Blockchain Industry Review Issue 4 - April 2021 by CryptoCurryClub

Issue 4 April 2021

INDUSTRY

REVIEW

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE YOUR GATEWAY TO BLOCKCHAIN AND DIGITAL CURRENCY USE CASES AND APPLICATIONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS BLOCKCHAIN INDUSTRY REVIEW BY THE CRYPTO CURRY CLUB

Upland, the NFT metaverse that is ‘quickly becoming the largest and most dynamic blockchainbased economy in existence’, with Idan Zuckerman, co-founder Upland

Algorand Foundation, the Brixton Pound and network participation with Sean Lee, CEO of the Algorand Foundation

Uplift Art, the platform using blockchain certified art and NFTs to raise money for charity

B L O C K C H A I N

I N D U S T R Y

R E V I E W

with Michael blu, founder Uplift.Art

NFTs, stablecoins and blockchain certificates meet Zilliqa with Colin, JG, Miles

When only a comic will do How Zilliqa are using comics to describe blockchain

Dragonchain & blockchain for healthcare with Phil Abrahams Member/Partner at Dragonchain

Security, compliance, and access to liquidity: Who’s Good at Keeping Secrets in Crypto Markets? by Alex Batlin, Founder & CEO of Trustology

InnovatingwithBlockchain could save your business tax – R&D Tax Credits Explained by Shaun Bartle FMAAT. Associate Director Finch & Associates

Courses Schedule

Events Schedule

Universities around the world offering courses in blockchain

FOUNDER´S NOTE

THE

WELCOME TO BLOCKCHAIN INDUSTRY REVIEW

Top: Founder- Erica Stanford Bottom: Editor-in-chief Jilian Godsil Designer: Mauricio Cano.

In a year of ‘who isn’t accepting crypto?’ (WeWork has now joined Tesla to accept and hold money in crypto) the last month has been more a question of ‘who hasn’t launched an NFT?’ Blockchain is accelerating into the mainstream through the rapid tokenisation and NFTisation of anything and everything that possibly can be tokenised. Art, music, content, tickets, tweets, Instagram DMs, done. What started off as being mostly digital art selling for eye-watering sums (Beeple, one piece of digital art, $69 million) is now a trend going into seemingly everything that can be digital. And it’s great, in so many ways, albeit less great for the environment (they can bring very high energy consumption) and could be perceived to be a bit of a bubble… But NFTs are bringing more people than ever before to interact with blockchain- the tech they’re built on- and what’s more, NFTs- or non-fungible tokens- basically unique digital tokens – are democratising content, bringing more power back into the hands of their artists and creators than

possibly ever before, bringing new revenue streams not dependant on centralised conglomerates and bring a whole new expression of digital creativity – NFTs in gaming in the next level of metaverse, tokenising contracts and even now selling the first movie as an NFT. In this month’s edition of Blockchain Industry Review, we bring you deep dives on blockchain platform Zilliqa, interviews with the founder of Upland, the NFT metaverse going viral and Uplift, a platform selling NFTs for charity and the CEO of Algorand Foundation on implementing a local digital currency with the Brixton Pound. We also feature a blockchain being picked up by healthcare with its founder, Dragonchain, what‘s next for crypto custody with Trustology and on getting tax back for blockchain innovations. Thank you for reading! We hope you enjoy this latest issue!

Erica Stanford Founder of the Crypto Curry Club

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Blockchain Industry Review

UPLAND- THE NFT METAVERSE THAT IS ‘QUICKLY BECOMING THE LARGEST AND MOST DYNAMIC BLOCKCHAIN-BASED ECONOMY IN EXISTENCE’. with Idan Zuckerman, co-founder Anyone using the Brave browser of late will have seen adverts for Upland, the new blockchain-based NFT metaverse that is, as they say, ‘quickly becoming the largest and most dynamic blockchain-based economy in existence’. Upland is fun. It’s mapped to the real world and allows its users to buy, sell and trade virtual properties mapped to real addresses, build a dream house, start a virtual business and earn its native tokens by selling NFT properties in a free and open marketplace. Upland launched in 2019 as a metaverse with a unique attribute, that of mapping its digital world to the real world. This adds a delicious piquancy where citizens can pur-

chase plots and buildings replicated from the real world. The extra layer of verisimilitude is a sure fire way of ensuring long term success for this platform as it combines two key quirks of human nature – the first of wanting to be a digital replica and the second that of being a tourist. For the former I give you as witness the first thing anyone ever does with google earth – they look up their own address as if they have never seen it before. Does it have to be immortalised digitally to exist in real life? The second is the reason people travel – to see other cities, countryside and even beaches. Add into that the possibility of

by the Crypto Curry Club

being a property mogul and it’s a dead cert. Upland was co founded by Dirk Lueth and Mani Hoginstein. It opened up its beta in January 2020 and states as its objective to become an earth metaverse. Originally, Idan and Mani hailed from a gaming background while Dirk comes from blockchain. Back in 2017 they were struck by the CryptoKitties craze and what this could mean for future digital ownership. “It hit us like a cannonball that the

ultimate NFT is property. Go to any location in the world and every property is unique, even multiple properties in a tower block.” As gamers, the other fact that struck him is that nearly everyone in the world has played the game Monopoly. “There is an immediate connection to property, even in a gamified fashion.” Idan points out the inherent comprehension for property values which does not need to be explained. A property is downtown San

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Francisco is worth more than one in the suburbs or in the vernacular Location, location, location. The rename Upland derives from the popular Netflix series Stranger Things which features a parallel universe. Both are not directly matched, just enough to make things feel familiar. In Upland, there are landmark buildings such as the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate bridge. Currently there are two main centres of activity and

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hoods to make key decisions such as governance laws, planning regulations on things like height, architecture, green spaces, recreational facilities etc.” There is also a vision that while neighbourhood autonomy is very important, Idan and his founders want to maintain a visual coherence of the metaverse, which includes supporting key landmarks. Builders will be given structures and then will need to obtain permission for the final architecture, a visible map that has to be approved by the

other cities and countries will be rolled out on a phased basis.

Upland team.

Each centre – city for now – is divided into three tiers. Downtown or the most expensive, mid-tier and then the starter homes out in the burbs. At current prices, top properties are costing approximately $20,000 but starter homes begin at a couple of dollars.

Inside properties is another matter, and owners can decorate and furnish their property as they wish, it’s their castle after all. However, if internal structures are NSFW (not safe for work) then a notice needs to be erected and age requirements requested for any visitors to that building.

The concept of neighbourhood is very strong and these will form the basis of decision making in the game.

Currently moving inside properties is a 2D experience but that will soon be upgraded to 3D.

“Our plan is to allow neighbour-

“I love the idea that you can furnish or decorate your property with ot-

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her NFTs available for purchase in the game.” The two hubs in Upland represent San Francisco and Manhattan which operate as ecosystems. They are connected via transport which requires monetary and time resources to move between them. In the same way, visitors cannot be in two places at once and if there is an event they wish to attend in one city, then they need to travel there in time. There is an easy onramp for players at Upland, an ability to dip the toe into the water to see if they like the land before committing serious funds. The free play option allows people to visit without needing to become a citizen. As a visitor, the game owns your private keys, in fact all elements of blockchain are hidden to make access easier. In order to keep on playing you need to come back every seven days to renew your visa. If the visitor has accumulated property and UPX coins but does not return within that period, these assets are automatically recycled back into the game. “This is important. We are running an economy and absent play-

Blockchain Industry Review

ers are a drain on the system. On the other hand, once you become a citizen then you get privileges, you get access to your private keys and you own any property that you have purchased.” All transactions are conducted through UPXs which can be purchased through the store or earned via the marketplace. When you buy land, then you can mint your property. You can purchase properties in the ecosystem or using fiat from other players who wish to liquidate their assets. Upland is in beta but the roadmap is ambitious. Uplanders will need to buy things for their properties or hang out in coffee shops – these are all new businesses just waiting for entrepreneurial Uplanders to establish. There will be new developments and brands entering the metaverse soon too. Currently there is only a flight option to travel between hubs but cars will be introduced before long. Then as shops open, brands will want to open their high street outlets and shops will stock names from fashion to food. There is a very active Discord chan-

nel with an active and engaged community. The largest number of daily active users is 19,000 and that is growing very quickly. Events are already being organised, including recent activities for St Patrick’s Day. Leader boards are in place too to encourage activity in-game. Access to the game is via the app store or Google Play. While Upland is currently only operational in two hubs, the rollout will be planned in strategic and rigorous fashion. Idan and his team are conscious not to flood the market and will gradually open up in tandem with demand. “We want to open up the world in a responsible way, keeping the economy stable.” To get the best up-to-date information, visit the Discord channel and check out any of the newly sprung podcasts and videos posts on the topic.

by the Crypto Curry Club

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>>>> photo: Idan Zukerman,

co Founder of Upland

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Blockchain Industry Review

ALGORAND FOUNDATION, THE BRIXTON POUND AND NETWORK PARTICIPATION by Jillian Godsil

ean Lee would say his career is a mixture of tech and finance which led him naturally to the role of CEO of the Algorand Foundation in June 2020. Hailing from Hong Kong he has a professional career in North America while working with clients across 20+ countries though all in conventional finance until Algorand. He was very aware of blockchain in his role of tech evangelist and began working side by side with the technology in 2017 when a consortium of banks with which he was consulting for evaluated the Corda blockchain. But he acknowledges that his awareness of cryptocurrencies is recent, really only arising in the past two years or so. So how come Algorand approached him for this position? It’s all to do with science, Sean reckons. Algorand was founded by Turning Award winner, cryptographic pioneer and MIT professor Silvio Micali and that influences the ethos of the company. “Algorand is rigorous in the way it builds technology, engages with clients and implements its busi-

ness strategy. They hire people with strong professional backgrounds which is where I come in – having a strong financial and compliance background with little cryptocurrency bias is a good fit. I also appreciate why regulation is important. And I suspect this makes it easier to talk to a major financial services institution director than a crypto native might. “On the flip side, they needed a global player and my career has spanned most continents. This has been very helpful as we look to grow the Algorand brand internationally.” Sean’s arrival has coincided with the swift expansion of the Algorand Foundation into new regions – with members in Tel Aviv, Dublin, Melbourne, Singapore, Shanghai and California joining New York, Milan and Hong Kong. Sean is fast to jump into the technology too. I ask about pure permissionless proof of stake and learn that rewards are earned proportionately by all stakeholders, large and small, regardless of duration of holding.

“The reason for this pure approach is that we want to encourage token holders to participate in our network and every token count as a vote in consensus. It’s all about free will to be part of the Algorand ecosystem.” “We also guarantee that every transaction written on chain will have almost instant “finality”, currently at 5 seconds moving to under 2 seconds in the near future, as the Algorand blockchain has no “forking”. If there is a platform upgrade, the community votes on a certain point and the upgrade is reflected on the entire chain. We’ve done this during our 2.0 upgrade, and we expect bigger changes to come in future with even more advanced features.” Algorand opted against mining as a mechanism for token distribution; instead it minted 10 billion tokens as a final amount and now distributes them through the initial auction during mainnet launch, early backer program, grants and developer awards amongst other ecosystem development programs.

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CEO of the Algorand Foundation

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“Our goal is to have as many projects as possible building on Algorand creating their own digital assets for a diversified set of applications and use cases. And we want to support them because the more transactions and economic activities we have on the network, the more it facilitates us to have even bigger financial inclusion and social good conversations.” This is where the Foundation steps in. As a legal entity it is domiciled in Singapore and set up in June 2019, to be the non-profit organization to build a vibrant ecosystem and to oversee the distribution of tokens to the community. The initial team was a mixture of economists and cryptographers. “Our first year was focused on getting the project off the ground and operational with foundational pillars. We were walking before but now entering our 2nd year we are running. I am tasked to bring in more business development, marketing and community driven resources so we can really drive the adoption and innovation in the use of Algorand.” One such use case is the Brixton

Blockchain Industry Review

Pound project in London, UK. This project was launched in 2008 against the backdrop of the financial crash. The project was aimed at helping local business with the support of the community. Over the twelve years since its launch an estimated £500,000 of Brixton pounds has been in circulation and its glamorous paper notes are in demand globally (famous Brixton natives have been celebrated on the notes including most recently David Bowie). However, creating a paper based monetary system is cumbersome and hard to maintain. The project needed a new impetus and digital money is seen as a key enabler. Algorand Foundation and Brixton are in deep talks currently about how to implement a local digital currency, using concepts like stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies. “The Brixton Pound fits between cryptocurrencies and locally privately issued stable coins. It’s pegged to the pound but not issued by the Bank of England. It is based on financial inclusion and strongly supported by the community. We want to see how we can integrate.” Some of the issues facing the team is the transition from paper to digital, with many Brixton pound notes still in circulation. “We are working on the tokenomics right now.”

There are two other projects Sean highlighted which were quite interesting, one of which involves his five-year-old daughter who published her first book based on a series of drawings to describe her life during the pandemic. Aided by her proud parents, they framed a story and told it in both English and Chinese. They saw it as an opportunity to introduce the idea of giving and decided to create a charity fundraiser on the back of it. Both the children’s charity and crowdfunding websites are based in Taiwan. Once the website was translated, Sean and his wife shared the site with their friends around the globe, only there was one hurdle. “When my international Englishspeaking friends wanted to send the money to donate, the payment instructions were all in Chinese and they were reluctant to commit their money and details to a non-English payment service. There was also the issue of transaction fees and currency conversion fees that card processors were charging, eating significantly into the actual donation that can go towards the charity” Ironically, this reluctance mirrors the issues people have using payment services to transmit remittances home including lack of a mother tongue, high commissions and slow delivery. One potential answer? Using crypto powered stablecoins supported

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by crowdfunding platforms. This can mimic the real-world transaction without the overhead and intermediaries. Perhaps a future ecosystem partner of Algorand can take this on?. The other project could not be more different in terms of scope and application. While the Chinese Belt and Road development policy is well documented, less well known is the BSN or Blockchain-Services-Network being rolled out of China which echoes the policy of creating a cross-border network to facilitate data and transaction exchanges. While the initial phase of Belt and Road was focused in physical infrastructure investments, now it is partnering with technology suppliers to build a transaction layer that sits on top.

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“This is going to be the new way of doing finance, if we use traditional payment rails then the financial hubs are going to be very inefficient. A trade route cannot afford those levels of complexity. “China is building a chain of service networks with a blockchain-based infrastructure layer for transactions. We at Algorand were invited to participate in providing a permissioned private blockchain for within China and a public blockchain on the international BSN network.” Between finding new ambassadors, running accelerator programs and hackathons, and supporting ecosystem projects large and small, the Algorand Foundation is definitely on a sprint.

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Blockchain Industry Review

UPLIFT ART the platform using blockchain certified art and

NFTs

to raise money for charity with Michael blu, founder Uplift.Art

‘Uplift.Art is a platform that empowers philanthropy & goodwill by creating and selling original blockchain certified Art that is then bought, sold, gifted and collected by an evergrowing community that is unified around helping those in need while creating a sustainable win-win-win economy’ - https://uplift. art/ The platform creates and sells original blockchain certified Art that is ‘bought, sold, gifted and collected by an ever-growing community’. The Uplift Art platform donate 50% of every piece of art sold to charity. They are currently raising to build a school in Haiti and see NFTs as a way to raise funds and awareness. As a precious metals broker, Michael knew the power of a trade led by fear. In a world where fiat has been squeezed with quantitative easing since the 2008 financial crash, hard assets have acquired an extra allure. His successful brokerage dealt in the message that the only true thing of value was physical, which is why his total dive into blockchain and cryptocurrency could not be more of an about-face.

And yet it also makes total sense. “I’m a hard metal guy – from the if you can’t touch it, you can’t own it school of life. And I was very successful because I was predicting the demise of the American dollar and its continued fall in value. I said ‘diversify your portfolio’ and people did.” Michael’s career reflects that diversity and ability to pivot. At various times he has served in the marines, worked in construction as a labourer, was a ditch digger, limo driver, actor, model, musician and penultimately gold broker and is still a musician. “My love for song writing and producing music has remained with me over the years.” This skill set came to fore when he released the world’s first full music video as an NFT. At the time of writing, this claim appears to be

by the Crypto Curry Club

true and Michael has not been able to find other examples. There are definitely shorter music NFTs but not complete music videos. When Bitcoin came into his world around 2012, initially Michael was not impressed. “I was very anti-Bitcoin, but it just kept on popping up. It’s like when you buy a green Volkswagen then all you see on the road are other green Volkswagens.” Eventually he read the Satoshi white paper and he was blown away. He was selling his brokerage at the same time and he put some of the proceeds into Bitcoin; ironically fuelling his new obsession with traditional precious metals - the antithesis of cryptocurrencies. If the Bitcoin experiment hooked him, then the programmable language of Ethereum landed the fish. At that time, 2017, it was full on ICO craze. Michael invested in more than 100 ICOs at the time, some of which failed, but he still ended up ahead as befits a successful broker. More importantly, he learnt a lot. Five years on he doesn’t use either bitcoin or ethereum, in fact he sweats buckets if he has to transact in either coin. “It’s the wait times – does my head in.” Instead, Michael is a big advocate

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of EOS and WAX. He likes wallets that have names, free transactions and easy payments. So, he was first won over by the technology, then the ethos.

them property and deliver goods and services needed by disadvantaged communities. And he knows cryptocurrencies and the people in the community are the answer.

Around that time, real life intervened and changed the course of his career. He and his wife adopted a daughter from Haiti. He was shocked to discover that the island looked the same as it did ten years ago after the hurricane, nothing had been rebuilt. While he was aware of the difficulties facing developing countries, the actual conditions horrified him.

Uplift Nation was born, now Uplift Art, where 50% of all proceeds go to its charitable partners. To make it work, Michael has coined a win, win, win philosophy, or actually a win, win, win, win model, codenamed Win Squared for the purposes of this interview.

“To see the country in pieces was terrible; the dirt, the rubble, garbage, people living on the streets. I can only explain it as walking past a burning building. I could not do nothing.” The nothing that Michael could not do is to fund raise for schools and he now works with local NGO Haitian Roots to build schools for the community, with the community, and by the community. “Education is statistically proven to eradicate poverty.” Going down this road also exposed Michael to the failings in the charity sector where committed people are expected to work on shoestring budgets. Michael is looking to flip that outdated concept on its head, attract capable talented people, reward

In a nutshell, he says the first win has to be the philanthropic cause. The second is the ecosystem of the organisation behind the activity where the employees are the best they can be, paid what they need and are winning on the happiness quotient as a result. The third win is the community who support the organisation, creating an inspired and empowered people. The final win is redefining winning itself. Michael poses some pretty deep questions on personal wealth. “How can you be happy in your mansion if there are beggars at the gate? If your neighbour is in trouble, can you sleep nights? Instead of massive profits for one person or one organisation why can’t we share it? This is not as difficult as it sounds, it just requires that we think about things differently, think about making things better.”

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Blockchain Industry Review

Photo: Michael Blu - Uplift.Art Founder

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ichael sees NFTs as a means of sharing wealth, as a means to transfer value to those in need. Uplift.Art launched Uplift World to build on that idea. Uplift World is a metaverse based on the building game Minecraft. Players in Uplift World buy land in the form of NFTs using the WAX blockchain. They can invite in friends to help them build and beautify the land. Every time Michael logs on he is delighted to see new buildings, art, shops, plants, flowers, statues. He calls the initial version Ready Player One and it is just beginning. “We have a robust roadmap and people are really getting involved. It’s building, it’s collaboration and it is literally creating a better world – online and in the real world.” Instinctively he understands that current value systems are failing society, and the emergence of cryptocurrencies is an antidote to that, but even more important is the translation of value back to people again. Having a new system of sharing wealth equitably is no good if it stays online, it has to come back to earth and build homes, schools, theatres, hospitals, restaurants, transport and roads. Uplift Art and World are not about escaping online but forming new communities that will build for the living, breathing humans on this wonderful place we call home.

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Blockchain Industry Review

NFTS, STABLECOINS AND BLOCKCHAIN CERTIFICATES- MEET ZILLIQA with Colin, JG, Miles, by Jillian Godsil

Colin, JG, Miles is English originally but has lived in Singapore for 27 years. He is a serial entrepreneur with a number of successful exits in his recent past, most notably in i-POP. He holds industry positions in mobile, including Chair Emeritus of the MEF, Mobile Ecosystem Forum. He has moved from the dot.com to the mobile to blockchain with ease – all signposts lead this way. His focus is the intersection of technology and media, this is the zenith of his career and he views blockchain as the 1000 times multiplier. “My introduction to blockchain was via Bitcoin – back in 2013 there was a bitcoin ATM at a conference. I was told I could buy a coffee with this new currency. So I put in $50 and the machine spat out a QR code.” Colin was advised to open a wallet which he did and promptly forgot about it for a couple of years. Then a chance checkup showed him the value had grown to $450 and this got his attention. The coming years saw Colin mingle with anarchists and early adopters, watching from the side-lines with interest. He was invited to invest in a self-sovereign, decentralised ID project and he moved a bit closer. Then a headhunter out of the blue approached him to join Zilliqa as the head of marketing. “I felt it was right time, right place, right company.” Zilliqa arose out of an academic project. It sought to solve a clear issue in the blockchain world – number of transactions per second. Bitcoin was crippled at 6, Ethereum was not much better at 15 and CryptoKitties highlighted the bottleneck in a dramatic fashion. Zilliqa aimed to solve this speed issue with sharding. A team was brought in and a TGE raised $22 million in 2018. It

was the world’s first public blockchain built entirely on a sharded architecture. The Zilliqa mainnet went live in January 2019 demonstrating sharding was effective and viable. An early and engaged community was complimented by active recruitment of partners now numbering 70 plus different entities. Colin came on board in February 2020 but six months later was chief commercial officer and co-CEO. Some highlights around the project that caught the eye include Social Pay. This is an inhouse product which, in Colin’s words, literally destroys Twitter when engaged. “We have run it three times. It’s effectively social commerce where people are rewarded for taking action online. We pay people in $Zil. The first time we used the project to promote Zilliqa itself we generated in excess of 72 million social engagements over a 72 hour period – literally a million interactions an hour with people hitting Twitter and then forwarding the links to their friends and claiming $Zil.” The second time they unleashed the Social Pay kraken was in aid of the Red Cross. “We added in some bells and whistles, allowing people to issue a blockchain certificate thanking a health care worker or a volunteer. This way we helped raise money for the charity which we also matched in corporate funding.” The third outing was to celebrate Zilliqa’s third anniversary in July of last year. Again, the Zilliqa community crushed Twitter with an 80% dominance at one stage. These experiences demonstrate the engagement of the community which numbers about 200,000 active people spread across Twitter, Telegram and Discord.

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Another interesting demographic detail is that some 50% of the hits came from North America, not just emerging economies where an average reward of 30c has a relative value.

obviously their own XSGD, the first Singapore dollar-pegged stablecoin built in conjunction with partner Xfers. This is just the start, with more planned with other fiat currencies beginning with Indonesia and a US dollar backed stablecoin.

Zilliqa may or may not have gone for relevance or indeed relatability as a key tenant, but it works out that way. For example, a recent high-profile partnership with the Hq Exchange is looking at whisky as a use case, in an easy to identify example.

“This is a game changer where people can use cryptocurrency in the same way as fiat but with all the benefits of crypto. Think of the difference in terms of remittances when sending money from a developed world back to say Indonesia or Malaysia.”

Hg Exchange is interesting for several reasons. It is approved by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and uses smart contracts to represent digital assets.

COVID has not slowed up Zilliqa, on the contrary it appears to have sped things up. The community is keen and the projects are racked up like Formula 1 cars at the start line.

“There is an element of ‘free money’ too but it boils down to an engaged base first and foremost.”

“Hg Exchange has the capability to sell securities the old-fashioned way but by partnering with Zilliqa they are can do it in a tokenised fashion. “The first tokenised product, as an asset backed security, is premium whisky.” As an ABS, premium whisky offers huge profit, something in the 500% range. Hg is also looking to roll out other projects such as pre IPO offerings, share sales or private share placements. “Maybe even property.” Another initiative is the Zeeves product currently running on Telegram which tips people, manages quiz rewards and other games as added. It’s effectively a wallet and an interactive bot. And then there NFTs. A recent project with American rapper Soulja Boy yielded a huge response with more celebrities following suite. “We are talking with DJs with big Spotify followings and wondering if we can disrupt Spotify.” These are all interesting developments but where Colin really gets excited is in stablecoins,

“We have a motto – patience is a virtue and things come to those who wait. It can be a bit daunting at first but there is a lot to feed out.” We’re drawing to the close of our conversation when Colin mentions in fast succession swap decks, locked value, decentralised exchanges, own tokens, pillar protocol, collateralised service, staking services, liquidity mining, and DeFi. All big topics in their own right but lined up at the start, revving engines and about to engage in a big fog cloud of pre-sustainable engine grunt. His ambition is not to be Asia’s top blockchain. His ambition is for Zilliqa to be the world’s leading blockchain. “We’re knocking on that door right now.” Colin’s entrepreneurial ideas are all fired up, and he is focussed on driving the Zilliqa brand into every retail offering, every media offering, every single engagement on a daily basis. “I’m pretty ambitious. I believe I have the tools and the resources to create Zilliqa as she was intended.”

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WHEN ONLY A COMIC WILL DO

How Zilliqa are using comics to describe blockchain

Blockchain Industry Review

by the Crypto Curry Club

>> Aparna Narayanan is VP for communications and marketing for Zilliqa. She describes her job as finding the best way to explain blockchain and uses stories to help simplify the complex. “We have a lot of projects underway here at Zilliqa and sometimes blockchain is not the easiest language to use – so I like to explore different mediums of education and information.” She met Ali Datoo from Corporate Comics and instantly knew he was onto a winner. “I thought how cool to use comics to explain blockchain – and thought there was a great crossover between crypto audiences and comic readers.” Godzilliqa – the intersection of comics and NFTs Comics are very good at conveying an idea in seconds. Unlike static images or text laden copy, comics are akin to magicians. They are capable of producing a story, like a rabbit, out of thin air, or out a hat. A comic can draw on a back story, on lore or on a shared history in a single image. Using an established name like Godzilla, the saviour of mankind, and then juxtaposing it with the Zilliqa name, the platform becomes at once huge, powerful and a beacon for good. “We were looking at ways to use NFTs before they became the hype they are today,” says Milan. “We did a lot of research and wanted to explore what is possible in this space. We wanted to combine sci-fi with art with gaming. So we created a simple game – it wasn’t a trading card game – but a coin flip game. People bought the card and periodically there were coin flips and the card value went up or down.”

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In total there were four cards created which went up and down in value depending on the result of the flip. Another key figure was ScillaMan which represented the genius behind the new smart contract language and was based on founder, president and chief scientific officer, Amrit Kumar. Currently he is the only member of the management team to be thus transformed and this also reflects his visual presence as the face of Zilliqa. These four cards would certainly be amongst the first NFTs to be minted and were limited in the numbers created. Each card was linked to a piece of merchandise, for example a Zilliqa teeshirt could be redeemed for these physical items. Releasing them was done via Twitter, a preferred and popular social media platform for the Zilliqa community. She points out that the community enjoys gamification and so NTFs are a good way to bring some excitement to the table. “We don’t just want to sell NFTs, we want to find new uses for them, explore different models and even look at possible ways of using NFTs for fundraising.” So far, the comics approach has been restricted to the NFT cards but Aparna is not ruling out doing a fully fledged comic to make a big announcement, perhaps in episodic nature combining visual comics and audio aspects such as music and dialogue.

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DRAGONCHAIN - BLOCKCHAIN

FOR HEALTHCARE by Jillian Godsil

>>>> Photo: Phil Abrahams,

Member/Partner at Dragonchain

Blockchain Industry Review

hil’s life is a series of apparent contradictions. As a young lad and following his parent’s divorce he moved out into a friend’s garage where he lived for the next two years. He was only 12. When I asked if Phil would do similar with his children the answer is a resounding no. He is an introvert yet has travelled the world speaking at conferences and meeting people. Phil is very much a solo thinker and inventor in the basement, but he also understands working with teams. He is the last man to keep a secret and yet much of his early career was covert and moreover he still works for the most secretive of organisations including the CIA, the NSA and Homeland Security. In fact, one time he was locked in a room in Washington for two days by representatives of one of those three-letteracronym named organisations where he was instructed in no uncertain terms not to release sensitive information. His reply? Well, stop telling me secretive stuff then. “I was told by my advisor in grad school that I was a modern-day Ender*, but if I wanted to save the world then I needed to fit in. It was a choice I had to make, and it went against my DNA, but I did it.”

So perhaps it is no surprise that his most successful business to date has been to uncover financial abuses in the US healthcare system and then to take that rigor and use it to secure data on the blockchain. First to the financial abuses in Healthcare; in the US the healthcare sector accounts for 35% of the economy so it’s a huge animal. Back in the 90s, Global Purchasing Organisations or GPOs were set up to streamline purchasing and reduce costs. What began as a good idea soon took on a life of its own and the GPOs now have their hands on the throats of healthcare. Of the $3 trillion that is spent on Healthcare purchasing, one third of that goes to the GPOs. “It’s a monopoly and because of lack of transparency, near impossible to unravel” The near impossible line guaranteed Phil’s interest and determination to investigate. He went in deep and documented the healthcare software systems across the US. “There are hundreds of thousands of systems and I managed to thread them together.” Phil put his theories into practice for the Lorna Linda University Medical Centre in California

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by the Crypto Curry Club

where he averaged previously unheard-of savings of 79%. The really key point to these savings is that these did not impact doctor/nurse/patient outcomes, just the technology. Phil is basically a man with a target on his back as a result, but he’s going to fix it. And the things he has learnt in tackling the behemoth that is the US healthcare will provide the same focus he is bringing to protect his country, hence his association with those threeletter-acronym named organisations. And that is where his allegiance to Dragonchain emerges. “Dragonchain has some magic of its own.” Phil’s skill lies in tying together disparate systems and predicting events in advance. He did it when he interrogated the Kmart supply chains, then the biggest retailer in the States, as part of one of his first engagements. He did not just look backwards; he used the data to predict future sales. He knew that the customers were going to buy even before they knew themselves. He formed his company Cloudface on the basis of this research. Today Cloudface and Dragonchain are interchangeable and even the terminology is shared. Digital

Fortress can be equally applied to both organisations. “Most blockchains can’t handle complexity, it’s a hot mess. Try taking a large organisation and running it on blockchain and it doesn’t work. But when I saw Dragonchain and Joe (Roetts) showed me some of his patents, I went aha this works. “Interoperability is key for complex organisations and that’s where Dragonchain works; it’s easy to use and scalable.” That impressed him, that and the seven layers of quantum security. The quantum layer was brought in by Phil and uses a quantum proof cyber solution. It’s so complex it includes unhackable algorithms to produce numeric chains so long they circle the earth a billion times. The seventh layer refers to the cost of unpicking a blockchain which currently resides in the $4 billion a year making it utterly uneconomic to steal or change historic data. “Basically Dragonchain is unstoppable which is why healthcare and government agencies are looking at it.” Phil has spent his life explaining that all software is bad and all technology platforms fail. He is the Ender guy after all, but to him Dragonchain is

perfect. “Even if hackers try and change your date, you can recreate it again on Dragonchain.” His thesis was on why technology is not working and how to run companies without complex software. He argued the more complex the software, the more reliant the company and the easier it is to hack. “However, all software comes back to Excel files, even complex ERP software. You want to know where a customer lives and you follow a search route back to an Excel spreadsheet and locate it.” As far as Phil is concerned Dragonchain has the whole enchilada wrapped up. He argues that many of the blockchains out there are going to fall by the wayside. In fact, he states that some blockchains are already doing that, but rather than admit their failure, they are bringing in Dragonchain instead. In fact, there is a rather big name doing just that now. True to form, Phil tells me the secret but not before I agree not to reveal it. If this is indeed the case, it’ll make big headlines when it comes out. Ender‘s Game

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Blockchain Industry Review

Security, complianc access to liquidity: WHO’S GOOD AT KEEPING SECRETS IN CRYPTO MARKETS? By Alex Batlin, Founder & CEO of Trustology

The market cap of crypto assets markets is growing fast—over $2 trillion. Institutional interest is rising, and players view the industry as an opportunity for growth compared to traditional financial markets. Crypto assets are based on a fundamentally different technology (blockchain) as compared to traditional financial rails. As such, brand new infrastructure is required to safeguard and administer traded crypto assets. In addition, new decentralised financial services,

known as DeFi, are on the rise, offering new trading, lending and hedging venues as well as passive yield opportunities. Fund managers are increasingly interested in the benefits that crypto could offer their portfolios given its price volatility as an asset class which can create opportunity in the market for arbitrage plays, high-frequency trading, and hedging /speculating with leverage to support maximising earnings potential. However, custodying and

safeguarding assets much in the same way traditional assets are is still giving many institutional investors pause. Institutions have a need for security, compliance, transparency, governance and speed without compromising one for the other to comfortably use and transact with crypto. Remarkable progress has been made in solving the pain points of digital asset custody in the blockchain space and here’s what you need to know.

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Finding a reliable security approach Financial services is one of the most heavily regulated industries. For many institutional level players who wish to buy and hold crypto assets but lack the expertise to do this in a safe and secure way, at scale and are legally unable to take on this level of risk, it becomes a barrier to participation. For others who have already entered the crypto realm, the challenge has been around the asset storage considerations themselves that the custodial models provide.

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When it comes to cryptocurrency private key storage and management, funds are either being overly cautious leveraging cold-storage solution providers or not as cautious as they should be storing the majority of funds on a centralised exchange or maintaining funds in self-custody with a hardware wallet solution provider, leaving themselves exposed. All scenarios come with their risks and drawbacks. Digital asset custodians act as trusted intermediaries, providing maintenance and management of customer keys and associated funds. One of the allures of this method of private key management is that the dedicated approach of custodians rarely leaves room for error and removes

credit risk. Custodians can secure private keys in several different ways. Some may opt for

>>>> Photo: Alex Batlin, Founder & CEO of

Trustology

cold wallet storage. These endow a high level of security but also produce a relatively sluggish rate of transfer - days or weeks in some instances - and don’t scale. To combat this, others may choose to operate through a hot wallet—a digital vault connected to the internet- which may not be secure and could concede to explicit attack vectors and oftentimes is not insured. Hence what is an ideal custodial solution to support increased institutional adoption in crypto markets where convenience and security are not inversely proportional. How can funds look to acquire solutions that are all in one - fast, flexible with easy transaction capabilities without decreasing security?

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TRUST

AS SAFE AS COLD STORAGE AT HOT WALLET SPEED We’re seeing more sophisticated custodial models emerge with abilities to effectively combine cold and hot storage protocols, achieving a comfortable middle ground. By harnessing a mix of front-end software flexibility in conjunction with end-to-end hardware security such as mobile phone secure enclaves to hardware security modules and secure data centres, it becomes possible to engineer a fully

Custodian Wallet Provider automated solution process that reduces operator risk and transaction delays. This, combined with additional security controls such as multi-signature and white lists and insurance allows these types of custodians to support the current shortcomings of the market, giving investors the reassurance they need. There is greater flexibility regarding access and authorization of the movement of funds without compromising on security. There is also an added as-

surance that these types of custodians have established relationships with insurance companies that will cover any potential losses incurred due to theft or malfeasance giving funds more peace of mind. An additional challenge that fund managers and institutional investors face when it comes to operating the fund is meeting regulatory compliance requirements around Know-Your-Customer, KYC, and Anti-Money Laundering, AML, regulations. They are often required by law to know the identities of all trading parties. Also often their legal advisors will advise them to document the source of funds AND the transaction histories, sometimes all the way back to the genesis block, for all the trades made with their counter-parties. These compliance costs by themselves can easily add a 5% premium, or more, to the expense of trading these asset classes. By leveraging these newer models emerging in crypto custody, funds can expect to partially outsource their KYC/AML obligations as these solutions come ready made with built in compliance controls that can support

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better monitoring of direct transactional exposure risk instead of having to manually perform pre-flight checks, saving them time, cost and effort.

Improving liquidity - enabling faster projection of capital as desired on exchanges The expression “Money loves speed”, is a well known aphorism when it comes to building wealth. Liquidity matters, not only when moving one’s own funds, but also when transacting both on and off exchange. Crypto markets are traded around the clock worldwide. Traders looking to act on arbitrage or margin trades or to implement hedging strategies through the futures and options derivative market require fast action and quick movement of capital. If their custody solution can’t provide this 24/7, it poses a significant challenge and risk. With the newer crypto custody models of today, funds can look to enable the highest levels of security, while simultaneously enabling faster projection of liquidity as desired. Enhanced automation and new features such as alerting systems or on-exchange wallets which look to provide funds with enforced transactional controls such as multisig and allow lists to effectively create a “walled garden” environment where all exchanges traded

on can be viewed and accessed from a single view. Capabilities such as this are proving beneficial to funds looking to demonstrate mitigating holding and fiduciary risks while keeping on top of margin calls.

With control measures like these, funds can improve their ability to act on low risk arbitrage plays without pre-committing excessive liquidity to a venue. Or, actively speculate on price movements using leverage on margin, which often arises a need to quickly increase margin deposits. This must be done in order to keep from having a margin call force their exit from a position before they want to do so. Many custodians are also establishing relationships with select exchanges to help decrease transaction clearance times and fees. In effect, they are performing a sort of escrow service, holding the private keys themselves as collateral, and establishing a line of credit with the crypto exchange. DeFi Support Decentralised finance (DeFi) has grown to $60 billion in total locked value, totally exceeding the $5 million mark prediction of 2020. However DeFi is a broad and complex playing field, where institutions can easily lose their assets or fall foul of regulation if they don’t know what they are doing. Now with more companies entering the DeFi ecosystem in the hopes of

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Blockchain Industry Review

maximising earning potential and growing their investments through staking, lending, hedging or yield farming, ensuring the safe custody of private keys across multiple chains is a necessity and priority. In the current DeFi landscape, interactions are anonymous and there is a big AML/KYC question yet to solve, which doesn’t work for regulated funds needing transparency to comply with regulatory requirements. This is where custodians like Trustology can help, adding layers of utility and security such as multisig, allow lists, co-signing and DeFi Firewalls along with effective private-key storage.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

All the foundations necessary to alleviate the concerns of institutional investors have been built and laid out over the last few years with more change yet to come. Custodians that provide flexibility, security, insurance, and liquidity have arrived on the scene. Many governments have provided some inclination as to the direction they’re headed with their regulations. Exchanges have begun implementing solutions allowing for cheaper faster movement of

capital, both into, and out of these asset classes. Taken altogether it is becoming easier and more likely that many fund managers and institutions will begin allocating larger portions of their portfolios into these assets given the confidence custodians are aiming to bestow. With the infrastructure in place, and the protections large capital fund managers require established, it is only now becoming possible for complex high-rise investment

structures to be built upon them. Fund managers and institutional investors are faced with a decision. There will be costs no matter the choice made. Each one will have to decide which entails greater risk, continue as if the world is as it has ever been, or adapt to these historical changes and possibly achieve greater capital gains, monetary freedom of choice, and international freedom of movement never known in traditional asset classes.

About the author: Alex Batlin is Founder & CEO of Trustology, an award-winning institutional custodian wallet provider focussed on developing solutions to help institutional, corporate and private clients safeguard and administer cryptoassets in a safer, faster and easier way on-chain, on-DeFi, and on-exchange. Alex is an entrepreneur with extensive banking and blockchain experience, previously at BNY Mellon, UBS and JPMorgan.

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Blockchain Industry Review

Blockchain

Innovating with Blockchain could save your business tax – R&D Tax Credits Explained by Shaun Bartle

>>>> Photo: Shaun Bartle FMAAT.

Associate Director Finch & Associates

he last few years has seen huge adoption of Blockchain being integrated across almost every industry, from real estate to finance to logistics to retail. There has also been an increase in companies creating their own native cryptocurrency to enhance their business, such as a token that is tracked to the supply chain of jewellery, allowing the end user to know exactly where the material has been sourced from. So, what does this have to do with saving your business on tax? The UK Governments Research & Development Tax Credit Scheme! This generous tax -saving scheme allows companies who are innovating to reduce their corporation tax burden and potentially receive a game-changing cash injection to the business. The scheme does, on the face of it, sound too good to be true, but I can assure you that is not the case. The scheme is a Government incentive that rewards UK companies for pushing the boundaries of

innovation and help to fuel growth in the UK, making a claim can potentially provide a valuable cash injection into the business and reduce your corporation tax bill. To qualify, a business must be seeking an advance in science or technology, and when trying to achieve this, encounters scientific or technological uncertainties that are not readily deducible by an expert in that given field. A loss-making company which qualifies for the SME scheme can potentially recoup up to 33p in every £1 spent on qualifying R&D activity (more on this later), whilst a profit-making company profitmaking company can potentially reclaim up to 26p in every £1 spent. How does this relate to Blockchain? The core value that underpins Blockchain is that it acts as a consensus mechanism that enables a database to be directly shared without a central administrator, essentially cutting out the middle man. Not only this, Blockchain

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offers businesses advantages such as trust, transparency, efficiency, reduced transaction costs but with faster transaction settlements, and with the pace of technology moving faster than ever before, it was inevitable that technology such as Blockchain would begin to become “the next big thing”, no doubt being helped by the crypto-craze we’ve been encountering with its various highs sin-

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ce 2017.

£130,000 x 19% (current Corporation Tax rate) = £24,700

The number of companies exploring the use of Blockchain and actually integrating it into their day-to-day operations has significantly increased.

Now let’s see what the potential benefit could be if that same company were a loss-maker instead:

This has led to higher volumes of R&D claims being made where companies are innovating with Blockchain.

£100,000 x 130% (enhancement rate) = £130,000 We then add this to the original expenditure: £100,000 + £130,000 = £230,000 (known as your enhanced expenditure) £230,000 x 14.5% = £33,350 The 14.5% is the known as the “surrender rate”, as the business is essentially giving up their loss for an immediate cash injection instead. The average claim made by an SME company in the 2016/17 tax year was £53,876. With benefits like this it’s easy to see why claiming R&D tax credits could help

So what is the benefit of doing an R&D claim? Credit where it’s due! SME’s can claim an additional 130% deduction of the qualifying expense incurred Whether you are profit or loss making, you may still be eligible for the relief, with up to 33p in every £1 spent on qualifying R&D activity potentially being recovered. A Tax Credit is an immediate source of cash which you can reinvest in your R&D and continue to lead innovation

Potential Benefits As an example, let’s assume a profit-making company qualifies for the SME scheme and their Tax Advisor has identified £100,000 of qualifying R&D expenditure for the period. The potential benefit could be a tax refund or reduced tax liability of £24,700, broken down as follows: £100,000 x 130% (enhancement rate) = £130,000 (known as your enhancement)

transform a business around! What Costs Qualify as R&D? The cost of staff directly involved in the R&D work. Some Software & Consumable items. 65% of the cost of third parties who worked on the R&D projects. Grants – You can still claim R&D tax relief if you have received a grant. Blockchain Case Study Real Estate The increasing use of Distributed Ledger Technologies (‘DLT’) such as Blockchain to record real estate transactions has led to an increase in R&D claims for Property Investment companies. The R&D is usually integrating an existing CRM system with the DLT. As the Intellectual Property vests with the business and is usually kept as a trade secret, the knowledge that is available in the public domain is scarcely limited. This results in specialists creating and advancing a new integrated platform that is more efficient for the business.

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To emphasise the impact that Blockchain is having in Real Estate, HM Land Registry themselves are currently exploring how Blockchain technology could be used to provide quicker and simpler services at Government level.

Blockchain Industry Review

You co for R&

So what next? If you are adopting Blockchain within your business and integrating it with your existing systems, or innovating via another method, you should contact your Accountant or Tax Advisor as soon as possible to discuss whether or not you qualify.

You might be surprise

and hadron colliders).

We’ve helped numero

It’s important that you act sooner rather than later, as claims can only be made within the 24 months after your year-end.

sectors – incuding tho

Remember, this could help transform your business around, freeing up cash quickly to enable you to continue to innovate and further growth.

Here’s one bit of resea tax affairs today.

Find out more:

rdtc@ﬁnchassociates.c

@ﬁnchassociate Contact Details: e-Mail: shaun.bartle@finchassociates.co.uk Telephone: 07494 170 202 Website: www.finchassociates.co.uk

by the Crypto Curry Club

ould be eligible &D Tax Credits

ed by what can qualify as R&D (it’s not always about white coats

ous businesses claim back signiﬁcant sums of money in all sorts of

ose in the sustainable technology sector.

arch you needn’t spend any more time on. Ask us about your own

co.uk | 01275 867350

es | www.ﬁnchassociates.co.uk

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Blockchain Industry Review

ORS SPONSORS Want to be one of our sponsors? contact us at hello@cryptocurryclub.com

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Blockchain Industry Review Issue 4 - April 2021

Articles inside

Innovating with Blockchain could save your business tax – R&D Tax Credits Explained

NFTs, stablecoins and blockchain certificates meet Zilliqa

Uplift Art, the platform using blockchain certified art and NFTs to raise money for charity

Dragonchain & blockchain for healthcare

Algorand Foundation, the Brixton Pound and network participation

Upland, the NFT metaverse that is ‘quickly becoming the largest and most dynamic blockchain-based economy in existence’, with Idan Zuckerman, co-founder Upland

When only a comic will do

Security, compliance, and access to liquidity: Who’s Good at Keeping Secrets in Crypto Markets?