ICO Crowd - Issue #9

www.icocrowd.com

ISSUE #9, august-september 2018

Price: 0.01 BTC

FOREWORD

ISMAIL MALIK Editor-in-chief DONOVAN OBOSI Head Analyst ANNEMIEKE DIRKES Managing Editor PAM TATRO Content Editor TZVI SHISHLER Marketing Photo credit © Shutterstock

by ISMAIL MALIK Chairman & Executive Editor ICO Crowd

Many ICO’s in the future will become Equity Token Offerings (ETO’s) as the value in utility tokens is often lacking. Many have severe doubts about the long-term viability of utility crypto-assets. Often utility tokens seem to have been bolted on solely to justify a project being pushed as an ICO. Last year was an exceptional year for the cryptocurrency market seeing the market capitalization increase dramatically. Initial Coin Offerings alone raised more than $6.6 billion USD. A fundraising revolution is underway.

Such growth raises some important questions. Why are tokens so valuable? Do tokens have intrinsic value? What benefits are offered to token holders? Often tokens are seemingly purchased for speculative gains without thought given to the tokens functional utility. Utility tokens provide the owners with access rights to a platform or protocol but provide no legal or economic rights. Such tokens are unregulated and accessible to anyone.

If you would like to advertise with us or have any other queries please get in touch at info@icocrowd.com Disclaimer. All opinions and views expressed in this publication are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent the views of ICO Crowd magazine, its Management or Advisors. All content of ICO Crowd Magazine, in particular but not exclusively, photographs, businessdetails, facts and figures, names, adresses and dates, historic details and offers, are the sole responsibility of the author of each artice. Copyright violations by the author are the sole responsibility of the author and ICO Crowd magazine can not be held liable, whether on the whole or on particulars. www.icocrowd.com

Last year’s dramatic growth led to overconfidence, fuelling investor sentiment and created a disparity between the market and fundamental value of many tokens.

Many are expecting a continued correction in utility tokens. Investors are looking more and more to security tokens which can offer them exposure to underlying assets and convey legal and economic rights. They can convey voting rights and can pay dividends.

Working out the true value of utility tokens remains an unsolved problem as there isn’t much empirical data from tokens with a real utility. The lack of data combined, and as yet unexplored areas of token design mean the jury remains out on how to create a useful and valuable utility token.

Alongside NFT’s we are likely to see a much more segmented market going forward.

Only protocols and core infrastructure projects like AI mining are likely to remain in the ICO bucket.

Regulatory bodies have strict criteria for securities and any ICO issuing an equity token will have to register with the relevant government bodies. The selling of unregistered securities can lead to significant fines and even prison sentences. Because of this some companies are choosing to incorporate outside of traditional markets (incorporating instead in, for example, Switzerland) to bypass restrictive laws altogether.

Equity tokens offer us the opportunity to bridge the gap between traditional shares and digital assets. Equity tokens will offer billions of prospective buyers the opportunity to own a new class of financial asset. The equity token market never closes, there are no middle men and lower fees than traditional equity markets. $188 billion was raised by the IPO market in 2017, and that’s just a tiny fraction of what can potentially be tokenized. The possible applications for security tokens include tokenizing commodities and debt, but ultimately the possibilities are limitless.

Reasoned speculation suggests the time has come for equity tokens as many ICOs are proposing ever weaker utility models.

These have the potential to bring disrepute to the entire ICO economy. Regulation is still catching up, but the next twelve months seem bright for equity tokens.

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CONTENTS 4 5 9 12 14 16 19 21 24 25 26 28

Advisory Board

GameCore and the ZeroCore Network

Whoever controls the data, controls the future

Aligning Incentives in Tokenomics

The Internet Democratised Knowledge, Blockchain Will Democratise Wealth Blockchain to Boost Trade and Combat Human Trafficking How to Pick an ICO Winner $300 billion to Reimagine Global Climate Finance Scientific Credibility of dApps, Blockchain and other DLT Technologies Claims Your Private Retail Currency - Fluzcoin as a Protocol for Private Currency and Loyalty on the Blockchain Empire Cash // JAMES SOWERS

Exploring The Block // JAMES SOWERS

30 32 34 36 40 42 44 46 48 51 52 55 58 60 62 64 66

Five Tips to Make Your Airdrop A Success Blockchain Security - Penetration Testing // MICHIEL MULDERS

Proof of Location - FOAM - The Future of Geospatial Data Introducing MEDIA Protocol // MEDIA PROTOCOL

From Lorry Driver to Crypto Investor THE INTERNET OF TOKENS: Scanetchain: Blockchain and AR Unite The Challenges and Solutions for Creating Deterministic Smart Contracts // MICHIEL MULDERS

OutCloud Systems Is Redefining The File Sharing Industry…

Mainstream Players Opt In With Reverse ICOs Next Crypto Finance Conference confirmed to take place in Half Moon Bay, California // CRYPTO FINANCE CONFERENCE

Non-Fungible Tokens Investors Will Be Limited Only

by Their Imagination The Quest to Future-Proof the Next Generation Protocol

3 Innovative Consensus Protocols for the Future

What Really Is a Blockchain?

AI and the Blockchain Should Stock Exchanges Be Worried About Blockchain?

What is a DEX?

68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 86 90 92

Secondary Market Listings of ICO Tokens

Can Blockchain and Formal Exchanges co-Exist?

How Will Blockchain Play Out In The Energy / Environmental Commodity Sectors?

Are Stablecoins The Answer To Crypto Volatility?

Equity Token Offerings: Will They Revolutionise Start-Up Equity?

Maelstorm: The Future of Gaming // IVAN SVIRID

snips.ai: How blockchain is helping bring Privacy to Voice Assistants

SVPER

.uniqx: The crypto-assets marketplace and issuance service

Incodium

Online Education – Problems, Solutions, and a Brighter Future

Advisory Board SUSAN POOLE

MARC KENIGSBERG

SIMON COCKING

Founder, BlockBridge Advisory Co-Founder, Blockchain Training Institute

Founder of BitcoinChaser.com

Senior Editor at Irish Tech News Freelance for Sunday Business Post, Irish Times, The Southern Star, Dublin Glob

ANDREY GOLUB, PhD

SEAD MUFTIC

SERGIO A. FERNANDEZ DE CORDOVA

Entrepreneur, CEO & Founder @ELSE Corp- a Virtual Retail company

CEO at Blockchain Information Exchange Security Corp

Chairman – P3SmartCity Partners, Inc Private Sector Advisory Group, SDG-FUND, United Nations

THEODOSIS MOUROUZIS, PhD

MUKHTAR MUSSABETOV

EMMANUEL R. GOFFI, PhD

Program Director of MSc in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics at Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) Research Fellow at UCL Centre of Blockchain Technologies (London,UK)

Blockchain Entrepreneur, Founder at BlockSpace Labs

Associate doctor with Science Po-CERI Research fellow with the Centre FrancoPaix, at the Université du Québec à Montréal

ALEX LIGHTMAN

DANIEL STEEVES

AVI LEVI

Award-winning and Amazon bestselling author.

Canadian-born, German-based consultant and entrepreneur, Strategist, Steeves Solutions

ICO Crowd North America

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

GameCore and the ZeroCore Network GameCore and the ZeroCore network is an ambitious project from the team behind Gameface Labs. They have produced a VR & AR headset agnostic next-gen gaming console which also supports traditional Android content. Utilizing the latest Nvidia Tegra X2 chip, the GameCore boasts a significant, over 5-fold the power compared to the Nintendo Switch, depending on whether the Switch is docked or undocked which is powered by an underclocked Nvidia Tegra X1.

THE ZEROCORE NETWORK ZeroCore™ Network is a platform that connects content developers with consumers all over the world. With robust hardware combined with next-gen software and content delivery technology, ZeroCore™ is the world’s first truby ICO CROWD ly end-to-end ubiquitous solution for both content developers and consumers, creating a full ecosystem. Content can range from traditional 2D videos and applications to fully immersive VR and AR content. Use cases span numerous sectors including gaming, education, training, marketing, tele-health and defence.

With ZeroCore™, developers, regardless of their size, resources, location or content type can raise capital for their projects, license proprietary digital assets, develop, distribute and then monetize their content globally. ZeroCore™ analytical tools provides real-time feedback for developers allowing them to refine their content based on customer engagement data.

THE HARDWARE ZeroCore™ have already started shipping its first product called GameCore™ - a next-gen AI Games Console in an elegant micro form factor, similar to a small set-top box.

GameCore™ is powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra X2, the world’s most powerful supercomputer on a module, which has enabled efficient AI compute performance for users everywhere. GameCore™ can be connected to any TV, VR or AR headset. With 8GB of RAM, 256 CUDA Cores, 2 x NVIDIA Denver2 ARMv8 (64-bit) cores & 4 x ARMv8 ARM Cortex-A57 (64-bit) cores it will outperform any ARM based device currently in the retail market.

GameCore™ will be running the latest version of the Android Operating System, customized for the ZEROCORE Network™, it also comes with built-in

drivers that support the world’s first ARM based submillimeter positional tracking solution for any OpenVR headsets, controllers or peripherals.

THE MINING PROPOSITION What sets ZeroCore™ apart from its peers in the industry is the future facing vision for the ecosystem. Connected to the ZeroCore™ Network, GameCore™ can generate continuous income for owners when not in use, as long as it’s connected to a power source and the internet. While sitting idle, ZeroCore™ Network can sell the unused GPU/CPU power of decentralized GameCore™ devices to companies or organizations that need GPU/AI power to process their GPU/AI-heavy applications. ZeroCore™ Network will form a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers for GPU/ AI power, with blockchain technology providing trust less proof-of-work and proof of availability to compensate users for connecting their devices to the Network.

Users will be compensated with ZeroCore™ Tokens (KORs)™. Pricing of the GPU/AI power and the actual mechanism will be managed automatically in the background, streamlining the user experience.

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ZeroCore™ Tokens can be used in multiple ways, and may end up redefining the way users pay for games and exchange value in a gaming environment.

GAMES AND CONTENT With its custom Android based system, GameCore™ will allow users to consume existing content, including, but not limited to VR, AR and Traditional Android (Rectangular TV based) content, enabling an instant use case for GameCore™ devices. The GameCore will also enable a new calibre of Android content to be developed, utilizing the awesome horsepower of the Nvidia TX2, unifying a rapidly fragmenting industry with a robust and ubiquitous solution positioned to cross the chasm.

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PC developers are working on porting well known PC VR titles to the ZeroCore platform which until now have been too graphically demanding to run on any other Android devices. Combined with ZeroCore’s tracking tech and console, you can plug in a high-end PC headset Like the HTC Vive and enjoy much higher graphical fidelity VR content than any phone or ARM standalone headset has ever offered, while being completely untethered from a PC. GameCore™ represents a significant paradigm shift in gaming. Currently games are designed with dopamine driven feedback loops designed specifically to keep gamers addicted and extract as much money from them as pos-

Currently the global games market generates sales of $137.9 billion USD in 2018. It is expected to grow to $180.1 billion by 2021.

sible. The GameCore creators have contracted various Game Development studios to create a new wave of educational and interactive content that both teaches while the user learns more about the fundamentals of the technology that is only going to grow significantly over the coming years. For the first time, gamers of all ages can ‘Learn and Earn’ these games will be unveiled over the coming months before the ZeroCore Developer summit at the prestigious Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

We have had a sneak peek into the upcoming phases of development the team has laid out and they have some very ambitious ideas, however, for a

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

around the world from capturing VR launch content for Mattel’s ViewMaster to filming Linkin Park in the Hollywood Bowl in 360-degree VR. GameFace Labs have previously built 8 ground breaking VR headset prototypes. Each incantation solving a separate problem preventing the mass adoption of this new immersive wave of computing. They have extensive experience within the industry and have always been on the cutting edge of VR & AR research and development.

company who pioneered the first standalone VR device back in 2013 and have followed year after year with a number of world firsts which have gone on to become industry standards, they stand a very good chance of achieving these goals.

We will continue to keep up to date with the ZeroCore team as they roll out their plans even further, for now, they are still somewhat in stealth mode.

THE TEAM GameFace Labs have worked closely in the past with Nvidia, 3D Systems, and trained and produced 3D solutions in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence. Their expertise has taken them

mature Mixed Reality gaming market will look, however, Sony alone has an entire ecosystem in place, whereby they own their hardware, OS and ecosystem. Microsoft and Nintendo have yet to announce their VR solutions, and all other PC based VR headsets are reliant on Windows and SteamVR or Oculus Runtime to be running in the background, making these PC driven headsets nothing more than sophisticated Displays with sensors.

Consumer virtual reality headsets have actually been around since the ZeroCore has gathered together a high- early 1990s. Sega first announced the ly impressive group of advisers and full- Sega VR headset for use with its Mega time staff, including: Drive console and arcade games. It used LCD screens in a visor, had ste2 Ted Schilowitz - Paramount reo headphones and used inertial senCo-founder of RED Digital Cameras, sors to track and react to the moveFuturist & 21st Century Futurist, ments of the headset. Virtuality also 2 Maxim Jago - NASA, Microsoft, HP, launched that same year and was the and Nvidia consultant, author, and first mass produced networked mulkeynote speaker tiplayer VR entertainment system.

2 Randy Adams - Co-founder of Units costed up to $73,000. Not only Yahoo, Funny or Die and WTFTV to did Virtuality’s offering include a name a few headset, but also exoskeleton gloves 2 Richard Baldock - Ex-chairman to that provided one of the first immerthe Rothschild Trust in Zurich. sive VR experiences. Whilst a fantas2 Dr. Dave Ranyard - Ex Sony Head tic proof of concept the user experiof VR content ence was spoilt by latency and many 2 Tareq Hawasli - Director of users experienced feelings of sickness Sheffield United whilst using the systems. It would be 2 Ismail Malik - Chief tokenomics of- many years before the hardware imficer proved enough to provide a user ex2 Bill Rehbock - Chief Development perience that was solid and responOfficer sive enough to avoid virtual reality sickness.

THE FRAGMENTED NATURE OF VR AND AR Fast forward to 2012 and PalmWhile the major players in the VR iner Luckey's prototype of the Oculus dustry are using similar underlying Rift reinvigorated consumer intertechnology, many competing softest in virtual reality leading to a reware platforms have arisen, each built vival in interest in virtual reality. His around a specific type of headset, or first prototype was only capable of reliant on someone else’s operating rotational tracking with no positionsystem. al tracking. However, it was revolutionary as it offered a 90-degree field Most large game developers have not of vision. The ZeroCore team have seriously committed fully to virtual re- demoed several prototypes to Palmality in any meaningful way. Currenter Luckey over the years, with the ly virtual reality games are mainly the CEO Ed Mason giving talks alongside preserve of indie developers. One of the Palmer and other industry Veterans major barriers to game development in Silicon Valley. for indie developers is the fragmentation of the industries. The GameCores In 2013, Valve shared their low-perheadset agnosticism allows game desistence display technology which velopers to write once and deploy to made smear free low latency VR conIn a very multiple headset providers. Engadget tent possible. This was adopted by real way, summed it up accurately when they Oculus and HTC and has been the baGamecore’s stated, “In a very real way, Gamecore’s sis of most High End future headsets, Engineering Engineering Prototype represents the these designs, technology and profuture of VR.” totypes have now been passed to the Prototype GameFace labs team for integration represents the THE MIXED REALITY into the ZeroCore Network. future of VR. PARADIGM SHIFT There are several major players in In March 2014, Facebook purchased ENGADGET the virtual reality market, each with Oculus VR for $2 billion USD. This their own different proprietary platoccurred after Oculus had shipped form and competing vision of how a their first development kits ordered 7

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through their 2012 Kickstarter campaign but before the shipping of their second development kits which came out in mid-2014. In that same month Sony announced Project Morpheus (their code name for PlayStation 4 VR offering). At the same time google announced their cardboard VR solution.

It was a stereoscopic viewer for smartphones and users needed to place their smartphone in a do-it-yourself cardboard holder. The ZeroCore team had already been showing standalone Android VR prototypes off, around the U.K. and Silicon Valley for a year prior to all that.

“The controller is slow to respond, drifts all over the place, and becomes essentially unusable near large steel objects,” writes Palmer, “Fine if you want to use it in a house made of sticks, bad if you want to work in any kind of industrial environment. Magnetic tracking is hard to pull off in the best of cases, but this is probably the worst implementation I have seen released to the public.”

While sitting idle, ZeroCore™ Network can sell the unused GPU/ Magic Leap One and GameCore are the CPU power of only two consumer products powered by a TX2. However, Magic Leap is limit- decentralized GameCore™ ed to just working with their AR glasses, which have been slated to have a devices to In early 2015 HTC and Valve Corporavery limited field of view, just slightly companies or tion announced their VR headset, the better than that of the Microsoft Holoorganizations HTC Vive and controllers. This headset lens, according to a report by the Verge. that need GPU/ included a tracking technology known AI power to as Lighthouse, which utilised wall ZeroCore have also showcased some mounted base stations for positional AR technology made by industry veter- process their tracking using infrared light, it is this ans who will be announcing something GPU/AI-heavy technology that is now available for any very exciting shortly. That being said, applications.

GameCore or ARM based device. the demos we have seen so far have Magic Leap, a $6.3Bn US start-up founded in 2010 has raised $2.3 billion from a list of investors including Google and China's Alibaba Group. They recently released their first augmented reality headset. It has received mixed reviews and Palmer Luckey has stated on Variety’s recent article: 8

$180.1 billion by 2021. About 91% of the global market is digital meaning that $125.3 billion USD worth of games flow through digitally connected systems as opposed to through retail stores.

The amount of consumer virtual reality headsets in homes was estimated at around seven million in 2016 and is expected to grow to over 37 million by 2020. The Sony PS VR was the bestselling VR device in 2017 and is expected to reach 2 million in 2018.

The Virtual Reality industry is growing rapidly. The market size of both virtual reality hardware and software is forecasted to grow from $2.2 billion USD in 2017 to more than $19 billion USD in 2020.

been incredibly impressive, without the field of view limitations of the Magic Leap device.

The augmented reality market exceeded $1 billion in 2016 and is expected to experience an annual growth rate of 65% all the way through to 2024. With applications in gaming, the automotive industry, aerospace and defence, medical, retail and industrial sectors.

VR, AR AND THE GLOBAL GAMES MARKET Currently the global games market generates sales of $137.9 billion USD in 2018. It is expected to grow to

With their unifying VR solution, dedicated and experienced team and some major companies behind them the future looks very bright for the ZeroCore network and GameCore console.

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Whoever controls the data, controls the future Four years ago, Dutch student Shawn Buckles auctioned off his digital soul; emails, calendars, geolocation, health records and more. The highest bidder bought the prized goods for $480.

I have a nice chart I can show that gives a nearly perfect correlation Today our data has become more valubetween chemistry doctorates able than ever, with monopolies such awarded in the US and annual as Google and Facebook acting like giant internet vacuum cleaners, swallow- cheese consumption. I’m pretty ing records of people’s online activisure these aren’t related in reality.

ty with ferocity. Meanwhile, new market entrants aspire to capitalise on the by ICO CROWD fast-growing digital asset by building business models based on consumer ownership of data.

The exponential growth of the Internet of Things combined with breakthrough technologies like blockchain and Artificial Intelligence have led to a gold rush for data monetisation. But how much is our online data really worth?

Over hundreds of years, a new discovery of gold has led to a gold rush, where people rush into an area to mine gold, consumed by the general buoyancy of a free for all in income mobility. People

rush in, in search of the great Californian Dream in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. For most it turns out to be smoke and mirrors. A few come out rich. Now, the ability to monetise data is spurring a similar entrepreneurial rush into the space.

Monetisation often comes through firms selling your information so that advertisers can better learn the tastes of certain groups. According to recent filings with the Securities and Exchange PAUL BRODY Commission, Facebook’s average reveEY’s Global Innovation Leader for nue per user in 2017 was $20.21, and Blockchain users in the U.S. and Canada bring in an even higher sum due to the size of those markets. This means that with 1.4 billion users globally, Facebook rakes in well over $20 billion a year for personal data.

But EY’s Global Innovation Leader for Blockchain, Paul Brody, says that viewing data as the new gold is “a somewhat simplistic metaphor, because in reality, a lot of data is not actually valuable and if you don’t have a good understanding of what you are analyzing, you can come up with all kinds of inaccurate ideas.

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“People want to imply that data is more valuable to focus on than physical resources. It means a shift from stuff to information.

“I have a nice chart I can show that gives a nearly perfect correlation between chemistry doctorates awarded in the US and annual cheese consumption. I’m pretty sure these aren’t related in reality.”

So, for those looking to avoid smoke, mirrors, chemistry doctorates, and annual cheese consumption, how does data actually come to be effectively monetised?

“Data on what we read online, what we look at and what we buy or where we go, when combined with a good understanding of what we want to accomplish, can allow marketers to manipulate our decisions and actions very effectively,” says Brody.

“Data, when combined with hypotheses, allow us to test our ideas and know if they really work or not.”

“Assuming you have good hypotheses and an understanding of what you’re looking at, data is the difference between informed strategy and poli10

cy-making and just coming up with good ideas.”

Consumers can be targeted through personal adverts or offers that have been created based on their previous engagement with that particular product or service.

“One of the toughest things we’ve had to learn is that not all reasonable-sounding ideas work out in reality.”

As more and more interactions with government, businesses, products and services involve the provision and disclosure of important personal information, there is a wealth of data being generated and collected.

Once this raw data has been processed and analysed, the data holders can then begin to identify patterns, habits, behaviors and trends. This new data can be combined with data from other sources to help identify wider patterns, trends and behaviors.

A bigger picture could then emerge that wouldn’t have been possible in less digital times.

Companies rely on data analysis for informed decision-making which leads to increased productivity, money saved, and money earned.

They can also use this information to create new products and services and more easily reach a certain target audience.

Data on what we read online, what we look at and what we buy or where we go, when combined with a good understanding of what we want to accomplish, can allow marketers to manipulate our decisions and actions very effectively.

PAUL BRODY EY’s Global Innovation Leader for Blockchain

One example could be a supermarket sending a customer an advert for a 20% discount off a certain brand of washing powder.

The company knows from the data that they have collected and from other information that this customer regularly buys this brand of washing powder and that this type of discount will appeal to them.

Data generated products are more likely to have high success rates, as they’re based on real-time information and analysis of target consumers.

With the possibilities for monetising data set to expand in coming years, consumers are slowly waking up to how valuable their data really is; “The ability to combine your information with the ability to measure your reactions and results means your data is, potentially, much more valuable than it has ever been before,” explains Brody.

The big question for the future will be “who gets the benefit” he adds.

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“When data wasn’t especially valuable, we tended to give it away. We did that by clicking “ok” on just about every box and letting our web browsers and mobile phones report back our every detail back to centralized servers to aggregate and analyze it.”

“Or if you want to use my data in that way, maybe give back as well. What is it you’re going to offer me? Is it really worth me letting you hold that amount of data on me?

So, will self-ownership of personal data catch on to where it becomes widespread? Or will the general public forego this opportunity to build their own data revenue stream?

“There are organisations and researchers specifically looking into solutions around that. In particular, looking at the value of data.”

“Information about who we are and what we do online and in the real world has never been more valuable, and there are a huge number of start-ups out there vying to help us monetize that information,” says Brody.

The ability to combine your But now blockchains have provided a information way for those who want to take conwith the ability trol of their information to aggregate it without giving it to any kind of central- With the sum of data produced globto measure your ized service. ally expected to increase by at least reactions and 250% in coming years and new possiresults means In theory, Brody says users could then bilities for data ownership enabled by offer it up to the highest bidder. blockchain, new market entrants such your data is, as Truth Data Cloud, Decenternet, and potentially, Michelle Chivunga, Regional Advisor Consensys, aim to build businesses much more to the British Blockchain Association, around a model that gives consumers valuable than adds; “We’ve had the Cambridge Anaback control of their data. it has ever been lytica crisis. There are problems with before. data usage and I think it’s really impor- German startup repay.me plans to tant that we focus on how we can protect data but also give back control to the owners of the data, where they can actually decide on where data is used.

“The big corporates, the Google’s, the Amazons, how are they using our data?”

“Do we have enough control to say, actually I’m not particularly happy with you using my data in that way.

launch a blockchain-powered marketplace which will share revenues from personal data with its community. The platform will offer users cashback on their purchases and retailers will be able to sell and advertise products.

Datawallet plans to help people own and monetize their data, enabling users to decide who sees their information and which details they can access.

So, whether personal data becomes an asset owned and controlled by the crowd, and is used according to people’s individual wishes, or whether it remains the hidden weapon of the internet oligarch’s, remains one of the many big stories of the innovation age.

The challenge, explains Brody, “will be that to monetise our information, we PAUL BRODY will have to take control of it from entiEY’s Global Innovation Leader ties that are already gathering it. for Blockchain

“And while there’s been a lot of talk about the idea of information intermediaries even before the era of blockchain, inertia in human behavior is tough to beat.

“It may take a new generation of users to see the option to seize control of their information and take it up.”

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Aligning Incentives in Tokenomics Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics.

“Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy,” that’s according to 20th century economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell, and a statement which now rings true as token economics emerge as an acknowledgement of the power of bottom-up by ICO CROWD relationships in economics.

This is not to say that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is driven by people with purely altruistic motives, but it highlights a shift in economic dogma: that bottom-up and collaborative can be more powerful than topdown and competitive.

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And according to Susan Oh, Founder & CEO of MKR AI, and Chair of AI for the UN General Assembly's Blockchain For Impact, decentralising with blockchain technology and tokenomics can create business models that incentivise people to be “more humane” by “aligning incentives.”

Oh’s focus is on AI and blockchain integration for human-centric technology and service to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

there’s something that you’re good at, there’s something that I’m good at, and we can go from zero to one faster as long as everyone’s getting a piece of the pie.”

The tokenomics business is built around crafting solid incentives and building a robust network of users and contributors.

The tokenomics business is built around crafting solid incentives and building a robust network of users and contributors.

She is also advisor to Toda.Network, the Global Bank of Small States, the Hoboken Smart City Project, and Trustabit.io, among others.

The emergence of tokenising assets represents a different way to generate and capture value: it builds networks that incentivise certain types of work or behavior and then monetises the value of the work or behavior performed on the network.

Speaking at London Fintech week, Oh said; “It’s really important to look at aligned incentives instead of regulation. Because regulation is always 40 years behind business models, business practices and technology.

The token represents the way that the value within a network becomes monetised.

“How about we use a collaborative model of business so that, I’m not competing with you, I’m just gonna say that

But despite the tremendous potential of the token economy and decentralising for creating a more equal and more humane society, Oh warns innovators of the need to safeguard their ecosystem based business model against potential bad actors.

She says technologists, builders, and entrepreneurs must realise that “every time you build something, you have to go to the edges of how something can be screwed with and used for the wrong intentions, and then reverse engineer by building a transparency model and a business model around it so that people can rule out the bad actors.

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“That same facial recognition and those tracking mechanisms that I’m sure you’re all aware of on every single corner of London, and you can find it with blockchain, it can either give you a reward for waiting to cross the light and not jaywalking, or it can automatically go into your virtual wallet or take money out for jaywalking.

Warning of how innovation can unexpectedly backfire, Oh spoke of the tragic 19th century Swedish entrepreneur and inventor, Alfred Nobel, “the guy who invented dynamite didn’t know it was going to be used in a war and to his dying day it was his greatest regret, so he started the Nobel Prize Foundation.

So, entrepreneurs must always be aware as to how things can be reversed used, and must “align business models and incentives so that the more you mess with it, if you’re a bad actor, it’s transparent, and so that you also make more money when you’re collaborative.

“You have to just keep building for something that’s better. Never ever forget the world wide web was propelled by porn and the military.”

So, what are the factors that drive value in permissionless blockchain systems?

Two economic models at work are the Quantity Theory of Money and the Network Theory of Value, and this ecosystem economics drives the value of the token.

The Network Theory of Value is derived from Metcalf’s Law which states that the total value of a network to its users grows as the square of the total number of its users.

According to the quantity theory of money, the supply of money determines price levels, and changes in money supply have proportional changes in prices.

Thus, by increasing the number of users, the dollar value of each transaction and the value of the token as a whole is driven up. In addition, the value derived from the network model can override the actual value of the data on the system, so the more people that transact the token, the higher the network effect and value creation.

This is a very different system of business, as instead of building a clientele

base, you are building a network of asset owners and co-creators who are all hoping to profit.

“If it can be decentralised, you just tell people, look how our incentives are aligned.

You put value into the system, it will benefit you and it’s all algorithmically determined.

You’d have everybody on board.”

People contribute, for example, by giving data or analysing data, and then earn tokens in exchange.

According to Oh, this is “one of the business models of collaboration that we now must consider in order to use this technology efficiently and to serve sustainable development goals.

“The way I look at it, machine learning, AI, and technology, is good for productivity, and people are good for creativity.

“So, with machine learning in this age of innovation and opportunity we can get people to be more humane, as long as we build the right business models and the right incentives, and that’s why decentralisation is so key.”

“If it can be decentralised, you just tell people, look how our incentives are aligned. You put value into the system, it will benefit you and it’s all algorithmically determined. You’d have everybody on board.”

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The Internet Democratised Knowledge, Blockchain Will Democratise Wealth “One of the reasons I and a number of people in the blockchain space are so passionate about this world, is that it’s not a new technology layer, it’s a fundamentally different way for organisations and societies to operate.

“The major problem is that without mass decentralisation we get a bigger and bigger wealth disparity between the rich and the poor,” says Mark Pascall, an Englishman living in New Zealand, who got sucked into the crypto world 4 years ago, after spending 3 days at a bitcoin conferby ICO CROWD ence.

Since then he has co-founded BlockchainLabs.NZ, become president of the Blockchain association New Zealand, presented at over 30 conferences, and spent a week last year showing Vitalik and Andreas around New Zealand. When not working he spends his time being towed behind a very big kite in Wellington harbour.

Pascall, who believes he has mastered the art of explaining blockchain at dinner parties without boring the pants off everybody, takes a deep dive into the evolution of society and centralisation to explain the value of blockchain as a transformer of social structures.

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The concept of the sovereign individual is the idea that the structure of society is built on the logic of violence.

So, who are these internet giants that have built seemingly unbreakable global monopolies?

Society’s predator prey relationship means that it’s harder to protect something than it is to make it. Many centuries ago we were in a hunter gatherer society and it was relatively easy to protect our assets, we just carried them around with us.

In 1996, Google began as a research project by two Stanford University PhD students; the company’s humble beginnings saw it launch out of a friend’s garage.

But as society became more complex, we built more things of value and we needed to build bigger things to protect those things.

This led to having people who would protect our assets, and the banking system and the sovereign state came fundamentally from that logic of violence.

That’s happened over many hundreds of years and then the internet accelerated that centralisation to an alarming degree.

“So, it’s really in quite a short space of time, literally in the last 10 odd years, we’ve become a highly centralised society,” Pascall says.

“Now the boundaries have been hit as we’ve got global monopolies. We’ve got five or six companies who own alarming amounts of data and wealth and control.

But today it’s worth about $132 billion, and together with Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, it has accrued so much power many believe it has become damaging to American democracy.

Amazon generates 30% of all online and offline retail sales growth in the U.S., while Apple is the world’s most valuable firm, with a market cap of 1 trillion USD. Google controls over 70% of the global market share of search advertising, and together with Facebook, its put most competitors for online advertising out of business.

But the internet giants’ ability to control spreads further than the business world.

Across the globe, many people’s entire awareness of current events is shaped, one way or another, by Facebook and Google, who determine what information we see and consume with hidden algorithms.

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“In the last century when we saw the dot.com craziness and then the crash - there’s a bit of that going on, so we are going to see out of the thousands of ICOs that are being generated now, a bunch of core foundational protocols emerging which will be open, community driven and fully decentralised, with no central organisation or person in control. They’ll be controlled by the token holders, which could be you, or anybody, so those will emerge as the winners.

“And the people who pick those winners now, if they buy tokens in one of those winners, yes, they will do very well, and the value of that token should go up and up, so there will be some winners financially out of that,” says Pascall.

“But more broadly, it should get us to a more equitable place where it’s not just the high net worth people in Silicon Valley or in Singapore or in London who are the financial investors who are making the big money, it should democratise that space.

“How I think about it is that the internet democratised knowledge, the blockchain will democratise wealth,” he adds.

“They control how we think, they control how we vote now, and that’s a pretty scary space, and they’re very difficult to displace. We know the network effectively is very powerful and it would be incredibly hard for somebody else to displace Facebook with another decentralised model.

“We can now share in a fairer system and a tokenised economy where everything can be tokenised from a football team, to a building, to a new idea and they can be fully liquid and tradable, and individuals can become their own Swiss Bank.

first internet in the 1980s, didn’t actually make any money out of it.

People who built the so-called fat applications, the Googles, Facebooks, and Amazon, were people who now extract massive value out of that fat layer on the thin protocol, and make the money.

The major problem is that without mass But Pascall believes that blockchains now The significant difference between the decentralisation enable these monopolies to be undone start of the internet and the tech giants “against a better, fairer, more equitable that grew out of it, and the possibilities we get a bigger society. that blockchain opens up today, is that and bigger the blockchain enables people to build fat “So, the blockchain is this infrastructure protocols that are open source. These are wealth disparity that can allow that centralisation to move open, transparent protocols built by com- between to a decentralised world,” he says. munities of developers. the rich and the poor.

While many people talk about the blockchain as a decentralised ledger, or a database, he says “actually, that in itself is missing the point.”

So, what is the point? According to Pascall, it can be found in building decentralised crypto economic models such as second generation blockchains like Ethereum, which is now thought of as a decentralised code execution engine or platform.

This concept was coined in a blog, the Fat Protocol: the first-generation internet was built along the lines of the thin protocol, so Berners Lee who created the

But instead of working for free, they’ve got this economic incentive to build projects because through tokenisation we can now own digital property and create tokens that represent these protocols and open them up to the markets to trade.

Therefore, the people who come up with these new ideas and protocols, the startups, can raise a lot of money to support them in building communities to develop these second layer, foundational bits of the internet.

“There is a bit of a wild west money grab out there and I think that’s one of the things the ICO concept has driven.

MARK PASCALL Englishman living in New Zealand

“Their private key rips into those twelve words in their head and they become sovereign individuals. They don’t need a big massive banking infrastructure system or a big corporation to manage their wealth, their data, their health records,” says Pascall.

So blockchain technology and tokenisation will enable more assets to be easily bought and traded and by many more people - removing previous barriers to trading and investing that meant that this was often reserved for the wealthy few.

It could also result in the creation of more firms that are socially responsible - if start-ups are funded by the crowd, then they are likely to offer services, products, and ideas that the ‘crowd’ is interested in bringing to fruition.

Time will tell how far current blockchain projects will go in bringing the decentralised vision of the future and the democratisation of wealth forwards, but as Pascall says, “that’s the positive future that a lot of people in the blockchain space see, and that’s why we’re passionate about it.”

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Blockchain to Boost Trade and Combat Human Trafficking 16

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It can be difficult to distinguish the fine line between those waving the proverbial magic wand of blockchain’s potential as a catalyst for change and where the real impact will be felt from blockchain innovation.

by ICO CROWD

Amidst the noise surrounding blockchain, Michelle Chivunga, Regional Advisor for the British Blockchain Association, remains committed to cutting through the clutter and educating on which real-world problems blockchain could help bring solutions to.

Chivunga has worked extensively within the global development and technology space after leaving the finance world about four years ago.

I think in my world, data is like the new money. If you can manage it and almost control use of your data, there’s a lot more power that you hold as well, so there’s that side of things as well. I think that’s absolutely critical.

We’re very keen on encouraging a lot more women into tech and promoting role models who are active in this market - there are a lot of role models doing a lot of phenomenal things.

At a time when international trade in the 21st century, is under pressure like MICHELLE CHIVUNGA never before, global trade has found a Regional Advisor for the British Blockchain Association champion in blockchain.

“I’m very passionate about looking at the educational side of things, because I feel there’s still a disparity between people who really understand blockchain and the potential of blockchain as opposed to the crypto currencies like bitcoin that everybody’s slightly more familiar with, but actually they’re two different things.

If we are able to record the births of a nation, we know how many children are born, they’ve got “So, I’m quite keen to help people in un- their identity that’s recorded derstanding what the potential of block- on the blockchain, they can be chain is, and at the same time I’m also tracked. This is not tracking as in quite passionate and I’ve done quite a Big Brother is watching you, it’s bit of work and involvement with womcompletely different in the sense en’s economic empowerment programs working with different groups from UN that we’re able to use that data, women to the World Bank and a whole even using machine learning or range of other organisations.

AI to analyse that data for health needs, policy, or a whole range “We’re very keen on encouraging a lot of other areas. We could make more women into tech and promoting role models who are active in this mar- evidence-based decisions which ket - there are a lot of role models doing we can use to plan ahead and a lot of phenomenal things.” foster solutions that are a bit more “I’m also focused on emerging markets tailored. People who are right at the bottom are the ones that need and nations as there are opportunities for technology to help,” she says. that social change.

The areas Chivunga highlights as having massive potential for improvement with blockchain include financial inclusion, people lacking identity, and international trade.

“I’m talking globally here, it’s not just a case of looking at emerging countries where you have a lot of people who are financially excluded in today’s market.

Another area where she recognises clear potential for positive change is around aligned connectivity to do business; international trade, and opportunities for countries to export and interact.”

MICHELLE CHIVUNGA Regional Advisor for the British Blockchain Association

The World Economic Forum (WEF) explains that blockchain technology can help as the cloud-based ledger ensures that records can’t be duplicated, manipulated or faked. This increased visibility throughout the supply chain promotes trust and means governments can more easily protect consumers while businesses can safely do business with more reliable trading documents. And, importantly, all parties save on their most valuable asset: time.

The WEF states that “with further investment and experimentation, blockchain could potentially hide confidential information to protect the interests of trading parties – pricing information, for example.”

“Take Africa, for example, we want to encourage a lot more interregional trade. We can try and look at doing that by tapping into blockchain again.

Because blockchain allows that opportunity for transparency, and opportunities to have a more cost-effective way of trading and doing business between different markets. So, there’s massive potential there,” says Chivunga.

In 2016, Barclays reported the first blockchain-based trade-finance deal in a transaction that guaranteed the trade of about $100,000 worth of cheese and butter between an Irish agricultural food co-operative and the Seychelles Trading Company, and the world has since seen explosive research and innovation in blockchain fueled trade deals.

She says “it’s really important that we look at how we can use blockchain to help fund financial inclusion to help with access to digital assets that people have control over, rather than having central authorities controlling this.

Adding blockchain to the trading process has proven to reduce time spent completing trade-finance deals from between a week to 10 days to just a couple of hours - producing time and cost savings that stand to transform not only emerging markets such as Africa, but global trade in general.

“We want people who have control of their money and control of their own data. It’s absolutely significant because

“A further area I see is of course identity,” Chivunga adds, “which is absolutely huge and very very important because 17

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we have a lot of problems with refugees, with human trafficking, modern slavery. A lot of this does boil down to a lack of identity and people almost taking advantage of that, which leads to things like human trafficking.”

blockchain, they can be tracked. This is not tracking as in Big Brother is watching you, it’s completely different in the sense that we’re able to use that data, even using machine learning or AI to analyse that data for health needs, policy, or a whole range of other areas. We could make evidence-based decisions which we can use to plan ahead and foster solutions that are a bit more tailored.

People who are right at the bottom are the ones that need that social change.”

Adding blockchain to the trading process has proven to reduce time spent completIn 1970 there were roughly half as ing trade-finance many people in the world as there are now and with an exploding global popdeals from beulation with over twice as many births tween a week to as there are deaths in a day, some gov10 days to just a ernments struggle to keep track. couple of hours According to a September 2017 report - producing time According to a 2017 report by the from the International Labor Organizaand cost savWorld Bank, 1.1 billion people are with- tion (ILO) and Walk Free Foundation, ings that stand out identification, that’s an astounding an estimated 24.9 million victims are to transform not 14% of the global population. trapped in modern-day slavery. only emerging This 14% are extremely marginalised Multi-millions of children are going markets such as from the wider world, unable to access missing every year; they are never seen, Africa, but global a bank account, prove they are eligible heard of or found. trade in general. for health insurance, or apply for many jobs or schools.

Nearly 80% of those whose opportunities and quality of life is severely restricted by a lack of ID live in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Chivunga says; “if we are able to record the births of a nation, we know how many children are born, they’ve got their identity that’s recorded on the 18

Meanwhile, human trafficking earns profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers, two-thirds of which comes from the sex-trade, according to the ILO 2014 report.

Human trafficking and modern-day slavery are global issues in desperate need of a game-changer, and areas where blockchain based technology holds some promise for positive change

with its potential for tracking and secure storage of people’s identity.

Chivunga explains that although “we do need regulation to protect consumers” we need innovation, “as its innovation that’s going to help us grow our economies, our societies, our nation, so it’s important we don’t stifle it.

However, Chivunga offers a word of caution; “there’s a lot of hype about how blockchain is going to solve the world’s problems.

“Don’t get me wrong, there are certain aspects where blockchain is absolutely relevant. But people must understand that bitcoin and blockchain are two different things, so we need more education around separating that, and education around how blockchain can actually be used and by whom. It’s not a magic wand, and we have to be quite cautious about how we throw in the hype.”

But, she says, what she is excited about, is “the potential of a scalable solution that addresses not just one thing, but which can be used to address a range of things. Blockchain can work in par with a range of things, like AI, or IT, I think that’s where we have room for scalability and adoption.”

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

How to Pick an ICO Winner With early investors in ICOs making as much as 50,000% in Return on Investment following private sales it’s no surprise that investments in ICOs are gaining momentum at break-neck speed.

In 2016 just $100 million was raised through ICOs, in 2017 this skyrocketed to $4 billion, and so far, this year we’re at $12 billion raised with ICO funding.

2018’s Q1 alone has surpassed total funds raised through ICOs in 2017. by ICO CROWD

But not all that glitters is gold: many ICOs turn out to be outright scams and only a small handful make it in the long-run.

As Fintech week conferences conclude around the globe, Freelance Fintech Consultant, AP, said in a scathing review of companies and start-ups who pitched their idea on stage, that “these firms had mostly also been sponsors for Fintech week, and “80% come up with a ridiculous concept, and go for ICO’s.

It’s worth hitting pause on the gold rush to dig deeper into the right strategy for picking an ICO winner.

Speaking at London Fintech week, Mark Pascall, co-founder of BlockchainLabs New Zealand (NZ) and president of the Blockchain Association NZ, explained the process of the ICO launch: “ICO or Initial Coin Offering emerged from the fact that over the last two years we’ve seen this development of the second generation blockchain, like Ethereum, which allows the immutable unstoppable execution of business logic. We call that a smart contract, so for the first time in history we have this way to own and transfer ownership of digital assets.

“It’s turned out that the first killerapp of this new technology paradigm is this concept of an ICO.”

“I need to persuade them to swap their existing cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ether, which has real world value, with my new token that I want you to believe has future value.

“This is where the traditional marketing and community building concept comes in. Then you have your ICO period which may last hours, months, or weeks, and it’s where the swapping occurs.

“So, people send in their cryptocurrency and the entrepreneur sends out their new token that’s just been invented.

And if all goes well, I the entrepreneur, raise a whole lot of cryptocurrency which I can use to build my thing. And this is happening, it’s increasing exponentially,” explains Pascall.

So in this Wild West, where great promHe describes a token as a cross between ise brings great risk, how can you sepaa cryptocurrency, a medium of exrate the wheat from the chaff? change, and a share in the potential value of an idea.

London FinTech panelists highlighted trust and transparency as being a ma“Very simply, if I’m an entrepreneur, I jor factor in successful ICO marketing: “The problem with these companies is have an idea and generally it’s a blockinvestors should look out for not only that they have no concept, the product chain decentralised global idea, I write how much you trust the idea, but the is nowhere near development stage, but a white paper and publish it. I then team that’s behind the idea. because of good references they have create a token and the majority of tovery good funding. Some of them raise kens are being created on the Ethereum Transparency is a key ingredient at all millions, but from the investors point blockchain and this token is linked to stages of business development. Steof view, be ready for the news of bankmy immediate idea.” fanie Braschel, Director of Decenruptcies, your money could be wiped tral Agency, says; “There’s a commuout soon.

The next step for the entrepreneur is to nity out there 24/7 that’s monitorgo out and convince a whole lot of people ing you through an ICO. And they hold “The remaining 20% are going in a good of their idea. And this can range from so- you accountable for everything you say direction, but out of those 20%, only phisticated investors down to the general - which is a good thing, and it’s very 5% will make it to their target goal.” public or anonymous investors. challenging.

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“To create trust in the system you have to filter out ideas which aren’t viable, because they’re not going to survive where the blockchain doesn’t make sense, or the token is not needed.”

Leonard Boord, Co Founder of Tokenmatch, explained that there are two broad ICO categories, “There are those that come with the reputation and those with the entrepreneurs who have already raised funds, this category is able to access the funding network quickly. That small group exists.

“We look for projects that are genuinely trying to solve trust problems, adds Pascall.

“We look for projects that genuinely couldn’t be done using a database. We look for projects that are truly disintermediating everybody and are open and transparent.

Think about the company and what they’re developing. The “If somebody is saying, hey we want to control this bit of it, then I’d be a bit skep- days of quick in tical typically. But if people are saying and out and not we want to create a community and the worrying about founding team has no central control. who bought “Imagine Vitalik from Ethereum raising something new. That would probably “If they’re doing an ICO then they your token are be built in 10 seconds and there would aren’t able to run off with the money over. be a long waiting list of people trying to get in.

“The rest of us have to signal and build and establish credibility, because we don’t have the reputation established.”

flowing in, physically, it’s locked into smart contracts with good governance and good rules around how that money can be released.”

He highlighted that projects likely to succeed in the long-term are well thought out, solving fundamental problems and a genuine global trust problem with good token economics. These are the factors that add long-term value.

He said investors should look out for ICOs that have: a proper team that has domain expertise, proper token economics to demonstrate that goals are aligned with the user community, and innovation that is significant - there are “That’s in the “hold”. That’s when you’re enough applications that are similar. holding on for dear life as opposed to the pump and dump ones where a lot The challenge is to put these things to- of people can make a lot of money just gether and expose yourself to the com- by that marketing hype. You buy and munity while establishing reputation. sell at the right time, that’s a separate It could be that establishing reputation world from where we’re at, as far as to successfully grow and market an ICO long-term value, which is what we look idea is one of the biggest hurdles for for. It’s those criteria that we would apwould-be entrepreneurs. ply,” Pascall says.

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CHRIS CARL Toronto based Chief Executive Officer of ICO Max

For both the prudent ICO investor, and the entrepreneur, it’s no easy ride to success. The democratisation of the investing process through ICOs also means that there’s a bigger variety of investors with different interests.

Within the investor space there are the old institutional investors, who come with large-scale and long-term experience, and the new crypto generation who have a different mindset.

And within the new generation, there are the pump and dump and the hodl investors. The pump and dump want to make a quick buck and the hodlers are in it for the long-term.

Toronto based Chief Executive Officer of ICO Max, Chris Carl, who plans to launch a public securities exchange in August 2018, advises to start off without thinking about the ICO: “think about the company and what they’re developing. The days of quick in and out and not worrying about who bought your token are over.”

“You need a longer-term real plan, you have to have a business that’s scalable and sustainable. “Have a plan as to how you can scale it globally, because we are a global marketplace.”

“You want projects where the token is really built hard-core into the business model. Where, without the token, it doesn’t make that much sense.”

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$300 billion to Reimagine Global Climate Finance $300 billion a year is the price tag for saving the planet. It’s the sum that needs to be pumped into investment in green energy by 2020 to keep global temperatures within a healthy 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. By 2030 this figure will need to rise to $500 billion.

tug-of-war between policy and industry politics, the planet continues to burn.

But climate finance is a domain the world can’t afford to ignore. Globally, the burden of climate change losses is already fast-growing to an unbearable weight that could crush prospects of a peaceful and prosperous future. There’s no doubt that to secure the planet’s future, the current system has got to change.

But the climate finance market remains starkly underfunded, with just $100 The dire state of the climate finance billion a year pledged by developed countries, climate funding barely reach- market prompted Alastair Marke, to set up the Blockchain Climate Insties one-third of necessary levels. tute to “bring together all the like-minded, worldly-conscious fintech talent and International climate funds have been by thought leaders on a common platform bogged down in a quagmire of bureauICO CROWD cracy and inefficiency; stringent accred- to break the logjam and make a genuine, meaningful difference in this era. To that itation requirements for these funds end, he is now the Secretary-General conmakes it difficult for less developed countries to participate; and it can take vening over 60 experts from more than years for a climate change project to re- 20 countries on various fronts of technolceive funding through various interme- ogy transfer-related work within the Institute. “I would like to bring the Blockdiaries. chain discussions, which concentrate on Climate funds also suffer from a ‘trans- the banking sector, to the climate change policy community,” says Marke. parency gap’ with just half of donor countries having complied with the Blockchain innovators are fast making UNFCCC climate finance transparency headway with significant use cases that requirements in 2016 for their climate stand to transform all areas of the outfunding to be trackable. dated climate finance ecosystem and inAnd while the financing of the renewa- frastructure. “Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things are ble energy sector remains trapped in a

set to revolutionise global climate change governance, enabling new solutions to climate finance and green investment. I reckon that we need blockchain and other emerging digital technologies to ‘automate’ these governance systems to administer climate projects smarter and faster. As of today, there is no definitive or universal blockchain system built in this space. To start with, they could facilitate the implementation of the Paris Agreement, especially Articles 6 and 9 on emissions reduction and climate finance respectively,” says Marke.

Blockchain climate finance may be in fledgling stages, but a plethora of new market entrants are driving stark change. The coming decade could see this vision of a universal automated governance system to administer climate projects in fruition.

BLOCKCHAIN INNOVATORS DISRUPT THE MARKET LO3 developed Brooklyn Microgrid, the world’s first blockchain-supported peer-to-peer energy trading system at neighborhood scale.

Electron built a blockchain-based trading platform to facilitate a more liquid, transparent and efficient market for response actions.

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NRG Coin by Enervalis is transforming the way in which both local production and consumption of renewable energy is rewarded by addressing the blind spots of feed-in tariff and net-metering in the prosumer-centric environment.

Marke explained that it can “streamline and accelerate the issuance of carbon credits in China’s emissions trading scheme.” The Russian Carbon Fund and Aera Group (France) pioneered the first international carbon credit transaction using Blockchain technology in DAO IPCI.

With these disruptors driving long overdue changes in the climate finance and investment space, the green energy industry is well on its way to getting a much needed turbocharge.

I would like to bring the BlockAnd Volt Markets built blockchain-enachain discusbled energy management systems that Melbourne-based CleanTek Market is sions, which conexplore new paradigms for the renewa- set to transform international climate ble energy certificates market. finance transfers, providing a smart al- centrate on the gorithm-supported matchmaking plat- banking sector, Combining blockchain with breakform for institutional investors and to the climate through technologies, such as the green project developers. change policy adoption of smart contracts, is set to redefine governance, regulatory The platform marries machine learning, community. structures, and transaction systems in coming decades.

For now, it’s a burgeoning space that’s still on the cutting edge of innovation.

a subset of artificial intelligence, and a package of blockchain services to enhance dealflows - directing private capital to the best-matched green investment projects.

Spring last year was an “iconic season for blockchain in emissions management,” Marke says, as IBM China and the Shanghai-based Energy Blockchain Lab announced the world’s first Blockchain-based carbon asset management platform based on the open-source, openly governed Hyperledger Fabric.

“There is a great deal of innovative enterprises, including Civic Ledger, Power Ledger, and Neocapita, which are doing excellent jobs to considerably improve the way we track climate finance and monitor the performance of climate adaptation or mitigation programmes,” Marke added.

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OBSTACLES TO RENEWABLE ENERGY INVESTMENT In 2010, the overall share of renewable energy in the global energy mix was roughly 18%.

To double this share, an estimated annual investment of $320 billion a year is needed – particularly for solar, hydro and wind technologies. “Currently, renewable energy investment is at ALASTAIR around $154 billion a year – that’s an MARKE investment gap of $166 billion annually. It’s clear that we need to accelerate investments significantly in renewable energy technologies,” says Marke.

With widespread innovation in the climate finance space, what obstacles remain in the way of filling the global renewable energy finance gap? For now, the biggest obstacle is the finance gap - but could this change as rusty old funding systems give way to

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blockchain and AI-powered dealflows for investment projects?

But renewable energy issues go beyond lack of investment; some flagship policy instruments struggle with rewarding prosumers at a rate disproportionate to the actual demand for energy at a particular point of time, which may lead to over-consumption or over-production. Prosumers can be either underpaid or overpaid, the unnecessary costs of which are eventually passed on to end consumers.

WHERE BLOCKCHAIN CAN HELP Lack of trust has been one of the biggest challenges to fighting climate change effectively.

This has cultivated unnecessary bureaucracy in many international climate funds, which some least developed countries, particularly small island states, can’t easily handle in order to get the funding they desperately need, to cope with adverse impacts of climate change.

The trouble with this, Marke explains, is that these mechanisms do not incentivise the consumption of green energy injected in the local grid, but only its production. And neither Net Metering nor Feed-in Tariff considers grid stability and scalability for future scenarios.

Lengthy delays in the disbursement of climate finance have increasingly become a norm. “I would imagine that by the time these aggrieved receive the much-needed funding, the water level will have already got their eyebrows soaked, says Marke.

“Other than large-scale solar or wind farms in which most of the private capital is concentrated,” he says, “there is pressing need to develop aggregation structures by bundling projects for project developers, including those doing replicable small-scale projects in emerging markets for renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

But change is on the horizon. “The Economist rightly says blockchain is a ‘trust machine.’ Blockchain will build trust among nations, without which the conclusion and effective implementation of the climate agreements will become a mission impossible. We can expect that trust is bolstered by the ability actually to see whether or not

your negotiating partners are in fact living up to the emissions reductions and finance commitments of $100 billion a year they have made.”

“With such key features as distributed ledgers and smart contracts, this techI would imis making sure that developed agine that by the nology country governments or private investime these agtors actually provide the funds they grieved receive promise; and ensuring that the funds the much-need- once committed actually get spent on areas that badly need them. The buzed funding, the zword we use to refer to this paradigm water level will of climate change governance these have already got days is: MRV (measurement, reporting and verification), but MRV should their eyebrows be done in a smarter and faster way to soaked. catch up with climate change,” explains ALASTAIR Marke.

MARKE

After governments across the globe have spent 25 years on climate negotiations it’s clear that progress has paled compared to the speed at which the climate is changing. But the blockchain climate finance movement has just begun - a trickle of innovation that is fast chipping away at the dams to enable a flood of green funds to flow into the space.

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Scientific Credibility of dApps, Blockchain and other DLT Technologies Claims Blockchain is still a new technology field with several remaining areas of improvements, for example, reducing the energy consumption of consensus algorithms whilst still keeping attack-resistance or increasing the number of transactions per second.

Unfortunately, many projects claim that they are solving some aspects without giving enough details about their solution for peer-review.

WHY YOU SHOULD LOOK FOR PEER-REVIEWED PROJECTS? Peer-review is a proven method to evaluate scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field. It has been used in academia for centuries. Actually, the current technological shortcomings of blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are so difficult that they are being researched in academia. Without peer-review, a DLT or cryptocurrency project, which only claims to solve one of these issues, doesn't give any proof that its solution really works. Only peer-reviews by independent experts, not involved in the commercial aspects of the project, should be considered trustworthy, otherwise it is merely marketing. For example, on one hand, Cardano is a decentralised application (dApp) development platform that has been peer-reviewed. It is one of the reasons that Coinbase is considering listing Cardano. On the other hand, there are projects, which claim to be dApp development platforms that reach 300 transactions per second but have not been peer-reviewed and such claims 24

The current technological shortcomings of blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are so difficult that they are being researched in academia.

should not be taken seriously until they and the founder of Reputaction, which are peer-reviewed. develops a patent-pending solution for pervasive instant KYC & AML compliGet your project peer-reviewed and ant cryptocurrency transactions, includpresented at the next ACM Sympo- ing Bitcoin and Ether based on hardsium of Applied Computing! ware security modules. The other ProThe Association for Computing Machin- gram Committee (PC) members of that ery (ACM) is one of the most reputed ACM SAC DAPP track are also experts engineering associations in the world in the field of blockchain and DLT from concerning computers. The ACM has or- technology to legal aspects. Submission ganized the yearly Symposium of Apof industrial experience reports, complied Computing (SAC) since 1986. 2019 mercial tools case studies and reports will be the first year that it has a speof innovative computing applications cial track on blockchain, DLT and dApps. with blockchain, DLT and cryptocurrenThat track is organized by Dr. Jean-Marc cies are possible. Thus, if you would like Seigneur, who has published more than to have your blockchain / crypto pro100 scientific papers on attack-resistject peer-reviewed for increased crediant decentralized trust algorithms. Still bility and visibility (it will be published teaching at University of Geneva, he is in the ACM digital library), check out an expert member of the International the following Web page: https://www.

Telecommunication Union (ITU) blockcas-blockchain-certification.com/en/ chain standardization working group acm-sac-dapp-track

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Your Private Retail Currency Fluzcoin as a Protocol for Private Currency and Loyalty on the Blockchain Customers loyalty and retention is a challenge for any business. Among all Fluzcoin benefits for market participants, in this article we want to highlight one of the top-voted Fluzcoin Protocol features in retail world. Fluzcoin is the only coin coming with in-built loyalty points mechanism, which takes form of private currency of a merchant.

Fluzcoin Protocol can enable retailers create their private currency and loyalty coins, used to reward its loyal customers. This money lives on Fluzcoin blockchain in a smart contract layer in form of a token that does not need any funds to move around the network.

While consumers benefit from the next generation Loyalty Platform with openly tradable points / tokens, merchants can get their private currency, with own branding and built-in loyalty mechanics.

WHY INTRODUCE YOUR OWN BLOCKCHAIN CURRENCY? Cryptography, distributed ledger technology and almost universal penetration of Internet made a new breed of currencies. From shells, stones, coins, gold, paper money, digital money in the databases in the banks, to decentralised immutable records accessible from any device connected to the internet.

Fluzcoin blockchain is compatible with the creation of your private currency. You do not need miners, proofIs currency the next thing moving from of-work, hashing being limited, unique and managed algorithms or centrally to a commodity, rewarding inflationary and available to everyone? supply...

PRIVATE PAYMENT AND LOYALTY CURRENCY A private currency is a currency issued by a private entity, be it an individual, a

2 Direct relationship with your customers through the currency 2 No transaction fees, no fraud 2 Deep loyalty - reward your customers with your own currency programmable and customizable on the blockchain Merchants can now issue their team and loyal customers own private coin that might become both currency and store of value.

PROCESS AND RATIONALE Early adopters of crypto currencies are already millions across the globe with billions in transactional volume. Fluzcoin blockchain is compatible with the creation of your private currency. You do not need miners, proof-of-work, hashing algorithms or inflationary supply - Fluzcoin provides conventional smart contracts to mint your coins and easy, cost-free and instant way to use your own money for payment. Unlike commercial business or a non-profit en- any other currency or blockchain you terprise. It is often contrasted with fiat build on top - when you use your currency issued by governments or cen- own currency - it is free! tral banks. Today, there are over four thousand privately issued currencies in STABILITY AS A SERVICE more than 35 countries. These include Once you let your coin to be tradable commercial trade exchanges that use and exchangeable, how do you ensure barter credits as units of exchange, pri- stability of its value? vate gold and silver exchanges, local pa- A peg to stability: per money, computerized systems of 2 Retailer private currency is pegged to credits and debits, and digital currenFluzcoin cies in circulation. Once known under 2 Retailer to back up own coin with “free banking� legislation, now with the Fluzcoin reserve advent of electronic currencies such as 2 Peg ratio configurable from 1:2 to 1:1 the Bitcoin the question of private curto the Fluzcoin rency is renewed.

INTEGRATION BENEFITS Fluzcoin team consist of POS inIndependent from activities of Govfrastructure professionals. Proof of ernment and Central Banks Concepts are discussed for offline, 2 Direct impact on your business online retailers as well as airlines success to your valuation and casinos. The same integration 2 expressed as monetary base of your that powers Fluzcoin can power your private currency private coin.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Empire Cash These days the influence of crypto assets is moving into areas like the hospitality space. Many companies are developing solutions already based on blockchain assets, cryptocurrency Economics and game Theory.

Currently, although there are significant solutions in the market for hotel bookings, none of them offers hotels the option of processing bookings using both fiat and crypto assets. The primary foundation of the hospitality industry is built upon customer service, by JAMES SOWERS an element shared by each segment of the hospitality business. Indeed, each segment focuses on delivering some or all facets of service, which gives entrepreneurs in hospitality a means to generate profits across various organizations. This is where EmpireCash shines.

EmpireCash aims to offer a currency to be used in the hospitality industry, offering an easy-to-use platform for the public and an API for integration with other systems. As a proof-of-concept, we developed the first app that will utilize the platform: Empire App. This app will make it possible for people to book rooms and facilities of hotels using crypto currencies while offering a great discount – and we will only charge the hotel an administration fee.

THE OPPORTUNITY IS HUGE! The food and beverage segment represent the largest percentage of the hos26

pitality marketplace. Business that comprise the segment include exclusive restaurants, fast food dining, caterers, clubs and club management, food processing, retail and distribution. Moreover, the food and beverage category can exist within other commercial establishments like movie theatres, planes and trains, hotels and shopping malls.

Food and beverage complements many commercial trade and dramatically enhances the total satisfaction of a guests experience through first-class customer service and excellent food and drink.

sary accomplishment to garner the attention of the top hotels in the world.

Hotels, bed and breakfast ventures and other types of lodging, are what comprise the accommodations segment.

These can range from five-star hotels, exclusive resorts and luxury inns to campgrounds and youth hostels. Travelers appreciate value as well as efficiency, comfort, useful amenities and thoughtful customer service.

To proactively prevent these types of administrative errors, many hotels invest in a robust Property Management System (PMS). However, if the damage is already done, a common practice is: the staff member apologizes and finds a room for the guest. Many times, they give the guests better suites than the booked ones. Sometimes, when the hotel is full, they offer to book a room in a sister hotel or nearby accommodations and arrange transportation.

The accommodations segment uses specific measurements of success to pinpoint trends in the business. These include: 2 Booking lead time; 2 Length of stay; 2 Cancellation percentage; 2 No-show ratio.

The discipline of hotel revenue management is highly sophisticated, and to achieve success on the global market, an education and degree from a highly respected university with a program in hotel management has become a neces-

EMPIRECASH IS SOLVING… The Double-Booking Problem A nightmare scenario for any hotel manager, the double-booked room or mishandled reservation is a tough but sometimes unavoidable part of the job.

Well-trained staff are more likely to prevent booking errors, but sometimes, one might slip through. So, what do you do when a guest shows up and you don’t have a room available for them?

THE WRONG-DATA PROBLEM Another common problem is when the guest is incorrectly assigned to a non-smoking room when they asked for smoking, or when a highly allergic guest booked on a pet-friendly floor.

Incorrect data can put a great amount of stress on both the customer and the front desk agent or manager.

To handle these mistakes, all managers and staff should be – ideally – well-

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trained in conflict resolution. No matter the complaint, a hotel staff member should always listen, apologize and thank the guest for sharing feedback, but this does not always happen and sometimes errors like this can harm the brand.

rates, so the platform is likely to be sustainable in the long term.

EMPIRECASH DECENTRALIZED ARBITRATION MODULE The main technology behind the blockchain was developed to solve a classical THE COST PROBLEM computational problem: the problem of When booking trips via regular booking double-spending. Before this technoloservices, this can become more expengy, if anyone wanted to digitally transsive than it should be. The charges usu- fer assets to another entity, they should ally sum up to 20%, with a part of this rely on a centralized trust authority. amount discreetly paid by the guest, Thanks to the blockchain structure, this another part paid by the host. The is unnecessary. booking charges can be broken down in By using similar concepts, we present a many parameters. solution for a decentralized and democratic support system from the EmpireEMPIRECASH AS A SOLUTION Cash community, by counting on ranThe EmpireCash project is intended to dom and impartial arbitrators, which give a solution to the aforementioned gives a considerable credibility to the problems. By fueling this platform with process. its own crypto asset, it will be possible to control its market and increase its The process works as follows: value over time. This will turn the plat- 2 Guest or hotel owner starts the Disform asset into a viable investment and pute by sending all the data, they a good currency. must justify their complaining and the refund required (full or partial); The main concern is with the economic 2 Counterpart has two days to accept factor of this platform, that's why sigthe Dispute or present their counnificant researches were conducted to ter arguments with all the necesdefine the right numbers and the right sary data;

Although there are significant solutions in the market for hotel bookings, none of them offers hotels the option of processing bookings using both fiat and crypto assets.

2 After this step, if the counterpart decides to keep the Dispute, 5% of the transaction is reserved as an arbitrary fee, then five random arbitrators are selected from the community and receive the following information: 1 All data provided by both sides; 1 Ratings and dispute-winning-rate for both sides, if applicable; 2 The arbitrators have 2 days to choose from 0% to 100% – in 20% increments – if the Dispute is either fair or not; 2 If there is an impasse, other arbitrators are selected; 2 If it is decided that the dispute is not fair by the majority of arbitrators, the complainer is marked as dispute winner and the counterpart is marked as dispute loser, otherwise the counterpart is refunded, and the parts are marked accordingly; 2 If an arbitrator (a) suggests a percentage below the average of all the other arbitrators (b), the arbitrator (a) will not be counted in the arbitrary fee splitting. The arbitrary fee will be split among all the right analyzers.

Check it out at http://empirehotels.io/

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice or advocates buying any tokens .

Please review their case purely on merit and proceed only if you are convinced or interested. Also, I do not encourage folks from USA, China etc. to invest in an ICO unless they speak to their lawyers. I only support genuine good people doing great in Blockchain innovation.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Exploring The Block FMW Media Works Corp. produces “Exploring the Block” the new program which features the best and brightest in the blockchain industry today!

The show features Docademic the healthcare start-up that offers a form of free basic healthcare for the world and enables scientific research of healthcare data for the masses, which will revolutionize the world by building an AI healthcare supercomputer.

Docademic is currently providing free basic healthcare in over 20 countries through telemedicine, with the aid of blockchain technology. The companies website states “The MEDICAL TOKEN CURRENCY (MTC), allows interaction with the blockchain enabled healthcare by JAMES SOWERS platform currently under development

by Docademic. It enables interested parties to interchange valuable data between them in exchange of a token that is used to acquire services or products.

It encourages the use of the blockchain as a trustful repository for health-related information and motivates the common user to exchange their data for 28

benefits provided by third parties. With the Docademic App we have the chance to have a positive impact on thousands of people around the world.”

Episode #1 featured Docademic CEO Charles Nader demonstrating the App live!

Mr. Nader states, "Docademic is very happy to be featured on the ‘NEW TO THE STREET’ new TV show, ‘Exploring the Block.’ The show’s producers are providing a deep look into the achievable real-world benefits of blockchain technology. The show provides an extraordinary medium which showcases legitimate companies based on facts and real-world examples of Blockchain use and innovation.” https://mtc.docademic.com The show also interviewed Docademic Supporter and 2020 Presidential candidate John McAfee in episode #2. With Docademic making its debut in California, John McAfee now has a worldwide

platform to showcase his vision for not only universal healthcare but for better governance in the United States.

Episode #3 Debuts the blockchain for children project Mission to Reunite Natasha Paracha miss world Pakistan 2008, Berkeley gr aduate and Chairperson of Pakistani Affairs at the United Nations tells the world why she founded Save the Children, who she is partnering with and/or plans to partner with GreaterGoodSociety.org and how blockchain technology can be beneficial in reuniting families that have been separated at the border. Yasmeen Drummond Berkeley graduate founder of Halo VC, Women in Blockchain and Team Block Society also speaks out on why she cofounded the project and about the meaningful relationships among women working in blockchain.

Yasmeen states on the team block society website “We advance women in the industry by spreading their ideas and

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

John McAfee

informing them of new opportunities.

We advocate and push conferences to have a diverse roster and make it easier for them to fill their roster with female speakers by reaching into our network and database. We are also a source of strong female talent for blockchain companies and investors.” https://www.teamblocksociety.com One of their partners is SimplyVital Health The secure new blockchain where patient data and healthcare professionals interact. Founded by the Wonder Woman of health Kat Kuzmeskas, MPH and Lucas Hendren. https://www.simplyvitalhealth.com Exploring The Block is the brainchild of three Successful business men: VINCE CARUSO President of FMW Media Works Corp.

Vince is known in the industry for his laser -like focus. Vince founded New to the Street in 2011.

ADAM BECKER COO of New To The Street, Adam Becker is a sales, marketing and manage-

ment professional with a track record of over 25 years of massive success. His role of Chief Operations Officer allows him to utilize that experience in the development and growth of the sales and marketing departments.

STEPHEN SIMON CO-CEO of New To the Street who has demonstrated a history of successful media production throughout his career and the anchor behind the scenes of Exploring The Block.

The goal of the show is to Showcase, Question & Explore companies changing the way the world uses data and security using Blockchain Technology.

“Exploring the Block” is providing the most up to date news and insight in the world of blockchain technology. The multi-part series will Air Monthly on the Fox Business Network. Exploring The Block is also organizing an event in New York City. The event will feature the best up and coming companies revolutionizing the world today!

The show plans to feature many more upcoming companies such as the most

Docademic is currently providing free basic healthcare in over 20 countries through telemedicine, with the aid of blockchain technology.

secure crypto hardware wallet ever invented. Bitfi Knox hardware wallet founded by DANIEL KHESIN is a breakthrough technology that offers a rare combination of the most advanced security for private and enterprise use and is remarkably simple to use requiring no technology knowledge. With the Bitfi technology your money is safer than in any bank vault on earth and even though it is a sophisticated instrument, operating it is as easy as using an ATM machine. This unprecedented combination of security and user-friendliness is a quantum leap in the way that you can interact with and manage cryptocurrency and other digital assets.

“NEW TO THE STREET” and “Exploring the Block” TV broadcasts on the Fox Business Network reaching up to 95 million homes. FMW Media Works Corp.’s “NEW TO THE STREET” is a leading provider of business profiles and special corporate programming.

Stay up to date http://exploringtheblock.com

Disclosure: The author is an advisor to both Docademic and Exploring The Block.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice or advocates buying any tokens .

Please review their case purely on merit and proceed only if you are convinced or interested. Also, I do not encourage folks from USA, China etc. to invest in an ICO unless they speak to their lawyers. I only support genuine good people doing great in Blockchain innovation.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Five Tips to Make Your Airdrop A Success Crypto follows no rules, regulations, or constructs of the typical market. It has its own mind, own systems, own set of ethics, and own ecosystem. In the world of crypto, we have concepts such as airdrops. It’s actually giving away free money.

The simplest version of an airdrop is where a user has to register with some basic details and give his Ethereum (or relevant coin) wallet address, and voila!

Within a few weeks, the tokens will be in your wallet. by ICO CROWD

Some airdrops are a bit more sophisticated. Project X is a hard fork of Project Y. Project X wants to distribute free tokens to increase awareness. As project X is a fork of project Y, they decide to take a snapshot of project Y’s blockchain (balances of all users) The airdrop tokens for project X will be equally distributed among the token holders of project Y. At last, we have ‘holder airdrops’. To apply for this type of airdrop, all you need to do is to hold the airdrop related crypto asset at a specific time (which is called a snapshot) and you will receive the new coins. Mostly, they take

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a snapshot of one of the bigger blockchains like Ethereum, Stellar, NEO, …

Let’s take a look at the following tips.

1. USE TELEGRAM Instead of using extra tools, keep it simple and reward new users with some free tokens. It’s not difficult to create software that monitors your Telegram for new users and sends them some of your project’s tokens. It also leads to users inviting friends via referral links.

An automated system eliminates any scope for human error during the process and creates a more seamless system.

2. USER-FRIENDLY Consumers know the value of their data, and with ethics and regulation under the spotlight recently (looking at General Data Protection Regulations in Europe), it’s important to take the privacy of your participants into consideration. Airdrop registration should be a simple task with minimal input of personal data required.

3. REWARD ENGAGEMENT Gabriele Giancola, CEO of blockchain-powered loyalty ecosystem Qiibee, explains her concept of a progres-

sive airdrop model, “the model includes participants getting the opportunity to earn more tokens through engagement. This gives control to participants and acknowledges their interactions and milestones, which is invaluable in building trust”.

4. MONITOR SPAM You don’t want to publish and receive a lot of spam because of your airdrop.

Managing community channels such as Telegram during the airdrop process often means dealing with increased volumes of spam and trolling. This can be detrimental to your credibility and have a negative impact on engaged participants contributing to the conversation.

Using anti-spam and anti-abuse policies in conjunction with sentiment detecting and text recognition technology are simple ways of maintaining high-quality discussions.

5. EARN.COM A disadvantage of ‘just’ doing an airdrop is the fact that you are targeting random individuals. It’s a good idea for increasing awareness among investors, however, you want to maximize the returns of your airdrop. By ‘just’ doing an airdrop, you are mostly targeting bounty hunters and smaller investors.

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What if you have an ICO that is building a new smart contract platform for developers. Projects can now use Earn. com to pay large groups of people in specific categories to fill out surveys, respond to emails, or do more complex tasks.

Here are a few examples: • Market Research: Send a paid survey to hundreds of JavaScript developers to validate a new smart contract platform.

• ICOs: Mass email thousands of digital currency investors with details on a new ICO to find buyers.

• Community Growth: Ask thousands of investors to join your Telegram channel and ask interesting questions about the project.

Earn.com is quite unique as they combine large curated groups of verified users, software to send them tasks, and a way to quickly pay them for completed tasks. This combination can speed up community growth dramatically for ICOs. To give you an example, with a budget of $15,000 we were able to grow our Telegram channel by an additional 5000 developers, paying $3 per person.

A simple, non-targeted message costs you $1, which is the cheapest service on the platform.

According to Earn.com, projects see response rates in the range of 4050%, with 90% of respondents usually replying within 24 hours. For reference, these numbers are very high relative to the 1.7% response rate of traditional cold emails.

PROBLEMS WITH AIRDROPS So-called bounty hunters will try to maximize profits from your ICO project without even investing themselves.

The original goal of an airdrop program is receiving ‘free’ marketing, or other tasks that benefit the project. Perhaps early on, this was a very effective marketing tool.

Nowadays, people falsely see bounty programs as a way of getting easy money, to be sold as soon the token gets listed. This has a negative effect on the long-term token holders as the price of the token immediately drops because of these short-term gold seekers.

In addition, these short-term cash-grabbers do not even visit the project’s website for a prolonged peri-

od of time, let alone read their whitepaper, and lack much, if any, understanding of the project. These types of people are toxic to blockchain startup communities and contribute no value to them, unless “when moon” is the type of question you like to read twenty times per day in your Telegram.

Serious ICO investors often decide to wait for the ICO to end so they can grab some cheap tokens when the bounty sell-off happens. This is not good for ICOs as more and more ICOs struggle to reach their targets.

TO SUM UP A cryptocurrency airdrop appears to be a very interesting promotional tool.

Watch out for bounty hunters as they can ruin a project’s initial token price by massively selling (dumping) the token as soon as it is listed for secondary market trading. Nowadays, it’s not a bad idea to use a more controlled airdrop model or use a service like Earn. com which turns out to be a very effective marketing tool for targeting users and growing your community.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Blockchain Security Penetration Testing

Many new blockchains are being created, but what about the security aspects?

Blockchain is claimed to be ultra-secure, and not many people have doubted this statement. Blockchain developers can become quite creative in building new platforms, but, leaving room for errors, which is normal.

In addition, modern software development, especially in the ICO space, is firmly focused on speed. The race to be first in the market is extremely competitive. To innovate, companies develop at breakneck pace, quickly establishing feedback loops that allow them to hone by their software. Security, however, is ofMICHIEL MULDERS ten an afterthought for stressed developers and the business people pushing them to deliver results faster.

Blockchain Security Testing CONSENSUS ALGORITHM TESTING The consensus algorithm is maybe the most crucial part of the blockchain as it enforces trust. It is responsible for determining if data is valid or not. A Proof of Work algorithm is, for exam32

ple, vulnerable to a 51% attack where an attacker gains 51% of the network nodes by GPU mining.

For the Bitcoin network, this is theoretically possible, however, in practice, it would be very costly. A website called 51crypto.app has calculated the theoretical cost of a 51% attack on several networks that implement Proof of Work.

Note that the attack cost does not include the block rewards that the miner will receive for mining. In some cases, this can be quite significant, and reduce the attack cost by up to 80%.

can test this by performing a brute force and dictionary attack to crack the password. A weak password policy can be detected if the passwords can be cracked within a couple of minutes.

2. KEY STORAGE REVIEW While blockchain technology secures data in transit from place to place using cryptography, the private key becomes vulnerable to theft when it is stored or displayed at one end or the other – whether that is on a piece of paper, screen, disk, in memory or in the cloud.

To keep digital assets and private keys safe, most people currently use software called hot wallets or multi-sigPRIVATE KEYS (WALLETS) nature wallets, but these solutions are All nodes contain software that can ac- driven more by convenience than secess users’ wallets using its private key curity. Hardware wallets (cold wallets), and password. It’s very important to se- such as Trezor, were designed to offer cure this part of the node as it can give a higher level of private key security, access to the coins a user owns. There but even these solutions are vulneraare two mechanisms to make this more ble to various hacks, including fault insecure. jections.

1. PASSWORD STRENGTH REVIEW In case an attacker is able to retrieve the private key of a user, they will need a password to access the wallet. The password strength is crucial here. We

A hacker can inject malicious code that introduces an error in your wallet in order to alter the software execution. For example, the attacker can leak your private key or bypass security checks.

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Name

Algorithm

Hash Rate

1h Attack Cost

Bitcoin

SHA-256

34,116 PH/s

$476,262

Ethereum

Ethash

221 TH/s

$368,535

Litecoin

Scrypt

304 TH/s

$59,606

Bitcoin Cash

SHA-256

5,643 PH/s

$78,771

Bytecoin

Ethash

494 MH/s

$657

Zcash

Equihash

560 MH/s

$57,687

Bitcoin Gold

Equihash

29 MH/s

$3,024

PACcoin

X11

8 TH/s

$59

However, a very secure key storage does not guarantee user safety. Today, hackers commonly target online services that store the private keys for a large number of users or infect network participants with a malware that searches for private keys.

try to become more scalable by implementing a redundancy factor of 3. This means that each piece of data has three copies in the network. On the other side, there is a bigger chance that an attacker can take down the nodes which contain the copies of the data.

Modern software SYNCHRONISATION TESTING TIMEJACKING ATTACK It is important to test synchronisation Sometimes, the attacker announces an development, especially in the between nodes and how the application inaccurate timestamp while connectis polling the blockchain for synchroing to a node for a transaction. The net- ICO space, is nisation updates. This process should work time counter of the node is alfirmly focused be fast and efficient. What happens if tered by the attacker and the deceived on speed. The we push multiple transactions to the node may accept an alternate blockrace to be first blockchain that all affect the same obchain. The serious consequences of ject state? And what happens if the this are double-spending and wastage in the market synchronisation fails on a certain node? of computational resources during the is extremely mining process. competitive.

REDUNDANCY TESTING This testing should reveal any issues with redundantly sharing data across nodes. We need to evaluate the impact of multiple nodes failing at the same moment. Some blockchain networks

BLOCKCHAIN API TESTING The endpoints of a blockchain are critical, as users will be interacting with the blockchain via this API. There are many dApps that hook the Ethereum block-

chain API to work properly. As we mentioned in the beginning of this article, injection is the most common security issue. We need to make sure the blockchain API endpoints are not vulnerable to this attack as this would allow an attacker to insert malicious data which can lead to data corruption or even halting the network.

DDOS ATTACK A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is a resource intensive attack.

The idea is to send a large number of similar requests that change the same object state. The goal is to clog the nodes’ memory, corrupt the data or prevent other users from adding transactions to a block as the block size is often limited.

Many blockchains have built-in mechanisms to prevent this like prioritizing transactions that are sent with a fee or requesting a minimal amount to be transferred.

THE BOTTOM LINE Blockchain penetration testing is still a very new field, but is highly needed. Blockchain code is still in its infancy and may be subject to currently unknown security vulnerabilities. In particular, the Ethereum smart contract language is relatively new and there may be vulnerabilities such as a zero day attack, which hackers may exploit.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Proof of Location FOAM - The Future of Geospatial Data Let’s introduce FOAM, a project that has been ongoing for two years and is coming out of stealth mode. FOAM has developed a new kind of protocol - Proof of Location (PoL).

FOAM is an open protocol for geospatial data markets on the Ethereum blockchain.

TRUST ISSUES IN TODAY’S GEOLOCATION TOOLS Brandon Goblirsch, community manager at Foam.space, explains the current issues with geolocation tools, “Today’s geolocation tools cannot offer reliable and trusted location verification serby ICO CROWD vices. It is problematic to rely on GPS for smart contracts that need to execute when spatial parameters are met.

It is possible for attackers to spoof other people’s GPS devices and it is trivial to fake a device’s location on the client side.”

GPS has some other limitations: It requires at least four beacon signals to be overhead, which makes indoor localization nearly impossible. Urban density and skyscrapers also cause difficul34

ties in receiving four messages and the issue of multi-path signals occurs within the vicinity of high rise buildings.

Further, for a device, it can take multiple minutes to acquire an accurate coordinate. When it comes to power consumption, GPS is a drain on the battery and is not feasible for low powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Many children (and adults) made use of geolocation spoofers in order to play Pokemon Go in cities like Melbourne or New York where you could catch Pokemons anywhere around you.

FOAM PROTOCOL PROOF OF LOCATION FOAM uses three consensus mechanisms at different levels of the protocol to ensure maximum efficiency. Synchronous, partially synchronous, and asynchronous. The asynchronous root chain in FOAM is being developed on Ethereum but the protocol is agnostic and someday something else could be used if necessary. Each local Zone maintains semi-synchronization via a shared state machine running on Ten-

dermint/Cosmos for Proof of Authority. Lastly, the time synchronization protocol is used to triangulate the position of the requesting device.

In addition, FOAM uses a special Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) synchronization protocol. In typical geolocation systems, the location of each node is known (GPS satellite trajectory is known and calculated by the location requesting device). However, in FOAM each node is a user-submitted and maintained node. Therefore, we need a BFT sync protocol to ensure each Zone can be trusted.

There are two types of nodes in the FOAM protocol. Zone Authorities maintain a shared state machine, where their clocks are periodically synced with other Zone Authorities in the Zone, and publish their time logs to the network, where Verifiers check for fraud.

Zone Anchors keep their clocks synchronized with their respective Zone Authority. Each node in a Zone can communicate with other Zone Anchors

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and Zone Authorities to locate its position in the Zone through trilateration (the same process that GPS uses and somewhat similar to the more common term - triangulation). With each node's location in the Zone known, the network can determine the location of a requesting device and sign a transaction to prove that the device was at a particular location and when it was at this location.

PROS AND CONS The FOAM protocol provides a reliable protocol layer for others to use and build on top of. It allows accurate positioning and location validation, eliminating location spoofer tools for games like Pokemon. Thanks to crypto-spatial coordinates (CSC) smart contracts can use CSC as a reliable source for geospatial data and make immutable claims to this address.

CRYPTO-SPATIAL COORDINATES FOAM Crypto-Spatial Coordinates (CSC) are Ethereum smart contract addresses with corresponding addresses positioned in physical space that are verifiable both on- and off-chain.

This allows for physical addresses in the built environment to have a corresponding smart contract address that is accessible for decentralized applications. The protocol uses the geohash standard as a basis for this construction because of its conceptual and mathematical simplicity. Another benefit of the geohash standard is that it is in the public domain.

On the other side, Brandon Goblirsch explained that the ideal hardware for the protocol is Low-power Wide-area Radio Networks. “This technology is brand new and has not been implemented in smartphone devices yet.

However, our protocol is hardware agnostic and could instead be used with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi networks. There are several LPWAN hardware providers competing to be the standard, and in time this technology will be integrated into next-gen smartphones. Until then, if you want to use a smartphone in an LPWAN Proof of Location Zone, you would need some sort of cheap phone dongle.”

A CSC allows any smart contract to make an immutable claim to an address on the blockchain and the corresponding location on the map. It can as well be used for smart contracts that rely on geospatial (event) data and need a trusted source for this data.

FOAM PROTOCOL USE CASES • The New York Stock Exchange uses GPS to time automated computer trades and ATMs and credit card transactions require location data.

• The electrical grid relies on GPS syn-

FOAM Crypto-Spatial Coordinates (CSC) are Ethereum smart contract addresses with corresponding addresses positioned in physical space that are verifiable both on- and off-chain.

chronized time stamps to deliver electricity without causing power surges.

• Trusted, decentralized “street view” http://mapdapp.com plans on implementing FOAM Proof of Location.

• A decentralized, trusted crowdsourced weather data aggregation network that uses FOAM positioning.

COMPETITOR - PLATIN.IO Platin is a Proof-of-Location protocol which allows one to determine the location of an individual through activity recorded and shared with smartphones or other devices. The Platin network has nodes that report the location of devices in their region. Thus, with the information that is recorded, it becomes possible to determine where the device and the one holding it is. Since it uses a blockchain, the data is secure and immutable, providing for an authentic location service.

Platins solution is not really focused on providing an accurate and verified location, but more about recording someone’s location in order to use it as proof later on that he/she has visited a certain location. The different nodes will register the location of the device they are tracking and synchronize it across other nodes, in order to use it for a claim later on.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Introducing MEDIA Protocol

Paradigm shifts don’t happen often.

It’s a rare occasion indeed when something — an idea, a concept, an invention — positively changes the long-established, socially-accepted, way of by thinking or behaving.

MEDIA PROTOCOL

The printing press. Automation. The Internet.

These are a few key examples of pioneering concepts that pushed the limits of what was believed possible. They enhanced commercial productivity and output, greatly improving quality of life, and gave people the ability to create, access and record information on a scale never-before-seen.

source of income, if nurtured and cared for, could potentially become a repeated source of income.

Of course, this is a rather mercenary, capitalist analogy. There are a myriad of other reasons why brands have a vested interest in looking after consumers.

Crowdsourcing.

This isn’t a new concept.

It’s simply a new term to describe a practice that has been going on since the dawn of humanity: sharing.

And yet, as rare as these moments are, Brands crowdsource conwe are about to witness a new paradigm stantly. They gather data shift in the digital content ecosystem. and information on their customers. They listen to BRANDS CARE ABOUT their opinions, ideas and CONSUMERS criticisms. They share in It may not seem this way sometimes, each other’s successes. but brands care deeply about consum- And all with the simple ers. They have to. Consumers are po- goal of driving improvetential customers and potential cusments, innovation and setomers are a source of income. This curing longevity.

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It’s a rare occasion indeed when something — an idea, a concept, an invention — positively changes the longestablished, socially-accepted, way of thinking or behaving.

CONSUMERS CARE ABOUT GOOD BRAND RELATIONSHIPS The relationship between brands and consumers favours the consumer. And brands know this. It may be cliché, but the old idiom “the customer is always right” serves to remind brands of the need to win consumers over.

Everyone likes to feel valued. That’s why brands offer loyalty schemes and discounts to their “valued customers”. Consumers care about maintaining a good relationship with the brands they love. They are always on the lookout for a brand they can trust; somebody that will value them and treat them well, and that they can rely on, time and again. Because, after all, they are going to be parting with their hardearned cash, so they better gain and enjoy a qual-

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

ity experience out of the transaction, otherwise they won’t be coming back in a hurry.

CONSUMERS CARE ABOUT CONTENT Content: The word itself is an interesting one. On the one hand it can mean “information”, and on the other it can describe a “sense of satisfaction or happiness”. These two definitions of the word (information and satisfaction) when coupled together, summarise consumer attitudes and behaviour towards brands and advertising in the digital era.

Consumers are looking for more now.

They are looking for stories. Experiences. Emotional engagement.

Consumers really do care about content.

And this is becoming increasingly more apparent. Traditional methods of advertising are no longer having the impact they once had. Consumers are savvy.

They’ve seen it all before. They’ve wised up to the sales-pitch and aren’t buying it.

As a result, brands have shifted their approach towards creating the content

that their customers love and would like to engage with. Articles. Videos.

Photos. Audio. Competitions. Branded content. This is the new model.

ly, that’s what has caused the problems we’ve recently borne witness to — taking the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal as a prime example.

At any rate, it’s the current model. And although it’s working, insofar as consumers are engaging with the content being distributed, it’s inefficient.

Brands are not getting the full return on the amount of time, effort, energy and money they are investing in creating and distributing their content. They get data. They are able to analyse it and identify patterns and trends in the interactions their target audience have with the content they are publishing.

But they’re not getting the full picture.

In the past, people didn’t seem to know or understand the technologies they were using. They just jumped on the bandwagon, along with everyone else and marvelled excitedly at what they were able to do with all this new and exciting tech. Ironically, the change in consumer attitude, behaviour and understanding has occurred thanks to these behemoth content delivery platforms. People read more, watch more, listen more and they share a lot more.

Things go viral. Knowledge and understanding has grown exponentially. You can’t hide in plain sight anymore.

It’s time to hand over the reins to the creators and the publishers. It’s their content after all. Why shouldn’t they choose to reward the end user Why? Because there’s a huge asymmewho interacts try in the market. rather than THE ROLE OF THE INTERMEDIARY a third party Here’s the catch. And it’s hardly a reve- “middleman”. lation. The current content distribution ecosystem is dominated by centralised platforms whose business model is to not share consumer interactions with the creators of content or brands. They want to control that information. It’s where their value lies. And ultimate-

As a result, the system these platforms created is also what is holding them back and causing people to re-evaluate what is important to them.

From a content creator’s point of view, this is troubling. As creators they rely on these centralised distribution networks.

Not because they want to, but because, until now, there hasn’t been a better al37

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

EXPERIENCE MEDIA PROTOCOL IN ACTION MEDIA Protocol’s dApp CryptoCatnip is a live use case which demonstrates the protocol in action. A news aggregator that serves up global crypto news as well as updates and announcements from MEDIA Protocol’s partnership projects, CryptoCatnip allows users the chance to earn real MEDIA Tokens (MPT) for interacting with the crypto content they already love. The CryptoCatnip reward bounty is still ongoing. Download CryptoCatnip for iOS and Android now for the opportunity to earn real MPT up until the end of MEDIA Protocol’s TGE. ternative. They have to rely on these platforms to publish and distribute their content. And, most importantly, they rely on them for the performance data used to track the success of their campaigns.

If you consider the fact that the Internet allowed these content distribution platforms to exist and grow, then blockchain is going to allow them to evolve. The natural next step in this evolutionary process is one that moves away from centralised powers who control, share and potentially distort personal information. It’s an evolutionary step towards complete transparency, security and openness that rewards true engagement with content.

That’s the paradigm shift that we are striving to create at MEDIA Protocol. We’re creating a scalable economic foundation that ensures directness, transparency, security and value for the consumer.

It’s time to hand over the reins to the creators and the publishers.

It’s their content after all. Why shouldn’t they choose to reward the end user who interacts rather than a third party “middleman”.

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For more information regarding MEDIA Protocol find us on our social channels below: Website: www.mediaprotocol.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MEDIAProtocol Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEDIA_Protocol LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/media-protocol/ Telegram: https://t.me/Media_Protocol_Community and https://t.me/MP_Announcements Medium: https://medium.com/@mediaprotocolsm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MEDIAProtocol

“A potential way of positioning MEDIA Protocol is asking someone, ‘Do you have a favourite content creator out there? How would you feel if they could no longer create content because they couldn’t sustain themselves?’ MEDIA Protocol is the answer. It’s pretty much as simple as that. It makes consumers’ lives better.”

lost and relationships have been broken it can only be rebuilt through transparency and openness.

People are understandably sceptical about the way their data is handled by the online platforms they subscribe to. Users are apprehensive about engaging with content online. And no matter how many updates to privacy policies consumers receive, there will still EUGENE KAN, be concerns about the safety and Partner at TLDR Capital security of their data and personal and Co-Founder of MAEKAN profile information.

It is clear that the current content monopoly held by centralised media owners and content distribution platforms is inefficient and unsustainable. Increasingly, creators, publishers and consumers alike desire more control and transparency. They wish to create, distribute, and consume content equitably, with no intermediary gatekeeper. MEDIA Protocol will facilitate this.

publishing and distribution industry in a very succinct manner:

Eugene Kan, Partner at TLDR Capital and Co-Founder of MAEKAN, explains the impact MEDIA Protocol will have on the content

BRINGING CLARITY TO THE FLOW OF DATA Transparency is fundamental to trust. And when trust has been

“A potential way of positioning MEDIA Protocol is asking someone, ‘Do you have a favourite content creator out there? How would you feel if they could no longer create content because they couldn’t sustain themselves?’ MEDIA Protocol is the answer. It’s pretty much as simple as that. It makes consumers’ lives better.”

For us, it’s simple. There shouldn’t be clandestine algorithms, or secretive relationships conducted behind closed doors with these centralised data hoarders.

The system should be out in the open, for everyone to see and to understand. MEDIA Protocol allows smart URLs to be used for direct exchanges and interactions in a new direct economy between producer and consumer.

This new economy sees content creators reward their consumers directly with incentives, for example, creating a direct channel

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

to promote content through consumption incentives, and in return, consumers can use their earned incentives — in the form of our native cryptocurrency, MEDIA tokens (MPT) — to directly unlock paywalled content or reward favoured content creators.

The current system allows you to pay a third party to distribute your content, in the hope of getting results.

You don’t really know how it works, you don’t know where it is happening, or how often it’s being served and interacted with. The truth is you know very little. And what you do Over the years we’ve seen the massive know is provided by the third party changes in media channels and the rethat is only too happy to charge you sulting shift of advertising spend. From for the pleasure.

Newspaper to Radio, Radio to Television, Television to Online and Online What’s the big secret? Why can’t we to Influencers. The next step is from see the raw data? Why can’t we analyse creators to consumers directly. It’s time what actually happened and see where, to disintermediate the exchange prowho, how and when our content was cess and the value chain. consumed and engaged with?

We’re freeing creators, distributors, promoters and ultimately the consumers from the third-party intermediaries and their secretive and centralised algorithms. We offer a completely open and transparent ecosystem with unencumbered, multi-directional exchange of value, rewards and data, allowing content creators and advertisers the ability to know where their content is being served, engaged with, shared and ultimately allowing them to reward those real consumers for their interactions.

MEDIA Protocol uses blockchain to bring clarity to the flow of data around a piece of content.

With MEDIA Protocol you can! It’s that simple. If we can take away the secrecy, the control, the urgent need to hoard everything in one centralised and controlled environment, we can give way to a disintermediated environment. We can open up the flow of information.

Content creators and consumers both have the right to know.

DIRECT REWARDS What could happen in a world where real consumers were rewarded for real interaction and engagement, instead of content creators paying a “toll” to the third-party intermediary gatekeepers?

This new economy sees content creators reward their consumers directly with incentives [...].

Imagine the budgets that are spent on international advertising for major brands and global content creators. Imagine taking that money and rewarding the consumers directly. Imagine how that ecosystem would look and feel.

For the content creators, the shift is monumental. No more paying for impressions or clicks. There would be real rewards for real engagement.

In return, consumers get the brand relationships they are searching for.

They get the content the care about.

More importantly, the consumer is suddenly rewarded for their real interaction with that content (likes, shares, reads), in the form of MEDIA tokens, which can be used to unlock paywalls, reward content creators directly based on merit or for additional content subscriptions.

Suddenly both sides of the ecosystem are incentivised to be involved with each other directly.

This is the paradigm shift. A new ecosystem where consumers are rewarded for their role in the network, and for the data they create for brands.

This is MEDIA Protocol.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

From Lorry Driver to Crypto Investor If there’s one thing the crypto and blockchain age has made mainstream, perhaps it’s a widespread recognition of the truly fluid nature of money and the ease with which money can be created with the right mix of tools and ingredients.

“I ended up having to take a month off work without pay that nearly result-ed in losing the house and getting into debt.

The public has woken up to new investing opportunities and is hungry for a chance to make money work for them, as they tire of insignificant percent-age increases on their bank savings.

His journey into entrepreneurship began with a foray into network market-ing, but he soon found that it wasn’t the right match, as “health care aloe products with a saturated market just didn’t work.”

by ICO CROWD

For Wayne Lewin, a lorry driver who was more than ready for change, hitching his wagon to investing opportunities heralded by the blockchain era, has brought more than a new lease on life.

“See, as a wagon driver you’re just a bum in a seat, a number, and that’s how I was treated. So, I went in search of something for me,” Lewin said.

When he came across Kuvera, a company offering crypto mining, trading, and investment opportunities, he says, “it suited me to the ground.”

“The driving force behind me wanting In the past, quality investment opportuto be an entrepreneur was an acci-dent nities and expert investing advice have in the wagon I had 2 years ago,” he says. often been reserved for high net worth clients, but this is changing.

“On my way to Tyne, a car driver who was on his phone ran into my wagon at New market entrants are rushing to fill 90 mph and nearly killed himself. the void as firms offering better re-turns than the banks enter the market in full “I was injured in the accident, but work force. made me stay with the wagon and sleep in it overnight until I had driving time And it’s about time that suppliers recto be able to make it back home. ognise and capitalise on the surplus of 40

public demand waiting to be filled. enlightening Lewin says, “we started on the 14th of December and six months later we moved to France and gave up our jobs.”

With no prior knowledge of how the crypto industry worked, Lewin and his partner delved into the world of blockchain, crypto mining and trading.

Things kicked off for Lewin in the New Year, “we bought our first mining pack and got some really good results, so we decided to compound the packs adding a new pack every month to a point where we were making nearly $2,000 a month from it.

“I’d always had a bit of an interest in crypto and investments but just no idea where to start, so Kuvera who I’m with now, gave ordinary people ac-cess to products and investments that ordinary people could use to make money without having to learn to trade or be an expert.”

He says Kuvera also offer a crypto bonus where you can get paid for ad-vising people on the benefits of different packs.

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

would have to change, he became a bus driver; “so I could earn more to provide for my family.

“We never had a lot of money, but we were happy. We bought our first home - a little two-bedroom house with no heating - but we loved it.

“Although, of course, you always want better, so I scored a job driving a concrete mixer which was amazing money.

It led me to go for my class 1 license for wagons with trailers. My last job ever was delivering to home bargains stores.

But now I’ve handed my notice and have never looked back,” he says.

So with his imminent success and a new life in the South of France, what’s his best advice for others looking for opportunities in the crypto space?

“Do your research and plenty of it. Kuvera is one of only two companies in the world to be on the blockchain, fully audited, and on the New York stock exchange.”

The metrics for success in the investing and crypto space are much the same as they are when setting out to build a business in any industry, Lewin says it takes “consistency, as results only come from constantly im-proving your knowledge and skills in helping others.

“I now show and teach a large team of people the skills I’ve learnt to help them earn the same sort of life I have.

“We now have over a hundred people in our team for which we get paid a residual income every month alongside the mining, bonuses and forex alerts we receive.

“We now live in France, in the countryside, with no neighbours or roads, and the peace and quiet is unbelievable at helping to make you feel grounded. We now have deer in the garden and owls nesting in the barn. We’re not stuck in traffic and in the rat race.”

The public has woken up to But life wasn’t always like this, Lewin’s “We have guys in our team working background had always been in the driv- new investing their way out of their jobs as we speak, ing and transport industry, “following in opportunities so the satisfaction of helping others get my dad’s footsteps you might say. and is hungry the same as we have is awe-some,” Lewfor a chance to in says.

“My dad was a driving instructor, so he make money taught me to drive, my first job was dework for them, Launching into the world of crypto, he livering hire cars for Alamo rent a car says, has changed not just his life, but his which was amazing at 17,” Lewis exas they tire of mindset: “the self-development alone has plains. insignificant changed me into a strong minded, motipercent-age vated person who didn’t exist before all “After a few months of doing that, I wantthis. ed to work my way up to get a full license increases on “I’ve read more books and attended more to drive everything, so I started on small their bank training than I ever did at school because vans delivering butchers supplies, which savings. this excites me.

“Having likeminded people around also helps as there’s no negativity any-where in my life now.”

But the biggest life change, he says, has come through having financial freedom to “come and go as I please and work my business around my life and not the other way around.

is still one of my favourite previous jobs.

The guys were brilliant fun and I had a wagon to myself to drive around.

“It was at that point,” he says, “I met the woman who is now my ex and mother to my two boys.”

But with a small family and a modest wage, financial pressures meant his path

“It also takes determination to solve problems and not let things get in your way, there’s always a solution for everything if you’re willing to look for it.

You have to take responsibility for your own work ethic as “no one is there to push you on or set your targets, it’s down to you.

“People skills also come into it, having to motivate and pass on knowledge in a way that another person will get the most from it.

“Having belief in yourself is a massive importance as the more you believe you will succeed the more it tends to happen,” Lewin says.

And while he’s learnt thousands of lessons over the course of his journey into entrepreneurship and crypto investing, he says the most important thing for him, “is that I’ve gone from having no real drive and determination to be successful, to being just that, and loving my passion for being the best at what I do.

“I’ve realised I can do so much more than I ever thought I could, I don’t see problems anymore, just a way of finding solutions.”

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

The Internet of Tokens

Scanetchain: Blockchain and AR Unite

with ALEX LIGHTMAN

The Internet of Tokens is an ICO Crowd column that offers a broader longer-term view for both Blockchain industry professionals and for a wider audience interested in understanding the market, regulatory and other forces behind the prices that are making headlines, written by an award-winning and Amazon bestselling author.

— How can AR and Blockchain work together?

Blockchain and Augmented Reality are two very unique technologies as we know already, and not necessarily seen as an obvious combination, however, the way we have aligned these two technologies together is quite unique in that the AR is used as the method of content capture and delivery, while blockchain is used to secure the ownership and provenance of the content.

Blockchain also enables the creation of a token economy that allows content producers and consumers to reward and incentivize based on the activities within our ecosystem.

— What is Scanetchain’s perspective of AR? Scanetchain perspective of AR is that visual technologies should be enablers in our daily lives, most AR has been used for entertainment and fun which is of big value, but we believe it should be a catalyst technology to simplify our lives.

— What is a Marker and what is matching data?

A marker is an image or content that can be scanned. It can really be anything, a logo, face, product or building.

Basically, anything you can take a picture of can be a marker.

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Matching data is the content, link or action that can be associated with the marker. Matching data can be anything that a content producer would like to show or share with people.

Users do not have to download AR content which can cause storage issues on their device, as well as affect the data charges.

We stream all content directly.

— Why is Scanetchain an AR Blockchain Platform?

What is unique about our service is that it is not just an app or dapp. It is a platform that can directly tie in through API’s into legacy systems and databases to enable the AR based functions that our service enables, we also have a cloud streaming infrastructure that is part of the service that reduces the stress on devices. Users do not have to download AR content which can cause storage issues on their device, as well as affect the data charges. We stream all content directly. The service also allows all users to contribute content that can be scanned and viewed by others, it is a multi-directional platform.

— How do you position your business in relation to relevant services?

We are a platform company that provides a service that enables people to use their mobile device to search by scanning. It is also a decentralized service where anyone can upload and share relevant searchable content. Our plat-

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OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS • INTERNET OF TOKENS

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form is also able to connect through to other legacy advertising or commerce platforms acting as an enabler. The fact that we built the service as a platform and that the decentralization enables open access to the masses is what sets us apart from other services that may share similar business cases.

— What role does blockchain play in your business?

Blockchain plays a big part in the service, since the main part of the service is about uploading and creating content for others to view and access, protection of the content and provenance of the content is important. Through a service in NEM called Apostille, users can Notarize the content which essentially is registering the ownership of that content, where the time/date of registration and ownership information is stored on the immutable ledger protecting the rights and ownership around that content.

We also utilize the tokenization functions in Blockchain to enable a token economy that allows both content producers and consumers to reward and incentivize each other for the quality of content. Advertisers, brands and pro-

ducers can incentivize users that view their content, users who view content can also reward producers, it is a twoway system.

We use a consensus algorithm called “Proof of Activity” where all interaction within our ecosystem is rewarded with SWC tokens which can then be used within the platform. Token holders can use the tokens for rewards/incentives with our partners such as discounts on products and services that can be used within the ecosystem to enable extended use of the AR marker and Matching data functions.

— What is the ecosystem of Scanetchain?

The ecosystem is a Hybrid model that includes on-chain and off-chain components, built on the NEM Blockchain.

We enable a decentralized ecosystem of content producing, sharing, rewarding and consuming.

— How does Tokenization work?

All users have the ability to use and share their tokens from a utility standpoint where they will need to use SWC to upload markers and matching data, they will also be able to use SWC as a reward-

ing/incentivization mechanism while interacting with others and content.

Demand for resources from the battery industry are making many existing and potential mining projects profitable...

— How long will it take for users to utilize Tokens?

We are building on the NEM Blockchain. We anticipate that this build will be complete by February 2019. We have already started the development of the off-chain components which consists primarily of the AR based functions so once that is fully configured we will implement the on-chain build. Users will be able use their tokens within the ecosystem at that time.

— What are the next steps to your business?

We just launched our crowd sale on Aug.10, we launched a public open beta Android app at the end of June, and will launch the iOS version in Sept. At the end of the crowd sale we will list the SWC token on 3 exchanges that we have already confirmed and from there we will start the commercial business operations where we will start to deliver in our use cases to partners and customers, all while we finalize the NEM Blockchain build. It is an exciting time for us and we can’t wait to get users on board our service. Don’t Search just Scan It! 43

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

The Challenges and Solutions for Creating Deterministic Smart Contracts Practical guidelines for creating deterministic contracts

by MICHIEL MULDERS Blockchain Developer & Writer

“In computer science, a deterministic algorithm is an algorithm which, given a particular input, will always produce the same output, with the underlying machine always passing through the same sequence of states.” - Wikipedia definition.

For smart contracts, determinism is very important. All operations on the Blockchain should be deterministic.

Simply put, the same operation performed across different nodes should return the same result. A difference in results between the nodes for the same operation can lead to a failure in consensus, since storing this data on the ledger will lead to an inconsistent ledger state thereby making the whole smart contract useless.

GUIDELINES FOR WRITING DETERMINISTIC SMART CONTRACTS Avoid randomness Randomness is the key property you want to avoid when creating smart contracts. Using a pseudorandom number generator with a known seed, makes it

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possible to reproduce the same long sequence of seemingly random numbers over and over again. Note that some smart contracts (e.g. lottery smart contracts) require a non-deterministic behavior. In that case, the seed of the random number generator must be an always-changing value which is unpredictable.

Sometimes, it’s hard to spot randomness in certain programming languages. Often, map range iterators are non-deterministic. Let’s take a look at

an example from a Hyperledger Fabric smart contract, also called chaincode.

The variable myMap represents a Hashmap. In the code excerpt below you can see an iteration using the range keyword. This allows for iterating over every key/value pair of the hashmap similarly to a foreach loop in other programming languages (e.g. C#, JavaScript). The problem is, that there is no obvious order amongst elements of a hashmap. Golang, even goes as far as randomizing the order of such an iter-

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

For Hyperledger Fabric smart contracts, this should be avoided as it is highly unlikely, that every node will query the time at the exact same moment, data dependent on such an operation will not be consistently updated on the ledger.

The Hyperledger ChaincodeStub offers a function called GetTxTimestamp capable of returning a deterministic timestamp agreed by all nodes.

ORACLES ENABLING DETERMINISTIC API CALLS A simple workaround is available, instead of the smart contract calling an external API, we use a trusted service which monitors the blockchain's state and performs certain actions in response.

An oracle, in the context of blockchains and smart contracts, is an agent that finds and verifies real-world occurrences and submits this information to a blockchain to be used by smart contracts.

Source image: DZone article on avoiding non-deterministic smart contracts. ation intentionally. This means, when you run a program twice with the exact same inputs, the program will iterate differently over the elements.

The code snippet performs a write action to the ledger twice, right after each other. First of all, the code gets appended for the same ‘key’. The concurrency problem here is that the second write action can finish before the first one has finished. This means that some nodes may have “data2” as the final result for the key being appended to the ledger, but some may have “data1” as the end result. This non-deterministic behavior will lead to transaction failure as the nodes can’t reach consensus.

On the other side, this workaround requires a trusted entity to manage the interactions between the blockchain and the outside world.

While this is technically possible, it undermines the goal of a decentralized system.

EXTEND YOUR BLOCKCHAIN SMART CONTRACTS WITH OFF-CHAIN LOGIC From a purely technical standpoint, implementing all business rules into your smart Go maps documentation tells us this, “When contract seems to be the ideal solution. But iterating over a map with a range loop, the itis it feasible to re-implement hundreds or eration order is not specified and is not guarthousands of rules that have been tested anteed to be the same from one iteration to and validated and that are known to work the next. Since the release of Go 1.0, the runtas expected? Doing so could be costly to the ime has randomized map iteration order.” organization, and errors could easily be introduced in the re-implementation of these Other languages like Java implement this rules as smart contracts. Another possipseudo randomness as well, the iteration order Blacklisted imports ble drawback from re-implementing and defor HashMap is non-deterministic. If you want Hyperledger Fabric ploying such rules as smart contracts is that deterministic iteration, use LinkedHashMap. Watch out when importing packages as they if business folks are accustomed to updatmay hold many non-deterministic functioning and validating the rules through the IBM Avoid concurrency alities. Packages which communicate with the ODM user interface, they would lose this Concurrency is the ability to allow multiple us- outside world (e.g. via an API), grant file access flexibility. ers to affect multiple transactions. Take a look or can introduce any form of non-determinisat the following piece of code which introductic behavior should be avoided. The most comExtend the operational boundary of a smart es a concurrency problem in Hyperledger Fab- mon example of this type of packages is the contract to a third-party system (for example, ric chaincode. “time” library.

IBM Operational Decision Manager, ODM).

In this model, peers in the blockchain network invoke a third-party service co-located with them. The underlying assumption is that the outcome of the invocation is deterministic (Hyperledger Fabric example).

THE BOTTOM LINE It’s definitely no easy task to create deterministic smart contracts. Especially imports, which are dangerous as they can contain calls to the outside world or unexpected sources of randomness. Even when testing a smart contract thoroughly, it’s hard to detect such non-deterministic behavior. Workarounds exist like off-chain logic or the usage of oracles, however, these solutions undermine the true meaning of decentralisation.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

OutCloud Systems Is Redefining The File Sharing Industry…

OutCloud Systems, Inc. is redefining the file sharing industry and setting the new standard for how people are sending and receiving large files.

The current leading file sharing services are using technology that by today’s standards would be considered by ICO CROWD primitive at best with the advent of blockchain technologies. Instead of creating new and exciting platforms they have built upon old and outdated ones allowing for OutCloud Systems, Inc. to lead the way as the next generation in file and data sharing technology.

Unlike other file sharing services OutCloud Systems, Inc. not only replaced the need for office supplies by providing a paperless and rapid delivery system for large files, but also the need for downloading of any bloated invasive software for the sender or receiver. In fact, there is no downloading needed at all to send or receive the files sent!

1) There are No Downloads Required At All! - Many leading file sharing services require both the sender and the receiver to download a bloated software file before files 46

can be viewed. This takes time, storage and requires effort on the part of both the sender and the receiver.

OutCloud Systems, Inc. services require no downloads of any kind on either end. This process reduces time and storage needed, eliminates compromising your computer’s privacy and security, and reduces the risk of virus contamination as many computer viruses infect a computer during the downloading process. OutCloud Systems, Inc. services are instantaneous, and files are ready to view at the click of a button with no downloads required. In this manner, the service does twice the work in half the time.

2) There are No Invasive Permissions Required - Other leading file sharing services require their users to give total access to all of their computer files. Not only do they require this from the sender of large files but in some cases from the receiver as well. Many people are not comfortable with such an invasion of privacy and want to be more selective about which files they intend to share with someone as well as to have control over who those files are shared with.

3) Professional Presentations Delivered - Most file sharing services are very generic and offer no presentation of the files shared using their systems. Since we believe that presentation is a powerful tool, OutCloud Systems, Inc. is designed to allow its users to build a customizable secured webpage presentation on the fly that can be branded to look like a part of the user’s company or personal website complete with a personalized welcome message and personalized text message to the intended receiver – like having “a website for your files”!

5) Changes made in Real Time OutCloud Systems, Inc. competitors that allow for sharing of large files cannot make changes once a file has been sent. If the sender accidentally sends the wrong file there is nothing that can be done about it. This can become a very costly mistake in cases where sensitive information was sent to the wrong individual. Our system allows for changes to be made in real time even after a link has already been sent and changes are made instantaneously which includes deleting the files entirely.

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6) File Security and Access - The links created within OutCloud Systems Inc. are never indexed by search engines, so they cannot be found by anyone they are not sent to. Additionally, there are time limits set on how long the files are available after which they are deleted. Lastly, links created have the senders’ option of password protection so even if someone found a link in your email they still cannot access the information without the correct password assigned by the sender at the time the link was created.

7) Custom Branding - The Internet Delivery Platform developed by OutCloud Systems, Inc. is designed to accommodate branding options for premium users in the form of direct click portals, banner ads, still graphic image ads and video links. This design provides a revenue potential that can offset expenses incurred by Free User Accounts in the form of advertising space.

Income from advertising links can be revenue producing through direct purchase, based on online views or clicks generated.

8) Multiple Device Access - OutCloud Systems, Inc. offers its users

many of the same benefits of cloud computing without the security risks involved with the cloud. Instead of requiring that you grant permissions giving total access to all of your computer files as is found in cloud computing based solutions, OutCloud Systems, Inc. will allow the user to access all of their files on all of their devices from anywhere in the world by way of a proprietary (self-to-self) micro networking feature that we are currently in the process of developing. Self-to-Self (s2s) micro networking works in a similar fashion as is done with Peer-to-Peer networking with one major difference, the user is only networking within the safety of the devices that are under that user’s total and exclusive control. The reason for this is to allow the user to remotely access the files they need from multiple devices and from anywhere in the world using our web based user interface. By utilizing this method, the user maintains the convenience of accessing all of their files from multiple devices without the risk involved of being forced to grant invasive access to their devices by any third party whatsoever avoiding the “cloud” entirely.

9) Lower Security Risk - In addition, our use of blockchain technology and a decentralized network will dramatically reduce our vulnerability signature that is so prevalent in the large centralized cloud data centers and yet we will be Unlike other ICO’s far more secure, efficient and faster in storage and delivery of files shared. In you may have addition, our system will be proactively looked into and making sure that no files are stored on noticed that, Outany insecure cloud storage, truly stayCloud Systems, ing “out of the cloud”.

Inc. actually has a working program that has ventured well beyond the usual file sharing experience to include a dynamic and instantaneous streaming presentation of those files in a safe, secure and fully customizable display that can be personalized for each recipient

OutCloud Systems, Inc. will be launching an initial coin offering presale (PREICO) in August of 2018. Unlike other ICO’s you may have looked into and noticed that, OutCloud Systems, Inc. actually has a working program that has ventured well beyond the usual file sharing experience to include a dynamic and instantaneous streaming presentation of those files in a safe, secure and fully customizable display that can be personalized for each recipient.

Take a look at our full tutorial video or other promotional videos at: http:// prelaunch.outofthecloud.com/ or visit our website at: http://outofthecloud. com/ or to invest in OutCloud Systems ICO please visit: http://outofthecloud.io 47

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Mainstream Players Opt In With Reverse ICOs

Once the mainstay of blockchain startups, the ICO trend is now flooding into the established players’ space. Traditional players have been keen to cash in on the benefits of the token economy and are fast turning their shareholders into token holders with the reverse ICO. The rising star for instant messaging, Telegram, raised the bar for the re-verse ICO with a fund-raiser that soared to $850 million. Kakao, a popular South Korea messaging app, followed suit with a reverse ICO of its own. Big names are increasingly movby ICO CROWD ing into the token economy with a reverse ICO.

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It’s used by firms with existing products, services, and clientele, and acts as an Initial Public Offering (IPO) but allows the launch of cryptocurrency tokens.

The reverse ICO runs through the exact same process as a standard ICO, although the company issues tokens to decentralise its business; it can offer these tokens to investors as a replacement for traditional shares and can use them to crowdsource fundraising efforts.

The token holders then get a share in the company’s profits and in some cases become involved in decision-making processes.

So, what are the attractions of the reverse ICO? How is it different to a standard ICO, and what long-term strategic benefits does it offer?

Therefore, the reverse ICO is very similar to a traditional share allotment event, although transactions are made through tokens over a blockchain network.

The reverse ICO is a regular ICO but one in which a company’s existing business model shifts from centralised and fiat based to decentralised and cryptocurrency based.

BENEFITS OF THE REVERSE ICO “Transactional costs and intermediary influence in even the simplest finan-cial transactions are unwieldy, expensive and they slow innovation.

If I lead a forward-thinking company and I have the option to unwind the complexi-ties of ownership and fundraising, I will,” explains Charlie Waldburger, ICO Strategist and Writer.

“Using a token, I can program ownership using smart contracts. I can add any number of exotic rights, preferences and clauses into my token. I can let investors share in revenue upside, offer dividends or interest and liqui-date rapidly,” he says.

In an environment where technological innovation has led to an army of start-ups threatening disruption across every industry, traditional players are in the hot seat and are keen to protect their market share.

The reverse ICO has gained traction as it allows established players to grab hold of the benefits of the token economy within their existing busi-nesses.

“I can program all compliance and regulatory checks I need inside my token and keep the fortune I’ll spend

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on lawyers, accountants and other fi-nancial intermediaries in house.

“Also, since I don’t need to trust any third parties to hold or prove asset ownership, my token holders’ data won’t be sitting at the banks and brokers that are daily making the news for being the latest victim of a cyber security attack,” says Waldburger.

In some cases, firms are reverting to the reverse ICO as they expand their products and services with use cases for blockchain technology.

REWRITING BUSINESS MODELS WITH THE REVERSE ICO It’s clear that firms want and need to position themselves to be part of the new token economy and the decentralised business infrastructure model.

However, the fact remains that a token will only hold value if it is intrinsical-ly built into a business use case, so established firms will have to ensure they are transforming not just their finance structure, but their business model as well.

Kik, a social media app with 300 million users and 15 million active users, became the first mainstream company to have transitioned to the to-kenomics model after it completed a reverse ICO on the Ethereum block-chain.

In an environment where technological innovation has led to an army of start-ups threatening disruption across every industry, traditional players are in Increasingly, mainstream players are opting in on the token economy; the hot seat firms are choosing to launch a reverse and are keen ICO to expand their business with a to protect their blockchain component or to transimarket share. tion to a tokenomics business model With its ad revenue based model, the company had been struggling to compete against bigger players like Facebook Messenger. But through a reverse ICO the firm escaped the prospect of being crushed by monopo-lies. It transitioned into a blockchain-based model that incentivises user activity through its Kin token.

Kik cashed in on its 300 million users, raising over $100 million during the 2017 token sale and became an icon of the reverse ICO business reboot.

that offers incentives to its user base.

So, could the reverse ICO take the gust out of the sail of the blockchain

startup, if the token economy becomes a free for all?

“Maybe. For the unprepared ones,” says Waldburger, “if a startup’s value proposition is that they offer a token, then they’re using the ICO as a gim-mick; to raise money for something that by itself – without the allure of a token – isn’t worth investing in.

“Now that companies can’t print money by throwing the word “ICO” or “blockchain” on a pitch deck, they’ll need to show a real business, a real path to monetization, a real user base and a real blockchain use case.

“But for the companies that are doing an ICO, (or STO for that matter) and have a technologically savvy team and great business model, the entrance of proven players into the token economy using reverse ICOs won’t hurt.”

REDUCED PROBABILITY OF RISK FOR INVESTORS The days of wild and crazed investing into projects without a proper protocol are long since over.

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Protocols and dAPPs without enough money to build and deploy products and communities, or those lacking in real user cases, will inevitably die.

“They could use other approaches to fundraising, but they recognize some new advantage to incorporating blockchain technology, creating a user owned or governed experience or offering rights and privileges otherwise impossible in a standard equity offering, for example,” says Waldburger.

This makes investing in a reverse ICO an attractive alternative to the startup ICO launch; with a business that already carries a pedigree of suc-cess, productivity is likely to flow, reducing the risk probability for the in-vestor. Despite the fact that the reverse ICO seems a safer bet, as always, to proInvestors in reverse ICOs are attracttect against the dangers of the pump ed by valuations that can be easiand dump, investors should do their er and more transparent than that of homework (DYOR) to ensure tokens the start-up ICO. The track record of are integral to a reverse ICO’s bues-tablished businesses can offer a less si-ness model. risky and more trustworthy venture.

Reverse ICO events are also less prone Although established companies to risks of fraud and capital loss. may have the upper hand for attracting investors to their reverse ICOs “Given that reverse ICOs are launched as the legitimacy of their project has by businesses with legitimate, maral-ready been proven, they also face ket-hardened products or services, the obstacles of having to convince there is higher likelihood of stabilithat they have a genuine blockty and company solvency in the near chain-based value proposition. term. More participants broaden the ICO market landscape.

It’s often been just a handful of tokens that have proven to be inextri“Investors may have better, more com- cably connected to the companies’ pelling options to invest in. Also, you business model. The Binance coin need to remember: the companies do- (BNB), where you need BNB if you ing reverse ICOs are, for the most want to pay less for trading on the part, doing them compliantly. This platform, is one such example. Users isn’t easy. It’s not a fast track to cash. are incentivised to use BNB, so it’ll 50

be used re-gardless of what else occurs within the wider crypto market.

Investors in reverse ICOs are attracted by valuations that can be easier and more transparent than that of the start-up ICO. The track record of es-tablished businesses can offer a less risky and more trustworthy venture. Reverse ICO events are also less prone to risks of fraud and capital loss.

Waldburger believes the addition of the reverse ICO trend will be “healthy for the space” as the prevalence of “scammy ICOs, illegal security offerings and bad actors soured many on what is otherwise an incredible space.

“You’re seeing it today. SEC intervention and poor performance has slowed the influx of cash. So, in one sense, reverse ICOs may restore some of the mainstream legitimacy back to ICOs. “Or, since that word has gotten a bad wrap, they restore market faith in the idea of tokenized offerings,” he says.

The ICO space hasn’t been without its problems but it’s undoubtedly bur-geoning. Last year, ICOs raised close to $6 billion, and this year figures have already totaled $9.1 billion, according to an Autonomous Next report.

And, as well-established firms place their bets on the token economy with the reverse ICO, the massive capital influx into ICOs seems set to contin-ue to skyrocket in coming years.

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Next Crypto Finance Conference confirmed to take place in Half Moon Bay, California

St. Moritz, May 2018: After its huge success in Switzerland (Blockchain Nation) a Swiss Team of Crypto Investors brings the Crypto Finance Conference by from St. Moritz, Switzerland to CaliforCRYPTO nia, US.

exclusive and high-quality audience at each conference.

ference for cryptocurrencies and blockchain investments, with events in Switzerland, Asia, and the US. The inaugural Crypto FiCFC is connecting private nance Conference USA investors, institutional inFINANCE takes place at the Ritz Carlvestors and family offices “We are excited to CONFERENCE The Conference is focusing on the ton at Half Moon Bay Calbring the leading and with the leading players in needs and interests of the global inifornia – just 45 Minutes the crypto and blockchain most exclusive Fivestor community and increase their outside of San Francisco universe. The three-day nance Conference appreciation of the Blockchain and – from September 5 to 7, conference offers expert Crypto Currency space. The Confer2018. The Ritz Carlton will in the Crypto space education, investment opence will place particular emphabe familiar territory for the from Switzerland to portunities, and excellent sis on the US market and address the Silicon Valley and US inopportunities. the U.S. Not only will networking needs of the local and global commuvestment communities.

The list of participants of prominent speakers nity in this emerging market. Emieach conference is strictly nent speakers such as Wences Casares Burning Man 2018, an im- of the Crypto world limited and curated by the (Founder and CEO xapo), Dan Moreportant festival for the board to enable the particattend the Conferhead (Founder and CEO Pantera CapCrypto Community, takes ence, but also billionipating experts to build a ital), Bobby Lee (Co-founder BTCC), place in the Black Rock Deunique network. The CFC aires, family offices, Meltem Demirors (Athena Capital), sert of Nevada just one has been founded by AnAndy Bromberg (CEO Coinlist), Miweek before the Crypto Fi- asset managers and drea-Franco Stoehr (lawchael Sonnenshein (Managing Direcnance Conference USA. UHNWI from all over yer, based in St. Moritz), tor Grayscale), Brian Kelly (BKCM Therefore, Conference Daniel Gutenberg (investhe world. The NetLLC), Jennifer Zhu Scott (Co-foundguests will have the possitor), Eric Sarasin (former working opportunier and principal of Radian), Tony Lane bility to start the week afprivate banker and investies at the Conference tor), Marc Bernegger (seCasserly (Co-Founder CULTU.RE) and ter Burning Man among will be unique and un- rial fintech and crypto enCatherine Ross (Co-Editor in-Chief peers in an exclusive and Cointelegraph) will discuss how to inunique setting. trepreneur), Pascal Formatched.” vest in Blockchain and cryptocurrency ster (headhunter), SamuANDREA-FRANCO el Manz (Moneyland.ch), companies, which risks are associated ABOUT CRYPTO STOEHR with such investments, and how the FINANCE CONFERENCE CEO CFC Schoscho Rufener (event market is likely to evolve. All particiThe Crypto Finance Conmanager) and Tobias Repants are being screened and approved ference is the world’s most ichmuth (SUSI Partners / by the board of CFC to guarantee an exclusive investor conCrypto Finance AG).

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Non-Fungible Tokens Investors Will Be Limited Only by Their Imagination

“What is it that you want for yourself?

Is it big enough? Remember, whatever you come up with, 10x it. Challenge your brain to break the bounds.” This is the philosophy of world class high performance coach Brendon Burchard, and this is the challenge for those moving into the nascent and expanding domain of the non-fungible token (NFT), as its full potential is yet to be explored.

The NFT is a new frontier in the securities and token economy; a breakthrough in the way we keep track of unique assets on the internet.

It has many properties that expand the range and possibilities of the securiby ICO CROWD ty token.

An NFT is a token with a unique identifier attached to it, making the token unique and specific so it can be used to represent a non-fungible asset.

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This creates new opportunities in the blockchain trading and exchange space to trade what have typically been non-fungible assets like a house or a piece of fine art.

So NFT tokens aren’t currencies or traditional tokens which can be likened to a share, they represent a unique asset on the blockchain and mean that the tracking of a document of ownership becomes easier to represent on the blockchain.

“Transfer is simplified, ownership is verifiable on the blockchain and authenticity is easily established,” explains Charlie Waldburger, ICO Business Strategist and Writer.

Cryptokitties - where every cat is represented by one token that has a unique identifier - were one of the first use cases of how an NFT can be subscribed to a unique asset to make it easily tradable.

With NFTs, when it comes to trading and recording or storing asset owner-

ship on the blockchain, “investors will be limited only by their imagination,” says Waldburger.

“There is no reason that this securitisation effort won’t eventually overtake major equity markets or institutional capital markets in size,” he adds.

Albert Einstein once famously said;” your imagination is a preview of life’s coming attractions,” and this is proving to be true once more, as the way the world conducts business is once again ready to be rewritten.

And it’s an industry with a big imagination that has kicked off the potential for widespread movement of assets into the non-fungible token space.

According to Waldburger, the gaming industry has led the way, as “major gaming companies are already making millions by creating rare digital goods inside popular video games. This is the start.”

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ERC721 So, how big is the potential opportunity that the non-fungible token represents?

it enables the digital representation, exchange, and trade of an ever bigger variety of non-fungible assets.

Fanbits enables creators to turn their content into unique crypto collectibles that their fans can buy and resell.

“There are trillions of dollars of illiquid, often-physical and non-fungible assets that are ready for tokenisation.

But NFTs are the new kids on the block of the ICO and the token economy domain, this means an ecosystem for NFT trade is yet to be established before securitisation of both physical non-fungible assets and digital assets with NFTs becomes widespread.

Metamask is a browser plug-in for Ethereum wallet, used to access dapps

Albert Einstein once famously “Consider fractionalizing ownersaid;” your imship in Air Jordans, vintage Chevys, or fine art. Unique, digital assets are agination is a ripe for this too,” says Waldburger. preview of life’s According to Waldburger, the last macoming attracWe’ve already seen companies bringjor remaining hurdle is the “necessary tions,” and this ing tokenisation and liquidity to real infrastructure to support trading – is proving to be estate - one of the largest and most like an exchange.” prized asset classes. Now, non-funtrue once more, gible tokens are set to bring a greatThese NFTs will have to be traded in a as the way the er variety of assets that have for cen- different way to the traditional crypworld conducts turies been considered non-fungito-token, since each NFT is unique. business is once ble, to the blockchain. This could include physical and digital assets as MARKETPLACE AND again ready to well as documents such as certificates TRADING INFRASTRUCTURE be rewritten. or even IDs.

The non-fungible crypto space could be very big in the very near future as

FOR NFTS ARE YET TO BE BUILT New exchange platforms and marketplaces have been emerging to cater to NFT trading:

Mokens helps you design and create your own crypto-collectibles with a simple web interface.

Wax is a decentralised platform that enables anyone to run a fully functioning virtual marketplace with zero investment in security, infrastructure, or payment processing.

ZeppelinOS offers developer tools for tokens, and published an implementation of the ERC721 standard.

Opensea has entered the space as one of the first NFT dedicated marketplaces.

Openbazaar, a blockchain-based distributed marketplace has started trading crypto collectibles.

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OpSkins, a marketplace for video game skins and digital items have launched their own crypto currency to use on the platform.

Rarebits has entered the scene as an auction-based marketplace for crypto collectibles. oxcert.org offers developer tools for issuing and managing NFTs. Bitcrystals aims to create a platform for games to use crypto features.

Codex Protocol has launched as a decentralised registry for unique assets including art, fine wine, and watches.

Ethereum offers a platform for the latest collectible projects.

WHAT OR WHO MIGHT BE DISPLACED? History has proven that where ever there’s great innovation and the old falls away as it gives in to the new, there are winners and losers. With all these new market entrants catering to a better, faster, and more efficient way to record and trade assets, old structures and business models are bound to be gradually displaced and eroded.

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We’ve already seen how new blockchain-based business models are disrupting major industries and enterprises such as the franchise industry, the scientific publishing industry, investment banks, financial institutions, trading and exchange platforms, and predictive financial forecasting models.

So which companies and infrastructures will be collateral damage to the token economy, and what new elements do NTFs bring to the table to significantly change current business strategies and processes?

Waldburger says, “as non-fungible crypto asset popularity grows, there will be a major blockchain and token-induced restructuring of middle men.

“Collectively, these players have thrived in an intermediary capacity: performing services that the user or business couldn’t because of some legacy technological, regulatory, bureaucratic or monopolistic reality.”

But these players will now be displaced because “the evolution of digital token technology is such that many of these services will be imbed-

ded in the token itself. It can self-regulate, contract and comply – by design,” says Waldburger.

Codex Protocol has launched as a decentralised registry for unique assets including art, fine wine, and watches.

“Will government intervention slow the token industry potential in the near term? Of course!” he adds.

And although “unleashing the full potential may be too disruptive, too quickly” soon, he believes, “the third parties and custodial type services seen in financial transactions, in particular, will dwindle.”

Although innovation in the business world is typically 40 years ahead of regulators, and uncertainty caused by lack of knowledge on how an industry will be regulated can hinder progress.

Thus no one can forecast how long this dwindling of third parties will take, or what obstacles will surface as the business and finance world transitions to using tokens with embedded services that could include regulation, compliance, and contracts. However, as the token economy develops, innovators will be able to increasingly use NFTs to cut out the middle man who had previously been involved in many of these transactions.

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The Quest to Future-Proof the Next Generation Protocol If 2017 was the year the ICO emerged as the first killerapp of the blockchain, 2018 has given birth to the next generation protocol.

As limits to transaction speed and scaleability continue to plague the king and queen of blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, newcomers including Hashgraph, Universa, and Neo have entered the space with new improved protocols that enable faster transactions; the soby ICO CROWD called next generation protocols. With scores of these entering the market, those looking to build on and invest in a blockchain protocol must face up to the million dollar question; who will still be standing in 10 to 20 years time?

Blockchain has kicked off a technological revolution that’s creating early stage transformation across most industries from healthcare to transport and trade, but limitations of the first blockchain protocols have meant that they’re often too expensive or too slow to use.

This has led to a plethora of improved blockchain protocols being unleashed into the playing field to vie for the market’s attention: blockchains compete on speed, processing, and security. They

compete to see who will ultimately be crowned with the most prized label of all: future proof.

And if blockchain protocols make up the foundation on which future application layers will be built, then it’s of paramount importance that developers build for the long-term and get it right.

There are many different technical solutions that potentially get rolled into next generation or second-generation protocols.

“Credit card processing networks are usually pegged at performing peaks of 60,000 tx/s within North America, and blockchain solutions that want to operate on a global scale for P2P B2C and B2B transaction volumes will need to beat hundreds of thousands of transactions to millions of transactions per second to be viable,” he says.

Blockchain has kicked off a technological revolution that’s creating early stage transformation across most industries from healthcare to transport and trade, but limitations of the first blockchain protocols have meant that they’re often too expensive or too slow to use.

Craig Borysowich, Emerging Digital Platforms Strategist at Capco, explained that “these include a variety of design changes like sharding, side chaining, multi-chaining, and different consensus protocols which are all working towards the goal of increasing the transactional speed of a cryptocurrency network.

So, this is the challenge ahead of next generation protocols; improve the blockchain, offer more than the rest, and scale quickly and globally.

Just like the invention of the first car, the classic Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchain has had an unprecedented impact on the world, but will they still be used in 50 or even 100 years time?

American inventor Henry Ford said; “I will build a car for the great multi55

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tude,” and he followed up his words with the invention of assembly line production which meant he could offer affordable vehicles to the masses. Mr. Ford focused on both quality and scalability. The result? He built one of the best-selling cars of all time.

Lightning Network. The world is in a transitional phase as it moves towards the decentralised models of blockchain based transactions, and the question of who will win out in the long-run is yet to be answered.

Will the end game entail an improved version of first blockchain protocols, Now Ethereum can handle less than 20 or will second generation protocols transactions per second and Bitcoin un- own the touch down? der 10: reality is that the networks are slow, expensive, and that they don’t “It is looking like we are going to be livwork smart. ing with a wide variety of blockchain solutions for some time. Most next “Newer blockchain launches are trial- generation networks like Cardano, ing new designs and consensus meth- EOS, NEM, NEO and others, are just ods to reach higher volumes and fast- coming online and becoming available er resolution speeds,” says Borysowto developers, says Borysowich. ich. The first generation blockchain protocol can’t compete with next gen- “So long as the network can sustain a eration protocols such as Universa, quantity of independent nodes, attract which enables 25,000 transactions developers, and maintain the economper second. ics of gas fees for apps and alt coins on the platform, then they are likely to But instead of succumbing to being stick around.” left in the dust, Bitcoin and Ethereum are reworking their protocols with Although, he adds that “Ethereum has initiatives like Casper, Raiden and likely set the bar for participant/node/ 56

developer uptake and that will be the comparison for the success of other networks that come online now and in the future.”

So, developers are working hard to bring some of the first blockchain protocols up to speed. Meanwhile, new protocols are flooding the market, promising fundamental advances in computer science: decentralised and distributed networks and protocols but with moderation opportunities, smart contracts, the ability to tokenise any asset, together with stable transaction prices.

Now Ethereum can handle less than 20 transactions per second and Bitcoin under 10: reality is that the networks are slow, expensive, and It’s still a nascent market space with that they don’t room for many protocols to emerge, work smart.

but as markets run their course the nature of competition often leads to the biggest and best gradually building monopolies to drown out the rest.

So, will many different next generation protocols serving different use cases survive into the future, or will a small handful build a network monopoly?

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“The marketplace likely can’t support thousands of options but could probably settle down to about a dozen implementations of highly performant consensus protocols that will be the best of the breed in their particular design.

“There is likely a place for having networks each running POS, dPOS, DAG, Hashgraph, SCP, POA, or other consensus models as some approaches may be more appropriate for different use cases,” Borysowich believes.

“For instance, you probably don’t want to build a gambling platform on a proof of stake based network as one participant could win a significant enough stake in the currency to start gaming the protocols operation in ways that are detrimental to the overall ecosystem,” he adds.

Ultimately next generation protocols are building infrastructure, so for longterm success they will need 100% support from the community and widespread uptake. Thus, open source protocols could win out over permissioned

blockchains as you are unlikely to have the full backing of the community if you are not open source - however, this will have to be balanced with the demand for security.

While huge technological breakthroughs have been made with blockchain protocols, lets not forget that these aren’t yet mainstream. Mainstream markets especially care about the stability of the platform, so security will undoubtedly be another major factor set to shake out the next generation of protocols.

“Whether it is the successful application of game theory to protocol operations like in a proof of stake model, or the general security model of the ecosystem and the ability for an attacker to create or influence the balance of power in nodes within a network these are the factors that will likely determine long-term success.

“We’ve already seen a couple of 51%+ compromises on tokens this year that

weren’t properly balancing their node pools,” explains Borysowich.

While huge technological breakthroughs have been made with blockchain protocols, lets not forget that these aren’t yet mainstream.

Governments, enterprises, and small to medium businesses and individuals will require stability first and foremost, thus the winning combination for protocols will likely be those with legal controls that don’t restrict open innovation but provide the stability needed by mainstream markets.

As next generation protocols rush to fill the demand for fast and secure transactions, these need to be not only on the cutting edge of blockchain innovation, speed, and security, but also boast a widespread and active community of users. Long-term success is no easy challenge in the fast-paced tech world.

The networks that are going to succeed, says Borysowich, are those that can “attract and maintain developers, scale performance to extremely high volumes of transactions per second, and incentivise people to operate nodes and contribute to the stability of their network.”

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3 Innovative Consensus Protocols for the Future What is a protocol?

A protocol is a set of rules by which computers communicate with each other. The protocol says what part of the conversation comes at which time and prescribes the format of the communication. It also says how to end the communication. Most people are not aware of how many different protocols they are using. When accessing websites via your favorite browser you are using the HTTP protocol which describes how websites are requested and transferred from servers whereas the SMTP protocol is responsible for delivering emails to the right recipients. by ICO CROWD

1. Proof of Location - Platin.io A SECURE AND VERIFIABLE LOCATION CONSENSUS PROTOCOL Platin is a cutting-edge company born in Israel, one of the biggest innovation hubs in the world, especially within the blockchain sector. Using a Proof of Location protocol on their own blockchain, called the Plexus™, Platin makes it simple and secure to verify a location claim. Their protocol is lightweight with security baked-in and it consumes very little energy making it ideal for a myriad of use cases.

BACKGROUND Today’s geolocation tools often fail to offer reliable and trusted location verification services. It is possible for attackers to spoof GPS signals and it is simple to fake a device’s location. Besides spoofing, GPS has some other limitations. It requires at least four satellite signals to be detected overhead, which makes indoor localization nearly impossible. Urban density and skyscrapers also cause difficulties in receiving four signals. Additionally, the issue of multi-path signals occurs within the vicinity of high-rise buildings.

PROTOCOL DETAILS - PROOF OF LOCATION The Platin project extends the Ethereum Solidity smart contracting language into SolidityGEO, a location-aware language. SolidityGEO, is used to request and define secure location proofs on the blockchain.

As our internet is increasingly being dominated by GAFA (large companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) our data is becoming less and less our own property. These companies collect and sell our information including

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location data to do things like fine-tune their advertisements. Using Platin’s blockchain, users can take back control of their location data. Each user owns their information on the Plexus, the Platin blockchain, giving them the ability to choose who can see and use it and for what purpose.

ant using Zero-Knowledge Proof technology.

KEY FEATURES • Verifiable location claims (proof of origin) • Encrypted localization service via Zero Knowledge Proofs • 100% trust - decentralized global poIt is also important to note that Platin sitioning system is privacy preserving and GDPR compli- • Consumes very little energy

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2. Partial Proof of Kernel Work - XAIN BACKGROUND Speaking of exciting beginnings, it all started five years ago at the University of Oxford and Imperial College in London, where a group of researchers, machine-learning engineers, mathematicians and cryptographers, including Leif-Nissen Lundbæk (CEO XAIN), Felix Hahmann, Daniel Janes Beutel, Professor Michael Huth and Laurence Kirk, decided to join forces. The result was XAIN — a research project focused on strengthening the Blockchain through reinforcement learning and a novel two-fold consensus mechanism — called Practical Proof of Kernel — for massive energy reductions and network democratization that directly includes mobile low-power devices, like ECUs in machines or connected cars.

PROTOCOL DETAILS The energy efficiency of XAIN Partial Proof of Kernel Work (PPoKW) is one of the factors that allowed the project to navigate the Porsche Innovation Contest and take the gold from a pool of over 100 other prospects. PPoKW requires far fewer computational resources that PoW because any node in the Ethereum Network can decide the next block via a secret lottery.

The PPoKW is maintained by a smart contract on the Ethereum Network and

contains a whitelist of approved nodes.

The public, permissioned blockchain allows network members to temporarily share their keys with any other user, as well as informing the account holder when their vehicle was accessed and who accessed it.

accessed his car.

• Online access: The car can be opened securely via an online transaction that is mined by the vehicle network (other cars that make up the network).

• Public permissioned blockchain network with hybrid nodes inside the KEY FEATURES cars.

• Unlock time reduced, works offline as • PPoKW is an energy optimized conwell. sensus algorithm which is ideal for • Car owner knows which account has low energy devices.

3. Proof of Importance - NEM BACKGROUND Proof of Importance is one of NEM’s major innovations in the blockchain industry. It’s a novel algorithm that uses network theory to assign a rating of each account’s importance in the network. Many other blockchains use Proof of Work (POW) or Proof of Stake (POS) to allocate rewards.

Proof of Importance is one of NEM’s major With POW, those who can afford the most powerful computing arrays have innovations in an unfair advantage over other users. the blockchain These POW systems also consume exindustry. cessive amounts of energy, harming the environment and burdening miners It’s a novel with expensive power bills. algorithm that uses network POS gives an unfair advantage to coin theory to assign hoarders. The more coins they keep in their accounts, the more they earn. This a rating of means the rich get richer and everyone each account’s has an incentive to save coins instead importance in of spending them. the network.

PROTOCOL DETAILS – PROOF OF IMPORTANCE Proof of Importance solves the above issues with an algorithm that looks at 3 factors:

• Vested stake • Transaction partners • Number and size of transactions in the last 30 days The PoI protocol uses a system to compute the period of days that virtual assets have in one’s account, thus vesting 10% of the virtual currency each day. Eventually, the higher the period time of vested coins a consumer has, the higher the PoI score. In order to compute this, any users ought to be in possession of a minimum of 10,000 vested coins in their wallet for reaping.

Users who often trade larger transactions have a greater impact on their PoI score.

This provides an incentive to use XEM as a currency and offsets NEM’s already low transaction fees.

KEY FEATURES • More fair selection protocol • Low energy consumption.

• Removes problems with POS where coin hoarders get an unfair advantage.

• Low transaction fees.

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What Really Is a Blockchain?

The term blockchain is derived from Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper in which he describes the underlying system via which a distributed ledger is compiled and stored across a peer to peer network to create a distributed store of data. Through a clever comby ICO CROWD bination of cryptography and the fact it is distributed between all users of the blockchain, the blockchain becomes incredibly hard to alter once confirmed thus protecting it from being retrospectively edited. Whilst Satoshi never actually uses the term blockchain, his paper does describe both blocks and chains. The blocks are added sequentially and are made up of a hash (a unique digital code), some data and the hash of the previous block. The fact that a block contains both its hash and the hash of the previous block essentially chains the blocks together creating a blockchain.

The hash is essentially a digital fingerprint which is calculated using all the data stored within that block. If you change the data within the block you change that block’s hash. This in turn would affect the hashes of all subsequent blocks making it easy to detect if the data in any single block has been compromised. However, this in itself is 60

not enough to prevent a modern computer which can calculate hundreds of thousands of hashes per second from editing a blockchain and recalculating all the hashes of subsequent blocks to hide their edit. To protect the blockchain from this form of misuse the blockchain concept known as “proof of work” is used to slow the process of the creation of cryptographically valid new blocks.

When a new block is added to the blockchain 50%+1 of the users must agree this. Once this threshold is reached the blockchain achieves consensus and the new block is added to all ledgers. To compromise a blockchain you need to edit all the blocks on the chain, redo the proof of work for each block and take control of more than 50% of the peer to peer network. It is the difficulty of this almost impossible task that allows you to trust the accuracy of data stored in the blockchain. The collective self-interest of the members of this peer to peer network guarantees the blockchains safety and reliability.

Whilst the term blockchain is often considered synonymous with distributed ledger technology the two are not the same. Blockchain is a type of dis-

tributed ledger but not all distributed ledgers need to be arranged in chain.

Anticipated effect on intermediated markets Blockchains and distributed ledger technologies lend themselves very well to performing transactions digitally.

Not only can information be exchanged but value. It is due to this, that currently the most popular uses for blockchains are digital currencies. However, the scope of potential uses for these technologies is much wider than banking and digital currency with implications for all organisations of all shapes and sizes.

Blockchains have the potential to disrupt every part of an organisation and indeed the way organisations themselves are perceived. The corporations of today are built on practices refined over the last century and our most successful ones tend to be hierarchical, vertically integrated and their shares traded on intermediated markets. Blockchain technology will change the way we think about human resources, procurement, finance, accounting, sales, marketing, legal affairs and raising capital. It will change how they are managed, funded and create value. In

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many instances it will minimise or completely remove the need for management roles allowing swathes of functions to be automated by software.

The internet initially streamlined how companies worked by improving the way information flows within an organisation. However, it did not allow for the transfer of value both inside and outside an organisation without the help of 3rd party intermediaries. This used to occur on the application layer of the internet. Blockchain removes the 3rd party and moves the transfer of value to a protocol level. Traditional payment gateways such as credit cards and paypal will find themselves no longer needed.

recently shaken industries from finance to the automotive sectors. Rather than having to wait for books to be compiled quarterly or annually, staff and shareholders will be able to see the books in real time reducing the opportunities for deception. This also ensures that constantly changing information about the financial well-being of a company can always be determined and it never becomes out of date.

Blockchains and distributed ledger technologies lend themselves When recruiting staff, human resourcvery well to es employees will be able to verify canperforming didates employment history and qualtransactions ifications via blockchains streamlining the recruitment process and eliminatdigitally. ing the possibility of candidates makNot only can ing false claims on their applications. information Recruitment consultants could finder be exchanged The vertical nature of many companies their roles as intermediaries made rebut value. It will be transformed, as stakeholders dundant. self-organise and reshape their organiis due to this, sation through software to respond to Various blockchains will assist corpora- that currently industry challenges and market forces. tions in identifying potential contractors and customers. Thus, changing the the most A good blockchain encourages its parnature of procurement and marketing. popular uses ticipants to behave in an ethical manfor blockchains ner. Through the use of smart contracts Blockchains and smart contracts will are digital shareholders can more easily ensure also allow corporations to automate currencies. that executives meet their commitmany of their legal affairs. It allows ments to the organisations they work companies to enforce terms and payfor. Mega scale corporate scandals have ment. As these contracts are self-en-

forcing additional consideration is going to be required before entering into them.

With a blockchain based system, corporations will be able to sidestep traditional funding avenues and make easier use of crowdfunding and ICOs. Blockchain has the potential to disrupt the global finance system and as a result of this we are seeing many leading stock exchanges and banks investing in blockchain exchanges and investigating how their current business models will be affected.

Whilst the true value of and the level of disruption caused by the use of the blockchain in most of these areas is unproven and often untested, you can guarantee that those who fail to at least attempt to experiment with these technologies in their business models will in time be left behind by those that do. No industry will be unaffected by the changes blockchain adoption will bring with banks and stock markets who make the majority of their income through transaction fees finding their traditional roles no longer required. Existing businesses will have to adapt to the new technological environment or die.

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AI and the Blockchain

What happens when you take two of the hottest current technologies, AI and blockchain and combine them? AI and blockchain are still both experimental technologies and whilst both have incredible potential, either could ultimately end up disappointing. Exby ICO CROWD ploring the intersection of both technologies could well prove futile.

In tech, a game changing development tends to appear every 10 to 15 years, from the silicon chip, to the pc, to the internet to web 2.0. We are probably nearing the end of the current trend.

Blockchain and AI technology could well underpin the next generation of tech giants.

As with most new trends they are often seen initially as experimental and over-hyped before eventually taking hold and establishing a new paradigm.

Amara’s law states that: the impact of new technology is often overestimated in the short run and underestimated in the long run and this could well be true here.

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It does appear that “AI, blockchain and the Internet of things” could well be the new “Social, Cloud & Mobile” Those trends are still very much emerging, but their potential impact is massive.

Blockchain and AI may seem like very different technologies. Blockchain for example, is decentralised, open, deterministic and transparent whereas AI is generally centralized, closed, probabilistic and blackbox in nature.

Currently advanced AI’s are the preserve of the major tech companies. These companies have access to unprecedented amounts of data and advanced hardware to train their systems. Giving them a huge competitive advantage over any new startups. However, several projects are attempting to build blockchain based AI and this move towards open source AI could help redress the balance of power in the AI sector.

SingularityAI is an AI blockchain concept that aims to combine multiple simple AI onto a single blockchain

based platform. Its goal is eventually to let its users access multiple pretrained artificial intelligence systems covering a wide range of artificial intelligence tasks such as face recognition, weather prediction and trading bots. A less capable machine can lean on this repository of AI, with the intention of eventually creating a human level Artificial General Intelligence. This project has the potential to democratize AI research and development and remove our dependency on the big tech monopolies.

Potentially the most promising and most worrying use for AI is with DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organisation). DAOs aim to hard-code the rules and procedures a company uses from the get go using software. This could for example, involve setting aside a certain percentage of earnings for a cause or the process via which such a DAO rule could be changed. This seems to be how a normal corporation would work. The main difference being that these rules are enforced digitally.

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DAOs and AI can be combined in at least three ways.

• With AI at the edges of smart contracts • With AI at the centre of smart contracts • With swarm intelligence and many dumb agents combining to create emergent AI complexity.

changes within its DAO. A smart contract manager could for example aim to put the right people in touch with each other to produce a desired outcome.

The third way to use AI in a DAO would involve the creation of multiple simple AI agents using smart contracts to interact. Whilst any one component on its own would be relatively “dumb” if the agents act collectively it can result in emergent intelligence. Much like the way a bee’s nest or ant colony self-organises.

Amara’s law states that: the impact of new technology When AI is at the edges of smart conis often tracts it essentially replaces the human overestimated component in a DAO. They will be inin the short telligent decision-making entities and interact with a dumb core i.e. a smart The opportunities for AI based DAOs to run and contract or clearing house of value. An flourish are plentiful. Imagine for exunderestimated example of this would be an automated ample a decentralized Uber type service in the long run AI trading bot or a fully autonomous AI where the cars were not only self-drivand this could agent present in Minecraft. ing but were fully autonomous. well be true here.

When AI is at the centre of smart conThere are inherent problems to creattracts we would generally expect to see a much more complex AI. The kind we have witnessed with DeepMinds AlphaGo. It would have its own built in feedback loop allowing it to continually update its state and react dynamically to

ing distributed AIs. For example, you could program an AI DAO to generate as much art as possible. The AI could teach itself to create art that could be sold. With the proceeds it could purchase itself additional computer pow-

er with which to further its cause. As it became larger and more successful it would become harder and harder to stop until eventually it became the wealthiest entity in all history. It would be indestructible as such as it lives on a blockchain. It will be up to developers to investigate exactly how DAOs function in the real world and build in safeguards to prevent this kind of runaway AI. In conclusion, a lot of what I have discussed is as exciting as it is experimental and it’s unclear whether we will be able to achieve the ambitious goals we are pursuing.

However, a lot of foundational work has been done, and the combination of AI and blockchain could create some very powerful technologies, at speeds that are hard to fully predict.

Some of those advances may well create undesirable results. Now is the time when we must fully consider the implication of building unkillable artificial intelligences.

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Should Stock Exchanges Be Worried About Blockchain?

As of mid 2017, the total market capitalisation of the world’s stock markets was around US$76.3 trillion. By country, the largest market was the United States (about 34%), followed by Japan (about 6%) and the United Kingdom (about 6%). There are currently around by ICO CROWD 60 stock exchanges globally.

Traditional stock markets are centralized, expensive and have limited transparency. Currently stock market traders, brokers, and regulators have to go through an inefficient process which can often take three days or more for a transaction to complete. This is mainly due to the role of intermediaries, operational trade clearance, and regulatory processes.

Whilst many exchanges were initially sceptical about the value of blockchain and wary of its potential to decimate existing centralized exchanges some stock exchanges are actively investigating the way they can use this technology including Nasdaq (U.S.A.), The London Stock Exchange (U.K.) and The Australian Securities Exchange (Australia), to name a few.

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The major stock exchanges are investigating ways to use distributed ledger technology to overhaul the mechanisms behind their exchanges and produce more streamlined and efficient systems. Managing a stock exchange currently involves frantic and cumbersome processes which take significant time to execute, are costly and are inherently risky. The processes are multi-layered with pretrade, post-trade and custody. Securities servicing is very complex. There is a strong case for experimenting with blockchain and distributed ledger technology as there is great scope to streamline the process.

Using blockchain technology, stock exchanges could run with no need for a centralized settlement. Smart contracts can be used to ensure the rules and regulations are built in to the technology eliminating the need for third parties. This is certain to make the process cheaper, faster and more secure. An exchange based on blockchain can have characteristics that monitor and report illegitimate network access built in.

All users would have complete records

of all transactions making this new type of exchange vastly more transparent than our current stock markets. The technology will permeate into all aspects of stock exchanges including clearing, settlement and other post trade processes.

From the businesses point of view, blockchain technology represents an innovative way to raise finance, using initial coin offerings as a cheap and efficient alternative to traditional IPOs. Blockchain has proven itself to be a superior alternative to listing on a stock exchange for lots of reasons. Reasons include the facility to offer more features to its token holders, shorter time spans to get established, increased trading speed, the ability to offer utility tokens rather than just security tokens and much more.

Companies can utilize blockchain technology to create tokens in-house. These tokens have a smart contract embedded, which are designed to perform specific functions. These functions can grant permissions to users, drive promotions or allow holders to exchange

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features amongst other things. This makes the tokens much more applicable than traditional stocks on stock exchanges, It also helps increase engagement with investors and token holders.

The timescales of setting up a token on a blockchain can be measured in days (excluding the ICO and the marketing process). For a traditional stock exchange, the timescale is significantly longer. Not only is the setup time reduced, but the speed of trading on blockchain is getting closer to instantaneous eliminating speed limitations.

position gradually over a prolonged period of time. During this process it is essential that the process is not noticed by other traders who may wish to take advantage of large scale sales. Due to the transparency of the blockchain this type of selling could not be effectively applied. This potentially could see investors leaving these exchanges in search of less transparent markets to trade in dark pools.

From the businesses point of view, blockchain technology In the first quarter of 2018 ICOs raised represents an $6.3 billion USD in funding exceedinnovative way ing the total amount of funding raised to raise finance, throughout 2016. The cumulative allDespite all of the obvious advantages time funding received by ICOs has exusing initial of using blockchain technology it does ceeded $20 billion USD. In 2017 tradicoin offerings have its disadvantages. The case for us- tional IPOs in the United States raised as a cheap ing blockchain is not as straightforapproximately $36 billion. ICOs seem ward as it is in other markets. A maset to usurp IPOs as the primary meth- and efficient jor concern of some classes of invesod of raising capital. Stock markets may alternative tors is the increased transparency. Un- find themselves increasingly irrelevant to traditional der most proposed trading systems, the as investors move to these new platIPOs. position of participants in the market will be exposed to the public as traders will be able to be identified. This would put many large and institutional investors at a disadvantage. Super, managed and hedge funds typically sell a large

forms. However, migrating the existing $76 trillion of traditional stocks to new platforms will pose significant issues. Whilst traditional stock markets are working on their own blockchain propositions and will be seeking to mi-

grate their existing listings to their new platforms, they will face the prospect of companies choosing to delist and relist on new platforms. The barriers to doing so will be significantly reduced.

Traditional stock exchanges are not the only parties interested in utilizing blockchain in capital markets and developing decentralised stock exchanges. tZero (a subsidiary of Overstock) are attempting to develop a security token trading system that complies with all applicable securities laws and regulations. If they succeed in doing so this will place them in direct competition with many of the world's stock markets. The tZero team have made it clear that it is their intention to eliminate stock markets and oversee the eventual transfer of value of all the words stocks and shares transferred on to their new platform. How traditional stock markets compete against such a proposition is unclear. What we do know is that the existing exchanges will not go down without a fight and governments will naturally be reluctant to approve such a potentially disruptive and as yet unproven technology.

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What is a DEX?

A DEX or decentralized exchange is a blockchain based market whereby the exchange does not rely on a third party to process a customer’s deposits or withdrawals. Instead, via an automated peer to peer system trades occur directly between the two interested parby ICO CROWD ties. There are several ways that this can be achieved with current solutions ranging from creating proxy tokens (a crypto asset representing a fiat or cryptocurrency), creating assets (that can represent stocks and shares) or through an escrow system with multiple-signatures. Other solutions are currently in development.

Until recently almost all crypto trading occurred on centralized exchanges.

Binance which is currently the world's largest centralized crypto exchange expects profits to reach $1 billion this year as did its rival Coinbase last year.

With such huge sums of money at stake decentralized exchanges represent a huge threat to these crypto giants and are destined to fundamentally change the way we transact crypto.

Decentralized exchanges differ from current models which are centralized.

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With the centralized model, users deposit their funds with an exchange, an IOU is issued which is then freely traded within the platform. When users wish to withdraw funds, the IOU is converted back into the cryptocurrency they represent, and it is then sent to the owner.

ers have no way of asserting whether they are being treated fairly or not.

Decentralized exchanges have multiple advantages over centralized ones.

This lies in the trust less nature of the transactions. To complete a trade, you do not have to trust the integrity or security of the exchange as funds are held in your own personal wallet and never touched by a third party.

Decentralized exchanges are not without their downsides. There are multiple reasons why centralized exchanges are popular. Bitsquare, a decentralized exchange requires you to be online for an order to be listed and for the trade to take place.

Increased privacy is another advantage for users of decentralized exchanges. Users of such exchanges are not required to reveal any of their personal details unless the exchange involves moving funds to a bank account, in which circumstances that information is only revealed to the entity you are buying from or selling to.

In addition to this, as the hosting of a decentralized exchange is distributed throughout all the nodes on the network there is no risk of downtime on the exchange.

In addition to this, certain trading features such as margin trading, lending and stop loss orders are unavailable on most decentralized exchanges as they currently only allow the basic exchange of cryptocurrency at a predetermined value.

Most current implementations of DEX’s have no automatic buyer/seller matching meaning you have to manThe unregulated nature of centralized ually agree to each trade. Often multiexchanges means that they can manip- ple confirmations are required by both ulate the market as they please and us- sides as the sale progresses. This can

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create an issue whereby both users have cies and fiat money without entrusting to be online for a trade to complete. funds to a third party. The transactions take place directly between the buyAs most DEX’s are built upon the er and seller. This is done using a mulEthereum network they are subject ti-signature escrow system to ensure to the time limitations caused by the honesty. The order book is hosted by Ethereum blockchain. This means, for the user. This means for an exchange to the time being, that high frequency even begin both users must be online. trading is not possible in a truly deAlso, both the buyer and seller have to centralised environment. Some designal certain actions during the trade centralised exchanges have come up for it to complete, this means that not with solutions to this which involve only must the computer be online, but trades taking place outside the Ethere- the trader must also be present for the um network on a centralized aspect of trade to be successful. the exchange. These trades are periodically brought back on to the Ethereum Bitshares is a decentralized platblockchain. form that uses its own native currency known as Bitshares or BTS. When DEX’s have some way to go until they using the platform, users can trade are comparably functional and easy their BTS for Market Pegged Assets to use as todays centralized exchang(These are various crypto assets that es. However, there are projects that are pegged to another commodity or are already offering alternative ways currency price and are always at least to trade cryptocurrencies, that are al100% backed in value by the Bitshare ready offering basic functions whilst core currency). There are also User Isensuring funds are kept safe from insued Assets. These are crypto assets side thefts, hacks and bad business that can be issued by anyone repremodels. senting shares, commodities and currencies. A web-based version of BitBitsquare is an open source DEX where shares is called Openledger and runs users can buy and sell cryptocurrenon the same blockchain.

Binance which is currently the world’s largest centralized crypto exchange expects profits to reach $1 billion this year as did its rival Coinbase last year.

There are several new interesting decentralized exchanges currently in development that will bring with them the ease of use and advanced features that are missing from current implementations. Some of these are the Waves Asset Exchange that allows users to trade assets (encompassing asset-to-asset exchange), fiat tokens and cryptocurrencies. EasyDEX is built on the Bitshares platform and will allow users to trade crypto directly without the need to resort to proxy tokens. The Pegged Asset Exchange is being developed by the SuperNET and Komodo teams allowing users to exchange fiat currency using zero-knowledge proofs to provide privacy.

The examples cited above are just a few of the efforts being made by the crypto community to address the immense need for decentralized exchanges that will put users back in control of their funds and prevent a lot of the issues with centralized exchanges. The future of crypto exchanges is bright, and the future of exchanges is almost certainly decentralized.

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Secondary Market Listings of ICO Tokens

by ICO CROWD

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During the 1849 California Gold Rush, few prospectors found enough gold to make themselves rich. Most of the people who made money back then were those who sold shovels, jeans, tents, pickaxes and the likes of, to the miners at astronomical prices.

Fast forward to today's ICO gold rush and you will find that many high-volume exchanges are charging exorbitant fees to list the issued tokens from ICOs. A recent report by Autonomous Next (a financial research firm) suggested that exchanges charge fees of up to $3 million USD to give ICOs access to quick liquidity. It should be noted that this information was garnered by sleuthing on the crypto rumour mill, from Telegram groups to whispered numbers between entrepreneurs. The true figures are not actually known but given the current market conditions the figures being suggested are in no way unrealistic. Tokens have a greater value proposition and become more appealing if the purchaser knows they can trade them easily, meaning a successful ICO can at least in part come down

to getting listed on a major exchange.

It is clear that the exchanges managing these ICOs are getting fat off the proceeds of these coin offerings whilst ICOs are having to significantly overfund to cover these costs.

Compare these fees to those of a traditional IPO on the NASDAQ and you will see that they charge as little as $125,000 USD with a $25,000 application fee. It is quite apparent that all of the large costs that came with the old ways has found its way to the new crypto financial ecosystem. But what ways are there of listing your coin with little or no cost?

Fortunately, there is hope. Decentralized exchanges offer the opportunity to list your ICO for a tiny fraction of the cost of getting yourself listed on some centralized exchanges. An example of such a decentralized service is Bisq. Although, exchanges such as this are still in the very early stages of development it looks like the general industry trend is moving away from centralized exchanges and towards the decentralized exchanges.

The process of listing a coin on an exchange varies significantly from site to site and by the nature of your unique coin. But generally, a strong team with a better product that is upfront with information should have a relatively simple time getting listed on most exchanges.

In the USA and some other countries, paying an exchange to fast track your tokens listing raises some very difficult regulatory questions. Particularly if you are claiming your token is a utility token. If you pay an exchange to list your token it is essentially creating a secondary market. This is a factor that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (and other regulatory agencies) consider when determining if a token is a security. This is not just a problem for ICO operators. The SEC has announced that it is illegal for exchanges to list security tokens without registering themselves as a securities exchange.

Falling foul of the SEC is not the only way you can find your ICO on the wrong side of the law. When dealing

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with other people's money it is recommended you take legal advice whilst preparing a campaign.

lease on special calendar sites. There are a multitude of resources available to publish a schedule of a planned ICO. A quick Google search should bring up the most popular ones. If your project is built upon a popular blockchain technology such as Ethereum you should look for the calendars that mark the projects that are run on it.

You should also be careful about losing the trust of your audience. Due to the unregulated nature of blockchain there have been many scam ICOs. Investors are therefore cautious. Any inference of fraudulent activity will be a huge red flag to potential investors. It is important to It is important to interact with both remain genuine throughout the process. your potential investors and potential customers. You need to share with the Merely getting your ICO listed on an world how interesting your project is. exchange is not enough. It is very imSocial Networks are a great way to get portant that potential investors get to your message across and receive valuahear about your ICO. Some exchanges ble feedback from a wide audience. will help you with this and even allow you to pay to increase your listings vis- After these steps have been taken it is ibility within their platform. However, important that you work with on and there is still much work to be done. You offline media. You will need a website cannot just assume that investors will with a decent blog to publish news, isflock to your ICO. Instead, its success sue press releases, get in to relevant in(or failure) is directly tied to your mar- dustry publications and use these to keting strategy. provide details about your business.

The first step as an ICO organizer is to ensure that you place all the information about your upcoming token re-

Investors like to see a good team behind a project. It is important to have a list of all major team members and pro-

Compare these fees to those of a traditional IPO on the NASDAQ and you will see that they charge as little as $125,000 USD with a $25,000 application fee.

vide details of their social media profiles. It is important to the success of your ICO that you do not have significant changes to your team before and during your campaign. Getting relevant industry professionals on board as advisers is a great way to garner trust from your audience.

Avoid making unrealistic or unclear goals in your proposition as it gives the impression your team is either incompetent or dishonest. It is imperative that your ICO has a white paper that clearly outlines the technical aspects of your proposition. It should clearly detail what problems your proposition solves and how it is going to do it. Your roadmap should include clearly defined realistic goals and achievable timeframes.

Finally, it is incredibly important that you are fully prepared before launching your ICO. It can be very tempting to try and launch as soon as possible. In most cases ICO’s are limited in time and all foreseeable problems should be ironed out before launch.

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Can Blockchain and Formal Exchanges co-Exist?

The reason formal centralized exchanges exist within the crypto and wider financial system is simple. It all boils down to trust, reputation and ease of access to a given market.

When a single entity manages the transfer of assets between 3rd parties it reduces a lot of the opportunities for confusion and fraud. New blockchain based technology seeks to replace these centralized exchanges by creating decentralized systems where trust is built in via smart contracts. You simply cannot break the terms of the agreement. If a transaction does not complete, then funds are returned to the original parties.

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Centralized crypto exchanges are efficient and currently the primary method of transacting crypto-assets. However, several exchanges have collapsed due to hacks, fraud and general mismanagement. Many investors have by ICO CROWD seen their funds disappear. These centralized exchanges are also vulnerable to restrictive changes in government legislation. An investor may well find that their funds have been appropriated by the government under which that exchange has chosen to be regulated.

Well-built distributed exchanges should remove the possibility of the loss of funds as you never relinquish control of your funds to a 3rd party and there is no one place nor jurisdiction within which the exchange operates.

a trade (T3). Several major stock exchanges are working on their own systems using blockchain to facilitate increased speed of transactions. However, these systems whilst built on blockchain will not offer a truly decentralised experience. Exchange owners will seek to ring fence their existing market, limiting the types of stocks/ commodities etc that can be traded on the platform and giving the owners of this technology the ability to manage who can operate on the networks.

Regulators worldwide are struggling with the problem of how to regulate cryptocurrency transactions, ICOs and cryptocurrency trading on online exchanges. The concerns range from investor protection to preventing money laundering. As regulation looms we The speed and efficiency of block- are witnessing the rise of decenchain based exchanges are immetralized crypto-exchanges. Govdiately apparent with the tradiernments will naturally be keen tional stock market system, taking to attempt to regulate disruptive up to three days to clear and settle technologies like this that could

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have such dramatic consequences for the world's stock markets. However, due to the supranational decentralized nature of these new exchanges they will be almost impossible to eradicate. The most likely outcome is that the first fully approved and regulated blockchain based exchanges will be offered by today's major players in equities. Governments will at some point attempt to move against ICOs occurring outside their regulated platforms.

How governments chose to regulate crypto is going to have a major impact on how exchanges evolve. China issued a blanket ban on all ICOs in September 2017. This will force all crypto traders in China towards illicit DEXs providing a welcome boost to distributed platforms.

tocurrencies made by individuals and corporations), in the region of JPÂĽ1 trillion or US$9.18 billion.

By far the most common approach to regulating cryptocurrencies and ICOs is by using existing laws and regulations. Hong Kong, the US, the UK and Singapore have taken this approach, although the Monetary Authority of Singapore is working on a new Payment Services Bill, which aims to impose licensing requirements on cryptocurrency trading platforms. The problem is that existing financial regulations were written long before the advent of ICOs and trying to place cryptocurrencies into these existing frameworks may not work.

Limiting access to certain crypto-assets and controlling who can use these trading platforms through regIn Japan The Financial Services Auulation may appear to the technothority (Japan’s regulatory authorilogically minded, as being a restricty) , responded to the theft in 2014 of tive practice. However, it will also alUS$437 million worth of bitcoin from low new start-ups to tap into and crypto exchange Mt Gox by establish- take advantage of the vast amount ing clear regulations governing crypof investment that can come from altocurrency trading exchanges, rather lowing their shares / coin offerings than shutting exchanges down comto make up parts of existing investpletely. The Japanese tax cryptocurment funds and other financial prodrencies and estimates put tax revenue ucts. Until such a time as the cryptofrom cryptocurrency businesses (incurrency market starts to mature it cluding capital gains tax from crypmay well make sense for ICOs to op-

How governments chose to regulate crypto is going to have a major impact on how exchanges evolve.

erate exclusively through regulated exchanges ensuring their access to the world's capital markets, legitimizing their projects and protecting them from future legislation that may seek to restrict the ability of organisation to raise funds or even ban organisations that trade on decentralised exchanges.

In the short term, at least we are likely to see traditional stock exchanges convert into hybrids of the traditional model and formal blockchain exchanges. Whilst distributed exchanges attempt to compete with centralized crypto exchanges. Governments are very aware that their ability to preside over and regulate the activities of distributed exchanges will be massively diminished. Whilst we wait for legislation to catch up with technology many distributed exchanges are going to remain on the fringe rather than in the mainstream of the financial ecosystem. Until the legal consequences of participating in these types of exchange become clear, or government is so significantly changed by technology that it is no longer within their remit to regulate financial products and services, there will be a place for both distributed/ blockchain type exchanges and our traditional formal type of exchange.

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How Will Blockchain Play Out In The Energy / Environmental Commodity Sectors?

The global energy industry is huge.

Around 10% of global expenditure is currently spent on energy. Vast swathes of our current energy infrastructure were developed a long time ago and aspects of regulation designed up to 100 years ago. There are massive by ICO CROWD inefficiencies across the entire energy ecosystem. When you consider energy produced that is not needed, the inefficiencies of power plants and losses made transferring energy long distances it is estimated that only a small fraction of the energy generated intended to be used for the consumer actually reaches its end point. Significant losses are incurred as energy is generated and moved around the grid in a sub-optimum manner. The control and distribution of energy is often highly antiquated. The entire energy sector is ripe for disruption. However, innovation is being held back by regulation. There has only been limited deregulation of the market in the United States. Systems across the globe are often highly centralized and monolithic with limited opportunities for new players to enter in to the markets.

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With the advent of blockchain technology, opportunities have arisen to revolutionise and democratise energy generation and distribution. Blockchain technology is already being used by major energy companies to help improve the efficiency of their supply chains and logistics. Blockchain is being utilized to tokenize fossil fuels speeding up their trade and streamlining their transportation around the globe. IBM and Shell are two companies to name a few who are looking into what blockchain can do for oil. However, perhaps the most interesting and exciting uses for blockchain relates to renewables.

By 2050 the International Energy Agency is attempting to move us to a place where 57% of the global energy supply comes from renewables. This growing industry differs from traditional power generation in significant ways. A large part of the growth in this sector is small scale and decentralized such as wind turbines and solar roof panels. Currently most of these technologies have little or no access to a network, to share information. Whilst

you will most probably be tied in to the grid and potentially have a feed in tariff there is huge potential to make these systems much more efficient. Using blockchain technology we can unlock currently untapped value in our networks by making them work smarter. Best of all, all this technology can be implemented over time without having to make significant changes to our existing infrastructure.

To unlock this value, we need a system of communication between all producers, prosumers and consumers of electricity. This concept is known as a smart grid. What better method of implementing a smart grid than using the blockchain to tokenize electricity. To get the best from a blockchain electrical grid, every producer and consumer of energy needs to be connected as a node and aware of all the other nodes in its locality. These nodes should react dynamically to market conditions. They should take into account if the sun is shining, what time of day it is and be able to react to new sources coming online as

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others go offline. These systems have to consider that if improperly organised, pumping too much electricity through certain parts of the grid can result in its failure, fires and even death. It cannot go wrong as its potential failure has massive real world consequences.

If we can implement a system or systems which tokenize all existing energy commodities from physical fossil fuels to electricity generated through the various sources of renewable energy we can create an increasingly smart and self-organizing network that identifies needs in different areas and apportions the relevant value to electricity produced to satisfy those needs.

On the grid electrons produced by wind, tide and solar generators are indistinguishable from those generated through burning fossil fuels. Until now governments all over the world have created systems based on traded certificates. It is currently these certificates that are traded on energy commodities markets.

Currently when a renewable-power plant or a solar setup via the feed in tariff generates a unit of electricity today, a meter produces data that gets logged in a database. The data is then sent to a registry provider, where the data gets entered onto a new system and a certificate is generated. A second set of intermediary brokers setup deals between buyers and sellers of these certificates, and an additional third party verifies the certificates after they are purchased. There is plenty of room within this system for accounting errors and the potential for fraud. There is little transparency in this system and that can scare people from dealing with these certificates.

Not only would a blockchain remove all unnecessary bloat from the accounting and recording process but it would make it a lot easier for individuals to trade in and generate these energy commodities.

Governments would be able to gather better real time data, but they would also be able to effectively incentiv-

ise decarbonization of production to achieve environmental goals.

What better method of implementing a smart grid than using the blockchain to tokenize electricity.

There are significant opportunities for a tokenized smart grid to interact with new technologies such as Tesla's home battery technology the Powerwall. Excess production from a houses solar panels could potentially lease battery space in a neighbours Powerwall and re-enter the grid when the price had risen to a price where it made sense to use it.

Weaknesses in the grid would be easier to spot and the generators would be incentivised to add new production capacity where it was needed most rather than offering a standard feed in tariff.

Blockchain (specifically Bitcoin) is currently seen as a hugely wasteful and environmentally damaging use of electricity. If we are able to successfully tokenize our electrical grids and make them smarter. Blockchain may be able to shake off its reputation as an environmental villain and reinvent itself as a green energy superhero.

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Are Stablecoins The Answer To Crypto Volatility?

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that is pegged to another asset that is considered stable. A coin could be pegged to gold or to the US dollar. A stablecoin can be used globally but does not actually have to be tied to a central bank. Stablecoins have low volatility and as such can be used to pay for everyday items without having to worry about dramatic price fluctuations.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple have proven themselves to be highly volatile and 20 percent fluctuations in prices on a single day are not uncommon. Widespread adoption of Stablecoins will act as a catalyst for the decentralized internet to become mainstream.

An optimal stablecoin should have scalability, privacy and decentralization.

Wider adoption of a stablecoin will be achieved ideally through its simplicWith a stablecoin, customers would no ity and elegance. It will need to intelonger have to worry about spending an grate easily with partners and exchangasset that consistently goes up in value. es. Short term stability is required for People are unlikely to purchase a prod- transactions and long-term stability is required for a coin to be an effective uct with crypto if they think the valstore of value. Such a stable coin could ue is set to increase. Why spend a dolhave huge implications for internationlar today when it could be worth two by al money transfers. tomorrow?

Most people have heard of ICO CROWD the Bitcoin owner who bought two pizSeveral projects are working solutions zas in 2010 using 10,000 bitcoins. At to the problem and each one has their today's pricing each of those pizzas cost the purchaser around $33,000,000 own unique features.

USD. Obviously with such price volatility a cryptocurrency becomes impracti- One Tether is worth $1 USD. This is achieved through holding an amount cal to use in everyday life.

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of US dollars in a reserve account equal to the amount of all tethers available in the network. However, it is a centralized coin and concerns have arisen about its creator’s refusal to be fully audited. If for any reason the dollar reserve account was unable to cover the liabilities created by Tether the stablecoin would fail.

Maker DAI is a Decentralized Autonomous organisation or DAO that is pegged to the USD. However, this coin is backed not by US dollars but through ETH. The coins stability is sustained through an autonomous system that executes a series of smart contracts. To create DAI, you must send Ether to a Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) on the Maker platform. Anyone can secure their ETH tokens as collateral and issue DAI against them.

When the value of Ethereum fell from a record $1,400 in January to $400 in April the DAI successfully managed to keep its value pegged to $1 USD.

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This is an incredible achievement and shows that Dai can continue to function even in a market where ETH is falling.

The riskiest aspect of Maker’s system is that it must determine what the price of Ethereum is. Dai uses multiple oracles to provide pricing data. This reduces the possibility of the network being compromised by feeding the system flawed pricing data. Furthermore, the amount that the ETH to USD price can change is limited. This prevents rapid changes being made by any potential attacker.

The third fail-safe against Dai unpegging from the dollar is that owners of Maker tokens (MKR) can vote in favour of a global settlement. This is the nuclear option and would only be used in the event of a catastrophic failure, such as a global attack. If this is voted for, the entire system shuts down unwinding all positions and returns the ETH to the users who have the collateralized debt positions.

Dai has been criticized for being highly complex and slow moving. However, others are touting it as a crypto game changer. Due to its decentralized nature a government could never shut it down.

Havven is another decentralized coin that provides stability through a system backed by two coins. The first coin is a Nomin and is a stablecoin. This is the coin that is intended to be used in everyday transactions. These are backed by reserve tokens called Havvens. Every time a transaction is completed with Nomins a small transaction fee is passed back to the Havven token holders who are rewarded for maintaining the system. At this moment Havven and Nomins are very new and are therefore unproven.

The team at Basecoin are creating a stablecoin without collateral. They use a consensus approach to expand and contract the supply of their own coin.

If Basecoin starts trading below $1 the coin supply is contracted through

An optimal stablecoin should have scalability, privacy and decentrali­ zation. Wider adoption of a stablecoin will be achieved ideally through its simplicity and elegance.

the issuance of bonds to coin holders.

This makes the supply decrease, thus increasing the price. When the price goes over one dollar the opposite occurs. Bond holders are repaid, and the coin supply increased. This whole process does rely somewhat on users having faith in the protocol which is the coins primary weakness.

Before crypto currencies can truly go mainstream we are going to need a decentralised stablecoin to achieve a level of price stability that will give users confidence to use them in daily transactions. These pioneering projects working to produce a stable coin truly are the holy grail of crypto. Only once this is achieved will we have a true alternative to fiat currency. We could eventually transition to a society where the dollar is pegged to a crypto and not the other way around. This is only the beginning.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018

Equity Token Offerings: Will They Revolutionise Start-Up Equity?

ICOs which are sometimes known as token generation events are in the process of radically changing the very nature of early seed fundraising. Whilst outside the mainstream environment of investment fundraising, the amount of money raised through ICOs this year has shown exponential growth. Through an ICO a startup can raise capital by issuing their own tokens on a blockchain. Very often this is done through the Ethereum network and they are sold to investors or contributors.

chain and smart contracts start-ups can bypass the traditional methods of funding such as venture capital and initial public offerings (IPOs). They can instead issue shares and apportion voting rights via a blockchain. In addition to this, a lender could potentially create tokens representing debt owned by the company. This would enable loans to be traded in a high liquidity environment.

or app tokens. These provide users with future access to products and services. These tokens are not considered securities and represent a way of an ICO raising capital without being subject to the same regulatory scrutiny brought through the issuance of an equity or security token.

Whilst utility tokens are not designed as investments their price can fluctuate as demand for them increases or Many in the crypto industry believe decreases. You could consider them that equity tokens will over time beto be similar in nature to music or come the principle type ICO token. sporting event tickets. The future valUS financial regulators, the Securiue of the ticket can change depending ties and Exchange Commission, have on the popularity of the musician or These tokens are exchangeable and fun- however stipulated that equity tokens sports team. gible, and their value is derived by what should be subject to federal securities regulations. Few ICOs are at this time When issuing equity tokens, you need they represent, for example equity in equipped with the resources to comto consider the commercial terms you a company or access to a service. Both ply with the applicable regulations are offering to potential investors. equity and utility tokens are common and as such people should be cautious You need to specify what you pertypes of ICO coins. and seek legal advice before investing ceive your company's value to be and by in equity tokens. the total investment available. The Equity tokens are a type of security toICO CROWD terms should also state the minimum ken and are used to represent the owninvestable amount as well as votership rights of an asset. This could be Equity tokens differ from utility toing rights attached. Tradability and debt or a company stock. Using block- kens which are sometimes called user

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transferability requirements should also be stated.

A pre-equity token offering allows a company to offer its tokens to a select group of investors. Usually these would be high net worth investors and they are offered to them before the public offering. In some circumstances the full amount of funding required can be raised at this stage when the select investors purchase all the tokens being offered by the company.

company’s activities and information.

A voting platform will need to be established, with reporting tools and payment modes to the token holders established.

ETOs do not have to be ICOs. Once your initial ETO is complete it is quite possible to have further equity token offerings in the event further fund-raising efforts are required.

ETOs do not have to be ICOs. Once your initial ETO is complete it is Regulators in the United States are quite possible playing a game of cat and mouse with to have further In the event the full amount of funding blockchain companies which threatequity token required is not reached during the first ens to quash innovation by labelling phase, the remaining equity tokens will everything either a security or utiliofferings in the then be offered to the public. The fity. Whereas, in Malta they are using event further nancing stage ends here, and an invest- a qualifying scale system. At one end fund-raising ment agreement is signed with the toyou have a security and at the othken holders representing the release of er a utility, but you can also have a hy- efforts are all the tokens purchased by investors. brid anywhere in between. Malta is the required.

A shareholder community is formed whenever shares or tokens are sold to the public. It then becomes the company’s responsibility to ensure that all shareholders have full access to the

first country to issue clear guidelines on how to hold a legal ICO.

uity token offerings. Any company, be it public or private, blockchain based or not can now issue tokenized assets. German law has two definitions of what a security is. This enables companies to issue shares in the form of equity tokens. All German companies must be registered and as long as they comply with practices like know-your-customer and anti-money laundering regulations the German government has no issue with ETOs. ETOs are on track to become the preferred form of fundraising as they offer much greater value to the investors than other coins. As they are equivalent in many ways to shares, regulations must be followed to established trust with investors. If done correctly this is likely to offer ICOs access to greater funding than any other fundraising method launched by blockchain companies.

Germany is also making progress in establishing what a legal ICO is by establishing legislation that allows for eq77

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Maelstorm: The Future of Gaming

What’s the most effort you spent to watch a movie recently? I bet fifteen years ago you would have answered hooking up your TV to a DVD player, configuring inputs, figuring out capability issues, and finally playing a £30 DVD you bought. Well things have changed a lot since then, in fact the hardest thing you would do today is probably carrying the TV physically. Strangely though, in fifteen years access to games has become harder.

by IVAN SVIRID Co-Founder at BandZ Network 78

Go back fifteen years and remember how we consumed PC games. We went to the store and bought a title, popped in the CD and within ten minutes the game was installed and if we had no compatibility issues, we were playing. Today in 2018, we download a platform like Steam and purchase games digitally through it, no CDs involved, no long-distance driv-

ing. There is a problem here though, and that is that games have astronomically grown in size the last fifteen years. The average AAA game is over 40GB large, in CD terms this is about 53 CDs, this large size requires a very long download time, around six hours on the average connection, not only that, it consumes a large amount of disk space, and often requires large patches, GB's in size, to even be able to play. We went from a ten-minute installation process, to a six hour plus two hours of patches process to just play a new game. The immediate accessibility of PC games is abysmal.

THE INDUSTRY SHIFT Just like how corded phones shifted to wireless handsets and eventually mobile phones. We are shifting to "de-cord" our games. This means much quicker access as we cannot wait hours and hours to install and

try new games. Also, we do not want to constantly be having to upgrade our hardware to truly experience the latest games in all their glory. Then when you consider the complexity of PC gaming where you also need to be able to keep your computer virus free and updated, the actual platform becomes a hindrance. Let's get to the million-dollar question, "Why is playing a game ten times harder than watching a show on Netflix?".

I think it's about time to introduce myself, my name is Ivan Svirid, and I am the founder of Maelstrom. We focus on the nature of this question in a newly emerging field called Decentralized Cloud Gaming. Why cloud? here the term cloud implies remote, the actual game is running remotely, not necessarily in a cloud, it could be your neighbor running a node. Why decentralized? because there should

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not be a central hierarchy backed by a central entity, where lights out for the entity means a shutdown of the entire service. This is the core difference between decentralized and distributed (cloud). Distributed systems are exoscale and have a single point of failure, the entity running them.

Decentralized systems are exoscale and have multiple points of failure running them. Thus, a decentralized system never goes down. Has the Ethereum blockchain ever been down for server maintenance?

Maelstrom solves the problem of access to gaming. We want games to be accessible within seconds. This means while browsing a catalog of games and you find a game you like, you click play, and in under ten seconds you are in the game. We are making gaming as easily accessible as watching a video on YouTube.

So how does the technology work? Unfortunately, we cannot go into great detail at the moment but on the surface, it is quite simple. The game you choose to play is not actually running on your local computer, but it gets run on a remote computer that is a very powerful gaming computer, think GTX 1080 Ti with eight cores. This remote computer then streams the video of the game to your local computer over the network. The entire experience is very similar to watching your favorite streamer playing a game, except, you can actually control the game.

The games market is currently 110 billion USD globally with 25% of that being North America and 50% being Southeast Asia. It is predicted to keep growing at 8% per year. But the cloud gaming market is interesting, its growth is predicted to be 23% - 40% per year. And rightly so, just this year

alone a few big players entered the market, you probably heard of some of them. EA Games, HP, Microsoft and there are players also that entered before 2018, NVIDIA, Sony. The market also has a handful of smaller players.

Take note that big or small, only a few of these have an actual working solution, and those that do are in alpha/ beta stages.

We are making gaming as easily accessible as watching If you are burning and know that this a video on is the next big thing, note that we are YouTube.

looking to improve our team with some of the best talents. We are also looking for some great partners to work with from all corners of gaming; publishers, studios, hardware manufacturers, streamers and advertisers.

To learn more, join our Telegram, t.me/ maelstrom8, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/ ivan-svirid-9a002857.

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How blockchain is helping bring Privacy to Voice Assistants

Voice assistants, and with them smart speakers, are the fastest growing consumer electronics category. Since appearing in 2014, over 100 million assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home have been bought. Today, 1 in 6 Americans is speaking to a machine in their living room, making voice assistants the new platform people interact with in their homes.

Although there is no doubt about the utility of these AI assistants, there are clear privacy issues around putting a microphone connected to a technology company in our living rooms. Where does the data go? What is being recorded? Who has access to it? All questions by ICO CROWD that are yet to be answered.

THE 3 DANGERS OF VOICE ASSISTANTS Voice Assistants, through the use of machine learning, require a lot of data to be useful. The more data our assistants are trained with, the better they get at understanding what we ask. This has led big technology companies to 80

take shortcuts, and ask their users to passively send all their data to them so that they can improve their products over time, while asking developers to give away the data from their own app as well, leading to the 3 main dangers of Voice Assistants: COMPROMISED PRIVACY A recent survey found that every three in four respondents are worried about the privacy concerns that AI brings forth. Sending our voice to the cloud means we lose control over who can access it, when and for what. Although some companies claim they erase the data after processing, all we can do is trust them blindly.

UNFAIR USAGE OF DATA Big technology companies business models revolve around the usage of personal data. The more they capture their user's data, the more profit they make. However, this means users are paying twice for the service: once for the device itself, and a second time with their data. Shouldn't we own our data and receive a share of the profit made from it?

CLOSED ECOSYSTEM Voice assistants are platforms: they rely on developers to create voice apps to make them useful. Users add capabilities to their AI assistants by downloading apps from an app store, just like they would with their smartphones.

However, when it comes to AI assistants, developers are being exploited as the company running the platform can unilaterally decide to remove an app from their store, effectively acting as a centralized censorship authority. Furthermore, in some cases, they also capture all the data from within the apps, improving their own service on the back of the developer. This means voice assistants, while pretending to be platforms, are really only data aggregators benefiting a single entity: the company creating it.

THIS IS WHAT SNIPS AIR AIMS TO SOLVE THROUGH BLOCKCHAIN Snips is a company that was founded in 2013 and has received over â‚Ź22M in VC funding already. It is solving these issues through 3 key technologies in their upcoming consumer product Snips AIR:

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2 Privacy is guaranteed by processing the voice of the user directly on the device they are talking to, without anything being sent to the cloud. Their technology can run on small devices such as a Raspberry Pi, taking only a fraction of the resources cloud-based platforms require. This effectively means nobody can ever access the voice of the users, since it never leaves their home in the first place.

2 The AI assistants are improved over time using what they call "Encrypted Federated Learning", where they can train the AI in a decentralized way through a blockchain, while keeping all the data encrypted. Users are then paid in tokens for contributing their encrypted data, without any risk to their privacy.

2 The Snips app store is free from censorship, as it is curated by the community directly, acting as a token-curated registry. With token staking mechanisms, the app store guarantees a high quality of apps, while preventing the need

for a centralized authority to review apps.

Nearly 15,000 developers are already building apps for Snips AIR. Like any platform, the value of the Snips AIR product depends on the amount and quality of apps that are available. Although the Snips AIR hardware devices won't be available until Q4 2019, developers have already been building apps for it, using the various tools Snips have made available on their website.

These tools include a web interface for creating voice apps, a tool for generating "fake" data to train the AI, a hardware development kit to test the apps and a developer app store that is used to share what has been created with other developers. One interesting aspect here is that they already have an off-chain token in place that is being used to reward developers for creating apps, acting as an incentive for them to start building ahead of the consumer product being available.

It seems that the privacy promise is indeed attractive to developers as there

It seems that the privacy promise is indeed attractive to developers as there are now close to 15,000 of them registered on the platform.

are now close to 15,000 of them registered on the platform. This makes Snips one of the largest communities of voice developers outside of Amazon and Google, and gives them a unique advantage when it comes to creating an ecosystem around their token down the line.

Snips is part of a new wave of companies entering blockchain, which are more established and at an advanced stage of development. With offices in Paris and New York, over â‚Ź22M in VC funding from both US and EU investors (including the French government), and a team of over 60 people, Snips is one of the major players in the AI space today. Although Snips AIR is a new product, the company has been commercializing their voice technology as a b2b product, enabling other companies to create their own voice assistant.

Going up against Amazon and Google can seem like an insurmountable challenge, but if privacy does indeed turn out to be a decision factor for consumers, then Snips will be well positioned to take over that market.

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Social networks may connect us online, but they disconnect us from the real world. They are leading us down a road of loneliness, selfishness and social isolation.

Moreover, we are bombarded by fake profiles, ads we didn’t ask for, and content we just don’t care about. In fact, they should be called antisocial networks.

SVPER is the first mobile application that rewards its users for meeting new people in the real world. The innovative concept replaces user profiles, pictures and text messages with instant video invitations. Users can see what people near them are doing (or planning to by ICO CROWD do), choose the event they would like to join, and meet them in person straight away. The more users socialize, the more SVP tokens they get.

The SVPER App is set to fight offline loneliness and social isolation by bringing the online dating and friends-seeking experience closer to reality. The on82

line app allows people to meet online the same way they meet in real life. The tokenized economy rewards members for socialising in real life.

Secondly, it uses Blockchain to add a layer of transparency with Digital DNA using ERC-721 providing enhanced security within the app. This approach allows for fake and un-verVideo interaction adds more value to ified profiles to be easily eliminated the user experience. SVPER’s product and any scammers are also kept away. allows people to interact with each oth- The ERC-721 standard is ideal for a er in real time with videos. Users are re- non-fungible token representing each warded by socializing with each othcustomer’s ownership and keeping er on the platform. SVPER is a fun way their information unique. As one of of making new friends and tackling isthe latest evolving standards, SVPER’s sues of loneliness. The product is more approach to keeping with the updated focused on millennials – the immediate market standards is a great plus. go-to market with a potential market for baby boomers (middle aged persons Users interacting on the platform will and veterans) and GenZers (teenagers). be rewarded with the tokens hence this is a good tactic for customer acquisition The SVPER app aims to be innovative and retention. Users can also earn toin two main aspects. Firstly, by offerkens by performing micro-tasks on the ing people a new way of interacting with SVPER app such as referring friends, one another beyond just images and de- attending and joining events. scription, which cannot always be trusted, by introducing video interactions be- The spending of tokens is more tween the users. Videos are more reliafar-reaching and meant to be capitalble and “truthful” and provide enhanced ized for using premium features on the user experience – a great way to connect app, attending special events (concerts, socially isolated disconnected people. venues, parties) and buying tickets –

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these are phased in at later stages of product development. Although pricing models are yet to be determined, the team is confident to adopt a fair and reasonable model which will be profitable and inexpensive for the end-user at the same time.

THE TEAM Team size is reasonably large consisting of 23 team members with 6 core team members and over 115 years of combined experience spanning across social networking, dating, digital media and IT. Advisory team comprises 8 team members experienced in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. All team members have a good LinkedIn presence with strong leadership skills and good track record. It must be noted that there are two key advantages of the founders: their creativity, which will play a positive long-term role in the development of the app and allow meticulous improvements in the design interface, enabling a high level of overall customer experience and their management experience.

THE VISION The SVPER team envisions a world where users interact with each other in real time via videos and build successful relationships either as friends or partners. As a potential market disruptor in the online dating space with addition of blockchain technology, the future seems bright for SVPER as blockchain becomes more mainstream. The project is so far in line in accordance with their roadmap. The prototype is scheduled to be launched around the token sale period in the third quarter of this year. Growth and

expansion plans are ambitious with the fourth quarter of this year aimed to bring on board 2.5 million users on to the SVPER ecosystem. This number increases to 5 million as we head towards the first quarter of next year.

Targets are achievable, especially with more individuals demanding a shift towards more offline interactions with their peers.

THE ENVIRONMENT Although no direct competitors are mentioned, a few notable ones include Tinder, Bumble, Vina, Atleto, Nearify and Socialise. Most apps in the online dating world would qualify as potential competitors for SVPER. Hence, the market it is trying to disrupt is quite significant. The main advantage SVPER has over its competitors is the use of blockchain technology and the reward-sharing system through the SVPER tokens in addition to video interaction– no identical platforms exist. However, Luna, a blockchain optimized dating platform is worthy to watch out for.

Overall, the market environment is healthy for growth with 5% average expected annual growth in the online dating market for the next 5 years.

THE VALUATION 70% of tokens will be sold through token sales across 2 phases of the fundraising: Pre-ICO and ICO. This is a positive since the majority of tokens are held by the public and the community.

The team keeps 10% of the tokens with a 2-year lockup and Advisors & Bounty participants are allocated 5% with a 6 month lockup - this is a positive sign

Videos are more reliable and “truthful” and provide enhanced user experience – a great way to connect socially isolated disconnected people.

to prevent excessive manipulation internally. External Auditing, Bi-Annual Reporting and Risk Mitigation further add to reduced risk exposure for investors. Price evolution factored by market efficiency ensures intrinsic value of SVPER token is maintained before it hits exchanges.

Addressable market share of SVPER can reach almost $160m by 2023. Until product development, user penetration rates have been taken as 5% at the beginning all the way up to 10% until 2023. This assumption specifies SVPER captures 10% of the online dating market. The reason for high penetration rates owes to the number of token holders and early-adopters that the project plans to obtain

by Q1 2019.

USE OF FUNDS Plans are well structured with over-estimated marketing Budgets; 60% Marketing, 10% R&D, 10% operational, 15% - Technical Development, 5% Non-Technical Development. Considering the market environment the project is operating in, high marketing costs seem justified with high ad spends, worldwide PR campaigns, partnerships and collaborations with key influencers.

There is a token burning mechanism to enhance token value and adoption over time. The project has assumed a decreasing velocity from 2.60 to 0.20; decreasing by 0.20 every Quarter from Q1 2019 to Q4 2022 .

The monetary base keeps increasing as the project moves forward due to reduced velocity in the tokenized econ83

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The total number of tokens in float includes 12.5 million tokens released every quarter from beginning of 2019.

They have taken market growth rates based on the worldwide industry growth rate of 4.6%. This is slightly higher than the US Market Growth Rate of 3.9%.

Current token price (discounted for 6 years) at 35% = $0.09 ≈ € 0.08 Current token price (discounted for 6 years) at 40% = $0.07 ≈ € 0.06 ICO Issue price = € 0.06 | Pre-ICO Issue price = € 0.03 (100% Bonus) The project is well-poised to leverage on the growing shift in consumer behaviour with its simple yet innovative solution in the current market landscape. Given the high level of interest surrounding the project as we inch towards the next quarter, targets are achievable, and the team is strong and has demonstrable experience to deliver on its projected goals.

Upside Potential at Pre-ICO stage = 100-120% SVPER is already building a strong online community with many thousands of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and Instagram followers. omy. The company’s tokens have been projected to cater to a $228 million economy, as the velocity is lowest in 2021, the tokenized economy becomes more addressable.

The project’s forecasted utility value per token has been estimated, so as to give the average investor a return of approximately 900% or a 9x return on investment by first quarter of 2022. This is just a forecast and one must bear in mind that it is the market price that

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will eventually determine investor returns post ICO. It would also depend on the “hype” around the project They used two discounted rates of 35% and 40% to map the current utility token price for SVPER. The token burn has been adjusted through proportional revenue burns in the monetary base necessary for SVPER’s GDP as mentioned in their whitepaper.

Investor, Niatran Invest, has invested about €400k into the project. Niatran Invest is a company specialized in investing in innovative digital companies with an international orientation.

It is held and managed by its foundSVPER is the first ers. Since its launch, Niatran Invest has mobile application been financing growing companies in the digital economy and the new techthat rewards its users for meeting nologies (mostly telecoms and internet new people in the services) sectors.

real world.

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PARTNERS Chaineum, founded by Laurent Leloup, expert in blockchain and corporate finance, Chaineum is positioned as the first “ICO Boutique” in France, providing a range of end-to-end services to companies and international startups wishing to develop with this new funding mechanism. Based in Paris and Besancon where Laurent Leloup is developing the “Blockchain” Valley project, Chaineum services are based on its team of experts in finance, token design, graphic design and website development, white papers, blockchain development and computer security (bug bounties). Successful fundraisers conducted by Chaineum include: DomRaider €35m NaviAddress $20m

ing online connections into real life relationships and to perform this value proposition, we employ blockchain technology to create Digital DNA- we are the first movers.

Q5) How qualified is your team?

2 CEO and founder: Jean-Baptiste: 20 years of experience in social networking and dating.

2 Co-founder & Investment Director: René Carrillo: 20 years in Social networking and dating.

2 CSO and co-founder: André Vanyi-Robin: 20 years in IT and Digital Media.

2 Creative Director: Alex Goude: 20 years in Media and Digital Media.

2 Head of Digital Marketing: Xavier Fisselier: 20 years of experience in Digital Media.

2 Communications Director: Laura Jouve: 15 years in Media and Digital Media.

SVPER TEAM INTERVIEW Q1) Describe your project in one sentence?

Svper.com is an app that revolutionizes the way people meet online. It recreates the experience of meeting new people Q6) How advanced is your MVP? in real life via an online app that replac- The MVP is in development and will be es user profiles, pictures and text mesready in October. sages with instant video invitations.

Q7) Why do you need your own Q2) How do you justify the token? hardcap?

The SVP token based on ERC 20 is for Our hardcap will allow us to acquire the ecosystem to act as a lubricant of very rapidly the 15 million users we are transactions. We have chosen to istargeting to dominate the instant video sue our own utility token because we social networking space. have found it to be the best solution to remunerate our users on a worldQ3) How much interest is there for wide basis in terms of their usage and your project? promotional activities. We have users To date, we have received commitments in many different countries that do from investors of 1m EUR not use Euros, Dollars or Pounds and consequently SVPER would incur sigQ4) How do you compare to the nificant financial costs to remunerate competitors? all activities and ambassadors across With respect to Facebook, Instagram, all geographies if fiat or CryptocurTinder, etc. we are focused on convert- rencies were used.

We have decided to not use existing altcoins or cryptos as we cannot build a stable ecosystem and expose SVPER to the risks of alt-coin volatility and policy changes.

We have decided to not use existing altcoins or cryptos as we cannot build a stable ecosystem and expose SVPER to the risks of alt-coin volatility and policy changes. SVPER needs to ensure that its ecosystem grows along with its users and that token conditions do not change.

Q8) Who are your main investors?

The main investors are Niatran Invest (€400k) and we have other French investors.

Q9) Which exchanges will SVPER be listed on?

We are in discussions with various exchanges and will revert when agreements have been made.

Q10) Any other comments?

We have been working hard and the team has been on the go since the project began. We really aim to bring this app to the masses and grow a tokenized economy for the social networks and dating industry. We are open to any questions that investors may have.

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The crypto-assets marketplace and issuance service UNIQX have developed a decentralised trading and auction platform for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s) using blockchain technology. Its key features are that clients retain full ownership, at all times, of their digital assets.

Products can be sold either at a fixed price or auction format. The minimum auction length is 1 hour and there is no maximum length. UNIQX are looking to raise $1.3m USD in their presale and $15m in their public sale. The fees for using the service can either be paid by in ETH in which case you are rewardICO CROWD ed with 50% back in the form UNIQXs own tokens called UNX tokens. This encourages use of the UNX token. UNIQX is already available to use in its beta phase.

OPPORTUNITY. Blockchain has demonstrated its ability to track and manage ownership of digital assets that were previously infinitely copy able. This gave rise to the market of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that encapsulate such ownership and have digitally verifiable scarcity. The re86

cent launch and subsequent explosion in popularity of CryptoKitties demonstrated the value of such services not only for art, but also for other verticals, such as in-game assets. Overall, they expect the NFT markets to increase massively in popularity and expand to a variety of use-cases over the course of the next several months or years, tracking both the increased use of NFT’s among current crypto-enthusiasts and the overall adoption of crypto. NFT’s are expected to find uses such as a fundraising tool with projects offering pre-sales of NFT’s to finance many new ideas and products. UNIQX’s platform will allow for both the issuance and trading of NFT’s on a secondary marketplace.

Global standards in NFT issuance and trading are rapidly emerging in the form of the ERC-721 standard and the relevant parts of 0x 2.0 protocol. Consequently, the UNIQX team are seeing a strong case for building a generic NFT market, which makes use of these standards, while stressing the requirement for a high-quality user experience, global access, as well as issuance and trading services. Like existing ex-

changes that carry traditional currency-like tokens, the global NFT trading market is likely to support many service offerings with varying degrees of differentiation.

THE TEAM The team behind UNIQX have worked together as part of the 135b consulting company. There are four developers with 10+ years of experience and a proven track record in building bespoke smart contract solutions for clients as part of their prior consulting offerings.

UNIQX has a strong development team of experienced software engineers and is well-positioned to deliver a strong end-user experience as part of a generic system providing access to the global NFT market.

PRODUCT STRATEGY. As a first step, UNIQX will launch an on-chain smart contract based, seller-initiated marketplace.

UNIQX will offer tools for issuers and large holders of NFT assets. Their first client will conduct a kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaign and they think

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that this market will expand as more projects will seek to raise funds in a low friction and compliant fashion. They will offer the infrastructure for this to happen and they have the first mover advantage on this. Additionally, it is expected that a variety of projects will be integrating NFTs into their functionality, not only as a funding mechanism, but also as part of the overall user experience. Rather than developing their own specialized NFT market as CryptoKitties did, it is more feasible for projects to improve their time to market by using existing generic functionality, possibly rebranding parts of it for their specific use cases.

help the customer find the right asset he/she is looking for.

FOCUS ON TOOLS UNIQX is more than just a marketplace for browsing and exploring items that are for sale.

As a consequence UNIQX has developed an NFT Wallet, of the discount which they call “Collection”. They think the term “collection” is better suited for token model, mainstream adoption. They will allow the sellers users to “onboard” more tokens themare always selves and view them in their collection. incentivised to hold a balance UNIQX are developing tools for issuers. They started their development by of tokens in building the “Minting” section and their their account As a further enhancement, UNIQX’s first client is using these tools to create to pay the fees proposition will allow the buyers to sig- the AdaptThankYou tokens. They will itnal their desire to buy an item, genererate on the development of these tools for their open ating innovative buy-side liquidity and to make it more generic and create beorders.

PARTNERSHIPS UNIQX have partnered with Mattereum, who are a legal engineering company and are focused on tokenizing real-world assets. This is a strategic partnership where they will build the technical infrastructure and Mattereum will bring the blockchain assets with legal enforceability in the physical world.

Identity services for tokens are sometimes required. Blockpass ID app will be used for Know-Your-Client purposes in such circumstances.

They are working together with Lestari Capital to issue tokenized Carbon Credits as NFT’s.

price discovery, not present in traditional art and collectibles markets.

spoke versions of it for clients that request it as part of their B2B offering.

The team will ensure that the functionality of UNIQX is sufficiently generic to account for a broad range of NFT assets, not just art. To this end, the onboarding of an asset type onto UNIQX will include building a set of custom components for displaying and identifying the assets and their characteristics.

UNIQX will allow self-service onboarding of new assets, either by their creators or token holders.

TOKEN INTEGRATION The project will be launching its own token called UNX through a crowd sale.

The work to put together the crowd sale will start immediately after the public launch of the platform and the current estimate is that it will take approximately 6 months to prepare the event, both on the technical and the PR fronts.

FOCUS ON SECURITY UNIQX are launching with support for the Ledger hardware wallet. They also have plans to integrate all hardware wallets.

The UNX token’s main utility will be to discount the fees charged by the Network. If the user chooses to pay a transaction fee using the token, he will only pay half of the fee. Otherwise, if the

Furthermore, they will improve the platform by supporting decentralized trading protocols, such as 0x or Wyvern, permitting otherwise expensive signalling to happen off-chain.

Building this layer in a way that prioritizes seamless user experience will enhance UNIQX’s differentiation from the competition.

COMMERCIAL STRATEGY. The team will seek compliant commercial monetization of UNIQX. This will include: 2 Revenue from issuer services, including a white-label integration of our platform 2 Revenue as percentage of market volume 2 Revenue for providing market infrastructure services, such as building and operating large liquidity hubs 2 Revenue from adding legal licensing support to accompany some types of tokens. Examples of legal agreements could be IP licensing or rental of property.

They will build and improve the search engine and personal recommendation services. When they are dealing with millions of listed assets, they arrive at the same problem that the web had when Google came and revolutionised finding the right content. They want to use machine learning algorithms to

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user chooses to pay the fee with the native token of the blockchain platform (e.g. Ether), the entire amount will be charged. In this later case, the platform will reward the user with half of the value of the fee in UNX tokens.

Using the mechanism above, the user is not obligated to purchase tokens from an exchange. He is automatically rewarded for using the platform and next time he can benefit from the fee discount by paying directly with his balance of accumulated reward tokens.

To make it seamless to pay with tokens, the marketplace website will ask the user to give permission to the market smart contracts to automatically withdraw the fee from the available balance of tokens. The default action of the smart contracts will be to check for permission and availability of tokens to use them to minimise the amount of fees the user needs to pay.

As a consequence of the discount token model, the sellers are always incentivised to hold a balance of tokens in their account to pay the fees for their open orders. Based on the specific mechanics and parameters of the types of auctions the seller is currently using, the platform can predict and recommend a number of tokens they need to hold at a specific moment in time or when they need to top up their balance.

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One of the deciding factors for UNIQX choosing a hybrid token model between a direct payment token and a staking discount token was the ability of the payment token to allow for fee splits with token issuers and other future partners. For example, the poetry auction pilot project on the platform automatically rewards the original author of the poems from all fees that will ever result from the trading of the assets representing his poems. Providing creators with an ongoing revenue stream.

The poetry auction pilot project on the platform automatically rewards the original author of the poems CURRENT STATUS The website is now live with the poetfrom all fees ry asset being available to trade. The that will ever smart contracts are currently in testresult from mode, deployed on the Rinkeby testnet. the trading They are preparing to launch the plat- of the assets form with their first client Adaptk.it representing conducting a crowdfunding campaign his poems. where the contributors get an NFT Providing representing a cartoonfied crypto-cecreators with an lebrity. ongoing revenue UNIQX participated at the NIFstream.

TY conference in Hong Kong between 24th and 26th of July where they took part in the hackathon and built on the idea of blockchain poetry as an NFT. They engaged with the Wachsman PR firm to use this event to communicate about UNIQX for the first time.

BESPOKE SOLUTIONS Not all NFT assets are the same. Some are purely digital and others a digital representation of a physical asset in the real world. Does your asset issuance need approval from multiple parties? Do you want help creating an NFT based crowdfunding campaign? UNIQX is working with token issuers to create the best auction type and user experience for their asset.

DECENTRALISED Trust-full trading allows workflows without the requirement of a middleman. All trades settle directly on the blockchain. Research into state channels that can maintain trust, lower fees and increase transaction speed.

MARKETPLACES CryptoKitties, baseball cards, reward-based crowdfunding, carbon credits, digital art and rare bottles of wine are all different types of non-fungible assets, yet live under the same NFT umbrella.

UNIQX will offer multiple types of auctions and sellers can choose which type best fits their asset.

LINKS Website: https://uniqx.io/ Email: contact@uniqx.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/uniqxio Telegram: https://t.me/uniqxio

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Incodium The cryptocurrency market is among the most rapidly growing sectors of the global economy. Representing over $200 billion USD in value. As the cryptocurrency market expands new threats have arisen including scam projects and also hacking incidents on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Hacking erodes confidence and represents the main threat to the value of cryptocurrencies. Efforts to refund investors for damages by some hacked exchanges have been slow, leading to uncertainty about how long repayment processes take, Inby ICO CROWD codiums coin INCO was designed to fill this gap. Over $650 million USD was stolen in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Making it by far the worst year for crypto losses in terms of assets stolen.

change hacking by providing a ‘smart compensation protection’ service for eligible victims.

Incodium is a decentralized blockchain based solution built on the Ethereum platform and represents a solution that is simple, actionable and transparent.

It protects its holders from all crypto losses incurred in exchange hacking incidents at eligible exchanges (exchanges where Incodium is a listed coin).

quired to verify and approve any potential compensation claim, as each claim must match the user information on file at the exchange in question.

COMPENSATION RANGE All cryptocurrency damages incurred in the event of an exchange hacking incident on an exchange where Incodium coin is listed.

COMPENSATION AMOUNT The compensation awarded will be the ELIGIBILITY lower of these three figures: You must be a hacking victim who owns 2 30 times the amount of incodium Incodium coin in the Incodium mobile coin owned wallet app.

2 $10,000 USD The Incodium Mobile Wallet is a decen- 2 The actual damage tralized application (DApp). After installing the DApp on your smart device, COMPENSATION METHOD the log-in screen prompts and guides Incodium coin amounting to the comusers through the membership regispensation amount is sent to the Incoditration process. A minimum requireum Mobile Wallet App. Because the Inment is that a registrant provides an codium coin balance can easily be conemail address, password, phone numfirmed through the Mobile Wallet App, Incodium provides a rational way for minimal time is needed to carry out investors to cope with the threat of ex- ber and date of birth. These are re-

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compensation procedures. At the heart of this project are automated smart contract functions.

It is expected that the Incodium Mobile Wallet App v1.0 will be released in June 2019.

REPORTING A HACK Hacks can be reported via the Incodium Mobile Wallet App. Additional personal information will be required at this point as well as specifying the size of the losses incurred and confirmation of the facts of the incident. This information is held in a separate secure database configured by Incodium and is deleted after compensation is paid. In the event insufficient information is provided the client will receive a request for further information through the mobile app. When these requirements are met, and the information verified, the compensation will be paid.

AN EXAMPLE CASE Imagine an exchange used by an investor who owns Incodium coin in an Incodium Mobile Wallet App is hacked and the user has losses totalling $8000 USD. Let's assume that 1 INCO has a value of $0.30 USD. Let’s also assume the investor is holding 1,100 INCO ($330 USD).

ROADMAP The public sale of INCO coins completed on the 27th of August and the team are now in the process of getting the coin listed on exchanges.

November will see them launch on Ethereum’s Mainnet and the release of the Incodium Mobile Wallet in beta.

The compensation amount is calculated within the agreed compensation limit.

2 30 times the amount of Incodium coin = $9,900 USD. 2 $10,000 USD 2 The actual hacking damage is $8,000 USD The compensation would in this circumstance be 26,667 Incodium coins which corresponds to a compensation amount of $8000 USD, would be deposited into the users Incodium Mobile Wallet App. The figure of $8000 USD was chosen as it was the lower out of

the three methods of calculating compensation.

OTHER BENEFITS Union Soft has partnered with Incodium and are currently developing patent-pending POS software which will allow INCO coin holders to make payments via the Incodium Mobile Wallet App. Union Soft has over 10,000 retail clients.

Those who hold INCO coin in the Incodium Mobile Wallet also benefit from exclusive access to the Incodium e-commerce platform, where they can purchase innovative products and are eligible for “coin back” rewards.

By voluntarily offering data or watching targeted advertisements, users can receive rewards.

INCO coin holders gain exclusive access to crowd buying opportunities via the INCO voting system for the group purchase of high priced items such as art or real estate. When the market conditions are ideal, items will be sold and profit shared.

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Online Education – Problems, Solutions, and a Brighter Future Online education is rife with potential problems and pitfalls, but with TEN, we know that we are up to the task of solving them!

As the education system shifts evermore into the digital realm, new problems continue to arise, and it is incumbent upon all of us – just as education in general is a shared responsibility – to solve these problems effectively. This, of course, is much easier said than done, by ICO CROWD and it is clear that online education platforms face an uphill battle on multiple fronts. From copyright issues to payment methods to assessment techniques to education material equality, there is no shortage of problems to solve for those of us working in this area. It has also become clearer as this field has matured, that traditional technology is not necessarily up to the job.

online education platform to be inclusive and global, you need to take a step away from traditional payment methods, which are all flawed in one way or another. Lacking protections and conTake copyright issues to start. Piravenience, the payment methods facy has run rampant across the intervored by the “old guard” are just not gonet over the last twenty years, dating ing to cut it when we are talking about back to file-sharing platforms like Napthe online education platform that is ster and even earlier. The music, movie, and book industries all take giant rev- going to usher in a brighter education future for all. That brings us to anothenue hits year after year due to digital er point of dated methods, those used piracy, and the trend seems like it will in assessments. We know that so-called not abate anytime soon. Reasonably, though, we should be able to expect that standardized assessments are, by and a high-quality online education platform large, some of the most biased and unfair assessments out there and that will do something to defend against pisubjectivity is the norm with most asracy and to protect the copyright ownsessment techniques. Once again, howers. This is the first major hurdle to deever, online education platforms need veloping an online education platform to be better than the norm: to supplant that can be said to work properly. the traditional education system even partially, they need to achieve objectivNext, consider how problematic payity somehow. ment methods are. If you want your

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Taking these problems and many others into account, the team at TEN (an acronym for “Transparent Enlightened Network”) has created their platform as a means to pioneering cutting-edge solutions. With decentralized, blockchain technology, they are introducing Proof-of-Content-Time to protect copyright owners, cryptocurrency-style payment methods with a TEN wallet, and objective assessment techniques based on verified, non-editable evaluations. Their goal is to build TEN into a paragon of all that can be right in the digital world and to bring online education forward by giving it a platform worthy of all its potential. They want TEN to stand apart not only from all other online education platforms but from all education systems throughout history. TEN, it seems, is ushering in the future of education unfolding for all.