Welcome to a new edition of the TruBlo newsletter. We are funding 45 early-stage blockchain ideas to explore new options for “trusted content on future blockchains”. A list of all TuBlo projects is here: https://www.trublo.eu/projects/Our main question for the selection of news and links below: How is the field .of blockchain, content and trust evolving?
US authorities on the hunt for Conti ransomware gang
U.S. authorities have named five members of a ransomware gang called Conti. There are rewards of up to 10 million US-Dollar for information leading to an arrest.
“The State Department said Conti has carried out over 1,000 ransomware operations targeting U.S. and international critical infrastructure, including law enforcement agencies, emergency medical services and 911 dispatch centers”.
Trust, transparency and reliability are keys to Web3 success
“A Web3 world that removes traditional “middlemen” in favor of decentralization has the potential for creators and regular end users to gain more control over their data — but only if issues around digital trust, transparency and reliability are successfully addressed.”
Data ownership redefines the relationship between artists and fans
“Over the course of the past two decades, Grammy Award-winning DJ, André Allen Anjos (also known as RAC) has noticed a growing trend. ‘There’s been a trend since 2005 in the MySpace era, and all of that has been a trend towards sovereignty of an artist, of putting the artists on top,’ he says.
RAC is an advisor to Audius — a decentralized music streaming platform that raised $5 million last September from big names including Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital, along with popular artists such as Jason Derulo and Katy Perry.
“Gen Z internet use is on the rise, but the rate at which teens use Facebook is rapidly declining. A Pew Research Center study on teens, technology and social media found that only 32% of teens aged 13-17 use Facebook at all, but in a previous survey from 2014-2015, that figure was 71%, beating out platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.” (Source: TechCrunch)
The merge is now expected for September 15 or 16, 2022.
Background: “The Merge is set to transition the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum to its next phase (formerly known as Ethereum 2.0) as the network’s entire blockchain moves to a new system which proponents say will make it more efficient, sustainable and scalable.” (Source: TRT World).
Tornado Cash website goes dark after sanctions by U.S. Treasury
Background: “Tornado Cash is an open-source project that enables people to shield their transaction histories from public view. The U.S. government alleges it is also a service that was used to launder more than $7 billion worth of ill-gotten gains since 2019, including by North Korean hackers.”
On Friday, August 12. the Tornado Cash website was no longer reachable. Similarly, the Discord channel. Before Tornado Cash had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury on Monday this week. According to crypto news websites, all “American persons are barred from interacting with the open-source protocol”. (Via Coinbase)
Another view from David Gerard:
“Transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are completely traceable. Any transaction anyone ever made on Ethereum can be traced, all the way back to the launch of the project in 2015. Transactions are pseudonymous — but many users have been identified after the fact. Tornado Cash is a mixer — an Ethereum smart contract program that you can use to break the traceability of transactions on Ethereum. This is for privacy. Tornado Cash accepts deposits of ether (the currency on Ethereum) from one address and enables you to withdraw the ether from a different address. The smart contract works as a pool that mixes all deposits, using zero-knowledge proofs.” (Via David Gerard).
Study: Number of people working in the blockchain industry up by 76%
“The number of people working in the blockchain industry went up by 76% year-on-year as of June 2022, a study undertaken by the professional networking platform Linkedin and the crypto trading app OKX has found. The study also found there is “a large gap in demand for technical talent in the global blockchain talent pool.'”
Updates from the intersection of trust, content and blockchain. What are notable developments?
This newsletter is published by the TruBlo project. We are funding 45 early-stage blockchain ideas to explore new options for “trusted content on future blockchains”. A list of all TuBlo projects is here: https://www.trublo.eu/projects/.
“In a typical scenario, according to the report, a scammer will pose as a professional with a fake profile and reach out to a LinkedIn user, starting with small talk before elevating to an offer to make money through crypto investments. Eventually, the scammer leverages the trust earned over months to direct the user to invest money to a site controlled by the perpetrator, and then drains the account.”
German telcos test new advertising technology, resulting in concerns by privacy advocates
In Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, the two largest mobile providers are currently testing a new advertising technology called TrustPid.
“TrustPid allows mobile carriers to generate pseudo-anonymous tokens based on a user’s IP address that are administered by a company also named TrustPid. Each user is assigned a different token for each participating website they visit, and these can be used to provide personalised product recommendations—but in what TrustPid calls “a secure and privacy-friendly way.” That “privacy-friendly” part has raised critics’ hackles.”
In essence, the question is whether or not the new technology would allow for personal tracking. A spokesperson from Vodafone answering to Wired denied that this would be possible.
New York Times with solid growth of website traffic
The New York Times is currently one of the fastest-growing news websites. The website got 524 million visits in May 2022, an increase of 52% compared to last year. A big driver for the traffic growth has been the acquisition of Wordle, a popular online game. The NYT purchased the game in February 2022. Another website with solid traffic growth is the Daily Mail (UK), with an increase of 14% to 373 million. For comparison: The website of CNN has even higher total traffic (641 million) but not as much growth (4%).
Netflix will introduce a new tier supported by advertising. After years of solid growth, the company had recently lost around 200.000 subscribers. The idea is to reach an audience which would not pay the monthly subscription.
“We’ve left a big customer segment off the table, which is people who say: ‘Hey, Netflix is too expensive for me, and I don’t mind advertising”, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in an interview. “… we’re not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today. We’re adding an ad tier for folks who say, ‘Hey, I want a lower price, and I’ll watch ads.”
Based on reports, Google will organise the sales for such Netflix advertising.
China wants to censor all social comments in advance
A new proposal by a regulator in China aims to approve all social media comments in advance. It is not clear how this would be done technically. The assumption is that it would be an automated service.
“On June 17, the internet regulator Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published a draft update on the responsibilities of platforms and content creators in managing online comments. One line stands out: all online comments must be pre-reviewed before being published. Users and observers are worried that the move could further tighten freedom of expression in China.”
Related: The New York Times has a visual report showing how surveillance technology in China works and how it has expanded in recent years:
“China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.”
Twitter will add a new feature called ‘Notes’, which then can be attached directly to a tweet. The idea is that content creation and tweet promotion can be done on one platform. Market observers view it as an experiment; it is unclear whether this will catch on. Twitter is testing the feature with several writers. So far, the quality is not available in all world regions, e.g., Europe.
The falling values of cryptocurrencies create all kinds of challenges. Example: Last week, users of Solend, a Solana-based protocol, voted to take over an account to prevent a margin call. The original user had borrowed $108 million but was getting under pressure to liquidate if the Solana token would fall below $22,30. Managers of Solend used “emergency powers” to take over the wallet. However, this decision was met with an outcry by users as a violation of the principle of decentralised decisions through code, not by single humans. While this is only one episode, the current situation in the crypto market creates all kinds of issues and pressure to invent policies for crises.
The end of the crypto speculation bubble affects all kinds of Blockchain companies. Some of them are in crisis mode. Many watched the liquidity crisis in the past week at Celsius and BlockFi. Another firm in trouble is ThreeArrows Capital, which is based in Singapore. Sky News reported that a British Virgin Islands court had ordered the fund’s liquidation.
“The firm’s demise is likely to raise further questions, however, about the regulatory oversight to which cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are subject in the world’s major financial centres.”
The collapse of such prominent players sends shockwaves yet to other companies:
“Cryptocurrency market maker and lending firm Genesis Trading is facing potential losses into the “hundreds of millions,” according to three people familiar with the matter.”
The Harmony blockchain, used as a bridge to exchange tokens of different blockchains, has been hacked.
“Hackers looted about $100 million from a so-called cryptocurrency bridge, again exposing a key vulnerability in the digital-asset ecosystem.”
“…bridges are particularly vulnerable to hacks, as their technology is complex and they are often run by anonymous teams. The way they safeguard funds is often unclear. Sophisticated hackers have repeatedly targeted them. ”
As your customer base grows and you start to make a profit, it’s only natural to start thinking about your next steps and ask yourself: is it time to scale?
But where to start and what are the next steps to take? Scaling can be full of challenges and premature scaling is considered to be one of the main reasons why young companies fail.
At this webinar we will talk about:
What are the key questions to ask before scaling?
What is premature scaling?
What are the components of a good “ready to scale checklist”?
Speakers
Andrej Petrus is investment Manager @ ZAKA – venture capital family office investing primarily in the pre-seed and seed stage (50-500k EUR) in CEE region. Agile generalist with experiences in venture building for CEAi and M&A and Strategy consultancy for PwC in Prague. Assisting the Board of Directors of SLOVCA (Slovak Venture Capital and Private Equity Association) as Project Manager. LinkedIn
Donnie Sc Lygonis works as an Innovation Strategist and Business Coach at KTH Innovation, the innovation office at The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He has been working with entrepreneurship and innovation for over 25 years, both running his own companies or helping others start theirs. He is an appreciated speaker on innovation and creativity, having spoken at 5 TEDx events and been part of 3 separate TV-series on innovation. LinkedIn
KTH Readiness System
You will be introduced to the KTH Readiness System, a unique and effective approach for self-assessment of how far your project has evolved. There are many, many approaches how to getting an idea off the ground and transforming it into a real world. One approach which should be known more widely is the KTH Readiness Level. It is a simple, yet very effective and helpful approach to letting an idea evolve, step by step. The approach comes from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH).
Brief overview
Originally developed as a step-by-step development approach for technology at NASA, the KTH Readiness System has extended to seven dimensions that are relevant for every new idea. The key questions are: How ready is your idea to be used by customers, how far evolved are the development steps for the technology, the business model, the IPR, the team and the funding.
Each of these dimensions will be checked against a grade scale, which starts at one and has the highest level at nine. The scales are visualised as thermometers. The visualization is used as a simple tool to enable an assessment of the founders, potential funders and other stakeholders. The system is very simple to use and helps to align the many possible activities of a start-up into a logical build-up process.
For illustration, here are the levels to work on for the business model. The process starts at the bottom, at level 1. In this process, an early, unclear business idea is gradually filled with assumptions, gradually described and then checked for viability through tests with potential clients. Based on the findings there is an added business model, early pricing and projections for revenue.
In total there are six Innovation Readiness Levels:
Customer Readiness Level (CRL): To confirm customer needs and interest
Technology Readiness Level (TRL): To develop and test the technology, product, service, or concept
Business Model Readiness Level (BRL): To establish that the concept can be financially, environmentally, and socially viable and feasible
IPR Readiness Level (IPRL): To clarify the legal and IP situation and secure relevant IP protection
Team Readiness Level ( TMRL): To secure the right competencies and align the team
Funding Readiness Level(FRL): To secure the necessary funding to take the idea to the market
Value and benefits
The KTH Innovation Readiness Level is a tool with many applications that adds value for several users and stakeholders (idea owners, coaches, managers, and external partners). For example:
Snapshot of status and maturity – use the tool to quickly and without bias assess the maturity and current development status of an idea
Reality check – the tool enables idea owners to more objectively define their progress across several important dimensions
Coaching and communication – offering clear and defined terminology and a visual model allow coaches, advisors, and idea owners to communicate effectively around the idea development. It also provides a structure for individual meetings as well as the entire process
Guidance – the model provides key steps and questions that need to be addressed and gives a clear roadmap for both coaches and idea owners throughout the process
Portfolio management – the possibility to quantify and visualise the development progress of the ideas in your entire portfolio can generate useful metrics that help your organisation to objectively and fairly allocate resources and in other ways control and guide your innovation support process
The model is built to align with and include the current best practices and well-known methodologies in innovation development such as the lean startup methodology, the business model/lean canvas, etc.
FileChain aims to extend existing, often complex document workflows with simple yet secure sharing options, similar to a decentralised blockchain platform. The underlying software is based on Java, making it more straightforward for many companies to adopt and customise their existing systems.
Currently, FileChain is a start-up company with offices in Sweden and the UK. Here is an interview with the founder and CEO.
INTERVIEW
Mirko Lorenz: You are the founder and CEO of FileChain. Can you briefly say what brought you there?
Sylvain Vittecoq: The original idea of why we created FileChain came from a day in 2016 when I realised that I had to provide input for my preference for a window or aisle seat on every airline website every time I would book a flight ticket. I thought there must be a way for me just to grant some airlines access to this one piece of information about my preference. This is how FileChain started. We are using distributed ledger technology to solve this kind of problem. My example was B2C. Decentralisation and delivery of such individual services are probably some years away. But for B2B markets, we are here with FileChain. Our software is a new way to provide blockchain distributed ledger services for B2B transactions.
About
Sylvain Vittecoq is an entrepreneur and IoT expert. Originally from France, he has been in technology and management roles since 1996. Vittecoq lives in Sweden. LinkedIn
Photo: Sylvain Vittecoq, via FileChain https://www.filechain.com
Question: From your point of view, decentralised exchange of information blockchain functionality could help to free many workflows from having to file the same data again and again and again because we can access such pieces with the permission of the owner?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Everything is highly centralised. In any company, you will have ERP systems based on databases found in every single company and public administration. It is then the job of all integrators to enable these systems to talk to other systems with security layers to cross. Whenever there is an audit, there is a need to decide who can be trusted. My thinking is: By now, we can use a technology called the blockchain, which you can place in the middle. It is owned by no one but can be used by all parties involved to achieve a common goal. This approach puts the current logic upside down, and we can get there with a piece of technology placed between many parties with common interests. This opportunity is why I believe that this technology is not just a short-lived trend but that blockchain, in general, will succeed.
At what development stages is FileChain as a company? Is it a start-up? How is it funded through revenue or venture capital? How many people are working for you?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We are a start-up. We are less than ten people, which is still a small team. We got bootstrapped. We used our funding for development so far in stealth mode. We got a small investment in December 2020 from a UK seed investor. We are just running and financing our activities based on customers and incoming projects. We are still a relatively small company, with a substantial technical stack, which is now ready for production. We are just starting commercialisation.
What is your pitch to potential companies? Why should a company use FileChain?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We have a different vision for ledger technology. We don’t believe in public blockchains. Instead, we believe in federation or private blockchains which would be run and managed by a more comprehensive number of parties, and it might be a group of companies focused on supply chains for instance.
“We don’t believe in one ledger in charge of everything”.
Secondly, we don’t believe in one ledger in charge of everything, which does not make sense. Therefore, our ledger setup is different; we focus on the enterprise space. Thirdly, we want our blockchain ledger to be highly more economical than what is available today and way more performant. What needs to be understood is what it costs you to use specific software every day when everything goes well – and would I need to pay when something things go terrible. This is a fundamental question for every decision-maker.
Looking at specific blockchain tokens with gas fees, we think that many current blockchain use cases are based on speculation. It is almost impossible to predict what it will cost you down the road. You know, what will be your cost down the road. FileChain is none of that. We automate, but not through smart contracts because they are expensive and very slow to run. We do our automation, but differently. If anything goes wrong when using new blockchain platforms, no one can provide actual liability. FileChain is different here: We want to make sure everyone knows from the start who would be blamed for what and who would have to pay what. Our focus is not on smart contract utility tokens but on a decentralised ledger that can reliably transport documents between parties, the right legal professionals. And I mean regular contracts, not smart contracts, actual, regular paper-based contracts. For example, we believe that it is possible to achieve a significant change in how to handle paper and permissions in the global shipping trade. There is an immense potential to save money and drastically reduce current operational costs. Implementing news ledger technology could generate new revenue streams because the new features can disrupt the current market and create a new market.
“We don’t forget the old world. We aim to integrate ERP solutions with blockchain.”
So, in other words: FileChain is a modern approach to cloud storage that uses some aspects of a blockchain. So FileChain creates a bridge between the old world and the business world of the future. Is that correct?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Yes. We don’t forget the old world. We aim to integrate ERP solutions with blockchain. We simply don’t forget large companies that have invested 100.000s lines of code. Our technology is a true full-stack ledger from layer 1. So, we have no dependency on any other ledger. This is not a fork of the code from Ethereum, Bitcoin, or any other token platform. Instead, this is 100% FileChain code for the nodes. These nodes have the task to verify the signatures of all the transactions. Those nodes would be one piece of software. We also have an agent, which is the other piece of the software we provide, for people to send or receive millions of transactions. Our goal is to make this much cheaper and more performant than today.
Could you describe a typical company from a specific industry that is a FileChain client?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We are getting traction because we not only provide file and data exchange. On top of that, we can implement transactions to transfer value from A to B. We offer a complete toolkit to underpin the needed paperwork for many types of transactions. Shipping is a good example. You may want to have many companies being able to onboard and identify themselves. This is what they can do with our ledgers. Once they have a public-private key pair, they can authenticate themselves and provide all the required documentation to identify everyone on that ledger fully. Even the shipping containers could authenticate themselves with a serial number and some keys. This is the perspective for the future: A shipping container could send a document or form in JSON XML. Someone from a shipping company could send a Word or a PDF document to another entity present on the ledger. That is the focus of FileChain: To streamline paperwork for all types of transactions – before we get into a transfer of value, which – we believe – is at most five per cent of all the transactions needed for many types of business.
Logistics and shipping are the focus of FileChain for now?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Many of our current use cases are in shipping because there is a lot of paperwork. We are supporting supply chains because you must trace everything. But such a system helps track any valuable goods or many companies. Another use case is when you need to follow valuable cars, watches, or other luxury goods such as art. All such workflows will require packaging the correct information and sharing it with specific people or companies. And never share anything with anyone else. That is another crucial element of FileChain technology, as we offer privacy by design.
“I can decide to share it, in that second, that hour, within days or even months, to share the same content with one or 5000 other recipients instantly”
What you offer is a modern way to exchange information, but with a specific and innovative approach how to share sensible parts such as a person’s name, address, bank account, and so on?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Let’s say I want to share a document with you using FileChain. I can do this using drag-and-drop from my desktop. Encryption is added automatically. When the file leaves my computer, it is now embedded as a FileChain transaction as in-chain storage. Once the transaction gets into the ledger, I’m still the only one who can decrypt that content. I can decide to share it, in that second, that hour, within days or even months, to share the same content with one or 5000 other recipients instantly. I am not going to clone that document again on the ledger. Instead, I will give everyone access to that same content sitting on the ledger. I have complete control over who can access this information. I can even reverse access.
What is the technology you use for FileChain? Is it a specific blockchain protocol?
Sylvain Vittecoq: FileChain is a full-stack offering, and our reference implementation is in Java, which means we have no dependency on anything else. So, no exotic language. And, going back to my initial point, we don’t forget the work that has been done before because older systems are already running and existing today. This is the reason why our reference implementation is in Java. We have a full-stack offering from Layer 1 up to the SDK, including rest APIs for anyone to implement the business logic into other applications. This one ledger can run multiple applications with multiple use cases.
Is it that many clients want to use the benefits of the blockchain approach but have to be able to understand the language in use?
Sylvain Vittecoq: That’s precisely why we do not use a language like Solidity, which is used for many smart contracts but is to some extent prone to errors. From a liability standpoint, this is a no-go. Because in many business settings, you cannot guarantee that the smart contract will execute as intended. So that’s why we don’t have smart contracts for FileChain. Our focus is different: We want to have an application that many engineers can work with efficiently, which they can connect with existing ERP systems quickly. Through such projects, blockchain can achieve mainstream adoption, in our view. To get there, we need a low barrier of entry for software engineers. This is the same for the hosting and the management of those infrastructures. With FileChain, we have a straightforward set-up for the network and to join additional nodes. We don’t want people to spend a lot of time building many tools. That is pointless. What you want is just to get done with your actual business so that you can save money or make money. It is precisely what we try to achieve every day.
Examples of implementations using FileChain. Source: FileChain
Would you be open to collaborative projects? For example, could creators of other innovative distributed concepts work together with you? Or would that be complex?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Partnerships are, at the same time, simple and complicated. Simple in the sense that our core technology is Java. We should exclude the full integration of an ERP system because such work is often complicated. A marketplace, for example, can be created in some days or maybe a few weeks by just one Java engineer. So that is the yes path to the answer. Indeed, if we want to participate in an App in creating a particular ecosystem, we can very, very quickly do that. Our technology allows for very short development cycles, as we are already starting from something substantial. The no part is that we cannot do it for free. We would have to look carefully at the possible benefit down the road. We are already partnering with many large system integrators. We like to work in sandboxes to make something with others, and we welcome partners.
What are your plans for the future of FileChain?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We are 100% “Made in Europe”. And we want to remain with this DNA. I am increasingly meeting people from France, Germany, and other parts of Europe who share a common understanding that we need to create momentum in that direction to not end up with solutions and companies from the US running every blockchain-oriented project in Europe. That is one part of the reason we want to be an example.
We are 100% “Made in Europe”.
We aim to maintain an excellent knowledge of all the European regulations. So that all our customers, wherever they are on the planet, FileChain ledgers will match all the regulations as applicable in Europe. This is basically what we try to drive forward, who we work with, and how we work. We have always been told our technology is very different, and our point of view is very different. Based on this approach, we are getting a lot of traction.
Below is a video demo of the FogBlock4Trust project, which aims at realising a Fog-assisted Blockchain-based credential management solution to strengthen the trust and privacy of users.
Innovation: The most important novelty of FogBlock4Trust is the provision of two distinct major services within one framework, namely global institution accreditation, and distributed credential verification. Other recent proposals for credential management are inefficient, unreliable in terms of storage management and privacy AND/OR provide only one of the two services.
Use case: The FogBlock4Trust solution is planned as a global institution/provider accreditation and credential verification system. It will support the use of one-way encryption, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, Zero-Knowledge-Proofs, and an improved Proof-of-Signature consensus algorithm. Exploiting these methods and technologies for providing end-users with full privacy-preserving distributed accreditation and verification services is the goal of FogBlock4Trust.
Scenario: The assumed scenario for the demo is that there are issuers of online credentials, in a zero-knowledge setting. A real-world example would be a group of universities providing trustable digital copies of certifications from students to each other. Such a setting (a group of issuers, a multitude of certificates/documents, and a large number of single users who can access the system for certain tasks) can be found in a range of domains.
Demo: The 20-minute demo shows how cloud and fog computing can be enhanced with blockchain features.
.jpg "Andrej Petrus (1).jpg")
Andrej Petrus is investment Manager @ ZAKA – venture capital family office investing primarily in the pre-seed and seed stage (50-500k EUR) in CEE region. Agile generalist with experiences in venture building for CEAi and M&A and Strategy consultancy for PwC in Prague. Assisting the Board of Directors of SLOVCA (Slovak Venture Capital and Private Equity Association) as Project Manager.
Donnie Sc Lygonis works as an Innovation Strategist and Business Coach at KTH Innovation, the innovation office at The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He has been working with entrepreneurship and innovation for over 25 years, both running his own companies or helping others start theirs. He is an appreciated speaker on innovation and creativity, having spoken at 5 TEDx events and been part of 3 separate TV-series on innovation.
Visual: Benefits Source: FileChain (Screenshot Website)
