top stories of each month. The winners will be announced at the end of each contest. Apart from $9k in prizes, the sponsor has committed to offering the winners and standout contributors a place at ĀutDAO in a creative role! You can use to enter the contest. this prompt All the best, hacktivists! Visit for more updates from us. contests.hackernoon.com

#OptOut: A Series of Writing Contests for Web3 Hacktivists by Āut Labs

#অপ্টআউট: আউট ল্যাব দ্বারা ওয়েব3 হ্যাকটিভিস্টদের জন্য লেখার প্রতিযোগিতার একটি সিরিজ

#OptOut: Eine Reihe von Schreibwettbewerben für Web3-Hacktivisten von Āut Labs

#OptOut: una serie de concursos de redacción para hacktivistas de Web3 organizados por Āut Labs

#OptOut : une série de concours d'écriture pour les hacktivistes du Web3 par Āut Labs

#ऑप्टआउट: ऑट लैब्स द्वारा वेब3 हैक्टिविस्ट्स के लिए लेखन प्रतियोगिताओं की एक श्रृंखला

#OptOut: Āut Labs による Web3 ハクティビスト向けの一連のライティング コンテスト

#OptOut: Āut Labs가 진행하는 Web3 핵티비스트를 위한 글쓰기 콘테스트 시리즈

#OptOut: uma série de concursos de redação para hacktivistas Web3 da Āut Labs

#OptOut: серия конкурсов писателей для хактивистов Web3 от Āut Labs

#OptOut: Āut Labs'tan Web3 Hacktivistleri için Bir Dizi Yazma Yarışması

#OptOut: Chuỗi cuộc thi viết dành cho những kẻ tấn công Web3 của Āut Labs

#OptOut：Āut Labs 为 Web3 黑客活动家举办的一系列写作比赛

Mark Twain's Speeches by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH here AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872 MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I thank you for the compliment which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention—as usual. It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord—and not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and—common drinks, what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of brotherhood? This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and glorious land, too—a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin, a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C. Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read. And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for some of them—voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion. I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, “Please state what figure you hold him at—and return the basket.” Now there couldn’t be anything friendlier than that. But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won’t mind a body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word of brag—and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that. And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for us yet.* *At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
          but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
          blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
          harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
          did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
          would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
          sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
          sociable time.  It is known that in consequence of that remark
          forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb.  The
          depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
          banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
          that were there.  By that one thoughtless remark General
          Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
          More than one said that night: “And this is the sort of person
          that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Mark Twain (2004). Mark Twain's Speeches. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3188/pg3188-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

The spirit of emigration crept in among the few survivors

Last summer, during my 14-day quarantine after flying home, my friend called me and told me her crazy idea. We talked about ways people can donate to those who were heavily impacted by COVID-19. We found out that unless we donated as an institution, it was actually difficult to do charity because we needed to ensure a few things: That the individual/organization doing charity is reliable That our donation comes to those who actually need it That the donation recipients receive just enough Most of the time, people don’t have time or may not be mindful enough to do careful research and follow-up with their donations. We needed a faster, more efficient, and transparent way to bridge the gap between those who can share and those in need. was born out of quarantine to remove all barriers to the donation process and empower community-giving. We ran in 2 months with operating in of Vietnam and delivered of rice to underprivileged students, workers, elders, and patients across Vietnam. App Gạo 2 beta tests 4 charity organizations 4 different provinces 12,818lbs (5814kg) Our future vision for App Gao was not limited to only rice. We wanted people to be able to donate a variety of products and services. We aimed for App Gao to become a management tool/network for all charity organizations to manage their activities/donations, including scheduling volunteering events that anyone can check and sign up to participate in (similar to how ClassPass works). Our team wanted App Gao to be the first thing that would come up in people’s minds when they think of charity. Although I didn’t understand what my developers talked about to one another at first, I unconsciously spent late nights scrolling through their messages to look up technical concepts and ask a team member to elaborate. I always thought that changes could only be made through policies, but App Gao proved me otherwise. March 2020 - May 2020: We found our talented team members working in 2 time zones - Vietnam and United States: Vicky Giap, Tuan Dao, Quang Khanh, Trang Dang Built our first business plan, which included a 5-year vision plan (Vicky and I are very compatible when it comes to executing crazy ideas) Met and partnered with Mr. Tran Dang Tuan - the person behind Vietnam’s most successful charity organization Talked to so many people about our idea, including Mr. Giap Van Duong - who suggested the name “App Gao”, and Mr. Ban Thai Hung - one of the biggest supporter of my crazy ideas of all time Launched our web-app version Launched our app version Created our Facebook page June 2020 - August 2020: Ran 2 beta tests: Delivered 670kg of rice to Xóm Chạy Thận Delivered 420kg of rice to Sa Lông Primary School in Mường Chà, Điện Biên through Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt) Delivered 550kg of rice to Chùa An Quốc Went on our first research trip to Mường Chà, Điện Biên to learn about the living conditions of people in mountainous areas (Watch my video ) here Had a news article written about us Deployed our first user survey, identifying 3 technical glitches Received a funding offer worth of 20,000 USD from Vietnam Silicon Valley (but we didn’t know anything about investing!) August 2020 - October 2020: Delivered 500kg of rice to Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt) Delivered 1852kg of rice to Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt) Delivered 1079kg of rice to Mỗi Ngày Một Quả Trứng (One Egg A Day): 800kg delivered to 40 families in Cư San, M'Drak 270kg delivered to families in Ea So, Ea Kar Looking back, there are a few ideas I wish we could have done or continued to implement/improve: App engagement and user retention features that would notify or remind people to make a donation weekly/monthly/annually. A charity map (which now exists in Vietnam!) that shows all places in need of help as red dots, and can turn into green once they received support from a user. Our Excel file is a mess. It’s important to keep data organized as that’s the only thing I’m looking at right now as I’m writing this to ensure I got the details right. We found a business model that worked. After looking into crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, we learned that at least 1% of users’ donations go to these platforms. However, as a charity app, it wouldn’t look good if we were to charge users money so they can make donations. We realized that we were technically a third-party seller for our rice suppliers, so we decided to charge them 1% for each purchase made by users. We tested this out for a month, and we got: !!! Although it wasn’t a lot of money, this number proved that our business model could work! We donated all of this money to the 2 charity organizations that partnered with us and guided us as we learned about the charity scene in Vietnam: Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt) and Mỗi Ngày Một Quả Trứng (One Egg A Day). 16,957,000VND (745 USD) We talked to so many people with expertise in law and finance to ask for their advice on how to give App Gao a legal entity (Non-profit? Or social enterprise? Who would represent us? Did we even have to pay tax? How much tax would we have to pay?). Since there are few social enterprises in Vietnam, and our business model was kind of new for an app, we didn’t find much information. We wanted to look for ways to grow App Gao, but who would be the CEO? COO? CTO? What would my team members’ roles be when we were all calling ourselves co-founders? It was clear that our team was small, and we needed to continue going on our own journeys so that one day, when we are equipped with the necessary knowledge and experience, we could actually make hard and important decisions with confidence. Although we are no longer working on App Gao, I want to document our big milestones. I think we were very successful for an idea that we didn’t think would receive so much support and attention. App Gao was a crucial life event that marked my growth both as a friend and a team player.

App Gạo is a New & Digitized Charity Experience

Introducing ’s Official Writing Prompts! Interested in answering some of the below questions? Find the template and just start writing! Hacker Noon HERE Have you have ever had a feeling that something could be made better or that some critical piece of information in a system was missing? Perhaps it’s as simple as an outlook or a tiny part of a larger system. Maybe when you apply this small little piece of information you notice that it changes the entire system as a whole and it starts to break everything. Should you continue to work towards understanding how and why it breaks things down? I think yes, people should strive to break and change the world around them and rebuild it better than before. Just because your idea breaks things, doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it could just mean it’s incomplete. Understanding the system that you are changing and how you are changing it will guide your intuitions further to better answers. HN Reporter: If automation replaces 70 percent of all possible human jobs, what do you think people will spend their time doing? Exploring, like in Star Trek. Perhaps they will play around with their existence and change it to experience the difference. I think people will better themselves, their bodies and their minds or they will fall into a cycle of addiction and suffering, idle hands and all. Out of this new wave of ease of existence, people will make their own works and rebuild old systems of thought, philosophy, schools, and government. In such a case, what do you think the governance structure will look like? I think we will have more time to look at our systems and make them better. I think we will choose better people in elections (USA) and hold those people accountable to their actions and the way they vote and represent us. I think it will take time to do this, because people don’t like to give up power, so they will do strange and drastic things and use the system against change. It will be interesting to say the least to go through a process like that with an entire nation, but also very difficult. Do you think it’s possible technological advancement will be able to outsmart human greed? Why? Yes. Greed is primal and when we boil down the complicated steps that greedy people take, it’s easy to see they are just being greedy and are trying to take more than what is necessary. The other question that should go with this is: Is being greedy something we should punish in the first place? If we have a post-scarcity society will we see being greedy the same way or as something different from the past in our society? Or maybe it’s from trauma about not being recognized in early childhood. Basically, a mental condition that we are all subject to. Perhaps being greedy is a trauma from a past experience of not having enough or being poor. In the race against Armageddon vs. technology, which do you think will win, why? Armageddon is a word from the bible, but we now use it to describe a future event that will bring a great change in the existence of the entire world where the events will affect every person in a negative way. I don’t see how this is different from the personal events that people go through every day. People who are going through cancer treatment or a breakdown of their bodies are going through a battle of existence. What does it matter if it happens to one person or 1 billion people, they are both suffering and we should try to fight that with all the tools at our disposal. I think the more we help individuals in their time of need the better practice we will have for when something really big comes our way. In short, it pays to live in a compassionate society, because it has the most practice at fighting suffering. Could you survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? I could, but the question to me is do I want to? What kind of existence would I have? If you think it would be fun to live this kind of life, I challenge you to go naked in the wilderness for a month and see what kind of fun you will have. Are you afraid of a robot army? How would you fight against one if you had to? No, I am not afraid, because fear is the second thing your enemy wants you to do, the first being to die or to be overcome. Robots are made from man and the best way to beat a robot army is to beat the programmers or developers of those programs. You will have to think outside the box and in strange ways to fight a robot army, but I think and they don’t want to have to program the entire existence of the world into a fighting machine. success will be found because developers are lazy Only the worst developers make weapons to destroy because it’s easy to destroy, it’s hard to build, and very time-consuming and the best developers are found in those areas. Could you survive in a bunker? How would you do it? How would you go without trackers picking up your radio frequencies? Go deep with lots of food and water and don’t have a radio transmitter. If you have to use a radio, randomize the time it’s being used and the duration and location. If you can’t move out of the bunker to use the radio try to build a tunnel(s) for each time you use the radio and use it very sparingly, like once a month or longer if possible. What in life is truly objective and not subjective? Momentum. What is consciousness? I would like to think that this is something that is primal and has been with the Universe since it began, but I think it’s more of an emergent property of our Universe. I think our Universe is very well equipped to nurture consciousness and that, that should put people at ease, because I think a system of continuing a consciousness for a very long time in our Universe is possible and if that is true, perhaps the Universe is remembering our existences for us in some way we have yet to understand. I think this will be answered by us (the human race) and we will see our existence in a completely different way in the near future. What’s your favorite fractals formula? Please explain and show the result. I don’t have one, but I do have an appreciation for fractals in our existence, especially when I find them unexpectant through physics. Do we have free will? Maybe we don’t, but If we all (the human race) don’t know/understand the outcomes of our actions, because of the sheer amount of variables that present themselves, what’s the difference? We all know we die, yet we continue to work and do works. The only move that makes sense to us is to continue, continue in our paths that we are forced to walk, but are blind to see. At least when we continue we can make sense of where we are now, because of our past experience of where we have been. Would you kill 10 people to save 100? Why? That’s easy. No. There is no information given about these people except numbers. I’m going into the situation blind and my first instinct is to watch the situation, so those 100 people will die because I did nothing, but if I choose to kill 10 people I need a very good reason why and it’s more than just numbers (for me). I would have to weigh the value of those lives to the 100 and that’s not a position that anyone wants to be involved in, because through this process they will have to find the value of their own life, which could be a good or bad thing. The trick of this question is that 111 people are involved, but it only gives the problem between the 110. Should 1 person be responsible for the fate of 110 people? Does life require a purpose and a goal? Life only requires us to maintain life and that’s a really hard thing to do sometimes. When we are born we are given the choice to continue or not. This is a very uncomfortable thing for me to ponder because my death is involved with the logic. Is mind or matter more real? I don’t know. Does observation alter an event? No. Unless a conscious mind chooses to intervene. A bunny running away from a car’s headlights at night is an observation by the bunny and it chooses to run. The inevitable future of an asteroid impact on the Earth. Will we choose to alter the event? Do we have the foresight or the ability to work together or will we act like a dumb rabbit who won’t move in the headlights? What is infinity? The death and the rebirth of the Universe over a mind-bending amount of time, just to find 1 more electron to add to its structure, so that it can become greater than it was and continue to try to find an infinite amount of electrons. Does fate exist? Isn’t this the same question as free will? I think frequency and synergy exist and sometimes frequencies line up in very powerful ways, good and bad. I think that’s what fate means to me. Is life all a dream? If we are part of an immortal being that is filling out its time by fracturing itself into imperfect mortal beings, then, yes, life is but a dream. Can I make myself into superhero yet? What is intelligence? The ability to spot infrequent or loosely correlated patterns and act on them to gain a benefit. Why do we dream? So the mind can work or play in its own realm without the anxieties of the body constantly acting on it. Is it possible time is being altered right now? Time is altered constantly by all of us and we weave our futures together if we like it or not. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is , just start writing! Interested in what others had to say in their answers? Click . Interested in reading the content from all of our writing prompts? Click . HERE HERE HERE

"Success will be found because developers are lazy"

Digital Ownership has been a controversial matter if NFT is kept out of space. Game skins, tokens, and other collectible items bought through microtransactions give the users a sense of ownership. But in reality, those digitally bought items belong to the original publishers, it could be due to the centralized nature of the business. For example, Gamer 007 plays competitive COD and has bought a dozen rare in-game skins and collectible items. For the time being, Gamer 007 owns the digital items because he/she paid for them. What happens if that game shuts down or loses its player base completely? What happens to those items? Does the owner or gamer profile get it? Does he/she get a refund or compensation? No! It's lost forever. This very problem is fundamentally tackled by NFTs. As NFTs are based on the decentralized blockchain network, there’s no single entity with the majority of ownership. It's all distributed. Decentralization was the reason crypto became so prominent today, to break away from the central authoritarian structure. We have always believed the pioneer of NFT is Crypto Kitties because it introduced an idea where collectibles are digitally owned via smart contracts. Theoretically, it means that if Crypto Kitties is to close its business tomorrow, you wouldn’t lose your ownership of the asset. In the last couple of years, the NFT market has erupted into a $432 million industry, which is a positive sign that people are embracing it with such warmth. But, few critical issues need fixing on a much larger scale and only a handful are trying to address them. NFT’s Problems Low Liquidity -  Understand this with an example For example -  Tony wants to sell a car for $5000, the most obvious asset that it can be exchanged here for is the cash, right? Steve doesn’t have the cash and instead offers a Gauntlet having the same value as $5000 in exchange for the car, Tony might not want to do it. It creates two different scenarios - Steve has to sell the Gauntlet and get cash for it to buy the car. But it is tough finding anyone willing to buy that Gauntlet for $5000 first. Steve may have to wait months to find the perfect match to sell it to buy the car, given Tony is willing to wait around, which is highly unlikely. 1st. Tony cannot wait, and Steve must buy the car at the earliest. So Steve decides to sell the Gauntlet for a lower price to Natasha because a match for the correct value couldn’t be made. 2nd. Here, in this example, Gauntlet is an asset with low liquidity. Heavy Network Fee NFT requires complex smart contracts to be executed, compared to a normal crypto transaction. This causes gas fees to go higher in order to process that smart contract over the network which takes more space in the blocks. Robert Martin, a guy who tried buying an NFT on Rarible that cost $30, had to pay $200 for the gas fee. The high gas fee stops many NFT users from buying or selling. Interoperability Each NFT is unique. They don’t have the same value so it cannot be exchanged like other assets which cause scarcity, making the NFT less liquid. ERC-721 tried solving a lot of things but Interoperability is far from being normal at this very moment. Why We Created a DeFi Platform Based On A Mythical Creature? The founders were fascinated by Werewolves and the myths surrounding them. So we decided to bring the myth and connected it with the Decentralized Finance ecosystem consisting of a Decentralized Marketplace, Decentralized Asset Management, and Gamification for Werewolf Assets. Because at the moment, DeFi is the next big thing, and if you add NFT to this equation, Boom! A look at the Market cap of DeFi shows exponential growth in just over a year.  And if you do a side-by-side comparison with NFT Marketplace, the picture tells another astonishing story. For Werewolf Exchange, having a defi based ecosystem has great benefits: It tackles all those problems like High Exchange fee, Interoperability, and Liquidation. is a key aspect of any market and without it, it’s the wild west out there. Automated Market Maker is one solution especially for the projects or exchanges based on the Sale Mechanism model. It also helps in deciding the price of the token as value is decided through a public offering in the open market. More on IBCO later….. Liquidation - Our ecosystem also addresses liquidity through IBCO or Initial Bonding Curve Offering. Ganesh Lore, Founder of Werewolf Exchanges says, “There’s always more than enough balance in the reserve of our Bonding Curve Contract. This helps facilitate accurate amounts of tokens to the buyers in exchange for Ethereum. On the other hand, when tokens are sold, the contract takes the current selling price of the tokens into account and sends the user the correct amount of Ethereum.” Since the bonding curve is acting as an automated market maker (AMM), tokens can be bought or sold at any time giving it instant liquidity. This is made possible by the bonding curve contract holding more than enough Ethereum to perform as the transaction counterparty, and buying back the WOLF tokens from the seller. Meaning there’s continuous and constant liquidity. On our exchange, the fee is a little higher, up to $2.5 on each transaction. But our exchange uses that fee to incentivize those who hold Werewolf assets. So more and more investors want to hodl their position and earn incentives on the network. High Fee - We talked about interoperability and how NFTs are having a hard time. We are fixing this issue by standardization which gives a much higher degree of interoperability to our NFTs. So the assets are easily transferable between applications. Interoperability - “In Werewolf Marketplace, users can also use Ethereum or WWC (Werewolf Coin) and get NFTs in return. These tokens represent a unique value. NFTs could be used to represent these items and make them easy to store on a wallet, less expensive to sell and trade on an open market.” Now coming to the gamification part of Werewolf Exchange: Why A Virtual World of Werewolves There are projects selling virtual lands, we have Crypto Kitties selling virtual cats, so we thought why not a whole world full of Werewolves. By gamifying werewolf assets, we’re giving NFT enthusiasts a new exciting way to get involved that's not boring. Our game will engage the community with their participation. They can buy Werewolf NFTs and rule territory. Stake their asset into our Full moon pool and earn rewards. The gaming platform is a virtual version of our real world and is divided into territories/states. The territories are occupied by our three Werewolf Assets: Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Each territory is led by Alpha Werewolf Asset. Alpha is the leader of a territory that is followed by a pack of Beta werewolves. While the Omega is the outcasts or loners, owing no allegiance to any territory or the Alpha. Things get interesting as one territory cannot be ruled by more than one Alpha, a user wanting to gain control over another territory will have to fight the Alpha hodler of that territory. Whoever wins gets the opponent's territory and the betted token. “Shortly after we announced our NFT, people successfully managed to mint 2 Alpha and 2 Beta Assets in different territories.” Alpha Werewolf Asset- The Werewolf platform is a digital version of the world where Alpha owns the territory and is the most dangerous out of the three. The number of Alpha is parallel to the number of territories. Beta Werewolf Asset- The followers or the members of the pack that Alpha leads. If a beta Werewolf is born in a territory, it will be automatically assigned to the Alpha of that area. Betas are not as powerful as Alpha but they are stronger than Omegas. Omega Werewolf Asset- The lowest-ranked canine is the least powerful and are the outcasts. They do not belong to any pack even if born in a specific territory. They are also the least powerful of them all. The Initial Bond Curve Offering (IBCO) In January 2021, we made our ERC-20 WOLF token sale public via Initial Bond Curve Offering was announced, starting the tokenomics of the entire project followed by our whitepaper. The IBCO enables participants to use Ethereum as a form of currency to instantly buy Wolf Token on Werewolf Exchange, which gets deposited in the wallet instantly and acquires governance over the Decentralized Finance ecosystem. The token works just like any other where increasing demand causes the price to increase as well. Meaning each next buyer will have to pay slightly higher prices for the token. In simpler terms, as more interest builds up leading to more investment, the value of token progressively rises along the bonding curve. It helps with liquidity as there are always more than enough in reserve that users shouldn’t be concerned about their locked liquidity. PurchaseReturn = ContinuousTokenSupply * ((1 + ReserveTokensReceived / ReserveTokenBalance) ^ (ReserveRatio) - 1) SaleReturn = ReserveTokenBalance * (1 - (1 - ContinuousTokensReceived / ContinuousTokenSupply) ^ (1 / (ReserveRatio))) Custom Bonding Curves interface IBondingCurve { function calculatePurchaseReturn( uint256 _supply, uint256 _reserveBalance, uint32 _reserveRatio,  uint256 _depositAmount) public constant returns (uint256); function calculateSaleReturn( uint256 _supply, uint256 _reserveBalance, uint32 _reserveRatio, uint256 _sellAmount) public constant returns (uint256); } The buying and selling price of the tokens rises and falls in correspondence with the number of tokens minted and burned. “We are focusing on launching an Exchange where people can trade their WWC with other Crypto Tokens, and also building a gaming platform where NFT holders can fight with other NFT holders over ownership of Territory as well as getting hold of oppositions Werewolf assets which they used in the fight. We also aim to build Werewolf Payment Gateway and Werewolf Auth in which people can use Werewolf NFT as a Login service. Last but not the least, eCommerce Platform is also on our list. Our developers are working hard to make it possible by the end of the year 2021.” Future Plans In March 2020, DeFi transactions were evaluated to be around $2.2 billion. A year later, that market cap has reached $68billion during mid April, showing a growth of a stunning 31000% (according to ). Some of the best names are Aave, Maker, Uniswap and more. Moneyweb Our DeFi exchange that is to launch in the second quarter of 2021, will help us and our users achieve the freedom to buy and sell or stake their holdings. This in turn will further the liquidity as the tokens locked for staking can be used for lending or other token-based activity. Those who stake coins or tokens on our network are equivalent to network participants. DeFi craze is rising and having no involvement of regulators is the cherry on the top. At the moment, DeFi is estimated to have over $59billion locked, an increase of over $17 billion in just a month. Big financial institutions are jumping in as well embracing Defi. Sentiments are changing and people who this, they don't want to miss out. #FOMO. As a team of developers, we wanted to create an innovative way to bring in more DeFi enthusiasts, hence Werewolf Exchange. It delivers a secure and convenient way to create or trade NFTs, buy or sell anywhere in the world. About Werewolf Exchange Werewolf is a Defi platform based on the Ethereum network with an intuitive Decentralized Exchange, Decentralized Asset Management, and Yield Farming for Staking and rewards. The ecosystem uses Werewolf Coin as the utility token. The token holders are considered contributors to the exchange’s success and as the whole Werewolf ecosystem grows, they will profit from it. Werewolf comprises DeFi based platforms like Decentralized Asset Marketplace, Decentralized Exchange, and Gaming. Important links: Buying and Staking Werewolf IBCO Werewolf IEO Werewolf Exchange Werewolf Whitepaper

A Virtual World of Werewolves in the NFT Space

"Tyranny without the tyrant" - Hannah Arendt Our world is in a clerical mess. Growing technological debt is leading us into a future. The one for up until recently we had no solution, namely the delegation of trust. kafkaesque Word has entered our dictionaries describing the complicated and frustrating experience of being forced to navigate the labyrinth of bureaucracy. Dealing with these mundane and absurd aspects of modern administration can sidetrack one's quest for truth in our society. kafkaesque In another small piece written by Franz Kafka in 1920 called , the sea god is presented as a disgruntled manager of the waters, who became overwhelmed with paperwork and lost its will to rule. "Poseidon" Tragicomic mythology of the digital age Good protocols make sure the information is transformed in a transparent way while not hindering the user's ability to interface with his freedom. Now, this is easy to say. The cost of running a highly redundant and uncoherent system makes truth expensive to achieve in any society. In our society truth is mostly achieved by consensus. And technology isn't really helping it's just adding to the growing list of dependencies the social machine needs to function. We rely on these convoluted systems with real consequences in all aspects of our lives. Administrative and legal systems are expensive and often time-consuming - sometimes it takes years to prove a case that should be done in days. The bureaucracy apparatus is so big and inefficient that it has become a meme, an ever dragging legacy. There are wormholes, gray areas and non-transparent processes working out behind the curtain and the momentum of the legal system is hard to stop - even by those who made them. Often the verdicts end up contextualized by arbitrary interpretations in a process where we don't even know the middleman that claims to represent us. After a while, like a well-oiled machine, instead of serving justice parasitic bureaucracy has only one goal - to perpetuate itself. Trustware, not software Execution of social transactions on our behalf is performed by other humans that we delegate trust to. Humans are not perfect, and most often are the least strong link in the chain. We naively believe other people are just like us and that they operate in the same context and uphold the same moral values. Can we produce an incorruptible, transparent way of determining the truth in everyday transactions, while not relying on the legacy bureaucratic system? Joseph K. in the world of blockchain The only way technology can survive the test of time is if it addresses a core problem in our society. Technology by itself doesn't solve the trust problem if governed directly by people. If there is one key argument to advocate why technology like blockchain should exist it is this - to enable humans to make trustless transactions without needing a middleman. Authority of immutable, append-only database driven by smart contracts looks like a promising solution. Decentralization is giving us the power to change for the better, many yet need to wake up to the possibility of a different reality than the one most of us living right now - which is paperwork hell! *image header credits to Mariano Mantel

Technical Debt and the Obfuscation of Truth

About that Harvard Instagram study… You may have heard about the Harvard study wherein researchers “ .” The paper’s subject is perfectly weaponized to make the media rounds, combining data, AI, health, a popular social network, and an enticing question to encourage clicks ( ). , , , , and others all hit post. The story has been lighting up Twitter for nearly a week now. trained a machine to spot depression on Instagram what filter means you’re depressed? MIT Technology Review Wired The Next Web The Independent _One of the curious things about color is that we associate it with emotions. Intuitively, we tend to link darker…_www.technologyreview.com A machine can tell whether you're depressed just by looking at your photos on Instagram But once the depression filter was revealed (Inkwell, ), I’m pretty sure everyone stopped reading. If they had, they’d have found a different story about depression: of course the crowdsourced workers who fuel the algorithms, which will evaluate us, are very depressed. To find this sad story let’s run down the numbers cited in the : MIT Technology Review article The researchers asked workers on Amazon’s crowdsource platform, , to complete a survey which contained a standard clinical depression survey. 500 Mechanical Turk The researchers asked those workers if they would share their Instagram posts for the study. workers agreed. 500 170 Out of those workers, were clinically depressed, based on their survey responses. 170 70 The researchers sorted the Instagram photos shared with them(again, with Mechanical Turk workers) and used that data to train a . machine learning algorithm The researchers tested their algorithm on the photos of 100 individuals and correctly identified of those who are depressed. (Who these individuals are, how they got their photos, and how they diagnosed them is not specified — I assume they repeated the steps above.) 70% 70% accuracy sounds pretty good! Allegedly, this hit rate is better than general practitioners. But it is statistically significant. A test group of 100 is laughably small and the paper has yet to be peer reviewed. ( , atoning for the publication’s earlier breathlessness.) hardly Nick Stockton covers this on Wired But they’ve buried the real story. . The depression rate among adults in the United States is 6.7% The depression rate among the crowdsourced workers who shared their photos is . Over the national norm. 41.2% six times Working on Mechanical Turk, it appears, is crushing. Mechanical Turk does not pay well. Because of their status as independant contractors, Turkers (as they are called) are not covered by labor laws. . Their hourly pay ranges from $1-$5 _The wages offered on Mechanical Turk do not seem very enticing. Three cents for copying the product codes and prices…_priceonomics.com Who Makes Below Minimum Wage in the Mechanical Turk Sweatshop? But poverty does not appear to be the driver for this high depression rate. , poverty doubles the average US depression rate. Mechanical Turk, according to the Instagram study, multiplies it by six. According to the CDC With the , Mechanical Turk has become a training ground for algorithms. Turkers sort data which will be used to create machine learning products. The best summary of Mechanical Turk, its workers, and the machines they train is . recent rise of deep learning this episode of NPR’s Planet Money _They are hundreds of thousands of people out there doing stuff to your internet that you probably think is automatic…_www.npr.org Episode 600: The People Inside Your Machine Listening to Planet Money, its easy to see how crowd work can spur frustration and feelings of helplessness beyond poverty itself. There are no bosses or structure, just rapidly cycling tasks. Pay for repetitive work is generally insultingly low. There are no avenues for recourse other than which generate no response. self-organization and open letters to Amazon When we discuss the issues inherent with AI and machine learning we usually . We rarely discuss the people whose work or attention create the algorithms themselves. focus on the perils of allowing computers to make decisions humans currently own This is a mistake. Crowd work will only grow in the future, either through sharing-economy applications or online work. It’s existence without appropriate, modern regulation is worth discussion. In an ironic twist, the decisions made by the powerless people on Mechanical Turk will be amplified in algorithms which will eventually have power over us all. If the people training these machines do not represent us, we will cede decisions to algorithms with which we will likely disagree. The case discussed here regarding Mechanical Turk is even worse: the work of sorting itself could turn a representative population into a depressed one, making skewed decisions unavoidable. Do the depressed judge depression or photos differently than the happy? It is a missed opportunity that crowd work remains largely invisible while its output, machine learning, is a topic du jour.

Do Algorithms Find Depression or Cause Depression?

As law practice across the world slowly embraces a slew of digital technologies, the need to eventually bridge the gap between law and becomes more pronounced. technology Although transitioning to automation is a complex process, it's achievable in the long run. Moreover, studies have shown that lawyers and law firms that gravitate toward technology solutions offered by AI tools have a competitive advantage in this era. At the intersection of law and technology is seasoned American tech and IP attorney Schaefer, the founder of Traverse Legal PLC. Enrico Schaefer built , the world's first AI-enabled web application built upon 's state-of-the-art Large Language Model(LLM). By design, Traverse AI provides 24/7 client-assisted information on a range of legal issues–free of charge. Traverse AI OpenAI I recently sat down with Mr. Schaefer to discuss the impact of technology on the legal industry. Read on! Mr. Schaefer, you are practising at the intersection of law and technology. How did you get there? In 1992, I left my law firm to become the General Counsel of a technology startup in Boulder, Colorado. The company was working on new and emerging technology projects for a new and emerging technology called ‘the Internet.’ I have been ‘all in’ on technology and technology law ever since. Most people agree that there is a huge gap between law and technology. Why do they still overlap despite the advances we've seen in automation? The disconnect between technology, innovation, and law firms has to do with the general hesitancy of lawyers to change. Unlike many other industries, there has been less competition in law because of the advertising restrictions and disparity in expertise between lawyers and clients. The internet dramatically changed that dynamic by making information available to clients, previously only to lawyers. Law firms were eventually forced to change as more innovative, smaller firms integrated technology. Let's face it, lawyers get up in the morning to bill hours. Why would law firms want to be able to perform more work in less time in an hourly billing environment? We developed Traverse AI as a client intelligence tool. It provides free legal information to clients, information that they would have had to pay an hourly fee to access. Sure, we have reduced the reliance of clients on lawyers and the number of hours which might be billed. But we will have more intelligent clients better equipped for success. And we will be there to help them grow.  That is far more valuable. That is innovation. What makes one a 21st-century lawyer? A 21st-century lawyer is open to changing the way law firms operate and innovate in the business of law. There is no real threat caused by being able to provide better quality work and less time to clients. If it takes me 10 minutes to do something that used to take me an hour, that leaves me 50 minutes to do more strategic and valuable work for my client. Lawyers spend a lot of time putting out fires. In the age of AI, lawyers will spend more time helping their clients grow, innovate, and become successful. According to a recent survey, there is a growing number of lawyers across the world who believe that AI will take their jobs. Is this fear unfounded? There is still a lot of unknown. I think that lawyers who are less talented and innovative will see their jobs threatened by AI. However, the best lawyers will have their talents amplified and enhanced by AI. The best lawyers will lean into the technology. The best lawyers will become better and more sought after. The old-guard law firms will talk a big game about AI but will not be able to integrate AI at a significant level. https://youtu.be/f2vxqVNRyCs?embedable=true The larger your organization, the more people there are to convince, train, and change. Our law firms will have the greatest potential benefit from AI. They will be able to implement the AI tools that are coming more quickly, more efficiently, and more comprehensively. Do you agree that ChatGPT can and should be harnessed by lawyers? Why? ChatGPT and many other artificial intelligence tools being developed and deployed will assist lawyers and clients in identifying, analyzing, and resolving legal issues. Much of the use will be dedicated to assisting lawyers so they can do better work in less time. A percentage of work done by lawyers will no longer be necessary since clients can access answers using AI. represents an apocalypse to traditional law firms and traditional legal business models. AI IP issues have found their way into the crypto sphere. Is this an interesting development? Finally, two years ago, I beat a drum that few projects were listening to. Because these crypto and NFT projects had [FOMO](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8283615/#:~:text=Fear%20of%20missing%20out%20(FoMO,to%20maintain%20these%20social%20connections.), they did not stop to consider the legal issues that were mission-critical to their success. They did not consider the importance of identifying, protecting, and growing their IP. NFT projects licensed digital assets without owning the copyright or in assets to which there could be no copyright. A few projects performed a trademark clearance search to make sure they could establish rights in their project name. As a result of the market downturn, these projects can now take a breath and consider IP as the threshold to their business success. With the growing adoption of blockchain technology, how do you think crypto should be regulated? As a lawyer, I spend less time thinking about a wishlist and more time considering the reality of the situation. The is putting many crypto projects, crypto exchanges, and NFT projects into the securities basket. That's the reality. Congress is taking forever to develop a regulatory scheme that will work for consumers and the blockchain industry. While many projects have downplayed the investment aspect of their business model, there are going to be projects which will fall within any and all definitions of security. SEC What's the toughest part of being a tech lawyer? It would be the amount of time you spend learning about new technology; Time spent digging in on complex software and hardware issues. Fortunately, I love technology and learning about new technology. Technology is the catalyst that changes the world. Technology is always good in that it forces people to think about important issues without change we often drift through the world without questioning how and why we do what we do. How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect legal practice in the US? COVID inflicted massive amounts of change across the entire industry. It caused courts, lawyers, law firms, law schools, law students, and judges to completely rethink notions of legal practice and court operations. Zoom hearings and remote work are now forever part of the delivery of legal services. That's for the best, and I love that we were forced to think about why we were doing certain things as lawyers, as courts, as judges, and as law schools. As mentioned above, the more dramatic the impetus to change, the more innovation potential. And I love innovation Any parting words? AI and blockchain will complement each other in ways we cannot imagine. These are two of the most powerful technologies in the history of mankind. We are about to see a decade of innovation, change, and challenge unlike we have ever seen in human history. There will be some good, and there will be some bad, but at the end of the day, we will have to think about what is best for mankind. Ultimately, we will be pushed to consider what it means to be human, what is true and whether our current economic system is as idyllic as we think. The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's via the prompt "a law firm on fire". AI Image Generator

AI Represents an Apocalypse to Traditional Law Firms: Traverse AI Founder Enrico Schaefer

9 Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Fix Them - Beginners' Guide

When we talk about broad-spectrum finance, we are not only talking about purely super-complicated products, but also about insurance, and also in decentralized finance (DeFi), we also find this type of instrument. Traditional insurance In this case we find ourselves faced with 2 parties, the insurer and the insured, the first undertakes to cover any future damage and the second undertakes to pay an agreed amount to cover the risk to the insured, in the event that potential damage may occur in the future and call the insurer to compensate for any damage. There are insurances of various kinds that cover different objects or situations, think of the normal insurance of our cars or large household appliances, but also of the more complex ones such as in the case of theft of a jewelry store or potential disasters that can cancel a concert and in that case the insurer will undertake to compensate the users for any ticket or other eventualities established in the contract, let's think about what happened during the pandemic, especially with important sporting events, which thanks to these insurances, were able to cover part of the costs. Crypto insurance Even in the crypto and blockchain world, the first projects of this kind have begun to appear, although still at a very small and not widespread enough level given that there are particular difficulties and risks that many do not want to take on, think of possible errors in the code of the smart contract or an external attack that causes the loss of funds, all episodes that have occurred and will occur in the future. Nexus Mutual However, a project that has certainly stood out in this area is that of Nexus Mutual, founded by Hugh Karp, which is a decentralized insurance company that uses the blockchain (in this case on Ethereum) to create a mutual or a shared risk pool with other users and in this way open up to the insurance of smart contracts, in fact in this case the focus is on the most important part of the project in this sector, because it is the heart around which the whole system revolves. The system also plans to govern everything with the relevant NXM tokens and therefore take part in decisions regarding whether to cover the problem that has arisen or not, given that it is the members who decide who and how much to cover after the damage has occurred. Recall that the Nexus Mutual team operates as a traditional company, and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Bank of England) and this allows it to have the name “Mutual” in the project name. To participate in this project and therefore also use this form of coverage you need to become a member of Nexus Mutual, which is interesting but requires going through a KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure since we will respond and interface personally with the our funds and in the event of a loss, also bear the same. With this system we can cover practically every smart contract that we find on the Ethereum blockchain, even if it must have at least some interesting and minimum parameters because it would not make sense to cover a smart contract that has little value within it or that is not used. Before proceeding to see how this protocol works, there is a detail that we must point out is that if it is true that Nexus Mutual offers coverage for smart contracts, it is also true that it does not use its system, a risk that could put user funds at risk, even though this has never happened and the related smart contract has been audited by Solidified. Obviously there is other interesting information regarding this protocol, such as the governance model, tokens and so on, which in this case we will not delve into but which is a good idea to read on the relevant website and therefore read up carefully by also reading the project's whitepaper to have an overview. How to cover the funds Once we have connected to the site, we will have to log in with our wallet, so as to be able to access the platform and here we will be able to see all the various options available and also search for the relevant protocol we are interested in: For example, let's search for the Aave protocol and see what protocol is available: In our case we choose v3 and open the page with all the details relating to this coverage, what it covers and how much it costs: So we choose both the time and the amount we want to cover and continue to become members of the protocol: On this page we then have to enter all the information for the KYC part such as our personal data, among other things there is the possibility to choose whether we are acting as an individual or as a company, also allowing companies to cover their own funds in case of future problems: In this way and thanks to this but also other protocols, it is possible to protect ourselves from any attacks or problems regarding those protocols we use, and therefore having an additional level of security for our funds, especially if they are important. Conclusion In conclusion, decentralized finance (DeFi) is evolving rapidly and decentralized insurance is becoming an increasingly important aspect of protecting user funds and Nexus Mutual is an example of a decentralized insurance platform that uses the Ethereum blockchain to create a shared risk mutual among users. Thanks to this system, it is possible to cover the smart contracts used in DeFi protocols, protecting yourself from any future attacks or problems, however, it is important to underline that the use of these platforms requires a KYC procedure and the active participation of users in the governance of the protocol, and in more, it is essential to carefully read up on the characteristics of the project and the coverage offered before using these services because decentralized insurance represents an important step towards greater security and protection of funds in DeFi. When we talk about broad-spectrum finance, we are not only talking about purely super-complicated products, but also about insurance, and also in decentralized finance (DeFi), we also find this type of instrument. Traditional insurance In this case we find ourselves faced with 2 parties, the insurer and the insured, the first undertakes to cover any future damage and the second undertakes to pay an agreed amount to cover the risk to the insured, in the event that potential damage may occur in the future and call the insurer to compensate for any damage. There are insurances of various kinds that cover different objects or situations, think of the normal insurance of our cars or large household appliances, but also of the more complex ones such as in the case of theft of a jewelry store or potential disasters that can cancel a concert and in that case the insurer will undertake to compensate the users for any ticket or other eventualities established in the contract, let's think about what happened during the pandemic, especially with important sporting events, which thanks to these insurances, were able to cover part of the costs. Crypto insurance Even in the crypto and blockchain world, the first projects of this kind have begun to appear, although still at a very small and not widespread enough level given that there are particular difficulties and risks that many do not want to take on, think of possible errors in the code of the smart contract or an external attack that causes the loss of funds, all episodes that have occurred and will occur in the future. Nexus Mutual However, a project that has certainly stood out in this area is that of Nexus Mutual, founded by Hugh Karp, which is a decentralized insurance company that uses the blockchain (in this case on Ethereum) to create a mutual or a shared risk pool with other users and in this way open up to the insurance of smart contracts, in fact in this case the focus is on the most important part of the project in this sector, because it is the heart around which the whole system revolves. The system also plans to govern everything with the relevant NXM tokens and therefore take part in decisions regarding whether to cover the problem that has arisen or not, given that it is the members who decide who and how much to cover after the damage has occurred. Recall that the Nexus Mutual team operates as a traditional company, and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Bank of England) and this allows it to have the name “Mutual” in the project name. To participate in this project and therefore also use this form of coverage you need to become a member of Nexus Mutual, which is interesting but requires going through a KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure since we will respond and interface personally with the our funds and in the event of a loss, also bear the same. With this system we can cover practically every smart contract that we find on the Ethereum blockchain, even if it must have at least some interesting and minimum parameters because it would not make sense to cover a smart contract that has little value within it or that is not used. Before proceeding to see how this protocol works, there is a detail that we must point out is that if it is true that Nexus Mutual offers coverage for smart contracts, it is also true that it does not use its system, a risk that could put user funds at risk, even though this has never happened and the related smart contract has been audited by Solidified. Obviously there is other interesting information regarding this protocol, such as the governance model, tokens and so on, which in this case we will not delve into but which is a good idea to read on the relevant website and therefore read up carefully by also reading the project's whitepaper to have an overview. How to cover the funds Once we have connected to the site, we will have to log in with our wallet, so as to be able to access the platform and here we will be able to see all the various options available and also search for the relevant protocol we are interested in: For example, let's search for the Aave protocol and see what protocol is available: In our case we choose v3 and open the page with all the details relating to this coverage, what it covers and how much it costs: So we choose both the time and the amount we want to cover and continue to become members of the protocol: On this page we then have to enter all the information for the KYC part such as our personal data, among other things there is the possibility to choose whether we are acting as an individual or as a company, also allowing companies to cover their own funds in case of future problems: In this way and thanks to this but also other protocols, it is possible to protect ourselves from any attacks or problems regarding those protocols we use, and therefore having an additional level of security for our funds, especially if they are important. Conclusion In conclusion, decentralized finance (DeFi) is evolving rapidly and decentralized insurance is becoming an increasingly important aspect of protecting user funds and Nexus Mutual is an example of a decentralized insurance platform that uses the Ethereum blockchain to create a shared risk mutual among users. Thanks to this system, it is possible to cover the smart contracts used in DeFi protocols, protecting yourself from any future attacks or problems, however, it is important to underline that the use of these platforms requires a KYC procedure and the active participation of users in the governance of the protocol, and in more, it is essential to carefully read up on the characteristics of the project and the coverage offered before using these services because decentralized insurance represents an important step towards greater security and protection of funds in DeFi.

How to Insure Your DeFi Plays with Nexus Mutual

SAN FRANCISCO, United States, May 7th, 2024/CyberNewsWire/-- Hunters, the pioneer in modern SOC platforms, today announced its full adoption of the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF), coupled with the launch of groundbreaking OCSF-native Search capability. This strategic advancement underscores Hunters’ commitment to standardizing and enhancing cybersecurity operations through open, integrated data-sharing frameworks. Uri May, CEO of Hunters, explained the strategic significance of this move, stating, "Adopting OCSF as our primary data model represents a transformative step in our journey to elevate cybersecurity operations. Alongside this, our new advanced OCSF-native search functionality is set to transform how security data is searched and analyzed, offering unprecedented efficiency and precision." Democratizing Security Operations with OCSF The adoption of OCSF provides a unified, standardized language across cybersecurity tools and platforms, simplifying data integration and analysis workflows. The adoption fosters frictionless interoperability and enables enhanced collaboration among cybersecurity professionals, promoting flexibility and innovation by eliminating constraints imposed by proprietary data formats. "Adopting OCSF will not only enhance our AI-driven security solutions, but also enable seamless data integration across vast and diverse datasets, dramatically improving the speed and accuracy of threat detection and response," added May. Some of the benefits of adopting OCSF include: Streamlined Operations and Enhanced Collaboration - practitioners use common security language, promoting efficient sharing of insights and best practices, bolstering collective defense strategies.
Breaking Vendor Lock-in and Data Silos - Organizations are not constrained by proprietary data formats from specific vendors.
Revolutionizing Threat Hunting and Investigation - By shifting from logs to context-aware events and objects, OCSF enables multi-stage attack analysis and context-rich threat hunting.
Accelerating AI and Gen-AI in Security - Standardized data schema accelerates the development of AI-driven security solutions. OCSF-native Search Functionality: A New Era in Cybersecurity Analytics Hunters is thrilled to launch their revolutionary OCSF-native search functionality, designed specifically for SOC analysts and threat hunters. This innovative technology addresses the complexities of "query engineering" by leveraging a universal data schema—OCSF—to streamline the search process across diverse data formats and environments. The new search capabilities not only reduce the frustration and errors associated with traditional query syntax but also enhance both general and specialized investigation capabilities, transforming how security teams interact with data and significantly accelerating their operations. OCSF-Native Search is Revolutionizing Search in the following ways: Event and Object-Based Searching: A New Search Paradigm - Hunters SOC platform introduces event and object-based searching, eliminating the complexities of source-specific log formats by enabling analysts to search cybersecurity events and objects without the need for field normalization or navigating diverse log formats.


Democratizing Data Analysis: Equipping Analysts of All Levels for Success - OCSF-native search simplifies the search experience, eliminating the need for SQL proficiency or specialized knowledge in tools like Kibana or KQL. With an intuitive interface tailored to the OCSF model, analysts of all experience levels can quickly become proficient, bypassing traditional complexities and lengthy training sessions.


Entity Investigation Curated Workflows: Investigations with a Single Click - With this new capability analysts can pivot directly from Hunters’s alerts to Search with a single click, automatically populating and executing queries for deep context. This eliminates the need for manual query building, facilitating a seamless investigative workflow that allows analysts to efficiently explore and analyze security incidents.


Timeline Experience: Enhanced Chronological Insight for Security Analysis - A new timeline-based approach to search enables analysts to explore the chronological progression of security events. This feature provides insights into patterns, anomalies, and potential threats, enhancing the investigative workflow. Analysts can identify correlations, track threat evolution, and streamline investigations efficiently. "Our new search functionality is a game-changer for both experienced and novice security practitioners," says Yuval Itzchakov, CTO at Hunters. "It elevates SOC operations by providing Tier 1 analysts with the clarity needed for higher-level analysis and democratizes security insights, making advanced investigations accessible to more team members." Contributing to the Community - OCSF Mapping In conjunction with this new product release, Hunters is also proud to contribute to the cybersecurity community by sharing one hundred mappings of security logs to the OCSF schema. This contribution is part of their commitment to fostering an open and collaborative environment where knowledge sharing accelerates innovation and strengthens security postures across the industry. The full adoption of OCSF and the launch of our OCSF-native search functionality mark significant milestones in Hunters' ongoing mission to innovate and automate cybersecurity analytics and operations. By embracing open standards and providing powerful, intuitive search capabilities, they are not only advancing our platform but also contributing to a more interconnected, efficient, and effective cybersecurity ecosystem. To learn more, visit us at RSAC Booth #4317, Moscone North, or contact us on www.hunters.security Contact Ada Filipek Hunters ada.filipek@hunters.ai This story was distributed as a release by Cyberwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. SAN FRANCISCO, United States, May 7th, 2024/CyberNewsWire/-- Hunters, the pioneer in modern SOC platforms, today announced its full adoption of the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF), coupled with the launch of groundbreaking OCSF-native Search capability. This strategic advancement underscores Hunters’ commitment to standardizing and enhancing cybersecurity operations through open, integrated data-sharing frameworks. Uri May, CEO of Hunters, explained the strategic significance of this move, stating, "Adopting OCSF as our primary data model represents a transformative step in our journey to elevate cybersecurity operations. Alongside this, our new advanced OCSF-native search functionality is set to transform how security data is searched and analyzed, offering unprecedented efficiency and precision." "Adopting OCSF as our primary data model represents a transformative step in our journey to elevate cybersecurity operations. Alongside this, our new advanced OCSF-native search functionality is set to transform how security data is searched and analyzed, offering unprecedented efficiency and precision." Democratizing Security Operations with OCSF The adoption of OCSF provides a unified, standardized language across cybersecurity tools and platforms, simplifying data integration and analysis workflows. The adoption fosters frictionless interoperability and enables enhanced collaboration among cybersecurity professionals, promoting flexibility and innovation by eliminating constraints imposed by proprietary data formats. "Adopting OCSF will not only enhance our AI-driven security solutions, but also enable seamless data integration across vast and diverse datasets, dramatically improving the speed and accuracy of threat detection and response," added May. "Adopting OCSF will not only enhance our AI-driven security solutions, but also enable seamless data integration across vast and diverse datasets, dramatically improving the speed and accuracy of threat detection and response," added May. Some of the benefits of adopting OCSF include: Streamlined Operations and Enhanced Collaboration - practitioners use common security language, promoting efficient sharing of insights and best practices, bolstering collective defense strategies. Breaking Vendor Lock-in and Data Silos - Organizations are not constrained by proprietary data formats from specific vendors. Revolutionizing Threat Hunting and Investigation - By shifting from logs to context-aware events and objects, OCSF enables multi-stage attack analysis and context-rich threat hunting. Accelerating AI and Gen-AI in Security - Standardized data schema accelerates the development of AI-driven security solutions. Streamlined Operations and Enhanced Collaboration - practitioners use common security language, promoting efficient sharing of insights and best practices, bolstering collective defense strategies. Breaking Vendor Lock-in and Data Silos - Organizations are not constrained by proprietary data formats from specific vendors. Revolutionizing Threat Hunting and Investigation - By shifting from logs to context-aware events and objects, OCSF enables multi-stage attack analysis and context-rich threat hunting. Accelerating AI and Gen-AI in Security - Standardized data schema accelerates the development of AI-driven security solutions. OCSF-native Search Functionality: A New Era in Cybersecurity Analytics Hunters is thrilled to launch their revolutionary OCSF-native search functionality, designed specifically for SOC analysts and threat hunters. This innovative technology addresses the complexities of "query engineering" by leveraging a universal data schema—OCSF—to streamline the search process across diverse data formats and environments. The new search capabilities not only reduce the frustration and errors associated with traditional query syntax but also enhance both general and specialized investigation capabilities, transforming how security teams interact with data and significantly accelerating their operations. OCSF-Native Search is Revolutionizing Search in the following ways: Event and Object-Based Searching: A New Search Paradigm - Hunters SOC platform introduces event and object-based searching, eliminating the complexities of source-specific log formats by enabling analysts to search cybersecurity events and objects without the need for field normalization or navigating diverse log formats. Democratizing Data Analysis: Equipping Analysts of All Levels for Success - OCSF-native search simplifies the search experience, eliminating the need for SQL proficiency or specialized knowledge in tools like Kibana or KQL. With an intuitive interface tailored to the OCSF model, analysts of all experience levels can quickly become proficient, bypassing traditional complexities and lengthy training sessions. Entity Investigation Curated Workflows: Investigations with a Single Click - With this new capability analysts can pivot directly from Hunters’s alerts to Search with a single click, automatically populating and executing queries for deep context. This eliminates the need for manual query building, facilitating a seamless investigative workflow that allows analysts to efficiently explore and analyze security incidents. Timeline Experience: Enhanced Chronological Insight for Security Analysis - A new timeline-based approach to search enables analysts to explore the chronological progression of security events. This feature provides insights into patterns, anomalies, and potential threats, enhancing the investigative workflow. Analysts can identify correlations, track threat evolution, and streamline investigations efficiently. Event and Object-Based Searching: A New Search Paradigm - Hunters SOC platform introduces event and object-based searching, eliminating the complexities of source-specific log formats by enabling analysts to search cybersecurity events and objects without the need for field normalization or navigating diverse log formats. Event and Object-Based Searching: A New Search Paradigm - Hunters SOC platform introduces event and object-based searching, eliminating the complexities of source-specific log formats by enabling analysts to search cybersecurity events and objects without the need for field normalization or navigating diverse log formats. Democratizing Data Analysis: Equipping Analysts of All Levels for Success - OCSF-native search simplifies the search experience, eliminating the need for SQL proficiency or specialized knowledge in tools like Kibana or KQL. With an intuitive interface tailored to the OCSF model, analysts of all experience levels can quickly become proficient, bypassing traditional complexities and lengthy training sessions. Democratizing Data Analysis: Equipping Analysts of All Levels for Success - OCSF-native search simplifies the search experience, eliminating the need for SQL proficiency or specialized knowledge in tools like Kibana or KQL. With an intuitive interface tailored to the OCSF model, analysts of all experience levels can quickly become proficient, bypassing traditional complexities and lengthy training sessions. Entity Investigation Curated Workflows: Investigations with a Single Click - With this new capability analysts can pivot directly from Hunters’s alerts to Search with a single click, automatically populating and executing queries for deep context. This eliminates the need for manual query building, facilitating a seamless investigative workflow that allows analysts to efficiently explore and analyze security incidents. Entity Investigation Curated Workflows: Investigations with a Single Click - With this new capability analysts can pivot directly from Hunters’s alerts to Search with a single click, automatically populating and executing queries for deep context. This eliminates the need for manual query building, facilitating a seamless investigative workflow that allows analysts to efficiently explore and analyze security incidents. Timeline Experience: Enhanced Chronological Insight for Security Analysis - A new timeline-based approach to search enables analysts to explore the chronological progression of security events. This feature provides insights into patterns, anomalies, and potential threats, enhancing the investigative workflow. Analysts can identify correlations, track threat evolution, and streamline investigations efficiently. Timeline Experience: Enhanced Chronological Insight for Security Analysis - A new timeline-based approach to search enables analysts to explore the chronological progression of security events. This feature provides insights into patterns, anomalies, and potential threats, enhancing the investigative workflow. Analysts can identify correlations, track threat evolution, and streamline investigations efficiently. "Our new search functionality is a game-changer for both experienced and novice security practitioners," says Yuval Itzchakov, CTO at Hunters. "It elevates SOC operations by providing Tier 1 analysts with the clarity needed for higher-level analysis and democratizes security insights, making advanced investigations accessible to more team members." "Our new search functionality is a game-changer for both experienced and novice security practitioners," says Yuval Itzchakov, CTO at Hunters. "It elevates SOC operations by providing Tier 1 analysts with the clarity needed for higher-level analysis and democratizes security insights, making advanced investigations accessible to more team members." Contributing to the Community - OCSF Mapping In conjunction with this new product release, Hunters is also proud to contribute to the cybersecurity community by sharing one hundred mappings of security logs to the OCSF schema. This contribution is part of their commitment to fostering an open and collaborative environment where knowledge sharing accelerates innovation and strengthens security postures across the industry. The full adoption of OCSF and the launch of our OCSF-native search functionality mark significant milestones in Hunters' ongoing mission to innovate and automate cybersecurity analytics and operations. By embracing open standards and providing powerful, intuitive search capabilities, they are not only advancing our platform but also contributing to a more interconnected, efficient, and effective cybersecurity ecosystem. To learn more, visit us at RSAC Booth #4317, Moscone North, or contact us on www.hunters.security www.hunters.security www.hunters.security Contact Ada Filipek Hunters ada.filipek@hunters.ai This story was distributed as a release by Cyberwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. This story was distributed as a release by Cyberwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here . here here

Hunters Announces Full Adoption Of OCSF And Introduces OCSF-Native Search

Cypherpunks Write Code: The Mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto

সাইফারপাঙ্কস কোড লিখুন: রহস্যময় সাতোশি নাকামোটো

Cypherpunks schreiben Code: Der mysteriöse Satoshi Nakamoto

Código de escritura de Cypherpunks: El misterioso Satoshi Nakamoto

Cypherpunks écrit du code : le mystérieux Satoshi Nakamoto

साइफरपंक्स कोड लिखें: रहस्यमय सातोशी नाकामोतो

サイファーパンクがコードを書く: 謎のサトシ・ナカモト

사이퍼펑크의 코드 작성: 신비한 나카모토 사토시

Cypherpunks escrevem código: o misterioso Satoshi Nakamoto

Шифропанки пишут код: загадочный Сатоши Накамото

Şifrepunklar Kod Yazıyor: Gizemli Satoshi Nakamoto

Cypherpunks viết mã: Satoshi Nakamoto bí ẩn

密码朋克编写代码：神秘的中本聪

Once at Last.fm we had an integer overflow in an identify field. I can’t recall where exactly. But I do remember that the inconvenience of having a bunch of Hadoop jobs disrupted while we rushed to update the relevant type couldn’t spoil the collective pride for having more than 2 billion of whatever needed so many ids. Being frugal with identifiers is seldom a good idea, but for me the worst identifier-related headaches came from IDs that had semantic value. At Tuenti (once the largest social network in Spain) there was a concept similar to Facebook pages. Pages had types and subtypes. A page type might have been “group”, which had subtypes “business” or “community”. Another type could be “place” with subtypes like “store” or “landmark”. Page identifiers were strings composed by concatenating numeric identifiers of the type, subtype, and then an increment field in a DB. If you visited https://tuenti.com/p/3_2_6691 you’d instantly know the meaning. It was a “place” (3) of type “store” (2), and the store ID was 6691. Page IDs decomposed in this way would be useful for multiple purposes. Choosing a type-specific implementation of controllers to compose the relevant page, routing to a database shard, that kind of thing. At some point Product wanted to change the classification of pages. To their frustration, this became problematic because the entire taxonomy was encrusted across the code all the way from URLs to databases. Another example are New Relic entities. Entities are an abstraction that broadly represents anything that can send telemetry to New Relic. A host, a Kubernetes cluster, an application, a JVM or a network router can be entities. Of course those are all things you want to identify, so entities have Global Unique IDentifier, or GUID. Every single telemetry datapoint is stamped with the GUID of the entity that produced it, so they act as the keystone of the New Relic platform. Features like Service maps, distributed tracing, entity relationships, and many others are built upon them. Entity GUIDs have meaning. An example of a GUID is 1|APM|APPLICATION|23 where 1 is the account, APM is the domain, APPLICATION is the unique type within that domain, and 23 is a unique identifier within the domain and type. That application might be running in a host 1|INFRA|HOST|12. If we wanted to store that relation, we’d have an entry in some database saying: "1|INFRA|HOST|12" RUNS "1|APM|APPLICATION|23". Like at Tuenti, these semantics come handy. If you’re processing millions of telemetry datapoints per second, it’s useful to tell the type of reporting entity on the fly by decomposing the GUID, rather than perform an expensive lookup to an external service. Account IDs can be used to route data to cells (this talk from Andrew Bloomgarden explains how NR used this pattern to scale). Domains like INFRA or APM corresponded to the original product verticals at New Relic. Years later Product decided (with good criteria) that they created unnecessary fragmentation on the user experience. Types change, get renamed or merged with others. Sometimes (more often than it seems) entities had to migrate from one account to another. In all these cases you would be altering the identifier of many entities. It was painful but possible to work around many of these problems. But replacing GUIDs with semantic-free identifiers was straight impossible. By virtue of being present in thousands of URLs, NRQL queries, etc. GUIDs had become a public API that thousands of customers relied upon. A technical solution to replace identifiers would have been a major project, but doable. What wasn’t possible was to run a find/replace across the private documentation and workflows of your entire customer base. If you look closely, the world is full of semantic identifiers. Sometimes they are hard to avoid, but almost always a pain in the neck. Because they embed a specific model of the world. But models become obsolete faster than we’d like. Addresses make notable examples. The “complex and idiosyncratic” Japanese address system reflects the organic growth of its urban areas. In British postal codes the final part can designate anything from a street to a flat depending on the amount of mail received by the premises. When I was a kid, license plates would give up the province where the owner lived causing an array of nuisances. They were alleviated with the adoption of European standards. But partly. The root problem being that, like the Domain Name System identifiers (“Galo’s website”) remain tied to administrative authorities (“.net”), which can change regulations, or even disappear. Nowadays I find most semantic identifiers in resource management. For some reason, when infrastructure teams define access rules to the resources of a particular service, they prefer to create a group named after the team that owns that service, something like “owner-team-access-list”. Identifiers tied to the org chart don’t like it when the service moves to another team, or owner-team is reorged away. Once at Last.fm we had an integer overflow in an identify field. I can’t recall where exactly. But I do remember that the inconvenience of having a bunch of Hadoop jobs disrupted while we rushed to update the relevant type couldn’t spoil the collective pride for having more than 2 billion of whatever needed so many ids. Last.fm Being frugal with identifiers is seldom a good idea, but for me the worst identifier-related headaches came from IDs that had semantic value. At Tuenti (once the largest social network in Spain) there was a concept similar to Facebook pages. Pages had types and subtypes. A page type might have been “group”, which had subtypes “business” or “community”. Another type could be “place” with subtypes like “store” or “landmark”. Tuenti Page identifiers were strings composed by concatenating numeric identifiers of the type, subtype, and then an increment field in a DB. If you visited https://tuenti.com/p/3_2_6691 you’d instantly know the meaning. It was a “place” (3) of type “store” (2), and the store ID was 6691. Page IDs decomposed in this way would be useful for multiple purposes. Choosing a type-specific implementation of controllers to compose the relevant page, routing to a database shard, that kind of thing. https://tuenti.com/p/3_2_6691 At some point Product wanted to change the classification of pages. To their frustration, this became problematic because the entire taxonomy was encrusted across the code all the way from URLs to databases. Another example are New Relic entities . Entities are an abstraction that broadly represents anything that can send telemetry to New Relic. A host, a Kubernetes cluster, an application, a JVM or a network router can be entities. Of course those are all things you want to identify, so entities have Global Unique IDentifier, or GUID. Every single telemetry datapoint is stamped with the GUID of the entity that produced it, so they act as the keystone of the New Relic platform. Features like Service maps, distributed tracing, entity relationships, and many others are built upon them. New Relic entities Entity GUIDs have meaning . An example of a GUID is 1|APM|APPLICATION|23 where 1 is the account, APM is the domain, APPLICATION is the unique type within that domain, and 23 is a unique identifier within the domain and type. That application might be running in a host 1|INFRA|HOST|12 . If we wanted to store that relation, we’d have an entry in some database saying: Entity GUIDs have meaning 1|APM|APPLICATION|23 APM APPLICATION 23 1|INFRA|HOST|12 "1|INFRA|HOST|12" RUNS "1|APM|APPLICATION|23" . "1|INFRA|HOST|12" RUNS "1|APM|APPLICATION|23" Like at Tuenti, these semantics come handy. If you’re processing millions of telemetry datapoints per second, it’s useful to tell the type of reporting entity on the fly by decomposing the GUID, rather than perform an expensive lookup to an external service. Account IDs can be used to route data to cells ( this talk from Andrew Bloomgarden explains how NR used this pattern to scale). this talk from Andrew Bloomgarden Domains like INFRA or APM corresponded to the original product verticals at New Relic. Years later Product decided (with good criteria) that they created unnecessary fragmentation on the user experience. Types change, get renamed or merged with others. Sometimes (more often than it seems) entities had to migrate from one account to another. In all these cases you would be altering the identifier of many entities. INFRA APM It was painful but possible to work around many of these problems. But replacing GUIDs with semantic-free identifiers was straight impossible. By virtue of being present in thousands of URLs, NRQL queries, etc. GUIDs had become a public API that thousands of customers relied upon. A technical solution to replace identifiers would have been a major project, but doable. What wasn’t possible was to run a find/replace across the private documentation and workflows of your entire customer base. If you look closely, the world is full of semantic identifiers. Sometimes they are hard to avoid, but almost always a pain in the neck. Because they embed a specific model of the world. But models become obsolete faster than we’d like. Addresses make notable examples. The “complex and idiosyncratic” Japanese address system reflects the organic growth of its urban areas. In British postal codes the final part can designate anything from a street to a flat depending on the amount of mail received by the premises. Japanese address system British postal codes When I was a kid, license plates would give up the province where the owner lived causing an array of nuisances . They were alleviated with the adoption of European standards . But partly. The root problem being that, like the Domain Name System identifiers (“Galo’s website”) remain tied to administrative authorities (“.net”), which can change regulations, or even disappear. array of nuisances European standards Domain Name System Nowadays I find most semantic identifiers in resource management. For some reason, when infrastructure teams define access rules to the resources of a particular service, they prefer to create a group named after the team that owns that service, something like “owner-team-access-list”. Identifiers tied to the org chart don’t like it when the service moves to another team, or owner-team is reorged away.

Identifiers are better off without meaning

Causal Analysis – Experimentation (AB Testing) and Statistical Techniques

Enterprises delivering IoT solutions have unlocked new potentials and are enjoying success with the trend of increasing IoT adoption worldwide. However, while IoT developers and vendors emphasize delivering unparalleled convenience and efficiency, security is often overlooked. And that’s what requires immediate attention. Whether we talk about smart wearables, home assistants, or industrial automation systems, the IoT landscape has broadened the horizons for cybercriminals, making security a top priority for vendors. For the security of this interconnected ecosystem, robust role-based authentication frameworks have become an absolute necessity. Let’s understand how role-based user authentication frameworks reinforce IoT security and why businesses must put their best foot forward to adopt it. What is Authentication and Authorization in IoT? Authentication and authorization are the most crucial components of IoT security. Developers and vendors must prioritize them to ensure sensitive information is always shielded. While authentication verifies the identity of devices, users, and applications attempting to access IoT systems, authorization determines what resources or actions a verified device, application, or user can access within the IoT network. Once the identity is verified, access to network resources is offered based on the user’s role or privileges, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data. In a nutshell, authentication and authorization lay the foundation for a robust security framework to prevent privacy and data breaches. Though most IoT vendors and developers have incorporated robust mechanisms to safeguard sensitive data, many still rely on conventional legacy systems that aren’t potent enough to shield against modern threat vectors. Here’s where enterprises offering IoT services need to rethink their security strategy by keeping customers at the center of their business strategy. Why is Robust Authentication and Authorization in IoT a Pressing Need? In this digital world, where we’re constantly surrounded by the aura of multiple devices, applications, and networks, secure authentication and authorization have become critical. Talking about the IoT landscape, weak authentication and authorization could lead to severe consequences that compromise users’ privacy and the security of service providers. Here’s the list of consequences that may occur in the presence of inadequate security measures in the IoT ecosystem: Privacy Breach: Weak authentication could lead to unauthorized access to individuals that may breach individual privacy. Most users may face issues about unauthorized surveillance, data breaches, or device hijacking. Data Breach: Businesses may end up losing millions of dollars just because they didn’t incorporate a robust authentication security mechanism into their IoT services. Data loss, including sensitive business details and customer information, could be compromised which may entitle businesses to hefty fines. IoT Botnet Formation: Sometimes weak authentication leads to IoT botnet creation that further leads to coordinated attacks. The botnets are controlled by cybercriminals and can be used for DDoS attacks, which impact the overall system within an organization. Understanding Role-Based User Authentication and its Models Just like a user authenticates himself by proving his/her identity online on a platform to make a purchase or to access his/her account, authentication in IoT works similarly for devices and applications. The entire authentication process involves the identification of devices/apps and authorizing them with permission to access resources or information based on their specific roles. This ensures that devices/apps have access and permissions to do what they need and the non-authorized devices and apps can’t access sensitive information. Depending on the location, device type, and role, organizations can have multiple ways to authenticate and authorize IoT devices and applications for data access Though IoT administrators register each device or application while deploying it on the system, certain devices and applications can be further added, and their roles can be later defined by the user. Let’s have a look at user authentication models to deploy role-based authentication in the IoT ecosystem. 1. One-Way Distributed Authentication One-way distributed authentication represents a connection between two devices. This can be either a smart device, a wearable, or a sensor that tries to connect with the gateway. In this communication, only one device authenticates the other via password hash. In some cases, the authentication is established through a digital certificate. Once a device initiates the authentication request, the other devices authenticate it by comparing the certificate or password with stored information. Once the information matches, the second device authorizes the connection. 2. Two-Way Distributed Authentication In two-way distributed authentication, both devices authenticate each other before sharing any sensitive information or even communicating. This kind of authentication is commonly known as mutual authentication and this protocol is preferred when each of the communicating devices has a unique digital identity that is stored in the system for other devices. The connection in this authentication mode is established only when one of the devices trusts the other device’s identity through a digital certificate and vice versa. This kind of authentication is widely preferred for highly sensitive information transfer, including banking, e-commerce, or other financial transactions. 3. Three-Way Centralized Authentication The three-way centralized authentication approach emphasizes on registering the devices to a central server or authority. This central authority initiates a secure connection between the devices that need to communicate to ensure no unauthorized individual has access to sensitive information. The entire process is managed seamlessly through a dedicated certificate management system. Apart from this, the security certificates aren’t stored on the devices and can’t be compromised. This centralized authentication is best suited for devices that require frequent connection or are always connected. To Conclude With the increasing sophistication of IoT attacks and cybercriminals finding new ways to exploit sensitive business data, relying on conventional security mechanisms isn’t a great option. IoT vendors and developers need to rethink their security posture to ensure they’re on the right track to securing sensitive customer data and their confidential business information. On the other hand, leveraging the true potential of a role-based user authentication framework could be the best way to reinforce authentication security. Enterprises can eventually choose their preferred authentication model based on their business needs and ensure the highest level of protection. Enterprises delivering IoT solutions have unlocked new potentials and are enjoying success with the trend of increasing IoT adoption worldwide. However, while IoT developers and vendors emphasize delivering unparalleled convenience and efficiency, security is often overlooked. And that’s what requires immediate attention. Whether we talk about smart wearables, home assistants, or industrial automation systems, the IoT landscape has broadened the horizons for cybercriminals, making security a top priority for vendors. For the security of this interconnected ecosystem, robust role-based authentication frameworks have become an absolute necessity. Let’s understand how role-based user authentication frameworks reinforce IoT security and why businesses must put their best foot forward to adopt it. What is Authentication and Authorization in IoT? Authentication and authorization are the most crucial components of IoT security. Developers and vendors must prioritize them to ensure sensitive information is always shielded. While authentication verifies the identity of devices, users, and applications attempting to access IoT systems, authorization determines what resources or actions a verified device, application, or user can access within the IoT network. Once the identity is verified, access to network resources is offered based on the user’s role or privileges, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data. In a nutshell, authentication and authorization lay the foundation for a robust security framework to prevent privacy and data breaches. Though most IoT vendors and developers have incorporated robust mechanisms to safeguard sensitive data, many still rely on conventional legacy systems that aren’t potent enough to shield against modern threat vectors. Here’s where enterprises offering IoT services need to rethink their security strategy by keeping customers at the center of their business strategy. Why is Robust Authentication and Authorization in IoT a Pressing Need? In this digital world, where we’re constantly surrounded by the aura of multiple devices, applications, and networks, secure authentication and authorization have become critical. Talking about the IoT landscape, weak authentication and authorization could lead to severe consequences that compromise users’ privacy and the security of service providers. Here’s the list of consequences that may occur in the presence of inadequate security measures in the IoT ecosystem: Privacy Breach: Weak authentication could lead to unauthorized access to individuals that may breach individual privacy. Most users may face issues about unauthorized surveillance, data breaches, or device hijacking. Data Breach: Businesses may end up losing millions of dollars just because they didn’t incorporate a robust authentication security mechanism into their IoT services. Data loss, including sensitive business details and customer information, could be compromised which may entitle businesses to hefty fines. IoT Botnet Formation: Sometimes weak authentication leads to IoT botnet creation that further leads to coordinated attacks. The botnets are controlled by cybercriminals and can be used for DDoS attacks, which impact the overall system within an organization. Understanding Role-Based User Authentication and its Models Just like a user authenticates himself by proving his/her identity online on a platform to make a purchase or to access his/her account, authentication in IoT works similarly for devices and applications. The entire authentication process involves the identification of devices/apps and authorizing them with permission to access resources or information based on their specific roles. This ensures that devices/apps have access and permissions to do what they need and the non-authorized devices and apps can’t access sensitive information. Depending on the location, device type, and role, organizations can have multiple ways to authenticate and authorize IoT devices and applications for data access Though IoT administrators register each device or application while deploying it on the system, certain devices and applications can be further added, and their roles can be later defined by the user. Let’s have a look at user authentication models to deploy role-based authentication in the IoT ecosystem. 1. One-Way Distributed Authentication One-way distributed authentication represents a connection between two devices. This can be either a smart device, a wearable, or a sensor that tries to connect with the gateway. In this communication, only one device authenticates the other via password hash. In some cases, the authentication is established through a digital certificate. Once a device initiates the authentication request, the other devices authenticate it by comparing the certificate or password with stored information. Once the information matches, the second device authorizes the connection. 2. Two-Way Distributed Authentication In two-way distributed authentication, both devices authenticate each other before sharing any sensitive information or even communicating. This kind of authentication is commonly known as mutual authentication and this protocol is preferred when each of the communicating devices has a unique digital identity that is stored in the system for other devices. The connection in this authentication mode is established only when one of the devices trusts the other device’s identity through a digital certificate and vice versa. This kind of authentication is widely preferred for highly sensitive information transfer, including banking, e-commerce, or other financial transactions. 3. Three-Way Centralized Authentication The three-way centralized authentication approach emphasizes on registering the devices to a central server or authority. This central authority initiates a secure connection between the devices that need to communicate to ensure no unauthorized individual has access to sensitive information. The entire process is managed seamlessly through a dedicated certificate management system. Apart from this, the security certificates aren’t stored on the devices and can’t be compromised. This centralized authentication is best suited for devices that require frequent connection or are always connected. To Conclude With the increasing sophistication of IoT attacks and cybercriminals finding new ways to exploit sensitive business data, relying on conventional security mechanisms isn’t a great option. IoT vendors and developers need to rethink their security posture to ensure they’re on the right track to securing sensitive customer data and their confidential business information. On the other hand, leveraging the true potential of a role-based user authentication framework could be the best way to reinforce authentication security. Enterprises can eventually choose their preferred authentication model based on their business needs and ensure the highest level of protection.

Strengthening IoT Security through Role-Based User Authentication Frameworks

This paper is available on arxiv under CC0 1.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Salim Chouaki, LIX, CNRS, Inria, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris; (2) Oana Goga, LIX, CNRS, Inria, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris; (3) Hamed Haddadi, Imperial College London, Brave Software; (4) Peter Snyder, Brave Software. Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Background Measurement Methodology Results Limitations Related Work Conclusion, Acknowledgments, and References Appendix 3 MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGY We develop a measurement methodology to capture network flows when clicking on an ad from a search engine results page. Using multiple crawlers, we simulate a large number of search engine queries in order to collect a sample of information flows per search engine. For each request, we collect the cookies created, the locally stored values, and the web request sent by the browser. In addition, we rely on several open-source datasets to detect web requests to online trackers. We consider five main search engines: Google[1], Bing[2], DuckDuckGo[3], StartPage[4], and Qwant[5]. We use Google and Bing as baselines to compare with the other three, which claim to have higher privacy standards and protective measures in place. 3.1 Crawling system Each crawling iteration begins at a search engine’s main page, where our system will type a query and access the search engine results page. Next, it chooses one of the displayed ads to click on to access its destination website. Then, the navigation path passes through zero or more redirectors before landing on the ad’s destination website. The redirectors are invisible to the user but can be identified through an analysis of network requests initiated by the browser. Each of these redirectors can read the query parameters added by the search engine or other intermediaries and store them locally or send them to other third parties. The system records all first-party and third-party cookies, local storage values, and web requests at each step. We run each iteration in a new browser instance to ensure no stale data is cached from previous iterations. Depending on the search engine, ads are either part of the main page or are loaded through an iframe. We use scrapping techniques to detect them and rely on several HTML elements’ attributes. For instance, all ads on StartPage are inside an HTML element titled "Sponsored Links". Moreover, we use hyperlink values to detect Google ads since they all link to "www.googleadservices.com/*". Our system prioritizes ads with landing domains it has not visited yet, aiming to maximize the number of different destination websites. Each time a crawler clicks on an ad, our system adds the domain of its landing URL to the list of visited websites. In the subsequent iterations, the crawler first extracts the landing domains of all the displayed ads. The landing domains are included within the HTML objects of the advertisements on all search engines. The crawler then gives preference to click on ads leading to domains that have not been encountered in the list of visited websites. We reproduced these steps for 500 search queries on the five search engines. We randomly choose them from Google Trends [21] and movie titles from MovieLens [6]. All iterations were performed in "accept" cookies mode. Table 1 represents the number of different search queries we typed, the number of different destination pages we landed on, and the number of different domain paths we collected for each search engine. We implemented our system using Puppeteer [7] to automate visiting search engines’ websites, typing search queries, detecting and clicking on one of the displayed ads, and waiting for 15 seconds on the ad’s destination website. We reproduce these steps multiple times from the same IP address for each search engine. To reduce the chance of being identified as bots, we use puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth [8]. This plugin applies various techniques to make the detection of headless Puppeteer crawlers by websites harder. Puppeteer allows us to record cookies and local storage for each request. However, it does not guarantee that it can attach request handlers to a web page before it sends any requests [33]. Hence, detecting and collecting web requests only using Puppeteer might cause losing some of them. We use a Chrome extension alongside Puppeteer crawlers to record web requests during all the crawling time. We do not observe a significant difference between web requests recorded by crawlers and web requests recorded by the extension. In median, the crawlers recorded 97% of the requests recorded by the extension. The code of the crawling system and the dataset are available at https://github.com/CHOUAKIsalim/Search_Engines_Privacy. 3.2 Detection techniques We use URL filtering to detect web requests to online trackers. We use filter rules from two open-source lists: EasyList [4] and EasyPrivacy [5]. EasyList is the most popular list to detect and remove adverts from webpages and forms the basis of many combination and supplementary filter lists [19]. EasyPrivacy is a supplementary filter list that detects and removes all forms of tracking from the internet, including tracking scripts and information collectors [19]. These filter lists are used by extensions that aim to remove unwanted content from the internet, like AdBlock and uBlock. We combined and parsed these lists using adblock-rs [1] and obtained 86 488 filtering rules. Detection of trackers: In addition, we use the Disconnect Entity List [2] to get the entities of online tracker domains. It is a dictionary where keys represent entities such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, and values represent the web domains that belong to each entity. Hence, to get the entity of a tracker, we iterate over all values and search to what entity is the tracker domain associated with. This list contains 1 449 entities and 3 371 related web domains. We classify an instance as bounce tracking when an advertisement’s destination link is altered to pass through one or more redirectors. To construct the redirection sequence, we trace the series of URLs the browser navigates through after clicking an ad and prior to reaching the advertisement’s intended landing page. We further validate the redirection sequence by examining the HTTP response headers, precisely the ’Location’ and ’status code’ headers. These headers divulge the redirection process, as the ’Location’ header contains the new redirection URL, and status codes such as ’301 Moved Permanently,’ ’302 Found,’ ’307 Temporary Redirect,’ and ’308 Permanent Redirect’ indicate the occurrence of redirection [17]. Detection of bounce tracking: To detect UID smuggling, we need to differentiate between query parameters that represent user identifiers and non-tracking Detection of UID smuggling and user identifiers: query parameters such as session identifiers, dates, and timestamps. We consider all query parameters, localStorage, and cookie values. We call them tokens. There are 6 971 unique tokens in our dataset. We perform the following filtering, which is similar to the one performed by Randall et al. [33]: (i) Each iteration is executed in a new browser instance; hence, user identifiers should not be shared across browser instances. We discard tokens that are the same across all or a subset of browser instances. (ii) For each browser instance and search query, we analyze the tokens resulting from the URLs of all ads that appear on the results page (which are usually in the form of googleadservices.com/..../aclk?..cid=CAESbeD2ZWCwqFv3e2k_....). We discard tokens with different values for the different ad URLs as they likely correspond to ad identifiers. (iii) To detect session identifiers, we store the profile of each iteration in a separate directory and execute an extra iteration per browser instance one day later to see which values of cookies/parameters change. We discard tokens with different values in the two iterations as they are more likely session identifiers. (iv) Similar to [33], we use programmatic heuristics to discard particular values. We discard tokens that appear to be timestamps (values between June and December 2022 in seconds and milliseconds), tokens that appear to be URLs, tokens that constitute one or more English words ([20]), and tokens that are seven characters long or less. After using these filters, we are left with 1 942 tokens. We manually investigated them and observed a non-negligible number of false positives. Hence, we manually filtered the remaining tokens and removed those composed of any combination of natural language words, coordinates, or acronyms. In the end, we are left with 1 258 user-identifying tokens, which we consider to be user identifiers. [1] https://www.google.com/ [2] https://www.bing.com/ [3] https://duckduckgo.com/ [4] https://www.startpage.com [5] https://www.qwant.com/

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