[just quoting the statistics … the power use discussion is more complex]

Der Bitcoin verbraucht laut Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index aktuell rund 60 Terrawattstunden Strom pro Jahr. Das ist mehr als beispielsweise die Schweiz oder Irland.

Von 219 der im CIA Factbook gelisteten Länder und Gebiete verbrauchen nur 42 mehr als die Digitalwährung.

Deutschland liegt in diesem Ranking mit 537 Terrawattstunden auf Platz sechs hinter China, den USA, Indien, Japan und Russland. Das alles sind wohlgemerkt Schätzwerte.

Im Fall des Bitcoins besteht hinsichtlich des tatsächlichen Energiebedarfs eine große Unsicherheit – die Untergrenze setzen die Analysten derzeit bei 23, die Obergrenze bei 183 Terrawattstunden.

from: https://de.statista.com/infografik/18608/stromverbrauch-ausgewaehlter-laender-im-vergleich-mit-dem-des-bitcoins/

Bitcoin mining has become more competitive than ever.

Bitcoin mining difficulty – the measure of how hard it is to earn mining rewards in the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap – has reached a new record high above 7.93 trillion. That’s a seven percent jump from the 7.45 trillion record set during the recent two-week adjustment cycle, which was the highest since October 2018.

Bitcoin is designed to adjust its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks (approximately 14 days), based on the amount of computing power deployed to the network. This is done to ensure the block production interval at the next period will remain constant at around every 10 minutes. When there are fewer machines racing to solve math problems to earn the next payout of newly created bitcoin, difficulty falls; when there are more computers in the game, it rises.

Right now the machines are humming furiously. Bitcoin miners across the world have been performing calculations at an average 56.77 quintillion hashes per second (EH/s) over the last 14 days to compete for mining rewards on the world’s first blockchain, according to data from mining pool BTC.com.

BTC.com data further indicates the average bitcoin mining hash rate in the last 24-hour and three-day periods were 59.58 EH/s and 59.70 EH/s, respectively, even higher than the average 56.77 EH/s from May 15 to June 27, or any 14-day data in the network’s history.

Similarly, data from blockchain.info also shows the aggregate of bitcoin computing power was around 66 EH/s as of June 22, surpassing last year’s record high of 61.86 EH/s tracked by the site, and has more than doubled since December 2018 when the hash rate dropped to as low as 31 EH/s amid bitcoin’s price fall.

Assuming all such additional computing power has come from more widely used equipment such as the AntMiner S9, which performs calculations at an average rate of 14 tera hashes per second (TH/s), that suggests more than 2 million units of mining equipment may have been switched on over the past several months. (1 EH/s equals to 1 million TH/s)

The increase in capacity is also in line with bitcoin’s price jump over the first half of 2019, which caused the price of second-hand mining equipment to double in China, and also juiced demand for new machines.

BTC.com further estimates the bitcoin mining difficulty will jump by another seven percent at the beginning of the next adjustment cycle, which would be the first time for bitcoin mining difficulty to cross the eight trillion threshold.

Delayed plugging in

Such computing interest comes at a time when mining farms in China, especially in the country’s mountainous southwest, have been gradually plugging in equipment as the rainy summer approaches.

According to a report published by blockchain research firm Coinshare, as of earlier this month, 50 percent of the global bitcoin computing power was located in China’s Sichuan province.

However, it’s important to note that this year, the arrival of the rainy season in China’s southwest has been delayed by nearly a month compared to previous years. As a result, some local mining farms were only running less than half of their total capacity in the past month.

Xun Zheng, CEO of mining farm operator Hashage based in Chengdu that owns several facilities across China’s southwestern provinces, said there had been no rain in the area for over 20 days since early May, which was “unusual.”

“In the past years, it usually starts raining continuously throughout May so [hydropower plants] normally will have enough water resources by early June,” he said.

As a result, in early June his firm was only operating at 40 percent of capacity; it can host more than 200,000 ASIC miners. But as the rain has arrived gradually over the past two weeks, the proportion has climbed to over 60 percent.

Mining farms in China previously estimated that the total hash rate this year during the peak of the rainy season around August could break the threshold of 70 EH/s. That means another 300,000 units of mining machines could be further activated, assuming all are AntMiner S9s or similar models.

Those waiting to be switched on will also include new capital in the sector such as Shanghai-based Fundamental Labs, a blockchain fund that has invested $44 million on top-of-the-line mining equipment, which will be activated in June.

from: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-hash-rate-new-record

The Takeaway

• Facebook’s Libra white paper includes a brief but potentially seismic nod to digital identity standards.
• With 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook may be able to succeed where others have failed in jump-starting a globally accepted digital ID.
• Some identity experts say this is even more important than the cryptocurrency, but others question how much control Libra would give users and find its approach overbearing.
• see below: The Libra Technical Whitepaper
• see below: Libra White Paper Shows How Facebook Borrowed From Bitcoin and Ethereum
• see below: The Libra Move Programming Language
• see below: A Deep-Dive into Libra Move

Buried in Facebook’s Libra white paper are two short sentences hinting that the project’s ambitions go even further than bringing billions of people into the global financial system.

More than launching a price-stable cryptocurrency for the masses, Libra could be aiming to change the way people trust each other on the internet.

At the top of page nine, in a section describing the consortium that will govern the Libra coin, the white paper states:

“An additional goal of the association is to develop and promote an open identity standard. We believe that decentralized and portable digital identity is a prerequisite to financial inclusion and competition.”

That’s all the paper has to say on the topic of identity, perhaps explaining why the brief mention of such a foundational issue for 21st-century commerce escaped widespread notice despite all the hype over the document itself.

But to some observers, the line dropped like a bomb.

Dave Birch, director of Consult Hyperion and the author of books on digital identity and bitcoin, flagged these lines as “the most interesting” in the paper.

Smoothing pathways on the internet using identity is a bigger deal to many people than a putative cryptocurrency, Birch argued, adding:

“There are no throwaway remarks in a Facebook white paper that has taken a year to put together. It’s in there for a reason. [Facebook] are actually going to try and fix the identity problem.”

A Facebook spokeswoman said this week that the company had nothing to add about identity beyond what’s in the white paper.

Who are you?

It’s a problem almost as old as the internet itself. As the classic “New Yorker” cartoon put it, “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

In such an environment, businesses need to guard against fraud, but the copious amounts of personal data consumers must share to prove they are who they say they are leaves them vulnerable to identity theft and spying.

Fixing this problem means finding a way to have the sort of credentials an individual holds in their physical wallet realized in a verifiable digital version which can be trusted across the internet. And for many technologists who have thought long and hard about identity, the solution must be “self-sovereign,” or controlled by the individual.

Birch, who has long seen the potential of social networks as natural springboards for managing digital identity, described a scenario where a user’s “I am over 18” credential (rather than their exact birthdate) is needed to log into a dating site.

This could be accessed through Libra’s cryptocurrency wallet Calibra via one of its partners, Mastercard, for example, with its two-factor authentication process. Then a cryptographic credential is sent back to Calibra containing no personally identifiable information but stating this person is over 18, which can then be presented to the dating site at log in.

While others have proposed similar arrangements (sometimes involving blockchains), none had the reach of Facebook, with its 2.38 billion users worldwide.

If Libra were “to drift in the direction of self-sovereign solutions, Facebook’s endorsement of that approach might make more of an impact on the market than, say, uPort or Evernym might have done,” Birch said, referring to two such blockchain ID startups.

And despite its reputation as the ultimate Peeping Tom, Facebook has hinted at such aspirations before. In February, while Libra was still under wraps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was investigating blockchain’s potential to allow internet users to log in to various services via one set of credentials without relying on third parties.

Standard setting

Stepping back, technologists have been trying to address the challenge of identity for more than a decade by establishing open standards. In the same way that URLs, for example, open webpages anywhere on the internet, standards are also needed to ensure digital attributes about an individual can be universally issued and verified.

The OAuth standard, for example, is what let you log into websites through a third-party service like Facebook without sharing a password. More recently, such work under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has included things like Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and the verifiable credentials standard, both meant to enable self-sovereign digital identity.

Some veterans of this field were taken aback by the suggestion that the Libra Association (a group of 30 or so companies, expected to reach 100 or more) would develop an open identity standard.

“That’s very world domination-ish of them,” said Kaliya Young, a co-author of “A Comprehensive Guide to Self Sovereign Identity” and co-founder of the Internet Identity Workshop. “Some of us have been working on that problem for a really long time. You already have a set of open standards for verifiable credentials that are basically done and working.”

Young pointed out that “unilaterally declaring” an open standard belies the process of going through standards development with an open community, adding that all the people working on identity standards are connected to one another in reaching a common goal.

“That work is being led by a community of people deeply committed to there being no one company owning it in the end, because identity is too big to be owned, just like the web is too big to be owned,” she said.

(Indeed, Facebook was previously said to have rebuffed an invitation to participate in the DID project alongside Microsoft.)

Phil Windley, chair at the Sovrin Foundation, which contributed the codebase to the Hyperledger Indy blockchain ID project, acknowledged the risk of parsing two sentences in Libra’s paper too finely. But he made the point that “decentralized” and “portable” (Facebook’s words) are not exactly the same as self-sovereign.

“Decentralized” could simply mean a user’s identity data – their attributes and identifiers – are spread among nodes that are run on the Libra blockchain, said Windley. This doesn’t imply the user necessarily has control of them. Likewise, “portable” just means credentials can be moved from one place to another but doesn’t necessarily mean you get a say in how they are used.

Windley told CoinDesk:

“People often use ‘decentralized’ as an unalloyed gilt and just assume that it means everything is going to be great. That could be what they are doing here – just using ‘decentralized’ as a synonym for ‘awesome.’”

Joining the dots

That said, Windley was respectful about the scale of Libra’s vision, which he suspects is much bigger than dealing with know-your-customer (KYC) checks and the regulation around building a global permissioned currency platform.

He pointed to the paper’s authors which include many firms like Mastercard or Kiva, folks who have thought very hard about digital identity. (Neither company would comment on Libra’s approach to digital identity).

“I suspect given Libra’s goal of financial inclusion, they are probably thinking about it bigger than just authentication and authorization for a few narrow purposes,” said Windley. “I think there is enough there (e.g. the smart contract language) to believe a stablecoin is just one thing that they envisage using Libra for.”

In the absence of any detail on what might comprise a decentralized identity standard from Libra’s perspective, some dots can be joined by examining the recent work of George Danezis and his co-founders at Chainspace, a startup acquired by Facebook in May.

A paper introducing a “selective disclosure credential scheme” called Coconut explains how a system of smart contracts (computer programs that run on top of blockchains) could “issue user credentials depending on the state of the blockchain, or attest some claim about a user operating through the contract – such as their identity, attributes, or even the balance of their wallet.”

The Coconut protocol goes on to describe how credentials can be jointly issued in a decentralized manner by a group of “mutually distrusting authorities.” These credentials cannot be forged by users or a group of corrupt authorities, and are also “re-randomized” prior to being presented for verification to further protect user privacy. Unlike some computationally-hungry proving schemes, this is done in a matter of a few milliseconds making it highly scalable.

Returning to the question of standards, Birch said W3C, DIDs and verified credentials might be the right option for Libra, but whether it’s that or something else, basically whatever they choose would end up being a standard, he said, concluding:

“And you could argue, is that necessarily a bad thing? I mean what happens if they come up with a good standard for identity and attributes and so on and then other people can use it, e.g. banks would be one obvious example.”

from: https://www.coindesk.com/buried-in-facebooks-cryptocurrency-white-paper-a-digital-identity-bombshell

***

Libra White Paper Shows How Facebook Borrowed From Bitcoin and Ethereum

With the long-awaited Libra white paper, Facebook is showing off its blockchain smarts, and making a bid for crypto credibility.

Released Tuesday morning, the 29-page paper describes a protocol designed to evolve as it powers a new global currency. More than a year in the making, the document opens by trumpeting the new blockchain’s ambitious goal:

“The Libra Blockchain is a decentralized, programmable database designed to support a low-volatility cryptocurrency that will have the ability to serve as an efficient medium of exchange for billions of people around the world.”

As a first step toward achieving the “decentralized” part, the protocol has been turned over to a new organization, the Libra Association, whose members will hold separate tokens allowing them on-chain voting rights to govern decisions about Libra.

“Over time, it’s designed to transition the node membership from these founding members who have a stake in the creation of the ecosystem to people who hold Libra and have a stake in the ecosystem as a whole,” Ben Maurer, Facebook’s blockchain technical lead, told CoinDesk in an exclusive interview.

In short, Libra is designed to be a high throughput, global blockchain, one that’s built with programmable money in mind but limits how much users can do initially as it evolves from prototype to a robust ecosystem.

Unlike many other blockchains, Libra seems laser-focused on payments and other financial use cases for consumers.

But the white paper itself seems geared to demonstrate both Facebook’s proposed advances to the science of distributed consensus and its appreciation for what has been built so far.

Indeed, over the last several months, many sources told CoinDesk they had visited Facebook to share their perspective on decentralized technology. The company has done a lot of homework.

And now it has created a new language for writing commands on its blockchain, called Move, and opened its software to public inspection.

“To validate the design of the Libra protocol, we have built an open-source prototype implementation — Libra Core — in anticipation of a global collaborative effort to advance this new ecosystem,” the white paper states.

“It’d be sort of presumptuous for us to say we’re creating an open environment and then say, ‘Well, but we’ve set everything in stone,’” Maurer told CoinDesk. “It’s a paper that requests feedback.”

Mix and match

Libra’s designers have picked what they see as the best features of existing blockchains while providing their own updates and refinements.

1. Like bitcoin, there’s no real identity on the blockchain.

From the perspective of the blockchain itself, you don’t exist. Only public-private key pairs exist. The white paper states: “The Libra protocol does not link accounts to a real-world identity. A user is free to create multiple accounts by generating multiple key-pairs. Accounts controlled by the same user have no inherent link to each other.”

2. Like Hyperledger, it’s permissioned (at least to start).

Initially, the consensus structure for Libra will be dozens of organizations that will run nodes on the network, validating transactions. Each time consensus is voted on for a new set of transactions, a leader will be designated at random to count up the votes.

Libra opts to rely on familiarity rather than democracy to choose the right entities to establish consensus in the early days. “Founding Members are organizations with established reputations, making it unlikely that they would act maliciously,” the white paper states. These are entities range from traditional payment networks (Mastercard, Visa) to internet and gig-economy giants (eBay, Lyft) to blockchain natives (Xapo) to VCs (Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital).

3. Like tezos, it comes with on-chain governance.

The only entities that can vote at the outset are Founding Members. These members hold Libra Investment Tokens that give them voting rights on the network, where they can make decisions about managing the reserve and letting new validators join the network.

The governance structure is built into the Move software from the start, and like Tezos it is subject to revision over time. Updates will be essential as it adds members and evolves from what’s more like a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) system (such as EOS or steem) to a fully decentralized proof-of-stake ecosystem.

4. Like ethereum, it makes currency programmable.

In a number of ways, the white paper defines interesting ways in which its users can interact with the core software and data structure. For example, anyone can make a non-voting replica of the blockchain or run various read commands associated with objects (such as smart contracts or a set of wallets) defined on Libra. Crucially, Libra’s designers seem to agree with ethereum’s that running code should have a cost, so all operations require payment of Libra as gas in order to run.

Unlike ethereum, Libra makes two important changes in its smart contracts. First, it limits how much users can do on the protocol at first (the full breadth of Move’s features are not yet open). Second, it breaks data out from software, so one smart contract (what Move refers to as a “module”) can be directed at any pool of assets, which Move calls “resources.” So one set of code can be used on any number of wallets or collections of assets.

5. Also like ethereum, it thinks proof-of-stake is the future, but it is also not ready yet.

“Over time, membership eligibility will shift to become completely open and based only on the member’s holdings of Libra,” the white paper promises, describing a path to real permissionless-ness.

Meanwhile, the paper dismisses the approach of the blockchains with the longest track record (namely bitcoin), stating, “We did not consider proof-of-work based protocols due to their poor performance and high energy (and environmental) costs.”

6. Like Binance’s coin, it does a lot of burning.

Blockchains that build in purposeful burning of tokens became very influential last year. Binance, the world’s leading exchange, created the BNB token, with which users could pay trading fees at a discount. Binance led the way to token bonfires, regularly burning a significant portion of its profits paid in BNB.

Libra won’t use burning to enhance the value of its coin. Rather (as with collateralized stablecoins such as tether), tokens will be issued and burned constantly, as the association responds to demand shifts for its reserve, with no supply maximum or minimum supply.

7. Like coda, users don’t need to hold onto the whole transaction history.

A lesser-known protocol, Coda, was one of the first to make its ledger disposable. Users only need to hold a proof of the last block, which they can easily check on a smartphone to be sure they are interacting with a valid ledger.

Similarly, on Libra, “historical data may grow beyond the amount that can be handled by an individual server. Validators are free to discard historical data not needed to process new transactions.”

8. Like EOS, it hasn’t worked everything out yet.

EOS launched without its approach to governance well defined, which yielded complications down the road. Similarly, Libra promises to decentralize, but there’s nothing that inherently forces its members to do so.

Work in progress

Other matters are left undecided as well. For example, the storage of data.

“We anticipate that as the system is used, eventually storage growth associated with accounts may become a problem,” the white paper says. The document anticipates but does not define a system of rent for data storage.

It cites a number of examples of other open questions, such as how best to maintain security as more validators join the network, how often the pool of validators can change and how modules can be updated safely.

As the paper admits:

“This paper is the first step toward building a technical infrastructure to support the Libra ecosystem. We are publishing this early report to seek feedback from the community on the initial design, the plans for evolving the system, and the currently unresolved research challenges discussed in the proposal.”

Dream team

The Libra white paper is signed by 53 people. Though senior Facebook executives such as CEO Mark Zuckerberg and blockchain lead David Marcus are notably absent from the author list, the team that wrote the document looks to be one of the most-heavy hitting in blockchain history.

The signatories hail from nearly every continent and include Ph.D. students from Stanford, computer science professors, and artificial intelligence (AI) developers.

They include:

• Christian Catalini: The MIT professor was one of the first to study the economics of cryptocurrency alongside crowdfunding and tokenization. Catalini has written extensively for the Harvard Business Review and other publications.
• Ben Maurer: Facebook’s infrastructure engineer graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in computer science. He and CMU assistant professor Luis von Ahn built the reCAPTCHA service that Google bought in 2009. He is leading the team that built the Move programming language.
• George Danezis: A privacy engineer at University College London, Danezis was one of the creators of Chainspace and the Coconut protocol upon which Libra is based. He is currently a researcher at Facebook after the company bought his startup in February 2019.
• François Garillot: A machine-learning and AI expert who worked at Swisscom and Skymind.ai, Garillot focuses on distributed AI.
• Ramnik Arora: Arora spent time as an analyst at Goldman Sachs Investment Strategy Group as well as at IV Capital as a quant. His background is in finance and he has a master’s in computer science from Stanford and an undergraduate degree in the mathematics of finance.

from: https://www.coindesk.com/libra-white-paper-shows-how-facebook-borrowed-from-bitcoin-and-ethereum

***

The Facebook Libra Technical Whitepaper

see also: https://developers.libra.org/docs/the-libra-blockchain-paper
https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-blockchain.pdf

Introducing Libra

from: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#introducing-libra

***

Move, a safe and flexible programming language for the Libra Blockchain

Whitepaper Deep Dive — Move: Facebook Libra Blockchain’s New Programming Language

Key characteristics of Move and How it differentiates with Ethereum from a developer’s perspective

Overview & Motivation

This is a walkthrough of the 26 pages technical whitepaper of Move, Facebook Libra’s new programming language. As an Ethereum developer and a blockchain community enthusiast, I hope to provide a quick overview and highlights of the paper for everyone curious about this new language :)

Hope that you will like it, happy learning!

Abstract

Move is an executable bytecode language used to implement custom transactions and smart contracts.

There’re two things to take note:

1. While Move is a bytecode language which can be directly executed in Move’s VM, Solidity (Ethereum’s smart contract language) is a higher level language that needs to be compiled down to bytecode before executing in EVM (Ethereum’s Virtual Machine).
2. Move can not only be used to implement smart contracts but also custom transactions (explained later in the article), while Solidity is a language for smart contracts on Ethereum only.

The key feature of Move is the ability to define custom resource types with semantics inspired by linear logic: a resource can never be copied or implicitly discarded, only moved between program storage locations.

This is a feature similar to Rust. Values in Rust can only be assigned to one name at a time. Assigning a value to a different name causes it to no longer be accessible under the previous name.

For example, the following code snippet will output the error: Use of moved value ‘x’. This is because Rust has no garbage collection. When variables go out of scope, the memory they refer to is also deallocated. For simplicity, we can understand this as there can only be one “owner” of data at a time. In this example, x is the original owner, and then y becomes the owner.

2.2 Encoding Digital Assets in an Open System

There are two properties of physical assets that are difficult to encode in digital assets:
• Scarcity. The supply of assets in the system should be controlled. Duplicating existing assets should be prohibited, and creating new assets should be a privileged operation.
• Access control. A participant in the system should be able to protect her assets with access control policies.

It points out two major characteristics that digital assets need to achieve, which are considered natural for physical assets. For example, rare metal is naturally scarce, and only you have the access (ownership) of the bill in your hand before spending it.

To illustrate how we came up with the two properties, let’s start with the following proposals:

Proposal#1: Simplest Rule Without Scarcity and Access Control

• G[K]:=n denotes updating the number stored at key 𝐾 in the global blockchain state with the value 𝑛.
• transaction ⟨Alice, 100⟩ means set Alice’s account balance to 100.

The above representation has serval serious problems:

• Alice can have unlimited coins by sending transaction ⟨Alice, 100⟩ herself.
• The coins that Alice sends to Bob are worthless since Bob could send himself unlimited coins using the same technic as well.

Proposal#2: Taking Scarcity into Account

Now we enforce that the number of coins stored under 𝐾𝑎 is at least 𝑛 before the transfer takes place.

However, though this solves the scarcity issue, there’s no ownership checking on who can send Alice’s coins. (anyone can do so under this evaluation rule)

Proposal#3: Considering both Scarcity and Access Control

We address the problem by using digital signature mechanism verify_sig before the scarcity checking, which means Alice uses her private key to sign the transaction and prove that she is the owner of her coin.

2.3. Existing Blockchain Languages

Existing blockchain languages are facing the following problems (all of them have been solved in Move):

1. Indirect representation of assets. An asset is encoded using an integer, but an integer value is not the same thing as an asset. In fact, there is no type or value that represents Bitcoin/Ether/StrawCoin! This makes it awkward and error-prone to write programs that use assets. Patterns such as passing assets into/out of procedures or storing assets in data structures require special language support.

2. Scarcity is not extensible. The language only represents one scarce asset. In addition, the scarcity protections are hardcoded directly in the language semantics. A programmer that wishes to create a custom asset must carefully reimplement scarcity with no support from the language.

These are exactly the problems in Ethereum smart contracts. Custom assets such as ERC-20 tokens use integer to represent its value and its total supply. Whenever new tokens are minted, the smart contract code has to manually check if the scarcity (total supply in this case) has been reached.

Furthermore, serious bugs such as duplication, reuse, or loss of assets, are more likely to be introduced due to the Indirect representation of asset problem.

3. Access control is not flexible. The only access control policy the model enforces is the signature scheme based on the public key. Like the scarcity protections, the access control policy is deeply embedded in the language semantics. It is not obvious how to extend the language to allow programmers to define custom access control policies.

This is also true in Ethereum, where smart contracts do not have native language support for the public-private key cryptography to do access control. Developers have to manually write access control such as using OnlyOwner.

Despite that I’m a big fan of Ethereum, I agree that these asset properties should be natively supported by the language for safety purposes.

In particular, transferring Ether to a smart contract involves dynamic dispatch, which has led to a new class of bugs known as re-entrancy vulnerabilities

Dynamic dispatch here means that the code execution logic will be determined at runtime (dynamic) instead of compile time (static). Thus in Solidity, when contract A calls contract B’s function, contract B can run code that was unanticipated by contract A’s designer, which can lead to re-entrancy vulnerabilities (contract A accidentally executes contract B’s function to withdraw money before actually deducting balances from the account).

3. Move Design Goals

3.1. First-Class Resources

At a high level, the relationship between modules/resources/procedures in Move is similar to the relationship between classes/objects/methods in object-oriented programming.
Move modules are similar to smart contracts in other blockchain languages. A module declares resource types and procedures that encode the rules for creating, destroying, and updating its declared resources.

The modules/resources/procedures are just some jargons in Move. We will have an example to illustrate these later in this article;)

3.2. Flexibility

Move adds flexibility to Libra via transaction scripts. Each Libra transaction includes a transaction script that is effectively the main procedure of the transaction.

The scripts can perform either expressive one-off behaviors (such as paying a specific set of recipients) or reusable behaviors (by invoking a single procedure that encapsulates the reusable logic)

From the above, we can see that Move’s transaction script introduces more flexibility since it is capable of one-off behaviors as well as reusable behaviors, while Ethereum can only perform reusable behaviors (which is invoking a single smart contract method). The reason why it’s named “reusable” is that smart contract functions can be executed multiple times.

3.3. Safety

The executable format of Move is a typed bytecode that is higher-level than assembly yet lower-level than a source language. The bytecode is checked on-chain for resource, type, and memory safety by a bytecode verifier and then executed directly by a bytecode interpreter. This choice allows Move to provide safety guarantees typically associated with a source language, but without adding the source compiler to the trusted computing base or the cost of compilation to the critical path for transaction execution.

This is indeed a very neat design for Move to be a bytecode language. Since it doesn’t need to be compiled from the source to bytecode like Solidity, it doesn’t have to worry about the possible failures or attacks in compilers.

3.4. Verifiability

Our approach is to perform as much lightweight on-chain verification of key safety properties as possible, but design the Move language to support advanced off-chain static verification tools.

From here we can see that Move prefers performing static verification instead of doing on-chain verification work. Nonetheless, as stated at the end of their paper, the verification tool is left for future work.

3. Modularity. Move modules enforce data abstraction and localize critical operations on resources. The encapsulation enabled by a module combined with the protections enforced by the Move type system ensures that the properties established for a module’s types cannot be violated by code outside the module.

This is also a very well thought data abstraction design! which means that the data in a smart contract can only be modified within the contract scope but not other contracts from the outside.

4. Move Overview

The example transaction script demonstrates that a malicious or careless programmer outside the module cannot violate the key safety invariants of the module’s resources.

This section walks you through an example about what modules, resources, and procedures actually is when writing the programming language.

4.1. Peer-to-Peer Payment Transaction Script

There are several new symbols here (The small red text is my own notes XD):

• 0x0: the account address where the module is stored
• Currency: the name of the module
• Coin: the resource type
• The value coin returned by the procedure is a resource value whose type is 0x0.Currency.Coin
• move(): the value can not be used again
• copy(): the value can be used later

Code breakdown:

In the first step, the sender invokes a procedure named withdraw_from_sender from the module stored at 0x0.Currency.

In the second step, the sender transfers the funds to payee by moving the coin resource value into the 0x0.Currency module’s deposit procedure.

Here are 3 types of code examples that will be rejected:

1. Duplicating currency by changing move(coin) to copy(coin)

Resource values can only be moved. Attempting to duplicate a resource value (e.g., using copy(coin) in the example above) will cause an error at bytecode verification time.

Because coin is a resource value, it can only be moved.

2. Reusing currency by writing move(coin) twice

Adding the line 0x0.Currency.deposit(copy(some_other_payee), move(coin)) to the example above would let the sender “spend” coin twice — the first time with payee and the second with some_other_payee. This undesirable behavior would not be possible with a physical asset. Fortunately, Move will reject this program.

3. Losing currency by neglecting to move(coin)

Failing to move a resource (e.g., by deleting the line that contains move(coin) in the example above) will trigger a bytecode verification error. This protects Move programmers from accidentally — or intentionally — losing track of the resource.

4.2. Currency Module

4.2.1 Primer: Move execution model

Each account can contain zero or more modules (depicted as rectangles) and one or more resource val- ues (depicted as cylinders). For example, the account at address 0x0 contains a module 0x0.Currency and a resource value of type 0x0.Currency.Coin. The account at address 0x1 has two resources and one module; the account at address 0x2 has two modules and a single resource value.

Some highlights:

• Executing a transaction script is all-or-nothing
• A module is a long-lived piece of code published in the global state
• The global state is structured as a map from account addresses to accounts
• Accounts can contain at most one resource value of a given type and at most one module with a given name (The account at address 0x0 would not be allowed to contain an additional 0x0.Currency.Coin resource or another module named Currency)
• The address of the declaring module is part of the type (0x0.Currency.Coin and 0x1.Currency.Coin are distinct types that cannot be used interchangeably)
• Programmers can still hold multiple instances of a given resource type in an account by defining a custom wrapper resource

(resource TwoCoins { c1: 0x0.Currency.Coin, c2: 0x0.Currency.Coin })

• The rule is it is ok as long as you can still reference the resource by its name without having conflicts, for example, you can reference the two resources using TwoCoins.c1 and TwoCoins.c2.

4.2.2 Declaring the Coin Resource

Some highlights:

• A Coin is a struct type with a single field value of type u64 (a 64-bit unsigned integer)
• Only the procedures of the Currency module can create or destroy values of type Coin
• Other modules and transaction scripts can only write or reference the value field via the public procedures exposed by the module

4.2.3 Implementing Deposit

This procedure takes a Coin resource as input and combines it with the Coin resource stored in the payee’s account by:
1. Destroying the input Coin and recording its value.
2. Acquiring a reference to the unique Coin resource stored under the payee’s account.
3. Incrementing the value of payee’s Coin by the value of the Coin passed to the procedure.

Some highlights:

• Unpack, BorrowGlobal are builtin procedures
• Unpack<T> is the only way to delete a resource of type T. It takes a resource of type T as input, destroys it, and returns the values bound to the fields of the resource
• BorrowGlobal<T> takes an address as input and returns a reference to the unique instance of T published under that address
• &mut Coin is a mutable reference to a Coin resource, not Coin

4.2.4 Implementing withdraw_from_sender

This procedure:

1. Acquires a reference to the unique resource of type Coin published under the sender’s account.
2. Decreases the value of the referenced Coin by the input amount.
3. Creates and returns a new Coin with value amount.

Some highlights:

• Deposit can be called by anyone but withdraw_from_sender has access control to only be callable by the owner of coin
• GetTxnSenderAddress is similar to Solidity’s msg.sender
• RejectUnless is similar to Solidity’s require. If this check fails, execution of the current transaction script halts and none of the operations it performed will be applied to the global state
• Pack<T>, also a builtin procedure, creates a new resource of type T
• Like Unpack<T>, Pack<T> can only be invoked inside the declaring module of resource T

Wrap up

Now that you have an overview of what is the main characteristics of Move, how it compares to Ethereum, and also familiar with its basic syntax.

Lastly, I highly recommend reading through the original white paper. It includes a lot of details regarding the programming language design principles behind and many great references.

Thank you so much for your time reading. Feel free to share this with someone who might be interested :) Any suggestions are also welcomed!!

from: https://medium.com/coinmonks/whitepaper-deep-dive-move-facebook-libra-blockchains-new-programming-language-7dbd5b242c2b

***

Cortex claims that this is the first time that artificial intelligence has been introduced to a crypto network at scale.

Cortex has launched a network for decentralized apps powered by artificial intelligence (AI,) according to a news release published on June 26.

The company claims this is the first time that AI has been introduced to a crypto network at scale. It is hoped the technology will be used to generate credit reports for the decentralized finance industry and facilitate anti-fraud reporting for exchanges — and Cortex believes the gaming and eSports sector could also benefit from a “diverse range of use cases.” Cortex CEO Ziqi Chen said:

“In the near future, we expect to see stablecoins based on machine learning, decentralized decision making, malicious behavior detection, smart resource allocation, and much more. These are challenges that all intersect with crypto networks, where having trained AI models that are accessible on-chain will prove to be extremely valuable.”

Looking ahead, Cortex says it plans to work with developers to implement AI dApps on its network, and deliver on-chain machine learning to networks beyond Ethereum.

Earlier in June, the European Union announced plans to increase the amount of data that can be reused as raw material for AI and blockchain projects.

An AI-powered index tracking the 100 strongest-performing crypto coins and tokens was also recently added to Reuters and Bloomberg trading terminals.

from: https://cointelegraph.com/news/cortex-launches-deep-learning-and-ai-network-for-decentralized-apps

***

Cortex Network Launches Mainnet to Democratize Deep Learning and AI

SINGAPORE — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Decentralized AI world computer, Cortex has announced the successful launch of its technology platform. The network, designed for AI-powered dApps, brings deep learning models as artificial intelligence support to the blockchain ecosystem. The Cortex mainnet, which launched on June 26th following 15 months of intense development, marks the first time that AI has been introduced to a crypto network at scale.

“In the near future, we expect to see stablecoins based on machine learning, decentralized decision making, malicious behavior detection, smart resource allocation, and much more. These are challenges that all intersect with crypto networks, where having trained AI models that are accessible on-chain will prove to be extremely valuable.”

The Cortex team has overcome a number of technical challenges to create, in the Cortex Virtual Machine (CVM), the means for AI models to be executed on-chain using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). This opens the door to a myriad of applications, including dApp and AI development. Trained AI models can be uploaded onto the storage layer of the Cortex chain before being incorporated into smart contracts by dApp developers.

“On-chain machine learning is an extremely complex endeavor due to the computational demands, and the need to create a virtual machine that is Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible. With the Cortex Virtual Machine, we’ve achieved a breakthrough that brings the benefits of artificial intelligence to a wider audience. Although dApp developers will be among the first beneficiaries of the Cortex mainnet, this is only the beginning. In time, we expect to develop a diverse range of use cases, all delivered on-chain,” said Cortex CEO Ziqi Chen.

These use cases will include generating credit reports for the burgeoning DeFi industry, and facilitating anti-fraud reporting for decentralized exchanges, P2P financing platforms, insurance, and cryptocurrency lending. Other potential applications include gaming, esports, and AI governance structures.

Explaining the rationale behind this latter concept, Ziqi Chen explains: “In the near future, we expect to see stablecoins based on machine learning, decentralized decision making, malicious behavior detection, smart resource allocation, and much more. These are challenges that all intersect with crypto networks, where having trained AI models that are accessible on-chain will prove to be extremely valuable.”

Cortex provides a mechanism for machine learning researchers to upload data models to the storage layer and monetize them with entities in need of AI models which are able to make inferences after arranging payment using CTXC tokens. The Cortex mainnet has launched with 23 AI models available, trained with four datasets. The CVM is backward-compatible with the EVM, and capable of running traditional smart contracts as well as AI smart contracts.

A detailed roadmap includes plans for the Cortex Foundation to work with dApp developers to implement AI dApps on the Cortex chain and plans to broaden cross-chain support to bring on-chain machine learning to networks beyond Ethereum. The Cortex team also intends to collaborate with academia and industry for research partnerships, and with publications to help further understanding of neural networks and their integration into the emerging field of blockchain.

To learn more visit: https://www.cortexlabs.ai/

from: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190626005421/en

Mt. Gox founder Jed McCaleb is being sued by two traders who used the doomed exchange, court documents filed on May 19 show.

Joseph Jones and Peter Steinmetz have accused the ex-CEO of fraudulently and negligently misrepresenting the exchange.

The pair also allege that McCaleb was aware of “serious security risks” back in late 2010 or early 2011 — more than three years before 850,000 bitcoin (BTC) was stolen in an audacious hack. Their complaint adds:

“Rather than secure the exchange, McCaleb sold a large portion of his interest in the then sole proprietorship, and provided avenues to the purchases to cover-up security concerns at the time without ever informing or disclosing these issues to the public.”

Both of the plaintiffs describe themselves as experienced cryptocurrency traders. They said they were reassured by McCaleb following a “dictionary attack” in 2011, where a fraudster stole coins after targeting accounts with weak passwords.

The court document alleges that 80,000 BTC was already missing at that time, and claims that McCaleb sold a majority of his interest in Mt. Gox to Mark Karpeles instead of staying to repair the security issues.

While Jones said he owned 1,900 BTC at the time of Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy in February 2014 (worth $24 million at press time,) Steinmetz said he owned 43,000 BTC — crypto that would be worth more than $542 million at today’s rates. Both men are still in pursuit of their lost funds, and say they would not have used Mt. Gox had they known about the “significant security concerns” that existed in 2011.

In April, Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi successfully petitioned a Japanese court to extend the deadline for the submission of rehabilitation plans to October 2019.

Meanwhile, back in March, former CEO Mark Karpeles was given a suspended jail sentence after being found guilty of tampering with financial records.

Mt. Gox was once the world’s biggest crypto exchange, and McCaleb later went on to become the founder of Ripple and the co-founder of Stellar.

from: https://cointelegraph.com/news/kodak-reveals-new-blockchain-based-document-management-system

They’ll steal your money, not just your data.

Everyone’s worried about Mark Zuckerberg controlling the next currency, but I’m more concerned about a crypto Cambridge Analytica.

Today Facebook announced Libra, its forthcoming stablecoin designed to let you shop and send money overseas with almost zero transaction fees. Immediately, critics started harping about the dangers of centralizing control of tomorrow’s money in the hands of a company with a poor track record of privacy and security.

Facebook anticipated this, though, and created a subsidiary called Calibra to run its crypto dealings and keep all transaction data separate from your social data. Facebook shares control of Libra with 27 other Libra Association founding members, and as many as 100 total when the token launches in the first half of 2020. Each member gets just one vote on the Libra council, so Facebook can’t hijack the token’s governance even though it invented it.

With privacy fears and centralized control issues at least somewhat addressed, there’s always the issue of security. Facebook naturally has a huge target on its back for hackers. Not just because Libra could hold so much value to steal, but because plenty of trolls would get off on screwing up Facebook’s currency. That’s why Facebook open-sourced the Libra Blockchain and is offering a prototype in a pre-launch testnet. This developer beta plus a bug bounty program run in partnership with HackerOne is meant to surface all the flaws and vulnerabilities before Libra goes live with real money connected.

Yet that leaves one giant vector for abuse of Libra: the developer platform.

“Essential to the spirit of Libra . . . the Libra Blockchain will be open to everyone: any consumer, developer, or business can use the Libra network, build products on top of it, and add value through their services. Open access ensures low barriers to entry and innovation and encourages healthy competition that benefits consumers,” Facebook explained in its white paper and Libra launch documents. It’s even building a whole coding language called Move for making Libra apps.

Apparently Facebook has already forgotten how allowing anyone to build on the Facebook app platform and its low barriers to “innovation” are exactly what opened the door for Cambridge Analytica to hijack 87 million people’s personal data and use it for political ad targeting.

But in this case, it won’t be users’ interests and birthdays that get grabbed. It could be hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of Libra currency that’s stolen. A shady developer could build a wallet that just cleans out a user’s account or funnels their coins to the wrong recipient, mines their purchase history for marketing data or uses them to launder money. Digital risks become a lot less abstract when real-world assets are at stake.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook raced to lock down its app platform, restrict APIs, more heavily vet new developers and audit ones that look shady. So you’d imagine the Libra Association would be planning to thoroughly scrutinize any developer trying to build a Libra wallet, exchange or other related app, right? “There are no plans for the Libra Association to take a role in actively vetting [developers],” Calibra’s head of product Kevin Weil surprisingly told me. “The minute that you start limiting it is the minute you start walking back to the system you have today with a closed ecosystem and a smaller number of competitors, and you start to see fees rise.”

That translates to “the minute we start responsibly verifying Libra app developers, things start to get expensive, complicated or agitating to cryptocurrency purists. That might hurt growth and adoption.”

You know what will hurt growth of Libra a lot worse? A sob story about some migrant family or a small business getting all their Libra stolen. And that blame is going to land squarely on Facebook, not some amorphous Libra Association.

Inevitably, some unsavvy users won’t understand the difference between Facebook’s own wallet app Calibra and any other app built for the currency. “Libra is Facebook’s cryptocurrency. They wouldn’t let me get robbed,” some will surely say. And on Calibra they’d be right. It’s a custodial wallet that will refund you if your Libra are stolen and it offers 24/7 customer support via chat to help you regain access to your account.

Yet the Libra Blockchain itself is irreversible. Outside of custodial wallets like Calibra, there’s no getting your stolen or mis-sent money back. There’s likely no customer support. And there are plenty of crooked crypto developers happy to prey on the inexperienced. Indeed, $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen last year alone, according to CypherTrace via CNBC. “As with anything, there’s fraud and there are scams in the existing financial ecosystem today . . .  that’s going to be true of Libra too. There’s nothing special or magical that prevents that,” says Weil, who concluded “I think those pros massively outweigh the cons.”

Until now, the blockchain world was mostly inhabited by technologists, except for when skyrocketing values convinced average citizens to invest in Bitcoin just before prices crashed. Now Facebook wants to bring its family of apps’ 2.7 billion users into the world of cryptocurrency. That’s deeply worrisome.

Regulators are already bristling, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown tweeted that “We cannot allow Facebook to run a risky new cryptocurrency out of a Swiss bank account without oversight.”

And French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Europe 1 radio that Libra can’t be allowed to “become a sovereign currency.”

Most harshly, Rep. Maxine Waters issued a statement saying, “Given the company’s troubled past, I am requesting that Facebook agree to a moratorium on any movement forward on developing a cryptocurrency until Congress and regulators have the opportunity to examine these issues and take action.”

Yet Facebook has just one vote in controlling the currency, and the Libra Association preempted these criticisms, writing, “We welcome public inquiry and accountability. We are committed to a dialogue with regulators and policymakers. We share policymakers’ interest in the ongoing stability of national currencies.”

That’s why as lawmakers confer about how to regulate Libra, I hope they remember what triggered the last round of Facebook execs having to appear before Congress and Parliament. A totally open, unvetted Libra developer platform in the name of “innovation” over safety is a ticking time bomb. Governments should insist the Libra Association thoroughly audit developers and maintain the power to ban bad actors. In this strange new crypto world, the public can’t be expected to perfectly protect itself from Cambridge Analytica 2.$.

from: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/18/libra-analytica/

So sieht eine Papierbriefmarke aus. Links die normal verwendbare Briefmarke,
rechts der verdeckte Teil mit Zugangsdaten zu einer Ethereum-Wallet. (Screenshot: t3n)

Die erste Blockchain-Briefmarke der Welt gibt’s im Onchain-Shop der Österreichischen Post

20.06.2019, 03:28 Uhr

Die Österreichische Post hat die erste Blockchain-Briefmarke der Welt auf den Markt gebracht. Unser Gastautor hat sich das etwas genauer angeschaut.

Die sogenannte Crypto Stamp besteht aus zwei Teilen. Bei dem ersten Teil handelt es sich um eine echte Briefmarke aus Papier mit einem Nennwert von 6,90 Euro. Dieser Teil der Briefmarke kann ganz normal verwendet werden. Zusätzlich erhält man beim Kauf aber auch einen zweiten Teil. Dieser besteht ebenfalls aus Papier und verfügt über zwei verdeckte Textfelder, die freigerubbelt werden können. Hinter den Rubbelflächen befinden sich Zugangsdaten zu einer Ethereum-Wallet – also einer digitalen Geldbörse auf der Ethereum-Blockchain. Innerhalb dieser digitalen Geldbörse liegt ein Token mit dem Namen „Crypto stamp Edition 1“ und mit einer einzigartigen Token-ID. Dieser einzigartige Token kann Philatelisten und Krypto-Enthusiasten als virtuelles Sammelgut dienen. Daneben befindet sich in der digitalen Geldbörse noch ein kleiner Betrag von 0,001666 Ether mit einem Gegenwert von etwa 40 Cent. Dieser Betrag der verbreiteten Kryptowährung soll dem Käufer der Marke vermutlich ermöglichen, Transaktionsgebühren innerhalb der Blockchain zu bezahlen, sollte er seine virtuelle Marke an eine andere Ethereum-Wallet übertragen wollen.

Die Crypto Stamp ist in einer Auflage von 150.000 Stück erschienen und kann ganz normal in Ladengeschäften und im Onlineshop der Österreichischen Post gekauft werden. Allerdings werden nicht alle Briefmarken normal verkauft. 500 Stück können exklusiv im sogenannten Onchain-Shop der Österreichischen Post erworben werden – also direkt in der Blockchain. Und auch an dieser Stelle wird es spannend.

Der Kauf im Onchain-Shop

Der Onchain-Shop kann ganz normal über einen Browser erreicht werden. Alternativ kann die Ethereum-Adresse 0xC5BA58b8362a25b1ddB59E2106910B6c324A5668 genutzt werden. Der Kauf im Onchain-Shop setzt voraus, dass der Käufer bereits über eine eigene digitale Ethereum-Geldbörse verfügt und sich in dieser die Kryptowährung Ether befindet.

Der eigentlich Kauf der Krypto-Briefmarke wird dann über einen Smart Contract innerhalb der Ethereum-Blockchain abgewickelt. Der Smart Contract enthält ein Regelwerk, das grundsätzlich folgender Logik folgt: Wenn ein Nutzer von seiner digitalen Geldbörse den aktuellen Gegenwert von 6,90 Euro in Ether an die Blockchain-Adresse des Smart Contracts sendet, sendet dieser im Gegenzug einen einzigartigen Token der Art „Crypto stamp Edition 1“ an die digitale Geldbörse des Käufers. Der Kauf ist damit abgeschlossen und das virtuelle Sammelgut auch bereits auf den Käufer übertragen. Das Besondere an dieser Art des Kaufs: Unmittelbar personenbezogene Daten mussten bis hierhin nicht ausgetauscht werden.

Die Versandanschrift wird direkt über die Blockchain mitgeteilt

Was dann allerdings noch fehlt, ist die Briefmarke in Papierform – denn diese kauft man auch im Onchain-Shop mit. Die Papiermarke wird weltweit versendet. Bemerkenswert ist, wie die Post an die Versandadresse des Käufers kommt: Der Käufer muss mit aktivierter digitaler Geldbörse den Onchain-Shop besuchen und seine Versandanschrift in ein Formular eintragen, das auf den ersten Blick einem normalen Webformular ähnelt. Allerdings werden die Daten nicht an einen Server der österreichischen Post gesendet, sondern direkt und unveränderlich in die Blockchain gespeichert. Es wird also direkt über die Blockchain kommuniziert. Damit an dieser Stelle keine Datenschutzverletzung entsteht, werden die Daten nicht im Klartext in der Blockchain gespeichert, sondern vor der Speicherung mit einem öffentlichen Schlüssel der Post verschlüsselt.

Sammeln, sammeln, sammeln

Außerhalb der Blockchain bietet der Kryptobereich der österreichischen Post im Hinblick auf alle 150.000 Briefmarken beziehungsweise deren digitalen Tokens noch weitere Möglichkeiten. So wird beispielsweise der digitale Werdegang der Tokens öffentlich einsehbar angezeigt. Es ist also möglich, einzusehen, in welcher digitalen Geldbörse welcher Token liegt, ob ein Verkauf des Tokens innerhalb der Blockchain erfolgte und wenn ja, an welche Adresse. Die gesamte Transaktionshistorie der Tokens ist somit für jedermann abrufbar. Was auf den ersten Blick aussieht wie ein Datenschutzverstoß, ist in der Ethereum-Blockchain ganz normal; die Blockchain dient als eine Art öffentliches Kassenbuch.

Um das Sammlerherz höher schlagen zu lassen, bietet die Website der Österreichischen Post die Möglichkeit, sich weitere Metadaten seiner digitalen Briefmarken im Internet anzeigen zu lassen. So existiert die virtuelle Krypto-Briefmarke in fünf unterschiedlichen Farben. Am seltensten ist mit 1.500 Stück die virtuell rote Marke.

Welche Farbe die jeweilige Marke hat, bestimmt sich über die in der Blockchain gespeicherte Token-ID. Leider werden die der Token-ID zugeordneten Metainformationen aber nicht in der Blockchain selbst gespeichert, sondern in einer zentralisierten Datenbank, die im Internet unter https://crypto.post.at/CS1/meta/1 zu erreichen ist – die Zahl am Ende der URL entspricht dabei der jeweiligen Token-ID. Die Gefahr für Sammler: Sollte die Österreichische Post die Seiten vom Netz nehmen, existiert diese Information grundsätzlich nicht mehr. Zudem könnten die Informationen jederzeit geändert werden. Dies widerspricht eigentlich dem Gedanken eines echten Cryptocollectibles und trübt die Sammelfreude etwas.

Dafür enthält der Smart Contract des Onchain-Shops aber noch eine interessante Funktion: Stehen im Onchain-Shop nur noch 100 Marken zum Verkauf, so wird der Preis dieser letzten Marken jeweils um den Faktor 1,08 erhöht. Das bedeutet konkret: Die letzte Crypto Stamp des Onchain-Shops müsste für ungefähr 13.000 Euro über die virtuelle Ladentheke gehen. Zumindest in der Theorie.

Also: Datenmüll oder wertvolles Sammelgut?

Die Antwort auf die Frage liegt im Auge des Betrachters. Für einen Preis 6,90 Euro bekommen Käufer zumindest einiges geboten. Und eins muss festgestellt werden: Die Österreichische Post hat keine Mühen gescheut. Denn jede Papierbriefmarke kommt aufgrund der Zugangsdaten als individuell bedrucktes Unikat mit einem virtuellen Gegenpart und wird für viele Käufer darüber hinaus das erste Mal die Möglichkeit eröffnen, auf die Kryptowährung Ether zuzugreifen. Wer an dieser Stelle Lust auf die ersten Schritte in der Blockchain bekommen hat, benötigt neben der Crypto Stamp nur eine Browsererweiterung, um Zugang zum Ethereum-Netzwerk zu erhalten. Sehr verbreitet ist hierfür das Plugin Metamask, das unter anderem für Chrome und Firefox verfügbar ist.

from: https://t3n.de/news/krypto-oesterreichische-post-1172058/

Derzeit gibt es laut coinmarketcap.com 2.238 unterschiedliche Kryptowährungen mit einem Gesamtwert von über 280 Milliarden US-Dollar, von denen mehr als die Hälfte auf den Bitcoin entfallen. Nun hat Facebook seine eigene Digitalwährung, den”Libra”, vorgestellt. Da das größte soziale Netzwerk der Welt mit seinen 2,3 Milliarden aktiven Accounts jede Menge potentielle Nutzer mitbringt, wird dem Vorhaben eine große Bedeutung zugemessen. Noch vor wenigen Jahren waren Krypto-Coins allenfalls etwas für Internet-Nerds. Mitte 2013 waren gerade einmal 26 unterschiedliche Digitalwährung im Gesamtwert von 1,1 Milliarden US-Dollar aktiv.

https://de.statista.com/infografik/12186/unterschiedliche-krypto-coins-und-marktkapitalisierung/

from: https://www.finanz-szene.de/digital-banking/it-panne-bei-der-commerzbank-behoben-von-wegen/

***

Kunden der Commerzbank ärgern sich schon wieder über Schwierigkeiten. Bei der Auszahlung an Geldautomaten und bei der Kartenzahlung kommt es ausgerechnet vor dem Wochenende zu Problemen. Die Commerzbank spricht von einer “Störung in der IT”.

Deutschlands zweitgrößtes privates Kreditinstitut kämpft erneut gegen die Tücken der Technik: Bei der Commerzbank traten am Vormittag erneut gravierende Probleme auf. Es ist bereits die zweite Computerpanne innerhalb weniger Wochen.

“Aktuell haben wir eine Störung in der IT”, teilte das Institut vor dem Wochenende mit. Betroffen waren demnach unter anderem Geldautomaten und Kartenzahlungen. Die Bank arbeite an einer Lösung, hieß es. “Bitte entschuldigen Sie die Unannehmlichkeiten.”

Nach gut einer Stunde konnte zumindest ein Teil der Probleme behoben werden. “Geldautomaten und Kartenzahlungen funktionieren wieder”, hieß es in einer weiteren Mitteilung, die am späten Vormittag veröffentlicht wurde. Die Anmeldung (“Log-in”) in das Online-Banking ist allerdings weiterhin nur eingeschränkt möglich.

“Arbeiten unter Hochdruck”

Weitere Details wurden zunächst nicht genannt. An der Börse lösten die technischen Schwierigkeiten keine sichtbaren Reaktionen aus. Der Kurs der Coba-Aktie notierte weitgehend unverändert bei 6,28 Euro und lag damit deutlich fester als der Gesamtmarkt starke 1,23 Prozent im Plus.

Bereits Anfang des Monats hatte eine IT-Panne für Ärger bei Kunden gesorgt. Wegen einer technischen Störung konnten Daueraufträge, Überweisungen und Lastschriften zeitweise nicht verarbeitet werden. Besonders unangenehm: Gerade zum Monatsanfang werden besonders viele Daueraufträge ausgeführt und Lastschriften eingezogen.

Bei dem Vorfall Anfang Juni konnten gut acht Stunden lang bei betroffenen Konten weder Lastschriften noch Überweisungen oder Daueraufträge verbucht werden – ausgerechnet am ersten Arbeitstag des Monats als viele Kunden ihre Gehalts- oder Rentenzahlungen erwarteten. Die Commerzbank hat nach jüngsten Angaben in Deutschland gut 13 Millionen Privat- und Firmenkunden.

Im Frühjahr stand zeitweilig eine Übernahme der Commerzbank durch die Deutsche Bank im Raum. Die Sondierungsgespräche über eine mögliche Fusion wurden dann jedoch ergebnislos beendet. “Wir sind alleine stark genug, um unseren Weg zu gehen”, hatte Commerzbank-Chef Martin Zielke Ende April erklärt.

Quelle: n-tv.de, mmo/dpa/rts

from: https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Commerzbank-kaempft-erneut-mit-IT-Panne-article21114109.html

[ NOTE: THIS IS LIKE A PAID PRESS RELEASE FROM THE COMPANY, NOT “NEWS” PER SE ]

A multicurrency digital wallet that enables consumers to store crypto and spend their funds at more than 40 million outlets worldwide has fully integrated Apple Pay.

Spend says the latest version of its Spend Wallet app unlocks instant access to the popular iPhone feature, meaning that more than 20 supported cryptocurrencies can be instantly converted to fiat and used to complete a mobile transaction on demand.

The platform says its priority has been ensuring that users can access all of these features instantly. An emphasis has been placed on streamlining the Know Your Customer process, and once this is complete, eligible consumers can immediately receive a Spend Visa virtual card.

To ensure that the process is as simple as possible, users can select which cryptocurrency they want to use. All conversions into fiat happen behind the scenes, meaning shoppers are spared the convoluted and frustrating process of switching the assets themselves.

According to Spend, the next step is to roll out support for Google Pay within the next couple of weeks, meaning that owners of Android devices will be able to access similar features.

Bringing crypto to the masses

Spend says its cards can be used anywhere where Visa is accepted as a payment method. Whereas it has been a challenge for crypto enthusiasts to be able to use their assets for everyday purchases in the past, the platform hopes its technology will open doors and help this new approach to personal finance go mainstream.

In terms of security and protection, “leading encryption methods” are used to ensure sensitive personal information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. This technology is also deployed to prevent any Spend card from being used without permission. Meanwhile, the platform says fiat funds are held at licensed payment and financial institutions to give users peace of mind.

Spend is available here

Spend says it is international in focus and wants to appeal to as many consumers around the world as possible. To this end, account holders can alternate between 27 fiat currencies and perform exchanges at the click of a button, including United States dollars, Canadian dollars and euros. As well as being beneficial for business travelers and those taking a holiday, this choice can help users protect themselves against volatility in the forex markets.

In a blog post from July 2018 explaining its vision for the Spend app, the company’s team said: “We are a firm believer in the fourth industrial revolution and the digitization of currencies. There are tremendous benefits for users worldwide to have control of their finances and to create an alternative financial solution for those whom don’t have access to banking which currently totals to 2 billion people worldwide.”

Keeping users informed

Through the digital wallet within the Spend app, the company gives users the chance to make informed decisions when making transfers to businesses, friends and family. As well as clearly indicating which currency is being used to complete the transaction, other crucial details — such as how long the transaction will take to clear and any associated fees — are displayed before money is sent. The payment can then be verified using a passcode or facial recognition.

Keeping tabs on the ever-changing crypto markets can also be crucial. From within the Spend app, users can access in-depth charts and analytics that make it easy to monitor recent fluctuations in a virtual currency’s value. As well as helping consumers to make financial choices, it is also hoped that users will learn new things about the industry, too.

Learn more about Spend

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

from: https://cointelegraph.com/news/multicurrency-crypto-wallet-integrates-apple-pay-with-google-pay-to-follow-within-weeks

from: https://cointelegraph.com/news/report-chinese-e-commerce-giant-jdcom-has-applied-for-over-200-blockchain-patents

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“Jingdong has applied for nearly 200 blockchain patents
The number of BAT blockchain patents ranks among the top 20 in the world
On the track of the blockchain patent application, many small and medium-sized companies show their enthusiasm far beyond their business volume.

■ Reporter Xing Meng

On May 20, at the National Science and Technology Week in 2019, Jingdong Digital Technology disclosed the patent application for blockchain for the first time. The data shows that there are nearly 200 patents in the blockchain that have been applied for, and the blockchain technology has been put on the scenes of quality traceability, digital deposit certificate, credit network and value innovation.

With the final disclosure of the blockchain patents in Jingdong District, the Internet giant’s competition in this field has become increasingly hot. According to the data of the Intellectual Property Center of China Information and Communication Research Institute, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu were all selected for the 2018 global blockchain patent applicants TOP20 list. Among them, Alibaba has 262 patent applications, 80 Tencent and 50 Baidu. From this point of view, the number of blockchain patent applications in nearly 200 pieces of Jingdong has been at the world’s leading level.”

from: http://epaper.zqrb.cn/html/2019-05/21/content_459202.htm?div=-1

from: https://cointelegraph.com/news/self-proclaimed-satoshi-craig-wright-files-us-copyright-registrations-for-btc-white-paper

***

Craig Wright Attempts to Copyright the Satoshi White Paper and Bitcoin Code

raig Wright, the self-proclaimed creator of bitcoin, has filed registrations with the U.S. Copyright Office supporting his claims of authorship over the original bitcoin code and the Satoshi white paper.

The registrations, which are visible here and here, pertain specifically to “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” and “Bitcoin,” meaning the original 2009 code.

A press release sent to CoinDesk states:

“In the future, Wright intends to assign the copyright registrations to Bitcoin Association to hold for the benefit of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Bitcoin Association is a global industry organization for Bitcoin businesses. It supports BSV and owns the Bitcoin SV client software.”

Founding President Jimmy Nguyen commented in the release:

“We are thrilled to see Craig Wright recognized as author of the landmark Bitcoin white paper and early code. Better than anyone else, Craig understands that Bitcoin was created be a massively scaled blockchain to power the world’s electronic cash for billions of people to use, and be the global data ledger for the biggest enterprise applications. We look forward to working with Craig and others to ensure his original vision is recognized as Bitcoin and is realized through BSV.”

To be clear, registration does not imply ownership nor is this an official patent. The copyright process allows anyone to register anything in an effort to prepare, say, for lawsuits associated to ownership.

Computer code and white papers can be copyrighted insofar as they are considered literary works and, as the copyright office writes: “In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.”

In other words you, the reader, could register this post and I would have to fight you in court to contest it.

Jerry Brito, executive director at advocacy group Coin Center, tweeted:

“People register things for a reason. They want to exploit it and they want the credit for it,” said David H. Faux, Esq., an intellectual property attorney in New York City. “Someone dishonest would register the Bitcoin white paper to put it on his website and get speaking engagements. But at some point it would catch up with him.”

“The market takes care of itself,” said Faux.

When asked for comment noted Wright critic Jameson Lopp said “LOL.”

CoinDesk has contacted Wright’s representatives and the Copyright Office for further comment.

from: https://www.coindesk.com/craig-wright-attempts-to-copyright-the-satoshi-white-paper-and-original-bitcoin-code