Posts of: Lesli Callas

Maurice Herlihy (An Wang Professor of Computer Science at Brown University), Eric Koskinen (Assistant Professor in Stevens Institute of Technology, and one of Maurice’s collaborators), and Vikram Saraph (Ph.D. from Brown with Maurice as his advisor); are the three computer scientists whose research may fuel a significant speeding up of the blockchain technology in the coming times. Their work is buzzing beyond Bitcoin and other crypto coins.

Looking at the blockchain crashes, some may think that a saturation of the technology is nearing, but the three scientists revealed that this kind of perception is far from the truth. Maurice Herlihy put it in a very interesting manner when he said:

With blockchains, we have a Volkswagen engine because that is the way things evolved out of necessity. Our research is trying to replace it with a Maserati. [… ]Most people are not going to become cryptocurrency speculators, but blockchains could someday be used for everything from monitoring the freshness of produce to trading stocks to tracking items that move through the planet’s biggest supply chains. They’re conceivably a good fit for any interaction in which parties have a discussion process and are interested in coming to a conclusion.

The need for speed:

The blockchain industry began with the concept of ledger backed Bitcoin that mathematically assigned details and value of the crypto. The smart contracts further built themselves on the same concept. But what didn’t change was the structure of working with one unit or one user at a time. With the growing use of blockchain technology the ‘one-at-a-time- the structure will eventually start to challenge and cause unnecessary lapses.

How the research became the answer:

The research from these three scientists is an answer to this eventual issue. On this, Eric said:

We felt like the ideas that went into transactional memory would be a good fit for adding concurrency to smart contracts. […] Our work detects when simultaneous transactions might try to access the same part of the hash table, and pauses smart contracts to ensure that they proceed carefully. In this way, you can make high-level statements like ‘X and Y are independent’ and then the system finds a way to let them happen at the same time.

The need to test the effectiveness of this idea needed simulation, which would offer a model the idea without having to go for massive changes. Vikram Saraph helped in connecting the dots and helped the project to further get closer to its success through his creation of simulation execution. According to him-

A blockchain’s transactional data is never thrown out. […] So to evaluate how concurrent execution techniques might work in the future, I applied them to smart contracts from earlier in Ethereum’s history.[…]  In simulations, you don’t have an obvious measure for time. As a proxy, you can think about what instructions cost, because certain instructions require a payment to Ethereum. It’s a hypothetical way of evaluating the speedup.

Firstly  8X, then down to 2X, and then surging to ~5X Speedup:

The research has brought about some striking results. The initial stages of the simulation when the conflicts were minimal, there was an eightfold speed increase! But when the ICOs as such as CryptoKittens, were considered, the speedup dipped down to 2X. Fortunately, by running other contracts concurrently and mitigating a small set of high contention activities, Vikram managed to soar the speedup back to 4-5 times!

The researchers are continuously improving the work and are confident of the results. The likely outcome should gift the blockchain industry great speedups, with minimal fuss, and absolute transparency, which can be applied to any smart contract. Maurice believes that this speedup should also bring about more control to people on their data.

Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) in Albuquerque was founded in 1964. According to the recent news, CNM is hosting a one-day blockchain conference event on October 13, 2019.

The senior technology advisor of CNM, Bill Halverson said that this blockchain event is organized to help individuals, organizations, and businesses in knowing the ways to consolidate blockchain technology. He also continued that blockchain is one of the emerging technologies adopted globally. It provides accurate data and a unique decentralized code for recording the transactions safely. Blockchain plays a vital role in many sectors like health, education, finance, and government.

Blockchain is specially created to keep the records, ledgers, and locked blocks of information in such a way that there will be no change or corruption in data. The blockchain network users can check the ledgers as well as changes in the transactions. It helps the users to track and verify the complete information regarding the assets.

Cryptography secured the linked blocks and developed a blockchain with a record of all the transactions which has duplicates in every network computer. If new block information added to the blockchain and the information does not verify with other blocks then, that block gets removed from the blockchain. That is how it manages and shares the asset information online. This fantastic technology allows the use of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency.

According to the news, CNM will be going to discuss the benefits of blockchain in the BlockFiesta conference. They will tell graduates the use of issuing digital diplomas. This method will help in sharing the diplomas to the employers and others with the help of mobile devices.

Halverson said that in this event, the educational providers would share the credentials to all the students across the world. It is the way to connect the sovereign and other identities with blockchain identity.

In this event, many local businesses will also participate in discussing their blockchain use. It will also help other attendees to know the way to apply for the blockchain and its services. The cost of the event for the students, seniors, and educational staff is $69 or $49.

The Blockchain Island along with its rich cultural history and heritage is making its presence in the throbbing world of cryptocurrency. After becoming an all-embracing home for iGaming industry (this industry is roughly worth around 1.4 Billion dollars, and it makes 12 percent of Malta’s GDP); Malta is now setting its foot in the cryptocurrency banking sector.

The Blockchain Island is looking forward to establishing a bank that will serve crypto-based companies, Blockchain based companies, and along with that individual with high net worth will be served too. On the other hand, OK group’s investment dept. and OK Blockchain Capital Limited revealed that it is a pivotal investor in RnF Finance Limited. (RnF is a company in Malta that seeks to act as a credit institution by applying with the Malta Financial Services Authority.)

Roderick Psaila, the CEO and founder of RnF, Malta, has been serving in the banking industry for over 28 years now. He is the man behind starting several banks in the Blockchain island in the last ten years. He has also served as the CEO of AgriBank (A licensed credit institution in Malta.) As per reports from CCN, Psaila expressed his views on the upcoming Blockchain Bank. He assured that proper banking services will be offered to the clients, once the bank starts to operate. He further gave details on the bank services which comprises of four types of services i.e. 1. ‘Banking services to the corporates’, 2. ‘Lending services’, 3. ‘Private banking services’, and 4. ‘The wealth management services.’ Psaila shone a light on the targets of the bank too. He said that the bank especially aims to serve big corporate and private clients. He further explained that the bank’s thinking is not to deny any industry in the first place, but rather each case will be given unique and due attention it deserves. This exclusive attention style of the bank should offer crypto exchanges and Blockchain companies that are offering security tokens with a chance to be treated like other companies; Psaila thinks.

The Blockchain based bank targets to invest strongly in Blockchain technology and also in the ‘Artificial intelligence’ (AI) specifically during the first year of its commencement. This special focus is to attract several clients from the mentioned sectors. This will be done along with carrying out the risk-based compliance assessment by the bank.

The founding partner of OK Blockchain Capital Limited- Ms. Tian Ying expressed her delight in joining hands with Roderick and his team of bankers. She expressed the company’s excitement for partnering in the promising project f new banking venture in Malta.

The Chief Risk Officer and Head of Govt. Relations of OK Group- Mr. Tim Byun said that Malta is being the first country to efficiently regulate the Blockchain industry. He further added his company’s excitement to be involved with RnF Finance Limited for this very unique Banking venture. He thinks that the efficient regulatory structure and knack of support for the new industries in Malta, is going to create several more interesting opportunities on the Blockchain Island.

It is reported that around June or July next year, we will be able to see RnF initiate its banking operations after getting regulatory approval.

On July 4, 2018, Malta became the first and only country to get three new crypto bills passed in Law. This establishment encouraged a regulatory structure for Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and DLT. This year the country also held its long-awaited ‘Malta Blockchain Summit.’ For this summit, the Blockchain strategist and member of Malt’s National Blockchain Task Force- Steve Tendon said that this international platform will witness Malta’s intention to recognize “Legal Personality” to the innovative technology arrangements such as DAOs. He further added- “This is an innovation in law making that will support innovation as no other law has ever done.”

Malta didn’t stop at getting three laws passed, rather the country has a detailed National Blockchain Strategy constructed by Tendon. The strategy covers vision, strategies (such as Public Blockchain services, R & D, Education and innovation, e-Residency, cryptocurrency regulation, smart govt. Projects, and regulatory infrastructure), and Goal of 10 percent of Malta GDP by 2027. Tendon further added-

“This will undoubtedly attract all the developers and entrepreneurs who are working on decentralized technologies of all kinds, such as new generation of Blockchains, decentralized exchanges, decentralized ICO platforms, decentralized banking services and so on.”

Malta being the pioneer in the Blockchain industry is a source of encouragement for other governments to regulate the crypto landscape rather than to fear the new technology. The smart forward approach on crypto and Blockchain regulation and banking system of Malta has encouraged several Blockchain based companies to join hands with Malta. Earlier this month, Binance which is one of the big shots among the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency trading platforms has opened a bank account in Malta.

Malta’s advancements and intentions on crypto regulations sit in perfect alignment with G-20’s line of thought. The summit took place in Buenos Aires early this December. As per the forum-

“We will regulate crypto assets for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism in line with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards and we will consider other responses as needed.”