CCN Every so often a blockchain project that comes along that knocks your socks off and Kleros may be just the that one. Steeped in intellectual concepts, Kleros delivers a decentralised organisation that promises fast, affordable and transparent justice for all. Given that we live in a time were justice is perceived to the preserve of the rich, this platform may very well change the world. Let’s start with the name and philosophical origins. Kleros derives from the Greek. Jury duty was much sought after in Ancient Greece and moreover paid. Citizens wishing to be picked for jury duty would submit tokens, called pinakions, into an allotment machine called a kleroterion. A justice officer would use a dice on the side of the machine eliminating random names with the remaining people selected. Fast forward into more recent history and consider the work of American economist Thomas Schelling. He set up an experiment where he asked students to rendezvous in New York without giving either party a time or place. The most popular choice selected was the information booth in Grand Central Station at noon. This introduced the concept of the Focal Point, often called the Schelling point, where people can […]
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From yesterday’s Irish Times – a decade on in the recession – however, I was much more upbeat about my future. I have turned the corner, I am proud of my achievements, and the future is looking very rosy! Irish Times Jillian Godsil lost her home in the recession and was one of the the first women to go bankrupt under Ireland’s new bankruptcy regulations. “Until 2008, life was very good. I was happily married, or so I thought, running my own PR and marketing company, living in a big house we’d bought in 1996. “Then two things went wrong. I discovered to my horror that I wasn’t happily married, and we started separation proceedings. The second thing was that my ex had got into property. The house had been worth €1.6 million at one stage, and it seemed to make sense to release some equity. So we had huge debts that we couldn’t pay. “It happened so quickly. My husband went back to the UK and declared bankruptcy. I made a video to try to sell the house on YouTube. The video was quirky and it went viral. I got a cash offer of €500,00 in 2011, and I put […]
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CharityStars, Aiming For The Stars
CCN ‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.’ Oscar Wilde Four years ago Francesco Nazari Fusetti set up CharityStars, a fund raising platform for charities. It linked celebrities with charitable causes, delivering funds to charities in a transparent, online manner. Initially Fusetti approached celebrities, looking to get them to donate their time, possessions or support for charity. Over time, this has changed and charities began instead to approach the CharityStars platform to post their projects with their own celebrity ambassadors; CharityStars having proven an ability to deliver – matching causes, celebrities and donors – the latter now numbering 40,000 active people. Fusetti is very proud of his organisation pointing to the $10 million raised since the formation of the company with mainstream charities benefitting such as WWF, UNICEF and Save the Children. With the original office located in his native Italy and still accounting for more than 30% of all income generated, new offices have been opened in the UK and US. This is important as while the donors and bidders are worldwide, many of the celebrity experiences on offer are geographically based – such as lunch with a star or a […]
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Why Hashgraph Could Replace The Blockchain – Dublin Meetup Sparks Interest
The first meetup for hashgraph enthusiasts in Dublin happened last night in the Bank of Ireland Workbench in Montrose. Ably fortified by pizza and coffee, approximately 20 people showed up to listen to Conor O’Higgins, content manager in Ireland for hashgraph. A show of hands at the start showed the audience was already aware of the technology with over half hailing from an engineering background. There were some cryptocurrency traders attending as well. Conor stepped through the interesting aspects of the technology, talking though the consensus algorithms, Byzantine Emperors and the gossip about gossip protocols. For more information on the technology visit this article. (November 29). Questions from the meetup concentrated on how hashgraph charged per transactions – looking at the mining approach from Blockchain. O’Higgins pointed out that currently, hashgraph is only deployed in private, permissioned-based networks. ‘Real use examples included CULedger,’ he explained, ‘which is a credit union consortium supported by the efforts of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the Mountain West Credit Union Association (MWCUA).’ Other engineers present were familiar with the Credit Unions example. ‘It’s a situation where individual Credit Unions don’t know or trust each other but they need to transact,’ said one engineer. ‘Hashgraph offers the […]
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The Difference Between A TGE And An ICO, Gabriele Giancola Explains More
CCN We find out more about loyalty programs on the Blockchain delivered by qiibee, a decentralized, Ethereum blockchain-based loyalty ecosystem. Its name, which is derived from qii for energy and bee for the one of the world’s most important insects, is not the only different thing about this company. It is also looking at a Token Generation Event (TGE) next year. A TGE is different from an ICO in legal terms according to co-founder and CEO Gabriele Giancola. Incorporated in Zug, the heart of the Crypto Valley outside Zurich, Giancola says that the Swiss like to keep things above board and that hosting a TGE is easier to run than an ICO and certainly it makes issues like regulation much more straightforward. Currently there is a hardcap of 70,000 ETH to be raised in Q2 of next year. The token is a qiibeePoint or QBX. qiibee is a classic example of a traditional technology solution pivoting onto the blockchain for two main reasons: scalable data capture and security. qiibee began life trying to solve the loyalty program platform. Giancola and his brother, both co founders, looked at the loyalty program space and saw a lot of problems. Loyalty Programs are […]
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The Crypto Valley Of Zug, Why Switzerland Is The Place To Be For Bitcoin, Ethereum And Blockchain Initiatives
CCN Coming to a city near you… At first glance it might seem an unusual choice for the hottest tech location in Europe, if not EMEA, but Zug, named for its fishing rights is both a town and canton in Switzerland and home to a little under 30,000 residents. It is an affluent area, a low tax region and a base for several multinational companies. In 2001, it first sparked to international recognition when a disgruntled gunman shot 15 people, including himself, in the Zug Cantonal Parliament in what became known as the Zug Massacre. This year, Zug was very much back in the news for quite different reasons. In January 2017 a not for profit organisation was formed: the Crypto Valley Association (CVA) headquartered in Zug and formed for the express purpose of attracting and supporting blockchain companies and organisations to Switzerland. Prior to the formal establishment of CVA, the Crypto Valley in Zug had been the brain child of Johann Grevers who based his cryptofinance startup Monetas in Zug in 2013. He outlined all sorts of positive reasons why Switzerland was attractive for blockchain companies and soon attracted broad support from numerous individuals, startups, corporates, service providers, industry […]
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Indorse – Spelling The End Of The Dishonest CV…
Just how do you know if what people claim in their CV is true? For a time, google seemed to deliver an endless source of data on other people. You could search for people online and see where they had worked. Then social media made it even easier to track people – or so it seemed. In the last few years prospective employees have been warned that when they attend interviews, the company looking to hire will include a trawl of their social media to see if what they say is true or to ascertain the calibre of the person. Of course there have already been cases where legal claims have been made against individuals abusing social media, but even harmless activities may be seen as detrimental to prospective employment. Applying to a company where the CEO is teetotal? Then perhaps don’t post those post party pictures on FB. Looking to work in a company that works in pet supplies? Perhaps posting pictures of you supporting the local hunt might not be so clever. The list is endless. However, while verifying your character online is one thing, verifying your career details is another. Most CVs have referees which a thorough […]
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What have the pope, weapons of mass destruction and student protests have in common?
First published in CryptoCoin.News Angel Versetti, CEO of Ambrosus featured, and helping to demonstrate what have the pope, weapons of mass destruction and student protests have in common? Why is he in the news? CEO of newly formed Ambrosus, a blockchain ecosystem to assure quality of products, and having signed a partnership with INS Ecosystem Most bizarre thing he has done? Lectured the Pope on blockchain in the Vatican Most unusual job? Versetti’s first job in the UN was at the Department of Weapons of Mass Destruction, where he used satellite imagery and intelligence to find out where Americans and Russians were hiding their nuclear warheads Low tolerance of? Stupidity and Hypocrisy Interview: It’s not every day that a Russian-born, half Italian, Swiss resident quotes an Irish writer in interview. Oscar Wilde to be exact and the quote is about common sense being remarkably uncommon. Angel Versetti uses the quote as a throwaway line in relation to madness that surrounds ICOs. ‘The ICO industry is a bit of a circus,’ he says. ‘Blockchain is an amazing technology but the early emphasis on changing the world has been overtaken by money.’ It might seem ironic that an entrepreneur in the […]
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Peter Fedchenkov, Disrupting The Global Grocery Marketplace, INS Ecosystem ICO Launches Dec 4th
First Published in CryptoCoin,News.com Despite a very handsome CV littered with impressive names including Harvard Business School, Goldman Sachs and Baring Vostock Capital Partners, Peter Fedchenkov, founder of the INS Ecosystem, insists he is a grocer at heart and that the grocery trade is in his genes. His grandfather had a wholesale grocery business when, just after the collapse of the USSR in 1993, his retail distribution channels disappeared, As a result his grandfather was forced into selling groceries directly to consumers at small market stalls, Then he discovered the approach of placing ads in regional newspapers to sell goods directly to his customers; thereby creating an early mail-order grocery business where he no longer relied on the middle man. Four years ago Fedchenkov put his education and genes into practice, and co-founded Instamart in Moscow – an upgraded internet of things approach to his grandfather’s business. Today Instamart is the largest online grocery delivery business in Russia, with 100,000 orders processed every day. Instamart possesses no stock, warehouses or fleet but picks fresh produce to order from a number of key grocery outlets and ships it to the customer the same day. Compared to the UK where online food […]
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Hashgraph – can it give Blockchain a run for its money?
Ken Anderson, admin of the official Hashgraph Telegram Dev Group as well as CTO for Irish ICO Mingo, believes that Hashgraph has the potential to either eliminate or upgrade the many issues facing the Blockchain. ‘It makes sense that the next step is not another public Blockchain, but a new distributed ledger technology,’ he says. ‘Development is all about improving technology, not getting a piggy back just for the sake of it.’ Maybe it is his background as an ex-Military Intelligence Specialist in the US Army that makes Anderson somewhat fearless when it comes to evaluating new technology. ‘I’m committed to vetting Hashgraph,’ he says. Anderson and his developers in Mingo have been given permission to go inside the technology but it will be several months before he will commit to his final verdict on the new distributed ledger. So what is Hashgraph and why might it have the potential to overthrow Blockchain? Firstly, it should be noted that the Hashgraph platform, which is a distributed ledger developed by Swirlds, is currently a private ledger, does not have an ICO planned nor does it have a cryptocurrency. It does however, take some pretty big swipes at the problematic issues facing […]
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