Category: Blockchain

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.