This brief video outlines and overview of the IOST network and ecosystem.
IOST uses a “Proof-of-Believability” algorithm to enable high-speed transaction throughput while ensuring nodes stay compliant. Some of the factors monitored include IOST token balance, reputation-based token balance, network contributions and user behaviors.t
They boast of faster and higher-grade Byzantine Fault Tolerance mechanism, microstate blocks, Atomic Commit protocol and a dynamic sharding protocol (Efficient Distributed Sharding), which are intended to ensure transactions are safeguarded, consistent and fast while reducing storage, configuration costs and processing power for validators.
IOST states they are committed to a permissionless and transparent network that is open source and accessible for all.
Their website says “anyone is able to participate in every layer of our system, from using services on our blockchain to running a node and validating transactions. Our rules and code are open for all to see and no preconditions will limit participation.”
Amy Webb, founder and quantitative futurist at The Future Today Institute, talks with Tonya Hall at ZDNet about blockchain, benevolent malware, AI, and mixed reality.
In spite of the vicissitudes and hype of cryptocurrencies, the potential for blockchain to benefit so many industries is irresistible.
Within the field of artificial intelligence, there is much to pay attention to. Facial computing is a branch of AI which shows great promise.
In terms of generally looking at future technology, Webb advises looking broader than your own industry.
The Future Today Institute researches emerging technologies at the fringes and tracks them as they move towards the mainstream. Their pioneering, data-driven forecasting methodology and tools enable organization leaders to make better decisions about the future.
The MATRIX AI Network is a global, open-source, public, intelligent blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
MATRIX was created to make blockchains faster, more flexible, more secure, and more intelligent.
Registered in Hong Kong, the Foundation has separate departments to manage various aspects of the development and operations.
MATRIX AI Network is designing Intelligent Contracts that leverage natural language programming and adaptive deep learning-based templates to auto-code.
MATRIX’s Secure Virtual Machine can detect attacks on transactions by providing AI-backed vulnerability detection with fault-tolerant protocols. In other words, the MATRIX team has introduced formal verification technology during transactions to detect security vulnerabilities.
Adledger states they are “a nonprofit research and development consortium charged with implementing global technical standards and solutions for the digital media and blockchain industries.”
“The goal of AdLedger is to further trust and transparency within the digital media space.”
Blockchain is key to that ambition.
In the above video, Christiana Cacciapuoti of AdLedger; Chad Andrews & Babs Rangaiah of IBM; Ryan Nathanson of Salon Media Group Inc.; and Adam Helfgott of MAD Network, discuss issues plaguing ad tech and how AdLedger can address these issues.
The goal is for brands to get more media for their working dollar, publishers will get a fair price for their inventory and consumers will get messages that are better targeted and more relevant.
Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals. Computer science defines AI research as the study of “intelligent agents”: any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals.
“Artificial intelligence” is often applied when a machine mimics “cognitive” functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as “learning” and “problem solving.”
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and in the years since has experienced several waves of optimism, followed by disappointment and the loss of funding (known as an “AI winter”), followed by new approaches, success and renewed funding.
For most of its history, AI research has been divided into subfields that often fail to communicate with each other.
These sub-fields are based on technical considerations, such as particular goals (e.g. “robotics” or “machine learning”), the use of particular tools (“logic” or artificial neural networks), or deep philosophical differences.
Subfields have also been based on social factors (particular institutions or the work of particular researchers).
Kevin Werbach, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, joined Mozilla’s Director of Public Policy, Chris Riley, in a discussion of decentralization and trust online, to explore Kevin’s recent work on the blockchain as a trust architecture.
Werbach notes that blockchain is represented as an ultimate form of decentralized trust. In other words, you can trust the system without trusting specific actors. That concept is underscored by the fact that no one has the power to change a distributed ledger once transactions are recorded. And interested parties can see the same information, which provides a standard of transparency.
Werbach notes that too much trust in the system is unwarrented. He notes that for a given blockchain to succeed, all parties need to trust the system, so some amount trust is inherently required. Yet, he notes examples of the system failing, in terms of fraud and illegal activity, which have exposed flaws in the system. Hence, Werbach advocates for proper governance and regulation.
The discussion touches upon the realities of scalability re blockchain, citing that current technologies are adequate for many real-world scenarios, but not in others.
Werback is also the author of, The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust.
Blockchain technology promised a compelling vision: decentralized networks allowing open innovation and peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries or fees.
Entities are working to fulfill much of that promise.
As blockchain adoption has increased over the last decade, early adopters have struggled with sluggish transaction times and rising fees.
As financial rewards for validating certain blockchain transactions became increasingly competitive, their networks strayed from a pure decentralized network to becoming dominated by powerful players.
IOTA, based on its distributed ledger technology it calls “The Tangle,” considers itself to be the missing link for the Internet of Everything and Web 3.0.
“Powering a secure, scalable and feeless transaction settlement layer, IOTA will empower machines and humans to participate in flourishing new permissionless economies – the most important one being the Machine Economy which we are building.”
Meet ‘The Tangle’
IOTA’s does not consist of transactions grouped into blocks and stored in sequential chains, but as a stream of individual transactions entangled together.
In order to participate in the IOTA Tangle network, a participant performs a small amount of computational work that verifies two previous transactions. Rather than creating a hierarchy of roles and responsibilities in the network, every actor has the same incentives and rewards.
In order to make a transaction in the Tangle, two previous transactions must be validated with the reward for doing so being the validation of your own transaction by some subsequent transaction. With this ‘pay-it-forward‘ system of validations, there is no need to offer financial rewards. Transacting with IOTA is and will always be completely fee-free.
Moreover, without the
need for monetary rewards, IOTA is not limited to transactional value
settlements. It is possible to securely store information within Tangle
transactions, or even spread larger amounts of information across
multiple bundled or linked transactions.
This structure also
enables high scalability of transactions. The more activity in ‘the
Tangle’, the faster transactions can be confirmed.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, delivers his AWS re:Invent 2018 keynote, featuring the latest AWS news and announcements.
In this segment, he announces Amazon Managed Blockchain as a fully managed service that makes it easy to create and manage scalable blockchain networks using the popular open source frameworks Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.
The idea is to make it much easier to use the two most popular blockchains.
For private network capabilities, with a specific number of members, Hyperledger Fabric is available now.
Ethereum will be available in a couple of months and is often selected for a public decentralized ledger with an unknown amount of members.
ETHEREUM
Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract functionality.
Ether is a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform. Ether can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant mining nodes for computations performed.
“Gas”, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.
Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale that took place between July and August 2014.
The system went live on 30 July 2015, with 72 million coins “premined”. This accounts for about 70 percent of the total circulating supply in 2018.
In 2016, as a result of the exploitation of a flaw in The DAO project’s smart contract software, and subsequent theft of $50 million worth of Ether, Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains – the new separate version became Ethereum (ETH) with the theft reversed, and the original continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC).
HYPERLEDGER FABRIC
Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain infrastructure, originally contributed by IBM and Digital Asset, providing a modular architecture with a delineation of roles between the nodes in the infrastructure, execution of Smart Contracts (called “chaincode” in Fabric) and configurable consensus and membership services.
A Fabric Network comprises “Peer nodes”, which execute chaincode, access ledger data, endorse transactions and interface with applications as well as “Orderer nodes” which ensure the consistency of the blockchain and deliver the endorsed transactions to the peers of the network.
Fabric supports chaincode in Go and JavaScript (via Hyperledger Composer, or natively since v1.1) out-of-the-box, and other languages such as Java by installing appropriate modules. It is therefore potentially more flexible than competitors that only support a closed Smart Contract language.
Kathleen Breitman and Christine Moy speak with Jen Wieczner (Fortune Magazine) about how blockchain is changing business. Moy is the Blockchain Program Lead at J.P. Morgan Chase and Breitman is the Co-Founder of Tezos.
Their discussion includes blockchain application in terms of finance and banking and also touches upon women in technology.
According to their website, Tezos offers a formal process through which stakeholders can efficiently govern the protocol and implement future innovations. Further, the platform was designed to facilitate formal verification, which helps secure smart contracts and avoid buggy code. Tezos uses their own version or a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm, with the intention of giving every stakeholder the opportunity to participate in the validation of transactions on the network and be rewarded by the protocol for doing so.
Tezos is a smart contract platform similar to Ethereum. As opposed to more well known cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Tezos sees the future of cryptocurrency as an upgradable path to success.
Tezos has evolved via some controversy and like most cryptocurrencies and specific blockchains, long-term success is unproven.
In this brief video, Vitalik Buterin describes the difference between proof of work and proof of stake and why he considers proof of stake to be a more efficient consensus mechanism.
Proof of stake is a type of algorithm by which a blockchain network aims to achieve distributed consensus. In proof of stake, the creator of the next block is chosen via various combinations of random selection and wealth or age (i.e., the stake).
Proof-of-work uses mining; which requires solving computationally intensive puzzles to validate transactions and create new blocks. This uses a tremendous amount of energy.
Proof of stake requires much less energy consumption.
Consensus is fundamental to a blockchain. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires consensus of the network majority.
Consensus algorithms are in continual development to increase performance and efficiency.
Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer primarily known as a co-founder of Ethereum and as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine.
