Joo list

During the past year, blockchain went from the buzziest word in the tech world to a hot potato no one wanted to hold, in terms of marketing. If you’ve noticed less talk about blockchain this year from technology product makers, that’s on purpose:

Companies have realized big promises without flashy results makes consumers suspicious.

But that doesn’t mean blockchain hasn’t delivered on those promises. The thing is, what blockchain does best is done quietly. A blockchain is basically a growing list of records that are resistant to modification, and therefore extremely secure.

It makes whatever actions, transactions, and activities that occur upon it safe and reliable. And “reliable” isn’t sexy — it’s just something we need, especially in the accounting profession. Ideally, if it’s working well, we won’t even notice it.




And that’s what’s been happening. For instance, Veem, a payments app that debuted in 2014 and has been successful since, allows business users to send payments with no upper limit across borders instantly.

In other words, the app can be used to send $2 or $22 million, and that is only possible because the payments are sent on a blockchain. But Veem doesn’t plaster the word “blockchain” across its PR or advertising, because it doesn’t need to. The app just works.


And that’s what we all want from our technology — it should do what we need it to do, and it should be easy. After that? No questions!

Payments are the obvious first step, in the accounting and finance world, for blockchain application. Providing immutable distributed ledger entries establishes trust and security for the exchange of funds.

Veem is in good company with several other payments platforms, like Circle and Airfox, both based in Boston, and Ripple, which like Veem is based in San Francisco. And these have proved to be the first step to getting blockchain into accounting software itself — for instance, Veem integrates with NetSuite (and has achieved “built for NetSuite” status), essentially embedding blockchain capabilities right into NetSuite, ready for use now.

Another accounting software company, which by request shall remain unnamed, has been trying to build a blockchain platform to underlie its accounting software product, and to thereby provide a product for lenders to assess the credit risk of the businesses using that accounting software (with their permission).

This credit assessment and loan activity would be facilitated by cryptocurrency tokens that the company itself issues. The company has stopped advertising its planned blockchain capabilities because it’s simply been taking far longer than it anticipated to build.

“Currently the market is a very pessimistic environment for the blockchain space, and that’s the biggest challenge,” the founder of the company in question said.

“They’re not so responsive. We’ve reached out to between 10 to 15 crypto exchanges, and barely anyone responded. We might have to go on a second tier exchange.

”Secondly, and also tellingly, it’s been hard to find the right talent. “Our other biggest challenge had been finding the talent that we need to deliver on this kind of project,” the founder said.

“It’s one thing to come up with a great idea, but you need a great team of developers to deliver.”Issues around retaining top talent are not new in tech.

Cybersecurity experts, for instance, are in extremely high demand, and firms have difficulty retaining them without top salaries and attractive project opportunities.

And market skepticism is what has led to blockchain companies to stop the hype, keep their heads down, and work to perfect their product before making big promises.

If you’re interested in the application of blockchain for accountants, be patient. It’s coming, and it will be here before you know it. In fact, it already is.

The fad is dying. A recent CB Insights report that was cited by Bloomberg announced a 60% decline in blockchain startup investments this year, down to $1.6 billion.

But at the same time, large enterprises such as Microsoft, Walmart, IBM and Samsung have either deployed their own blockchains or joined partnerships to use the technology. Ironically, several banks, such as HSBC and JPMorgan Chase, have also developed their own blockchain arms — the same entities blockchain was supposed to replace.

What happened? Why are public chains with the true spirit of decentralization fading away while early adversaries have turned into advocates of the technology?

Slow to adopt — but finally adopting

Governments and politicians were regularly called out for their failing to comprehend blockchain technology. Many initially ignored the crypto boom, which led to the scam-filled craze over initial coin offerings in 2017. Then, they started opposing, regulating and shutting down blockchain projects, which hurt the developing industry. But as time has passed, they are slowly embracing the technology in the right way.

One notable example is China, which had initially banned blockchain projects altogether. In late October 2019, President Xi Jinping took a U-turn by requiring China to make a “greater effort” toward blockchain development in order to gain an “edge over other major countries.” While cryptocurrencies were still banned, this showed that the tides were turning in favor of the still-nascent technology.

Public vs. private

It’s worth noting that enterprises have their own versions of the blockchain: “private” or “enterprise” blockchains. These differ on several fronts from traditional, “public” blockchains.Contrary to public blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, not just anyone can join a private blockchain. Each node is specifically selected by the enterprise, which might require Know Your Customer procedures in some cases.

For the same reason, “trust” is established much easier. As the nodes are already identified, there is a much lower risk of bad actors trying to corrupt the chain. Even if they try, they cannot do it anonymously.

This leads to scalability. Since fewer nodes are involved and a different consensus mechanism can be used, the transactions become much faster.

Hyperledger can run up to 20,000 transactions per second, whereas Ethereum runs 15.

In private blockchains, there is no need for “rewards.” Typical blockchain projects must pay the nodes for the work they do and the energy they consume. There is no point in doing this in a private chain, as the motivation behind the project is different.

Similarly, private chains are easier to update. Public chains require consensus from a majority of the participating nodes — and if there is a disagreement, it can lead to a split, where a new blockchain is born. There are no such requirements in enterprise chains, which means the code can be updated much easier and faster.

For these reasons, it is much easier to launch a private chain. “In the near term, more projects will probably use private to learn the onboarding process and use that first, adopting public blockchains where appropriate or required,” said Nate D’Amico, the chief technology officer of the Nem Foundation, a provider of blockchain technology capable of taking the form of both a public chain and a private solution.

But public chains are favorable for different reasons: for when you need to connect individuals who have no information about each other but still need to collaborate and transact. That was why Bitcoin (BTC) was born — to enable peer-to-peer transactions without middlemen.

This begs the question: Do we need enterprise blockchains at all? When we discard the primary characteristics of blockchain, why can’t we just use a distributed database?

The real use of blockchain

It turns out there are some actual advantages in using blockchain technology, even for enterprises. Among them are commercial concerns. Enterprises strictly control the nodes that join their network, but that does not mean they dictate how the system operates.

Where several competitors need to collaborate, blockchain offers the ideal medium to cooperate in a trustless environment without giving too much power to one party.

This may sometimes even be a political concern, such as when there is no central location to host the database that would be acceptable to all parties. Decentralization also prevents one side from overcharging for their middleman services.

Finally, there are security concerns. Blockchain comes with built-in redundancy, encryption, synchronization and tamper resistance. “Blockchain architecture is fundamentally designed differently in that openness, collaboration, and data interactions among many parties actually make the database technology more secure and reliable,” D’Amico said.

Thus, blockchain offers one of the best methods to preserve data.But this benefit also has certain drawbacks. “A grey area for both private and public ledger/blockchain adoption are regulations like GDPR and organizations that choose to persist Personally Identifiable Information and other related data on-chain,” D’Amico explained.

“Depending on how the network is run, such as globally distributed network, you don’t control where copies of the data reside, and you don’t have any recourse to ‘the right to be forgotten’ as data is inherently immutable and cannot be removed from history.”

The middlemen are here to stay

Contrary to popular belief, it seems that blockchain is not going to replace central authorities. Rather, the trend suggests that semi-centralized, government-regulated versions will have the highest chance of survival.

Startups are learning the hard way that they need to comply with governmental regulations — not because they are submitting to a higher authority, but simply because of public interest.

At the end of the day, blockchain requires you to trust codes and algorithms over human counterparts, and some are not ready to do so. Trusting codes and algorithms may work great for simple cases, but edge cases need oracles and human authorities to dispute.

Still, blockchain’s ability to offer an immutable and tamper-proof ledger can help to prevent the authorities from misusing their power. Just like most other technologies, finding a human–computer balance is the best use of blockchain.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Paul McNeil is a tech analyst specializing in the political and moral perspectives of today’s innovative world. His articles have appeared on various websites, including the Huffington Post. Currently, he is focused on building the Post’s flagship product under his stealth-mode startup, Blue AI.

Twitter is funding a small team of researchers to build an “open and decentralized standard for social media,” with the goal of making Twitter a client for that standard. 

CEO Jack Dorsey announced the news and laid out his reasoning in a tweet thread this morning, although he acknowledged that the process could take years.

The project is called Bluesky, and nobody’s working on it yet. Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal is tasked with finding a lead for the project, who will build a team of up to five people. The Bluesky account’s only tweet quotes Dorsey with the comment “lo” — a reference to the first message ever sent on the internet.

bluesky✔@blueskylo https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106 …


jack 





✔@jackTwitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter


to ultimately be a client of this standard.


  

3424:14 PM - Dec 11, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy

103 people are talking about this

Dorsey says he was inspired partly by a proposal from Techdirt founder Mike Masnick, who has long promoted a standard of “protocols, not platforms” for the internet.

He also says that a decentralized system could solve some key problems with social media — especially moderation issues. “Centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people,” writes Dorsey.

Agrawal tweeted that the ideal candidate will have experience working “in the open on the blockchain,” and Dorsey points to blockchain technology as a way decentralized social networks could implement “open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization.

” He doesn’t elaborate on this point, though. It’s relatively easy to see how blockchains could help create a decentralized payment system, but distributed record-keeping — one of the technology’s main strengths — doesn’t offer a clear solution for problems like finding moderators to manage decentralized communities.

jack

 

✔@jackReplying to @jackThere are MANY challenges to make this work that Twitter would feel right becoming a client of this standard. Which is why the work must be done transparently in the open, not owned by any single private corporation, furthering the open & decentralized principles of the internet.

1,3344:13 PM - Dec 11, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy

187 people are talking about this

Decentralized social networks already exist. The best-known system is likely Mastodon, which is composed of individual- or community-run servers loosely connected through a system called the “fediverse.” Mastodon itself is based on an open-source networking protocol called ActivityPub.

Dorsey leaves open the possibility of using this kind of existing standard. “For social media, we’d like this team to either find an existing decentralized standard they can help move forward, or failing that, create one from scratch,” he writes.

“That’s the only direction we at Twitter, Inc. will provide.” Twitter is already a participant in the Data Transfer Project, a nascent effort to allow data to be easily moved between web platforms — and it’s possible Bluesky’s work will dovetail with that effort.

If Bluesky comes up with a viable protocol, Dorsey says Twitter would benefit from using it because “it will allow us to access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation, focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation, and will force us to be far more innovative than in the past.

” Though Dorsey doesn’t say this, it offers Twitter an escape from its substantial moderation woes — if Twitter is just a client, it’s much less responsible for what people post online. And he argues that social media networks’ value is becoming more linked to providing recommendation algorithms rather than hosting content itself.

If Bluesky bears fruit at all, it could take years to see the effects. But it’s an unusual direction for a social network to take in 2019 — and it at least promises to expose interesting questions about how an internet that’s not full of walled gardens could work.

China’s recent blockchain development bonanza shows no sign of abatement. Business leaders and investors seized on President Xi Jinping’s first-ever endorsement of blockchain as an underpinning technology, and new initiatives sprung up almost overnight.

But Chinese firms, investors and universities have been working quietly on blockchain projects since 2014.  From pledging loyalty to the Communist Party and identifying smart city citizens to verifying pigs and tracking liquor shipments, here’s how China’s gone all-in on blockchain.

1. An identification system for cities

China’s wasting no time with this one. Since Sunday, city authorities across China have been eligible to apply for a city identification code to link them into a blockchain network developed by three institutes in Shijiazhuang city. The network aims to enable data sharing and interconnectivity between provinces. But Chinese smart city goals don’t end there. China’s aim is to have 100 operational smart cities by 2020, including its future capital Xiongan, and blockchain will feature prominently. 

2. An authentication method for everything from liquor to pig meat

Prized by international dignitaries (one bottle is a staggering $450,) Moutai liquor is blended from up to 200 spirits and is manufactured by only one company, Kweichow Moutai Co., a partially state-owned Chinese enterprise. The company has been working with Ant Financial (an affiliate of China's internet behemoth Alibaba) since March 2018, to develop a blockchain-based anti-counterfeiting system for its premium hooch.

The country that’s famous for its copies of everything from Louis Vuitton bags to WAL-MART (China’s version is WU-MART), has embraced blockchain’s authentication talents like no other. It’s using them for everything from verifying pigs to “information asymmetry" in trade finance. 

3. A national digital currency

Many of China’s applications are a far cry from the vision of the technology’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto. One example is China’s plan for a national digital currency. It won’t be decentralized—one of the main factors ensuring that a blockchain is tamper-proof. That’s why some are calling the technology’s renaissance in China, “blockchain with Chinese characteristics.”Decentralized or not, China’s national digital currency is still likely to get off the starting blocks before Facebook’s Libra—the project that’s rumored to have precipitated its speedy rollout. 

4. A highway to innovation for Big Tech and banks 

China’s Big Tech players, such as Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, have long been experimenting with blockchain for financial applications, such as cross-border micro-transaction payments, as well as medical reimbursement and leasing contracts. Things are going well. The People’s Bank of China, Shenzhen branch, reported, in October, that its blockchain-based trade finance platform has processed $10.7 billion in transactions in the past year.

5. A hallowed technology worthy of government investment

Local government officials have begun to provide funding for "outstanding blockchain projects.”—a step up from more stealthy governmental funding of the technology through its “key pillar” projects, such tech giant, Tencent. The city of Guangzhou, a blockchain innovation hub since at least 2017, last week introduced a $150 million initiative to support two public or private-based blockchain projects per year.

There’s no reason to think that other regions won’t follow suit. And standardized regulations for the industry are also in the works.For good measure—irony of ironies, considering its prohibitive stance on cryptocurrencies—China has begun cracking down on any articles daring to tarnish blockchain.

6. A breeding ground for tech unicorns

The prospect of billions of dollars in cheap government financing and subsidies, has led to Chinese investors snapping up shares in blockchain-related businesses. More than 85 stocks surged by 10 percent—the daily limit on trading  in Shanghai and Shenzhen— the Financial Times reported last week.

But China is also home to three of the world’s top Bitcoin mining companies. Last week Chinese Bitcoin miner Bitmain bested all other crypto startups on this year’s “Global Unicorn List,” published by the Shanghai-based Hurun Report. And, on Wednesday, China finally put an end to speculation that bitcoin mining would be phased out, ensuring a more certain future for Canaan and Ebang, and Bitmain too, if it can sort its civil war.

7. A tool for party loyalty

The study of blockchain has become a national movement in China—from civil servants, to stay-at-home moms, the public has been encouraged to study Introduction to Blockchain, on “Xuexi Qiangguo,” an app designed to teach President Xi’s thoughts. A national “Blockchain Day” is even under consideration.

And to provide indisputable evidence of loyalty to the Communist Party, a news publication operated by the People’s Daily newspaper has asked Party members to stamp their declarations of fealty directly onto a blockchain.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A little over two years ago, I was at my company’s holiday dinner, and the only topic of conversation was the stratospheric rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and those others that were lesser known but certainly more amusingly named (like Putincoin).

Related: Should You Still Invest in Bitcoin in 2018?

With Bitcoin at that time topping $20,000 and Crypto Kitties also hitting the world by storm, something momentous was afoot; and we all wanted in. Yet, my company’s CTO called a halt to our excitement, cautioning that a deep decline was coming.

The reason he gave: The potential of the blockchain -- the platform through which cryptocurrencies are built -- to create real-world applications with strong customer use cases had yet to be realized.“Raising $10 million from retail investors on a two-page paper is not enough,” our CTO said.

Boy, was he ever right. What came next was that massive slump, in which Bitcoin lost over 80 percent of its value, and the swiftness with which the SEC put an end to initial coin offering scams.Yet, a few weeks ago, as I was attending a demo day for Binance Labs -- a kind of accelerator program but for blockchain startups -- I saw that some of our initial energy had returned.

In particular, I was struck at the focus and discipline of these entrepreneurs from Binance Labs, the venture arm of Binance. Rather than releasing a white paper and trying to raise money on ideas and theory alone, these people had already fully built their product, conceived of applicable real-world use cases and secured strong early customer traction.

More important: They were focusing, as has startup fund-raising has traditionally done, on getting skilled investors on board, the kind of investors who contribute so much more than just capital.

This got me thinking: Is now the time to invest in or start a blockchain-focused company?  What are the factors that entrepreneurs and investors should be looking for in this space?To quote the words of Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly, now (yes, right now) is the best time to start something (never mind that he wrote those words in 2014).

This mindset, in my opintion, is extraordinarily applicable to the blockchain which, as it matures, presents more and more opportunities to create new solutions. To take advantage of this trend, entrepreneurs and investors should seek opportunities that present an immediate real-world application as well as customer traction.

And these investors should be ones whose value-add is more than just capital; the colleagues they bring in, meanwhile, should be the type interested in the long-term impact of the technology.

Real-world traction matters.

At Binance’s demo day, nearly all presenting companies had some early customer buy-in and traction.  Whether it was a brand signing up for a test run on a new decentralized loyalty platform or a marketplace touting the growth of its supply-side volume, customer-use cases won the day.

Many entrepreneurs commented that with blockchain solutions slowly gaining acceptance among everyday consumers, it was only appropriate to demonstrate real-world adoptionA case in point: Cerebellum Network, a decentralized version of Salesforce’s famed CRM. 

Rather than publish a white paper, the founders built a product and tested it, to positive feedback, with early customers like Benefit Cosmetics. Because of this, Cerebellum’s founders were able to secure significant early investment from the likes of Arrington XRP Capital and others. 

Related: Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Panic About the Bitcoin Slump

Are you starting or investing in a blockchain company? If so, the first question to ask yourself is: What real-world problem are you solving for consumers?

For instance, an entrepreneur friend of mine is planning to start a next-generation nomadic home-sharing platform that will allow members to hop from house to house at exciting locations around the world.

While the entirety of the database, billing and identity components of the product will be built on the blockchain, that’s not what the founder is excited about. Rather, he’s psyched about bringing to market a product  that people have expressed a desire for. In this instance, blockchain technology is just acting as the enabler. 

Seek investors who add more than just capital.

During the height of “Crypto Mania,” it was not uncommon to see new ICOs floated to retail investors, and see coin prices shoot skywards in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

These cryptocurrencies were an incredibly efficient way to acquire capital to scale a business.Yet, this process misses the most important point: Advice and help from investors is often more important than money in early-stage companies. Yes, this includes blockchain companies, as well.

Early-stage investors offer so much more than just capital.  They offer connections to talent, first-mover customers and additional investors.  Some, like Match.com co-founder Will Bunker, use help as a form of due diligence.

Even if he does not invest in a prospective company, Bunker goes out of his way to offer help and guidance because he knows that that’s what matters to early-stage companies.

So, if you're launching a business, seek investors who offer resources help and guidance, even if this route it costs you a bit more than other fund-raising channels do. While you may be paying a little more now, you will be able to maximize your valuation down the road.

Seek out long-term colleagues who “get it.”

Sitting down on my friend’s couch one night, talking crypto with others, I was struck by how short-term many of those attendeess' thinking seemed. Rather than building a sustainable, real-world application, my friends were more interested in releasing a hot new coin and pumping value out of it, rather than in the long-term transformative nature of their product.

Of course I understand that any new field will generate a lot of buzz, excitement and FOMO, or fear of missing out. Like moths to a flame, people often flock to what’s “hot” rather than what’s sustainable.

Yet this instinct of theirs misses the foundational point of cryptocurrencies and blockchain: their long-term revolution and transformation. The potential of cryptocurrencies to fundamentally alter our global economy, trade pathways, financial system and supply networks cannot be understated. 

According to investor Lou Kerner, blockchain is “the biggest thing to happen in the history of humanity.” Okay, maybe that's over the top, but Kerner follows up that phrase by cautioning that this revolution will be a long time in the making.

Naturally, founders should seek out colleagues, partners and even investors that understand the long-term nature of the space and are willing to invest the time, capital and, yes, the patience needed in order to make something happen.

Related: 7 Reasons Experts Say It's Not Too Late to Invest in Cryptocurrency

Right now is the best time to start something.

With crypto prices recovering, albeit slightly, and the market opening up to new entrants and applications, now may be the best time to start a blockchain-powered company. 

While the technology offers unlimited opportunities, when starting a new business, founders should not ignore the key points. Namely: Build a product that people want; seek out investors who are true advisors and partners; and hire colleagues who are in it for long-term gain.  

In the first five months of 2019, there were almost as many blockchain job listings as for all of 2018, TeQatlas research has shown.The post Blockchain job offerings growing consistently, research shows appeared first on The Block.

In the first five months of 2019, there were almost as many blockchain job listings as for all of 2018, TeQatlas research has shown. The company has analysed the data on open vacancies for blockchain-related positions, looking into disclosed salaries.

It also provided the list of the top-15 blockchain employers, with IMB grabbing first place with 335 blockchain vacancies, followed by Oracle and pwc. The rise in blockchain job offerings is nothing new—the number of blockchain-related positions has been growing consistently since the inception of blockchain.

Between  2013-2018, it noted 139 per cent CAGR growth. By the end of May, there were already 2,300 vacancies open—while there were 2,577 vacancies altogether in 2018.

With the growing number of open positions, disclosed salaries also present nicely.

While the salaries range from $17k up to $271k per year, the majority of job offerings—404 offerings—place between $81k-$144k. Therefore, an average blockchain salary is more than double the U.S. average, equaling $105k annually as opposed to $49k.

However, globally, London is the leader when it comes to job offerings. "London is Europe’s leading city in terms of Blockchain related job offerings occupying 26% of the worldwide amount.

Unsurprisingly, the US leading cities are New York and San Francisco with 19% and 13% respectively," report reads.