Today, the much-anticipated Palo Alto AI X Web3 Summit has officially unveiled its full agenda.

Palo Alto AI X Web3 Summit Unveils Official Agenda | The Block

SINGAPORE, Sept. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- HTX DAO co-hosted an afterparty with TRON following TOKEN2049, one of the world's most influential Web3 events, in collaboration with Alethea AI, TourBillion, BitWave, ChainGPT, Google Cloud, and The Block. TRON founder and Global Advisor to HTX, Justin ...

HTX DAO and TRON Unite to Lead the Future of Web3 with Innovative Growth and a Vision for the Next Decade – Australian Associated Press

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's plans to launch World Liberty Financial later today could deepen divides among lawmakers in Washington and thwart legislative efforts, investment bank TD Cowen said in a note on Monday.

World Liberty Financial crypto project could deepen political divides if Trump wins presidential election: TD Cowen | The Block

The company announced the news alongside its first quarter earnings report on Thursday afternoon.

Jack Dorsey's Block Adding More Bitcoin to Balance Sheet, Presents Road Map for Others

Block&#x27;s earnings report comes during a slide in the stock price tied to reports that U.S. prosecutors were probing the company&#x27;s compliance practices.

Block shares jump on better-than-expected first-quarter results

Current and former owners of the 76ers bought more than 2,000 tickets to mute the presence of New York Knicks fans attending Game 6 in Philadelphia on Thursday night.

Sixers owners buy up tickets to block Knicks fans

The owners of the 76ers and former minority owner Michael Rubin have purchased tickets for Game 6 of Philadelphia&#x27;s playoff series against the Knicks in an attempt to block New York fans from once again overrunning Wells Fargo Center.

76ers owners buy Game 6 tickets to block Knicks fans - ESPN

God could destroy Satan at any moment. So, why has God allowed Satan to blind the minds of unbelievers from seeing the glory of Christ?

Why Does God Allow Satan to Block the Gospel? | Desiring God

The Block

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The payment technology market, often shortened to simply "paytech," falls under the fintech umbrella. However, because of the rapid rise in payment market popularity, it has become its own subset of fintech that deals exclusively with transactions and payment methods. In fact, by the end of , paytech companies had raised $8.1 billion and accounted for 9.7% of all fintech deals. Paytech has become an interesting space for startups because it allows for the disruption of entrenched finance models, something that existing institutions like banks struggle with. Q1'23 This spotlight on payment technology is completely changing the existing payment and transaction landscape, which is great news for consumers, affiliate marketers and entrepreneurs alike. Payments Are Now More Than a Basic Financial Exchange Thanks to this relatively new intersection of finance and technology, payments have now grown beyond a simple exchange of money into a crucial part of the customer experience. Many now consider paytech a type of brand-building opportunity. By expanding their cashless payment capabilities and staying up-to-date on the latest payment methods, brands are working tirelessly to separate themselves from competitors and position their businesses as industry leaders. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the global community to accelerate the process of shifting how we interact with money, and there is no going back to the pre-pandemic days. The reduction and removal of payment barriers and explosive growth of e-commerce has made us more connected and also changed our expectations for convenient transactions, regardless of where or how we use our money. For example, QR code integration and instant payments are considered two of the main players in this paytech paradigm shift. – QR Codes For businesses, QR codes offer the ability to give customers a fast, convenient way to send payment via mobile device. This is a massive boost to their bottom line and overall customer experience. Beyond this, peer-to-peer transactions that can be completed with a quick tap and scan of a QR code allow users to move money in a fast, simple way. Juniper Research estimates that nearly will be utilizing QR code payments by 2025. a third of all mobile phone users – Instant Payments With instant payment, there are two sides to consider: The sender and the recipient. In both cases, each party wants their end of the transaction to be cleared as quickly and seamlessly as possible. For most services, it can take hours at best and weeks at worst to send and receive payments, particularly if the amounts are large or it is a cross-border transaction. Paytech disruptors in the instant payout space are aiming to change this, though. that the market is expected to maintain a 29% CAGR through 2025, so we can expect to see a continuous evolution of instant payments. New research shows How Instant Payment is Revolutionizing E-commerce and Performance Marketing For industries like martech and e-commerce, where affiliate publishers and loyalty program participants often must wait for weeks before receiving the money they have earned, this shift toward instant, seamless payments is especially important. In the past, performance marketing platforms and cashback services had to wait for an extended period of time before reimbursing participants, which made it difficult for publishers to earn a steady income. Deferred payments have always been a core part of these industries that rely on cost-per-action, and it has been a pain point on both sides for years. The delay happens because companies must wait for "approved actions," such as an affiliate sale being completed past the brand's return policy or a travel booking being used after booking months in advance. (Think of a cash-in and cash-out model: If the company doesn't get paid, it can't pay the publisher.) However, with the introduction of more sophisticated AI in the payment space, this lengthy period of nonpayment can be drastically shortened without causing a huge burden of risk for the company. Admitad Instant Payout Pro is currently a leader in this space thanks to AI-powered algorithms. It made it possible to predict with at least 95% accuracy whether an action will be considered approved, allowing marketers and loyalty programs to pay out nearly instantly. Other companies like Sopra Banking Software are offering their own instant payment services, helping users clear payments of up to €100,000 in under a minute. These companies are frontrunners in changing the fintech landscape by offering innovative solutions and better supporting a secure digital payment infrastructure. Paytech and AI Are a Perfect Match For Companies of Any Size AI's ability to analyze data and forecast outcomes is one of its unquestionable strengths. In the paytech world, this allows companies of all sizes from a wide range of industries to leverage this power to create better, faster, more innovative ways to transact. Beyond martech and cashback services, AI can improve payment structures for individual marketplace sellers on platforms like eBay and Amazon. It can even facilitate faster payouts to app developers who put programs in the App Store or Google Play. Paytech is an exciting space to watch because innovations are coming as fast as developers can think of them. In the near future, we will likely see a completely borderless, barrier-free transaction landscape for the entire global community.

New Kid on the Block: How Paytech Innovations Are Revolutionizing the Way We Get Paid

In computer security, a cold boot attack is a type of side-channel attack in which an attacker with physical access to a computer performs a memory dump of a computer’s random access memory by performing a hard reset of the target machine. Security researchers have discovered a new technique for stealing sensitive data on computers and will detail how cold-start attacks can use computer firmware to allow attackers to recover passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive information stored in them. As we have known since 2008, cold-start attacks on encryption keys or cold-start attacks can steal the encryption key of a computer from an attacker with physical access to a machine, which remains briefly in memory after a hard reboot. The new cold start attack technique differs from the traditional cold start attack, which was developed in 2008 and allows attackers to steal the shortest information that remains on a computer before it is shut down. The primary functionality of the cold-start attack is to obtain an encryption key from the user’s device before booting by extracting data from RAM or memory. This reduces the probability that an attacker is theoretically able to retrieve the encryption keys from memory before executing the cold boot attacks. When a hard drive is encrypted with full encryption — Cold boot attacks on hard drives: Cold boot attacks may or may not be required for hard drives that are encrypted without full encryption or potentially contain evidence of criminal activity. Cold-start attacks can be used in digital forensics to forensically preserve the data in the memory as criminal evidence, for example as evidence in criminal investigations. In fact, this technique allows encryption keys to be extracted from memory, and cold boot attacks can be used when a hard drive is encrypted with full disk encryption. This reduces the likelihood that the attacker can rescue the encryption key from memory before executing a cold-start attack. If an attacker hijacks the key with cold boots or similar attacks, he has the “key to the kingdom” for a long time, even if the encryption of the phone is disabled. It reduces the likelihood that attackers can retrieve the keys in memory and the likelihood that they will be able to execute the Cold-Boot attack on a phone. Cold-boot restrictions on modern computers make these attacks less effective than they were a decade ago, and there would be no reliable way to decrypt a lost or stolen computer. Here’s the good news: Cold-boot attacks are not a trivial type of exploit. They require special hardware and tools to work means they are not trivial to exploit. Operating systems and chipmakers added mitigation against cold attacks 10 years ago, and F-Secure researchers have found a way to bring them back from the dead. But companies have difficulty finding reliable ways to prevent or block them, even if you get an attacker with the right expertise. The company configures the laptops so that the attacker who uses the cold boot attack does not find anything stolen, such as a hard drive, hard drive, or even a computer. Think of Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys, which were released at the IEEE International Conference on Secure Computing and Security (ICS) 2015 in San Francisco, California, the USA in 2008. This research paper describes how the key to encrypting the encrypted data of a computer (e.g. passwords) can be obtained by a cold-start attack. The paper is titled “That you do not remember: Cold Encrypted Keys, “which describes a method for recovering the information stored in memory and a solution to the problem. In a nutshell, Cold Boot Attacks use the DRAM remanence effect to restore cryptographic keys in memory. If the encryption key is stored in the memory of a computer while the computer is hibernating, there is no chance for attackers to steal valuable information and the data remains on a chip that is kept at a low temperature. This reduces the chances that the attacker can retrieve the key from memory and perform a cold boot attack on a phone. Data recovery is not possible if the attackers physically access the system; they could still perform successful cold boot attacks on computers configured for this purpose, but because the chips are kept at low temperatures, no data is preserved. Cited Sources https://blog.f-secure.com/cold-boot-attacks/ https://gbhackers.com/cold-boot-attacks-hackers-can-unlock-all-the-modern-computers-and-steal-encryption-keys-passwords/ https://privatecore.com/resources-overview/physical-memory-attacks/index.html https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/cold-boot-attack-encryption.html https://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/cold-boot-attack-tools-linux https://www.darkreading.com/risk/new-cold-boot-attack-gives-hackers-the-keys-to-pcs-macs/d/d-id/1332814 https://www.andreafortuna.org/2020/03/06/cold-boot-attack-in-digital-forensics/ https://www.starlab.io/blog/encrypting-in-a-dangerous-world https://threatpost.com/researchers-heat-up-cold-boot-attack-that-works-on-all-laptops/137466/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack https://www.ethicalhacker.net/features/root/using-cold-boot-attacks-forensic-techniques-penetration-tests/ https://techxplore.com/news/2018-09-firmware-weakness-red-carpet-cold.html https://hackwarenews.com/new-cold-boot-attack-can-unlock-disk-encryption-in-nearly-all-laptops-under-2-minutes/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-cold-boot-attack-affects-nearly-all-modern-computers/ https://www.wired.com/story/cold-boot-break-pc-encryption/ Read behind a paywall here .

New Kids On The Block: Understanding Cold Boot Attacks

The lack of scalability is known to be the foremost obstacle standing in the way of mass adoption of blockchain technology. All existing blockchain projects look for solutions that could improve the performance of their network. Many emerging projects claim that they have a magic bullet that could solve the problem. However, such assertions are not always valid. Unfortunately, many observers and investors do not realize the core and root of this problem. Without deep investigation and considerable technical background, it’s difficult to determine hidden bottlenecks and trade-offs. In this post, we are going to discuss one well-known bottleneck that prevents Bitcoin from scaling. Shortly after the invention of decentralized peer-to-peer network Bitcoin, researchers got interested in what determines the limits of Bitcoin’s scaling. Soon the core issue was determined and in terms of or . described block propagation time block propagation delay It’s an average time that is needed for the new block to reach the majority of nodes in the network. In a large decentralized network like Bitcoin, whenever the new block is generated, it is broadcasted according to the Gossip protocol. If some node has got the new valid block, it informs nodes connected to it about its new possession. Then the node transfers this block to those nodes which asked it to do that. Before the block reaches each full-node in the network, it passes through 7 intermediary nodes. It’s important that every honest node verifies the block before relaying it to other peers. Obviously, the whole thing takes a while. Every new block shakes the network and makes nodes and ethernet connections between them work at full power. One might argue that since the launch of the network, there have been many improvements to the Gossip protocol. For example, the Bitcoin improvement proposal introduced the option to transfer only short transaction IDs, instead of the whole list of transactions, in the block body. BIP 0152 However, if the node doesn’t have that transaction in its mempool, it has to ask its peers to transfer it in a separate message. If there is a large number of such transactions in the block, then improvement from BIP 0152 disappears. Since data transmission is the most time-consuming part of the block relay, researchers got interested in determining how much time is required for a data packet of a certain size to reach 50%, 90%, or 95% of nodes in the network. It was found that for blocks of a size larger than 20kB, the block propagation delay is nearly proportional to the block size. According to published in 2013, every extra kB of data in the block caused an extra 80ms of block propagation delay. research Since then, a couple of academic papers and surveys on this topic have been published every year. They update the aforementioned data and discuss various improvement proposals. Moreover, the monitors the current state of the Bitcoin network and the block propagation time. Also, it provides charts with historical data on this subject. site The majority of well-established blockchain networks have the same design as Bitcoin. As a result, the block propagation time in these networks obeys the same rules. Unfortunately, the block propagation time has a massive effect on the blockchain security. The longer the propagation time in the network, the more often miners mine on top of old blocks. As a result, the forking of the main chain occurs more often, and the percentage of orphan blocks rises. The long propagation delay leads to the so-called Verifiers Dilemma. Some nodes may find that skipping the block verification step could be a profitable strategy. In this case, they face the risk of mining on top of the wrong block. However, if block verification time is significant, this strategy could be profitable. Researchers that long propagation delay reduces the node’s resistance against 51% attacks and selfish mining. found In order to address the aforementioned problem, blockchain developers often try to keep the block propagation time to be less than 1% of the average block time. This is true for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major blockchain networks that are based on PoW consensus. For this reason, block propagation time to 50% of the nodes in the Bitcoin network is often below 6 seconds. Although fast block relay, like the one described in BIP 0152, reduces the average block propagation time, in the worst-case scenario it could take more time than the basic protocol. It’s important that even in the worst-case scenario, the propagation delay should be reasonable so that miners will keep their nodes synchronized most of the time, and will always verify proposed blocks. Whenever people talk about the scalability of the blockchain, they mention the transaction throughput of the system. However, people forgot that improvements in transaction throughput shouldn’t compromise the network’s security, or raise data storage requirements for nodes desiring to participate in the network. These modifications could decrease the number of independent transaction validators in the network, thereby reducing decentralization. Transaction throughput in Bitcoin could be easily calculated using the formula: where Bsize is the block size in bytes, Tsize is the average size of transaction record in the block, Btime is the average time between consecutive blocks in the blockchain. Obviously, transaction throughput could be increased by increasing the block size, by reducing the transaction record size, or by reducing the interval between blocks. It’s rather hard to reduce the size of the transaction records. One might instead try the other two options. However, these actions will increase the percentage of time that is spent on block propagation. Thus, the security and decentralization of the network could get compromised. One might notice that in the described Bitcoin protocol, network resources are used inefficiently. Every node processes and transmits the vital data about a new block only a small fraction of time. Its network bandwidth is really important, but it is used in full for only a few seconds at a time. The rest of the time, this node transmits only pending transactions and auxiliary data. This observation has inspired researchers to look for more efficient protocol designs that could dramatically improve transaction throughput without compromising the security and decentralization of the network. In our next post, we will discuss approaches for solving the block propagation problem that has been proposed in recent years. Written by Iurii Shyshatskyi, Chief Scientific Officer at JAX.Network

Understanding The Block Propagation Problem in Blockchains

Familiar with ICOs? That’s great. But it’s time to move on because something new has just arrived to the neighbourhood: Security Token Offerings. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have proven themselves effective in raising funds for entrepreneurs all around the globe. Despite the bearish trend in the cryptocurrency market, there were 2.5 times more ICOs that successfully raise money in 2018. While the number of ICOs showed promising growth last year, the amount of money raised by all those projects only increased by 15% compared to 2017. Overall, the nearly one thousand projects that managed to convince investors in 2018 put together . $12 billion There is more. Only in the fourth quarter, the amount of Total Funds Raised to $1.4 billion, down from the $1.8 billion registered in the previous three months. declined While these figures suggest a clear performance slowdown of the ICO market — possibly linked to the downtrend in the crypto market — ICOs remain a viable fundraising alternative for many projects out there. But ICOs are no longer the only option for entrepreneurs in search for cash. In the second half of 2018, a new idea hit the headlines: Security Token Offerings — blockchain-based fundraising issued as a form of security. Not That Difficult After All… In essence, a security token is classified as such if the token itself offers a promise of future returns or, simply put, it is seen as an investment. People purchase stocks in the market in hope that one day their value will increase, offering them a positive return. That’s exactly how you should think of a security token. Are STOs Better Than ICOs? Regulation Is On As security tokens are essentially financial securities issued in the form of digital tokens, they have to be compliant with certain securities law. That said, Security Token Offerings provide with an additional layer when it comes to protecting the pockets of retail investors. Following this premise, STOs fall under the scope of Know Your Customer (KYC) policies. The KYC process plays a major role in the industry as it helps verify the identity of customers, potentially preventing fraud, money laundering, as well as financing criminal or terrorist activities. Exchanges offering STO listing services are not taking this matter lightly. For instance, the clients willing to access security tokens on should all go through a meticulous KYC process. LATOKEN By investing in security tokens, investors gain ownership rights to the underlying assets. Furthermore, depending on how the STO is structured, an investor could even be allow to voice his/her opinions in company decisions as a shareholder, as well as profiting from dividends or accessing to other company benefits. It’s All Low-Cost Do you want to buy a stock? Great! Go for it… Now let’s count the number of intermediaries on your way. Banks, custodians, brokers, and the list goes on and on. You get the point — security tokens give you access to regulated investments without the need for a bank or a middleman apart from exchange. Forget about the paperwork and ridiculous transaction fees. Fast Like Nothing Seen Before We live in a world of instant satisfaction. You order an Uber, it arrives within 5 minutes. You post a photo on Instagram, you get a like in a blink of an eye. So… why shouldn’t your trades be processed as fast? The multiple middlemen involved in the traditional market make it impossible. Nowadays, it takes 2 days on average to settle a single trade. Blockchain — the technology behind security tokens — eliminates intermediaries and ensures your trades are executed at lightning speed. STOs Are Already Here The number of platforms where you can actually conduct a security token offering are quite limited. In fact, — the exchange I work for — is one of the first digital assets exchanges to offer fully compliant STO listing, along with other existing services such as IEO and ICO. LATOKEN If you’re interested in learning more about the available STO services, you can drop a message here or reach out via Telegram . The Bottom Line This “new kid on the block” is undoubtedly gaining momentum in the crypto community, largely as they offer a reliable investment alternative to those without the means to access traditional investments. The ball is rolling! By Matias Lapuschin

Security Token Offerings — The New Kid On The Block

Mike Dudas from The Block on Crypto Journalism

Looking to Provide the Stability Crypto Needs You may not have heard of the year-old startup known as . But the company based out of Hoboken, New Jersey has roared out of the ICO gates and raised over $133 million in the past year to go toward creating a new stablecoin for the masses. The token (formerly known as Basecoin) is a that is programmed to maintain its value closely to the value of one US dollar at all times. Basis works to solve this problem. We at the investing platform, , recently spoke with them to better understand their intended and expected purpose for the future of cryptocurrency. The Basis team explains, Basis cryptocurrency stablecoin In cryptocurrency, it is not always a practical or available option to simply trade Bitcoin for dollars and vice versa. Level “Cryptocurrencies have been too volatile for mainstream use. Loans, salaries, and other basic financial contracts are poorly served by volatile currency.” The soon to be public non-collateralized stable token, founded by , utilizes an algorithmic bank embedded in its code. This algorithm sets out to: Nader Al-Naji Buy back Basis tokens when demand falls in order to shrink its supply Sell off Basis tokens when demand rises in order to inflate its supply By doing both of the above, the algorithm can optimally maintain that one Basis token is equal to one US dollar at all times. Although Basis will peg itself to the US dollar, it has plans to peg to a consumer price index once mass adoption is achieved and it is (hopefully) being regularly used to make real life purchases of goods and services. In a discussion with Josh Chen, a co-founder at Basis, he stated, “Basis is designed to offer a fully-decentralized, counterparty-free system to users, independent from any centralized source of value in the long term. has shown that users find real value in the safety of a decentralized cryptocurrency. We think users will find similar value in Basis, but with added stability regulated by its algorithmic central bank.” Bitcoin Founder Nader Al-Naji, a former Bitcoin miner during the early years of cryptocurrency in 2012, has received tremendous backing for his revolutionary idea to create a coin that algorithmically adjusts its own supply as needed. The coin is intriguing not only for its uniqueness among other stablecoins, but also for its designed purpose of being a consistent force in such a volatile market. To give an idea of the excitement surrounding Basis, a large chunk of their money raised came from the likes of GV (previously known as Google Ventures), Bain Capital Ventures, fed reserve governor Kevin Warsh, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Investors know there is a major market opportunity for a coin like Basis, which offers a stable store of value in an otherwise heavily turbulent field. According to the , Basis website “Basis is designed to maintain a stable value and serve as a medium of exchange accessible to anyone with an internet connection.” Theoretically, this means that the only thing separating it from that green paper money sitting in your wallet is having an active connection to the world wide web. If the coin actually establishes itself as a relied upon currency that can be used without significant fluctuations from its intended value, then this will be a big deal for the future and mainstream usage of cryptocurrency as a whole. With one Basis coin equalling one US dollar, it has the potential to be used as an alternative to purchase goods and services. Trust Issues The designed purpose of Basis (pegging its value to the dollar) is the same as other already existing popular stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and True USD (TUSD). These coins have been circulating through exchanges as relatively easy ways to convert one’s Bitcoin or other altcoin holdings into something stable while circumventing FIAT central banks. However, there has been a lack of proof in fund backing for USDT, as well as slightly wavering values that stray away from the dollar in both coins’ histories. As a result, exchanges have seen many traders avoid these coins as options to stabilize their portfolios. There has instead been an increased demand for regular USD trading pair options on popular trading sites. But is this really what is best for the future of cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrency may eventually rest on the viability of stablecoins like Basis. This lack of trust in the relatively new existence of stablecoins is precisely what is holding back cryptocurrency from separating itself from the Federal Reserve and central banks as a viable alternative to traditional currency. The struggles and controversies other stablecoins like Tether (USDT) have experienced in trying to make a name for themselves have if they can accomplish what they hope to do. And if Basis does succeed, it will be a concern for the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. opened up the door for Basis to become the first reliable dollar-pegged coin Andrea O’Sullivan, an analyst at CoinCenter, points out that there is: “fear that if cryptocurrencies are adopted on a wide enough scale, it could have a negative externality, or spillover effect, on the economy as a whole in the form of monetary instability.” goes on to explain that $100 billion of Bitcoin’s market cap only accounts for 1.3% of the world’s actual hard Fiat currency. Therefore, it is fairly unlikely that Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency coin actually makes a dent in the US dollar, Euro, or another major currency any time soon. However, 1.3% is not nothing. And as more people eventually adopt crypto as a means for making legitimate transactions, there will come a time where the Fed will need to actually take Bitcoin and others seriously. Stablecoins such as Basis could be the ones to eventually stir the pot, as their coinciding values with the dollar will give it appeal as a direct alternative. Her article Threat to the Fed It will be very intriguing to see how Basis will coincide and interact with the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. The Fed currently manages its monetary policy based on the economy’s need to achieve stable prices in the dollar. They can contract their policies when unemployment is too low, and they can conversely expand monetary policy when interest rates are high and economic growth is needed. However, they often These decisions are made and announced on a quarterly basis through press conferences that do not always include all details in how they came to their conclusions. lack transparency in their decision making and there is significant lag time in their decision making. Basis and other stablecoins, on the other hand, adjust to its demand virtually immediately. And with the assumption that they will live up to the transparency they promise, it may ultimately force the Fed to be much more accountable and transparent with their actions. A truly decentralized stable currency will either: Be taken as a legitimate threat by the Fed. They can address their own monetary policies to become more honest, proactive, and fair in dealing with public and economic needs. Be ignored and scoffed at as a non-serious threat. The Fed can shrug their shoulders at the presence of the decentralized alternatives that are offered to users. This may backfire if stablecoins like Basis enjoy mass adoption and become a more intriguing and trustworthy option for Americans. Randal Quarles, who is a vice chair for the Federal Reserve, made national headlines when he addressed the threat that digital assets were posing to the Fed in the midst of the crypto boom on November 30, 2017. During , he went over the threat of cryptocurrency overall to their reserve banking system. He stated, his speech “While these digital currencies may not pose major concerns at their current levels of use, more serious financial stability issues may result if they achieve wide-scale usage.” Quarles and the Fed understand that under the currently stable economic conditions the US is in, there is not a great deal of fear that people will abandon the dollar. However, the Fed also understands that if the economy begins to slip into another recession or crisis situation, Once people find an alternate space they can trust to store their funds, it may self-perpetuate the dollar’s demise. the existence of an attractive space like cryptocurrency (and particularly stablecoins) will make it that much harder for the dollar and economic state to recover. Many suggestions have been tossed around regarding how the Fed may be able to address the threat of cryptocurrency diluting the need for mainstream currency. One suggestion is for the Fed to actually develop its own cryptocurrency, theoretically known as a “FedCoin”. Kevin Warsh, a former U.S. Fed Reserve governor, believes there could be merit to conduct monetary policy after the next U.S. crash. Their own cryptocurrency would hypothetically allow them to hedge themselves in case of crisis, and with the assumption that a growing number of the population continues adopting cryptocurrencies. However, this has not seemed to garner much serious consideration with others currently within the Fed. to the notion of the hypothetical Federal Reserve run cryptoasset idea by stating, Quarles responded “I am particularly concerned that a central-bank-issued digital currency that’s held widely around the globe could be the subject of serious cyberattacks and could be widely used in money laundering and terrorist financing,” This would certainly be a real concern, as the creation of this coin, which would be intended as a safety precaution for crisis, could have real potential of causing more harm for the Fed than good. There is a risk of the Fed’s version of a crypto token being completely counterintuitive to what they are trying to accomplish, thus there is not a strong push for it currently. Creating a “FedCoin” does open up the risk of their currency being used for immoral purposes. So how does the threat of cryptocurrency to the Fed relate specifically to Basis? Well, a coin that can function off of its own centralized bank can efficiently do everything that the Fed can with its flawed, often criticized monetary policies. And if Basis can improve upon this and allow for more precise levers to dictate the purchasing power the US and other countries have, and doing so through the inclusion of their own real-time central bank that is sustainable, there will be less and less need for the Fed and central banks to dominate the decisions pertaining to when our economy is supposed to “heat up” and “cool down”. Probably the most obvious reason that Bitcoin is not currently taken seriously as a threat to the Fed’s monetary policies is because it is just far too volatile. But a coin that intends to be the same value as the Fed’s dollar and has its own policies? That can and should be taken a bit more seriously. Shifting Away From Traditional Currency Al-Naji and the Basis team believe they can actually replace fiat currency for every day purchases of goods and services. He has recently stated, “I think the fact that the value is stable and not expected to appreciate really solves almost a perverse incentive with spending it that makes it much more useful as a medium of exchange.” Indeed, the large swings in Bitcoin and other tokens often dissuade users from utilizing them as actual currencies for making transactions. Basis can solve this problem and become a pioneer for mainstream crypto adoption as a regular mean of exchange for goods and services for the first time. If this is accomplished, it would be a savior for many coins that have great, real world use cases, yet are struggling due to the lack of mass adoption they covet. The team behind the token truly believe a coin can be created to emulate and accomplish the same goals as the Federal Reserve. According to their , Basis blog “Central banks apply monetary policy to mitigate currency volatility. Until now, there’s been no way to create a cryptocurrency with comparable benefits. And no way for cryptocurrencies to become true currencies.” With a coin that does not have the looming threat of major volatility that Bitcoin and others coins have, or the delayed, often inaccurate monetary needed adjustments that are implemented by the Fed a handful of times a year at most, we may have a currency that meets the standard of what we hope a currency can be. Even if it does not become a household name or a commonly used coin for real-world transactions, Basis can at least accomplish the task of raising the bar for the Fed and forcing them to improve upon the policies they currently have in place. When even a small percentage of people are aware of better alternatives like Basis and other stablecoins, central banks will wake up and rise to the occasion with the threat of having their monopolization on monetary policy usurped from them. I write in depth cryptocurrency analysis at Level , the passive investing tool for crypto. See what we’re doing at Lvl.co and see our other analysis at our magazine . If you love what you see, give this article 50 claps! If you hate it, show your displeasure with 49. This article and related content is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered investment advice, and you should consult a financial advisor and do your own research and due diligence prior to making any investments. Where securities or commodities are referenced, it is only for illustrative purposes only, and does not imply any position on securities or commodities classification. To the extent that Level services are offered or discussed, those services are available only for Level whitelisted assets only.

Cryptocurrency’s New Stablecoin On the Block — Basis

In case you hadn’t noticed already, I have recently been the I suffered when trying to get started with the . While the blame for most of those stupid mistakes is on my own laziness, over-esteem and lack of attention to detail, I personally felt that getting started with a leading serverless provider should not have been hard. babbling about pitfalls official AWS lambda-S3 example that ) (https://previews.123rf.com/images/inspirestock/inspirestock1402/inspirestock140202784/26145257-businessman-banging-his-head-against-the-wall.jpg And so did my team at . And we built to make it a reality. SLAppForge Sigma Sigma Let’s see what Sigma could do, to . make your serverless life easy Sigma already comes with a of the S3 thumbnailing sample. Deploying it should take just a few minutes, as per the , if you dare. ready-made version Readme In this discussion, let’s take a more hands-on approach: grabbing the code from the , pasting it into Sigma, and — the exact same thing that got me , the last time I tried. original thumbnailing sample deploying it into AWS running around the block , Sigma manages much of the “behind the scenes” stuff regarding your app — including function permissions, and related — on your behalf. This relies on certain syntactic guidelines being followed in the code, which — luckily — are quite simple and ordinary. So all we have to do is to grab the original source, paste it into Sigma, and make some adjustments and stuff — and Sigma will understand and handle the rest. As you may know trigger configurations resources drag-and-drop configuration If you haven’t already, now is a great time to so that we could start inspiring you with the awesomeness of serverless. (Flattery aside, you need a Sigma account in order to access the .) Have a look at to get going. sign up for Sigma do IDE this small guide Sigma: create an account Once you’re in, just copy the and shove it down Sigma’s throat. S3 thumbnail sample code from AWS docs S3 thumbnail sample code from AWS docs, pasted into Sigma The editor, which would have been rather plain and boring, would now start showing some specks of interesting stuff; especially on the left border of the . editor area Code comes to life: operation and trigger indicators on left border The lightning sign at the top (against the function header with the highlighted variable) indicates a ; an invocation (entry) point for the function. While this is not a part of the function itself, it should nevertheless be properly configured, with the necessary source (S3 bucket), destination (lambda function) and permissions. event trigger lambda Trigger indicator: still red (unconfigured) Good thing is, with Sigma, you only need to indicate the ; Sigma will take care of the rest. source (S3 bucket) configuration At this moment the lightning sign is red, indicating that . Simply drag a from the left pane on to the above line (function header) to indicate to Sigma that this lambda should be triggered by an . a trigger has not been configured entry S3 S3 event Dragging a S3 entry As soon as you do the drag-and-drop, Sigma will ask you about the missing pieces of the puzzle: namely the , and the nature of the operation that should trigger it; which, in our case, is the for image files. S3 bucket which should be the trigger point for the lambda “object created” event S3 trigger pop-up When it comes to specifying the source bucket, Sigma offers you two options: you could either select an existing bucket via the drop-down list ( tab), or Existing Bucket define a new bucket name via the tab, so that Sigma would create it afresh as part of the project deployment. New Bucket Since the “image files” category involves several file types, we would need to define multiple triggers for our lambda, each corresponding to a different file type. (Unfortunately S3 triggers ; if they did, we could have gotten away with a single trigger!) So let’s first define a trigger for JPG files by selecting “object created” as the event and entering “.png” as the suffix, and drag, drop and configure another trigger with “.jpg” as the suffix — for, you guessed it, JPG files. do not yet support patterns for file name prefixes/suffixes S3 trigger for PNG files There’s a small thing to remember when you select the bucket for the second trigger: even if you entered a new bucket name for the first trigger, you would have to select the same, already-defined bucket from the “Existing Bucket” tab for the second trigger, rather than providing the bucket name again as a “new” bucket. The reason is that Sigma keeps track of each newly-defined resource (since it has to create the bucket at deployment time) and, if you define a new bucket twice, Sigma would get “confused” and the deployment may not go as planned. To mitigate the ambiguity, we mark newly defined buckets as “(New)” when we display them under the existing buckets list (such as for a newly added ) - at least for now, until we find a better alternative; if you have a cool idea, feel free to . my-new-bucket (New) my-new-bucket chip in! Selecting our new S3 bucket, from the existing buckets list Now both triggers are ready, and we can move on to . operations S3 trigger list pop-up with both triggers configured You may have already noticed two S3 icons on the editor’s left pane, somewhat below the trigger indicator, right against the and calls. The parameter blocks of the two operations would also be highlighted. This indicates that Sigma has identified the API calls and can help you by automatically generating the necessary bells and whistles to get them working (such as execution permissions). s3.getObject s3.putObject A S3 operation, highlighted Click on the first icon (against ) to open the operation edit pop-up. All we have to do here is to select the correct bucket name for the parameter (again, ensure that you select the "(New)"-prefixed bucket on the "existing" tab, rather than re-entering the bucket name on the "new" tab) and click . s3.getObject Bucket Update S3 getObject operation pop-up Similarly, with the second icon ( ), select a destination bucket. Because we haven't yet added or played around with a destination bucket definition, here you will be adding a fresh bucket definition to Sigma; hence you can either select an existing bucket or name a new bucket, just like in the case of the first trigger. s3.putObject S3 putObject operation pop-up Just one more step: adding the dependencies. While Sigma offers you the cool feature of the ability to add third-party dependencies to your project, it does need to know the name and version of the dependency at build time. Since we copied and pasted an alien block of code into the editor, we should separately tell Sigma about the dependencies that are being used in the code, so that it can bundle them along with our project sources. Just click the “Add Dependency” button on the toolbar, search for the dependency and click “Add”, and all the added dependencies (along with two defaults, and ) will appear on the dependencies drop-down under the button. aws-sdk @slappforge/slappforge-sdk Add Dependency “Add Dependency” button with dependencies drop-down In our case, keeping with the , we have to add the (for waterfall-style execution flow) and (for ) dependencies. original AWS sample guidelines [async](https://www.npmjs.com/package/async) [gm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/gm) GraphicsMagick Adding async dependency Done! Now all that remains is to click the button on the IDE toolbar, to set the wheels in motion! Deploy Firstly, Sigma will save (commit) the app source to your GitHub repo. So be sure to provide a nice commit message when Sigma asks you for one :) You can pick your favourite repo name too, and Sigma will create it if it does not exist. (However, Sigma has a known glitch when an “empty” repo (i.e. one that does not have a master branch) is encountered, so if you have a brand new repo, make sure that you have at least one commit on the master branch; the easiest way is to create a Readme, which can be at repo creation.) easily done with one click Committing your code Once saving is complete, Sigma will automatically build your project, and open up a deployment summary pop-up showing everything that it would deploy to your AWS account with regard to your brand new S3 thumbnail generator. Some of the names will look gibberish, but they will generally reflect the type and name of the deployed resource (e.g. may represent a new S3 bucket named ). s3MyAwesomeBucket my-awesome-bucket Build in progress! Deployment changes summary Review the list (if you dare) and click . The deployment mechanism will kick in, displaying a live progress bar (and a log view showing the changes taking place in the underlying of your project). Execute CloudFormation stack Deployment in progress! Once the deployment is complete, your long-awaited thumbnail generator lambda is ready for testing! Just upload a JPG or PNG file to the source bucket you chose (via the , or via an if you are more like me), and marvel at the thumbnail that would pop up in your destination bucket within a matter of seconds! S3 console [aws s3 cp](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/cp.html) If you don’t see anything interesting in the destination bucket (after a small wait), you would be able to check what went wrong, by checking the lambda’s just like in the case of any other lambda; we know it’s painful to go back to the AWS consoles to do this, and we hope to find a cooler alternative to that as well, pretty soon. execution logs If you want to make the generated thumbnail public (as I said in my previous article, what good is a private thumbnail?), you don’t have to run around reading IAM docs, updating IAM roles and pulling your hair off; simply click the S3 operation edit icon against the call, select the parameter as from the drop-down, and click to go through another save-build-deploy cycle. (We are already working on speeding up these "small change" deployments, so bear with us for now :) ) s3.putObject ACL to apply to the object public-read Deploy Making thumbnails public: S3 putObject operation edit pop-up Once the new deployment is complete, in order to view any newly generated thumbnails, you can simply enter the URL into your favourite web browser and press Enter! http://<bucketname>.s3.amazonaws.com/resized-<original image name> Oh, and if you run into anything unusual — a commit/build/deployment failure, an unusual error or a bug with Sigma itself — don’t forget to — or post an issue on our ; you can do it right within the IDE, using the “Help” → “Report an Issue” menu item. Same goes for any improvements or cool features that you would like to see in Sigma in the future: faster builds and deployments, ability to download the build/deployment artifacts, a shiny new set of themes, whatever. Just let us know, and we’ll add it to our backlog and give it a try in the not-too-distant future! ping us via Slack public issue tracker Okay folks, time to go back and , while I write my next blog post! start playing with Sigma Stay tuned for more from SLAppForge! Originally published at randomizd.blogspot.com on March 9, 2018.

No more running around the block: Lambda-S3 thumbnailer, nailed by SLAppForge Sigma!

An interview with Amy Wan, ICO smart contract legal entrepreneur I meet and connect with many inspiring entrepreneurs, innovators, thought leaders and academics, working relentlessly on the blockchain phenomenon. Some of them are in the public light and some are not. I thought it would be great to dive into the minds of such known and unknown blockchain entrepreneurs and innovators. That’s how this interview blog started. This will be a technical interview, so if you are new to Blockchain, you may want to get up to speed with Coindesk. This rendezvous is with ICO smart contract legal entrepreneur Amy Wan. She is a London School of Economics grad and earned her JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Amy is the co-founder and CEO of one of the top ICO blockchain legal startup Sagewise is a dispute resolution infrastructure startup for smart contracts. ‘Sagewise’. In this interview, we will dive deep into the legal nuances of smart contracts. The smart contract protocol was developed and designed by Nick Szabo, later incorporated smart contracts into the blocks that led to distributed-development platform Ethereum. Back in the day, we have heard so much about how smart these smart contracts are and that has really boggled my mind. An inflexible system with no accountability or recourse, especially when it comes to people’s money built on static code copied by legions of developers in building their own ICO somewhat fails at Nick Szabo’s original vision. There will be multiple blockchain iterations in our lifetime and we will get to a place where private key thieves can be held legally accountable. I know smart contracts are supposed to be lawyer-less smart code, but sophisticated multi-sig and DAO hacking had led us to question our lackadaisical approach to security code audits. Vitalik Buterin Thank you Amy for giving us your valuable time and working on some of the challenging and most interesting projects in blockchain. Q. Tell us about your legal background and what you were doing before working on Blockchain. Amy: I’ve had an unusual career that’s spanned government and policy, the private sector, law firms, and startups. I started off doing international trade and regulatory affairs for the federal government in Washington DC; then became general counsel at an early stage startup; and spent some time as a partner at a boutique law firm before finally leaving to start this company. Originally, the company started with the mission of automating myself as a securities attorney — we created software to draft the securities documents that I had previously been drafting manually. But as I started to get calls in late 2016/ early 2017 about ICOs, I began noticing that millions of dollars worth of crypto kept falling into the wrong hands — starting with the DAO hack. While I believe blockchain technology will change the future, I also believe that people and businesses will only transact where there is transactional confidence and certainty — and today, smart contracts provide none. They are riddled with coding errors and security vulnerabilities. What’s more, code is static, but the real world is not. I firmly believe that success of the blockchain industry depends on creating an ecosystem that promotes transactional confidence, which is why we pivoted to create Sagewise, a dispute resolution infrastructure for smart contracts. Q: Suppose I wrote some code on a smart contract with agreeable terms between us and I changed my mind. Can I challenge the smart contract code in a court of law before the terms mature? If I do then who is the plaintiff and who is the challenger (because I wrote the code)? Amy: There are a lot of different questions there. First, we have to define what a ‘contract’ even is. In the legal arena, it’s merely an offer, acceptance, and consideration. It can take any form, whether on paper, orally, or even scribbled on a napkin. A smart contract, on the other hand, is instructions for execution written in code — some have called it a programmable contract, but it may not even necessarily a ‘contract’ as thought of in traditional terms, though it can be one. One of the most important things in a contract is intent. What is each party’s intent? This is where smart contracts become not quite so smart. Perhaps you change your mind, but in a way that I’m still okay with because it fulfills the intent of both parties. It doesn’t really matter who wrote the code — same as when it doesn’t matter who writes a contract. It only matters that both parties agreed to the contract. The ‘plaintiff’ or ‘challenger’, if you will, is whichever party believes that the spirit or intent of the contract is not being fulfilled. Q. Tell us your opinion, from a legal perspective, on how smart is a smart contract? Amy: I believe smart contracts have great potential. At the same time, in order to understand how to effectively use them, one must come to terms with their limitations. Just as lawyers cannot write the perfect disputeless contract, developers cannot write the perfect errorless, disputeless smart contract — especially when they adopt a ‘fail fast and iterate’ mentality. Solidity code is also constantly changing, which causes issues. And even if a smart contract undergoes a security audit, that only detects the presence of bugs, but cannot guarantee the absence of them. Further, we live in a constantly changing world, but humans write static code. I often call lawyers ‘the janitors of society’ — we are the garbagemen that deal with situations when they go bad. And I can foresee so much going bad. Also, smart contacts are also not great in understanding intent. For example, the intent of the DAO was to operate a decentralized fund. The hack against the DAO was not a hack against the code of the smart contract, but against the intent of the smart contract. Perhaps this will become less of an issue when we’ve got sentient AI (which raises a whole suite of other issues), but until then, we still need to rely, in part, on human judgment. Q. What are you doing with Sagewise with regard to your digital jurisdiction? Amy: As we were diving into the dispute resolution problem with smart contracts, it occurred to me that every other industry will fundamentally change over the next decade due to blockchain technology — except law. We’re dragging along this incumbent legal system that evolved in a haphazard way in the absence of technology, and in many ways, in archaic and outdated. So, we thought, why shouldn’t the legal system get a refresh too? We’re using blockchain as the perfect opportunity to architect a legal paradigm that is better suited to today’s complex, borderless economy. One of our advisors Dr. Gillian Hadfield inspired us with her recent book Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy , which addresses this exact subject. It sounds crazy, but the incumbent legal system has only been around for a few hundred years — it served its purpose up until now, but it’s time for a change. Q. Tell us about Sagewise and its token usage. Amy: Sagewise is a dispute resolution infrastructure that provides parties the ability to monitor, freeze, fix, and dispute smart contracts, choose from a variety of dispute resolution vendors, and allow enforcement of such resolutions. Our tokens have a number of different purposes, all aims are incentivizing and disincentivizing certain behaviors. For example, I hate the vexatious litigants the game our current legal system — people who run causing trouble for others. They’re the employees who go around suing every employer for ridiculous reasons, or the tenants that stop paying after the first month because they know it’ll take the landlord a year to kick them out. There are people who literally make a career out of doing this stuff. To combat this problem in our ecosystem, in order to call a dispute, disputers have to stake a certain amount of Sagewise tokens. This forces disputers to have to really care about the dispute and be willing to put skin in the game to call a dispute. If they lose the dispute, they lose their tokens. Q. There is no end to human stupidity and greed. But how can we securely audit our codes without getting hacked in a DAO like situation or a multi-sig hack? Amy: I saw someone say on social media that hackers are the new lawyers — you hire them to help you find a loophole in your contract. Security audits are very helpful, but in some ways, it’s akin to hiring another attorney to review your regular contract. A lawyer cannot address the infinite number of things that might go wrong with a written contract, just as a developer/auditor cannot address the infinite number of things that might go wrong with a smart contract. In the end, I cannot control what types of smart contracts developers decide to code, the quality of their coding, or the quality of the firm that audits the smart contract. All I can do is provide a freeze button and safety net to handle those (hopefully rare) situations in which a smart contract fails. Q. How do you think legal professionals like you can innovate in the blockchain space to bring up the next generation protocols? Amy: The field is wide open — there is a lot to be done, both to change the legal system and also to formulate laws and policy for this brave new world. As a first step though, I think legal professionals need to take the time understand blockchain’s uses and potential implications. ************ Disclaimer: I’m not an investor/advisor or token holder in Sagewise.

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