Updates from the intersection of trust, content and blockchain. What are notable developments?
This newsletter is published by the TruBlo project. We are funding 45 early-stage blockchain ideas to explore new options for “trusted content on future blockchains”. A list of all TuBlo projects is here: https://www.trublo.eu/projects/.
“In a typical scenario, according to the report, a scammer will pose as a professional with a fake profile and reach out to a LinkedIn user, starting with small talk before elevating to an offer to make money through crypto investments. Eventually, the scammer leverages the trust earned over months to direct the user to invest money to a site controlled by the perpetrator, and then drains the account.”
German telcos test new advertising technology, resulting in concerns by privacy advocates
In Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, the two largest mobile providers are currently testing a new advertising technology called TrustPid.
“TrustPid allows mobile carriers to generate pseudo-anonymous tokens based on a user’s IP address that are administered by a company also named TrustPid. Each user is assigned a different token for each participating website they visit, and these can be used to provide personalised product recommendations—but in what TrustPid calls “a secure and privacy-friendly way.” That “privacy-friendly” part has raised critics’ hackles.”
In essence, the question is whether or not the new technology would allow for personal tracking. A spokesperson from Vodafone answering to Wired denied that this would be possible.
New York Times with solid growth of website traffic
The New York Times is currently one of the fastest-growing news websites. The website got 524 million visits in May 2022, an increase of 52% compared to last year. A big driver for the traffic growth has been the acquisition of Wordle, a popular online game. The NYT purchased the game in February 2022. Another website with solid traffic growth is the Daily Mail (UK), with an increase of 14% to 373 million. For comparison: The website of CNN has even higher total traffic (641 million) but not as much growth (4%).
Netflix will introduce a new tier supported by advertising. After years of solid growth, the company had recently lost around 200.000 subscribers. The idea is to reach an audience which would not pay the monthly subscription.
“We’ve left a big customer segment off the table, which is people who say: ‘Hey, Netflix is too expensive for me, and I don’t mind advertising”, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in an interview. “… we’re not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today. We’re adding an ad tier for folks who say, ‘Hey, I want a lower price, and I’ll watch ads.”
Based on reports, Google will organise the sales for such Netflix advertising.
China wants to censor all social comments in advance
A new proposal by a regulator in China aims to approve all social media comments in advance. It is not clear how this would be done technically. The assumption is that it would be an automated service.
“On June 17, the internet regulator Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published a draft update on the responsibilities of platforms and content creators in managing online comments. One line stands out: all online comments must be pre-reviewed before being published. Users and observers are worried that the move could further tighten freedom of expression in China.”
Related: The New York Times has a visual report showing how surveillance technology in China works and how it has expanded in recent years:
“China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.”
Twitter will add a new feature called ‘Notes’, which then can be attached directly to a tweet. The idea is that content creation and tweet promotion can be done on one platform. Market observers view it as an experiment; it is unclear whether this will catch on. Twitter is testing the feature with several writers. So far, the quality is not available in all world regions, e.g., Europe.
The falling values of cryptocurrencies create all kinds of challenges. Example: Last week, users of Solend, a Solana-based protocol, voted to take over an account to prevent a margin call. The original user had borrowed $108 million but was getting under pressure to liquidate if the Solana token would fall below $22,30. Managers of Solend used “emergency powers” to take over the wallet. However, this decision was met with an outcry by users as a violation of the principle of decentralised decisions through code, not by single humans. While this is only one episode, the current situation in the crypto market creates all kinds of issues and pressure to invent policies for crises.
The end of the crypto speculation bubble affects all kinds of Blockchain companies. Some of them are in crisis mode. Many watched the liquidity crisis in the past week at Celsius and BlockFi. Another firm in trouble is ThreeArrows Capital, which is based in Singapore. Sky News reported that a British Virgin Islands court had ordered the fund’s liquidation.
“The firm’s demise is likely to raise further questions, however, about the regulatory oversight to which cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are subject in the world’s major financial centres.”
The collapse of such prominent players sends shockwaves yet to other companies:
“Cryptocurrency market maker and lending firm Genesis Trading is facing potential losses into the “hundreds of millions,” according to three people familiar with the matter.”
The Harmony blockchain, used as a bridge to exchange tokens of different blockchains, has been hacked.
“Hackers looted about $100 million from a so-called cryptocurrency bridge, again exposing a key vulnerability in the digital-asset ecosystem.”
“…bridges are particularly vulnerable to hacks, as their technology is complex and they are often run by anonymous teams. The way they safeguard funds is often unclear. Sophisticated hackers have repeatedly targeted them. ”
FileChain aims to extend existing, often complex document workflows with simple yet secure sharing options, similar to a decentralised blockchain platform. The underlying software is based on Java, making it more straightforward for many companies to adopt and customise their existing systems.
Currently, FileChain is a start-up company with offices in Sweden and the UK. Here is an interview with the founder and CEO.
INTERVIEW
Mirko Lorenz: You are the founder and CEO of FileChain. Can you briefly say what brought you there?
Sylvain Vittecoq: The original idea of why we created FileChain came from a day in 2016 when I realised that I had to provide input for my preference for a window or aisle seat on every airline website every time I would book a flight ticket. I thought there must be a way for me just to grant some airlines access to this one piece of information about my preference. This is how FileChain started. We are using distributed ledger technology to solve this kind of problem. My example was B2C. Decentralisation and delivery of such individual services are probably some years away. But for B2B markets, we are here with FileChain. Our software is a new way to provide blockchain distributed ledger services for B2B transactions.
About
Sylvain Vittecoq is an entrepreneur and IoT expert. Originally from France, he has been in technology and management roles since 1996. Vittecoq lives in Sweden. LinkedIn
Photo: Sylvain Vittecoq, via FileChain https://www.filechain.com
Question: From your point of view, decentralised exchange of information blockchain functionality could help to free many workflows from having to file the same data again and again and again because we can access such pieces with the permission of the owner?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Everything is highly centralised. In any company, you will have ERP systems based on databases found in every single company and public administration. It is then the job of all integrators to enable these systems to talk to other systems with security layers to cross. Whenever there is an audit, there is a need to decide who can be trusted. My thinking is: By now, we can use a technology called the blockchain, which you can place in the middle. It is owned by no one but can be used by all parties involved to achieve a common goal. This approach puts the current logic upside down, and we can get there with a piece of technology placed between many parties with common interests. This opportunity is why I believe that this technology is not just a short-lived trend but that blockchain, in general, will succeed.
At what development stages is FileChain as a company? Is it a start-up? How is it funded through revenue or venture capital? How many people are working for you?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We are a start-up. We are less than ten people, which is still a small team. We got bootstrapped. We used our funding for development so far in stealth mode. We got a small investment in December 2020 from a UK seed investor. We are just running and financing our activities based on customers and incoming projects. We are still a relatively small company, with a substantial technical stack, which is now ready for production. We are just starting commercialisation.
What is your pitch to potential companies? Why should a company use FileChain?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We have a different vision for ledger technology. We don’t believe in public blockchains. Instead, we believe in federation or private blockchains which would be run and managed by a more comprehensive number of parties, and it might be a group of companies focused on supply chains for instance.
“We don’t believe in one ledger in charge of everything”.
Secondly, we don’t believe in one ledger in charge of everything, which does not make sense. Therefore, our ledger setup is different; we focus on the enterprise space. Thirdly, we want our blockchain ledger to be highly more economical than what is available today and way more performant. What needs to be understood is what it costs you to use specific software every day when everything goes well – and would I need to pay when something things go terrible. This is a fundamental question for every decision-maker.
Looking at specific blockchain tokens with gas fees, we think that many current blockchain use cases are based on speculation. It is almost impossible to predict what it will cost you down the road. You know, what will be your cost down the road. FileChain is none of that. We automate, but not through smart contracts because they are expensive and very slow to run. We do our automation, but differently. If anything goes wrong when using new blockchain platforms, no one can provide actual liability. FileChain is different here: We want to make sure everyone knows from the start who would be blamed for what and who would have to pay what. Our focus is not on smart contract utility tokens but on a decentralised ledger that can reliably transport documents between parties, the right legal professionals. And I mean regular contracts, not smart contracts, actual, regular paper-based contracts. For example, we believe that it is possible to achieve a significant change in how to handle paper and permissions in the global shipping trade. There is an immense potential to save money and drastically reduce current operational costs. Implementing news ledger technology could generate new revenue streams because the new features can disrupt the current market and create a new market.
“We don’t forget the old world. We aim to integrate ERP solutions with blockchain.”
So, in other words: FileChain is a modern approach to cloud storage that uses some aspects of a blockchain. So FileChain creates a bridge between the old world and the business world of the future. Is that correct?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Yes. We don’t forget the old world. We aim to integrate ERP solutions with blockchain. We simply don’t forget large companies that have invested 100.000s lines of code. Our technology is a true full-stack ledger from layer 1. So, we have no dependency on any other ledger. This is not a fork of the code from Ethereum, Bitcoin, or any other token platform. Instead, this is 100% FileChain code for the nodes. These nodes have the task to verify the signatures of all the transactions. Those nodes would be one piece of software. We also have an agent, which is the other piece of the software we provide, for people to send or receive millions of transactions. Our goal is to make this much cheaper and more performant than today.
Could you describe a typical company from a specific industry that is a FileChain client?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We are getting traction because we not only provide file and data exchange. On top of that, we can implement transactions to transfer value from A to B. We offer a complete toolkit to underpin the needed paperwork for many types of transactions. Shipping is a good example. You may want to have many companies being able to onboard and identify themselves. This is what they can do with our ledgers. Once they have a public-private key pair, they can authenticate themselves and provide all the required documentation to identify everyone on that ledger fully. Even the shipping containers could authenticate themselves with a serial number and some keys. This is the perspective for the future: A shipping container could send a document or form in JSON XML. Someone from a shipping company could send a Word or a PDF document to another entity present on the ledger. That is the focus of FileChain: To streamline paperwork for all types of transactions – before we get into a transfer of value, which – we believe – is at most five per cent of all the transactions needed for many types of business.
Logistics and shipping are the focus of FileChain for now?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Many of our current use cases are in shipping because there is a lot of paperwork. We are supporting supply chains because you must trace everything. But such a system helps track any valuable goods or many companies. Another use case is when you need to follow valuable cars, watches, or other luxury goods such as art. All such workflows will require packaging the correct information and sharing it with specific people or companies. And never share anything with anyone else. That is another crucial element of FileChain technology, as we offer privacy by design.
“I can decide to share it, in that second, that hour, within days or even months, to share the same content with one or 5000 other recipients instantly”
What you offer is a modern way to exchange information, but with a specific and innovative approach how to share sensible parts such as a person’s name, address, bank account, and so on?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Let’s say I want to share a document with you using FileChain. I can do this using drag-and-drop from my desktop. Encryption is added automatically. When the file leaves my computer, it is now embedded as a FileChain transaction as in-chain storage. Once the transaction gets into the ledger, I’m still the only one who can decrypt that content. I can decide to share it, in that second, that hour, within days or even months, to share the same content with one or 5000 other recipients instantly. I am not going to clone that document again on the ledger. Instead, I will give everyone access to that same content sitting on the ledger. I have complete control over who can access this information. I can even reverse access.
What is the technology you use for FileChain? Is it a specific blockchain protocol?
Sylvain Vittecoq: FileChain is a full-stack offering, and our reference implementation is in Java, which means we have no dependency on anything else. So, no exotic language. And, going back to my initial point, we don’t forget the work that has been done before because older systems are already running and existing today. This is the reason why our reference implementation is in Java. We have a full-stack offering from Layer 1 up to the SDK, including rest APIs for anyone to implement the business logic into other applications. This one ledger can run multiple applications with multiple use cases.
Is it that many clients want to use the benefits of the blockchain approach but have to be able to understand the language in use?
Sylvain Vittecoq: That’s precisely why we do not use a language like Solidity, which is used for many smart contracts but is to some extent prone to errors. From a liability standpoint, this is a no-go. Because in many business settings, you cannot guarantee that the smart contract will execute as intended. So that’s why we don’t have smart contracts for FileChain. Our focus is different: We want to have an application that many engineers can work with efficiently, which they can connect with existing ERP systems quickly. Through such projects, blockchain can achieve mainstream adoption, in our view. To get there, we need a low barrier of entry for software engineers. This is the same for the hosting and the management of those infrastructures. With FileChain, we have a straightforward set-up for the network and to join additional nodes. We don’t want people to spend a lot of time building many tools. That is pointless. What you want is just to get done with your actual business so that you can save money or make money. It is precisely what we try to achieve every day.
Examples of implementations using FileChain. Source: FileChain
Would you be open to collaborative projects? For example, could creators of other innovative distributed concepts work together with you? Or would that be complex?
Sylvain Vittecoq: Partnerships are, at the same time, simple and complicated. Simple in the sense that our core technology is Java. We should exclude the full integration of an ERP system because such work is often complicated. A marketplace, for example, can be created in some days or maybe a few weeks by just one Java engineer. So that is the yes path to the answer. Indeed, if we want to participate in an App in creating a particular ecosystem, we can very, very quickly do that. Our technology allows for very short development cycles, as we are already starting from something substantial. The no part is that we cannot do it for free. We would have to look carefully at the possible benefit down the road. We are already partnering with many large system integrators. We like to work in sandboxes to make something with others, and we welcome partners.
What are your plans for the future of FileChain?
Sylvain Vittecoq: We are 100% “Made in Europe”. And we want to remain with this DNA. I am increasingly meeting people from France, Germany, and other parts of Europe who share a common understanding that we need to create momentum in that direction to not end up with solutions and companies from the US running every blockchain-oriented project in Europe. That is one part of the reason we want to be an example.
We are 100% “Made in Europe”.
We aim to maintain an excellent knowledge of all the European regulations. So that all our customers, wherever they are on the planet, FileChain ledgers will match all the regulations as applicable in Europe. This is basically what we try to drive forward, who we work with, and how we work. We have always been told our technology is very different, and our point of view is very different. Based on this approach, we are getting a lot of traction.
Below is a video demo of the FogBlock4Trust project, which aims at realising a Fog-assisted Blockchain-based credential management solution to strengthen the trust and privacy of users.
Innovation: The most important novelty of FogBlock4Trust is the provision of two distinct major services within one framework, namely global institution accreditation, and distributed credential verification. Other recent proposals for credential management are inefficient, unreliable in terms of storage management and privacy AND/OR provide only one of the two services.
Use case: The FogBlock4Trust solution is planned as a global institution/provider accreditation and credential verification system. It will support the use of one-way encryption, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, Zero-Knowledge-Proofs, and an improved Proof-of-Signature consensus algorithm. Exploiting these methods and technologies for providing end-users with full privacy-preserving distributed accreditation and verification services is the goal of FogBlock4Trust.
Scenario: The assumed scenario for the demo is that there are issuers of online credentials, in a zero-knowledge setting. A real-world example would be a group of universities providing trustable digital copies of certifications from students to each other. Such a setting (a group of issuers, a multitude of certificates/documents, and a large number of single users who can access the system for certain tasks) can be found in a range of domains.
Demo: The 20-minute demo shows how cloud and fog computing can be enhanced with blockchain features.
Please join us on Tuesday, March 29 from 09:45 CET for a TruBlo-themed online event “TruBlo initiatives against disinformation: media and digital technologies” organised and hosted by TruthSeekers’ Chain, a project from the First Open Call of TruBlo.
You will have the chance to hear from ATC about TruBlo (NGI initiative), learn from Deutsche Welle and Thomson Reuters about disinformation and the media industry, and hear from TruBlo teams such as TruthSeekers’ Chain, FAKE, OttCT and TrueBees how they innovate towards trustable content using blockchain technology.
Settlemint, a company from Belgium, offers a low-code platform enabling any company to start projects, with simple steps and a visual overview of set-up, costs and tracking of performance. TruBlo invited Settlemint to talk about their low-code platform for fast blockchain onboarding.
Settlemint is a tech start-up from Belgium, five years in business by now and a leader in this particular field. There are a number of reasons why making it easier to launch blockchain projects will meet a lot of demand.
Firstly, there is by now much interest in how established businesses can actually use blockchain technology, in order to enhance and extend their workflows.
Secondly, there is a severe scarcity of developers who have experience with blockchain. This means that only a few companies can start exploring blockchain right now.
With Settlemint it is possible to get started much fast, connect data from your current cloud and then explore the options with a variety of available blockchain protocols. Settlemint offers a cost calculator, provides a visual overview and all other needed components.
We want to hear about the Settlemint platform and see it in action. Stefan Günther from Settlemint will provide an overview and a short presentation in our one-hour event.
The event is organized jointly by Settlemint and TruBlo, an EU-funded project funding innovative approaches towards “trusted content on future blockchains”. https://www.trublo.eu
News and updates from the intersection of trust, content and blockchain. Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 49 seconds. Contains 965 words.
FEBRUARY 7, 2022
This week:
Info event for TruBlo open call 3
Facebook shrinks (a little) and loses (a lot of) stock value
Pecan gets funding for predictive analytics
Dune Analytics enables blockchain dashboards
China designates blockchain test areas
The newsletter is brought to you by the TruBlo project: We are funding 45 early-stage ideas for “trusted content on future blockchains”.
The current open call #3 is available until March 30, 2022. Consider applying if you have a good idea.
Information event: How to apply for TruBlo open call 3 – February 8, 11:00 CET
Join us for this one-hour event on February 8, 11:00 CET. What we cover: How to get funded by TruBlo and how to apply. Mirko Ross from Asvin GmbH will report how their project D-SBOM got funding (open call 2). Further, he will talk about why they participated. The info event is organized in collaboration with Berlin Partner, an economic development agency initiated by the city of Berlin.
A second spy firm exploited an iPhone security flaw
Last week, we linked to articles where a human rights activist reported how her iPhone was hacked using the NSO Pegasus software. This week, Reuters reports that another spy software firm also used the security flaw. Apple fixed the flaw in September 2021. The exploit allowed for forced entry and did not require any installation of malware by the user.
Machine Learning “lacks access” to training data against bias
Machine Learning researchers questioned in a survey said that they “lack access” to datasets that would help train their models. This would be needed to avoid biased judgement and other ethical issues. ML models tended to make biased recommendations in the past, e.g. when judging criminal suspects based on available data.
Have you seen “Line goes up” and what do you think?
“Let me tell you a story”, these are the opening words of Dan Olson, creator of “Line Goes Up – The Problem with NFTs”. The YouTube video is a deep (and lengthy) criticism of the current NFT (non-fungible token) market. Published on January 21, 2022, the video has already reached four million views. Olson NFTs says NFTs are currently “the topic that sucks all the air out of the room”. Crypto news website “Coindesk” published a review of the video, but by and large, agreed that the views presented in “Line goes up”.
The company behind Bored Ape NFT seeks multi-million dollar investment
Despite the many doubts about whether NFTs are a sustainable business, companies have no big problem finding investors. The “Financial Times” reports that Yuga Labs, the company behind the “Bored Ape Yacht Club“, is in talks with top venture capital firms such as Andreesen Horowitz at a valuation of $4bn to $5bn. NFTs from the platform have been bought by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dog, which gave the platform some publicity. In other news: Buzz Feed revealed the identities of the founders. Interesting to read. A key motivation of the investigators was that you can’t hold a company accountable if you don’t know who founded it.
Meta (the former Facebook) reported a slight decline in the number of users for the first time. As a result, the stock price dropped by almost 25% overnight, wiping out roughly $200 billion of book value. Casey Newton has a post reflecting on the company’s long, long growth period and what comes next.
Pecan gets $66M funding for predictive analytics software
Predicting the future is considered the next level in the analytics industry, and the field is called “predictive analytics”. The core idea is that if you can understand many variables, you might be able to tell what is next. Reliable predictions would enable business planning into the future, which is why there are high hopes for significant revenues once there is a solution. Last week, Pecan, a company based in Israel, received a funding of $66 million after already getting $35 million in May last year.
Blockchain Bridge Wormhole loses Ether worth $320 but manages to get it back
Sometimes stories are like a rollercoaster. Example: This week, Wormhole, a popular blockchain bridge, reported losing access to $325 million worth of Ether.
The Verge has insights how a vulnerability made this possible:
“To carry out the attack, the attacker managed to forge a valid signature for a transaction that allowed them to freely mint 120,000 wETH — a “wrapped” Ethereum equivalent on the Solana blockchain, with value equivalent to $325 million at the time of the theft — without first inputting an equivalent amount. This was then exchanged for around $250 million in Ethereumthat was sent from Wormhole to the hackers’ account, effectively liquidating a large amount of the platform’s Ethereum funds that were being held as collateral for transactions on the Solana blockchain.”
Later the Wormhole team sent an offer of $10 million if assets were returned. The message was embedded in an transaction sent to the Ether wallet where the funds were now stored. In between the platform announced that is had replenished the lost Ether, out of funds from their investor.
Dune Analytics, a blockchain analytics platform, raises $69.4 million in funding
With only 16 employees, Dune Analytics has achieved unicorn status, based on the new investment of $69,4 million by Coatue, an investment company. In a Coindesk article, Dune CEO Fredrik Haga is quoted saying:
“We had not made a single slide or Excel sheet – they simply came to us, had extreme conviction in what we were doing, and had done a lot of outside-in research, and gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse” (Source: Coindesk).
The company has an exciting model: To make crypto data accessible, Dune Analytics enables community-based analysis. The analysts are external experts or enthusiasts who provide interested users with data insights. For their work, they get payments in crypto.
El Salvador Rejects IMF Call to Abandon Bitcoin as Legal TenderLINK
China designates 15 blockchain pilot zones, including Shanghai and Beijing. The goal is to carry out projects in “various fields of manufacturing, energy, government” LINK
South Africa urges users to be more careful with crypto exchanges LINK
Software-Update: With iOS 15.4 beta Apple will introduce and update face recognition while users wear a COVID mask. LINK
While we wait for the real thing: Over 500 apps already use the term metaverse to attract users. LINK
There is a government plan to raise a 30 per cent tax on crypto income in India LINK
82% of all Indians would invest in crypto if the government allows it LINK
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Visual: Benefits Source: FileChain (Screenshot Website)
