Blockchain summit report: Day 2
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/54adfo/blockchain_summit_report_day_2_final_report_for/
- Devcon day 0
- Devcon day 1
- Devcon day 2
- Devcon day 3
- Blockchain summit - demo day
- Blockchain summit - Day 1
Final day. I'm tired from 6 days of sessions, and many of the sessions today were more high level "we are a bank / enterprise that are looking into what the cloud can do for us". So I skipped taking notes for a lot of them.
Sessions
Factom. Blockchain Technology tools for net gen asset systems
Most of old asset records are paper based, difficult to update.
Databases are too easy to modify. Blockchain is a happy medium.
They have a way to do document tracking on Blockchain.
Zcash
Issue is privacy on the Blockchain. It is a giant shared database, everyone can see what you are transacting. Like trading securities.
Possible solutions: Private chain, restricted read access.
Could try to do it off chain and put hash on chain, but then the blockchain is just a timestamping service.
Encryption can hide the values, but not the people.
Ring encryption can hide the people.
Zero-knowledge security layer. Enables private transactions. Supports "Selective disclosure".
What the 2 parties see: Alice sells 1,0000 MSFT to Bob at USD 97.123
What the trade repository aggregator sees (selective disclosure): <blank> sells 1,0000 MSFT to <blank> at USD 97.123
What everyone else sees: <blank> sells <blank> to <blank> at <blank>
Internet has a security encryption layer (SSL). Cryptography (SSL) was required to let the Internet grow.
Blockchain needs a security layer (ZK security layer)
Plans on releasing their zCash Blockchain on Oct 28
Bloq
http://bloq.com/
Bringing Enterprise to Blockchain
Trying to be like Redhat for Blockchain. Enterprise support 24/7, security fixes, monthly subscription.
"Blockchain operating system". On-premises software stack.
Open Bazaar
https://openbazaar.org/
Open distributed trade market. With no fees.
Ebay & Taobao are C2C (Consumer to Consumer) trade platforms.
Has an escrow style payment system. Buyer puts money into escrow, merchant sends, buyer releases from escrow.
Ebay is completely centralised. Every communication goes through Ebay and you pay them for the privilege.
Open Bazaar is distributed, you talk direct to each other.
Challenges of Building Decentralised markets: P2P software more complex than standard websites. Designing incentives to encourage users to act responsibly. Ensuring software is secure & reliable. Translate difficult tech into mainstream user experience.
Benefits of buying & selling on OpenBazaar: sell ANYTHING you want, anywhere (some things just aren't available for purchase in that country). No buyer or seller fees. No data collection by 3rd parties. No restrictions on how you operate your business. Market of moderators that compete to provide quality dispute resolution.
Can purchase weird things like hot sauce, and North Korean cigarettes.
Version 2.0, you can purchase digitital goods (music, videos) and get it delivered instantly. Great for sellers as they will get to keep all the revenue, and not lose the 30% cut that iTunes takes.
Chronicaled
A turnkey solution to securely connect physical goods to a Blockchain.
Blockchain benefits for IoT are incresingly recognized by developers and enterprise, and hundres of potential physical world use cases have been identitifed.
The lack of a turnkey solutoin to securely connect and engage with assets with assets on chain is a huge barrier to development.
Turnkey solution: Ethereum smart contracts. BLE & NFS microchip inventory. Custom, secure chip firmware. Registration & authentication SDK. Open registry explorer. Tamperproof form factors so people can't functionally remove the chip.
Device sends a challenge to the chip. Private key securely stored in the chip signs the challenge.
Signed challenge is compared to public key stored on Blockchain.
Has an open registry explorer (blockchain explorer)
Use cases: Authenticity & provenance. Handbags, fine art, wine, collectible sneakers, event ticketing.
Atomic financial transactions. New sharing economies. Micro & peer to peer insurance. Collateral & security. Physical world affiliate networks.
Machine to Machine interaction. Drone with a chip flies to a garage, it is recognised as being whitelisted, the garage door opens.
Everledger
Provenance means "the history of something". It's life story. Is very important for luxury items like artwork.
You may have the expensive thing, but may have misplaced the certificate of authenticity.
Digital global ledger to track items of value.
Currently tacking diamonds (write its unique dimensions, physical properties, faults, etc. gives it a unique ID).
Later if they are stolen and tried to be sold elsewhere, then can grab them.
Currently 98,000 diamonds tracked on their Blockchain.
Can track provenance to track origins of rough diamonds, through to polished stone. To ensure that they don't come from conflict areas.
Can have IoT enabled diamond analysis devices, that can auto get the properties and look up its authenticity in the Blockchain.
Augur
http://Augur.net
Prediction platform built on Ethereum.
Would be cool to ask Siri/Cortana a generic question like "who will win the US presidential candidate will win the US presidency?".
Predication market works by creating a market on a question. You purchase a share in the prediction, then if you predicted correctly, you get your share of the pool.
"wisdom of the crowd". The average answer that comes out of a crowd is usually consistently better than an expert.
Stellar
International remittances of money transfers are expensive, with long delays. Legacy payment systems are expensive, complicated and slow.
Used to be unreliable to send email to each other, needed to manually specify routes. But SMTP made it a simple open protocol that anyone could use. Why hasn't this been adopted for payments?
Bitcoin allowed sending money as a single network.
They want Stellar to be the protocol to send money from any 2 points, through any payment network. Like Alice pays Bob, but it goes through Bitcoin network, through Dash, then pays Bob in Doge.