Dragonchain Public Proposal TL;DR:

Dragonchain has demonstrated twice Reddit’s entire total daily volume (votes, comments, and posts per Reddit 2019 Year in Review) in a 24-hour demo on an operational network. Every single transaction on Dragonchain is decentralized immediately through 5 levels of Dragon Net, and then secured with combined proof on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Binance Chain, via Interchain. At the time, in January 2020, the entire cost of the demo was approximately $25K on a single system (transaction fees locked at $0.0001/txn). With current fees (lowest fee $0.0000025/txn), this would cost as little as $625.
Watch Joe walk through the entire proposal and answer questions on YouTube.
This proposal is also available on the Dragonchain blog.

Hello Reddit and Ethereum community!

I’m Joe Roets, Founder & CEO of Dragonchain. When the team and I first heard about The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off we were intrigued. We believe we have the solutions Reddit seeks for its community points system and we have them at scale.
For your consideration, we have submitted our proposal below. The team at Dragonchain and I welcome and look forward to your technical questions, philosophical feedback, and fair criticism, to build a scaling solution for Reddit that will empower its users. Because our architecture is unlike other blockchain platforms out there today, we expect to receive many questions while people try to grasp our project. I will answer all questions here in this thread on Reddit, and I've answered some questions in the stream on YouTube.
We have seen good discussions so far in the competition. We hope that Reddit’s scaling solution will emerge from The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off and that Reddit will have great success with the implementation.

Executive summary

Dragonchain is a robust open source hybrid blockchain platform that has proven to withstand the passing of time since our inception in 2014. We have continued to evolve to harness the scalability of private nodes, yet take full advantage of the security of public decentralized networks, like Ethereum. We have a live, operational, and fully functional Interchain network integrating Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and ~700 independent Dragonchain nodes. Every transaction is secured to Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Ethereum Classic. Transactions are immediately usable on chain, and the first decentralization is seen within 20 seconds on Dragon Net. Security increases further to public networks ETH, BTC, and ETC within 10 minutes to 2 hours. Smart contracts can be written in any executable language, offering full freedom to existing developers. We invite any developer to watch the demo, play with our SDK’s, review open source code, and to help us move forward. Dragonchain specializes in scalable loyalty & rewards solutions and has built a decentralized social network on chain, with very affordable transaction costs. This experience can be combined with the insights Reddit and the Ethereum community have gained in the past couple of months to roll out the solution at a rapid pace.

Response and PoC

In The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off post, Reddit has asked for a series of demonstrations, requirements, and other considerations. In this section, we will attempt to answer all of these requests.

Live Demo

A live proof of concept showing hundreds of thousands of transactions

On Jan 7, 2020, Dragonchain hosted a 24-hour live demonstration during which a quarter of a billion (250 million+) transactions executed fully on an operational network. Every single transaction on Dragonchain is decentralized immediately through 5 levels of Dragon Net, and then secured with combined proof on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Binance Chain, via Interchain. This means that every single transaction is secured by, and traceable to these networks. An attack on this system would require a simultaneous attack on all of the Interchained networks.
24 hours in 4 minutes (YouTube):
24 hours in 4 minutes
The demonstration was of a single business system, and any user is able to scale this further, by running multiple systems simultaneously. Our goals for the event were to demonstrate a consistent capacity greater than that of Visa over an extended time period.
Tooling to reproduce our demo is available here:
https://github.com/dragonchain/spirit-bomb

Source Code

Source code (for on & off-chain components as well tooling used for the PoC). The source code does not have to be shared publicly, but if Reddit decides to use a particular solution it will need to be shared with Reddit at some point.

Scaling

How it works & scales

Architectural Scaling

Dragonchain’s architecture attacks the scalability issue from multiple angles. Dragonchain is a hybrid blockchain platform, wherein every transaction is protected on a business node to the requirements of that business or purpose. A business node may be held completely private or may be exposed or replicated to any level of exposure desired.
Every node has its own blockchain and is independently scalable. Dragonchain established Context Based Verification as its consensus model. Every transaction is immediately usable on a trust basis, and in time is provable to an increasing level of decentralized consensus. A transaction will have a level of decentralization to independently owned and deployed Dragonchain nodes (~700 nodes) within seconds, and full decentralization to BTC and ETH within minutes or hours. Level 5 nodes (Interchain nodes) function to secure all transactions to public or otherwise external chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. These nodes scale the system by aggregating multiple blocks into a single Interchain transaction on a cadence. This timing is configurable based upon average fees for each respective chain. For detailed information about Dragonchain’s architecture, and Context Based Verification, please refer to the Dragonchain Architecture Document.

Economic Scaling

An interesting feature of Dragonchain’s network consensus is its economics and scarcity model. Since Dragon Net nodes (L2-L4) are independent staking nodes, deployment to cloud platforms would allow any of these nodes to scale to take on a large percentage of the verification work. This is great for scalability, but not good for the economy, because there is no scarcity, and pricing would develop a downward spiral and result in fewer verification nodes. For this reason, Dragonchain uses TIME as scarcity.
TIME is calculated as the number of Dragons held, multiplied by the number of days held. TIME influences the user’s access to features within the Dragonchain ecosystem. It takes into account both the Dragon balance and length of time each Dragon is held. TIME is staked by users against every verification node and dictates how much of the transaction fees are awarded to each participating node for every block.
TIME also dictates the transaction fee itself for the business node. TIME is staked against a business node to set a deterministic transaction fee level (see transaction fee table below in Cost section). This is very interesting in a discussion about scaling because it guarantees independence for business implementation. No matter how much traffic appears on the entire network, a business is guaranteed to not see an increased transaction fee rate.

Scaled Deployment

Dragonchain uses Docker and Kubernetes to allow the use of best practices traditional system scaling. Dragonchain offers managed nodes with an easy to use web based console interface. The user may also deploy a Dragonchain node within their own datacenter or favorite cloud platform. Users have deployed Dragonchain nodes on-prem on Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, MS Azure, and other hosting platforms around the world. Any executable code, anything you can write, can be written into a smart contract. This flexibility is what allows us to say that developers with no blockchain experience can use any code language to access the benefits of blockchain. Customers have used NodeJS, Python, Java, and even BASH shell script to write smart contracts on Dragonchain.
With Docker containers, we achieve better separation of concerns, faster deployment, higher reliability, and lower response times.
We chose Kubernetes for its self-healing features, ability to run multiple services on one server, and its large and thriving development community. It is resilient, scalable, and automated. OpenFaaS allows us to package smart contracts as Docker images for easy deployment.
Contract deployment time is now bounded only by the size of the Docker image being deployed but remains fast even for reasonably large images. We also take advantage of Docker’s flexibility and its ability to support any language that can run on x86 architecture. Any image, public or private, can be run as a smart contract using Dragonchain.

Flexibility in Scaling

Dragonchain’s architecture considers interoperability and integration as key features. From inception, we had a goal to increase adoption via integration with real business use cases and traditional systems.
We envision the ability for Reddit, in the future, to be able to integrate alternate content storage platforms or other financial services along with the token.

LBRY - To allow users to deploy content natively to LBRY
MakerDAO to allow users to lend small amounts backed by their Reddit community points.
STORJ/SIA to allow decentralized on chain storage of portions of content. These integrations or any other are relatively easy to integrate on Dragonchain with an Interchain implementation.

Cost

Cost estimates (on-chain and off-chain) For the purpose of this proposal, we assume that all transactions are on chain (posts, replies, and votes).

On the Dragonchain network, transaction costs are deterministic/predictable. By staking TIME on the business node (as described above) Reddit can reduce transaction costs to as low as $0.0000025 per transaction.
Dragonchain Fees Table

Getting Started

How to run it

Building on Dragonchain is simple and requires no blockchain experience. Spin up a business node (L1) in our managed environment (AWS), run it in your own cloud environment, or on-prem in your own datacenter. Clear documentation will walk you through the steps of spinning up your first Dragonchain Level 1 Business node.
Getting started is easy...

Download Dragonchain’s dctl
Input three commands into a terminal
Build an image
Run it

More information can be found in our Get started documents.

Architecture

Dragonchain is an open source hybrid platform. Through Dragon Net, each chain combines the power of a public blockchain (like Ethereum) with the privacy of a private blockchain.
Dragonchain organizes its network into five separate levels. A Level 1, or business node, is a totally private blockchain only accessible through the use of public/private keypairs. All business logic, including smart contracts, can be executed on this node directly and added to the chain.
After creating a block, the Level 1 business node broadcasts a version stripped of sensitive private data to Dragon Net. Three Level 2 Validating nodes validate the transaction based on guidelines determined from the business. A Level 3 Diversity node checks that the level 2 nodes are from a diverse array of locations. A Level 4 Notary node, hosted by a KYC partner, then signs the validation record received from the Level 3 node. The transaction hash is ledgered to the Level 5 public chain to take advantage of the hash power of massive public networks.
Dragon Net can be thought of as a “blockchain of blockchains”, where every level is a complete private blockchain. Because an L1 can send to multiple nodes on a single level, proof of existence is distributed among many places in the network. Eventually, proof of existence reaches level 5 and is published on a public network.

API Documentation

APIs (on chain & off)

SDK Source

Nobody’s Perfect

Known issues or tradeoffs

Dragonchain is open source and even though the platform is easy enough for developers to code in any language they are comfortable with, we do not have so large a developer community as Ethereum. We would like to see the Ethereum developer community (and any other communities) become familiar with our SDK’s, our solutions, and our platform, to unlock the full potential of our Ethereum Interchain. Long ago we decided to prioritize both Bitcoin and Ethereum Interchains. We envision an ecosystem that encompasses different projects to give developers the ability to take full advantage of all the opportunities blockchain offers to create decentralized solutions not only for Reddit but for all of our current platforms and systems. We believe that together we will take the adoption of blockchain further. We currently have additional Interchain with Ethereum Classic. We look forward to Interchain with other blockchains in the future. We invite all blockchains projects who believe in decentralization and security to Interchain with Dragonchain.
While we only have 700 nodes compared to 8,000 Ethereum and 10,000 Bitcoin nodes. We harness those 18,000 nodes to scale to extremely high levels of security. See Dragonchain metrics.
Some may consider the centralization of Dragonchain’s business nodes as an issue at first glance, however, the model is by design to protect business data. We do not consider this a drawback as these nodes can make any, none, or all data public. Depending upon the implementation, every subreddit could have control of its own business node, for potential business and enterprise offerings, bringing new alternative revenue streams to Reddit.

Costs and resources

Summary of cost & resource information for both on-chain & off-chain components used in the PoC, as well as cost & resource estimates for further scaling. If your PoC is not on mainnet, make note of any mainnet caveats (such as congestion issues).

Every transaction on the PoC system had a transaction fee of $0.0001 (one-hundredth of a cent USD). At 256MM transactions, the demo cost $25,600. With current operational fees, the same demonstration would cost $640 USD.
For the demonstration, to achieve throughput to mimic a worldwide payments network, we modeled several clients in AWS and 4-5 business nodes to handle the traffic. The business nodes were tuned to handle higher throughput by adjusting memory and machine footprint on AWS. This flexibility is valuable to implementing a system such as envisioned by Reddit. Given that Reddit’s daily traffic (posts, replies, and votes) is less than half that of our demo, we would expect that the entire Reddit system could be handled on 2-5 business nodes using right-sized containers on AWS or similar environments.
Verification was accomplished on the operational Dragon Net network with over 700 independently owned verification nodes running around the world at no cost to the business other than paid transaction fees.

Requirements

Scaling

This PoC should scale to the numbers below with minimal costs (both on & off-chain). There should also be a clear path to supporting hundreds of millions of users.
Over a 5 day period, your scaling PoC should be able to handle:
*100,000 point claims (minting & distributing points) *25,000 subscriptions *75,000 one-off points burning *100,000 transfers

During Dragonchain’s 24 hour demo, the above required numbers were reached within the first few minutes.
Reddit’s total activity is 9000% more than Ethereum’s total transaction level. Even if you do not include votes, it is still 700% more than Ethereum’s current volume. Dragonchain has demonstrated that it can handle 250 million transactions a day, and it’s architecture allows for multiple systems to work at that level simultaneously. In our PoC, we demonstrate double the full capacity of Reddit, and every transaction was proven all the way to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Reddit Scaling on Ethereum

Decentralization

Solutions should not depend on any single third-party provider. We prefer solutions that do not depend on specific entities such as Reddit or another provider, and solutions with no single point of control or failure in off-chain components but recognize there are numerous trade-offs to consider

Dragonchain’s architecture calls for a hybrid approach. Private business nodes hold the sensitive data while the validation and verification of transactions for the business are decentralized within seconds and secured to public blockchains within 10 minutes to 2 hours. Nodes could potentially be controlled by owners of individual subreddits for more organic decentralization.

Billing is currently centralized - there is a path to federation and decentralization of a scaled billing solution.
Operational multi-cloud
Operational on-premises capabilities
Operational deployment to any datacenter
Over 700 independent Community Verification Nodes with proof of ownership
Operational Interchain (Interoperable to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ethereum Classic, open to more)

Usability Scaling solutions should have a simple end user experience.

Users shouldn't have to maintain any extra state/proofs, regularly monitor activity, keep track of extra keys, or sign anything other than their normal transactions

Dragonchain and its customers have demonstrated extraordinary usability as a feature in many applications, where users do not need to know that the system is backed by a live blockchain. Lyceum is one of these examples, where the progress of academy courses is being tracked, and successful completion of courses is rewarded with certificates on chain. Our @Save_The_Tweet bot is popular on Twitter. When used with one of the following hashtags - #please, #blockchain, #ThankYou, or #eternalize the tweet is saved through Eternal to multiple blockchains. A proof report is available for future reference. Other examples in use are DEN, our decentralized social media platform, and our console, where users can track their node rewards, view their TIME, and operate a business node.
Examples:

Transactions complete in a reasonable amount of time (seconds or minutes, not hours or days)

All transactions are immediately usable on chain by the system. A transaction begins the path to decentralization at the conclusion of a 5-second block when it gets distributed across 5 separate community run nodes. Full decentralization occurs within 10 minutes to 2 hours depending on which interchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Ethereum Classic) the transaction hits first. Within approximately 2 hours, the combined hash power of all interchained blockchains secures the transaction.

Free to use for end users (no gas fees, or fixed/minimal fees that Reddit can pay on their behalf)

With transaction pricing as low as $0.0000025 per transaction, it may be considered reasonable for Reddit to cover transaction fees for users.
All of Reddit's Transactions on Blockchain (month)
Community points can be earned by users and distributed directly to their Reddit account in batch (as per Reddit minting plan), and allow users to withdraw rewards to their Ethereum wallet whenever they wish. Withdrawal fees can be paid by either user or Reddit. This model has been operating inside the Dragonchain system since 2018, and many security and financial compliance features can be optionally added. We feel that this capability greatly enhances user experience because it is seamless to a regular user without cryptocurrency experience, yet flexible to a tech savvy user. With regard to currency or token transactions, these would occur on the Reddit network, verified to BTC and ETH. These transactions would incur the $0.0000025 transaction fee. To estimate this fee we use the monthly active Reddit users statista with a 60% adoption rate and an estimated 10 transactions per month average resulting in an approximate $720 cost across the system. Reddit could feasibly incur all associated internal network charges (mining/minting, transfer, burn) as these are very low and controllable fees.
Reddit Internal Token Transaction Fees

Reddit Ethereum Token Transaction Fees
When we consider further the Ethereum fees that might be incurred, we have a few choices for a solution.

Offload all Ethereum transaction fees (user withdrawals) to interested users as they wish to withdraw tokens for external use or sale.
Cover Ethereum transaction fees by aggregating them on a timed schedule. Users would request withdrawal (from Reddit or individual subreddits), and they would be transacted on the Ethereum network every hour (or some other schedule).
In a combination of the above, customers could cover aggregated fees.
Integrate with alternate Ethereum roll up solutions or other proposals to aggregate minting and distribution transactions onto Ethereum.

Bonus Points

Users should be able to view their balances & transactions via a blockchain explorer-style interface

From interfaces for users who have no knowledge of blockchain technology to users who are well versed in blockchain terms such as those present in a typical block explorer, a system powered by Dragonchain has flexibility on how to provide balances and transaction data to users. Transactions can be made viewable in an Eternal Proof Report, which displays raw data along with TIME staking information and traceability all the way to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and every other Interchained network. The report shows fields such as transaction ID, timestamp, block ID, multiple verifications, and Interchain proof. See example here.
Node payouts within the Dragonchain console are listed in chronological order and can be further seen in either Dragons or USD. See example here.
In our social media platform, Dragon Den, users can see, in real-time, their NRG and MTR balances. See example here.
A new influencer app powered by Dragonchain, Raiinmaker, breaks down data into a user friendly interface that shows coin portfolio, redeemed rewards, and social scores per campaign. See example here.

Exiting is fast & simple

Withdrawing funds on Dragonchain’s console requires three clicks, however, withdrawal scenarios with more enhanced security features per Reddit’s discretion are obtainable.

Interoperability Compatibility with third party apps (wallets/contracts/etc) is necessary.

Proven interoperability at scale that surpasses the required specifications. Our entire platform consists of interoperable blockchains connected to each other and traditional systems. APIs are well documented. Third party permissions are possible with a simple smart contract without the end user being aware. No need to learn any specialized proprietary language. Any code base (not subsets) is usable within a Docker container. Interoperable with any blockchain or traditional APIs. We’ve witnessed relatively complex systems built by engineers with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience. We’ve also demonstrated the creation of smart contracts within minutes built with BASH shell and Node.js. Please see our source code and API documentation.

Scaling solutions should be extensible and allow third parties to build on top of it Open source and extensible
APIs should be well documented and stable

Documentation should be clear and complete

For full documentation, explore our docs, SDK’s, Github repo’s, architecture documents, original Disney documentation, and other links or resources provided in this proposal.

Third-party permissionless integrations should be possible & straightforward Smart contracts are Docker based, can be written in any language, use full language (not subsets), and can therefore be integrated with any system including traditional system APIs. Simple is better. Learning an uncommon or proprietary language should not be necessary.

Advanced knowledge of mathematics, cryptography, or L2 scaling should not be required. Compatibility with common utilities & toolchains is expected.
Dragonchain business nodes and smart contracts leverage Docker to allow the use of literally any language or executable code. No proprietary language is necessary. We’ve witnessed relatively complex systems built by engineers with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience. We’ve also demonstrated the creation of smart contracts within minutes built with BASH shell and Node.js.

Bonus

Bonus Points: Show us how it works. Do you have an idea for a cool new use case for Community Points? Build it!

TIME

Community points could be awarded to Reddit users based upon TIME too, whereas the longer someone is part of a subreddit, the more community points someone naturally gained, even if not actively commenting or sharing new posts. A daily login could be required for these community points to be credited. This grants awards to readers too and incentivizes readers to create an account on Reddit if they browse the website often. This concept could also be leveraged to provide some level of reputation based upon duration and consistency of contribution to a community subreddit.

Dragon Den

Dragonchain has already built a social media platform that harnesses community involvement. Dragon Den is a decentralized community built on the Dragonchain blockchain platform. Dragon Den is Dragonchain’s answer to fake news, trolling, and censorship. It incentivizes the creation and evaluation of quality content within communities. It could be described as being a shareholder of a subreddit or Reddit in its entirety. The more your subreddit is thriving, the more rewarding it will be. Den is currently in a public beta and in active development, though the real token economy is not live yet. There are different tokens for various purposes. Two tokens are Lair Ownership Rights (LOR) and Lair Ownership Tokens (LOT). LOT is a non-fungible token for ownership of a specific Lair. LOT will only be created and converted from LOR.
Energy (NRG) and Matter (MTR) work jointly. Your MTR determines how much NRG you receive in a 24-hour period. Providing quality content, or evaluating content will earn MTR.

Security. Users have full ownership & control of their points.

All community points awarded based upon any type of activity or gift, are secured and provable to all Interchain networks (currently BTC, ETH, ETC). Users are free to spend and withdraw their points as they please, depending on the features Reddit wants to bring into production.

Balances and transactions cannot be forged, manipulated, or blocked by Reddit or anyone else

Users can withdraw their balance to their ERC20 wallet, directly through Reddit. Reddit can cover the fees on their behalf, or the user covers this with a portion of their balance.

Users should own their points and be able to get on-chain ERC20 tokens without permission from anyone else

Through our console users can withdraw their ERC20 rewards. This can be achieved on Reddit too. Here is a walkthrough of our console, though this does not show the quick withdrawal functionality, a user can withdraw at any time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNlTMxnfVHw

Points should be recoverable to on-chain ERC20 tokens even if all third-parties involved go offline

If necessary, signed transactions from the Reddit system (e.g. Reddit + Subreddit) can be sent to the Ethereum smart contract for minting.

A public, third-party review attesting to the soundness of the design should be available

To our knowledge, at least two large corporations, including a top 3 accounting firm, have conducted positive reviews. These reviews have never been made public, as Dragonchain did not pay or contract for these studies to be released.

Bonus points
Public, third-party implementation review available or in progress

See above

Compatibility with HSMs & hardware wallets

For the purpose of this proposal, all tokenization would be on the Ethereum network using standard token contracts and as such, would be able to leverage all hardware wallet and Ethereum ecosystem services.

Other Considerations

Minting/distributing tokens is not performed by Reddit directly

This operation can be automated by smart contract on Ethereum. Subreddits can if desired have a role to play.

One off point burning, as well as recurring, non-interactive point burning (for subreddit memberships) should be possible and scalable

This is possible and scalable with interaction between Dragonchain Reddit system and Ethereum token contract(s).

Fully open-source solutions are strongly preferred

Dragonchain is fully open source (see section on Disney release after conclusion).

Conclusion

Whether it is today, or in the future, we would like to work together to bring secure flexibility to the highest standards. It is our hope to be considered by Ethereum, Reddit, and other integrative solutions so we may further discuss the possibilities of implementation. In our public demonstration, 256 million transactions were handled in our operational network on chain in 24 hours, for the low cost of $25K, which if run today would cost $625. Dragonchain’s interoperable foundation provides the atmosphere necessary to implement a frictionless community points system. Thank you for your consideration of our proposal. We look forward to working with the community to make something great!

Disney Releases Blockchain Platform as Open Source

The team at Disney created the Disney Private Blockchain Platform. The system was a hybrid interoperable blockchain platform for ledgering and smart contract development geared toward solving problems with blockchain adoption and usability. All objective evaluation would consider the team’s output a success. We released a list of use cases that we explored in some capacity at Disney, and our input on blockchain standardization as part of our participation in the W3C Blockchain Community Group.
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-blockchain/2016May/0052.html

Open Source

In 2016, Roets proposed to release the platform as open source to spread the technology outside of Disney, as others within the W3C group were interested in the solutions that had been created inside of Disney.
Following a long process, step by step, the team met requirements for release. Among the requirements, the team had to:

Obtain VP support and approval for the release
Verify ownership of the software to be released
Verify that no proprietary content would be released
Convince the organization that there was a value to the open source community
Convince the organization that there was a value to Disney
Offer the plan for ongoing maintenance of the project outside of Disney
Itemize competing projects
Verify no conflict of interest
Preferred license
Change the project name to not use the name Disney, any Disney character, or any other associated IP - proposed Dragonchain - approved
Obtain legal approval
Approval from corporate, parks, and other business units
Approval from multiple Disney patent groups Copyright holder defined by Disney (Disney Connected and Advanced Technologies)
Trademark searches conducted for the selected name Dragonchain
Obtain IT security approval
Manual review of OSS components conducted
OWASP Dependency and Vulnerability Check Conducted
Obtain technical (software) approval
Offer management, process, and financial plans for the maintenance of the project.
Meet list of items to be addressed before release
Remove all Disney project references and scripts
Create a public distribution list for email communications
Remove Roets’ direct and internal contact information
Create public Slack channel and move from Disney slack channels
Create proper labels for issue tracking
Rename internal private Github repository
Add informative description to Github page
Expand README.md with more specific information
Add information beyond current “Blockchains are Magic”
Add getting started sections and info on cloning/forking the project
Add installation details
Add uninstall process
Add unit, functional, and integration test information
Detail how to contribute and get involved
Describe the git workflow that the project will use
Move to public, non-Disney git repository (Github or Bitbucket)
Obtain Disney Open Source Committee approval for release

On top of meeting the above criteria, as part of the process, the maintainer of the project had to receive the codebase on their own personal email and create accounts for maintenance (e.g. Github) with non-Disney accounts. Given the fact that the project spanned multiple business units, Roets was individually responsible for its ongoing maintenance. Because of this, he proposed in the open source application to create a non-profit organization to hold the IP and maintain the project. This was approved by Disney.
The Disney Open Source Committee approved the application known as OSSRELEASE-10, and the code was released on October 2, 2016. Disney decided to not issue a press release.
Original OSSRELASE-10 document

Dragonchain Foundation

The Dragonchain Foundation was created on January 17, 2017. https://den.social/l/Dragonchain/24130078352e485d96d2125082151cf0/dragonchain-and-disney/

What’s up team? I have a hot one for you. XVG returned 12 million percent in 2017 and this one reminds me a lot of it. Here’s why:
Mimblewimble is like Blu-Ray compared to CD-ROM in terms of its ability to compress data on a blockchain. The current BTC chain is 277gb and its capacity is limited because every time you spend a coin, each node needs to validate its history back to when it was mined (this is how double spending is prevented). Mimblewimble is different - all transactions in a block are aggregated and netted out in one giant CoinJoin, and only the current spending needs to be verified. This means that dramatically more transactions can fit into a smaller space, increasing throughput and lowering fees while still retaining the full proof of work game theory of Bitcoin. These blockchains are small enough to run a full node on a cheap smartphone, which enhances the decentralization and censorship resistance of the network.
The biggest benefit, though, is that all transactions are private - the blockchain doesn’t reveal amounts or addresses except to the actual wallet owner. Unlike earlier decoy-based approaches that bloat the chain and can still be data mined (XMR), Mimblewimble leaves no trace in the blockchain, instead storing only the present state of coin ownership.
The first two Mimblewimble coins, Grin and Beam, launched to great fanfare in 2019, quickly reaching over $100m in market cap (since settled down to $22m and $26m respectively). They are good projects but grin has infinite supply and huge never-decreasing emission, and Beam is a corporate moneygrab whose founding investors are counting on you buying for their ROI.
ZEC is valued at $568m today, despite the facts that only 1% of transactions are actually shielded, it has a trusted setup, and generating a confidential transaction takes ~60 seconds on a powerful PC. XMR is a great project but it’s valued at $1.2b (so no 100x) and it uses CryptoNote, which is 2014 tech that relies on a decoy-based approach that could be vulnerable to more powerful computers in the future. Mimblewimble is just a better way to approach privacy because there is simply no data recorded in the blockchain for companies to surveil.
Privacy is not just for darknet markets, porn, money launderers and terrorists. In many countries it’s dangerous to be wealthy, and there are all kinds of problems with having your spending data be out there publicly and permanently for all to see. Namely, companies like Amazon are patenting approaches to identify people with their crypto addresses, “for law enforcement” but also so that, just like credit cards, your spending data can be used to target ads. (A) Coinbase is selling user data to the DEA, IRS, FBI, Secret Service, and who knows who else? (B) What about insurance companies raising your premiums or canceling your policy because they see you buying (legal) cannabis? If your business operates using transparent cryptocurrency, competitors can data mine your customer and supply chain data, and employees can see how much everyone else gets paid. I could go on, but the idea of “I have nothing to hide, so what do I care about privacy?” will increasingly ring hollow as people realize that this money printing will have to be paid by massive tax increases AND that those taxes will be directly debited from their “Central Bank Digital Currency” wallets.
100% privacy for all transactions also eliminates one HUGE problem that people aren’t aware of yet, but they will be: fungibility. Fungibility means that each coin is indistinguishable from any other, just like paper cash. Why is this important? Because of the ever-expanding reach of AML/KYC/KYT (Anti-Money Laundering / Know Your Customer / Know Your Transaction) as regulators cramp down on crypto and banks take over, increasingly coins become “tainted” in various ways. For example, if you withdraw coins to a mixing service like Wasabi or Samourai, you may find your account blocked. (C) The next obvious step is that if you receive coins that these chainalysis services don’t like for whatever reason, you will be completely innocent yet forced to prove that you didn’t know that the coins you bought were up to no good in a past life. 3 days ago, $100k of USDC was frozen. (D) Even smaller coins like LTC now have this problem, because “Chinese Drug Kingpins” used them. (E) I believe that censorable money that can be blocked/frozen isn’t really “your money”.
Epic Cash is a 100% volunteer community project (like XVG and XMR) that had a fair launch in September last year with no ICO and no premine. There are very few projects like this, and it’s a key ingredient in Verge’s success (still at $110m market cap today despite being down 97% since the bubble peak) and why it’s still around. It has a small but super passionate community of “Freemen” who are united by a belief in the sound money economics of Bitcoin Standard emission (21m supply limit and ever-decreasing inflation) and the importance of privacy.
I am super bullish on this coin for the following reasons:

Only $400k market cap
Supply started at zero, so there are no VC’s and team to dump on you into the pumps - all coins are mined into existence, just like Bitcoin.
It just had its first halving, reducing emission from 16 to 8 per block. Between now and 2028 there are FOUR (!) more halvings, from 4 to 2 to 1 and then finally 0.15 (I guess that would be an 85%-ing :p) and at this point the supply is the same as BTC and stays in sync forever until the last coin is mined in 2140. This simple supply curve is already accepted by the market as a winner, so why mess with success? (I)
Meets Andreas Antonopolous’ 5 pillars of open blockchains test: Public, Open, Borderless, Neutral, and Censorship Resistant. (How many coins can say this?)
Unlike Bitcoin, Epic created a multi-algorithm approach that enables people to mine on ordinary computers - 60% for CPU on RandomX, 38% for GPU on ProgPow, and 2% for ASIC’s on Cuckoo31+. The algorithms don’t compete with one another. This is essential for leveling the playing field and preventing massive farms from dominating. These percentages can change over time and new algorithms can be easily dropped in. You can mine today using an old laptop and in 5 years you will still be able to. Incidentally, there is nothing standing in the way of adding mobile phone-based mining, which ETN showed there’s a huge demand for.
Based off the excellent Grin codebase, which means they continue to pull in ongoing core code enhancements and focus on ease of use and market penetration instead. (Smart!)
Litecoin’s Charlie Lee is out there daily talking about their move to Mimblewimble, which provides free publicity. What people don’t realize is that you can’t just bolt on Mimblewimble to a legacy blockchain, that’s like putting a Ferrari engine into a school bus - it’s still a school bus, not a race car! LTC is doing it as an optional soft fork via “extension blocks” which will not be supported by all wallets and exchanges. Also, anyone using “optional” privacy features is declaring themselves to be suspicious, which kind of defeats the point for people who care about privacy.
The community is friendly and welcoming to new people coming in, with lots of helpful (independently created) tutorials and guides. (F)
It’s already a global phenomenon, with the whitepaper in 20+ languages (G) and (not bot-infested) active local-language communities on not only Telegram but also Wechat, LINE, QQ and other messenger platforms.
It’s only on two random little exchanges currently, Citex and Vitex. Vitex is actually a pretty good DEX with no KYC and a great mobile wallet.
They are very creative - since centralized exchanges want huge money to list, they created a non-inflationary ERC20 tracker token that’s exchangeable 1:1 for coins so that Uniswap trading is possible (H)

Because it doesn’t have a huge marketing budget in a sea of VC-funded shitcoins, it is as-yet undiscovered, which is why it’s so cheap. There are only 4 Mimblewimble-based currencies on the market: MWC at $162m, BEAM at $26m, GRIN at $22m, and EPIC at $0.4m. This is not financial advice and as always, do your own research, but I’ve been buying this gem for months and will continue to.
This one ticks all the boxes for me, the only real problem is that it’s hard to buy much without causing a huge green candle. Alt season is coming, and coins like this are how your neighbor Chad got his Lambo back in 2017. For 2021, McLaren is a better choice and be sure to pay cash so that it doesn’t get repossessed like Chad!

Links:

Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/epic-cash/
Coingecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/epic-cash
Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/epiccash
Explorer: https://explorer.epic.tech/
Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230747
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpicCashTech
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpicCashTech
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/epiccash/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQBFfksJlM97rgrplLRwNUg
Uniswap: https://app.uniswap.org/#/swap?exactAmount=1&exactField=input&outputCurrency=0x4149195911EB592307d9aCb08aC6a5de08B8717d
Vitex: https://x.vite.net/trade?symbol=EPIC-001_BTC-000
Citex: https://trade.citex.me/trade/EPIC_BTC

What important crypto events happened last week?
Cryptocurrencies
Monero Presents New Legal Framework In Defense Of Privacy Coins
Riccardo Spagni presented the result of more than a year's work. A whitepaper titled "Anti-Money Laundering Regulation of Privacy-Enabling Cryptocurrencies" has been published. The document was conceived as a new legal framework to protect confidential coins such as Monero, Zcash, Dash, Komodo, and others.
Tether Is Moving 1 Billion More USDT Coins From TRON To Ethereum Blockchain
The total supply of coins will not change. The company carried out the swap on September 15, coordinating its actions "with a third party". In recent weeks, this is the second such stablecoin transfer between blockchains — on August 20, the issuer also moved USDT 1 billion from Tron to Ethereum. Another piece of news about Tether: USDT capitalization exceeded $15 billion, having increased by $3 billion in just a month.
Projects and Updates
Kraken Receives Licence To Establish First U.S Digital Assets Bank
The Kraken Bitcoin exchange was the first in the United States to receive the status of a special purpose depository institution (SPDI), giving it the functions of a traditional financial institution. The corresponding application of the Californian company was approved by the Wyoming Banking Council. This will allow Kraken to opt-out of third-party vendors to perform certain banking functions on its own.
Official Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Algorithm Proposal Published
Ethereum Foundation Lead Developer Danny Ryan has published the official proposal EIP-2982, which suggests the launch of Ethereum 2.0 and the transition from the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm to Proof-of-Stake. If approved by other leading developers, it will be possible to launch Serenity, Ethereum 2.0 phase zero. Within its framework, the Beacon Chain will be activated, which will use Proof-of-Stake.
Uniswap Provides All Its Users With $1.200
Leading decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has released the UNI governance token. It was listed on the Binance exchange almost immediately. About 13000 Uniswap users have already requested tokens.
Regulations
New Draft Law Suggests The European Union Is Set To Regulate Cryptocurrencies
The European Commission proposed to establish a legal framework for cryptocurrencies, security tokens, and stablecoins by analogy with the requirements for traditional financial instruments. This is stated in the Cryptocurrency Asset Markets Bill. The bill proposes to treat cryptocurrency assets like any other financial instrument. According to the European Commission, this will provide legal clarity.
Digital Assets Recognized As Securities In Nigeria
The regulator clarified that cryptocurrencies offer public alternative investment opportunities. Digital assets can be used as a medium of exchange, settlement, and accumulation. In order to protect investors from risks and not violate the integrity of the market, crypto assets must be controlled on an equal basis with securities. The main task of regulation is not to discourage the development of new technologies, but to ensure fair market competition and adherence to ethical standards.
Hacking
Japanese Crypto Exchange Sues Binance for Role in $63 Million Bitcoin Hack
The Japanese company Fisco Cryptocurrency Exchange, Inc has filed a US lawsuit against Binance Holdings Ltd., accusing it of providing a service to launder cryptocurrency stolen from the Zaif exchange in 2018. Fisco acquired Zaif in 2018 shortly after the hack. Over $9 million in stolen assets could have been funneled through Binance. The company notes that analysts were able to track the movement of all stolen $63 million to one bitcoin address. Subsequently, 1,451.7 BTC were sent from it to Binance addresses.
New Virus Attacks Microsoft SQL Database Servers For Monero Mining
Tencent's cybersecurity division has discovered a new miner virus called MrbMiner. The tactics of the virus are quite simple — the botnet scans the available IP addresses in search of Microsoft SQL servers, and if it detects such, it tries to log in under the administrator account using a brute-force password. If successful, the virus downloads the assm.exe file, which implements a reboot mechanism and creates a special account for hackers to access the server. After that, MrbMiner downloads a miner for mining the anonymous cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).
Mass adoption
Bahamas Geared to Launch Central Bank Digital Currency
The Bahamas wants to be the first country in the world to roll out a government-backed virtual currency nationwide and announced they will launch a central bank-issued cryptocurrency (CBDC) in October. The digital currency, dubbed "sand dollar", is designed to increase the financial availability of remote islands within the archipelago state.
Alibaba On Track To Be The Largest Blockchain Patent Holder By End Of 2020
Computer giant IBM risks losing the title of the largest blockchain patent holder to the Chinese corporation Alibaba. Since the beginning of the year, Alibaba has published ten times more patents than its closest competitor, IBM. According to analysts, if the pace is maintained, the Chinese corporation will become the largest patent holder by the end of the year.
France Begins Central Bank Digital Currency Testing
Société Générale — one of the largest financial conglomerates in Europe — will test the central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the Tezos blockchain. The Bank of France, as a result of the selection of partners, chose the Forge blockchain platform to test CBDC for interbank settlements. As part of the experiment, the feasibility of digitizing financial securities and the possibility of settlements on them using CBDC will be studied. In addition to Nomadic Labs, several technology service providers and consultants will participate in the testing.
Kazakhstan Will Develop A Blockchain Service For Ensuring The Security Of Personal Data
It will allow citizens of the country to control the use of their personal data. The service is planned to be introduced by the end of this year.
People
Kiss Rock Group Member Is Ready To Buy Bitcoin
Gene Simmons supported Cameron Winklevoss's request to use bank accounts to buy Bitcoin and Ether. The co-founder of Gemini tweeted that people who do not have access to banking services find it difficult to become the owners of cryptocurrency and that they need to take advantage of the benefits. The musician commented as follows: "I will. I am." For this moment, the most common opinion on Twitter is that Simmons is already buying cryptocurrency and will continue to increase the amount of Bitcoin he owns.
That’s all for now! For more details follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, join our Telegram.

What important crypto events happened last week?

Cryptocurrencies

Monero Presents New Legal Framework In Defense Of Privacy Coins
Riccardo Spagni presented the result of more than a year's work. A whitepaper titled "Anti-Money Laundering Regulation of Privacy-Enabling Cryptocurrencies" has been published. The document was conceived as a new legal framework to protect confidential coins such as Monero, Zcash, Dash, Komodo, and others.
Tether Is Moving 1 Billion More USDT Coins From TRON To Ethereum Blockchain
The total supply of coins will not change. The company carried out the swap on September 15, coordinating its actions "with a third party". In recent weeks, this is the second such stablecoin transfer between blockchains — on August 20, the issuer also moved USDT 1 billion from Tron to Ethereum. Another piece of news about Tether: USDT capitalization exceeded $15 billion, having increased by $3 billion in just a month.

Projects and Updates

Kraken Receives Licence To Establish First U.S Digital Assets Bank
The Kraken Bitcoin exchange was the first in the United States to receive the status of a special purpose depository institution (SPDI), giving it the functions of a traditional financial institution. The corresponding application of the Californian company was approved by the Wyoming Banking Council. This will allow Kraken to opt-out of third-party vendors to perform certain banking functions on its own.
Official Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Algorithm Proposal Published
Ethereum Foundation Lead Developer Danny Ryan has published the official proposal EIP-2982, which suggests the launch of Ethereum 2.0 and the transition from the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm to Proof-of-Stake. If approved by other leading developers, it will be possible to launch Serenity, Ethereum 2.0 phase zero. Within its framework, the Beacon Chain will be activated, which will use Proof-of-Stake.
Uniswap Provides All Its Users With $1.200
Leading decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has released the UNI governance token. It was listed on the Binance exchange almost immediately. About 13000 Uniswap users have already requested tokens.

Regulations

New Draft Law Suggests The European Union Is Set To Regulate Cryptocurrencies
The European Commission proposed to establish a legal framework for cryptocurrencies, security tokens, and stablecoins by analogy with the requirements for traditional financial instruments. This is stated in the Cryptocurrency Asset Markets Bill. The bill proposes to treat cryptocurrency assets like any other financial instrument. According to the European Commission, this will provide legal clarity.
Digital Assets Recognized As Securities In Nigeria
The regulator clarified that cryptocurrencies offer public alternative investment opportunities. Digital assets can be used as a medium of exchange, settlement, and accumulation. In order to protect investors from risks and not violate the integrity of the market, crypto assets must be controlled on an equal basis with securities. The main task of regulation is not to discourage the development of new technologies, but to ensure fair market competition and adherence to ethical standards.

Hacking

Japanese Crypto Exchange Sues Binance for Role in $63 Million Bitcoin Hack
The Japanese company Fisco Cryptocurrency Exchange, Inc has filed a US lawsuit against Binance Holdings Ltd., accusing it of providing a service to launder cryptocurrency stolen from the Zaif exchange in 2018. Fisco acquired Zaif in 2018 shortly after the hack. Over $9 million in stolen assets could have been funneled through Binance. The company notes that analysts were able to track the movement of all stolen $63 million to one bitcoin address. Subsequently, 1,451.7 BTC were sent from it to Binance addresses.
New Virus Attacks Microsoft SQL Database Servers For Monero Mining
Tencent's cybersecurity division has discovered a new miner virus called MrbMiner. The tactics of the virus are quite simple — the botnet scans the available IP addresses in search of Microsoft SQL servers, and if it detects such, it tries to log in under the administrator account using a brute-force password. If successful, the virus downloads the assm.exe file, which implements a reboot mechanism and creates a special account for hackers to access the server. After that, MrbMiner downloads a miner for mining the anonymous cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).

Mass adoption

Bahamas Geared to Launch Central Bank Digital Currency
The Bahamas wants to be the first country in the world to roll out a government-backed virtual currency nationwide and announced they will launch a central bank-issued cryptocurrency (CBDC) in October. The digital currency, dubbed "sand dollar", is designed to increase the financial availability of remote islands within the archipelago state.
Alibaba On Track To Be The Largest Blockchain Patent Holder By End Of 2020
Computer giant IBM risks losing the title of the largest blockchain patent holder to the Chinese corporation Alibaba. Since the beginning of the year, Alibaba has published ten times more patents than its closest competitor, IBM. According to analysts, if the pace is maintained, the Chinese corporation will become the largest patent holder by the end of the year.
France Begins Central Bank Digital Currency Testing
Société Générale — one of the largest financial conglomerates in Europe — will test the central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the Tezos blockchain. The Bank of France, as a result of the selection of partners, chose the Forge blockchain platform to test CBDC for interbank settlements. As part of the experiment, the feasibility of digitizing financial securities and the possibility of settlements on them using CBDC will be studied. In addition to Nomadic Labs, several technology service providers and consultants will participate in the testing.
Kazakhstan Will Develop A Blockchain Service For Ensuring The Security Of Personal Data
It will allow citizens of the country to control the use of their personal data. The service is planned to be introduced by the end of this year.

People

Kiss Rock Group Member Is Ready To Buy Bitcoin
Gene Simmons supported Cameron Winklevoss's request to use bank accounts to buy Bitcoin and Ether. The co-founder of Gemini tweeted that people who do not have access to banking services find it difficult to become the owners of cryptocurrency and that they need to take advantage of the benefits. The musician commented as follows: "I will. I am." For this moment, the most common opinion on Twitter is that Simmons is already buying cryptocurrency and will continue to increase the amount of Bitcoin he owns.
That’s all for now! For more details follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, join our Telegram.

Let's first talk about MESH technology:
It works in a decentralized manner relaying messages to other nodes without a central coordinating server or node. So for example a phone could send a message offline and it would get bounced between other phones to it's final destination.
Blockmesh has patented technology, a released app as well as they just announced Mr Shrem from the original Bitcoin foundation on the board. They have pretty hard working team. They said they will start marketing soon.

What is BlockMesh
BlockMesh’s vision is to create the world's first decentralized, cost-free communications network.
All data sent through our network will be absolutely cost-free. Our goal is to become the leaders in mesh technology by reinvesting in the technology and creating a platform where any developer can take advantage of our network with our simple open source API.

BlockMesh platform has three major products
Mesh Dev
MeshDev is a platform built for developers which will enable them to add the mesh networking infrastructure we’ve developed to their current apps/platforms. Thus enabling cost-free data transfeapp use for their users.
Mesh Ex
MeshEX are our custom Wi-Fi routers which users will be able to install in their homes or offices. They will be rewarded with Mesh Tokens for each MB of data that passes through their router. This not only extends the mesh network, but pays its owner to use it.
Mesh Ad
MeshAD is a revolutionary take on real-world advertising. Knowing what your audience is interested in, and what they engage with is of utmost importance. Our advertising platform will offer partners the most targeted geo-located and demographic insights ever acquired.

Their new chat app is LIVE
https://twitter.com/blockmesh_io/status/1261029954919313410

They have patents on their HARDWARE, they are integrating their hardware ALREADY called Mesh Extender Key Ring
BlockMesh will compete globally for the peer-to-peer offline communications and remittance market. We’re building a network to support the internet of things in a race for network coverage (predicted that will connect 50 billion IOT devices by 2020.)
The MESH Extender (Experimental Stage technology) will extend the mesh network reach of your mobile device. Our initial focus for the Mesh Extenders (MeshEx) will be on communication as it’ll allow us to grow an organic, supported network.
BlockMesh is focused on delivering free communication to the undeserved and will incentive's the network with BMH tokens. We believe this approach will fast track mass deployment of devices that will rival existing platforms competing for this market segment.
For more details:
https://blockmesh.io/Hardware.php

Binance is trying VERY hard to break into the African market (1.2 BILLION PEOPLE). They are trying to convert the “Unbanked” into crypto users. What better way than to offer a South African (hotspot for crypto) cryptocurrency? I think Boshmesh has better chance to hit african market.

Advisors:
Mike Weetman Former CFO of Yahoo and DreamWorks USA
Charlie Shrem - Crypto well known figure
Few more you can find in their website

I think this project defiantly have chance to moonshot. Just sitting at $50K marketcap.
This project has potential to reach 50-100 marketcap in bull run easily which is 1000-2000X from now
5M marketcap would puts us 100X in short term
500k marketcap would put us 10X now??
Website: https://blockmesh.io/Faq.php
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blockmesh_io
Hardware: https://blockmesh.io/Hardware.php

Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange that is independent of any central authority. BTC can be transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
Launched in 2009, BTC is the first virtual currency to solve the double-spending issue by timestamping transactions before broadcasting them to all of the nodes in the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin Protocol offered a solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem with a blockchain network structure, a notion first created by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991.
Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published pseudonymously in 2008 by an individual, or a group, with the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”, whose underlying identity has still not been verified.
The Bitcoin protocol uses an SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to reach network consensus. Its network has a target block time of 10 minutes and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens, with a decaying token emission rate. To prevent fluctuation of the block time, the network’s block difficulty is re-adjusted through an algorithm based on the past 2016 block times.
With a block size limit capped at 1 megabyte, the Bitcoin Protocol has supported both the Lightning Network, a second-layer infrastructure for payment channels, and Segregated Witness, a soft-fork to increase the number of transactions on a block, as solutions to network scalability.

https://preview.redd.it/s2gmpmeze3151.png?width=256&format=png&auto=webp&s=9759910dd3c4a15b83f55b827d1899fb2fdd3de1

1. What is Bitcoin (BTC)?

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange and is independent of any central authority. Bitcoins are transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
Network validators, whom are often referred to as miners, participate in the SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to determine the next global state of the blockchain.
The Bitcoin protocol has a target block time of 10 minutes, and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens. The only way new bitcoins can be produced is when a block producer generates a new valid block.
The protocol has a token emission rate that halves every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every 4 years.
Unlike public blockchain infrastructures supporting the development of decentralized applications (Ethereum), the Bitcoin protocol is primarily used only for payments, and has only very limited support for smart contract-like functionalities (Bitcoin “Script” is mostly used to create certain conditions before bitcoins are used to be spent).

2. Bitcoin’s core features

For a more beginner’s introduction to Bitcoin, please visit Binance Academy’s guide to Bitcoin.

Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model

A UTXO transaction works like cash payment between two parties: Alice gives money to Bob and receives change (i.e., unspent amount). In comparison, blockchains like Ethereum rely on the account model.
https://preview.redd.it/t1j6anf8f3151.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=33bd141d8f2136a6f32739c8cdc7aae2e04cbc47

Nakamoto consensus

In the Bitcoin network, anyone can join the network and become a bookkeeping service provider i.e., a validator. All validators are allowed in the race to become the block producer for the next block, yet only the first to complete a computationally heavy task will win. This feature is called Proof of Work (PoW).
The probability of any single validator to finish the task first is equal to the percentage of the total network computation power, or hash power, the validator has. For instance, a validator with 5% of the total network computation power will have a 5% chance of completing the task first, and therefore becoming the next block producer.
Since anyone can join the race, competition is prone to increase. In the early days, Bitcoin mining was mostly done by personal computer CPUs.
As of today, Bitcoin validators, or miners, have opted for dedicated and more powerful devices such as machines based on Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (“ASIC”).
Proof of Work secures the network as block producers must have spent resources external to the network (i.e., money to pay electricity), and can provide proof to other participants that they did so.
With various miners competing for block rewards, it becomes difficult for one single malicious party to gain network majority (defined as more than 51% of the network’s hash power in the Nakamoto consensus mechanism). The ability to rearrange transactions via 51% attacks indicates another feature of the Nakamoto consensus: the finality of transactions is only probabilistic.
Once a block is produced, it is then propagated by the block producer to all other validators to check on the validity of all transactions in that block. The block producer will receive rewards in the network’s native currency (i.e., bitcoin) as all validators approve the block and update their ledgers.

The blockchain

Block production

The Bitcoin protocol utilizes the Merkle tree data structure in order to organize hashes of numerous individual transactions into each block. This concept is named after Ralph Merkle, who patented it in 1979.
With the use of a Merkle tree, though each block might contain thousands of transactions, it will have the ability to combine all of their hashes and condense them into one, allowing efficient and secure verification of this group of transactions. This single hash called is a Merkle root, which is stored in the Block Header of a block. The Block Header also stores other meta information of a block, such as a hash of the previous Block Header, which enables blocks to be associated in a chain-like structure (hence the name “blockchain”).
An illustration of block production in the Bitcoin Protocol is demonstrated below.

https://preview.redd.it/m6texxicf3151.png?width=1591&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4253304912ed8370948b9c524e08fef28f1c78d

Block time and mining difficulty

Block time is the period required to create the next block in a network. As mentioned above, the node who solves the computationally intensive task will be allowed to produce the next block. Therefore, block time is directly correlated to the amount of time it takes for a node to find a solution to the task. The Bitcoin protocol sets a target block time of 10 minutes, and attempts to achieve this by introducing a variable named mining difficulty.
Mining difficulty refers to how difficult it is for the node to solve the computationally intensive task. If the network sets a high difficulty for the task, while miners have low computational power, which is often referred to as “hashrate”, it would statistically take longer for the nodes to get an answer for the task. If the difficulty is low, but miners have rather strong computational power, statistically, some nodes will be able to solve the task quickly.
Therefore, the 10 minute target block time is achieved by constantly and automatically adjusting the mining difficulty according to how much computational power there is amongst the nodes. The average block time of the network is evaluated after a certain number of blocks, and if it is greater than the expected block time, the difficulty level will decrease; if it is less than the expected block time, the difficulty level will increase.

What are orphan blocks?

In a PoW blockchain network, if the block time is too low, it would increase the likelihood of nodes producingorphan blocks, for which they would receive no reward. Orphan blocks are produced by nodes who solved the task but did not broadcast their results to the whole network the quickest due to network latency.
It takes time for a message to travel through a network, and it is entirely possible for 2 nodes to complete the task and start to broadcast their results to the network at roughly the same time, while one’s messages are received by all other nodes earlier as the node has low latency.
Imagine there is a network latency of 1 minute and a target block time of 2 minutes. A node could solve the task in around 1 minute but his message would take 1 minute to reach the rest of the nodes that are still working on the solution. While his message travels through the network, all the work done by all other nodes during that 1 minute, even if these nodes also complete the task, would go to waste. In this case, 50% of the computational power contributed to the network is wasted.
The percentage of wasted computational power would proportionally decrease if the mining difficulty were higher, as it would statistically take longer for miners to complete the task. In other words, if the mining difficulty, and therefore targeted block time is low, miners with powerful and often centralized mining facilities would get a higher chance of becoming the block producer, while the participation of weaker miners would become in vain. This introduces possible centralization and weakens the overall security of the network.
However, given a limited amount of transactions that can be stored in a block, making the block time too longwould decrease the number of transactions the network can process per second, negatively affecting network scalability.

3. Bitcoin’s additional features

Segregated Witness (SegWit)

Segregated Witness, often abbreviated as SegWit, is a protocol upgrade proposal that went live in August 2017.
SegWit separates witness signatures from transaction-related data. Witness signatures in legacy Bitcoin blocks often take more than 50% of the block size. By removing witness signatures from the transaction block, this protocol upgrade effectively increases the number of transactions that can be stored in a single block, enabling the network to handle more transactions per second. As a result, SegWit increases the scalability of Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Litecoin.
SegWit also makes transactions cheaper. Since transaction fees are derived from how much data is being processed by the block producer, the more transactions that can be stored in a 1MB block, the cheaper individual transactions become.
https://preview.redd.it/depya70mf3151.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6499aa2131fbf347f8ffd812930b2f7d66be48e
The legacy Bitcoin block has a block size limit of 1 megabyte, and any change on the block size would require a network hard-fork. On August 1st 2017, the first hard-fork occurred, leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (“BCH”), which introduced an 8 megabyte block size limit.
Conversely, Segregated Witness was a soft-fork: it never changed the transaction block size limit of the network. Instead, it added an extended block with an upper limit of 3 megabytes, which contains solely witness signatures, to the 1 megabyte block that contains only transaction data. This new block type can be processed even by nodes that have not completed the SegWit protocol upgrade.
Furthermore, the separation of witness signatures from transaction data solves the malleability issue with the original Bitcoin protocol. Without Segregated Witness, these signatures could be altered before the block is validated by miners. Indeed, alterations can be done in such a way that if the system does a mathematical check, the signature would still be valid. However, since the values in the signature are changed, the two signatures would create vastly different hash values.
For instance, if a witness signature states “6,” it has a mathematical value of 6, and would create a hash value of 12345. However, if the witness signature were changed to “06”, it would maintain a mathematical value of 6 while creating a (faulty) hash value of 67890.
Since the mathematical values are the same, the altered signature remains a valid signature. This would create a bookkeeping issue, as transactions in Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks are documented with these hash values, or transaction IDs. Effectively, one can alter a transaction ID to a new one, and the new ID can still be valid.
This can create many issues, as illustrated in the below example:

Alice sends Bob 1 BTC, and Bob sends Merchant Carol this 1 BTC for some goods.
Bob sends Carols this 1 BTC, while the transaction from Alice to Bob is not yet validated. Carol sees this incoming transaction of 1 BTC to him, and immediately ships goods to B.
At the moment, the transaction from Alice to Bob is still not confirmed by the network, and Bob can change the witness signature, therefore changing this transaction ID from 12345 to 67890.
Now Carol will not receive his 1 BTC, as the network looks for transaction 12345 to ensure that Bob’s wallet balance is valid.
As this particular transaction ID changed from 12345 to 67890, the transaction from Bob to Carol will fail, and Bob will get his goods while still holding his BTC.

With the Segregated Witness upgrade, such instances can not happen again. This is because the witness signatures are moved outside of the transaction block into an extended block, and altering the witness signature won’t affect the transaction ID.
Since the transaction malleability issue is fixed, Segregated Witness also enables the proper functioning of second-layer scalability solutions on the Bitcoin protocol, such as the Lightning Network.

Lightning Network

Lightning Network is a second-layer micropayment solution for scalability.
Specifically, Lightning Network aims to enable near-instant and low-cost payments between merchants and customers that wish to use bitcoins.
Lightning Network was conceptualized in a whitepaper by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015. Since then, it has been implemented by multiple companies. The most prominent of them include Blockstream, Lightning Labs, and ACINQ.
A list of curated resources relevant to Lightning Network can be found here.
In the Lightning Network, if a customer wishes to transact with a merchant, both of them need to open a payment channel, which operates off the Bitcoin blockchain (i.e., off-chain vs. on-chain). None of the transaction details from this payment channel are recorded on the blockchain, and only when the channel is closed will the end result of both party’s wallet balances be updated to the blockchain. The blockchain only serves as a settlement layer for Lightning transactions.
Since all transactions done via the payment channel are conducted independently of the Nakamoto consensus, both parties involved in transactions do not need to wait for network confirmation on transactions. Instead, transacting parties would pay transaction fees to Bitcoin miners only when they decide to close the channel.
https://preview.redd.it/cy56icarf3151.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=b239a63c6a87ec6cc1b18ce2cbd0355f8831c3a8
One limitation to the Lightning Network is that it requires a person to be online to receive transactions attributing towards him. Another limitation in user experience could be that one needs to lock up some funds every time he wishes to open a payment channel, and is only able to use that fund within the channel.
However, this does not mean he needs to create new channels every time he wishes to transact with a different person on the Lightning Network. If Alice wants to send money to Carol, but they do not have a payment channel open, they can ask Bob, who has payment channels open to both Alice and Carol, to help make that transaction. Alice will be able to send funds to Bob, and Bob to Carol. Hence, the number of “payment hubs” (i.e., Bob in the previous example) correlates with both the convenience and the usability of the Lightning Network for real-world applications.

Schnorr Signature upgrade proposal

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (“ECDSA”) signatures are used to sign transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
https://preview.redd.it/hjeqe4l7g3151.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=8014fb08fe62ac4d91645499bc0c7e1c04c5d7c4
However, many developers now advocate for replacing ECDSA with Schnorr Signature. Once Schnorr Signatures are implemented, multiple parties can collaborate in producing a signature that is valid for the sum of their public keys.
This would primarily be beneficial for network scalability. When multiple addresses were to conduct transactions to a single address, each transaction would require their own signature. With Schnorr Signature, all these signatures would be combined into one. As a result, the network would be able to store more transactions in a single block.
https://preview.redd.it/axg3wayag3151.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=93d958fa6b0e623caa82ca71fe457b4daa88c71e
The reduced size in signatures implies a reduced cost on transaction fees. The group of senders can split the transaction fees for that one group signature, instead of paying for one personal signature individually.
Schnorr Signature also improves network privacy and token fungibility. A third-party observer will not be able to detect if a user is sending a multi-signature transaction, since the signature will be in the same format as a single-signature transaction.

4. Economics and supply distribution

The Bitcoin protocol utilizes the Nakamoto consensus, and nodes validate blocks via Proof-of-Work mining. The bitcoin token was not pre-mined, and has a maximum supply of 21 million. The initial reward for a block was 50 BTC per block. Block mining rewards halve every 210,000 blocks. Since the average time for block production on the blockchain is 10 minutes, it implies that the block reward halving events will approximately take place every 4 years.
As of May 12th 2020, the block mining rewards are 6.25 BTC per block. Transaction fees also represent a minor revenue stream for miners.

https://preview.redd.it/q6xfuxvtmjv41.png?width=875&format=png&auto=webp&s=b092bca718f6cba3ae8c327a54952f4e65c7ed25
If you’ve ever heard the word cryptocurrency, then you’ve probably heard about the mining as well. If you still don’t know what cryptocurrency mining is and about profitable, keep reading!
In order to understand crypto mining, you need to fully understand what a cryptocurrency is first. Unlike traditional currencies (aka fiat currency), a cryptocurrency is a digital asset that works in a decentralized way; it does not require a bank or a third-party to operate. Someone can send someone else a cryptocurrency directly without any third-party involved.
The first ever cryptocurrency created was Bitcoin.
Every single cryptocurrency has a blockchain, which is an immutable digital ledger. A single transaction is recorded on the blockchain permanently, which no one can edit or delete it randomly.
A blockchain works by incentivizing miners to confirm the authenticity of each transaction. A person who confirmed the authenticity of the transaction, get the cryptocurrency as a reward.
Since the cryptocurrencies are based on cryptography, the miners need to solve extremely complicated mathematical problems to verify each transaction. They are incentivized to do it because they are rewarded for it.
Anyone can participate in mining from anywhere in the world as long as they have a computer. When the number of miners increases, it allows cryptocurrencies to be more secure. Even if an attacker would want to attack the blockchain network, somehow, an attacker needs to know 51% or more miners. Since the miners are spread around the world, this task is close to impossible and most likely not economically viable.

Types of Crypto Mining

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to introduce the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm, where users have to solve complex mathematical problems in order to process transactions and secure the whole network.
Bitcoin was quite easy to mine at first, and you could do it with your CPU, there was no need for special equipment, and the rewards were huge. However, today, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has increased considerably, and users need specialized and expensive equipment to mine it.
There are four main types of mining when it comes to the PoW algorithm. There is a CPU, GPU, ASIC, and Cloud mining.
The first three are essentially the same, but they use different parts of your computer. There are some cryptocurrencies specifically created to be mined only through CPU and to be ASIC resistant. Other cryptocurrencies can be mined through all three methods.
Cloud mining, on the other hand, is a process where a user basically pays to rent out a mining machine somewhere else. You don’t have to buy the equipment physically but it is wise to carry out due diligence and research into who and what you are paying for.

Proof of Stake ‘Mining’

With the introduction of the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, cryptocurrency mining changed forever. In this case, users don’t have to solve computationally intensive puzzles. In PoS-based cryptocurrencies, the creator of blocks is chosen via random selection or wealth.
Validators in the PoS consensus have to lock up some of their coins as a ‘stake’ and will get rewarded for it.
There are many benefits over the traditional PoW like lower cost and more energy efficiency. Additionally, because PoS encourages users to hold the coin in the wallet, it stabilizes the price a bit more than conventional cryptocurrencies.
Today, you can find plenty of exchanges that support staking, including the most popular exchange, Binance. The safest option, however, is always going to be staking using your own private wallet.

Proof of Formulation ‘Mining’

FLETA has developed the most innovative and newest consensus algorithms known as Proof-of-Formulation (PoF).
This PoF consensus algorithm uses something called the ‘Synchronization Group’, which allows all of the miners to mine in an orderly manner. The generating block time only takes 0.5 seconds, and the observer node checks the irregular blocks in real-time, which prevents the fork and double-spending. Furthermore, FLETA’s PoF algorithm is currently undergoing the patent process through the United States Patent Office (Application Number: 62717695).
The users can easily create a FLETA formulator through the official FLETA wallet. The minimum amount to create a single Formulator is 200,000 FLETA. The blockchain network is operated by FLETA and requires a 6-core CPU or higher.
As you created at least four Formulators, you will be able to upgrade it, which allows you to get 1.3 times more rewards.
Besides creating a Formulator, users can contribute to mining with a minimum amount of 100 FLETA.

Conclusion

Today, various mining methods exist, each with their pros and cons. However, cryptocurrency miners are still craving more convenient (and less costly) ways to earn rewards.
FLETA’s Proof-of-Formulation consensus is not only fast, but it is also highly secure the added layer of protection between observer nodes, formulator, and the synchronization group.
With plenty more to come, in terms of DApp development, games and partnerships, FLETA’s PoF is increasingly becoming the preferred consensus of many developers due to the speed, security and convenience of the platform.
**

Interviewer: Moose Team Member: Michael Luckhoo Telegram channel AMA: https://t.me/CryptoGEMS_official Digitalbits Telegram: https://t.me/digitalbits Token ticker: XDB
AMA:
Interviewer: Q1 Looks like Libra is moving forward. Is this bullish or bearish for you?
Michael Luckhoo: Definitely bullish. Firstly, this is further validation that brands like the Libra members including Facebook are embracing cryptocurrencies. That being said, not all enterprises have the internal technical capability like Facebook/Libra to build their own cryptocurrency internally. This is a massive market opportunity and the DigitalBits blockchain along with certain ecosystem participants are well positioned to support various brands with creating their own form of branded cryptocurrency on the DigitalBits blockchain.
Interviewer: glad to hear that , Libra would probably become the biggest branded coin out there
Michael Luckhoo: yes, but we can also help other brands to deploy their own and connect with others, such as Libra.
Interviewer: most brand dont have the capability like libra to build their own Stablecoin , that lead us to the next question from a community member.
Interviewer: Q2: I'm a business owner, I want a loyalty program. Why would $XDB be a solution for me ?
Michael Luckhoo: Businesses imploring the use of a blockchain based loyalty systems can provide a number of benefits: deeper marketing intelligence into the consumer buying behaviour, greater connectivity to other brands on the network and access to other value-adds on the network for both program operators (brands) and their consumers. For branded cryptocurrencies that are also listed on secondary-markets / exchanges, there is also the potential for enhanced liquidity for that branded cryptocurrency when compared to the legacy form of that asset, and in turn increasing the potential for such a brand's reward to appear more desirable to certain consumers given the enhancement to utility.
Interviewer: would it be easy for a client to reach you and setup the loyalty program? like a key in hand solution for new client ?
Michael Luckhoo: Ultimately DigitalBits serves as the network layer to support this industry, therefore we are agnostic to which parties build on the network. As a result we are forming strong partnerships to become the application layer to support the on-boarding of such clients that wish to have a one-stop setup. These ecosystem partners are an integral part to develop a key-in-hand solution as you suggest. Stay tuned for some updates on this :wink:
Interviewer: lovely ! your talking about forming partnership to become a easy step solution for new client ... with established partnerships with Pundi X, Kucoin - is Asia your primary market? Or you're going to develop other markets (Europe, North America, South America, Africa) at the same time?
Michael Luckhoo: Asia is obviously a massive market, however, it is not the only market wherein enterprises are embracing the DigitalBits blockchain. North America and Europe are home to other companies already collaborating with the DigitalBits blockchain.
Interviewer: i see you said companies with a (s) :grin:
Michael Luckhoo: :wink: next question..
Interviewer: lets go to the 4th question then eheh Q4: Is there truth in Bittrex maybe adding XDB to their trading pairs?
Michael Luckhoo: We cannot comment at this time specific to any future exchanges. However, we are routlinely contacted by exchanges….
Interviewer: gotcha , anyway i think Kucoin is a solid add to XDB and again congratz on this listing
Michael Luckhoo: I think so too, thank you.
Interviewer: The XDB roadmap is still not fully filled Q5:What are the time scales for the partnership announcements?
Michael Luckhoo: As we have just commenced Q2, we have commenced partnership announcements with critical players that will support the industry of branded cryptocurrencies. Considering the news of the ECD service with KuCoin, each of these parties play a specific role in supporting DigitalBits, from procurement and liquidity (ECD), to custody solutions, business registries and payment operators. This ecosystem is able to provide brands with a wide range of support to launch their own branded currency. We are also actively supporting new ecosystem additions that will each play a role in expanding use of the DigitalBits blockchain, some of which will be announced shortly.
Interviewer: Regarding the new partnership with Kucoin , what does it mean for XDB in term of volume / exposure / utility ? How can it affect the demande of the XDB token?
Michael Luckhoo : We are obviously excited to see KuCoin launch their Enterprise Currency Desk (ECD) service and XDB to be one of the first to support this. The ECD may provide a host of benefits to the businesses in a more frictionless way, some of the benefits include: Ease of transaction for token procurement, Guidance on requirements for specific functions depending on the blockchain application, automated business function, similar to a subscription plan for the blockchain - businesses not only need the access to tokens for certain functions, they need a "refuel system" to guide them for the next batch and so forth in a cost-effective and seamless way. We cannot comment on expected volume that Kucoin's ECD will drive for XDB. That being said, any demand Kucoin creates in marketing its ECD service to enterprises is obviously positive exposure for DigitalBits and the XDB token.
Interviewer: ease of transaction for token procurement .. it mean kucoin will buy the token for the client?
Michael Luckhoo: yes, they can enact this type of service on the clients’ behalf.
Interviewer: nice ! perfect so next question Q7 : Is Julie the CMO of walmart still working with you actively?
Michael Luckhoo: yes, Julie continues to be a very active advisory board member. She is also engaged, through her role with another organization, in other aspects of the DigitalBits ecosystem that we cannot comment on at this time..
Interviewer: glad to hear she is still there actively , its a big name to have onboard ! Soo during your last AMA your team was talking about a client with 10 000 000user ... where will companies get the amount they need to create their loyalty program knowing it need 10xdb per wallet? Lets say the current one have 10m user , it need 100m XDB to make their program , where will they get that amount? Will it have any effect on the trading token?
Michael Luckhoo: DigitalBits doesn’t have the obligation to supply consumer wallets with XDB tokens. Therefore, companies and their respective applications that are used by consumers will have the responsibility to ensure that their wallets have a sufficient amount of XDB tokens. With that being said, the company may source these tokens from the open-market and utilize services such as Kucoin's ECD to purchase XDB tokens.
Interviewer: ah that make sense. hence why this partnership is so important ! So any new client could refer to kucoin EDC and get their amount for their user
Michael Luckhoo: yes, they can. We hope to see other major exchanges explore concepts such as this as well in the future to induce a more business-centric approach to engaging with blockchain.
Interviewer: I'll be more than happy to see Binance going this way... knowing CZ is constantly talking about Stablecoin its looking good ! Q9: What is the number 1 feature of XDB that will drive adoption? When is the peak of adoption as a guesstimate?
Michael Luckhoo: Beyond technology features, the key to adoption is Execution. At the end of the day, its nice to have a product and/or a service that is viable, but ultimaltely the team and experience of a strong go-to-market strategy is what brings adoption. To date, many crypto projects have been lacking in this department. It’s hard to state when the peak of adoption will occur, but we are in the growth-stage of this industry as it would seem.
The early adopter and the early majority being able to connect in this stage is what is key to bring adoption and signifies this stage as well, we refer to it as crossing the chasm.
Interviewer: Its true , and most project depend on the crypto success ... however loyalty program are already a thing that hasn’t change a lot during past year
Does the situation with the Covid19 affect the work of the XDB team ?
Michael Luckhoo: Not at all, we are working very well remotely and still advocating the benefits of blockchain technology to support the consumer industry even more so now as consumers are even in heightened alert of how they spend, save and earn with the brand!
Interviewer:
Nice , as long as all of you guys stay safe so you keep these update coming in !!
lest go to the next and sadly final question for this Ama ! à
Q10: Bringing the masses to crypto instead of crypto to the masses"" Will we see this kickstart in 2020 or rather mid-longterm?"
Michael Luckhoo: This is a pivotal year in crypto as we continue to see companies expand their interest in the space (Facebooks' Libra coin, to Bakkt's acquistion of Bridge2, Walmart patents surrounding Stablecoin). Blockchain cotninues to gain greater validation regardless of market conditions. We continue to be a voice advocating this along with major players in bringing the masses to crypto by using pathways already familiar to the average user via seamless integrations. The average new person in this case may first own a branded cryptocurrency as their first crypto vs it first being Bitcoin, which is a big leap forward. As mentioned, as we enter into an economic downturn, consumers will be on heightened alert to want to save and earn more rewards from brands. Therefore, we expect no slow down in the use cases for branded cryprocurrencies, including branded stablecoins. Please check out this interesting read: Bailouts, CBDCs and Branded Currencies Tangible Solutions Amidst Global Crisis:
https://techbullion.com/bailouts-cbdcs-and-branded-currencies-tangible-solutions-amidst-global-crisis/
Interviewer: i will sure read this just after , its exciting to see these massive player getting into stablecoin in 2020
I know you guys dont have much time and again thank you for this AMA , i was wondering if you can drop us something for new potential investor , we are many here invested in XDB but some people here dont even know what it is ! Im just trying to flex more info here before it end 🙃
Michael Luckhoo: Thank you for all of your support Moose and I realize the tremendous support from your community. What I can say is that we have some major news coming in light within the upcoming months, this is not something that is recent, but rather what we have been working on for the past few years. As this seems to be the year that businesses are entering the space, it would not be unreasonable to hear a few big name companies of which will be announced this year.. I can’t say much more due to confidentiality agreements, but I can say that big-hitters are coming to crypto-town.
Talk to you all soon 🙂

The Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA), Italy’s major news agency has joined forces with Ernst & Young to develop a blockchain-based news tracking and authentication system. The solution is aimed at curbing the spread of fake news, while also uniting news publishers, web agencies and other participants in the journalism ecosystem reports Ledger Insights on April 7, 2020.

ANSA Taps Blockchain Technology

In an attempt to curb the dissemination of fake news and significantly reduce panic at a time when the world is working round the clock to find a solution to the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy’s leading news agency has rolled out a blockchain-based news provenance system.
Dubbed ANSAcheck, the blockchain system was developed in collaboration with Ernst & Young and it allows readers to verify the origin of the news published on ANSA platforms, its affiliated publications, social media platforms and more.
The ANSAcheck news authentication system is built upon the EY OpsChain Traceability solution which is powered by the Ethereum smart contracts blockchain. The team says the solution makes it possible for readers to see the primary source of the news they are reading plus its entire history.
Read more
Ogwu Osaemezu Emmanuel on April 7, 2020BTC Manager

he Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA), Italy’s major news agency has joined forces with Ernst & Young to develop a blockchain-based news tracking and authentication system. The solution is aimed at curbing the spread of fake news, while also uniting news publishers, web agencies and other participants in the journalism ecosystem reports Ledger Insights on April 7, 2020.

ANSA Taps Blockchain Technology

Overledger is the world’s first blockchain operating system (OS) that not only inter-connects blockchains but also existing enterprise platforms, applications and networks to blockchain and facilitates the creation of internet scale multi-chain applications otherwise known as mApps.
In less than 10 months since launching Overledger they have provided interoperability with the full range of DLT technologies from all the leading Enterprise Permissioned blockchains such as Hyperledger, R3’s Corda, JP Morgan’s Quorum, permissioned variants of Ethereum and Ripple (XRPL) as well as the leading Public Permissionless blockchains / DAGs such as Bitcoin, Stellar, Ethereum, IOTA and EOS as well as the most recent blockchain to get added Binance Chain. In addition, Overledger also connects to Existing Networks / Off Chain / Oracle functionality and it does all of this in a way that is hugely scalable, without imposing restrictions / requiring blockchains to fork their code and can easily integrate into existing applications / networks by just adding 3 lines of code.

https://preview.redd.it/3t3z6hkbxel31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=ac989c2752c726e10d2291eb271721ceaa332a30

What is a blockchain Operating system?

You will be familiar with Operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, Google’s Android etc but these are all Hardware based Operating Systems. Hardware based Operating Systems provide a platform to build and use applications that abstracts all of the complexities involved with integrating with all the hardware resources such as CPU, Memory, Storage, Mouse, Keyboard, Video etc so software can easily integrate with it. It provides interoperability between the Hardware devices and Software.
Overledger is a Blockchain Operating System, it provides a platform to build and use applications that abstracts all of the complexities involved with integrating with all the different blockchains, different OP_Codes being used, messaging formats etc as well as connecting to existing non-blockchain networks. It provides interoperability between Blockchains, Existing Networks and Software / MAPPs

How is Overledger different to other interoperability projects?

Other projects are trying to achieve interoperability by adding another blockchain on top of existing blockchains. This adds a lot of overhead, complexity, and technical risk. There are a few variants but essentially they either need to create custom connectors for each connected blockchain and / or require connected chains to fork their code to enable interoperability. An example of the process can be seen below:
User sends transaction to a multi sig contract on Blockchain A, wait for consensus to be reached on Blockchain A
A custom connector consisting of Off Chain Relay Nodes are monitoring transactions sent to the smart contract on Blockchain A. Once they see the transaction, they then sign a transaction on the Interoperability blockchain as proof the event has happened on Blockchain A.
Wait for consensus to be reached on the Interoperability Blockchain.
The DAPP running on the Interoperability Blockchain is then updated with the info about the transaction occurring on Blockchain A and then signs a transaction on the Interoperability blockchain to a multi sig contract on the Interoperability Blockchain.
Wait for consensus to be reached on the interoperability Blockchain.
A different custom connector consisting of Off Chain Relay Nodes are monitoring transactions sent to the Smart Contract on the Interoperability Blockchain which are destined for Blockchain B. Once they see the transaction, they sign a transaction on Blockchain B. Wait for consensus to be reached on Blockchain B.

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Other solutions require every connecting blockchain to fork their code and implement their Interoperability protocol. This means the same type of connector can be used instead of a custom one for every blockchain however every connected blockchain has to fork their code to implement the protocol. This enforces a lot of restrictions on what the connected blockchains can implement going forward.

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Some problems with these methods:

They add a lot of Overhead / Latency. Rather than just having the consensus of Blockchain A and B, you add the consensus mechanism of the Interoperability Blockchain as well.
Decentralisation / transaction security is reduced. If Blockchain A and Blockchain B each have 1,000 nodes validating transactions, yet the Interoperability Blockchain only has 100 nodes then you have reduced the security of the transaction from being validated by 1000 to validated by 100.
Security of the Interoperability Blockchain must be greater than the sum of all transactions going through it. JP Morgan transfer $6 Trillion every day, if they move that onto blockchain and need interoperability between two Permissioned blockchains that have to connect via a public Interoperability blockchain, then it would always have to be more costly to attack the blockchain than the value from stealing the funds transacted through the blockchain.
Imposes a lot of limitations on connected blockchains to fork their code which may mean they have to drop some existing functionality as well as prevent them from adding certain features in the future.
Creates a single point of failure — If the Interoperability blockchain or connector has an issue then this affects each connected blockchain.
It doesn’t scale and acts as a bottleneck. Not only does building complex custom connectors not scale but the Interoperability blockchain that they are forcing all transactions to go through has to be faster than the combined throughput of connected blockchains. These Interoperability blockchains have limited tps, with the most being around 200 and is a trade off between performance and decentralisation.

But some Interoperability blockchains say they are infinitely scalable?

If the interoperability blockchain is limited to say 200 tps then the idea is to just have multiple instances of the blockchain and run them in parallel, so you benefit from the aggregated tps, but just how feasible is that? Lets say you want to connect Corda (capable of 2000+ tps) to Hyperledger (capable of up to 20,000 tps with recent upgrade). (Permissioned blockchains such as Hyperledger and Corda aren’t one big blockchain like say Bitcoin or Ethereum, they have separate instances for each consortium and each is capable of those speeds). So even when you have just 1 DAPP from one consortium that wants to connect Corda to Hyperledger and use 2000 tps for their DAPP, you would need 100 instances of the Interoperability blockchain, each with their own validators (which maybe 100–200 nodes each). So, 1 DAPP would need to cover the costs for 100 instances of the blockchain and running costs for 10,000 nodes…This is just one DAPP connected to one instance of a two permissioned blockchains, which are still in the early stages. Other blockchains such as Red Belly Blockchain can achieve 440,000 tps, and this will surely increase as the technology matures. There is also the added complexity of then aggregating the results / co-coordinating between the different instances of the blockchain. Then there are the environmental concerns, the power required for all of these instances / nodes is not sustainable.

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It’s not just transactions per second of the blockchain as well, its the latency of all these added consensuses along the path to reach to the destination and not knowing whether the security of each of the hops is sufficient and can be trusted. To see examples of how this potential issue as well as others effect Cosmos you can see my article here. I recommend also reading a blog done by the CEO of Quant, Gilbert Verdian, which explains how Overledger differs here as well as detailed in the whitepaper here.

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Overledger’s approach

In 1973 Vint Cerf invented the protocol that rules them all: TCP/IP. Most people have never heard of it. But it describes the fundamental architecture of the internet, and it made possible Wi-Fi, Ethernet, LANs, the World Wide Web, e-mail, FTP, 3G/4G — as well as all of the inventions built upon those inventions.

Wired: So from the beginning, people, including yourself, had a vision of where the internet was going to go. Are you surprised, though, that at this point the IP protocol seems to beat almost anything it comes up against?Cerf: I’m not surprised at all because we designed it to do that.This was very conscious. Something we did right at the very beginning, when we were writing the specifications, we wanted to make this a future-proof protocol. And so the tactic that we used to achieve that was to say that the protocol did not know how — the packets of the internet protocol layer didn’t know how they were being carried. And they didn’t care whether it was a satellite link or mobile radio link or an optical fiber or something else.We were very, very careful to isolate that protocol layer from any detailed knowledge of how it was being carried. Plainly, the software had to know how to inject it into a radio link, or inject it into an optical fiber, or inject it into a satellite connection. But the basic protocol didn’t know how that worked.And the other thing that we did was to make sure that the network didn’t know what the packets had in them. We didn’t encrypt them to prevent it from knowing — we just didn’t make it have to know anything. It’s just a bag of bits as far as the net was concerned.We were very successful in these two design features, because every time a new kind of communications technology came along, like frame relay or asynchronous transfer mode or passive optical networking or mobile radio‚ all of these different ways of communicating could carry internet packets.We would hear people saying, ‘The internet will be replaced by X25,’ or ‘The internet will be replaced by frame relay,’ or ‘The internet will be replaced by APM,’ or ‘The internet will be replaced by add-and-drop multiplexers.’Of course, the answer is, ‘No, it won’t.’ It just runs on top of everything. And that was by design. I’m actually very proud of the fact that we thought of that and carefully designed that capability into the system.

This is the approach Quant have taken with their Blockchain OS, Overledger to solve Blockchain interoperability. Compared to other Interoperability platforms that are trying to achieve interoperability at the transaction layer by connecting two blockchains via another blockchain, these will be ultimately be made redundant once faster methods are released. Overledger is designed to be future proof by isolating the layers so it doesn’t matter whether it’s a permissioned blockchain, permissionless, DAG, Legacy network, POW, POS etc because it abstracts the transaction layer from the messaging layer and runs on top of blockchains. Just as the Internet wasn’t replaced by X25, frame relay, APM etc, Overledger is designed to be future proof as it just runs on top of the Blockchains rather than being a blockchain itself. So, if a new blockchain technology comes out that is capable of 100,000 TPS then it can easily be integrated as Overledger just runs on top of it.
Likewise, with protocols such as HTTPS, SSH etc these will also emerge for blockchains such as ZK-Snarks and other privacy implementations as well as other features made available, all will be compatible with Overledger as its just sitting on top rather than forcing their own implementation for all.
It doesn’t require blockchains to fork their code to make it compatible, it doesn’t add the overhead of adding another blockchain with another consensus mechanism (most likely multiple as it has to go through many hops). All of this adds a lot of latency and restrictions which isn’t needed. The developer can just choose which blockchains they want to connect and use the consensus mechanisms of those blockchains rather than forced to use one.
Overledger can provide truly internet scale to meet whatever the demands may be, whether that be connecting multiple red belly blockchains together with 440,000 tps it doesn’t matter as it doesn’t add its consensus mechanism and uses proven internet scale technology such as that based on Kubernetes, which is where each task is split up into a self-contained container and each task is scaled out by deploying more to meet demand. Kubernetes is what runs Google Search engine where they scale up and down billions of containers every week.
Due to this being more of a summary, I strongly recommend you read this article which goes into detail about the different layers in Overledger.

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But how does it provide the security of a blockchain if it doesn’t add its own blockchain?

This is often misunderstood by people. Overledger is not a blockchain however it still uses a blockchain for security, immutability, traceability etc, just rather than force people to use their own blockchain, it utilises the source and destination blockchains instead. The key thing to understand is the use of its patented technology TrustTag, which was made freely available to anyone with the Overledger SDK.
Please see this article which explains TrustTag in detail with examples showing how hashing / digital signatures work etc
A quick overview is if i want to send data from one blockchain to another the Overledger SDK using Trusttag will put the data through a hashing algorithm. The Hash is then included in digital signature as part of the transaction which is signed by the user’s private key and then validated through normal consensus and stored as metadata on the source blockchain. The message is then sent to the MAPP off chain. The MAPP periodically scans the blockchains and puts the received message through a hashing algorithm and compares the Hash to the one stored as metadata on the blockchain. This ensures that the message hasn’t been modified in transit, the message is encrypted and only the Hash is stored on chain so completely private, provides immutability as it was signed by the user’s private key which only they have and is stored on the blockchain for high availability and secure so that it can’t be modified, with the ability to refer back to it at any point in time.
Despite Overledger being a very secure platform, with the team having a very strong security background such as Gilbert who was chief security information officer for Vocalink (Bank of England) managing £6 trillion of payments every year and classified as national critical security (highest level you can get), ultimately you don’t need to trust Overledger. Transactions are signed and encrypted at client side, so Overledger has no way of being able to see the contents. It can’t modify any transaction as the digital signature which includes a hash of the transaction would be different so would get rejected. Transaction security isn’t reduced as it is signed at source using however many nodes the source blockchain has rather than a smaller amount of nodes with an interoperability blockchain in the middle.

Patents

The core code of Overledger is closed source and patented, one of the recent patents can be seen here, along with TrustTag and further ones are being filed. The Overledger SDK is open source and is available in Java and Javascript currently, with plans to support Pyhton and Ruby in the near future. Java and Javascript are the most popular programming languages used today.
The Blockchain connectors are also open source and this allows the community to create connectors to connect their favourite blockchain so that it can benefit from blockchain interoperability and making it available to all enterprises / developers currently utilising Overledger. Creating is currently taking around a week to implement and so far, have been added based upon client demand.

Multi Chain Applications (MAPPs)

Multi Chain Applications (MAPPs) enable an application to use multiple blockchains and interoperate between them. Treaty Contracts enable a developer to build a MAPP and then change the underlying blockchain it uses with just a quick change of couple of lines of code. This is vital for enterprises as it’s still early days in Blockchian and we don’t know which are going to be the best blockchain in the future. Overledger easily integrates into existing applications using the Overledger SDK by just adding 3 lines of code. They don’t need to completely rewrite the application like you do with the majority of other projects and all existing java / javascript apps on Windows / Mobile app stores / business applications etc can easily integrate with overledger with minimal changes in just 8 minutes.

Treaty Contracts

What Overledger will allow with Treaty contracts is to use popular programming languages such as Java and create a smart contract in Overledger that interacts with all of the connected blockchains. Even providing Smart contract functionality to blockchains that don’t support them such as Bitcoin. This means that developers don’t have to create all the smart contracts on each blockchain in all the different programming languages but instead just create them in Overledger using languages such as Java that are widely used today. If they need to use a different blockchain then it can be as easy as changing a line of code rather than having to completely rewrite the smart contracts.
Overledger isn’t a blockchain though, so how can it trusted with the smart contract? A Hash of the smart contract is published on any blockchain the MAPP developer requires and when called the smart contract is run its run through a hashing function to check that it matches the Hash value stored on the blockchain, ensuring that it has not been modified.
By running the Smart contract off chain this also increases Scalability enormously. With a blockchain all nodes have to run the smart contract one after another rather than in parallel. Not only do you get the performance benefit of not having to run the code against every single node but you can also run them in parallel to others executing smart contracts.
You can read more about Treaty Contracts here

The different versions of Overledger

Enterprise version

The current live version is the Enterprise version as that is where most of the adoption is taking place in blockchain due to permissioned blockchains being preferred until permissionless blockchains resolve the scalability, privacy and regulatory issues. Please see this article which goes into more details about Entereprise blockchain / adoption. The Enterprise version connects to permissioned blockchains as well as additional features / support suited for Enterprises.

Community version

The community version is due to be released later this year which will allow developers to benefit from creating MAPPs across permissionless blockchains. Developers can publish their MAPPs on the MAPP Store to create additional revenue streams for developers.

Where does Overledger run from? Is it Centralised?

Overledger can run from anywhere. The community version will have instances across multiple public clouds, Enterprises / developers may prefer to host the infrastructure themselves within a consortium which they can and are doing. For example SIA is the leading private Financial Network provider in Europe, it provides a dedicated high speed network which connects all the major banks, central banks, trading venues etc. SIA host Overledger within their private network so that all of those clients can access it in the confinement of their heavily regulated, secure, fast network. AUCloud / UKCLoud host Overledger in their environment to offer as a service to their clients which consist of Governments and critical national infrastructure.
For Blockchain nodes that interact with Overledger the choice is entirely up to the developer. Each member within a consortium may choose to host a node, some developers may prefer to use 3rd party hosting providers such as Infura, or Quant can also host them if they prefer, its entirely their choice.
Overledger allows for higher levels of decentralisation by storing the output across multiple blockchains so you not only benefit from the decentralisation of one blockchain but the combination of all of them. Ultimately though decentralisation is thrown around too much without many actually understanding what it means. It’s impossible to have complete decentralisation, when you sign a transaction to be added to a blockchain ultimately you still connect through a single ISP, connect through a single router, or the input into a transaction is done through a piece of software etc. What matters to be decentralised is where trust is involved. As i have mentioned before you don’t need to trust the OS, it’s just providing instructions on how to interact with the blockchains, the end user is signing the transactions / encrypting at client side. Nothing can be seen or modified with the OS. Even if somehow the transaction did get modified then it would get rejected when consensus is done as the hash / digital signature won’t match at the destination blockchain. Where the transaction actually gets put onto the blockchain is where decentralisation matters, because thats what needs to be trusted and conensus is reached and Overledger enables this to be written across multiple blockchains at the same time.

The Team

The team are very well connected with a wealth of experience at very senior roles at Global enterprises which I will include a few examples below. Gilbert Verdian the CEO was the Head of security for the payment infrastructure for the Bank of England through his CISO role with Vocalink (Mastercard)managing £6 trillion every year. This is treated by the government as critical national infrastructure which is the highest level of criticallity because its so fundamental to the security of the country. They have experience and know what it takes to run a secure financial infrastructure and meeting requirements of regulators. Gilbert was director for Cybersecurity at PWC, Security for HSBC and Ernst & Young as well as various government roles such as the CISO for the Australian NSW Health, Head of Security at the UK government for Ministry of Justice and HM Treasury in addition to being part of the committee for the European Commission, US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.
Cecilia Harvey is the Chief Operating Officer, where she was previously a Director at HSBC in Global Banking and Markets and before that Director at Vocalink. Cecilia was also Chief Operating Officer at Citi for Markets and Securities Services Technology as well as working for Barclays, Accenture, IBM and Morgan Stanley.
Vijay Verma is the Overledger platform lead with over 15 years of developer experience in latest technologies like Java, Scala, Blockchain & enterprise technology solutions. Over the course of his career, he has worked for a number of prestigious organisations including J&J, Deutsche, HSBC, BNP Paribas, UBS Banks, HMRC and Network Rail.
Guy Dietrich, the managing director of Rockefeller Capital (manages $19 Billion in assets) has joined the board of Quant Network, and has recently personally attended meetings with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with Gilbert

https://preview.redd.it/1x25xg78efl31.png?width=566&format=png&auto=webp&s=abea981ff40355eed2d0e3be1ca414c5b1b8573c
As well as advisors such as Paolo Tasca, the founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT) at University College Londonfounder and executive director as well as Chris Adelsbach, Managing Director at Techstars, the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. Techstars has partners such as Amazon, Barclays, Boeing, Ford, Google, Honda, IBM, Microsoft, PWC, Sony, Target, Total, Verizon, Western Union etc.
Due to client demand they are expanding to the US to setup a similar size office where board members such as Guy Dietrich will be extremely valuable in assisting with the expansion.
https://twitter.com/gverdian/status/1151549142235340800
The most exciting part about the project though is just how much adoption there has been of the platform, from huge global enterprises, governments and cloud providers they are on track for a revenue of $10 million in their first year. I will go through these in the next article, followed by further article explaining how the Token and Treasury works.
You can also find out more info about Quant at the following:
Part One — Blockchain Fundamentals
Part Two — The Layers Of Overledger
Part Three — TrustTag and the Tokenisation of data
Part Four — Features Overledger provides to MAPPs
Part Five — Creating the Standards for Interoperability
Part Six — The Team behind Overledger and Partners
Part Seven — The QNT Token
Part Eight — Enabling Enterprise Mass Adoption
Quant Network Enabling Mass Adoption of Blockchain at a Rapid Pace
Quant Network Partner with SIA, A Game Changer for Mass Blockchain Adoption by Financial Institutions

Microsoft Files Patent For New Cryptocurrency and Mining ...

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Dragonchain Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off Public Proposal

Dragonchain Public Proposal TL;DR:

Hello Reddit and Ethereum community!

Executive summary

Response and PoC

Live Demo

Source Code

Scaling

Architectural Scaling

Economic Scaling

Scaled Deployment

Flexibility in Scaling

Cost

Getting Started

API Documentation

SDK Source

Nobody’s Perfect

Costs and resources

Requirements

Scaling

Decentralization

Usability Scaling solutions should have a simple end user experience.

Bonus Points

Bonus

TIME

Dragon Den

Other Considerations

Conclusion

Disney Releases Blockchain Platform as Open Source

Open Source

Dragonchain Foundation

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Crypto Weekly News

Crypto Weekly News

Crypto Weekly News — September, 18

Cryptocurrencies

Projects and Updates

Regulations

Hacking

Mass adoption

People

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Bitcoin (BTC)A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

1. What is Bitcoin (BTC)?

2. Bitcoin’s core features

Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model

Nakamoto consensus

The blockchain

Block production

Block time and mining difficulty

What are orphan blocks?

3. Bitcoin’s additional features

Segregated Witness (SegWit)

Lightning Network

Schnorr Signature upgrade proposal

4. Economics and supply distribution

What are the benefits of Crypto Mining?

Types of Crypto Mining

Proof of Stake ‘Mining’

Proof of Formulation ‘Mining’

Conclusion

CryptoGems x Digitalbits 17th of April AMA. $XDB

COVID-19: Italian News Agency, EY, Combat Fake News with Blockchain Technology

ANSA Taps Blockchain Technology

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ANSA Taps Blockchain Technology

What is Quant Networks Blockchain Operating System, Overledger? And why are Enterprises adopting it at mass scale?

What is a blockchain Operating system?

How is Overledger different to other interoperability projects?

But some Interoperability blockchains say they are infinitely scalable?

Overledger’s approach

But how does it provide the security of a blockchain if it doesn’t add its own blockchain?

Patents

Multi Chain Applications (MAPPs)

Treaty Contracts

The different versions of Overledger

Enterprise version