Rethinking Finance as a spot and future contingency management system for assets and liabilities. Blockchains are an improved form of contingency management (precision, automation, lower-risk). The Internet transfers information, and now value; the Internet becomes a contingency management system with programmable money, smart contracts DACs, distributed ledger transactions. Ultimately, blockchain financial networks can automatically and independently confirm and monitor transactions, without central parties like banks or governments.
Cryptocitizen: Smart Contracts, Pluralistic Morality, and Blockchain SocietyMelanie Swan
Blockchain technology is not just about registering wills and IP on blockchains, and bank transfers taking less than 3 days to settle, philosophically blockchains invite a new level of thinking about what it is to be a cryptocitizen and possibilities for societal design
First presented on June 27, 2015 for Blockchain University hosted at PricewaterhouseCoopers in San Francisco. [Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-OxnJip-bA ] Additional notes, references and citations are in the comments of each slide. I would like to thank Arthur Breitman, Richard Brown, Alexandre Callea, Pinar Emirdag, Andrew Geyl, Dave Hudson, Hyder Jaffrey, Yakov Kofner, Antony Lewis, Todd McDonald, Piotr Piasecki, Robert Sams and John Whelan for their feedback.
Cryptocurrencies: The Mechanics Economic and FinanceErnie Teo
Presented at the INAUGURAL CAIA-SKBI CRYPTOCURRENCY CONFERENCE 2014 on 04 November 2014 held at the Singapore Management University
This talk gives a general overview of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
FirstPartner's 2016 Blockchain Ecosystem Market Map helps to decrypt the blockchain landscape with a visual overview of the emerging ecosystem, players, technologies and trends. It clearly summarises three main areas of focus emerging around the core blockchain or distributed ledger protocols:
1) Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies: Providing an alternative to centrally managed "fiat" currencies, this sector includes Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin wallets, miners and cryptocurrency payment processors. The map illustrates how these companies interact and features some leading players including Coinbase, Circle, Kraken and 21 Inc.
2) The Financial Services Blockchain: This has been the main area of focus over the last 12 months as attention shifts from Bitcoin to Financial Services applications. An increasing number of players are focussing on commercialising blockchain technologies for banks, securities, derivatives and asset markets and institutional investors - and are attracting VC funding to do so. Ripple and Ethereum are leading candidate protocols for payment processing and smart contracts and players including Ripple, Chain and Digital Asset Holdings are gaining traction with Financial Institutions. The Map highlights leading technology companies and some of the banks, card schemes and processors who are investing in or evaluating distributed ledger technologies.
3) Other Use Cases: The distributed ledger concept and its ability to support transparent and tamper-proof asset registration, proof of ownership and asset transfer transactions makes it potentially applicable to multiple non financial use cases. The Map highlights a number of candidate use cases including publishing, legal, distributed data storage, document management and IoT. Some of the pioneering initiatives and companies exploring these applications are included.
Crucially the Map also provides a clear pictorial explanation and summary of the leading protocols at the heart of the ecosystem and concepts including coloured coins and smart contracts that supplement them to make a number of the proposed services possible.
A printable version of the map can be downloaded from www.firstpartner.net.
Cryptocitizen: Smart Contracts, Pluralistic Morality, and Blockchain SocietyMelanie Swan
Blockchain technology is not just about registering wills and IP on blockchains, and bank transfers taking less than 3 days to settle, philosophically blockchains invite a new level of thinking about what it is to be a cryptocitizen and possibilities for societal design
First presented on June 27, 2015 for Blockchain University hosted at PricewaterhouseCoopers in San Francisco. [Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-OxnJip-bA ] Additional notes, references and citations are in the comments of each slide. I would like to thank Arthur Breitman, Richard Brown, Alexandre Callea, Pinar Emirdag, Andrew Geyl, Dave Hudson, Hyder Jaffrey, Yakov Kofner, Antony Lewis, Todd McDonald, Piotr Piasecki, Robert Sams and John Whelan for their feedback.
Cryptocurrencies: The Mechanics Economic and FinanceErnie Teo
Presented at the INAUGURAL CAIA-SKBI CRYPTOCURRENCY CONFERENCE 2014 on 04 November 2014 held at the Singapore Management University
This talk gives a general overview of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
FirstPartner's 2016 Blockchain Ecosystem Market Map helps to decrypt the blockchain landscape with a visual overview of the emerging ecosystem, players, technologies and trends. It clearly summarises three main areas of focus emerging around the core blockchain or distributed ledger protocols:
1) Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies: Providing an alternative to centrally managed "fiat" currencies, this sector includes Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin wallets, miners and cryptocurrency payment processors. The map illustrates how these companies interact and features some leading players including Coinbase, Circle, Kraken and 21 Inc.
2) The Financial Services Blockchain: This has been the main area of focus over the last 12 months as attention shifts from Bitcoin to Financial Services applications. An increasing number of players are focussing on commercialising blockchain technologies for banks, securities, derivatives and asset markets and institutional investors - and are attracting VC funding to do so. Ripple and Ethereum are leading candidate protocols for payment processing and smart contracts and players including Ripple, Chain and Digital Asset Holdings are gaining traction with Financial Institutions. The Map highlights leading technology companies and some of the banks, card schemes and processors who are investing in or evaluating distributed ledger technologies.
3) Other Use Cases: The distributed ledger concept and its ability to support transparent and tamper-proof asset registration, proof of ownership and asset transfer transactions makes it potentially applicable to multiple non financial use cases. The Map highlights a number of candidate use cases including publishing, legal, distributed data storage, document management and IoT. Some of the pioneering initiatives and companies exploring these applications are included.
Crucially the Map also provides a clear pictorial explanation and summary of the leading protocols at the heart of the ecosystem and concepts including coloured coins and smart contracts that supplement them to make a number of the proposed services possible.
A printable version of the map can be downloaded from www.firstpartner.net.
Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained: Cryptocitizen Smartnetwork Trust Melanie Swan
Blockchain technology is not just about cryptocurrencies, registering wills and IP on blockchains, and bank transfers taking less than 3 days to settle, philosophically blockchains invite a new level of thinking about the sensibility of the Cryptocitizen and possibilities for societal shared trust
Blockchain technology and applications from a financial perspectiveVittorio Zinetti
This article aims at explaining the blockchain opportunity for the financial industry. First the fundamentals of technology is introduced, then possible application of blockchain to three financial use cases are presented.
Bitcoin Protocols 1.0 and 2.0 Explained in the Series: Blockchain: The Inform...Melanie Swan
We should think about the blockchain as another class of thing like the Internet – a comprehensive information technology with tiered technical levels and multiple classes of applications for any form of asset registry, inventory, and exchange, including every area of finance, economics, and money; hard assets (physical property); and intangible assets (votes, ideas, reputation, intention, health data, information, etc.). In fact the blockchain concept is even more, it is a new organizing paradigm.
– Melanie Swan, Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
Evaluating the potential of blockchain technology to radically transform business
[Feel free to download the presentation if you'd like to view it offline]
From Bitcoin to Blockchain: Industry Review April 2017 from OLMA NEXT LtdOLMA Capital Management
When the Bitcoin cryptocurrency was released in 2009, its underpinning, the blockchain distributed ledger system was the real technological breakthrough, a formulation that promises to change the basis of all types of transactions globally.
Blockchain technology has paved the way for an Internet of Transactions. Blockchain technology has already proved its worth in such areas as means of payment, interbank exchanges and international remittances. Touted as the next digital revolution, blockchain technology has the potential to transform traditional industries and alter society through disintermediation of trade. Any situation that involves an intermediary that is expensive or fallible represents an opportunity to create a blockchain application case. No industry is immune to the blockchain’s disruption potential.
In 2017, the blockchain technology is at an inflection point. The industry is in a state of transition and must move to Blockchain 2.0, which means the adoption of more sophisticated applications, such as micro-payments and smart contracts. Having outgrown its original bitcoin community, the majority of blockchain applications have yet to pass beyond the prototype stage to make blockchain technology the greatest restructuring technology of the next decade.
State of Blockchain 2017: Smartnetworks and the Blockchain EconomyMelanie Swan
Blockchain is a fundamental IT for secure value transfer over networks. For any asset registered in a cryptographic ledger, the whole Internet is a VPN for its confirmation, assurity, and transfer. Blockchain reinvents economics and governance for the digital age. The long-tail structure of digital networks allows personalized economic and governance services. Smartnetworks are a new form of automated global infrastructure for large-scale next-generation projects.
CoinDesk’s Q1 2016 State of Blockchain report summarizes key trends, data and events from the first quarter of 2016.
You'll be able to read analysis of the key trends in this article: http://www.coindesk.com/state-of-blockchain-q1-2016/
We'd appreciate feedback on our research:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6W6WHST
UNBLOCKED: The Power of Blockchain Technology to Establish Trust, Build Brand...Ogilvy Consulting
UNBLOCKED: The Power of Blockchain Technology to Establish Trust, Build Brands & Transform Business shines light on the myriad capabilities, applications and benefits of blockchain technology for enterprises. It frames key questions for business leaders that open paths to unlock the value of the technology. It places the customer at the center of business strategy development. And it focuses on the ultimate end game, leveraging blockchain to prevent disruption and provide competitive advantage.
The distributed ledger technology that started with bitcoin is rapidly becoming a crowdsourced system for all types of verification. Could it replace notary publics, manual vote recounts, and the way banks manage transactions?
The Hive Think Tank: Sidechains by Adam Back, President of BlockstreamThe Hive
Over the last couple of years, blockchains have captured a significant mindshare of innovation in financial services, industrial Internet and digital commerce industries. The scope of applications of blockchain as a platform has long surpassed that of its origins in Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency technology. However, none of the new blockchain platforms has been able to reach Bitcoin's levels of scale, security and global reach. There have also been no standards to interoperate between different blockchain platforms for exchange of assets. In order to address these challenges, Sidechains were created as cryptographic systems that securely orchestrate exchange of information between different blockchains by leveraging the scale & maturity of the Bitcoin network. Sidechains are weaving a network of diverse blockchains to bring interoperability and Bitcoin’s scale & maturity. In this talk, Adam Back will talk about its role in building the decentralized world of blockchains.
Blockchain Developments is building a comprehensive solution for Supply chain, Politics, Decentralized currency, Financial Technology, Healthcare, Infrastructure, and other business verticals. Read our blockchain case studies and use cases of successful implementations of blockchain development solutions for our various clients.
Blockchain: a Singularity-class technology - No other technology has the power to
pull 2 billion people out of poverty overnight (with intermediary-free international remittances), produce a safe and orderly transition to the automation economy (with humans and machines in collaboration, and enacting friendly artificial intelligence), and fundamentally transform the only remaining sectors not yet re-engineered for the Internet era: economics and politics. There are growing classes of activities for smartnetwork execution, moving up the stack, pushing different qualitative states through the Internet pipes, building future smartnetworks. The smartnetworks thesis is that complex future operations will involve automated fleet coordination of “quantized” items via smartnetworks, using some kind of technology like blockchains with algorithmically-derived trust.
Technological Unemployment and the Robo-EconomyMelanie Swan
Technological Unemployment (jobs outsourced to technology) is coming and the challenge is to steward an orderly and beneficial transition to more intense human-technology collaboration
Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology Explained: Not just Cryptocurrencies, Econo...Melanie Swan
The blockchain concept may be one of the most transformative ideas to impact the world since the Internet. It represents a new organizing paradigm for all activity and integrates humans and technology. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are merely one application of the blockchain concept. The blockchain is a public transaction ledger built in a network structure based on cryptographic principles so there does not need to be a centralized intermediary. Any kind of asset (art, car, home, financial contract) may be encoded into the blockchain and transacted, validated, or preserved in a much more efficient manner than at present including ideas, health data, financial assets, automobiles, and government documents. Blockchain technology applies well beyond cryptocurrencies, economics, and markets to all venues of human information processing, collaboration, and interaction including art, health, and literacy.
Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained: Cryptocitizen Smartnetwork Trust Melanie Swan
Blockchain technology is not just about cryptocurrencies, registering wills and IP on blockchains, and bank transfers taking less than 3 days to settle, philosophically blockchains invite a new level of thinking about the sensibility of the Cryptocitizen and possibilities for societal shared trust
Blockchain technology and applications from a financial perspectiveVittorio Zinetti
This article aims at explaining the blockchain opportunity for the financial industry. First the fundamentals of technology is introduced, then possible application of blockchain to three financial use cases are presented.
Bitcoin Protocols 1.0 and 2.0 Explained in the Series: Blockchain: The Inform...Melanie Swan
We should think about the blockchain as another class of thing like the Internet – a comprehensive information technology with tiered technical levels and multiple classes of applications for any form of asset registry, inventory, and exchange, including every area of finance, economics, and money; hard assets (physical property); and intangible assets (votes, ideas, reputation, intention, health data, information, etc.). In fact the blockchain concept is even more, it is a new organizing paradigm.
– Melanie Swan, Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
Evaluating the potential of blockchain technology to radically transform business
[Feel free to download the presentation if you'd like to view it offline]
From Bitcoin to Blockchain: Industry Review April 2017 from OLMA NEXT LtdOLMA Capital Management
When the Bitcoin cryptocurrency was released in 2009, its underpinning, the blockchain distributed ledger system was the real technological breakthrough, a formulation that promises to change the basis of all types of transactions globally.
Blockchain technology has paved the way for an Internet of Transactions. Blockchain technology has already proved its worth in such areas as means of payment, interbank exchanges and international remittances. Touted as the next digital revolution, blockchain technology has the potential to transform traditional industries and alter society through disintermediation of trade. Any situation that involves an intermediary that is expensive or fallible represents an opportunity to create a blockchain application case. No industry is immune to the blockchain’s disruption potential.
In 2017, the blockchain technology is at an inflection point. The industry is in a state of transition and must move to Blockchain 2.0, which means the adoption of more sophisticated applications, such as micro-payments and smart contracts. Having outgrown its original bitcoin community, the majority of blockchain applications have yet to pass beyond the prototype stage to make blockchain technology the greatest restructuring technology of the next decade.
State of Blockchain 2017: Smartnetworks and the Blockchain EconomyMelanie Swan
Blockchain is a fundamental IT for secure value transfer over networks. For any asset registered in a cryptographic ledger, the whole Internet is a VPN for its confirmation, assurity, and transfer. Blockchain reinvents economics and governance for the digital age. The long-tail structure of digital networks allows personalized economic and governance services. Smartnetworks are a new form of automated global infrastructure for large-scale next-generation projects.
CoinDesk’s Q1 2016 State of Blockchain report summarizes key trends, data and events from the first quarter of 2016.
You'll be able to read analysis of the key trends in this article: http://www.coindesk.com/state-of-blockchain-q1-2016/
We'd appreciate feedback on our research:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6W6WHST
UNBLOCKED: The Power of Blockchain Technology to Establish Trust, Build Brand...Ogilvy Consulting
UNBLOCKED: The Power of Blockchain Technology to Establish Trust, Build Brands & Transform Business shines light on the myriad capabilities, applications and benefits of blockchain technology for enterprises. It frames key questions for business leaders that open paths to unlock the value of the technology. It places the customer at the center of business strategy development. And it focuses on the ultimate end game, leveraging blockchain to prevent disruption and provide competitive advantage.
The distributed ledger technology that started with bitcoin is rapidly becoming a crowdsourced system for all types of verification. Could it replace notary publics, manual vote recounts, and the way banks manage transactions?
The Hive Think Tank: Sidechains by Adam Back, President of BlockstreamThe Hive
Over the last couple of years, blockchains have captured a significant mindshare of innovation in financial services, industrial Internet and digital commerce industries. The scope of applications of blockchain as a platform has long surpassed that of its origins in Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency technology. However, none of the new blockchain platforms has been able to reach Bitcoin's levels of scale, security and global reach. There have also been no standards to interoperate between different blockchain platforms for exchange of assets. In order to address these challenges, Sidechains were created as cryptographic systems that securely orchestrate exchange of information between different blockchains by leveraging the scale & maturity of the Bitcoin network. Sidechains are weaving a network of diverse blockchains to bring interoperability and Bitcoin’s scale & maturity. In this talk, Adam Back will talk about its role in building the decentralized world of blockchains.
Blockchain Developments is building a comprehensive solution for Supply chain, Politics, Decentralized currency, Financial Technology, Healthcare, Infrastructure, and other business verticals. Read our blockchain case studies and use cases of successful implementations of blockchain development solutions for our various clients.
Blockchain: a Singularity-class technology - No other technology has the power to
pull 2 billion people out of poverty overnight (with intermediary-free international remittances), produce a safe and orderly transition to the automation economy (with humans and machines in collaboration, and enacting friendly artificial intelligence), and fundamentally transform the only remaining sectors not yet re-engineered for the Internet era: economics and politics. There are growing classes of activities for smartnetwork execution, moving up the stack, pushing different qualitative states through the Internet pipes, building future smartnetworks. The smartnetworks thesis is that complex future operations will involve automated fleet coordination of “quantized” items via smartnetworks, using some kind of technology like blockchains with algorithmically-derived trust.
Technological Unemployment and the Robo-EconomyMelanie Swan
Technological Unemployment (jobs outsourced to technology) is coming and the challenge is to steward an orderly and beneficial transition to more intense human-technology collaboration
Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology Explained: Not just Cryptocurrencies, Econo...Melanie Swan
The blockchain concept may be one of the most transformative ideas to impact the world since the Internet. It represents a new organizing paradigm for all activity and integrates humans and technology. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are merely one application of the blockchain concept. The blockchain is a public transaction ledger built in a network structure based on cryptographic principles so there does not need to be a centralized intermediary. Any kind of asset (art, car, home, financial contract) may be encoded into the blockchain and transacted, validated, or preserved in a much more efficient manner than at present including ideas, health data, financial assets, automobiles, and government documents. Blockchain technology applies well beyond cryptocurrencies, economics, and markets to all venues of human information processing, collaboration, and interaction including art, health, and literacy.
Innovation in Byzantine consensus protocols is helping decentralized networks scale up and become highly performant, possibly faster than centralized networks. Investment growth in Bitcoin and FinTech startups, and enterprise blockchain applications in development in multiple sectors
Blockchain: The Information Technology of the FutureMelanie Swan
The blockchain concept may be one of the most transformative ideas to impact the world since the Internet. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are merely one application of the blockchain concept. The blockchain is a public transaction ledger built in a decentralized network structure based on cryptographic principles so that any kind of trading, buying and selling of assets does not need to go through a centralized intermediary. Any kind of asset may be encoded into the blockchain and transacted, validated, or preserved in a much more efficient manner than at present including ideas, health data, financial assets, automobiles, and government documents. Venture Capitalists are calling the blockchain the next big investment wave.
Blockchain Smartnetworks: Bitcoin and Blockchain ExplainedMelanie Swan
Beyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, and governance, smart property and smart contracts, blockchains secure automated fleet coordination
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich digital smartnetwork societies of the future
Beyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, blockchains are a singularity-class technology that enables the secure, trackable, automated coordination of very large-scale projects, fleets, and swarms
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich human-machine collaboration in the digital smartnetwork societies of the future
There are new and emerging opportunities for organisations in all sectors to create and deliver compelling services for their customers using the power of disruptive innovation. As organisations formulate their plans for the coming months, this paper aims to help business and public sector leaders understand the cultural and organisational challenges that are inevitably brought by the use of blockchain technologies, and provides them with the insights they need to overcome them.
CBGTBT - Part 1 - Workshop introduction & primerBlockstrap.com
A Complete Beginners Guide to Blockchain Technology Part 1 of 6. Slides from the #StartingBlock2015 tour by @blockstrap
Part 1: http://www.slideshare.net/Blockstrap/cbgtbt-part-1-workshop-introduction-primer
Part 2: http://www.slideshare.net/Blockstrap/02-blockchains-101
Part 3: http://www.slideshare.net/Blockstrap/03-transactions-101
Part 4: http://www.slideshare.net/Blockstrap/cbgtbt-part-4-mining
Part 5: http://www.slideshare.net/Blockstrap/05-blockchains-102
Part 6: http://www.slideshare.net/Blockstrap/06-transactions-102
Deep.bi - Real-time, Deep Data Analytics Platform For EcommerceDeep.BI
Deep.bi It helps ecommerce teams improve their performance by providing current and detailed insights.
It bring operational excellence and performance for:
- Category Managers / Merchandisers
- Marketers
- Customer service
- UX / Design Team
- Tech / IT
- Executives / Managers
Ripple Labs @DeveloperWeek: Building the Payments WebRipple Labs
Building the Payments Web is a half-day of discussion and idea-sharing about the movement to re-architect payments for the Internet using math-based currency protocols, so that, for the first time in history, they’re globally inclusive. Attendees will hear from pioneers of the payments space, learn about the Bitcoin and Ripple protocols, and pitch their ideas to compete for XRP prizes. The event is hosted by Ripple Labs, the creators of the Ripple protocol.
Temporality of the Future: Part of a Series on Cryptophilosophy
Husserl’s Internal Time Consciousness is a theory of the structure of time and the present-now moment, and distinguishes two kinds of memory, primary memory as retention and secondary memory as recollection (reproductive, representational) memory. Retention does not break continuity with the present-now moment; retention is the part of a temporal object that contemplates its pastness and allows the present to emerge from the temporal background. Recollection does break continuity with the present; the current moment is interrupted to recall and re-represent a past memory. Recollection and expectation are piled up snapshots of discrete past moments or events. When recollected, they are reproduced in flow, but exist unsummoned as discrete elements. The structure of the present-now moment, on the other hand, is a continuous flow of the intentional unity of primal impression and retention-protention. How far the retention-protention horizon extends is unclear. It might only encompass the most immediate recent-pasts and near-futures surrounding the primal impression of the present-now moment, or it might extend to include all previous and future experiences in the realms of recollection and expectation. This talk posits that there might be a middle third form of time that exists respectively between recollection and retention and protention and expectation. Whereas protention and retention are continuous, and recollection and expectation are discrete, this middle form of time (X-tention) is simultaneously discrete and continuous.
A new philosophy of economics is needed that is adequate to the contemporary moment, configuring a mindset shift from 1) survival to fulfillment, 2) scarcity to abundance, and 3) centralization to decentralization
Successful societies recognize that economics is shifting to the greater production and consumption of “social goods” in complement to “material goods”
Social goods such as trust, dignity, abundance, opportunity, creative expression, fulfillment, challenge, collaboration, status, certainty, availability, contingency, willingness, cognitive surplus
Claim: societies with less income inequality have greater cohesion and trust, and are better poised to move more quickly into the abundance economics of the future
Blockchain technology is a key mechanism for building new forms of societal shared trust
Modern society arrived with trust beyond kinship groups; similar expansion now beyond hierarchical models with decentralization
Unbundling Of Financial Services: The Blockchain(s) RevolutionGeorge Samuel Samman
This is a deck which talks about blockchain(s) and their use cases, It is based off of some o the best thought in the space and looks at why banking and financial services will be changed.
Global Digital Sukuk (GDS) - A basic frameworkTariqullah Khan
GDS is a suggested digital Sukuk based on the idea of Bitcoin, but is proposed to be a registered and regulated digital(crypto)-asset as a perpetual Mudharabah issued on Public Blockchain by a credible SDGs oriented entity based on the entity’s overall balance sheet strength. The keywords are:
a. Digital(Crypto)-asset that is registered and regulated
b. On Public Blockchain
c. Perpetual Mudharabah Sukuk
d. Based on the overall balance sheet strength of the issuer
e. The issuer is a SDGs oriented business entity having track record of issuing Sukuk.
Blockchain Development and Innovation in the Banking and Finance Space Webina...Inflectra
Inflectra and BLOOCK co-hosted the webinar: Blockchain Development & Innovation in the Banking and Finance Industry. In this webinar, August Guenther, Software Engineer at Inflectra, and Marc Baqué, CTO at BLOOCK, discussed the current state of the traditional banking and finance space, the benefits of blockchain implementation in the industry, and scenarios in which customers might find an integration between Inflectra's and BLOOCK's technologies useful.
Webinar Agenda:
- Current state of traditional Banking & Finance space
- Software development & testing challenges
- Blockchain solution in the Banking & Finance space
- Benefits of blockchain implementation in the industry
- Inflectra and BLOOCK technologies: application scenarios & Spira's integration capabilities
- Questions from the audience
Webinar Presenters:
Marc Baqué is a full stack developer with deep knowledge in blockchain technology and expertise in the Ethereum ecosystem. Holding a master’s degree in IT Projects and Service Management from UPC, he leads BLOOCK technical team as the CTO. Through his expertise in Project Management as well as software development, Marc continues to grow BLOOCK’s product by developing new functionalities, all in accordance with client needs. Marc is also deeply involved in the Catalan tech community and proves himself as a key leader.
August Guenther is a Full stack web developer with market and general knowledge of popular blockchain implementations such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other miscellaneous crypto and NFT projects. He is on Inflectra's SpiraPlan product team working on external tools such as migration tools, data syncs, and other utility applications. August is a self taught developer and is involved in online communities helping new to-be developers get started on their own self led software development journeys.
Audrey Marcum is a Strategic Partner Manager at Inflectra Corporation. New to the IT industry, she has applied her skills developed in her education and previous job positions to her role at Inflectra, where she oversees the Partner Program, manages partners in the US and Canada, and provides support to Inflectra’s global partner channel. She also manages Inflectra's technology partnerships and organizes partner marketing efforts. Prior to working at Inflectra, she completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy with a focus in Public Affairs at The George Washington University.
Revolutionizing of Blockchain in Fintech App Development.pdfTechugo
Blockchain technology is a data management platform that uses complex cryptography to power many decentralized cryptocurrencies. Blockchains are digital ledgers and accounting systems that allow for auditing.
* Evaluation of network computing
* Why do industries need it?
* Blockchain will disrupt industries!
* Concrete project proposal for Turkey
* Conclusion
* Additional slides on
* More details about Blockchain?
* Cryptocurrency / Bitcoin details
2018 has been a roller-coaster ride for blockchain technology mostly at the hands of cryptocurrencies – blockchain’s main beneficiary. Extreme price volatility, unsuccessful ICOs, fraud, cyber security issues, and negative press around cryptocurrency would have all but killed most emerging technologies. But not blockchain.
Blockchain is entering into a new evolutionary phase with the help of tech giants like IBM, Amazon and Google who recognize the wider applicability of blockchain as a game changer in data storage, commerce, and security. Even cryptocurrency is showing promising signs as it moves out of the domain of overnight Bitcoin millionaires (and more who have lost fortunes when speculating on cryptocurrencies) to risk averse financial heavyweights such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Like the Internet, e-commerce, social media, and cloud computing before it, blockchain is on a fast track to become a ubiquitous technology.
Harnessing Blockchain technology to power Central Bank Digital CurrenciesBlockchain Worx
Central banks and institutions have been experimenting with and exploring Blockchain technology for digital currencies across a wide variety of use cases. 65% of the central banks recently surveyed said they are actively researching Digital Currencies; with 71% currently preferring DLT-based CBDCs. A two-tier model for CBDC would empower public-private partnerships and enable Digital Cash to be designed by central banks but distributed by commercial FI’s
eyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, blockchains are a singularity-class technology that enables the secure, trackable, automated coordination of very large-scale projects, fleets, and swarms
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich human-machine collaboration in the digital smartnetwork societies of the future
Blockchain: Revolutionizing Industries and Transforming Transactionscyberprosocial
Blockchain technology, initially introduced as the underlying technology for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has evolved into a transformative force with far-reaching implications across various industries. In this article, we will delve into the intricacies of it, exploring its fundamental concepts, its impact on diverse sectors, and the potential it holds for shaping the future of transactions and data management.
AI Health Agents: Longevity as a Service in the Web3 GenAI Quantum RevolutionMelanie Swan
Health Agents are a form of Math Agent as the concept of a personalized AI health advisor delivering “healthcare by app” instead of “sickcare by appointment.” Mobile devices
can check health 1000 times per minute as opposed to the standard one time per year doctor’s office visit, and model virtual patients in the digital twin app. As any AI agent, Health Agents “speak” natural language to humans and formal language to the computational infrastructure, possibly outputting the mathematics of personalized homeostatic health as part of their operation. Health Agents could facilitate the ability of physicians to oversee the health of thousands of individuals at a time. This could ease overstressed healthcare systems and contribute to physician well-being and the situation that (per the World Health Organization) more than half of the global population is still not covered by essential health services.
The computational infrastructure is becoming a vast interconnected fabric of formal methods, including per a major shift from 2d grids to 3d graphs in machine learning architectures
The implication is systems-level digital science at unprecedented scale for discovery in a diverse range of scientific disciplines
We know that we are in an AI take-off, what is new is that we are in a math take-off. A math take-off is using math as a formal language, beyond the human-facing math-as-math use case, for AI to interface with the computational infrastructure. The message of generative AI and LLMs (large language models like GPT) is not that they speak natural language to humans, but that they speak formal languages (programmatic code, mathematics, physics) to the computational infrastructure, implying the ability to create a much larger problem-solving apparatus for humanity-benefitting applications in biology, energy, and space science, however not without risk.
This work introduces “quantum intelligence” as a concept of intelligence for operating in the quantum realm may help in a potential AI-Quantum Computing convergence (~2030e), and towards the realization of SRAI for well-being (economics, health, energy, space). “Scale-free intelligence” is formulated as a generic capacity for learning.
AI did not spring onto the scene with chatGPT, but is in an ongoing multi-year adoption. A transition may be underway from an information society to a knowledge society (one tempered and specifically using knowledge to improve the human condition). AI is a dual-use technology with both significant risk and upleveling possibilities.
SRAI for well-being is a social objective, and also a technological objective. SRAI is part of AI development and within the technological trajectory of harnessing all scales of physical reality ranging from quantum materials to space exploration.
Conceptually, thinking in quantum and relativistic terms expands the physical worldview, and likewise the social worldview of entities inhabiting the larger world. Practically, SRAI may be realized in phases: short-term regulation and registries, medium-term agents learning to implement human values with internal reward functions, and long-term responsible human-AI entities acting in partnership in a future of SRAI for well-being.
The Human-AI Odyssey: Homerian Aspirations towards Non-labor IdentityMelanie Swan
The visionary progression in The Odyssey from shipbuilding to seafaring to advanced civilization informs contemporary tension in the human-AI relation forcing a broader articulation of human-identity beyond labor-identity. Edith Hall analyzes why one of the earliest known literatures, The Odyssey, remains a central cultural trope with numerous references in the storytelling vernacular of all eras, ranging from 1860s British theater to a highly-watched 1990 episode of The Simpsons. The argument is that The Odyssey provides a constant aspirational reference for human identity – who we think we are and where we are going on the epic journey of life, especially at the current crossroad in our relationship with technology.
The contemporary moment finds humanity, and the humanities, experiencing an identity crisis in the relationship with technology. Information science is having an ever more pervasive role in academia, and the machine economy continues to offload vast classes of tasks to labor-saving technology giving rise to two questions. First, at the level of labor-identity, humans wonder who they are as they have long defined their sense of self through their professional participation in the economy. Second, at the level of human-identity, with AI now performing cognitive labor in addition to physical labor, humans wonder if there is anything that remains uniquely human.
The effect of The Odyssey is to provide world-expanding imaginaries to change the way we see ourselves as subjects; in this way, Homer is an early modernist in reconfiguring our self-concept.
This work applies a philosophy (of literature)-aided information science method to discuss how Homer’s Odyssey persists as a literary imaginary to help us think through potential futures of human-AI flourishing as rapid automation continues to impact humanity. The intensity of the human-AI relation is likely to increase, which invites thought leadership to steward the transition to a potential AI abundance economy with fulfilling human-technology collaboration.
The shipbuilding-seafaring-advanced civilization progression in The Odyssey identifies that the human-AI relation is not one of the labor-identity-crisis of “robots stealing our jobs,” but rather one of the more difficult challenge of envisioning who we can be in the new larger world of human-AI partnership addressing a larger set of planetary-scale problems. Towards this new configuration of human-AI relation, the longer-term may hold radically different notions of identity, as we become physical-virtual hybrids, augmented post-disease entities in the health-faring, space-civilizing, energy-marshalling post-scarcity cultures of the future.
AdS Biology and Quantum Information ScienceMelanie Swan
Quantum Information Science is a fast-growing discipline advancing many areas of science such as cryptography, chemistry, finance, space science, and biology. In particular AdS/Biology, an interpretation of the AdS/CFT correspondence in biological systems, is showing promise in new biophysical mathematical models of topology (Chern-Simons (solvable QFT), knotting, and compaction). For example, one model of neurodegenerative disease takes a topological view of protein buildup (AB plaques and tau tangles in Alzheimer’s disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease, TDP-43 in ALS). AdS/Neuroscience methods are implicated in integrating multiscalar systems with different bulk-boundary space-time regimes (e.g. oncology tumors, fMRI + EEG imaging), entanglement (correlation) renormalization across scales (MERA, random tensor networks, melonic diagrams), entropy (possible system states), entanglement entropy (interrelated fluctuations and correlations across system tiers), and non-ergodicity (implied efficiency mechanisms since biology does not cycle through all possible configurations per temperature (thermotaxis), chemotaxis, and energy cues); Maxwell’s demon of biology (partition functions), conservation across system scales (biophysical gauge symmetry (system-wide conserved quantity)), and the presence of codes (DNA, codons, neural codes). A multiscalar AdS/CFT correspondence is mobilized in 4-tier ecosystem models (light-plankton-krill-whale and ion-synapse-neuron-network (AdS/Brain)).
Humanity’s constant project is expanding the range of attainable geography. Melville’s romance of the sea gives way to Kerouac’s romance of the road, and now the romance of space. In expanding into new geographies, markets (commerce) is the driving impulse, entailing a legal and judiciary system to order the new larger continuous marketplace, which brings a bigger overall scope of world under our control, and hence a new idea of who we are as subjects in this bigger domain.
Space Humanism is a concept of humanism based on the principles of inclusion, progress, and equity posited as a condition of possibility for a potential large-scale human movement into space. A philosophy of literature approach is used to contextualize Space Humanism, first through Melville-Foucault to articulate the mind-frame of extra-planetary geographies as one of human expansion, and second through posthuman philosophy extending from Shakespeare’s Renaissance humanism to contemporary enhancement-based theories of subjectivation.
Historical imaginaries outline subjectivation moments that have changed the whole notion who we are as humanity. Four examples are: the concept of the “new world” in Hegel’s philosophy, von Humboldt’s infographic maps, Baudelaire as the Painter of Modern Life, and Keats’s seeing the world in a new way upon reading an updated translation of Homer.
The reach to beyond-Earth geographies is a two-cultures project involving both arts and science. Technical competence is necessary to realize the aspirational, explorational, and survivalist aims of humanity pushing beyond planetary limits. Space was once a fantastic dream that is becoming quotidian with fourteen U.S. spaceports, six completed Blue Origin space tourist missions, and SpaceX having over 155 successful rocket launches including human space flights to and from the International Space Station. The notion of Space Human articulated through Shakespeare, Moby-Dick, and neuroenhancement informs the project of our reach to awaiting beyond-Earth geographies.
Quantum Information Science and Quantum Neuroscience.pptMelanie Swan
Mathematical advance in quantum information science is proceeding quickly and applies to many fields, particularly the complexities of neuroscience (here focusing on image-readable physical behaviors such as neural signaling, as opposed to higher-order operations of cognition, memory, and attention). Quantum mathematical models are extensible to neuroscience problem classes treating dynamical time series, diffusion, and renormalization in multiscalar systems. Approaches first reconstruct wavefunctions observed in EEG and fMRI scans. Second, single-neuron models (Hodgkin-Huxley, integrate-and-fire, theta neurons) and collective neuron models (neural field theories, Kuramoto oscillators) are employed to model empirical data. Third, genome physics is used to study time series sequence prediction in DNA, RNA, and proteins based on 3d+ complex geometry involving fields, curvature, knotting, and information compaction. Finally, quantum neuroscience physics is applied in AdS/Brain modeling, Chern-Simons biology (topological invariance), neuronal gauge theories, network neuroscience, and the chaotic dynamics of bifurcation and bistability (to explain epileptic and resting states). The potential benefit of this work is an improved understanding of disease and pathology resolution in humans.
Quantum information science enables a new tier of scientific problem-solving as exemplified in early-adopter fields, foundational tools in quantum cryptography, quantum machine learning, and quantum chemistry (molecular quantum mechanics), and advanced applications in quantum space science, quantum finance, and quantum biology
Grammatology and Performativity: A Critical Theory of Silence: Silence is a crucial device for subversion, opposition, and socio-political commentary, the theoretical underpinnings of which are just starting to be understood. This work illuminates another position in the growing field of critical silence studies, theorizing silence as an asset whose ontological value has been lost in a world of literal and figurative noise. Part 1 philosophizes silence as a continuation of Derrida’s grammatology project. Such a grammatology of silence valorizes silent thinking over noisy speaking, and identifies the deconstructive binary pairing not as silence-speaking, but rather as silence-noise. Noise has a simultaneous physical-virtual existence as Shannon entropy calculates signal-to-noise ratios in modern communications networks. Part 2 employs the philosophy of noise to assess what is conceptually necessary to overcome noise in a critical theory of silence. Malaspina draws from Simondon to argue that noise is a form of individuation, essentially a living thing with unstoppable growth potential, not defined by a binary on-off switch but as a matter of gradation. Hence different theory resources are required to oppose it. Part 3 then develops a critical theory of silence to oppose noise in both its physical and virtual instantiations, with the two arms of a deeply human positive performativity (Szendy, Bennett) and a beyond-computational posthumanism (Puar). The result is a novel critical theory of silence as positive performativity that destabilizes noise and recoups the ontological status of silence as not merely an empty post-modern reification but a meaningful actuality.
Philosophy-aided Physics at the Boundary of Quantum-Classical Reality The philosophical themes of truth-knowledge and appearance-reality are used to interrogate the contemporary situation of the quantum-classical boundary, and more broadly the quantum-classical-relativistic stratification of physical scale boundaries. The contemporary moment finds us at breakneck pace in the industrial information revolution, digitizing remaining matter-based industries into a seamless exchange between physical-digital reality. Digitized news is giving way to digitized money and perhaps in the farther future, digitized mindfiles (such as personalized connectome files for precision medicine, autologous (own-DNA) stem cell therapies, and CRISPR for Alzheimer’s disease prevention). Our technologies are allowing us control over vast new domains, the relativistic with GPS and space-faring, and the quantum with quantum computing, harnessing the properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference. Philosophy provides critical thinking tools that can help us understand and master these rapid shifts in science and technology to avoid an Adornian instrumental reality (subsuming humanity under societal structures) and to maintain a Heideggerian backgrounded and enabling relation with technology (versus technology enframing us into mindless standing reserve).
The philosophical theme underlying the investigation of the scales of planets, persons, and particles is the relationship between truth and knowledge (or appearance and reality). The truth-knowledge problem is whether knowledge of the truth, true knowledge, the reality under the appearance, is even possible. Three salient moments in the history of the truth-knowledge problem are examined here. These are the German idealism of Kant and Hegel, the deconstructive postmodernism of Foucault and Derrida, and the unclear leanings of the current moment. The German idealism lens incorporates the self-knowing subject as agent into the truth and knowledge problem. The postmodernist view breaks with the subject and emphasizes the hidden opposites in the formulations, the constant reinterpretation of meaning, and porous boundaries. The contemporary moment wonders whether truth-knowledge boundaries still hold, in a Benjaminian view of non-identity between truth and knowledge, and truth increasingly being seen as a Foucauldian biopolitical manufactured quantity. Contemporaneity has a bimodal distribution of the subject: the hyperself (the constantly digitally represented selfie self) and the alienated post-subject subject.
These moments in the truth and knowledge debate inflect into the scale considerations of relativity, classicality, and quantum mechanics. Whereas general relativity and quantum mechanics are domains of universality, totality, and multiplicity, everyday classical reality is squeezed in as a belt between the two multiplicities as the concretion of drawing a triangle or tossing a ball. Recasting truth and k
Comprehensive philosophical programs arise within a historical context (for Hegel and Derrida in the democracy-shaping moments of the French Revolution (1789) and the student-worker protests (1968) in which French politics serve as a global harbinger of contemporary themes). In the Derrida-Hegel relationship, there is more rapprochement concerning core notions of difference, history, and meaning-assignation than may have been realized. In particular, Hegel’s philosophy, despite being assumed to be a totalizing system, in fact indicates precisely some of the same kinds of revised metaphysics-of-presence formulations that Derrida exhorts, namely those that are flexible, expansive, and include non-identity and identity.
A crucial Derrida-Hegel interchange is that of différance and difference. Derrida develops the notion directly from Hegel (“Différance,” “The Pit and the Pyramid”), but only draws from the Encyclopedia, not Hegel’s masterwork, the Phenomenology of Spirit. For Derrida, the “A” in différance is inspired by the form of the pyramid in the capitalized letter and in Hegel’s comparing the sign “to the Egyptian Pyramid” (“Différance,” p. 3). Derrida invokes the symbolism of the pyramid, antiquity, and Egyptian hieroglyphics as an early semiotic system. However, when considering Hegel’s central definition of difference in the dialectical progression of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§159-163), the articulations of différance and difference are remarkably aligned.
Parallel formulations are also seen in history as a series of reinterpretable events, and indexical wrappers as a mechanism for meaning assignation. The thinkers examine the universal and the particular by exploring regulative mechanisms such as law (natural and social). In Glas, Derrida highlights not the singular-universal relation, but the law of singularity and the law of universality relation as being relevant to Hegel’s Antigone interpretation (Glas, p. 142a), a theme continued in “Before the Law.” Finally (time permitting), there is a question whether the most valid critiques of Hegel (Nietzsche’s unreason and Benjamin’s non-synthesis), as alternatives to Hegelian dialectics, are visible in Derrida’s thought.
The upshot is that the two thinkers produce similar formulations, derived from different trajectories of philosophical work; a situation which points to the potential universality of fundamental solution classes to open-ended philosophical problems, including the future of democracy.
Quantum Moreness: Kantian Time and the Performative Economics of Multiplicity
There is no domain with greater moreness than that of the quantum. A philosophy-aided physics approach (postmodernism and Continental philosophy) examines the contemporary situation of quantum moreness (more time and space dimensions than are available classically). Quantum moreness is configured by quantum reality being probabilistic; a multiplicity of outcomes all co-existing in superposition until collapsed in measurement. The quantum mindset uses quantum moreness to solve problems by thinking in terms of the greater scalability afforded in time and space with the quantum properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference. Quantum studies fields proliferate in arts and sciences, raising the Levi-Straussian raw-cooked dilemma of how “traditional humanities” are to be named alongside “digital humanities” and “quantum humanities.” Kant facilitates the conceptualization of quantum moreness by insisting on the dual nature of time as transcendentally ideal and empirically real. Kant’s moreness is allness, the absolute totality and multiplicity of time at the ideal level. Each faculty (sensibility, understanding, reason) has its own species of the a priori synthetic unity of ideal time that precedes and conditions the operation of the faculty. Each faculty also has a concretized formulation of empirically-real time as the time series, which is the basis for the faculties to interoperate to perform the conception of any empirical object. Kant’s achievement of time interoperability has potential extensibility to other areas of temporal incompatibility such as the scales of general relativity, Newtonian mechanics (human-scale), and quantum mechanics. The quantum moreness mindset with which Kant connects the ideal-real is visible in the domain of economics, itself too an ideal-real construction. The quantum moreness of money configures the postmodern abstraction of global cryptocurrencies and smart contract pledges, the implicative hope of which is a post-debt capital world that restores the human esprit in the face of an increasingly intense technologized reality.
Blockchain Crypto Jamming: Subverting the Instrumental Economy
The ultimate subversion is money, refusing the pecuniary resources of the state. This project applies a philosophical and critical theory lens to examine the use of nomenclature in one of the most radical longitudinal transformations in contemporary times, the shift away from state-run monetary resources towards cryptocurrencies and smart contracts in citizen-determined decentralized financial networks.
A Cryptoeconomic Theory of Social Change is presented in which linguistic progression serves as a tracking mechanism. The steps to lasting change have their own vocabulary (Brandom). First, there is the social critique, the complaint about what is wrong, the negative side (Adorno and Horkheimer highlight instrumental reason and the empty culture industry). Second, there is the antidote, an alternative that can overcome the complaint, the positive side. Third, the solution becomes the new reality, and as a consequence, the whole of reality is now seen in this context, adopting its vocabulary (“fiat health” system for example, referring to the antiquated method). The social movement graduates from language game (Wittgenstein) to form of life (Jaeggi).
Blockchains are Occupy with teeth, notable in the level of personal responsibility-taking by individuals to steward their own financial resources. The crypto citizen is not merely trading CryptoKitties and Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens, but getting blocktime loans through DeFi liquidity pools instead of fiat banks, earning labor income in crypto, and shifting all economic activity to blockchain networks. The artworld signals mainstream acceptance with Christie’s non-fungible token digital artwork auctioned from Beeple for $61 million. At the global level, coin communities constitute a new form of Kardashev-level (planetary-scale) democracy. Blockchains emerge as a robust smart network automation technology for super-class projects ranging from space-faring to quantum computing and thought-tokening. The further stakes of this work are having a language-based theory of social change with broad applicability to social transformation.
This work argues that the emerging understanding of time in quantum information science can be articulated as a philosophical theory of change. Change and time are interrelated, and one can be used to interrogate the other, namely, a theory of change can be derived from a theory of time. What is new in quantum science is time being regarded as just another property to be engineered. At the quantum scale, time is reversible in certain ways, which is quite different from the everyday experience of time whose unidirectional arrow does not allow a dropped egg to reassemble. At the quantum scale of atoms, though, a particle retains the history of its trajectory, which may be retraced before collapsed in measurement.
Quantum scientists evolve systems backward and forward in time, controlling phase transitions with Floquet engineering. Quantum systems are entangled in time and space, with temporal correlations exhibiting greater multiplicity than spatial correlations. The chaotic time regimes of ballistic spread followed by saturation are implemented in quantum walks for faster search and heightened cryptosecurity. In quantum neuroscience, seizure may be explained by chaotic dynamics and normal resting state by Floquet-like periodic cycles. Time is revealed to have the same kinds of repeating structures as space (described by entanglement, symmetry, and topology), differently instantiated and controlled.
The quantum understanding of time can be propelled into a macroscale-theory of change through its connotation of a more flexible, malleable, probabilistic interface with reality. Change becomes less rigid. Probability is the lever of change, but notoriously difficult for humans to grasp, as we think better in storylines than statistics. The idea of manipulating quantum system properties in which time, space, dynamics (change), are all just parameters, is an empowering frame for the acceptance of change. The quantum mindset affords greater facility with probability-driven events (change).
Blockchains in Space: Non-Euclidean Spacetime and Tokenized Thinking - Two requirements for the large-scale beyond-terrestrial expansion of human intelligence into the universe are the ability to operate in diverse spatiotemporal regimes and to instantiate thinking in various formats. Newtonian mechanics describe everyday reality, but Einsteinian physics is needed for GPS and the orbital technologies of telescopes and spacecraft. Space agencies already integrate the Earth-day and the slightly-longer Martian-sol. A more substantial move into space requires facility with non-Euclidean spacetimes. One challenge is that general relativity and quantum mechanics are non-interoperable. However, the theories can be formulated together when considering black holes and quantum computing since geometric theories and gauge theories are both field-based. Quantum blockchains instantiate blockchain logic in quantum computational environments. Blockchains have their own temporal regime (blocktime: the number of blocks for an event to occur), and hence quantum blocktime is a non-classical functionality for operating in diverse spatiotemporal regimes. Thinking is a rule-based activity that is unrestricted by medium. Central to thinking is concepts, which are referenced by words. Word-types include universals, particulars, and indexicals which can be encoded into a formal system as thought-tokens, and registered to blockchains. Blockchains are contemplated as an automation technology for asteroid mining and space settlement construction, and thought-tokening adds an intelligence layer. Time and tokenized thinking come together in the idea of smart networks in space. In blockchain quantum smart networks, spatiotemporal regimes and thought-tokens are simply different value types (asset classes) coordinated with blockchain logic, towards the aim of extending human capabilities into the farther reaches of space.
Cryptography, entanglement, and quantum blocktime: Quantum computing offers a more scalable energy-efficient platform than classical computing and supercomputing, and corresponds more naturally to the three-dimensional structure of atomic reality. Blockchains are a decentralized digital economic system made possible by the 24-7 global nature of the internet.
Quantum Neuroscience: CRISPR for Alzheimer’s, Connectomes & Quantum BCIsMelanie Swan
This talk provides an introduction to quantum computing and how it may be deployed to study the human brain and its diseases of pathology and aging. Refined to its present state over centuries, the brain is one of the most complex systems known, with 86 billion neurons and 242 trillion synapses connected in intricate patterns and rewired by synaptic plasticity. Research continues to illuminate the mysteries of the brain. Quantum computing provides a more capacious architecture with greater scalability and energy efficiency than current methods of classical computing and supercomputing, and more naturally corresponds to the three-dimensional structure of atomic reality. The vision for quantum neuroscience is to model the nature of the brain exactly as it is, in three-dimensional atomically-accurate representations. Neuroscience (particularly genetic disease modeling, connectomics, and synaptomics) could be the “killer application” of quantum computing. Implementations in other industries are also important, including in quantum finance, quantum cryptography using Shor’s factoring algorithm (“the Y2K of Crypto”), Grover’s search, quantum chemistry, eigensolvers, quantum machine learning, and continuous-time quantum walks. Quantum computing is a high-profile worldwide scientific endeavor with platforms currently available via cloud services (IBM Q 27-qubit, IonQ 32-qubit, Rigetti 19Q Acorn) and is in the process of being applied in various industries including computational neuroscience.
Art Theory: Two Cultures Synthesis of Art and ScienceMelanie Swan
Thesis: Aesthetic resources contribute broadly to the human endeavor of progress, self-understanding, and science, beyond the immediate experience of art. Aesthetic Resources are frameworks, concepts, and modes of expression in art, literature, and philosophy that capture the imagination and the intellect through the senses. The role of art is to inspire the future: the romance of the sea, the open road, space.
The arts are a hallmark of civilization, but can their benefit be crystallized as aesthetic resources that can be mobilized to new situations? How can aesthetic resources help in moments of crisis?
A worldwide social identity crisis has been provoked by pandemic recovery, politics, equity, and environmental sustainability. Philosophical and aesthetic resources can help. Understanding art as a reflection of who we are as individuals and groups, this talk explores conceptualizations of art, with examples, in different periodizations from the 1800s to the present. A marquis definition as to what constitutes an artwork is Adorno’s, for whom the work must promulgate its own natural law and engage in novel materials manipulation. For many theorists, art is the pressing of our self-concept into concrete materiality (whether pyramids, sculpture, or painting). What do contemporary periodizations of art mean to our current and forward-looking self-concept? Recent eras include the neo-avant-gardes of 1945, the conceptual art of the 1960s, and post-conceptual art starting in the 1970s, produced generatively with found materials, the digital domain, and audience interactivity. What is the now-current idea of art? Is today’s Baudelairian flâneur and Balzacian modern hero incarnated in the quantum aesthetic imaginary and the digital cryptocitizen? Far from an “end of art” thesis sometimes attributed to Hegel, aesthetic practices are more relevant than ever. Individually and societally, we are reinventing creative energy and productive imagination in venues from science, technology, health, and biology to the arts.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...
Blockchain Financial Networks
1. Washington DC, October 2, 2015
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Melanie Swan
Economic Theorist
New School, New York NY
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain
Financial Networks
2. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Blockchains: Overview
1
What is it?
Blockchains are secure
distributed ledgers and financial networks
Why is it important?
The next phase of the Internet (value transfer)
(1) Already here: rapid institutional uptake
(2) Pervasive: includes all cash, instruments & contracts
(3) High stakes: re-shuffles existing financial system
4. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks 3
Melanie Swan
Economic Theorist, New School, New York
Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
Instructor, Singularity University; Affiliate Scholar, Institute
for Ethics and Emerging Technology (IEET); Contributor,
EDGE
Traditional Markets Background Economic Theory Leadership
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Book: Blockchain:
Blueprint for a New
Economy
5. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Fintech Investment
4
https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/fintech-investment-in-us-nearly-tripled-in-2014-according-to-report-by-accenture-
and-partnership-fund-for-new-york-city.htm
$9.89 billion in 2014, up from $3.39 billion in 2013
6. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
R3 CEV Distributed Ledger Announcement
Shared distributed ledgers $28 Tn in assets
Secure financial-grade ledger, ‘fabric,’ scalable to
hundreds of billions of transactions per day
Benefits: fast-moving, reduce system-wide risk, core
infrastructure development, high-profile, cost savings; could
facilitate regulatory compliance, transparency to consumers
Risks: exclusionary access, fees-to-play; HFT or EDI?; greater
world market interconnectedness and systemic shocks?
5
DTCC annual revenue $1.5 bn; CLS Bank $0.8 bn, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-g-cecchetti/virtual-frenzies-
bitcoin_b_8228444.html; CEV: Crypto 2.0, Exchanges, Ventures (R3’s business lines)
7. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
What is Blockchain Technology?
Secure (cryptographic) distributed ledger system
A ‘giant Google doc spreadsheet’ database of transactions,
independently confirmed and validated by the software system
Secure, transparent, accessible, auditable, available 24/7
Batches (blocks) of transactions posted sequentially (chain)
Prevents double-spend of digital cash
6
8. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Phased Roll-out of Blockchain Technology
Decide: public or private, centralized or decentralized?
Centralized confirmation by U.S. Treasury
Private internal test implementation; modernize current
operations; move traditional ledgers to cryptographic ledgers
Public-facing hybrid implementation; digitize interactions with
external parties; centralized confirmation
Decentralized confirmation by blockchain financial
networks
Automated secure financial network operations obviate need
for centralized intermediaries; software-confirmed transactions
7
Phase II: Automate
Phase I: Modernize
9. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
U.S. Department of the Treasury Mission:
Maintain a strong economy and create economic
and job opportunities by promoting the conditions
that enable economic growth and stability at home
and abroad, strengthen national security by
combating threats and protecting the integrity of the
financial system, and manage the U.S.
Government’s finances and resources effectively
Operate and maintain systems that are critical to
the nation's financial infrastructure
8
10. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
U.S. Treasury Application Areas
9
Currency and Coinage Operations
Government Operations: managing federal finances
Revenue/Expenditure: revenue/tax collection; payment
disbursement and bill-paying
Managing government accounts and the public debt
Securities operations: federal borrowing
Supervisory and Oversight
Supervise national banks and thrift institutions
Consumer protection
Safeguarding Financial Systems
Policy advisory; national security: monitoring, investigation,
enforcement; international interactions
11. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Blockchain Financial Applications
Examples
10
Cash replacement/complement: issue digital
cryptocurrency (e.g.; UScoin, UStoken)
Blockchain Treasury securities operations
Securities: Treasury bonds, bills, notes, TIPS
Register and administer as blockchain-based smart-assets
possibly via smart-contract DACs: issuance, exchange,
redemption, tracking, audit, attestation, interest payments
Secure accounting ledger operations
Internal and governmental operations (Federal Reserve,
Government-sponsored Enterprise (FNMA, FHLMC, SLMA))
Back-office: clearing, settlement, compliance, audit, QA
Front-office: cash, payment, securities operations, contracts
DAC: Distributed Autonomous Corporation – package of smart contracts executing programmed functions as an entity
12. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Application
Digital Identity System
Blockchain-based digital identity cards,
passports
Identity confirmation, validation, assurance
Unify: identity, payment, insurance information
Financial payments, transfers
Income tax, social security transfer payments
Automated pay-in, pay-out
U.S. securities investment
Link to digital health wallet
Technical details
Public and private keys
Data hashing
Multi-factor authentication
11
13. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Blockchain Financial Applications
Advanced
Forecasting, budgeting, reporting
Growth, inflation, monetary policy, sector activity, consumption
Inflows/outflows: tax receipts, transfer payments
Blockchain-based Ricardian contracts
Ricardian contract: A type of value for issuance over the internet, a
contract that defines a set of conditions for the instrument that can be read
by both humans and computers and is signed with the Issuer’s public key
Real-time economic indicators
Economic data and statistics collection and aggregation as
distributed ledger meta data
Open risk-models (transparent, anticipative, big data-predictive)
12
http://www.systemics.com/docs/ricardo/issuer/contract.html
14. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Rethinking Risk per non-linear
causality: Risk Regimes
13
Lloyd’s of London
Sea-faring Trade
Black–Scholes
CAPM, Beta
Efficient Frontiers
Support Vector Machines
Complexity Math
Docker VM Containers
Deep Learning Algorithms
Blockchain
Decentralized
Risk Models1
Black Swan
Risk Models
Classical Portfolio
Theory Risk Models
Traditional Mutuality
Risk Models
Mutual Insurance:
Liability, D&O, Auto,
Life, Health
Actuarial Tables
Extreme Value
Analysis
‘Global warming for Markets’
Higher-magnitude,
increasingly frequent
unpredictable outsized events
‘World is flat’ interconnected
financial markets
New forms of
Exchange
Emergent self-
determined
economies
Economic Model
Plurality
Minimize/maximize
downside/upside exposure
to black swan events
Value-at-Risk
Open Risk Models2
1http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/swan20150914; 2http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2320562
Machine Learning Algorithms
Distributed Consensus
Algorithms
Portfolio Theory
Trinomial Trees
Heteroscedasticity
Convexity
Big Data Crunching
Eigen Values & Matrices
Analysis Tools:
Reflexivity
15. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Rethinking Finance
Internet of Information -> Internet of Finance
14
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
What is Finance?
Spot and future contingency management system for
assets and liabilities
Blockchains: improved form of contingency
management (precision, automation, lower-risk)
Internet transfers information, and now value
Internet becomes a contingency management system
with programmable money, smart contracts DACs,
distributed ledger transactions
Blockchain financial networks automatically and
independently confirm and monitor transactions,
without central parties like banks or governments
16. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Distributed ledgers allow a more serious move into the
Automation Economy, via secure value transfer
previously unavailable with the Internet
Fair and orderly transition from the Labor Economy to
the Automation and Actualization Economy
Bigger Picture: Automation Economy
15
Information &
Entertainment
Manufacturing Health
Economics &
Finance
Government &
Legal
Internet: Transfer of Information
Internet: Secure
Transfer of Value
Sectors
17. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Evaluating Blockchain Ecosystem Risk
16
Network Infrastructure
Organizational
Paradigm
Bitcoin and blockchain consensus mechanisms are the
initial but perhaps not final positions in the build-out of
the decentralized value-transfer infrastructure
Decentralization
Consensus
Mechanism
Blockchain-based
Distributed Ledgers
Cryptocurrency
Value-exchange Token
Bitcoin
Platform Level: Current Leader:
18. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Blockchains: Overview
17
What is it?
Blockchains are secure
distributed ledgers and financial networks
Why is it important?
The next phase of the Internet (value transfer)
(1) Already here: rapid institutional uptake
(2) Pervasive: includes all cash, instruments & contracts
(3) High stakes: re-shuffles existing financial system
20. Washington DC, October 2, 2015
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Melanie Swan
Economic Theorist
New School, New York NY
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain
Financial Networks
Thank you! Questions?
21. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Private and Public Blockchains
20
http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-consensus-protocols
Charts per: http://www.ofnumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Permissioned-distributed-ledgers.pdf
Public Permissionless Ledgers
• Censorship-resistant (pseudonymous)
• Anonymous validators (network
vulnerable to anonymous attack)
• “Car”
Private Permissioned Ledgers
• Identity known/confirmed, legally-compliant
• Value transfer VPNs, Decentralized SaaS
• “Better horse”
Stellar
22. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Byzantine Generals Problem, Byzantine Fault
Tolerance (BFT), Byzantine Agreement (BA)
Distributed network security problem
Problem: achieving consensus in a distributed network
with potentially faulty nodes
How to coordinate among distributed nodes to come up with a
consensus (a truth state; a common view of the world) that is
resistant to attackers trying to undermine that consensus
How to add new nodes
21
Swan, M. Blockchain Consensus Protocols, 2015, http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-consensus-protocols
23. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Approaches to Consensus/BFT
22
Byzantine Agreement Protocol (synchronous)
Microsoft/Lamport: Paxos (state machine replication)
Google: Chubby (serve strongly consistent files)
POW (Bitcoin) ‘Nakamoto Consensus’ – expensive,
high latency
POS (Tendermint) – requires resource ownership, risk
of ‘nothing-at-stake’ attacks per revoked escrow
Pebble: ARBC (Asynchronous Randomized Byzantine
Consensus)
UT: BAR (Byzantine, altruistic, rational) protocol
Stellar: SCP Quorum Slicing
Other: Prediction Markets (Augur), Meta (Factom)
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/lorenzo/papers/sosp05.pdf
24. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
POW ‘Nakamoto Consensus’ Shortcomings
Sybil attack-resistant compromise for
decentralized consensus but not the final
solution for distributed network fault-tolerant
security for scalability and performance, key
issues:
1. Expensive, excessive energy consumption
2. Poor scalability for widespread blockchain use
especially for IOT
3. Slow: high latency (1-10 minutes to confirm
transactions); only eventually consistent
23
https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949
http://crypto.stanford.edu/seclab/sem-14-15/williams.html
25. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Pebble: Asynchronous Randomized
Byzantine Consensus (Concept)
24
http://crypto.stanford.edu/seclab/sem-14-15/williams.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEgjqIMtVQ
Asynchronous Byzantine consensus for
decentralized networks using cryptographic
randomness, combine
Nakamoto chains (randomness source, Merkle
roots log) with …
conventional consensus techniques (produce
consensus by agreeing upon data transitions
through a new generation of highly-tuned and
optimized conventional consensus protocols) to …
produce fast and scalable decentralized networks
26. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Pebble: Asynchronous Randomized
Byzantine Consensus (Method features)
25
FLP: Fischer, Lynch and Patterson Friedman et al. 2003. Simple and efficient oracle-based consensus protocols for asynchronous
Byzantine systems. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=1353024 Maji et all. Exploring the limits of common
coins using frontier analysis of protocols. 2011. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1987298
Asynchronous (resist attack)
Fully asynchronous (no timing assumptions) and
leader-free (no one node orchestrates)
Randomized (improve efficiency)
Address FLP impossibility result (in asynchronous
networks, if only one node fails, cannot be sure
remaining nodes will reach consensus)
Randomized protocols get around this by
terminating with a probability approaching 1
Need a common source of randomness, so use
blockchains (constant source of randomness;
cannot predict who finds the next hash) to organize
the network
Use deterministic homomorphic threshold
signatures to create cryptographic randomness
without having a trusted dealer
27. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Pebble: Asynchronous Randomized
Byzantine Consensus (Example)
26
http://crypto.stanford.edu/seclab/sem-14-15/williams.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEgjqIMtVQ
Fast-throughput (achieve scalability)
Run massive numbers of binary leader-free
asynchronous randomized consensus protocols
in parallel to quickly agree a combined data set
from the inputs of large numbers of processes
Proof of concept
Focus on messaging efficiency, decentralized
network scalability and confirmation speed
Enable 500 distributed processes to
simultaneously present their data sets to the
group and quickly reach strongly consistent
agreement on an accepted superset
Pass only 0.5-1MB of protocol messages
A network reaching consensus every 5
seconds would have spare bandwidth to
process many thousands of transactions per
second
28. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Stellar: Quorum Slicing (Concept)
27
https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949
Objective: distributed consensus
Nodes update their states/ledgers
Avoid Byzantine failure (when individual nodes act
arbitrarily, maliciously or not)
Distinguish between
Quorum: the set of nodes required to reach
agreement across the whole system
Quorum Slice: the subset of a quorum that can
convince one particular node of agreement
Result: federated network of quorum slices,
continually testing the network
Do not need to trust the whole system/network, just
your neighbors, you do not know who to trust
initially, join the network, and try before you trust, the
system grows organically, each party makes a slice
of others from the whole to trust
29. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Federated Quorum Slice Network
28
https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949
Resilient network
Overall network health is preserved even if there are a few
bad nodes, and some good nodes slicing the bad nodes
Unanimous consent from the complete set of system nodes is
not required to reach agreement, or tolerate faulty nodes
30. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Stellar graphic novel explains Quorum Slicing
29
https://www.stellar.org/stories/adventures-in-galactic-consensus-chapter-1/
31. October 2, 2015
Blockchain Financial Networks
Stellar: Context of Byzantine Agreement
30
https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949
Traditional Byzantine agreement protocol (BAP)
Membership is set by a central authority or closed
negotiation (Sybil attack-resistant)
Update BAP for decentralized group admission
Ripple: publish a ‘starter’ membership list that participants
can edit for themselves
Divergent lists invalidate network safety; users fail to update
Tendermint: base membership on proof of stake
Ties trust to resource ownership; revoked escrow attacks
Stellar: open membership, participants affirm trust
Quorum is still vulnerable to Sybil attack, malicious parties can join
many times and outnumber honest nodes. So majority-based quorums
do not work, but a federated network of quorum slices can
Each node selects and tests quorum slices based on safety and
liveness; voting to accept statements (of network state)