Category: Blockchain

SWARM, an infrastructure provider for the issuance and trading of digital assets, has selected award-winning Copper as its preferred digital custodian. The integration of Copper’s solution will provide the institutional grade security fundamental to the mass market trading of digital securities.

Copper’s technology will secure assets held or managed as well as delivering settlement services through APIs, which trigger subsequent processes for the SWARM (SWM) that are wrapped to be invested into for investment opportunities on the SWARM platform.

Copper already provides custody for multiple crypto funds and investors operating a full range of investment strategies. The company also plans on providing custody for fiat in the future.

Copper has recently improved the security protocols of its custodial service further by adding military grade optical air-gapping. This enhancement ensures the complete security of an offline repository of asset owners’ sharded keys during the transaction signing process.

Philipp Pieper, Co-Founder of SWARM, has commented: “The integration between Copper and SWARM is a great fit due to the compatibility of our technologies as well as our teams.

“Copper provides the level of institutional grade security and convenience that is absolutely essential for the adoption of digital securities by institutional investors and the retail market.

“Philosophically, we have found in Copper a team who are committed to the growth of a broad ecosystem for digital securities, who share our innovative spirit, and who know that we will all get further, faster when we build together.”

Dmitry Tokarev, CEO and Founder of Copper, has commented: “SWARM is at the forefront of the emerging security token investment industry and we are excited to enable its vision.

“Although the crypto industry is evolving rapidly, it still needs large institutional involvement before the space can fully-mature.

“This cannot be achieved without proper custody solutions ensuring assets are secure alongside solutions that help institutions easily navigate the industry. The partnership between SWARM and Copper puts us at the forefront of developing the infrastructure for financial services 2.0”.

Recap, a privacy-focused accounting software platform for cryptocurrency has secured a sizeable grant from Innovate UK to help launch its services worldwide.

Recap has been granted £135,136 as a winner of the Transforming accountancy, insurance and legal services with AI and data competition. The funding was provided through the Government’s modern industrial strategy by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Recap is an encrypted, bespoke platform which allows those with complex cryptocurrency portfolios to track, manage and strategise by bringing all the information into one platform. One of its key features is to track the large numbers of taxable transactions many investors in cryptocurrencies incur, sometimes on a per second basis.

Co-founder and Director Daniel Howitt said: “It’s exciting times here at Recap, we have an ambitious backlog of work to deliver by March. The US tax deadline for the 2018 tax year closes mid-April. We want Recap to be available way ahead of this deadline, meaning we need to internationalise the product, design and build a US capital gains tax engine and also fully monetise the product so we can start collecting annual subscription revenue.

“The US launch comes off the back of our successful private beta launch to early adopters in the UK.”

The fintech start-up, based in the East Midlands and founded by Directors Daniel Howitt and Ben Shepheard and is the first platform of its kind in the UK and is supported by software experts Selenity and chartered accountants Wright Vigar.

Daniel added: “Our seed raise of £150,000 will allow us to meet the match funding requirement of our £135,000 grant to give us £280,000 investment.

“These funds will allow us to develop our transaction matching IP, release our 1.0.0 version of the product and actively market the platform in the UK and US.

Recap is currently raising a £150,000 seed round led by a cryptocurrency investor and customer of Recap.

To find out more, visit the website here: www.recap.io

The online gaming industry is one of the biggest success stories of the last two decades. Starting out at nothing more than a handful of rudimentary sites at the end of the nineties, online casino gaming alone is now worth upwards of $51 billion/£39.5 billion. Naturally, as the industry has become more lucrative, technology, tastes and gaming options have evolved. Indeed, when you compare early online gaming to today’s emerging blockchain-based creations, things have changed markedly.

Building the Foundations of Online Gaming

If we go back to 1999, Playtech was one of the first developers to harness the power of random number generator (RNG) software. Following the example set by Microgaming in 19995, Playtech’s developers found that complex algorithms could recreate random scenarios. With technology able to ensure a fair result, the company set about developing some of the earliest online casino games. Two decades later, this technology still forms the basis of all online casino games. Whatever title you select inside https://games.paddypower.com/c/slots, the underlying RNG technology will be the same as it was back in 1999. Yes, it will have been refined. However, the fundamental principles are still in place, meaning that everything from Electric Tiger to Gold Frenzy are fair.

From this base, online gaming has cherrypicked ideas and innovations from across the gaming industry at large. For example, almost all online bingo sites now have chat facilities, emojis and more. Essentially borrowing from https://www.facebook.com/games/, bingo sites now offer the same social experience as Words with Friends or 8 Ball Pool. Beyond socialisation features, live streams have become popular. Taking inspiration from https://www.twitch.tv/ and other streaming platforms, developers have been able to create live gaming experience. By combining webcams with RFID technology, players can now interact with real dealers hosting real games inside specially designed studios.

Can Blockchains Decentralise Casino Gaming?

The question is, how will online gaming evolve with the help of blockchain technology? Visit https://www.cryptokitties.co/ and you’ll start to get an insight into the direction blockchain gaming is going. Although an early attempt to utilise decentralised technology for recreational purposes, Axiom Zen’s Cryptokitties has one interesting feature that could be used to improve player safety. As part of the game, each Cryptokitty is represented by a non-fungible ERC-721 token. This allows ownership of the virtual cat to be tracked via Ethereum’s smart contract system. Applying this idea to online gaming, developers could use it to track player IDs. On the one hand, this would reduce the risk of fraud as it would be easier to track and control transactions between players and between players and the casino. Additionally, this technology could be used to create a multifaceted casino ecosystem.

In today’s online gaming community, players have to create individual accounts. By tracking players in the same way Cryptokitties are tracked, it could be possible to bridge the gaps. In other words, players would create a central account which could then be used to access multiple sites. As it stands, many of the leading brands are part of a larger network. Therefore, with this technology, it could be possible to link players across all sites within the network. By marking each account with an ERC-721 token, everything from a player’s personal details to their account balance and playing preferences would become decentralised (i.e. not held by one site). While this would require cooperation and communication between casino brands, the fact networks already exist suggests it could work. Indeed, if online casinos were able to take something from Cryptokitties, it would give players more flexibility, choice and, ultimately, provide a more entertaining experience.

Fancy seeing how the top brass in blockchain are laying the foundations for a mind-boggling future we’ll all reap the benefits from? If you can get yourself to London on November 21st, you’ll see it all up close and personal.

Event hosting masters Webrazzi are laying down the gauntlet for the rest of the crypto world to follow, with its Blockchain Venture Summit gracing London with its presence at the central 8 Northumberland venue.

With an intimate and exclusive allocation of just 500 tickets, the summit has already nearly sold out, even though the agenda has just been announced. The word ‘hotcakes’ comes to mind.

Attendees can expect to witness great things as the keynotes, panels and discussions will be delivered from a cluster of those at the very top of the blockchain game, from crypto investors, to venture capitalists, and hedge fund managers to trail-blaising entrepreneurs: it’s an all-star line up that doesn’t pull any punches.

Discussions and speeches will be across a multitude of hot topics, from Equity vs Token investments, unlocking institutional money, blockchain investing, mining, the future of crypto venture capital, corporate ventures, what’s in store for ICOs, security tokens and much more.

Many of the big-hitting blockchain speakers come from an array of heavyweight influential companies in the scene, with the likes of Consensys, StakeZero Ventures, Cambrial, Kryptonite1, Outlier Ventures and more stepping up to deliver the goods.

For those desperate to get tickets, luckily there are still a few ‘hotcakes’ for folks who act fast to get their hands on. And how’s this for an extra bonus, use the promo code “BVSLDN18” and you’ll receive a discount on the ticket price… if you’re quick off the draw.

Register to check the agenda, VIP line-up and all other details over at https://blockchainventuresummit.com

With climate change and various environmental factors threatening our way of life and those of our children, there’s been a huge increase in recent years of people striving to live a green, clean life that minimises any adverse impact they have on the world. There are many different ways people are able to change their lifestyles. Limiting energy consumption and recycling and two easy and quantifiable ways to help the environment, but the tricky aspect of lowering one’s carbon footprint has been a much more difficult beast to tackle in any measurable terms, until now.

Ecoingot, a group of environmental tech experts, are busy creating a platform which helps eco-conscious individuals gather and assess their carbon impact data across everything from their everyday purchases to activities and lifestyle choices. And they’re doing it on the blockchain.

Their solution, titled the Internet of Carbon, is said to use cutting-edge technological methods to gather the data and process it in a way that makes it easy to access by everyone with the aid of an app. This is all made transparent and secure by building the platform on the blockchain, so every piece of data is accounted for and can be tracked. It aims to provide carbon usage data on everything from a cup of coffee to taxi rides, to Amazon deliveries or doing your laundry.

Ecoingot’s platform could not be coming at a better or more urgent time, since the IPCC have reported that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees will have truly catastrophic consequences for mankind, that monumental changes are needed in the world to ensure this doesn’t happen, and that time is drastically running out before it’s too late to implement these changes. The world needs everyone to club together and help make the changes needed.

And currently, it is not happening fast enough, especially when it comes to industry level changes, which take years to implement due to the arduous processes they need to go through, and the many people deliberately trying to put roadblocks in the way so they can hang onto their profits at all costs. This is why Ecoingot is doing its best to put pressure on big-wig industries and retailers. But as they know they have a long battle ahead of them, they’re currently focussing their attention on those they can rely on to help: the public.

Ecoingot uses three main approaches in its mission to reduce carbon footprints: education, reduction and offsetting. Not only will their app tell its user about the different carbon impacts their choices have on the environment, it will give them an easy opportunity to redress any carbon-heavy lifestyle choices by providing alternatives.

The team are currently developing a data engine, ECOSISTM, using a carbon impact calculation model created by climate change expert Professor Mike Berner-Lees and his team. As no such data is currently available for consumers to assess what their personal carbon footprints is, this looks to be the first of its kind. With a variety of big data already available about large parts of our lives, such as fitness trackers and sleep monitors, having access to data that can potentially save the world should be at the top of the list of things we require.

Their EGT token is launching at the Malta Blockchain Summit, while their app is due to launch in April 2019, coinciding with Earth Day, which focuses attention on environmental factors threatening the planet. If it’s a success, there’s a chance it could make a real difference to one of the biggest issues facing humankind.

Earlier in May of this year, a monumental case regarding real estate data was brought forward to the Canadian Supreme Court. Prior to the ruling, websites were restricted from listing detailed information on data pertinent to real estate sales. Although this data if often available in other jurisdictions such as the United States, Canadian firms operating within the industry were unable to access it.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that real estate platforms can now list more detailed information on home listings. The court battle, which dates as far back as 2011, involved the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), who claimed that by publishing data linked to real estate selling prices, home owner privacy was being violated.

Commenting to the Financial Post, Daniel Steinfeld, a Toronto based realtor, explained that the real estate industry has been in a state of stagnation for some years now regarding access to data. Steinfeld noted that the court ruling has cleared the way for those operating in the industry to obtain important data and bring innovation to the industry.

In fact, following the ruling a real estate agency based in Toronto called Zoocasa experienced an increase of 3,000% in traffic.

Just three years prior, Zoocasa were ordered to stop posting information showcasing recently sold properties alongside their respective value. Failure to adhere to these demands would have resulted in them losing access to the Multiple Listings Service which is crucial for Canadian based real estate agencies.

Nevertheless, although the ruling is a step in the right direction, real estate data is still extremely difficult to come by. Moreover, even when data is available, there are no mechanisms in place ensuring the validity, relevance and accuracy of the data.

For example, in Spain, accessing real estate data on the prices of properties sold is virtually an impossible task. Although the Spanish land registry does in fact collect this information, they do not allow stakeholders to access it. Even if one were to obtain a Nota Simple – which is a paid-for document outlining a range of data linked to a specific property, it does not detail previous sale prices.

Can Blockchain Technology Solve the Reluctance to Share Data?

In the real estate industry there is an underlying issue of data hoarding. Essentially, private sector organizations that receive useful real estate data are reluctant to share it with their industry counterparts, preferring to keep it close to their chest.  The industry is also fragmented, with no single platform on which to search for, purchase and sell data and very little means to verify existing data already available. This is where blockchain project ReBloc is stepping in.

ReBloc are in the process of developing a decentralized marketplace on which real estate data can be shared. Vendors who share data are compensated with tokens which they can then trade for more data, or convert into another form of currency.  If one realtor wants to find out how much a particular property sold for, they can formulate a request on the platform.

The data which is held by another user can be autonomously exchanged in a direct peer-to-peer way, via a smart contract. Before the data is released to the user it needs to be verified by the platform’s validation protocol. Once it has been approved, it’s released by the smart contract, which then automatically sends payment to the data owner. This way buyers receive accurate data and vendors feel secure sending it.

By using the Enigma’s secret contracts protocol, sensitive data is encrypted and all inputs and outputs are hidden. As a result, data sharing through the ReBloc platform is kept confidential which is why organizations that have previously shown reluctance to share real estate data are hopping onboard.

Ultimately, the change in the way data can be accessed, evaluated and shared will have a positive and significant impact on the way real-world real estate decisions are made and the ease with which real estate information can be accessed.