DEFI: THE RISE OF A NEW EMPIRE

WITH GAINS IN MOMENTUM OF BOTH THE CRYPTO MARKET AND DEFI SPACE, THE ATTENTION OF THE USER BASE IS MOVING TOWARDS PLATFORMS IN THE DEFI SECTOR – GABRIEL ZANKO, CEO OF MOBILEYOURLIFE AND OF URANO CAPITAL LOOKS AT THE ROAD TO MAINSTREAM ADOPTION.

Bitcoin

In the last 13 years after Bitcoin’s white paper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was released, we have seen the first glimpse of how innovation in the financial world is about to be disrupted for the first time by a network without any centralized party or organisation.

Bitcoin became the first application within the ecosystem called the Blockchain. Which in essence is the record-keeping technology behind the Bitcoin network. In the Bitcoin paper it is explained in detail how the technology works and after figuring out the brilliant design of the Proof of Work, which discusses how peers go about time-stamping the ledger and makes a bit of effort to identify and verify the hashes that represent blocks of transactions.

By representing a block as an SHA-256 hash, peers are required to spend computational power to produce a matching hash that generates a new addition to the ledger. It is like a one-time puzzle that the computer(s) must solve using computational power. This hash then becomes part of every hash added afterward in a long chain of blocks that all participants agree is correct.

As you can see so far, Bitcoin has brought about innovation – and as Peter Thiel says in his book Zero to One - early innovation with the Bitcoin and Blockchain network created a whole new pattern that moved us onwards from Web 1.0, which was an interconnected computer system designed for scientists to share experiments in portals such as AOL and early Yahoo.

These online service providers were the gateway to Web 1.0, where businesses, individuals and governments began to consume and occasionally post content. Web 2.0, whose business model relies on user participation to create fresh content and profile data to be sold to third parties for marketing purposes. Indeed, the internet has become a massive app store, dominated by centralized apps from Google, Facebook and Amazon.

BLOCKCHAIN AND THE WEB 3.0.

The rise of technologies such as distributed ledgers and storage on Blockchain will allow for data decentralization and create a transparent and secure environment, overtaking Web 2.0’s centralization, surveillance and exploitative advertising. Decentralized infrastructure and application platforms will displace centralized tech giants, and individuals will be able to rightfully own their data.

Web 3.0 will bring us a fairer internet by enabling the individual to be a sovereign. Web 3.0’s decentralized Blockchain protocol will enable individuals to connect to an internet where they can own and be properly compensated for their time and data.

Ethereum

With the rise of decentralized networks, the Ethereum network builds on Bitcoin’s innovation, with some big differences – it lets you use digital money without payment providers or banks. But thanks to smart contracts Ethereum is programmable, so you can also use it for lots of different digital assets – even Bitcoin. So, it goes beyond Bitcoin in the sense that it is not only used for payments or store of value, but rather as a marketplace or platform to build financial services, games and apps that cannot steal your data or censor you.

DECENTRALIZED FINANCE OR DEFI.

DeFi is aiming to bring the traditional finance products into the Blockchain. With the main goal to replace legacy and centralized institutions with ecosystems and technologies, completely decentralized living as an ecosystem for all types of products - such as lending to Automated Market Making (AMM) and examples such as Uniswap and Compound. It is remarkable how it grew the DeFi market during 2020, increasing up to 51+ BN USD in Total Valued Locked in DeFi.

There are several challenges such as energy consumption and the switch from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake as Ethereum 2.0 is aiming to achieve - which will enhance speed and efficiency to build more solid products. Most applications are built today in Ethereum and more recently on Binance Smart Chain.

This is only the beginning but the technology from Bitcoin and the rise of Web 3.0 are allowing emerging markets and the whole world to tap into networks more transparent and more accessible to the people.

DR CONRAD ATTARD IS THE DEPUTY DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ICT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MALTA, AS WELL AS A LECTURER AND A RESEARCHER WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS. HE IS CURRENTLY LEAD RESEARCHER ON A PROJECT FOCUSING ON PERVASIVE ELECTRONIC MONITORING (PEM) IN HEALTHCARE. HE TAKES A DIVE INTO THE RESEARCH DRIVING INNOVATION IN DIGITAL HEALTHCARE.

Ilike to compare digital health to when we plan a holiday. We book all we need through technology. All this is done through a user-friendly system, whose connections between different local and international providers we trust will give us the holiday we planned. Similarly, digital health solutions can enable us to learn more about our health, to get treatment, and even to prevent ourselves from getting ill in the first place.

All this is already possible, of course, but it’s challenging for several reasons.

At the Faculty of ICT, we are currently focusing on improving the quality of life of people living with chronic illnesses or who need medical advice through technology-enabled health services. This work is related to personalised health, but digital health depends on health information, which needs to be collected from sensors using wearable devices, or else through the logging-in of observed information by professionals.

For this information to be truly useful, it needs to be as complete as possible, as well as secure and correct. And, in fact, that is where the problems with such systems begin. All these attributers create a challenge, particularly because the information currently available is dispersed in unintegrated IT solutions, with our main hospital’s health systems and those of other local and international hospitals acting separately.

Three projects we are currently working on aim to counteract this. The first is the Intelligent Aggregation and Adaptive Visualisation project, which focuses on integrating data from different IT solutions. Using an oncology-related case study, we want to see how this data could be used by professionals to improve their understanding throughout the patient care pathway. The second, is the Data Visualisation using BI for Digital Health project, which looks at how different IT dashboard solutions could help hospitals manage details for both out-patients and resident patients in a local hospital.

The final project looks to take such technology straight to the patient. Related to pervasive electronic monitoring in healthcare, and with several projects funded through UoM research funding and the Research, Innovation & Development Trust (RIDT), this project aims to take into account the different aspects formal and informal carers have to grapple with when looking after the elderly, particularly those living with dementia.

Our work here is to create a system that can predict when wandering may cause danger to them, thus allowing carers to take more informed decisions that do not limit their patients’ daily activities whilst keeping them safe. To create such digital health systems, we need multi-disciplinary teams that contribute by giving feedback and participating actively in the full life cycle of the research.

2021 is the year of medical education, leveraging augmented reality, virtual reality and emerging technologies, but this also reminds us of a very powerful point: digital health solutions have to be adapted in a way that different professionals can engage with, particularly in these difficult and extraordinary times. To be effective these technologies need to be reliable and keep both the professional and the patient in mind at all times.

By adopting effective, well-designed AI solutions that capture the user experience required to succeed, professionals working hand-in-hand with our research projects are learning about such technology. They are also helping us build datasets to improve the algorithms and designs using state-of-the-art tech. Data is required to build the models that are proposed, and to obtain successful outcomes we need as much data as we can humanly collect to give us real-life scenario predictions.

Through the data we have already collected we are now creating simulations for professionals to experience what life is actually like for their patients. The professionals here include occupational therapists, medical doctors, physiotherapists, nurses, and nursing aids, all of whom work in local hospitals.

While these professionals have years of experience, which can be vital for our data collection, the majority of them can only imagine what their patient actually goes through. So by using simulations that replicate these challenges using technology and simulation suits, we are giving them the chance to improve the decision-making process. Needless to say, all this has to take place in a space that allows for zero tolerance when it comes to deviating from established standards.

Meanwhile, to make sure that it is not just current professionals who have this opportunity, the UoM is introducing a masters of science in Digital Health. This is a joint collaboration between the Faculty of ICT and Health Science, with a contribution from different faculties to cover different aspects that such an area requires.

Ultimately technology can be vital in health, but at its core its function is always the same: to empower us to do much more than we imagine. Our main hope is that those who require access to health services come to see such technology in the same light they view technology when it comes to travel and all the other wonderful things it has helped make easier and more seamless.