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a16z releases anonymous voting system for Ethereum
The system uses “time-lock puzzles” to encrypt the contents of votes, making them unreadable until balloting has finished.
Venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, also known as A16z, has released a Solidity library that can be used for anonymous voting on Ethereum. Called “Cicada,” the library prevents an individual voter’s choice from being known before polling ends. When combined with zero-knowledge group membership systems like Semaphore, it can also make the identity of the voter permanently unknowable, according to a May 24 blog post from A16z engineer Michael Zhu.
Cicada relies on time-lock puzzles, a type of cryptography that allows users to encrypt secret values that can only be decrypted after a specific period of time has passed, Zhu stated.
These puzzles have been around since 1996. But before 2019, they would have required users to reveal their secret values once the time period had passed. In voting systems, this could have caused problems with users submitting votes and then going offline, preventing all the votes from being countable. Read More
When DAOs Self-Execute—What Could Go Wrong?
Self-executing DAO proposals are the pinnacle of autonomy for decentralized communities. Still, the feature comes with a lot of baggage.
This past week we got two examples of when self-executing proposals go wrong for DAOs.
One proposal on Aave resulted in roughly $110 million in assets freezing after the proposal passed, and another on Tornado Cash saw a crafty proposer make off with roughly 372 ETH, worth over $670,000.
The Aave proposal has been fixed, and a new proposal executed the fix. As for Tornado Cash, the proposer has made a new proposal to return the funds. But because he is still the majority holder of TORN, the DAO’s governance token, it’s still up to him whether the vote actually passes.
But what are self-executing proposals exactly?
“Self-executing DAO governance models allow for an additional level of decentralization,” Open Zeppelin’s head of solutions architecture Michael Lewellen told Decrypt. “They remove the need for an intermediary or centralized influence to ‘hit go’ on an action decided upon by the DAO, a reliance on which effectively centralizes the entire model.“
This means that as soon as a DAO votes on a proposal, the code that enacts said proposal is engaged immediately. Read More
Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade made it easier to detect criminals
Staking rewards following Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade have made it easier for investigators to spot counterintuitive behaviour by ETH holders.
With its historic Merge event in September, Ethereum has become a proof-of-stake blockchain. The mechanism now used to confirm transactions relies on validators staking their Ether. Ethereum’s March upgrade, codenamed Shanghai, finally enabled stakers to withdraw their locked Ether.
The Ethereum ecosystem’s “investment themes” have included a) decentralized finance (DeFi) b) stablecoins c) Bitcoin (via wrapped versions of BTC) and d) non-fungible tokens (NFTs). With the upgrade, the network also began providing fixed-income assets.
There are currently several ways people make money on or using Ethereum. Broadly, they can be grouped into “investment themes,” including: a) decentralized finance (DeFi); b) stablecoins; c) Bitcoin (via wrapped versions of BTC); and d) nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Following Shanghai, the network began to offer fixed-income assets. Read More
What are NFT royalties, and how do they work?
Royalties give NFT creators a way to keep getting paid for their work, even after the original sale of the NFT.
Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been a key technical paradigm and a building block of the Web3 ecosystem. While the rise of NFTs was really led by the Ethereum community through 2020 and 2021, other chains like Solana and even Bitcoin have followed suit with major projects launching on these blockchains.
Creators have historically looked for different forms of income from their work. While there are laws pertaining to protecting intellectual property in the Web2 world, enforcing these laws and protecting creators’ interests has been hard to achieve.
Royalty payments are passive income that goes toward a creator on each transaction of their finished product. The product could be music, art, game utilities or any other form of digital asset. While creators earn from the primary sale of their NFTs, royalties are paid to the creator for each subsequent purchase as well. Read More
Innovations that will change the way we work and interact online.
The Markethive Social Market Broadcasting Network becomes more prominent daily as the blockchain-driven ecosystem for entrepreneurs with a non-adversarial, bi-partisan free speech ethic and the collaborative culture we rarely see on social media platforms today. Even the newer acclaimed, free speech platforms are partisan to the left or right and deal with de-platforming and boycotts from payment providers.
Unlike the social media giants, which only have one primary news feed algorithmically set by the central authorities, Markethive is integrating four news feeds to accommodate the multi-functional platform within the Markethive ecosystem.
The individual feeds are General, Video, Blogging, and Content Curation, and they are all accessible from the main page and can be algorithmically set by the individual user. The scope that Markethive has is enormous as it integrates all the vertical systems of the other platforms under one roof.
Social + Video + Blogging + Marketing + Curation + Broadcasting + Affiliate + Gamification + Cottage Businesses = Markethive: A Powerful Blockchain-driven Ecosystem
There is nothing out there like Markethive. We are an Inbound Marketing (automated marketing platform) like Marketo, Paragon, and even the wannabee MLM Onpassive platform. We are like Youtube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., but will be superior to these legacy Web 2 media when we release all the aspects and layout of Markethive 2.0.
We have a dynamic social media interface and growing community with a strong collaborative ethos, with SaaS and broadcasting capabilities already operational. We are not waiting for the launch to access the services; they are already there for you to use to help you facilitate your business and increase your reach and following.
Markethive is enhancing and bringing the platform into the future internet with our new technology and interfaces, but still in keeping with the human touch. Read More
Blockchain-Based Re-Usable KYC 'Particularly Valuable in Web3' — Cheqd CEO Fraser Edward
According to Fraser Edward, the CEO and co-founder of the public permissionless network, Cheqd, one of the main hurdles faced when attempting to move data stored on Web2 servers to Web3 is “establishing a clear and scalable revenue model.” Edward however suggested overcoming this hurdle will unlock new use cases which facilitate economic activities within the Web3 ecosystem will be unlocked.
The Trusted Data Market:
The Cheqd co-founder also told Bitcoin.com News that in today’s data-driven world, greater emphasis is now being placed on obtaining accurate and verified data. This shift in value from what Edward labelled generic data to trusted data is evidenced by users’ demand for data that is portable and cryptographically verifiable. According to Edward, it is this demand for assured data that has given rise to what is now known as the “trusted data market.”
Meanwhile, in the rest of his responses to questions from Bitcoin.com News, the Cheqd CEO touched on the so-called “bot paranoia” and how a decentralized reputation system can be used to combat bots and impersonators. The CEO also offered his thoughts on blockchain-based re-usable KYCs as well as how these can be used in the real world. Read More
ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood Says Tech Giants Google, Apple and Amazon About To Be Disrupted by AI
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest says that the ruling giants of the technology industry are at risk of being disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI).
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Wood says that ChatGPT could potentially enhance Google’s products and services, but could also destroy them by taking away the tech giant’s advertising revenue.
She also says that it’s the same case for Apple.
“For Google, ChatGPT was either the worst thing that has ever happened to it, or maybe the best thing. We tend to think it’s going to be disintermediated though by ChatGPT and other chatbots. We are not going to need the kind of search and therefore advertising that drives Google’s model, so we do worry about that one and… Apple."
Wood also named Amazon as a possible victim of AI if something like ChatGPT or another bot learns to scour the web for items and prices better than Amazon. Read More
Solana aims to grow 100x through small business, infrastructure partnerships
Co-founder Raj Gokal commented on the company's partnerships and plans.
Solana co-founder Roj Gokal said in a May 29 interview with TechCrunch that his company aims to grow 10 to 100 times, primarily through small business and infrastructure partnerships.
Solana has a small business focus:
Gokal said in the interview:
“[Solana wants partners] that can move, push releases and experiments and measure every week rather than someone really big that has an established view of what they’re looking for.”
He criticized larger companies for their willingness to move on to new things if the results of the partnership were not successful.
He highlighted one partnership with the San Francisco-based cafe chain Boba Guys, which began to explore a loyalty program built on Solana in April. Gokal said that the cafe chain could use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and other tokens to drive sales. Read More
Hoskinson proposes ‘generative AI-proof watermarking’ to thwart deep fakes
Countering AI deep fakes - technological advancements will soon make fakery indistinguishable from real life.
Input Output CEO Charles Hoskinson said the emergence of AI deep fakes would force us to assume everything we see and hear is fraudulent.
AI deep fakes to become indistinguishable from real life
During a recent AMA, Hoskinson was asked about using blockchain technology to authenticate visual content. In response, he acknowledged that a verification system is needed.
He further expressed that, within the next 12 to 24 months, rapid advances in AI technology will see deep fake video and audio indistinguishable from real life. With that will come a gradual shift from the customary “seeing is believing” attitude currently prevalent to one assuming everything is fake.
Continuing, he spoke of a propagandized use of the technology that involves nation-states producing and distributing deep fakes for “instruments of polarization.”
Hoskinson suggested the way to combat this is to use the immutable properties of blockchains to store a verifiable “chain of evidence” from image capture to upload – this he called “generative AI-proof watermarking.” Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
