Blockchain Archives - Impact Lab

Blockchain will transform government services, and that’s just the beginning

October 6, 2021

Governments will not only use blockchain for fundamental services such as identity and voting but as a framework for economic growth.

Governments are tasked with bringing fair and efficient services to the public. Unfortunately, providing transparency and accountability often results in a reduction in efficiency and effectiveness or vice versa. Governments are usually forced to choose to improve one at the cost of the other. On rare occasions, technology comes along that enables governments to improve fairness and efficiency.

The move from paper-based record keeping to computer databases was one such technology. The internet was another. Blockchain is the next. Like the internet before it, blockchain will not only improve how the public interacts with government services, it will have broad economic and social implications.

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Blockchain

How blockchain can drive video games into the Web 3.0 future

September 14, 2021

NFTs, metaverses and ‘play-to-earn’ are upending gaming’s traditional revenue model. Shreyansh Singh of Polygon explains blockchain gaming’s business potential.

In recent years, various forms of in-game purchases and microtransactions have become the norm for many games. Free-to-play games that generate income from these revenue sources have also grown in popularity, but many gamers remain unconvinced. Now, thanks to developments in blockchain and novel software development kits (SDKs), developers can bring NFT-powered items and transactions into their games — even existing ones — for the first time. This stands to bring in a new era of gaming that benefits both developers and players alike.

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Blockchain

Cambridge Researchers Devise New Blockchain Impervious Even to Quantum Computers

August 28, 2021

The superior power of quantum computing poses a threat to blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency segment. However, Cambridge Quantum, the quantum software leader in the UK, might prevent that from happening.

Cambridge Quantum has recently released a new study and its partners from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Monterrey Institute of Technology (TEC de Monterrey). In the new report, now available in the preprint repository arXiv, researchers demonstrate a new blockchain technology that can supposedly resist attacks even from a quantum computer.

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Blockchain, Science & Technology News

India launches world’s largest blockchain diploma verification system

August 1, 2021

By Sam Cooling

Amid widespread diploma forgery, and driven by the intense competition in India’s job market, the Maharashtra state government has announced the launch of a new blockchain verification system to ensure transparency for genuine qualifications.

The new system will be the world’s largest educational blockchain system, and the Maharashtra State Board of Skill Development (MSBSD) has taken the active decision to overrule the nationwide ban on crypto technologies in order to deliver the progressive project.

“In the last 10 years, there has been a rampant increase in forgery of government-issued documents which have caused huge financial and reputational losses to the stakeholders involved,” said the Chair of the MSBSD as he announced the new system.

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Blockchain, Science & Technology News

China’s digital currency adds support for AliPay – the Alibaba payment app with over 700 million users

May 21, 2021

And just like that, the Digital Yuan has its route into the mainstream

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor

Alibaba’s controversial financial services arm, the Ant Group, has been welcomed into trials of China’s digital currency.

China’s state-controlled media on Monday reported that the Alipay app has added a feature allowing transactions in the Digital Yuan. Alipay has over 700 million monthly active users in China alone.

State-backed journal China Securities Journal reports that functionality to link to a bank is currently limited, and that no merchants are listed. Nor has the feature been made available to all users. But the Journal reports that real-time, anonymous, transactions are possible.

A second Journal piece reports that an Ant-Group-backed bank has also linked accounts to the Digital Yuan, as have some other banks.

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Blockchain, Science & Technology News

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry to Help Develop New Business Models

April 17, 2021

By Ejiofor Francis Updated by Leila Stein

Blockchain will break up entertainment monopolies.
This technology will put the power back in the hands of the creators.
Many industry problems can be solved through the blockchain.

The innovations in blockchain technology are evolving at the speed of light. Industries are planning to deal with current challenges with the help of these technological advancements.

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Blockchain, Science & Technology News

BMW, Ford back development of vehicle ‘birth certificates’ built on the blockchain

January 27, 2021

The solution will track a car throughout its sales history, clamping down on mileage tampering and fraud.

By Charlie Osborne

BMW, Ford, and major technology companies have indicated their support for a new blockchain project to assign “birth certificates” to vehicles.
Announced on Tuesday, the initiative is focused on developing technologies able to track a car from its manufacture and beyond, including when the vehicle has changed hands, its maintenance history, and records of mileage and any past damage.

The developer of the system, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI), says that this could stop second-hand sellers from misleading buyers, could wipe out the use of tools including roll-back odometers, and could “better track and protect vehicles’ true identities.”

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Blockchain, Science & Technology News

Mitsubishi and Tokyo Tech create blockchain system for P2P energy trading

January 26, 2021

Beginning in April, the electronics giant and university R&D team will evaluate and tweak the new trading system’s performance before commercialization.

By MARIE HUILLET

NEWS

Mitsubishi Electric has teamed up with researchers from the prestigious Japanese university, Tokyo Tech, to jointly design a blockchain-based trading system that can support more flexible, peer-to-peer energy trading.

Announced on Jan. 18, the new system is intended to support the efficient use of surplus electricity that is generated from renewable energy sources. In particular, it is hoped that the trading system can ensure that at any given moment, there will be the maximum available amount of surplus electricity accessible on the market for consumers.

Peer-to-peer energy trading set-ups allow consumers and prosumers to engage in direct trading as buyers and sellers. To make their new system less reliant on hardware-intensive, high-volume computations, Mitsubishi Electric and Tokyo Tech have customized their blockchain system in order to optimize matches and make clearing buy and sell orders more efficient.

According to the announcement, a distributed-optimization algorithm, which differs from most blockchain technologies, enables customer computers to share their trading goals and data and then to “optimally match buy and sell orders using minimal computations.” As well as requiring fewer computations, what Mitsubishi and Tokyo Tech call their “new mining method” can be executed on a micro-computing server. The four steps involved in the method are as follows:

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Banking, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

JPM Coin debut marks start of blockchain’s value-driven adoption cycle

November 9, 2020

Despite its centralized design, JPM Coin’s real life utilization represents a step toward the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.

JPM Coin debut marks start of blockchain’s value-driven adoption cycle.

On the heels of PayPal announcing its decision to enter the crypto sector early next year, Bitcoin (BTC) has continued its strong performance and has been hovering around the $13,500 mark for nearly a week now. In this regard, the payment giant’s foray into the crypto market has been hailed as a game changer, especially when it comes to improving the mainstream perception of the digital asset industry as a whole.

Not only that, JPMorgan Chase announced that its native digital currency offering — the JPM Coin — has finally been deployed for mainstream use by one of the firm’s technical associates. The token is designed to facilitate JPMorgan Chase’s various cross-border monetary transactions.

Continue reading… “JPM Coin debut marks start of blockchain’s value-driven adoption cycle”

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

How Blockchain will End Commercial Banks

October 26, 2020

Daniel Masters, CoinShares executive chairman

JP Morgan’s former global head of energy trading, Daniel Masters, was among the first traditional investors to get into bitcoin, helping craft the value proposition that many institutional investors now embrace. COINSHARES

As much as bitcoiners and crypto enthusiasts try to deny it, bringing in converts from traditional finance is the best way to legitimize and publicize the industry in the eyes of many investors.

One of the earliest executives to take the leap was CoinShares executive chairman Daniel Masters. After a long and distinguished career as a commodities trader with JP Morgan and elsewhere, he serendipitously stumbled upon bitcoin after the commodities supercycle ended following the global financial crisis. Masters immediately saw the potential of bitcoin and blockchain, and he realized that his background as a technologist and commodities trader was tailor-made to make him an ambassador for this new industry to a net set of individual and institutional investors.

At the same time, through building his crypto investment management company, he was able to look into the future of this industry and see what developments lie ahead, as well as upcoming clashes between crypto insurgents and entrenched financial incumbents. Forbes sat down with Masters to get his thoughts on the future of this industry.

Continue reading… “How Blockchain will End Commercial Banks”

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, cutting edge, Internet, Science & Technology News

No internet, no problem. Venezuela gets bitcoin satellite node

October 10, 2020

Venezuela deployed its first Bitcoin satellite node.

It allows for a node on the ground to receive Bitcoin transaction details from a Blockstream satellite without internet.

Venezuela has poor internet connectivity.

Venezuela has its first Bitcoin satellite node capable of processing transactions without an internet connection.

The Venezuelan “space node” was set up in the country by Anibal Garrido and the Anibal Cripto team. It uses technology from Blockstream, which contracts satellites—in this case, EUTELSAT-113 – to broadcast data between points via offline connections. That’s huge in a country where internet infrastructure is lacking.

Continue reading… “No internet, no problem. Venezuela gets bitcoin satellite node”

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, China, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

MIT is helping the Boston Fed build a CBDC that can be scaled for consumer use

September 12, 2020

MIT is helping the Boston Fed build a CBDC that can be scaled for consumer use

Can MIT help the U.S. catch up to China in the CBDC race?

The MIT Digital Currency Initiative, or DCI, is helping the federal reserve bank of Boston build a digital currency with the goal of scaling for consumer use. The DCI’s director Neha Narula told Cointelegraph:

“We’re trying to build a high throughput, low latency transaction system that could be used by consumers and could handle the security and resilience required for a national currency.”

The multi-year collaboration between the two organizations is still in very early stages and not much information is being released to the public. Yet the focus is not on building a newer version of interbank digital ledger, but rather something that the consumers would be able to use. It is hard to estimate the required transactional throughput of such technology, but considering that the U.S. population is around 330 million and the fact that the dollar is the most widely used currency in the world (some nations have even officially adopted it), this number would have to be rather high.

Continue reading… “MIT is helping the Boston Fed build a CBDC that can be scaled for consumer use”

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