Making token sales smart
One of the core benefits of blockchains is that they enable you to transfer assets to anyone around the globe. These assets can be native “protocol tokens,” like bitcoin or ether. They can be “app tokens,” which are managed by small computer scripts running on the Ethereum blockchain known as smart contracts. Or tokens can represent real world assets, like a barrel of oil, diamonds, stocks, bonds, investment securities, a piece of machinery, or even a contract itself (e.g., a lease, deed, or title to property). Ethereum makes it relatively easy to create tokens. With less than a hundred lines of code, a software developer can create an ERC20 token, deploying a smart contract program on Ethereum that keeps track of who owns a given token at a particular point in time. Over the past several years, ERC20 tokens have taken the world by storm, with over $1.8 billion in tokens sold to date.
Realizing the Potential of Blockchain: A Multistakeholder Approach to the Stewardship of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
In this report, the authors explain the core differences between the internet of information as a network of similar networks and the blockchain as a balkanized internet of value, where real assets are at stake. The report then goes onto what the authors have found to be the most urgent threats to this resource, which they view as governance challenges. By governance, they mean stewardship, which involves collaborating, identifying common interests and creating incentives to act on them. The authors do not mean government, regulation or topdown control. The report explores governance needs at three levels: platform, application and the ecosystem as a whole.
Blockchain: the age of maturity
When it comes to blockchain, geeks are quickly reaching “The DAO” point, sort of a Godwin point, but for technology. At a period where blockchain experiments of new organizations were abounding, The DAO experiment sounded like the end of the “summer of love”.
ShapeShift launches trustless asset portfolio platform, Prism
Swiss blockchain technology startup ShapeShift AG recently announced the launch of “the world’s first trustless asset portfolio platform,” called Prism. The service provides investors with customized portfolio management, allowing them to create their own digital asset portfolios without counterparty risk, and without the need to keep a wallet for each asset they’re invested in.
17 blockchain platforms — a brief introduction
Blockchain technology was announced through the paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Interestingly, this paper does not specifically use the word “blockchain.”
Yours raises funds for bitcoin based Reddit alternative
I met the CEO of reddit, Yishan Wong, at a restaurant in San Francisco in the summer of 2014. Yishan shared with me his vision of reddit as internetland, like a nation state with no physical borders. The only thing missing from internetland was money, so the users could pay each other for their work. Cryptocurrency seemed like the right tool for this, because it was native to the internet, just like reddit itself. I joined reddit as the world’s first cryptocurrency engineer to help Yishan implement his vision.
Cryptocurrencies provide customers with more choice
Philip Sedgwick and Juan Martin Grisales have two things in common; they’re both business owners and they both see digital currency as the future. Sedgwick is the owner and operator at the Wirtshaus am Bavariapark beer garden in Munich while Grisales is CEO at Living Group, an organization of three companies engaged in international tourism.
Bitcoin based content platform, Yours, attracts ‘overwhelming interest’ from investors
Yours is a new decentralized content network, that uses bitcoin to reward creators. As the project gets closer to launch, more details have surfaced from the development team, and a new project website has just been revealed.
LenderBot by Deloitte and Stratumn to bring insurance to the sharing economy using bitcoin’s blockchain
LenderBot is a proof-of-concept micro-insurance platform that uses the bitcoin blockchain for insuring all sorts of things. Most notably, products and services in the sharing economy, such as AirBnB stays and Uber rides.
Decentralized cloud storage platform, Sia, launches version 1.0 with full functionality
Originally conceived in October 2013 by founder and project leader David Vorick, the decentralized cloud storage program Sia received some backing from a crowdfund in early 2014. The network was launched for private beta testing around twelve months ago, for developers and those who weren't afraid to use the command line interface.
Whaleclub: Trading powered by bitcoin and only bitcoin
Whaleclub Director of Operations, Petar Zivkovski, along with Director of Marketing and Business Development, Jessica Lee, took over operations of Whaleclub in October 2015. This was merely a year after TradingView members founded the Club as a real-time feed of bitcoin trade ideas, supplied primarily from the TradingView and Teamspeak communities.
Whaleclub: A look below the surface
Whaleclub Director of Operations, Petar Zivkovski, and Director of Partnership, Jessica Lee, took over operations of Whaleclub in October 2015, a year after TradingView members founded the club as only a real-time feed of bitcoin trade ideas, primarily from TradingView and the Teamspeak community. “Back then it was a much different product,” Lee explained in an interview, adding that it was merely “a simple bitcoin trade idea browser and social sentiment indicator with some basic demo trading features which catered well to the thriving bitcoin trader community.”
Alexandria vs LBRY – Which will be the file sharing application of the next generation?
The next generation of file sharing applications is on the verge of being released with new features like payments built in and no need for tracker sites. The two leading contenders are very different from each other but beautifully conceived.
Blockchain technology provides safety and flexibility for artists on the internet
Monegraph is designed to aid the creators of digital media, providing licences that are flexible, and recording ownership on the blockchain. Supported by Law Firm, Pryor Cashman, the process brings copyright procedure into the 21st century.
Coinprism releases an open source ‘transaction chain’
Permissioned ledgers are a hot topic in both the Bitcoin and Financial Industries. Coinprism is joining the fray with Openchain, an open source permissioned ledger that anyone can use.
FunderBeam Partners With ChromaWay To Build Blockchain-based Marketplace for Equity
The partners aim to create a secondary market for startup equity, using colored coins technology, which allows nearly any asset to be represented and transferred on a blockchain.
