xx network

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The cypherpunk movement started with a mailing list in 1992, but there were pioneers of online privacy even before that. David Chaum, an American computer engineer and talented cryptographer, is likely the pioneer of all this. He wasn’t on the mailing list back then (to our knowledge), but he was definitely creating new software with cryptography to preserve our anonymity and improve older systems. He’s known to be the inventor of digital cash, long before Satoshi Nakamoto. That’s why he deserves a mention as an honorary cypherpunk, or, just like Bloomberg called him, “The Godfather of Crypto.” After all, Chaum provided a lot of pieces that would come together to create Bitcoin, eventually. He was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California (USA) in 1955, and got a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. The same year, he launched a whole conference about cryptography and its potential uses, and that was actually the kind of bold move a cypherpunk would make since the US government was paying close attention to these systems —in a bad way. In the early 1980s, cryptographic technology was classified as a munition under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which meant that exporting (even creating or sharing) strong encryption technology was heavily restricted. Chaum avoided being legally targeted for this by creating the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) at the same time, securing protection as an international scientific association by the United Nations. The IACR still exists today, and it organizes several annual conferences on cryptography across the globe. After that first Crypto conference, Chaum landed as a professor at the University of New York and the University of California. Ecash In 1983, Chaum published a paper called “Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments”, in which he described a new privacy-preserving financial technology built with cryptography. That’s the groundwork of Ecash, the first privacy-oriented electronic cash system in the wild, that would come to life when Chaum founded the company DigiCash in 1989. This system allowed users to store money in a digital format on their computers and spend it anonymously at any shop that accepted Ecash. It aimed to protect their privacy by ensuring that transactions didn't require opening accounts with vendors or transmitting credit card numbers. As we mentioned, the core technology behind Ecash was the use of blind signatures. They are digital signatures where the message content is hidden (blinded) before being signed. This technique ensures that the signer can’t see the message content, providing unlinkability between the withdrawal and spending of the digital currency. As a result, the bank couldn’t trace individual transactions, preserving the user's anonymity. However, the bank was still necessary as a middleman, and the money's ultimate origin was still a central bank. Ecash was a system, not a currency by itself, and, of course, it wasn’t as decentralized as modern cryptocurrencies. That’s maybe why, despite initial interest from large banks, DigiCash ended up declaring bankruptcy in 1998. The concept, however, opened the path for future developments in digital currency and cryptographic privacy solutions. More Than Ecash The cryptographic and privacy-oriented efforts by David Chaum didn’t end with Ecash or the blind signatures. One of his notable achievements was the development of mix networks in 1981, an anonymous communication system. Mix networks work by encrypting and batching messages from multiple senders, reordering and obfuscating them at each server until they reach their final destination. This concept is foundational to modern anonymous browsing tools like Tor, emphasizing Chaum's pioneering role in enhancing Internet privacy. Chaum also introduced undeniable signatures in 1989, which allow the signatory to control who can verify the signature through an interactive process. This ensures that signatures are considered valid unless actively disavowed by the signer. Additionally, in 1991, he developed group signatures, enabling a group member to sign messages on behalf of the group anonymously, with a group manager capable of revoking anonymity if necessary. Another significant area of Chaum's work is in trustworthy voting systems. Starting in 1981, he proposed a voting system that maintains voter privacy while ensuring verifiable tallies using mix networks. His later work included SureVote in 1991, which allowed secure voting from untrustworthy systems, and a series of cryptographically verifiable voting systems like Prêt à Voter, Punchscan, and Scantegrity. These systems have been employed in some real-world elections. More recently, Chaum has been working on the XX Network, “a high-speed privacy-protected blockchain with quantum-resistant consensus and currency with metadata shredding via mixing”. In other words, this network is designed with robust encryption for a variety of privacy-centric use cases, including secure messaging, anonymous transactions, and protecting user metadata from surveillance. Tools for Privacy As Chaum and other cypherpunks have pondered, the use of privacy tools today is even more important than in the last century. According to the “Zimmerman Law” (another remarkable cypherpunk), “The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier (…) the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months.” The sad truth is that surveillance is only the first step to abuse —from cybercriminals, corporations, and governments. We need to protect our information and our funds to the best of our ability. Luckily for us, there are numerous tools and decentralized ecosystems that will let us do it just by using them, and one of them is Obyte. This decentralized ecosystem offers a compelling solution for those seeking to protect their online privacy and financial freedom. Its Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure sets it apart from blockchains by providing a more decentralized and censorship-resistant framework. Since there are no miners, "validators", or other middlemen, only users are in charge of their own transactions and data. This architecture allows for secure and immutable operations, ensuring that no single entity can control, censor, or somehow manipulate the network. With Obyte, users can conduct their digital activities with greater confidence, knowing that their information and financial transactions are protected. The platform’s robust security measures and decentralized nature make it an ideal choice for anyone looking to maintain their privacy and autonomy in the digital age. By leveraging Obyte’s technology, individuals can safeguard their data and assets, enjoying a higher level of freedom and security online —just like cypherpunks have wanted. Read more from Cypherpunks Write Code series: Tim May & Crypto-anarchism
Wei Dai & B-money
Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts
Adam Back & Hashcash
Eric Hughes & Remailer
St Jude & Community Memory
Julian Assange & Wikileaks
Hal Finney & RPOW
John Gilmore & EFF
Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin
Gregory Maxwell & Bitcoin Core
Vinay Gupta & Mattereum Featured Vector Image by Garry Killian/Freepik Photograph of David Chaum by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Web Summit The cypherpunk movement started with a mailing list in 1992, but there were pioneers of online privacy even before that. David Chaum, an American computer engineer and talented cryptographer, is likely the pioneer of all this. He wasn’t on the mailing list back then (to our knowledge), but he was definitely creating new software with cryptography to preserve our anonymity and improve older systems. the pioneer He’s known to be the inventor of digital cash, long before Satoshi Nakamoto. That’s why he deserves a mention as an honorary cypherpunk, or, just like Bloomberg called him , “The Godfather of Crypto.” After all, Chaum provided a lot of pieces that would come together to create Bitcoin, eventually. He’s known to be the inventor of digital cash, long before Satoshi Nakamoto. Bloomberg called him Bloomberg called him He was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California (USA) in 1955, and got a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. The same year, he launched a whole conference about cryptography and its potential uses, and that was actually the kind of bold move a cypherpunk would make since the US government was paying close attention to these systems —in a bad way. a cypherpunk a cypherpunk In the early 1980s, cryptographic technology was classified as a munition under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which meant that exporting (even creating or sharing) strong encryption technology was heavily restricted. Chaum avoided being legally targeted for this by creating the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) at the same time, securing protection as an international scientific association by the United Nations. Chaum avoided Chaum avoided The IACR still exists today, and it organizes several annual conferences on cryptography across the globe. After that first Crypto conference, Chaum landed as a professor at the University of New York and the University of California. The IACR The IACR Ecash In 1983, Chaum published a paper called “ Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments ”, in which he described a new privacy-preserving financial technology built with cryptography. That’s the groundwork of Ecash, the first privacy-oriented electronic cash system in the wild, that would come to life when Chaum founded the company DigiCash in 1989. Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments That’s the groundwork of Ecash, the first privacy-oriented electronic cash system in the wild, that would come to life when Chaum founded the company DigiCash in 1989. This system allowed users to store money in a digital format on their computers and spend it anonymously at any shop that accepted Ecash. It aimed to protect their privacy by ensuring that transactions didn't require opening accounts with vendors or transmitting credit card numbers. As we mentioned, the core technology behind Ecash was the use of blind signatures. They are digital signatures where the message content is hidden (blinded) before being signed. This technique ensures that the signer can’t see the message content, providing unlinkability between the withdrawal and spending of the digital currency. As a result, the bank couldn’t trace individual transactions, preserving the user's anonymity. However, the bank was still necessary as a middleman, and the money's ultimate origin was still a central bank. Ecash was a system, not a currency by itself, and, of course, it wasn’t as decentralized as modern cryptocurrencies. That’s maybe why, despite initial interest from large banks, DigiCash ended up declaring bankruptcy in 1998. Ecash was a system, not a currency by itself, and, of course, it wasn’t as decentralized as modern cryptocurrencies. The concept, however, opened the path for future developments in digital currency and cryptographic privacy solutions. More Than Ecash The cryptographic and privacy-oriented efforts by David Chaum didn’t end with Ecash or the blind signatures. One of his notable achievements was the development of mix networks in 1981, an anonymous communication system. Mix networks work by encrypting and batching messages from multiple senders, reordering and obfuscating them at each server until they reach their final destination. This concept is foundational to modern anonymous browsing tools like Tor, emphasizing Chaum's pioneering role in enhancing Internet privacy. Chaum also introduced undeniable signatures in 1989, which allow the signatory to control who can verify the signature through an interactive process. This ensures that signatures are considered valid unless actively disavowed by the signer. Additionally, in 1991, he developed group signatures, enabling a group member to sign messages on behalf of the group anonymously, with a group manager capable of revoking anonymity if necessary. Another significant area of Chaum's work is in trustworthy voting systems. Starting in 1981, he proposed a voting system that maintains voter privacy while ensuring verifiable tallies using mix networks. His later work included SureVote in 1991, which allowed secure voting from untrustworthy systems, and a series of cryptographically verifiable voting systems like Prêt à Voter, Punchscan, and Scantegrity. These systems have been employed in some real-world elections. Chaum's work Chaum's work Starting in 1981, he proposed a voting system that maintains voter privacy while ensuring verifiable tallies using mix networks. More recently, Chaum has been working on the XX Network , “a high-speed privacy-protected blockchain with quantum-resistant consensus and currency with metadata shredding via mixing”. In other words, this network is designed with robust encryption for a variety of privacy-centric use cases, including secure messaging, anonymous transactions, and protecting user metadata from surveillance. XX Network XX Network Tools for Privacy As Chaum and other cypherpunks have pondered, the use of privacy tools today is even more important than in the last century. According to the “Zimmerman Law” ( another remarkable cypherpunk ), “The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier (…) the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months.” The sad truth is that surveillance is only the first step to abuse —from cybercriminals, corporations, and governments. another remarkable cypherpunk another remarkable cypherpunk We need to protect our information and our funds to the best of our ability. Luckily for us, there are numerous tools and decentralized ecosystems that will let us do it just by using them, and one of them is Obyte . We need to protect our information and our funds to the best of our ability. Obyte Obyte This decentralized ecosystem offers a compelling solution for those seeking to protect their online privacy and financial freedom. Its Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure sets it apart from blockchains by providing a more decentralized and censorship-resistant framework. Since there are no miners, "validators", or other middlemen, only users are in charge of their own transactions and data. This architecture allows for secure and immutable operations, ensuring that no single entity can control, censor, or somehow manipulate the network. With Obyte, users can conduct their digital activities with greater confidence, knowing that their information and financial transactions are protected. The platform’s robust security measures and decentralized nature make it an ideal choice for anyone looking to maintain their privacy and autonomy in the digital age. With Obyte, users can conduct their digital activities with greater confidence, knowing that their information and financial transactions are protected. By leveraging Obyte’s technology, individuals can safeguard their data and assets, enjoying a higher level of freedom and security online —just like cypherpunks have wanted. Read more from Cypherpunks Write Code series: Read more from Cypherpunks Write Code series: Tim May & Crypto-anarchism Wei Dai & B-money Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts Adam Back & Hashcash Eric Hughes & Remailer St Jude & Community Memory Julian Assange & Wikileaks Hal Finney & RPOW John Gilmore & EFF Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin Gregory Maxwell & Bitcoin Core Vinay Gupta & Mattereum Tim May & Crypto-anarchism Tim May & Crypto-anarchism Tim May & Crypto-anarchism Tim May & Crypto-anarchism Wei Dai & B-money Wei Dai & B-money Wei Dai & B-money Wei Dai & B-money Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts Adam Back & Hashcash Adam Back & Hashcash Adam Back & Hashcash Adam Back & Hashcash Eric Hughes & Remailer Eric Hughes & Remailer Eric Hughes & Remailer Eric Hughes & Remailer St Jude & Community Memory St Jude & Community Memory St Jude & Community Memory St Jude & Community Memory Julian Assange & Wikileaks Julian Assange & Wikileaks Julian Assange & Wikileaks Julian Assange & Wikileaks Hal Finney & RPOW Hal Finney & RPOW Hal Finney & RPOW Hal Finney & RPOW John Gilmore & EFF John Gilmore & EFF John Gilmore & EFF John Gilmore & EFF Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin Gregory Maxwell & Bitcoin Core Gregory Maxwell & Bitcoin Core Gregory Maxwell & Bitcoin Core Gregory Maxwell & Bitcoin Core Vinay Gupta & Mattereum Vinay Gupta & Mattereum Vinay Gupta & Mattereum Featured Vector Image by Garry Killian/Freepik Featured Vector Image by Garry Killian/ Freepik Freepik Freepik Photograph of David Chaum by Piaras Ó Mídheach/ Web Summit Photograph of David Chaum by Piaras Ó Mídheach/ Web Summit Web Summit

Cypherpunks Write Code: David Chaum & Ecash

সাইফারপাঙ্কস কোড লিখুন: ডেভিড চাউম এবং ইক্যাশ

Cypherpunks schreiben Code: David Chaum & Ecash

Los cypherpunks escriben código: David Chaum y Ecash

Les Cypherpunks écrivent du code : David Chaum et Ecash

साइफरपंक्स कोड लिखें: डेविड चाउम और ईकैश

サイファーパンクがコードを書く: デビッド・ショーム & Ecash

사이퍼펑크가 코드를 쓴다: 데이비드 차움과 이캐시

Cypherpunks escrevem código: David Chaum e Ecash

Шифропанки пишут код: Дэвид Чаум и Ecash

Cypherpunks Kod Yazıyor: David Chaum ve Ecash

Cypherpunks Viết Mã: David Chaum & Ecash

密码朋克编写代码：David Chaum 和 Ecash

An Overview of Kazakhstan's Fintech Ecosystem

Running Cisco pyATS on Windows 11 Really Helped Me Brush Up My Python Fundamentals

Background backed by institutional adoption has confirmed the appetite for . Today, Bitcoin is positioned as a and this liquidity, mining, and adoption are managed in a fairly decentralized manner by its community members. Bitcoin’s phenomenal rise digital assets by mainstream markets and investors scarce digital asset with very high liquidity, and Xinfin’s focus is for for institutions which include . Payment obligations can also be recorded for the employer to employee transactions which can potentially create opportunities for payday loans, mortgage origination, and auto loans on the XDC Network. XDC is positioned to connect real-world finance origination to DeFi markets XDC to be a de-facto standard for recording payment obligations buyers, suppliers, governments, and banks which are essentially payment obligations. Currently, this space is empty and there is no platform that focuses on this particular feature. Enabling this creates a massive opportunity to run . Governments raise billions through bonds DeFi backed by real-world assets on top of the XDC network so that liquidity can reach . XDC is positioned to absorb such liquidity and distribute it via originators that connect to TradeFinex on the . Central banks pour liquidity into financial markets MSMEs at the grassroots level XDC Network We are expecting a third-party developer to deliver payment obligations on the XDC network which will be used by the . There are ongoing discussions with regulated financial institutions ( ) to bring their payment obligations for instruments such as onto the XDC Network. initial 2 integrations, Validus and Funding Societies Know More letters of credits, invoices, and receivables While the Core Team is focused on the adoption of XDC and the network, it’s clear that in order for us to operate as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, the participation of the XDC community is needed to achieve the following objectives: XDC Integrations across hardware and software wallets, and the addition of more digital asset custodians and crypto exchanges.Provide XDC liquidity to support trade finance liquidity.Increase XDC adoption through marketing efforts that build awareness about the XDC Network’s protocol and benefits. We are happy to share this roadmap with our core community members so that we can collectively grow the XDC Network into a market leader in 2021. 1. Build a robust support infrastructure for the XDC Mainnet Chain with new wallet integrations a) Hardware and Software Wallets Ledger is done, we are awaiting security approvals and upgrade into their firmware in order to be fully supported on Ledger. D’CENT Wallet: Support and integration of XDC has been announced by Trezor (integration is ongoing) Wallet connect (Live): Freewallet : (Integration is ongoing) Safepal.io: Safepal.io has announced that they will keep XDC . Exodus, Trust Wallet, Coinswitch: Discussion Phase. XDC needs to meet their required criteria for Coinmarketcap rank, technical integration, fees, etc. XDC community members can participate and claim up to a 140% bounty visit: . code integration D’CENT https://walletconnect.org/apps/ Integration on their 2021 roadmap https://www.xinfin.org/bounty b) Digital Asset Custodians Copper.co — Established Onchain custodian — Support is scheduled to start in Q1 of 2021 Hex Trust — In negotiations as of Q1 2021Anchorage (backed by Visa) Other wallets: XDC community members can participate and claim up to 140% bounty visit the link: XDC community members can add support to other established digital custodian and claim up to 140% of XDC as bounty by submitting integration details at (Fill-in the form provided under pre-approved XDC Bounty) https://www.xinfin.org/bounty https://www.xinfin.org/bounty Discussions are in progress and we are awaiting for XDC community members to push them to get quick integration. Up to 140% in XDC Bounty is available for the actual cost borne by XDC community members visit: c) OpenLaw Integration: https://www.xinfin.org/bounty Cordite Society has been engaged by Xinfin to run third-party Corda Network nodes for XinFin and provide interoperability among the Corda and XinFin networks. d) R3 Cordite Integration: Integration is in progress and should be completed by Jan 2021. has already been released by the ExcelTrip team. e) ExcelTrip Travel Portal XDC Integration: An announcement Fork repositories like and provide options to use multisig facility on the XDC Network. Up to 140% in XDC Bounty is available for the actual cost borne by XDC community members visit: f) MultiSig Wallet Facility: https://gnosis-safe.io/ https://www.xinfin.org/bounty 2. Drive rapid adoption of XDC with DApps currently running on the XDC Network a) TradeFinex Currently, live with SGD. $50,000 worth of staking coming from XDC directly ported to Validus. Integration with more originators. Scaling up Liquidity Pools on TradeFinexIntegration with exchanges and custodians who can offer yields to their own stakers Payment obligation and smart contract utilization of XDC https://forum.makerdao.com/t/tokenized-yield-generating-trade-finance-assets-as-maker-collaterals/1645/11?u=atulkhekade Know More b) Globiance Boost adoption of SGDg, EURg Target: Scale-up issuance of SGDg and EURgScale-up the daily volume of SGDg and EURg c) Blockdegree Development of partnerships with institutions to cross-sell education with a 50% profit share.Blockdegree courses will be accredited by Singapore skills future (Please visit ) Blockdgree.org d) Mycontract Develop enterprise connectivity to blockchain and crypto-asset ecosystems Drive the development of Dapps on XDC Network with funding and bounty programs for 3rd party developers who can claim up to 140% of their costs borne in XDC as bounty by submitting details. (Fill-in the form provided under pre-approved XDC Bounty) 3. Exchange Listings a) Tier 1 Exchange Listing (In Legal clearance) Non-US Customers (Phase 1)US Customers - FIAT pairs (Phase 2) b) Tier 1 Exchange Listing (Proposal Received) Non-japan customers (Phase 1)Japan customers - Fiat Pairs (Phase 2) c) Tier 1 exchange listing (Proposed) Non-Korean Customers (Phase 1)Korean Customers - Fiat (Phase 2) d) Tier 1 exchange listing (Proposed) US Customers (Proposed, Under Legal opinion)Korean Customers - Fiat (Phase 2) Know More Other Exchange Integration Fee bounty at https://www.xinfin.org/bounty 4. Market making + Liquidity push by incentivizing Market Makers Community driven third party market making. There are some masternode groups who are running bounties via third party pages. https://ruslanwing100.medium.com/bounty-for-xdc-market-making-6326540e1766 Incentives will be paid from the XDC Ecosystem Pool for maintaining liquidity in a self-controlled mm account. 5. Global awareness + PR a) Received proposal from Market Across PR firm. This is a PR firm for top projects. b) Develop ways for the community to help in the decentralization of marketing efforts. 6. Develop Interoperability of XDC with Ethereum ecosystem a) Developers of Bancor and XDC are working with Bancorx integration of XDC with USDC, USDT, and ETH on BancorX Link for alpha product/tool: (Link for testing purpose only) https://bancor.xdc.network/ 7. Legal Clarity on XDC Network and token a) Singapore A law firm has already issued a legal opinion stating that XDC is a utility payment token and not a security. b) UK A law firm has already issued a legal opinion stating that XDC is a utility payment token and not a security. c) Liechtenstein Legal opinion underway. d) US - SEC Xinfin is currently in the process of engaging legal counsel in the United States to create a legal opinion for the XDC Network and the XDC token. e) Japan To be engaged after listing with Tier 1 Exchange for enabling fiat pairs. f) UAE Working through TradeFinex tech Ltd. (Reglab already issued) Know More 8. to promote XDC Adoption and More Dapps Integration. Hackathon & internship 9. Enhance XDC Staking in the following ways: Masternode/Backup Node: Expand XDC Masternode networks. Community Staking: Integration with exchanges and custodians who can offer a yield to XDC Holders. Inorganic Growth through third party project integrations: a) European Index provider — (will be publicly announced in Q1) XDC index to launch in January end or February. Know More b) A Fintech firm integrated with 17 banks Know More Integration of banking partners with TradeFinex over XDC liquidity pools for alternative investors. c) Tier 1 Bank — Know More d) DeFi Project on XDC — Know More f) Trade Finance Digitisation Project Integration with XDC The XinFin Core Team encourages community members to take part in the development and utilization of the XDC Network. Efforts to connect with or approach regulated companies that can boost XDC adoption with running systems will be supported through XinFin Bounty programs. Up to 140% in XDC Bounty is available for any communication, integration, or regulatory cost incurred by XDC Community members. XDC Bounty form. (Fill-in the form provided under pre-approved XDC Bounty)

[Announcement] XinFin RoadMap For 2021.

In conjunction with our friends at , each week we’ll be producing the CoinMarketCap Crypto Disparity Ratio. The Crypto Disparity Ratio recognizes the distinction between fundamental health ( rating) and current market capitalization. A score above 1 reflects an undervalued asset, and a score below 1 indicates an overvalued asset. FCAS June 6, 2019: Top Five CDR Cryptoassets: Undervalued (2.0) Remme (1.37) POA Network (1.35) XYONetwork (1.33) Raiden Network (1.23) RChain Holdings June 6, 2019: Top Five CDR Cryptoassets: Overvalued (.29) AuroraOfficial(AOA) (.39) Digix MonaCoin (.40) (.41) Waltonchain_EN Monaco Coin ( ) (.44) Crypto.com To identify those assets that are most under- and overvalued according to FCAS ratings, current market cap is converted into a standardized percentile, so that it can be directly compared on a 1,000-point scale. The ratio of [Current FCAS] to [Current Standardized Market Cap] provides a relative over/under score: A value over 1 indicates an asset (that is the FCAS is higher than the market cap would indicate) and; undervalued A value under 1 indicates an asset (one whose FCAS is lower than we might expect). overvalued Disclaimer. Do your own research, be a wise, thoughtful, considerate, mature and generally level-headed investor. Meaning: the information contained herein is not intended to be a source of advice or credit analysis and does not constitute investment advice.

The Cryptocurrency Disparity Ratio

This December marks 5 years for me at Arthrex within the Digital Media department (which didn’t even exist when I started). Arthrex is a healthcare company specializing in orthopedic devices, hardware, and techniques. The Digital Media Team is specifically focused on surgeon and patient education, surgery outcome tracking, and more. While reflecting upon this 5 year milestone, I felt that it was an infrastructure evolution story worth sharing. A story of our initial migration from our on-prem VMs managed by another internal team to the AWS cloud. Then, you can follow along our migration from EC2 centric deployment to our current ECS approach. We can then take a look into the near future and cover our plans for 2018. I will gloss over deprecated/retired technologies we have used and get more detailed as we get more current with our deployment. Day 1: December 17, 2012, 4 short days until the supposed end of the world, we had a small handful of web applications we were responsible for, written in either coldfusion or flex. Our subject of study for this era will be arthrex.com which was hosted on two Windows 2008 VMs and one bare metal windows system (affectionately known as “node a”, b and c). These app servers were load balanced by a Cisco NetScaler. The datastore for all of our apps at the time was a 2008 MSSQL server setup for manual failover across DCs. Software and system patches along with deployments were done manually and would at most require dropping the node from the load balancer, patching, and rebooting the box before re-adding them to the load balancer all by hand, zero automation. At the very least the application server would need to be restarted during deploys. Over time these nodes started to show their age, mostly during deployments, which at the time, had a bad habit of happening late in the day. Anytime a node had to be restarted, we were not certain it would come back up in a timely manner. Couple that with requests backing up at the load balancer and overloading the very slow (at the time) app servers when they were ready to serve and back in the load balancer. We ended up having to pre-warm our nodes before adding them back, coordinating over a WebEx to bring them in and out of the load balanced group. All these resources we just covered, along with DNS, Email, monitoring (or lack thereof), were all managed by an infrastructure team outside of our department. Conflicting priorities in a growing company and different technical ideologies made for difficulty making changes, planning deploys, or even troubleshooting at times. Things needed to change, time to take our fate into our own hands. Let’s skip ahead to Q4 2013, one year later, and the context of surgicaloutcomesystems.com (SOS), an internally developed Rails application ready for deployment. This application was a rewrite of the, at the time, on-prem flex application containing PHI. With it moving from flex to rails, the question was, how do we host it? Do we submit a help desk ticket along with and email over to the infrastructure team and be at there whim? After much internal debate, discussions with AWS, and many meetings, the business case was made and agreed upon to move to AWS. As far as I know, we were one of the first companies to sign a BAA in regards to HIPAA compliance on AWS. Certainly, at least, SOS would become the first Arthrex application hosted in the cloud. The stage was set, red tape cut, and handcuffs removed. The order, one rails application hosted in a highly available, HIPAA compliant manner on AWS. Infrastructure as code is a core tenant of our DevOps team. For configuration management, Puppet solo would sync the system with our desired state. Orchestration was done via nested Cloudformation stacks partitioned logically on networking, compute, datastore, etc. As for CI and deployment jobs, we spun up a Jenkins server, on here we also installed for ChatOps driven deployments in Hipchat. For monitoring, we brought in New Relic. OpenVPN would provide any private access we need for dev, qa, dba and ops. Hubot network Our VPC design utilized public subnets for ELBs with Internet Gateways and private subnets with EC2 nat instances for our application and database servers. Trying to take AWS best practices into account in regards to high availability we deployed our EC2 instances across multiple AZs* in autoscaling groups with prebaked AMIs, meaning no more pet nodes a, b and the beloved node c. Being in an autoscaling group and on EC2, these application nodes had to be stateless, no local session stores here, because now they could disappear at any time, unlike on-prem. VPC Design (simplified): During any production code change, once it had been QA tested and signed off on, we would do a canary deploy to a single node. Once that looked good, we baked a new AMI based on that node, updated a cloudformation parameter with the new AMI, which updated our autoscaling groups with a rolling deploy. To kick off this fully automated process you would run to do the canary, and to bake the AMI and update cloudformation. hubot deploy production hubot ship production *A cross region deployment is still something we are looking to accomplish, and the new makes that a lot more exciting! cross region VPC peering To check the compliance box, we were limited to a subset of AWS services, some with certain restrictions, some of these requirements stand today. Any EC2 resources had to live within a dedicated VPC, all PHI must be encrypted at rest and in-transit, ELB could only be ran in tcp/ssl mode making capturing the requesters true remote ip much more difficult than it should have been, no RDS support, the list goes on. The data migration plan was ready for moving from the old schema to the new. The DNS was ready to be updated. The infrastructure, monitoring and deployment process were all in place. Early in 2014, SOS was relaunched on AWS and continues running the same code base to this day, however, the infrastructure and process have changed drastically. The infrastructure architecture pattern used in SOS was applied to all greenfield projects taken on by the team. We had some pre-processable cloudformation templates driven by yaml that you could more succinctly declare applications in to easily follow the pattern. Also where we could we moved some websites to s3 static sites. By the end of 2014 we had a solid foothold on AWS, but we still had a proportionally large footprint on-prem, including arthrex.com with all its ever growing aches and pains. We began to deploy and migrate more supporting enterprise to the cloud as well, such as Jira, Confluence, and Github, and given we had many users at our corporate office, it made sense to setup a VPN connection at the office using the an AWS VPN connection. We also segmented our overall deployment into multiple VPCs for logical separation of duties, and connected each new VPC to the office via VPN connection. This evolved to a multi account strategy based on duty, where we can use IAM roles to control privileges and access across accounts. tools 2015, enter our container adoption era. As a DevOps team of one, it took a while to find a way to get containers into our workflow and how to run a production docker cluster. The experimentation spanned K8s, Deis, Flynn, Panamax, ECS, etc. At the time some of these were immature or running them meant DIY etcd or ceph management and HA architecting… something that after a bit of experimentation I discovered was not worth the overhead or stress, at least when there was a nice open source managed AWS ECS offering called that worked right of the box for both local development and for production quality deployments. Convox Convox AWS Architecture: Convox provides a core preprocessed cloudformation template that provisions the above architecture (or close to it — dated diagram) for you, in which it runs its own api within AWS ECS. Convox’s awesome command looks in your cwd for both a Dockerfile and a “docker-compose.yml” file. They support a subset of docker compose v2 to describe both local development and deployment. will run a command behind the scenes, hook up code syncing, and attach stdout logs from your application and route them to your terminal. convox start convox start docker-compose up To get your app up on AWS, you can create You can then deploy your application via , which in turn Convox creates a new cloudformation stack. We use multiple docker-compose.*.yml files to control if we want a certain container or port configuration for different purposes. This new app stack will create a load balancer exposing the ports defined in your docker-compose.yml file on a per docker compose process bases. It will also create an ECS task definition and ECS service using your Dockerfile, which is attached to the provisioned load balancer. There are a few other AWS services leveraged but these are the heaviest lifters. convox apps create my-app convox deploy -a my-app -f docker-compose.prod.yml Initially I had to add support for the private networking and custom VPC CIDR design for us to be able to deploy production loads and connect our VPNs. But aside from that, out of the box it has offered everything we have needed to get all of our applications containerized and ready to start using standard CI pipelines across the board. With all that said, we had found our container platform and began the arduous process of containerizing both the remaining legacy on-prem applications, and the existing ec2 based applications. From this point on, in early 2016, all new development was docker based. Up to today, Convox has been a great platform both operate and deploy to, and has served a great purpose in speeding up our initial container adoption given limited resources. For service discovery with convox/ecs, we are using and to declare our APIs. Kong is an open source API Gateway, of which we run one kong node for dev, and one cluster for prod. We use this for DNS for web apps and as a true api gateway for microservices, including header injection, JWT authentication, and more. We keep service discovery at this layer, agnostic and declarative to ensure it is reproducible and consistent across applications . kong kongfig We run kong in 3 environments, local, development, and production. Each has its own set of api consumers, JWT secrets, and api endpoints reachable via hostname based routing, allowing us to both map addresses and ports to a DNS name, which is exactly what we needed to address to our individual containers without having to worrying about the ports, everything could use :443 and :80 regardless of what is exposed on our ELBs. Kong itself is of course deployed as a container on our convox local or ecs cluster. Each kong environment gets 2 dns entries in route53 mapped to its ELB, one directly to the kong api i.e. and a wild card entry for any apis that the node will be hosting i.e. which accounts for kong apis exposed at or without registering directly in route53. mydevdomain.com *.mydevdomain.com myservice.mydevdomain.com mybetterservice.mydevdomain.com Taking a further look at local development, we are running a suite of containers to provide greater dev-prod parity, namely kong and its supporting containers, postgres, and kong dashboard. Kong Dashboard is used to view and troubleshoot local and deployed kongs. This suite is described in a docker-compose application that also provisions a user defined network when a docker.sock is mounted. We hide this behind a local cli but the internals at work here are as follow: Create or launch the application, named “arthrex” and detach the process: . docker-compose --project-name arthrex up -d --force-recreate And here is the corresponding docker-compose.yml: version: '2'services:kong-database:image: postgres:9.4ports:- 5432:5432networks:dev:aliases:- kong-database.arthrex.xyzkong:image: kong:0.9.3ports:- 80:8000- 443:8443- 8001:8001- 7946:7946- 7946:7946/udpenvironment:- KONG_PG_HOST=kong-database.arthrex.xyz- KONG_PG_DATABASE=postgres- KONG_PG_USER=postgres- KONG_PG_PASSWORD=postgresrestart: alwayssecurity_opt:- seccomp:unconfinednetworks:dev:aliases:- kong.arthrex.xyzkongdashboard:image: pgbi/kong-dashboard:v2.0.0ports:- 3070:8080networks:dev:aliases:- kong-dashboard.arthrex.xyzmailcatcher:image: yappabe/mailcatcher:latestports:- 1025:1025- 1080:1080networks:dev:aliases:- mailcatcher.arthrex.xyznetworks:dev:driver: bridge Now, let’s take a look at a sample application bootstrapped with kongfigure for self declaration on and . convox start convox deploy version: "2"services:kongfigure:build: ./kongfigureenvironment:- WWW_NAME- KONG_HOST- WWW_VIRTUAL_HOST- API_URLlinks:- wwwvolumes:- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sockwww:build: ./wwwenvironment:- API_URLports:- 4200networks:dev:external:name: arthrex_dev ./kongfigure/Dockerfile FROM arthrex/kongfigure:0.3 ./kongfigure/kongfig.yml apis: name: $WWW_NAMEattributes:request_host: $WWW_VIRTUAL_HOSTupstream_url: " " http://$WWW_HOST:$WWW_PORT When the application starts, kongfigure execute its baked in ONBUILD command . This registers the application load balancer with kong using the local kongfig.yml file. The variable dictates which kong environment we are targeting, local, develop, or production. Convox populating the and other variables via an integration with the docker-compose.yml links section. kongfig apply $KONG_HOST $WWW_NAME Kongfigure also manages the applications private network configuration, specified in our docker-compose.yml file “arthrex_dev”, this network exists only locally. This is just another approach driven by infrastructure as code, here we have service routing declared by code. By the end of 2016 we migrated our last app out of on-prem and into docker, and by Early 2017 all of our applications were running on convox. Greatly simplifying and genericizing the operations of our rails, go, coldfusion, node, and other apps. Current footprint is ~35 docker nodes, over ~130 application instances, and over 300 containers. 2017 has been another year of reworking our infrastructure to be easier to use and operate. This has been greatly accelerated by the addition of two DevOps team member, so now we actually have a real team, not an army of one! Some big enhancements this year is standardization of environment variables, migration away from MSSQL to Postgresql, PRs now create and deploy themselves into on demand containers for isolated testing, we brought in vault as a single source of truth for our configuration, and more! Vault is a now central configuration and secret store by hashicorp. We store numerous types of data within it including, third party tool credentials, database creds, server creds, application configuration and secrets, the list goes on. One of the main reasons we set up such a store was for the programatic access of application configurations to power our automation plans. My new(ish) colleague, senior DevOps engineer Braxton Beyer, has been busy replacing our hipchat/hubot/jenkins based deployment scheme with github hook based CircleCI. This new platform has already been through several incantations from circle 1, to circle 2, to a custom docker build image hosting a generic build pipline written in ruby. The ruby built pipeline allows for standardization of deployment across all of our applications, as the pipelines contact point with our apps is that the Convox level, which is agnostic about what it is deploying. From an ops perspective, there is now only one deployment process to learn, but nothing hands-on. From a dev perspective, their github PR’s are now all power and their interface to deployments. Looking ahead, this standard pipeline is the perfect place to begin enforcing code quality checks, linting, static analysis, and other custom checks related to the deployability of your service / application, and more, all in one place, and for all applicable apps at once. A key step in this pipeline is the realization of a long held idea of creating on demand environments from github PR’s. Anytime a new PR is opened on one of our repos, circleci kicks off the process of provisioning a new convox/ecs application. Following our conventions, we then inject the variables and into the build pipeline, which are based upon the github branch or PR name. We then pull a templated env file from vault, and evaluate it i.e.: $APP_NAME $APP_ENVIRONMENT MY_SECRET=thisissecretVIRTUAL_HOST=$APP_NAME.$APP_ENVIRONMENT.mydevdomain.comNEW_RELIC_NAME=$APP_NAME-$APP_ENVIRONMENT Given and . This env files becomes APP_NAME=myapp APP_ENVIRONMENT=shiny-feature MY_SECRET=thisissecretVIRTUAL_HOST=myapp.shiny-feature.mydevdomain.comNEW_RELIC_NAME=myapp-shiny-feature Next, we inject the environment into convox via . We then deploy your application via and from there, your app will start, kongfigure will run and declare your application routing configuration, and hipchat/github will be notified of the build success and provide the newly generated endpoint. Quick smoke testing, full QA testing, or developer review can then occur on that live version of code without having to clone and run locally. These environments are temporary and are set to be destroyed on PR merge. convox env set convox deploy This github PR pipeline is the most robust of all, and since it is a superset of our standard development CI environment and production environment deployment process, our entire infrastructure as code picture is getting very DRY. In order to expose application configuration control to developers, they each access have access to vault via the vault-web UI and are able to update the entries for their application instance as JSON objects. We run a daemon on our cluster that ensures the state of application configuration is met on our convox cluster. That evaluated env file generated from our PR pipeline is also written back into vault to provide access to the new app’s configuration. So here we are, wrapping up 2017, still on-boarding our older applications to the PR pipeline process and beginning to look beyond our convox deployment to the future. AWS Managed EKS looks very exciting, the control plane features k8s offers are second to none, a managed offering on AWS is a big win. Our experience with Convox and ECS will give us a big boost up at getting this new platform vetted, and if ready, spun up for use. We are also looking to take further steps into defining key application metadata used to provision and drive the entire automation pipeline from concept to post deployment monitoring for new and existing application, lowering the time to launch for new service, while keeping our legacy application on board with current internal best practices. This top level metadata would further drive configuration for downstream integrations, infrastructure, and applications. If any of this sounds appealing to you Arthrex is hiring many positions from dev, to devops and beyond, email me at cleblanc@arthrex.com.

From on-prem to AWS to ECS and beyond. The past 5 years at Arthrex Digital Media.

Today, more enterprises seek to set up private networks based on the XDC Network codebase. Whilst the process may seem daunting, knowing the steps to follow simplifies the process. As such, we’ve decided to give you a helping hand. Through this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to set up a private network on the XDC Network codebase. Note: This article walks you through the step-by-step setup of a XinFin private network with three masternodes (or network nodes). However, you can set up a private network with up to 5000 Nodes. Setting Up Private Blockchain Network Using XDC Network Codebase #1. Install Golang Download and install  Golang via these steps: i) Download the Go installer for , , or . Windows Linux Mac ii) Install Go on your computer system by following the specified steps, and you’re set up. For more information, refer to the . GO installation page #2. Set Environment Variables i) set GOROOT=$HOME/usr/local/go ii) set GOPATH=$HOME/go #3. Prepare XinFin Network Client Software Download the source code and build here. Run the commands: i) git clone https://github.com/XinFinOrg/XDPoSChain 
ii) git checkout v1.4.4
iii) make all #4. Customize Genesis Block Using the Puppeth Tool Run Puppeth command and answer questions about your private chain as follows: ./Puppeth i) Set chain name as XDPoS ii) Enter 2 to configure new genesis iii) Enter 3 to select XDPoS - delegated-proof-of-stake consensus iv) Set blocktime (default 2 seconds) v) Set a reward for each epoch vi) Set addresses to be initial masternodes vii) Enter the signers address. viii) Set the number of blocks of each epoch (default 900). (Note: If you would like to customize the epoch number, update the code here: common/constants.go:14 EpocBlockRandomize = 900) ix) Set gap (That is: How many blocks are needed to prepare a new masternodes set before checkpoint?) The suggested gap = 5 x) Enter the foundation address in which you hold the private key xi) Enter accounts with which you control private keys to unlock the MultiSig wallet xii) Enter how many Foundation MultiSignWallet require to confirm tx default=2 xiii) Enter the accounts that are allowed to confirm in Team MultiSignWallet xv) Enter the number of Team MultiSignWallet  that are required for confirming tx in MultisignWallet (default=2) xvi) Enter swap wallet address for fund 55 million XDC xvii) Enter the address which needs to be prefunded xviii) Enter the network ID xix) Export the genesis file  by: Selecting 2 to manage existing genesis. Selecting 2  to export genesis configuration Enter genesis filename---XDPOS.json xx) Press Control(CtrL) + C to exit. #5. Setup Bootnode i) Initialize bootnode key by entering the command: ./bootnode -genkey bootnode.key ii) Then start bootnode  with the command: ./bootnode -nodekey ./bootnode.key iii) Copy bootnode information shown: self=enode://c1a13b173d61097ba03c68346c0c761f75095efabe170a55cec427bca83af3c81529b5e6d599c3d594761ea1fac96d291471c805045db385c4c734bc979f63bd@[::]:30301 #6. Start the Masternode Follow the following steps to start the  masternode: i). Clone the Local DPoS Setup repository from: https://github.com/XinFinOrg/Local_DPoS_Setup ii). Replace the genesis file with yours. iii). Enter the bootnode key. iv). Edit the run.sh file by changing the network id and replacing the enode which was generated earlier. v). Enter the private key of the 3 masternode in the .env file, the masternode, and signers private key which was mentioned in the genesis file. vi). Start your masternode with the command : ./bash run.sh To help you understand flags in the run.sh file, here are several explanations. i). --- The log level ranges from 1 to 5. And, in this case, we're using 4 for debug messages Verbosity ii). ---That’s the path to your data directory created above. Datadir iii). ---That’s the path to your account's Keystore created above. Keystore iv). ---That’s your full node's name. Identity v). ---That’s your account's password. Password vi). ---This is XinFin’s  testnet network ID. Networkid vii) ---Your enterprise's full node's listening port (default to 30303) Port viii). -- , -- , -- , -- ---Your full-node will accept RPC requests at 8545 TCP. rpc, rpccorsdomain rpcaddr rpcport rpcvhosts ix). , , , ---Your full-node will accept Websocket requests at 8546 TCP. ws --wsaddr --wsport --wsorigins x). --- It implies that your full-node wants to register to be a candidate for masternode selection. Mine xi). ---That’s the minimal gas price to accept for mining a transaction. Gasprice xii). --- Target gas limit sets the artificial target gas floor for the blocks to mine (default: 4712388) Targetgaslimit xiii). --- Bootnode information helps in the discovery of other nodes in the network Bootnode xv). --- That’s blockchain’s  garbage collection mode ("full", "archive") Gcmode And, to see all flags usages, use the command: XDC  - -  help #7.  Check Your Private Chain To check whether your chain passes the first checkpoint, follow the following steps. i). Connect rpc eth.getBlock(0) eth.getBlock(1) ii) Verify Checkpoints. iii) Wait for 30 minutes to see if your chain passes the first checkpoint. Useful Tools to adopt: Some tools you can use to run different functions of the private blockchain network include:** ** i). XDCPay This extension helps access XDC's XDPoS enabled distributed applications or "Dapps"  within your browser. With the extension, you inject  XDC's XDPoS web3 API into every website's javascript context, helping Dapps read from the blockchain. ii) XDC Remix With the web browser-based integrated development environment, you can write, compile, deploy, and run Solidity-based smart contracts on the XDC network. ** For technical support, let’s connect via XDC’s Social media communities on__ __, , and ** Slack Twitter Discord.

How to Set Up a Private Blockchain Network with XDC Network Codebase

Blockchain technology is becoming a lot more than just a buzzword. Every day, companies worldwide are beginning to look to and integrate these networks into everything from their financial systems to supply chain management. However, adoption hasn’t been as fast as it could be, and this is due to teething problems that come along with these new platforms. From essential compliance to fundamental security assurances, blockchains, in their current state, lack many of the requisites for widespread enterprise adoption. The industry is in desperate need of policing, but this can't come from the regulators or third parties. Fortunately, presents the perfect blockchain-based solution. forensics monitoring The Evolution of Blockchain Modern blockchain technology has come a long way in a reasonably short time. In the beginning, there was Bitcoin, dubbed blockchain 1.0, which provided a revolutionary and permissionless means of transferring value. Then came blockchain 2.0, Ethereum, and the introduction of smart contract platforms, allowing for the development of entirely new decentralized applications. Blockchain 3.0 evolved this system further by introducing scalable solutions for these networks, boasting such evolutions as Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). The benefits for speed, security, and energy consumption were notable over the competing Proof-of-Work (PoS) architecture. This has led to a world where enterprise businesses are beginning to take note and seek to implement blockchain into their own working models. However, as this adoption is occurring, many are finding stumbling blocks along the way. If there were such a thing as natural selection for blockchain, security would undoubtedly be the next step in the evolutionary chain. This is where blockchain 4.0 comes into play. Major organizations can’t afford any mistakes if they are going to adopt this technology as the backbone of their financial network. Some enterprises may be more willing to take risks than others, but most simply need solutions that are proven to work. Though protocols such as the popular HotStuff consensus industry-standard are significant steps in the right direction, they still come with some problems. HotStuff is a powerful Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) system that provides fast finality of blocks and has even been adopted for the upcoming Diem stablecoin. However, it still has the issue of risk should more than ⅓ of nodes on the network begin acting maliciously. The odds of this are small but not irrelevant — especially for smaller private networks. Suppose a major institution should want to adopt this technology, issues like this need to be mitigated. Certain blockchains such as Ethereum 2.0 are attempting to deal with problematic actors through a process known as “slashing.” This is where nodes that are identified as malicious are cut off from the network and lose their stake. The theory is sound; however, current implementations are crude enough that sometimes simple glitches can cause and see their staked funds disappear. Once again, this is unacceptable for professional business purposes. Moreover, Slashing places the onus on network nodes to root out the bad actors. This means that some will inevitably slip the net, and others may be falsely accused. honest validators to be slashed Forensics Monitoring: Judge, Jury, and Executioner The harsh reality is that problems such as these keep many companies from adopting blockchain. ​​In fact, according to a recent , security concerns and an unstable regulatory environment are two of the main issues stymying blockchain market growth. Furthermore, if central banks are ever going to roll out their own digital currencies, these problems are going to be all the more pressing and could stand in the way if not solved. What’s optimistic is that it doesn’t have to stay this way. A new open-source and on-chain forensics monitoring system may be just what blockchains need to clean up their act. analysis The system could be analogized to an automated judiciary system that tracks down and removes malicious nodes — enhancing blockchain security, accountability, and attributability. The protocol builds on the Slashing mechanism, but rather than relying on adjacent nodes to hunt down malicious nodes; the forensics system eliminates wrongdoers autonomously. In the low probability event that more than ⅓ of the system displays a Byzantine fault, afflicted nodes would get shut down before they can cause any network instability, allowing the system to operate as it should. The evolution of this revolutionary forensics system could be equated to a “new sheriff in town"  maintaining an orderly ecosystem through systemic checks and balances. This protocol can reign in the wild west of decentralized finance (DeFi) and reduce the time institutions and enterprises spend in limbo between indecision and adoption of blockchain and crypto. Forensics monitoring stands to overcome the security and accountability issues plaguing blockchain adoption for so long. The novel tech has already seen interest from several prominent projects, including . Facebook’s Diem This means that blockchains may just be getting ready for primetime. Whether an institution wants to run a public or private chain, they’ll want all the benefits of these systems but without the headaches. Implementing forensic monitoring of the network at the protocol level means there is effective ‘policing’ for decentralized ledgers. Even the most organized attacker will be unsuccessful in changing blocks, and there will be no risk of a simple code issue causing a significant loss of funds. This is what enterprise business has been waiting for. The hope — as well as belief — is that once companies begin catching on to the power being offered here, they will start falling in line with the new technology. The final roadblocks to adoption seem to be getting torn down, and soon blockchain-powered companies may be the norm in the business landscape, not the exception. About the Author Dr. Fisher Yu is a postdoctoral researcher whose work includes coded distributed computing, distributed machine learning, and blockchain. Dr. Yu co-authored the "XDC Consensus Engine DPoS 2.0" whitepaper for the XDC Network , a delegated proof of stake consensus network (XDPoS), enabling hybrid relay bridges, block finality, and interoperability with ISO 20022 financial messaging standards, making XinFin's Hybrid architecture enterprise and developer-friendly. For more information about the XDC Network, please visit www.xinfin.org

Forensics Monitoring Is Blockchain’s New Sheriff

eXchange inFinite (XinFin) is a delegated proof of stake consensus protocol blockchain network. Proof of stake consensus protocol has an adverse effect on the rate of transactions in Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. The idea for XinFin was born with the necessity of making a financial asset that can support the complex architecture of modern financial systems like high-frequency trading. Problems that plague traditional blockchain networks like scalability, exorbitant fees for basic transactions, and the long time it has taken to complete basic transactions are due to the ever-increasing block sizes. Creating a Hybrid chain is the answer to that and XinFin positions itself as the product that bridges the gap. XinFin Digital Contract (XDC) is the utility token that drives the eXchange inFinite hybrid blockchain. It is used to settle transactions on dApps created on the XinFin blockchain. Since the launch of its mainnet, XDC has been in high demand and people have been actively trying to buy it. It is very early in the process, so buying XDC is still a rigorous endeavor. The developers have come out with a JavaScrpt library called xdc-connect to integrate your existing hardware or software wallet with an XDC wallet provider. What is XDC Connect XDC Connect is a JavaScript library part of React. React.js libraries are used for building efficient User Interfaces as it updates and renders as and when the data input changes. Developers can use for connecting to various XDC supported wallets like Guarda, DCent, BitFi in their decentralized applications. XDC Connect This is an open-source project hosted on .  Developers are welcome to add and contribute to this project by including new wallet providers, reporting and fixing bugs, and trying out the multiple preset styles and themes. https://github.com/XinFinOrg/xdc-connect Developers can install the XDC Connect library using the node package manager(npm) with this command npm i xdc-connect Using the Xdc-Connect library The xdc-connect library can be used with its default settings or it can be customized according to the developer’s choice. They can import from the xdc-connect library and render it with various settings accordingly. All of these various settings and customizations can be learned from the official documentation at XdcConnect https://xinfinorg.github.io/xdc-connect/?path=/docs/xdcconnect-styling--default To import the library and render it in its default form apply the following piece of code. // App.js
import React from "react";
import { XdcConnect } from "xdc-connect";
import "./App.css";


function App() {
 return (
   <div className="App">
     <XdcConnect />
   </div>
 );
}

export default App; On the other hand, if the developer wants to customize the library to add their own text, styles, and customizable buttons, they should apply the following lines of code // App.js
import React from "react";
import { XdcConnect } from "xdc-connect";
import "./App.css";
function App() {
 return (
   <div className="App">
     <XdcConnect
       btnClass="btn btn-rounded btn-success"
       btnName="Custom Text"
     />
   </div>
 );
}
export default App; Another customization that can be made in the library is adding event listeners. When ’s state changes, customizations can be made to reflect the state change in the dApp. These event listeners are passed an updated instance of the user’s parameters. xdc-connect wallet. as - this event listener is fired when the user will successfully connect their wallet to the dApp. It passes an updated instance of the user's wallet. onConnect - this event listener is fired when the user successfully logs out their wallet from the dApp. onDisconnect - this event listener fires when the user changes the default wallet address from providers like XinPay to any other hardware or software wallet compatible with XDC. onAddressChange import React from "react";
import { XdcConnect } from "xdc-connect";
import "./App.css";
function App() {
 return (
   <div className="App">
     <XdcConnect
       btnClass="btn btn-rounded btn-success"
       btnName="Custom Text"
       onConnect={(wallet) => {
         console.log("user connected wallet", wallet);
       }}
     />
   </div>
 );
}
export default App Modifying APIs through the Xdc-connect library. The xdc-connect library also has commands for your decentralized application to communicate through APIs to the wallet providers. These commands are the following - this command will return some data which will resolve into a wallet object GetWallet - this command will return some data which will resolve into xdc balance GetNativeBalance - this command will return some data which will resolve into xdc receipt for the transaction SendTransaction - this command will return some data which will resolve into the response for a transaction CallTransaction - this command will disconnect the dApp from the wallet provider. Disconnect import React, { useState } from "react";
import { XdcConnect, Disconnect } from "xdc-connect";
import "./App.css";
function App() {
 const [wallet, setwallet] = useState({});
console.log("wallet", wallet);
return (
   <div className="App">
     <XdcConnect
       btnClass={
         wallet.connected
           ? "btn btn-rounded btn-success"
           : "btn btn-rounded btn-warning"
       }
       btnName={wallet.connected ? "CONNECTED" : "CONNECT"}
       onConnect={(wallet) => {
         console.log("user connected wallet", wallet);
         setwallet(wallet);
       }}
       onDisconnect={(wallet) => {
         console.log("user connected disconnect", wallet);
         setwallet(wallet);
       }}
     />
     {wallet.connected ? <button onClick={Disconnect}>Logout</button> : ""}
   </div>
 );
}
export default App; Conclusion XinFin has been a keenly sought-after blockchain in most crypto industry circles. It currently has a market cap of $ 970,804,840 as of 5th, July 2021, 11:30 UTC. Early in 2020, the world was hit with one of the most destructive natural disasters, the Covid- 19 pandemic. Traditional industries, trade negotiations, travel and hospitality, and many more sectors have been hit hard, many on the brink of bankruptcy. The only silver lining has been perhaps the radical adoption of various alternate crypto technologies. Crypto finance industries have become mainstream among investors, and radical adoption of many DeFi applications is underway in niche population islands. Despite these facts reaching the critical mass is not possible with the present level of innovation. XinFin is a hybrid chain created as a hard fork of the Ethereum chain and the Quorum, XinFin promises to be the best of both worlds. Overcoming the interoperability and scalability issues plaguing blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin, XDC is poised to rise in value exponentially once the end-stage critical mass adoption happens. The library is a very important tool in this journey. Creating user-friendly APIs connecting various XDC supported wallets with the various DeFi applications will become easier for developers. Xdc-connect

XDC-Connect: A Simplified Process of Connecting to XDC Supported Wallets

The XinFin Digital Contract (XDC) network — an enterprise-ready, hybrid blockchain ecosystem — is expanding rapidly, driven by a plethora of utility and use-cases. In the context of rising community participation, prioritizing security, privacy, and usability is emerging as a matter of utmost necessity. Envisioning an optimally decentralized world, XinFin strives to foster steady and spontaneous adoption by SMBs, enterprises, and governmental entities. Among other things, there’s a need to make XDC-based transactions fully secured and private, and in doing so, the XinFin Web Wallet offers a novel . In this article, we discuss the major aspects of this feature, as well as provide a step-by-step guide to offline XDC transactions. Send Offline Functionality What is Send Offline Functionality (SOF)? Send Offline Functionality or SOF is a security-enhancing feature of the , involving two computers. One of these computers remains online, while the other has to be disconnected from the internet, either by using the or otherwise. The offline computer processes the transaction off-chain and the online computer broadcasts the transaction to the network. As the user’s private key is used and stored on the offline computer, the process minimizes the risks involving malware and/or hacks. XinFin Web Wallet Aeroplane Mode Hardware Requirement This computer has to be used after complete formatting and re-installation of the OS, apart from completely disabling the network card. Computer 1 (Offline): This computer shall be connected to the internet. Consequently, it must have updated antivirus and internet security solutions installed. Computer 2 (Online): A fresh USB drive is to be used, dedicated solely to the purpose of transacting XDC offline. USB Drive: Although optional, one might use a camera for scanning QR codes. Camera (Optional): Transacting XDC Offline: A Three-Part Process Broadly, the Send Offline Functionality can be split into three parts or tasks, as enumerated below: Downloading and running the offline (local) XDC wallet. Task 1: Generating the transaction on the offline computer. Task 2: Sending the transaction using the online computer. Task 3: Task 1: Download & Run the Offline XDC Wallet Download the latest version of the wallet software from . Step 1: XinFin’s official GitHub channel The setup files are available as (here, ‘X’ represents the version number). Make sure that you download the latest version. XDC.Wallet.vX.X.XXXX.zip After downloading the file using the online computer, transfer it first to a USB drive (or, any other storage device). Plug the USB drive into the offline computer, extract all the files in the zip document, and save them in your desired location. When the extraction is complete, open the destination folder and double click on the ‘ ’ file. Step 2: index.html After completing Step 2, your local XDC wallet will open in your browser, along with the warning that it’s unable to connect to the network. Understandably, this is normal and you need not worry. Since the wallet is offline, you won’t be able to view your XDC or other token balances from this interface. If you wish, you can perform these actions securely and publicly using XinFin’s native network explorer, namely . XinFinScan Task 2: Generate the Offline Transaction Once you have the offline wallet open from Task 1, make sure you select XinFin Network visible on the interface. Step 1: Access your wallet normally, while selecting the option from the menu available on the left-hand sidebar. Using this feature, you can send XDC OR all Custom Tokens deployed on the XDC network. Step 2: ‘Send Offline’ In the transaction-building phase, you can manually input the and . Otherwise, you can import the JSON file from the connected USB drive. Step 3: nonce, transaction details, receiver’s address the gas price To generate the nonce, visit the page using an online computer. Under the section on this interface, click on the dropdown menu and select . Then, type in your offline computer’s address (sender’s address) into the segment, which will automatically return the nonce in the relevant section. Send Offline Helper Utilities Select Functionality Nonce Address In case you are sending to a contract, you may have to use a higher gas limit to account for the additional data. Click on . Step 4: Generate Transaction Copy the long-string address under the section and paste it in a text file (.txt) or you can also download the new JSON file containing the signed transaction’s details. Either way, copy the file to the USB drive, necessary for the third and final task of the process. Step 5: Signed Transaction Task 3: Send the Transaction Using XinFin Web Wallet Visit your XinFin Wallet (Web) from the online computer, apart from plugging the USB drive containing the signed transaction’s text file into this computer. Step 1: In the footer section at the bottom of the page, find and choose the option to execute your offline transaction. Alternatively, you can directly visit the page mentioned in Task 2, Step 3. Step 2: Send Offline Helper Simple Wallet Under the section, paste the signed transaction’s address saved in the USB drive. If you wish, you can also use the option. Step 3: Raw TX Decoder QR scan Review the details of the transaction, and if everything is correct, click on . Step 4: Publish At this point, having completed each of the aforementioned steps, you will find your transaction’s hash ( under the section. TX Hash) Status Congratulations! You have successfully performed an offline XDC transaction and can verify its final status using XinFinScan. To conclude, let us put in a word of caution. Although the protocol undergoes stringent testing, it’s advisable to begin by transacting small amounts, especially because the solution is still in its Beta phase.

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