Use cases

If 3D printing technology wants to get ahead of its inherent security issues, the best way would be to adopt blockchain.

Speaking at the 2019 Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show, Jack Heslin, President of 3D Tech Talks, a 3D printing consultancy, said as 3D printing becomes cheaper, easier, faster, and more ubiquitous, the very nature of the technology is going to demand the security afforded by blockchain.

It's all about what Heslin called the Digital Thread of Additive Manufacturing (DTAM), “the single, seamless strand of data that stretches from the initial design to the finished, 3D-printed part.”



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If you've never heard of such a thing for 3D printing that's okay, because Heslin said such a thing really doesn't exist. “The [3D printing] process is linear, but it's not single or seamless,” he said.

3D-printing moves through several stages: from concept, to CAD file, to generative design (when available), to the actual 3D print. Then comes the post print process, and finally support if and when it is needed. All these steps each represent a point of vulnerability in which a 3D print can be corrupted or even stolen, putting company's intellectual property at risk.

“The digital thread of manufacturing has vulnerabilities. Design files can be stolen,” Heslin said. The one that scares me the most is that design files can be hacked to deliberately put in a flaw...I'm not saying it's happening right now, or it's easy to do, but it is a concern.

”Research has already shown 3D printing has a growing need for cybersecurity. Researchers from New York University's Tandon School of Engineering for example have found that there are serious security issues around 3D printing that could present significant safety hazards due to counterfeit parts and products, or products being deliberately printed with hidden flaws and built-in failures.





The Liberator (shown) is a single-shot gun that can be 3D-printed using unsecured files available on the Internet. (Image source: NotLessOrEqual [CC0]) In 2016 researchers from the University of California, Irvine demonstrated a novel approach to 3D printer hacking when they revealed that the source code to produce 3D-printed parts can be stolen by recording the sounds the printer makes.

All of this leads to implications for a number of issues Heslin pointed out. Aside from printers being taken offline by malicious entities and concerns of stolen IP there are also larger issues, particularly around gun safety.

For several years now a debate has raged about 3D-printed guns. Recently, a would-be domestic terrorist in Texas was arrested and sentenced after he was found in possession of an illegal AR-15 assault rifle that he was able to assemble with the help of 3D printed parts created using files freely available on the Internet.

One step beyond this, Heslin noted, would be the illegal and unauthorized printing of military machine parts and weapons or hacking 3D printer files to do deliberate damage to sensitive equipment or machines.

In a 2016 paper, “dr0wned – Cyber-Physical Attack with Additive Manufacturing” a team of researchers were able to hack a PC connected to a 3D printer and from there make secret alterations to the 3D printing files for a $1000 drone that caused its propellor to fail mid-flight.

So how does blockchain address all of this? Blockchain works by creating a distributed, encrypted ledger across any number of parties that can be used to verify not only identities but also the status of any particular job. That means every entity involved in any stage of a 3D print is aware of what all the others are doing at any time in a safe and secure manner.

Since a blockchain is decentralized, meaning no single entity owns it, stealing or altering a 3D printed file from a blockchain is not about tricking a single computer or printer – you'd have to hack every entity that was a part of that particular chain, which is exponentially more difficult, if not sometimes impossible.

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“When you have multiple stakeholders in the process you have to ask is consensus required across stakeholders,” Heslin said. In that regard blockchain can provide authority to print and authority to send files to be printed.He also pointed to the audit trail benefits offered.

“We all know about Six Sigma and ISO – a lot of it is about audit trails,” Heslin said. “Blockchain, by nature, is an audit trail. It shows every edit and iteration in the process. ” Furthermore, because the audit trail is decentralized it becomes immutable and cannot be erased.Even as early the conceptual level there are benefits.

“If you're a design engineer and you send parts to a service bureau to be 3D printed, you don't know if anyone else printed that part,” Heslin said. “Look at a site like Thingiverse. You can see how many times a file has been downloaded, but you have no idea how many times something has been printed...or if its being sold without your permission.

”There are already companies working on this. In 2017 GE filed a patent for an additive manufacturing (AM) system that is “an AM device configured to implement a distributed ledger system...wherein the the distributed ledger is a blockchain ledger.

” The basic premise of the system is to use blockchain to identify and verify builds, and the authors of those builds, in an AM system.Wipro, an India-based IT consultancy, is developing a blockchain system for AM specifically targeted at fighting IP theft. As the company's website states:

“3D printing empowers small manufacturers to create new products anywhere. The creators can share the files to a secluded printing facility. Blockchain can help set up such small independent value chain to make the production processes nimbler. The smart contracting application can ease out the transactions to assure integrity of product history, production process details, ownership and much more. It will also help to locate the most feasible printing facility and reduce the negotiation time regarding price, date of availability etc. At last the blockchain would capture the digital trail of the product, with details such as the type of raw material used, the source of raw material, production parameters, technical specifications, where it was manufactured, how it was stored and maintained etc.”

Where blockchain is typically looked at more on the software end, as with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have made it so popular, Heslin said 3D printing holds an “interesting extra layer in that this deals with physical products.

”And while cyberattacks against 3D printers have been confined mostly to research labs, 3D printers will only become a more enticing target for hackers as more and more printers are connected via the IoT and more and more companies trust 3D printers with sensitive files and information.

There's a shift happening in which what's most valuable won't be the end product, but rather the information that enables that end product, Heslin said.

“You can't say with certainty that we can do this. But this issue is serious enough you have to address this.”Chris Wiltz is a Senior Editor at  Design News covering emerging technologies including AI, VR/AR, blockchain, and robotics.

On a bustling street near the shiny new international airport in Ethiopia’s capital is a small coffee roastery with big dreams. Nearly 40 Ethiopians – a third of them women – sift, roast and package prized Arabica beans for export to Europe under the Moyee brand, founded by a Dutch social entrepreneur.

The roastery, together with the innovative use of blockchain technology to ensure the supply chain is transparent, represents an attempt to keep as much of the profits as possible in Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries.“It’s the world’s favorite drink.

We drink over 2 billion cups a day,” said Killian Stokes, who set up the Irish branch of Moyee. “The industry’s worth $100 billion and yet 90 percent of coffee farmers in Ethiopia live on less than $2 a day.

”That is partly because most exporters process the beans elsewhere, but also down to price fluctuations and other factors that make coffee growing a precarious business.

READ MORE | Ugandan Firm Uses Blockchain To Trace Coffee From Farms To Stores

To make things fairer, Moyee has created unique digital identities for the 350 farmers it currently works with – meaning buyers can see exactly how much each individual grower is paid, with prices set at 20 percent above the market rate.

Now the brand, whose slogan is “radically good coffee”, wants to use blockchain to take that to the next level – allowing buyers to tip farmers, or fund projects such as a new planting program, through a mobile app.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a recent report that blockchain had huge potential to address challenges smallholder farmers faced by “reducing uncertainty and enabling trust among market players”.

The technology, used to underpin cyber-currencies like Bitcoin, allows shared access to data that is maintained by a network of computers and can quickly trace the hundreds of parties involved in the production and distribution of food.Once entered, any information cannot be altered or tampered with.

‘BIGGER THAN THE INTERNET’

Siobhan Kelly, an advisor to the Food Systems Programme at the FAO, said blockchain would ultimately be “much bigger than the internet”. “Within 10 years – it’ll take probably 10 years – it’s going to be a major revolution, for everything,” said Kelly.

Fruit farmers in Caribbean nations are also looking at using blockchain to attract better-paying customers, bring traceability and build a credit trail. “It’s an innovation that is poised to empower local farmers in the Caribbean region,” said Pamela Thomas, executive director of the Agriculture Alliance of the Caribbean (AACARI), a regional network of nearly 100,000 farmers.

AACARI’s project has two components: auditing by accredited professionals to ensure farmers adhere to the Global GAP (good agricultural practices) standards, and a digital marketplace where buyers can find detailed information about the produce. Global GAP is a voluntary standard required by many European and U.S. supermarket chains.

Vijay Kandy, whose company is building the blockchain platform, said the auditing process would allow farmers to deal directly with buyers – bypassing the middlemen that many currently rely on – and make access to credit easier.

“One reason why buyers from faraway places or different countries go through middlemen is because they rely on them to make sure farmers are following these good practices,” he said.

One such buyer is London-based Union Hand-Roasted Coffee. The company sources its coffee directly from growers’ cooperatives to ensure higher quality, pays farmers more than minimum price set by the global Fairtrade organization, and works with more than 40 producer groups in 14 countries.

“We currently undertake direct interviews to verify farmers have been paid, but it’s very time- and labor-intensive to do that and to record all that data,” said Steven Macatonia, who co-founded Union in 2001.

“So to have a much more simple system where we can get a confirmation that payment has been received and how much that is, that could be hugely beneficial,” he said. Price fluctuations and the impact of climate change make coffee a particularly challenging crop to grow.

“Large companies’ profits usually increase when prices are low, but the profit for farmers does not, and in some cases it may cost them money to produce coffee,” said Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. 

Davis’s latest research shows climate change and deforestation are putting more than half of the world’s wild coffee species at risk of extinction.Ethiopia – the birthplace of Arabica, the world’s most popular coffee – is of particular concern. Up to 60 percent of the land used to grow coffee could become unsuitable by the end of the century, Davis found. 

“The more a farmer is paid, the more resources he will be able to devote to climate resilience,” he said.   

Both Davis and the FAO’s Kelly however cautioned that blockchain technology was not going to be a “quick fix”, with farmers around the world facing multiple challenges.

“Farmers need access to affordable seeds, to affordable finance and credit when they need it … and these things are not going to be given by blockchain,” said Kelly. -Reuters-Thin Lei Win @thinink

Like the Internet, social media, and mobile before, blockchain technologies represent a significant opportunity for enterprise marketers to reduce the cost of marketing operations, create more unique customer experiences, build improved customer relationships, and reduce corporate risk.

We’ve been tracking the landscape of companies emerging to disrupt marketing with blockchain technology, and, since our first overview in September 2017, the space has expanded rapidly. At that time, there were 22 companies in the landscape. By earlier 2018, there were 88. And now, as of Q1 2019, there are 290. That’s a growth of 13x in just 18 months.

Those 290 blockchain projects and companies are tackling five areas within marketing: Programmatic & Decentralized Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Marketing. Commerce, Data, and Management.There is also a set of companies that reward consumers for viewing ads or engaging with ads.

Other reward-based categories include: Rewards Content Contributors, Email Rewards for reading emails, and Rewards Video Contributors. One of the most important categories as it relates to GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act is Transparent, User Rewarded Data, where consumers have visibility and ownership of their personal data.

We debated whether to restrict the landscape to just “pure-play” Blockchain marketing tech startup entities or to include existing companies building solutions to leverage blockchain technology. Ultimately, it makes sense to include anyone trying to leverage the capabilities of blockchain technology with the intention of helping marketers.

Tracking growth in various sectors of the blockchain marketing tech landscape provides a window into where entrepreneurs and startups believe the impact of blockchain will occur, or occur first.

The landscape tells you who is out there, not necessarily who is performing. As more of these projects get into the pilot phase and beyond, we’ll be able to provide additional data around how these projects are satisfying marketer needs.

Blockchain AdTech also makes strides

We’re also seeing a lot of movement specifically in the AdTech sector, where many groups are looking to solve some of the numerous challenges within advertising, including transparency in the supply chain, fraud mitigation, data privacy, payments and settlements, and putting consumers first.

Many are running tests now. The latest this week is from Lucidity, which discovered that just 59.8 percent percent of clicks could be confirmed as human traffic — leaving about 22,000 of 55,000 clicks unaccounted for.

The IAB announced a series of pilots with MetaX, FusionSeven, Kochava/XCHNG, and Lucidity back in July, mostly to provide transparency through the programmatic media supply chain. Unilever is testing IBM’s blockchain platform to validate the agreed spend and clarify discrepancies.

Additionally, at Advertising Week, Brian Wong showcased Kiip’s test with AB Inbev to verify discrepancies using a single ledger to record time-stamped impression level campaign delivery.

We are also seeing significant increases in both the number of employees these entities are hiring and in total investment amounts they’ve raised, which we tabulated at $145 million in the programmatic space, based on press releases. Employee growth examples include Brave with 82 employees up from 25 12 months ago, Lucidity with 35, up from 10, and MetaX with 12, up from 9, based on conversations with each company.

There is also a notable inflow of seasoned talent into the industry. Joni Leimala, former Chief Strategy Officer at GroupM is now CEO of AdCoin, and Richard Bush, previously GM of Publisher Solutions at IPONWEB, is now President at NYIAX.

Informally, venture funding (as opposed to ICO funding) of blockchain-based marketing tech appears to be becoming the norm, and business models that involve blockchain but for whom tokens are merely a part of an execution strategy are increasingly prevalent.

Use of technology appears to be entering a phase of build-out rather than pure speculation. Overall, the growth in the number of venture-funded companies forging ahead into the blockchain space, particularly in a down period for the “crypto” markets, is a powerful signal of an emerging consensus that there is real value to be created through the use of blockchain technologies for marketing, regardless of the success or failure of the token economy.

All eyes are now looking forward, to the results from the case studies these first companies are executing. Over the next few months, those experiments will open a new chapter for marketing — one that may well vindicate these early entrepreneurs and their big bets on blockchain.

Jeremy Epstein is CEO of Never Stop Marketing and author of The CMO Primer for the Blockchain World.

Donny Dvorin is GM of Never Stop Marketing Research.

The ‘Big Four’ technologies of the future are beginning to force themselves to the fore as companies start to dabble in the likes of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), as well as Big Data. However, as these four spring from their embryonic stages, issues and concerns are being heeded about their growth.It is for this reason that many people and companies are starting to wonder if the problems cannot be solved by combining the technologies. 

Big Data, as a cornerstone component, can be useful when combined with of both AI and Blockchain, but, perhaps the combination of IoT and blockchain can again help the advancement of these two technologies.Blockchain has slowed in its adoption and growth, but its application is broad and comprehensive. Thus it can benefit, as well as help benefit, the likes of AI and IoT. However, Blockchain can also have a significant role to play in helping IoT along.

The growth of IoT is still moving along, but it too has slowed because many have realised that mastering this network of smart ‘things’ is far harder than they could have imagined. Issues of security and timelines of implementation have caused the hype around IoT to simmer down. 

In a similar vein, this has also happened in Blockchain.It is because IoT and Blockchain find themselves in similar places when it comes to adoption that their combination may be able to help each other out and solve some of the significant concerns that have dogged them individually.

Right off the bat, it is clear that having a system of smart things performing as a network under limited human supervision could benefit from an immutable ledger because the security and safety concerns of the network can be shored up with the help of an un-hackable blockchain that has a well established token system.

There are of course many different ways in which these technologies can blend and function together that are already being explored and tested, but as a combination, their ultimate and strongest use case is probably still to be discovered - but it is out there.

IoT is difficultMuch like in the blockchain space, where ICOs were popping up with new chains to solve every conceivable problem or niggle in today’s world, IoT had its hype cycle a few years back. Many saw the IoT as a way to revolutionise every little aspect of a person’s life.However, in the resulting few years, a lot was learned the hard way, especially when it came to roll out time and the security of a network of smart devices.

Deployment of IoT networks has come back with substantial failure rates. In a survey, it was shown that companies implementing an IoT initiative had only a 26 percent success rate. The problems slowing this success include some common issues that often dog new technologies, such as the quality of the data, the internal expertise, and the unexpected increased time to completion.

On paper, these IoT initiatives look promising and straightforward, but they are far more complicated to enact as it stands today. Additionally, when they are enacted, they are often subject to significant threats and security attacks. 

One example of this is, in late 2016, was when the world witnessed the sheer disruptive power of Mirai, a powerful botnet strain fuelled by Internet of Things devices like DVRs and IP cameras that were put online with factory-default passwords and other poor security settings.

This lack of security in the IoT sphere of things has been described as ‘a Doomsday Scenario waiting to happen’, by Yotam Gutman in the RFID Journal.Imad Labbadi, CEO of VeCap, a company aiming at securing IoT enabled Smart Homes, goes on to explain the current issues with IoT security.

"There is Insufficient protection, several devices from well-known companies and other vendors have serious breaches in their security systems: insufficient encryption, weak authentication requirements - for example, auto-login, possibility of external connections via VPN. All it takes is one unprotected device to compromise the security of your smart system or smart home. Hackers only need to find that one breaking point to bring down the whole network.

"“It takes hackers less than a minute to get access to smart home devices, from phones and TV´s to routers and consoles; all these machines are connected to the internet. Vast numbers of devices with zero-day vulnerabilities will be hacked as soon as the breaches become known before manufacturers will be able to update all vulnerable smart devices.Short-term thinking compromises long-term security.

”Labbadi explains their own usage of blockchain to try and alleviate security issues, as well as tie together the two technologies.“We use smart contract transactions to secure all internal communications within the home system. Every action on our platform is recorded on the blockchain, in an immutable database that is nearly impervious to corruption.

”Mostly, the hype of IoT has died down, but the technology holds a lot of promise and potential, but it is not ready to surge into the forefront of human lives just yet. It needs much sorting out, and a boost as well, probably from another burgeoning and nascent technology.

Sasha Ivanov, Founder and CEO of Waves Platform and Vostok, explains how the growth of IoT is heading for broader adoption; this is also down to its affiliation with other technologies.

“IoT is heading for wider adoption and a growing number of tangible use cases. So this will continue for many years to come,” Ivanov said. “IoT will be an important part of our work too, as it will merge with other new technologies – big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain – to form a platform solution. 

The major implementation and integration achievement will come thanks to Industrial IoT – loads of sensors collecting loads of data, especially in areas such as transportation, logistics, tracking and industrial processes .

”“If we take IoT and blockchain as separate technologies, they are restricted in their applications; however, both can benefit if you combine IoT with artificial intelligence and blockchain,” Ivanov adds. “AI will provide algorithms for analysing the data collected by IoT devices, identifying certain patterns, while blockchain will serve as a necessary layer for validating the data and guaranteeing its secure storage. 

I do not see how these technologies can achieve mass adoption and serious application and integration if they stay separated.”In steps BlockchainAs explained at the top of the article, four technologies are looking to break out and become a driving force of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but they have all pretty much reached a stage where they know they cannot go it alone. For this reason, we are now seeing many combinations of these technologies together.

“All three technologies IoT, AI & Blockchain have developed strongly in the last ten years. 
Moreover, the success of the ecosystem begins with Blockchain,” Labbadi adds.“Blockchain technology rebuilds the foundation of the internet. 
One fundamental problem preventing the further connection of IoT and AI is the security vulnerability inherent on the Internet in its current form. 

Blockchain technologies can help to solve many of these problems by achieving three things:“They allow users to trade directly by providing both a payment mechanism and a communication channel. 
Blockchain networks can be used to create indexed records,
which are linear and permanent so that others can reference them globally without censorship. 

The third thing Blockchain technologies allow its users to do, is act as their certification authority. 
Individuals who can control their data can achieve this. ”Of course, for Labbadi, the security aspect is critical, and because blockchain offers this added layer of security or 'the third generation of security' as Frank Gens put it in IDC’s 2017 worldwide IT technology FutureScape webcast
.

Additionally, Dan Bieler, an analyst at Forrester, also chimes in as to how these two technologies make sense together: “As Internet of Things applications are by definition distributed it is only normal that the distributed ledger technology, which blockchain is, will play a role in how devices will communicate directly between each other. 

Keeping a ledger and thus trail of not just devices but also how they interact and, potentially, in which state they are and how they are ‘handled’ in the case of tagged goods,” Bieler summarised.“Blockchain is designed as a basis for applications that involve transaction and interactions. These can include smart contracts or other smart applications that support specific Internet of Things processes. This way blockchain technology can improve not just compliance in the IoT but also IoT features and cost-efficiency.

”The potential of these two technologies interacting have not only been hypothesised, but they are starting to be tested and implemented. IBM, a big user and patenter of blockchain solutions, has already started extending private blockchain into cognitive Internet of Things. Ultimately they will be looking to the combination of AI, IoT and blockchain.

Tying in for future growthCompanies, users of IoT and Blockchain, as well as prominent figures in these futuristic technologies are all starting to come around to the idea that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will not just be built on one, but rather an amalgamation of all of them in different facets.

If IoT has issues with security and corruption, it makes sense that Blockchain come to its aid and help secure the data with its immutable ledger. At the same time, if AI is struggling with its recording of data and a record of the AI, a distributed ledger can help with that too.

So, as AI and IoT, for example, gain an edge in their previous issues with the integration of blockchain, so does the blockchain become more ingrained and useful going forward, making it indispensable in some sectors. Adoption like this always has been the hope for the distributed ledger technology.

It is probably time for blockchain builders and implementers to stop worrying about disrupting current and past sectors with the use of a single blockchain, and instead look to how they can use blockchain in alliance with IoT, Big Data, AI, and others. to build that Fourth Industrial Revolution.

I am an award-winning journalist that has covered a variety of topics from finance to economics, technology, and even sport. With the emergence of Blockchain technology and the rise in popularity of cryptocurrencies I have focused my efforts towards this fascinating and impo... MORE