The Saudi Embassy in Washington said the money "will save lives, help facilitate the return of displaced Syrians and help ensure that ISIS cannot reemerge to threaten Syria, its neighbors, or plan attacks against the international community."
The money will go toward agriculture, education, roadworks, rubble removal and water service for the region, which is now largely held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.




Saudi Arabia said early on Friday that it has contributed $100 million to northeast Syria for "stabilization projects" in areas once held by the Islamic State group and now controlled by U.S.-backed forces.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington said the money "will save lives, help facilitate the return of displaced Syrians and help ensure that ISIS cannot reemerge to threaten Syria, its neighbors, or plan attacks against the international community." ISIS is an alternate acronym for the militant group.

The money will go toward agriculture, education, roadworks, rubble removal and water service for the region, which is now largely held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

"This substantial contribution will play a critical role in the coalition's efforts to revitalize communities, such as Raqqa, that have been devastated by ISIS terrorists," the embassy said in a statement.

The Syrian city of Raqqa was the seat of the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed "caliphate" until it was liberated by the U.S.-backed forces last year. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council is the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

In May, Syrian President Bashar Assad threatened to attack areas held by the U.S.-backed forces. Saudi Arabia long has opposed Assad's government, funding and arming rebels who challenged his rule as the country's 2011 Arab Spring protests devolved into a civil war and then a regional proxy battlefield.

The U.S. military operates air bases and outposts in the Kurdish-administered region. The Saudi Embassy described the $100 million as part of a pledge made by Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir during a U.S.-sponsored conference in Brussels about the Islamic State group in July at NATO headquarters.




SOURCE : https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/17/saudi-arabia-says-its-given-100-million-to-northeast-syria.html

DxChain ICO Review

The DxChain ICO and DX token sale are raising funds toward a decentralized platform for big data, powered by a compute-centric blockchain protocol. Through a purpose-built, multi-chain architecture, DxChain provides a comprehensive solution for data acquisition, computation and storage, with an emphasis on privacy and security.

The platform integrates components of Hadoop, such as high-level language support for data analysis and a framework for machine learning, combining proven data processing tools with the benefits of blockchain.

DxChain ICO Value Proposition
DxChain proposes a decentralized platform for big data as a solution to the issue of data monopolization by large enterprises. Huge volumes of data and services are currently controlled by only a handful of corporations. For smaller entities, accessing and analyzing large data sets holds enormous potential but remains both technologically and financially prohibitive. DxChain is designed to provide a decentralized solution to this issue with a multi-chain architecture that handles data acquisition, computation and storage on a single network.

As part of the network infrastructure, DxChain will incorporate decentralized components of Hadoop, a leading open-source utility suite for distributed computing. A tokenized reward mechanism for sharing data will offer access to untapped sources of data, incorporating features such as anonymous sharing and encryption to reinforce user security on the network.

DxChain envisages a myriad of use cases for the platform, including a data exchange market, analytics service network, and foundation for the development of dApps.   

DxChain incorporates a “chains-on-chain” architecture comprised of a master chain and two side chains; namely, the Computing Side Chain (CSC) and Data Side Chain (DSC). The CSC and DSC communicate with the master chain via smart contracts. Even though the chains are interconnected through smart contracts and microservices, each side chain operates its own consensus mechanism. Below is a diagram of the network.

 

The Master Chain serves as an Ethereum-compatible, immutable ledger to record asset-related transactions on the network. After data processing tasks are completed, transaction, state and receipt information is stored on the Master Chain via an accounts-based model.   

The Data Side Chain (DSC) facilitates the transfer and storage of data via a decentralized p2p network such as IPFS. Data is broken down into pieces and stored on the p2p file network, while corresponding metadata and a hash of each fragment are recorded on chain. A virtual logic layer called the DxChain Storage Layer sits between the DSC and p2p distributed storage to facilitate the distribution of storage tasks, data transfer and verification. The DSC utilizes a Proof of Spacetime (PoST) consensus mechanism.

The Computing Side Chain (CSC) provides an environment for organizing and distributing parallel computing tasks between users and nodes on the network. When a user makes a computation request, it is propagated through the network to miners. Upon completion, the result is sent to the CSC for verification. Verification relies on one of two mechanisms depending on the task: verification game (between nodes who stake tokens) or Provable Data Computation (PDS). The CSC then saves a time-bound log of the task and results. 

DX is the native protocol token of DxChain, serving as a unit of exchange for transactions, storage and computation. DX provides the reward mechanism for nodes that offer resources or validation services on the network. DX will initially be released as an ERC20 token until launch of the mainnet.

DxChain ICO Team
The DxChain team is comprised of 12 members. Profiles of the 3 Co-founders are provided below. Complete information on the whole team and advisory board is available here.

Allan Zhang (Co-founder) has over a decade of experience in cybersecurity. Allan spent the first 4 years of his career as a Software Engineer at Lucent Technology. For the following 8 years, Allan served as a Senior Security and Vulnerability Research Engineer with nCircle, TELUS, and Palo Alto Networks, before moving on to found his own startup. In 2013, Allan established Trustlook AI Cybersecurity, launching a line of malware threat protection products for mobile and IoT devices. He has served as the CEO of Trustlook for the past 5 years.

Wei Wang (Co-founder and Chief Scientist) is the former Principal Scientist for Blockchain Database Research at AT&T, where he spent 1.5 years focused on integration of privacy preserving computation and deep learning with blockchain. Prior to joining AT&T, Wei Wang spent 2 years as the Principal Scientist of Big Data and Parallel Computing at Hortonworks, building and designing a big data platform based on Hadoop. Wei Wang has an additional 2 years of experience as a Data Scientist with Apixio and is a certified Apache Hadoop 2.0 Developer. He holds an MS from Columbia University.

James Li (Co-Founder) spent over a year as the Manager of the Mobile Department at Trustlook before joining DxChain full time. He has over 12 years of experience at nCircle Network Security as a Principal Security Engineer. Prior to that, James spent 5 years as a Senior Software Developer at Lucent Technologies.   

On the advising end, DxChain is receiving support from seasoned blockchain advisors Kevin Hsu, Founder of BlockVC, and Leo Wang, Founding Partner of PreAngel.

DxChain ICO Strengths and Opportunities
DxChain recently debuted a demo of their Alpha MVP, called Rocky Mountains, which can be viewed here. As an initial MVP demo of DxChain, Rocky Mountains demonstrates storage and retrieval of files on a 5 node network. The demo also introduces the mining and storage functionality of nodes, and the successful upload and download of a test file.

With a testnet release scheduled for Q3 2018 and mainnet in Q1 2019, the debut of the Alpha MVP before the public sale provides an important indication of the team’s ability to follow through on their commitments.

The first enterprise partnership that will leverage DxChain is with Trustlook, Allan Zhang’s own company. Founded in 2013, Trustlook produces AI-based cybersecurity products to protect against malware. Enterprise users of Trustlook products include Huawei, Oppo and Qualcomm. The partnership is significant in that Trustlook provides the built-in virus scan engine for Huawei mobile phones currently in use on hundreds of millions of devices. A cursory glance at Google Play shows beyond the built-in engine on Huawei devices, Trustlook’s mobile security app has 10 million+ installs.

To test the product in a real use case scenario, DxChain plan to launch a dApp via Trustlook rewarding users for sharing behavioral data, which will in turn be analyzed and utilized by partner companies. The partnership with Trustlook provides a channel to streamline acquisition of users via an existing, successful product- a crucial element most competing projects lack.

DxChain has also established a partnership with QuarkChain. DxChain plan to provide data computation and storage functions to QuarkChain. In turn, QuarkChain will assist with improving the performance of the data and computation chains on the DxChain network through sharding. The two projects also plan to collaborate on building a shared ecosystem of partners and users.

Contribution from the QuarkChain team toward development of DxChain represents another positive indicator for the tech progress, as the high-throughput capacity of QuarkChain has already been successfully demonstrated and independently verified.

DxChain ICO Weaknesses and Threats
With three separate core functions built into one platform, DxChain faces competition in the transaction, distributed computing and data storage markets. The distributed computing space is rife with contenders such as Golem, iExec, and Sonm.

Decentralized file storage presents a similar situation; Filecoin, Storj and Arweave represent just a few of the many players vying for dominance in the space.

In the protocol realm, the partnership with QuarkChain is highly strategic, as DxChain will benefit from the success of a project that would otherwise make for more competition.

While the project is up against some of the biggest players in the decentralized computing and storage markets, the value proposition of a comprehensive big data platform could prove crucial to adoption. DxChain offers a full suite of data processing features that would otherwise require the use of disparate blockchains. Leveraging this factor toward the goal of user adoption will be vital for the long-term success of the project.

Targeting adoption from the individual up to the enterprise, the success of the DxChain ICO will also rely heavily on a go-to-market strategy involving partnerships beyond Co-founder Allan Zhang’s own company. Building a thriving and sustainable ecosystem from the ground up will ultimately depend on a strong user base at both the supply and demand ends. We will be closely monitoring progress indicators to this effect as the project progresses.

The Verdict on the DxChain ICO
The DxChain ICO offers an all-in-one, decentralized platform that targets three areas where the big data industry is ripe for disruption.

The novel concept, solid track record of the team and timely release of the Alpha MVP before the public sale make the DxChain ICO a standout project.



Project Name: DxChain

Website: https://www.dxchain.com/

White Paper: https://docsend.com/view/8w3fman

Crowdsale Hard Cap: $21.5 Million

Total Supply: 100,000,000,000

Token Distribution: 22% to investors, 48% to ecosystem, mining and community, 10% marketing and business partners, 10% to team, 10% to foundation

Price per Token: 1 DX = $0.0014

Maximum Market Cap (at crowdsale price): $97 Million



SOURCE :  https://cryptobriefing.com/dxchain-ico-review-dx-token-analysis/

Uranus ICO Overview


The Uranus ICO and URAC token sale are raising funds for a platform to organize unutilized resources of everyday computational devices on a decentralized network. The Uranus network will serve as a juncture for computing resource providers and customers, allowing any compatible device to contribute spare compute power in exchange for a reward. Uranus presents the platform as a cheaper, more efficient alternative to centralized cloud computing service providers.

Uranus ICO Value Proposition
The Uranus platform facilitates aggregation and utilization of spare compute resources from devices like workstations, mobile devices and home computers. Users who require computational power access the network through a client interface, submit a request, and pay the corresponding about of Uranus Tokens (URAC), at which point a smart contract takes effect. The network selects nodes with the necessary compute power in accordance with the requested task and runs a computation. Once the task is complete, the output results are returned and settlement is completed automatically, releasing the token reward to the compute providers.

The Uranus Chain consists of a four-layer architecture:

The Storage layer provides a ledger of both transaction data and compute power container information, such as available CPU, memory and disk resources.

The Network layer facilitates interconnection and exchange of data on the chain. A data channel contains statistics on the computational resources available to the network and a management channel, or Computing Power Container Engine (CPCE), automates scheduling, deployment and management to maximize network coordination.

The Protocol layer runs the consensus mechanism of the platform. Uranus deploys a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) + BFT hybrid consensus algorithm.

The Extension Layer houses the business logic components of the chain, including the smart contract module and infrastructure components for dApp integration.




URAC is the native token for the Uranus Network. The token provides a store of value for transacting computational power, and also is integral to network governance, as a staking mechanism to gain voting power and elect validators. URAC will initially be released as an ERC20 token until launch of the mainnet.

Uranus ICO Team
James Jiang (Founder and CEO) spent the last 7 years as CEO of Beijing Cloud Times Technology Co., which he co-founded in 2011, developing enterprise-level cloud computing products. In 2001, James established a ZTE subsidiary company Shenzhen ZTE Integrated Telecom Ltd./ Shenzhen ZTE Mobile Telecom Co. Ltd, serving as a General Manager and Board Chairman until 2006. He holds 2 master’s degrees; in Mathematics from Texas State University and in Operational Research from Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

Hally Han (Co-founder and CTO) is also the Co-founder and CTO of Beijing Cloud Times Tech. Prior to that, Hally spent over a year as Chief System Architect with iSoft Infrastructure Software Co. He has an additional 4 years experience as Co-founder and Chief Architect of a video surveillance technology company.

Fei Li (CPO) has served as CPO at Beijing Cloud Times Tech for over 6 years. As a Product Manager, he has an additional year of experience with iSoft Infrastructure Software Co. Fei has another 4 years prior experience as a Technical Manager between various IT companies.

Mingbo Li (Software Architect and Algorithm Expert) has worked as a Manager with Beijing Cloud Times Technology for nearly 7 years. In addition, he has 2 years of experience as a Software Architecture Manager.

Yaowen Chen (Blockchain Expert) has spent the last 2 years as an AI Expert at Shanghai Higgs Network Tech, an AI-based recruitment solution provider in Shanghai. His has an additional 3 years of experience with developing machine-learning algorithms. Before venturing into machine learning, he spend 6 years as a software engineer. His LinkedIn profile does not contain information on his role with Uranus at the time of publishing.

Cheng Zhang (Senior Expert at Blockchain) is a Co-founder of Shanghai Higgs Network Tech, where he spent over 2 years. According to his LinkedIn, he has served for the last 2 years as Technical Director with another AI recruitment company also located in Shanghai.

The Uranus ICO has 12 full time team members, along with 6 “technical advisors”. While the technical advisors are distinguished from the “advisory team” on the Uranus website, they also do not contribute directly to the project but could be mistaken as full time team members from their order of display. The full details on the team and both sets of advisors are available here.

Uranus ICO Strengths and Opportunities
The Uranus ICO team share a fair deal of experience in the cloud computing domain and overall appear to be highly-competent developers. Adding credence to the business acumen of the executive team, Co-founders James Jiang and Hally Han have firsthand know-how developing cloud computing products and onboarding enterprise clients.

In addition, the product #DevelopmentTeam  includes tech veterans specialized in blockchain, cryptology and AI. The project also solicits support from several well-established technical advisors, who could bring important resources throughout the product development phase with their expert knowledge of the core technology underlying the Uranus platform.

Uranus ICO Weaknesses and Threats
The Uranus ICO has set 3 milestones which correspond to the level of product development and user scaling, with the first version of the platform initially scheduled for a private beta test release in Q3/2018. Versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 are set for release between Q4/2018 through Q1/2019, each corresponding with a target number of users: 10,000, 100,000, and 500,000. The final full-scale “Ecological” version, will launch in Q2/2019. With the release of a prototype already delayed until the end of September, the first milestone has been pushed ahead.

Along with the delay in technical progress, the 3 project milestones include references to continued user acquisition and an ecosystem growth strategy targeting enterprises, but an articulated strategy for accomplishing these goals is absent.

With no announcements either regarding strategic partnerships to pilot the platform, the Uranus ICO is missing progress on a front that is critical to success in this highly-saturated space. If we consider the number of distributed computing ICOs targeting the same market, which have already put significant effort into ecosystem growth, an aggressive, coherent go-to-market strategy is an absolute necessity for the future prospect of Uranus.

Without any significant headway in the tech or business realm, we invariably turn back to the team for evidence of past success that would indicate a higher probability for a repeat performance. While the team are undoubtedly well-experienced with cloud-computing development, several significant shortcomings are apparent. The team consists entirely of developers, with nobody to fulfill marketing or business development functions, which may provide one explanation for the absence of indicators toward current or future scaling efforts.

When weighing the value of the Co-founders’ previous experience founding and running Beijing Cloud Times Tech, the differences between launching an enterprise-level product and a decentralized computing platform are substantial. The success of decentralized platforms like Uranus rests heavily on effective user acquisition and growth strategies, an area where the team has limited experience.

The Verdict on the Uranus ICO
The Uranus ICO is the latest contender in the distributed computing race. Competition aside, crucial indicators for a strong project are missing at this stage. While the lead team has experience founding a company in the cloud computing industry, the process did not involve quickly scaling a large user base of individuals. As the team is solely comprised of developers, there are no visible resources to dedicate toward marketing and growth efforts.

Coming up short on 3 basic determinants of a solid project, the Uranus ICO is a pass.

We are not going to participate in the Uranus ICO.

What Would Change Our Minds?
A deliverable from the team demonstrating the viability of the MVP
Addition of more developers with solid blockchain experience and a marketing/biz dev team who has prior success scaling a product
Inclusion of a detailed roadmap and go-to-market strategy with milestones for product development and a coherent strategy for ecosystem growth

Today’s Date: 8/4/18

Project Name: Uranus

Token Symbol: URAC

Website: http://Uranus.ai/

White Paper: Uranus Whitepaper

Crowdsale Hardcap: 35,000 ETH

Total Supply: 3,500,000,000

Token Distribution: 35% to token sale, 3% to seed investors, 15% to team, 7% to ecosystem, 40% to mining reward

Fully-diluted Market Cap (at crowdsale price): $45,000,000 USD

Accepted Payments: ETH

Countries Excluded: US, China, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea

Whitelist: https://t.me/UranusAnn

Important Dates: TBA

Expected Token Release: TBA

Additional Information: https://t.me/Uraners





SOURCE :  https://cryptobriefing.com/uranus-ico-review-and-urac-token-analysis/

Trias ICO Review And TRY Token Analysis
Now that the bubble has burst, the hard work of creating mass adoption begins.


Trias ICO Overview
The Trias ICO and TRY token sale are raising funds to launch a decentralized, general-purpose computation infrastructure based on trust, to ensure distributed systems behave in a deterministic manner. Offering a product that combines trusted hardware with graph computing, Trias aims to increase throughput across a wide array of dApps and underlying platforms through an advanced development framework and collaborative ecosystem.

Trias ICO Value Proposition
The possibility of running general-purpose dApps on common devices like PCs and mobile phones presents a number of challenges that require attention for a viable ecosystem to flourish. Reaching consensus via mechanisms like PoW requires high amounts of computation resources, and network congestion presents a limitation on the number of programs that can run in parallel.

The layer 1 solution offered by Trias enhances public blockchains through enforcement of trusted relationships between consensus nodes, reducing the amount of overhead resources expended on network communication (and thereby, increasing tp/s).

The layer 1 solution in essence serves to prove block generation occurs as written, recording transaction validation details, ordering of blocks and corresponding fees, while allowing all nodes to generate blocks concurrently. Employing Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) for attestation, Trias mitigates potential threats to transaction speed through HashGraph, cutting down on the need for network communication and enhancing propagation. Trias has three subsystems:

Leviatom provides a network of TEEs to ensure the correct execution of general-purpose software. At its core, Leviatom utilizes a Heterogeneous Consensus Graph (HCGraph) algorithm, which combines multiple TEE hardware technologies with graph computing similar to Hashgraph. Employment of TEE in conjunction with graph computation algorithms allows Trias to quickly complete attestations among a large-scale network of distributed nodes.

Prometh offers a traceable development framework for establishing the functions and security properties of general-purpose software. With Prometh, critical information from the lifecycle of any software is recorded on the blockchain, including stages of development and distribution. Prometh also motivates network participants to apply formal verification through both automatic and manual examinations on the recorded information.

MagCarta is a smart contract language for defining dApp consensus strategies. MagCarta schedules and coordinates Prometh applications on the Leviatom computing network. It also acts to enforce self-defined consensus algorithms for determining the correctness of each invocation, and provides a means to set reward parameters for Leviatom and Prometh contributors.

The Trias token (TRY) provides the sole means of executing transactions and providing rewards on the network. The Trias network has three types of nodes: verifiers, routers and executors. Verifiers examine the trustworthiness of surrounding nodes through TEE-based “verification as mining”. Routers collect verification data, disseminating information through gossip algorithms to network peers, constructing a “web-of-trust” in the process. Finally, executors run Prometh applications and are rewarded for their contribution of compute and storage resources.

Trias ICO Team
Ruan Anbang is the Founder and CEO of Trias and parent company Octa Innovations.
He holds a MEng in Computer Security from Peking University and a PhD in Computer Science from Oxford. Before bringing Trusted Computing expertise into the business realm, Anbang spent nearly 2 years as a Research Associate at the Oxford e-Research Center focused on Trusted Cloud Computing development. He has 21 published articles in the field of Trusted Computing, spanning the course of a decade.

Wei Ming is the Co-founder and CTO of both Trias and Octa Innovations. He holds an MSc and PhD from Peking University. Prior to co-founding Octa Innovations, Wei Ming spent 6 years at Beijing Shenzhou Aerospace Software Technology Co., where he was a Lead Software Architect.

Hao Shuang serves as CMO of Trias and PR Director for Octa Innovations. Shuang has previous experience as a PR Manager at both Tsinghua University and NetEase. From 2014 to 2016, Shuang spent 2 years with China News Service as a journalist. She holds a Master’s degree in Media Management from Hong Kong Baptist University.

A complete list of the 8 founding team members can be found in section 6 of the Trias Whitepaper. Trias has yet to publicly announce project advisors.

Trias ICO Strengths and Opportunities
Many blockchain projects that incorporate TEEs tend to rely solely on integration with Intel SGX. Reliance on a specific hardware device invariably leads to a dependence on the centralized body responsible for the overall integrity of the product. TEE-based solutions that are only compatible with one type of hardware device also leave open the possibility of vulnerabilities, such as the recently discovered weakness in Intel SGX by scientists at Ohio State University.

Trias breaks with this dependency on hardware technology from a single provider for attestation. Instead, support for a range of TEEs is provided by the network. Besides Intel SGX, Trias initially plans to support Intel TXT, ARM TrustZone, and TCG TPM.

The Trias team is at the forefront of TEE-based distributed systems. Parent company, Octa Innovations, focuses on developing information-security products that rely heavily on TEEs for trusted computing. The most recent offering by the company is a private blockchain-driven enterprise security system, implementing several of the core components that comprise Trias, including Prometh.

Ruan Anbang himself has a demonstrable track record of published research on trusted computing and distributed systems spanning a decade. The previous experience of the team developing and deploying TEE-integrated blockchain tech for enterprise application scenarios strongly supports the ambitions of the project. 

Trias ICO Weaknesses and Threats
While Trias has developed a partnership with Beijing University through the formation of a joint research lab, cooperation agreements with enterprises and other blockchains that would benefit from a layer integration have yet to be established.

Formation of real partnerships that demonstrate the myriad of potential use case scenarios of Trias will be an important stepping stone for the product. As of yet, progress in this area remains scarce and the roadmap provides little indication of what strategies Trias plans to deploy to this effect.

The Verdict on the Trias ICO
The Trias ICO offers an innovative product that leverages the benefits of hardware-based attestation with the high-throughput capability of graph computation algorithms to address crucial fault points in existing blockchain networks.

The established expertise of the core team in the realm of trusted computing and its application to distributed networks is a significant indicator toward the future prospects of the Trias ICO. While progress is still to be made building the ecosystem, an overall assessment of the fundamentals points to a strong project.

Additional Information

We have been in discussions with the Trias ICO team and our ratings are based on conversations and information that they have asked us to keep confidential. Please note that our review does take into consideration the token data that has been shared with us, but we have been specifically requested not to share the token metrics that we have seen at this point. We will share them as soon as they are made available by the team.

The Trias ICO team has a Telegram Group at https://t.me/triaslab and a Chinese group at https://t.me/TriasChinese for more immediate updates.


As a Top 5% rated project, we intend to participate and will make a medium bet on the Trias ICO.

We have rated hundreds of projects to unearth ICOs in which members of our team intend to invest.

We won’t often go into further depth on projects that we don’t consider as candidates for our investments after the initial rating process, which is why you will usually see our stamp on our detailed ICO reviews – they are the best we have found. However, on occasion, we might also rate a well-hyped project that does not meet our personal investing criteria.

The Crypto Briefing Top 5 stamp is awarded to ICO projects that we rate in the top 5% of all projects.

Today’s Date: 8/14/18

Project Name: Trias

Token Symbol: TRY

Website: https://www.trias.one/

White Paper: https://www.trias.one/whitepaper

Additional Information: http://t.me/triaslab


SOURCE:   https://cryptobriefing.com/trias-ico-review-try-token-analysis/

Bitcoin price surged more than 6% and traded towards the USD 6,500 resistance.
Ethereum, Ripple, BCH also rallied and tested important resistances.
Tenx, ETP, BTCP, nano, zcoin and qtum gained between 20-30%.

Bitcoin found a strong support near the USD 6,000 level once again and rebounded sharply. BTC/USD traded higher and broke the key resistance at USD 6,250 to test USD 6,500. Similarly, ripple, ethereum and bitcoin cash corrected higher and moved into a short-term bullish zone. Going forward, bitcoin must break USD 6,500 and ethereum needs to settle above USD 300 to retain gains. If not, the market could trim gains and move back into a bearish zone in the coming sessions.

Total market capitalization:



Bitcoin
Bitcoin price formed a base near the USD 6,000 level and rallied more than 6%. BTC/USD broke the USD 6,250 and USD 6,400 resistance levels to test the next barrier at USD 6,500. However, the price was rejected from the USD 6,500 zone and is currently (UTC 08:20 AM) trading near USD 6,420.
Should bitcoin buyers succeed in pushing the price above the USD 6,500 and USD 6,600 resistance levels, there could be more upsides towards USD 7,000. On the flip side, a failure may perhaps ignite bearish moves below USD 6,300.

Ethereum
Ethereum was rejected from the USD 250 support as it climbed more than 5% to trade above the USD 275 and USD 280 resistance levels. ETH/USD must break and settle above the USD 300 resistance to retain gains.
On the downside, supports are visible near the USD 275 and USD 268 levels, below which, the price may possibly retest the USD 250 level.

Bitcoin cash and ripple
Bitcoin cash was a slow mover, but it still managed to move past the USD 500 resistance. BCH/USD now has to clear the USD 520 and USD 540 resistance levels to gain bullish momentum in the near term.
Ripple price was one of the best performing major cryptocurrencies as it rallied more than 10% and broke the USD 0.270 and USD 0.285 resistance levels. XRP/USD buyers are now attempting to clear the next barrier at USD 0.30, above which, the price could rally to USD 0.315.

Other altcoins market today
Many small cap altcoins rallied today, including tenx, ETP, BTCP, nano, zcoin, qtum, bitcoin gold, ardor, NPXS, BAT, WAX, POWR and IOTA. Tenx and BTCP were the highest movers with 27% and 21% gains respectively.

Overall, the recent bounce in bitcoin and altcoins is a positive sign, but BTC/USD must move past the USD 6,500 resistance to keep the rally going toward USD 6,600, USD 6,800 and USD 7,000 in the near term.
____
Find the best price to buy/sell some of the top cryptocurrencies at the biggest crypto exchanges:





SOURCE : https://cryptonews.com/news/bitcoin-ethereum-and-ripple-rebounds-sharply-2446.htm

Those who are following the bitcoin cash (BCH) community may have heard about the big debate that is going on right now regarding proposed changes to the BCH protocol. For those who haven’t, here’s some background below.

A group of developers working with a company associated with the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, has recently put forward a proposal to create a new full node client for Bitcoin Cash, dubbed Bitcoin SV, for “Satoshi’s Vision.”

The company, known as nChain, claims that the most popular BCH client in current use, the Bitcoin ABC, has introduced updates that are not wanted by the majority of miners, writing on their blog that they created Bitcoin SV “at the request of leading BCH mining enterprise CoinGeek and other miners.”

Essentially, much of the debate currently going on is centered around how BCH should be scaled, either with on-chain scaling technologies or second-layer scaling technologies such as the Lightning Network. nChain and other proponents of on-chain scaling claims that they are working to restore “the original Satoshi vision for bitcoin,” as is stated on nChain’s blog.

Craig Wright, on his end, is particularly opposed to an update of the protocol known as OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY, suggesting on Twitter that this may indeed be the single factor that will lead to a split of the network, writing “watch the axe fall.”

arlier this week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin offered his take on Twitter, saying that the BCH community “should NOT compromise with Craig Wright” on the issue. He went on to suggest that the self-proclaimed bitcoin creator can go ahead and take the now-available BCC ticker code for his new coin, referring to the de-listed scam-token known as BitConnect Coin (BCC).


SOURCE:  https://cryptonews.com/news/vitalik-vs-faketoshi-in-the-bch-hard-fork-debate-2495.htm

We're living at a time of unprecedented concern over identity. Fears abound that our personal data is being abused by distant third-parties, while this data has become more valuable to us at a time when our identities and the identity politics we base around them have become more central to our lives. It's in this context that blockchain technology has appeared, and while its application beyond cryptocurrencies is still limited, protecting our online identities and data more securely looks set to be one of its most central applications.

In its most basic outline, the use of blockchains in the area of securing personal data is simple: Our data is stored in encrypted form on a decentralized network, and we can grant other parties access to (some of) this data by the use of our private keys, in much the same way that using our keys allows us to send cryptocurrency to someone else. By virtue of this basic framework, blockchain tech promises to place control over our data back in our hands, at a time when Facebook and other technology giants have been abusing and misusing it. And seeing as how crypto-giants such as Coinbase have recently moved into the area of decentralized ID, it would seem that it already has strong backing and support within the cryptocurrency industry.

However, as sound as this all is in principle, there are a variety of challenges — some technical, some commercial — that have to be overcome before blockchains can be used at scale to secure personal data. The companies working in this area are all approaching these problems from different angles, yet it would appear that in solving them, a (partial) departure from the ideals of ‘complete’ decentralization is necessary.

And even when the technical challenges are all surmounted, there will still be the issue of weaning people off platforms such as Facebook, which — thanks to the profits of centralization — can afford to offer the public an enticingly 'free' and polished service.

Control and privacy
Alastair Johnson, CEO and founder of e-commerce and ID platform Nuggets, Johnson understands the pitfalls of storing masses of ID data in centralized siloes all too well.

"Today, the reality is that individuals do not control their personal data in any meaningful way. On average, a person has personal data — in the form of payment card details, home addresses, email addresses, passwords and other personal details — spread over roughly 100 online accounts. They can access this data but they do not own it."

By contrast, the use of blockchain tech grants newfound control to the user, who will be empowered to share their ID data only with the parties they approve. This is achieved primarily through the utilization of “decentralized identifiers” (DIDs), as explained by the Sovrin Foundation, which is building a blockchain platform aimed at providing individuals with "self-sovereign identity" (i.e. an ID they can take with them from platform to platform). As it notes in its white paper, "decentralized identifiers" (DIDs) not only encode information that identifies someone as, say, female, Asian, 35, and living in France, but they also circumvent the need for a centralized authority to verify ID claims.

"A DID is stored on a blockchain along with a DID document containing the public key for the DID, any other public credentials the identity owner wishes to disclose, and the network addresses for interaction. The identity owner controls the DID document by controlling the associated private key."

In other words, a protocol for a suitable blockchain is created, users register their ID data on this blockchain, and then use their private keys to decrypt this data for chosen parties. This is the kind of system also employed by Nuggets, although in its case it's referred to as "zero-knowledge storage," since no one else knows what your data says about you. And it’s also the system being worked on by Coinbase, which on August 15 announced its acquisition of ID-focused startup Distributed Systems. Having purchased the San Francisco-based company for an undisclosed fee, it will now develop a decentralized login system for its own crypto-exchange platform that will enable users to retain ownership of their ID credentials.

“A decentralized identity will let you prove that you own an identity, or that you have a relationship with the Social Security Administration, without making a copy of that identity,” it wrote in its press release.

With such a setup, there's little chance of a Cambridge Analytica-style scandal where data gets shared with unwanted groups or individuals, while it also grants unprecedented power to the individual user, who's likely to be treated with much more respect by companies now that his data is in such scarce supply. As explained by Johnson, this provides a vast improvement over the current stage of affairs.

“[Personal data] is stored and controlled in a series of centralized databases controlled by institutions such as retailers, marketing companies, utility companies and data reporting companies. In order to make purchases online, individuals simply authorize these different bodies to connect the different pieces of information they hold in order to authorize a transaction.”

However, while the individual user is currently dependent on hundreds of different companies to store and transmit his/her data in order to gain access to the services, the introduction of blockchain technology completely reverses the balance of power. Johnson shares with Cointelegraph:

"Blockchain-based solutions flip this model on its head, so that individuals can store and control their data associated to a digital identity. It is not stored in the centralized databases of third party organizations, it can be stored on the blockchain in a decentralized network. With the individual controlling their data in this way, they are then in full control to ideally not have to share or store anything by using attestations, tokens or references and share it only if and when they choose to do so."

Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg, as using blockchain tech to confirm who we are furnishes many additional benefits beyond user control. For one, it heightens privacy, since with many of the platforms being proposed, our ID credentials won't even be revealed to those parties and organizations requiring their verification.

This is enabled via the use of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a cryptographic method that can prove a claim without actually sharing the data ('knowledge') through which the claim is proven. ZKPs are being implemented by Sovrin and are also planned for use by such startups as Civic, Verif-y, and Blockpass. By using them, these companies will make the process of ID verification simpler and more efficient, while opening up the possibility of storing biometric ID on the blockchain. They'll spare organizations that verify our IDs the headache of having to securely store personal data after validating it, which in turn eliminates a potential vulnerability, given that these organizations would have normally kept any data they received on a centralized database.

And while not all decentralized identity platforms will employ ZKPs, others will still make use of functionally similar methods. For example, SelfKey harnesses a technique it describes as "data minimization," which "allows the identity owner to provide as little amount of information as possible to satisfy the relying party or verifier." This sidesteps the need to develop advanced technologies such as ZKPs, although it raises questions as to what is meant by 'minimal.' SelfKey writes that "claims can be signed in a way whereby one could choose to disclose only a minimum of information." But without a more formal specification of "minimum" and "choose," it's conceivable that such functional approximations of ZKPs might end up revealing more data than some users would want.

Security
Aside from providing greater user control and privacy, blockchain-based platforms for verifying ID are more secure than their centralized counterparts. This is because, being distributed among multiple nodes, they won't suffer from having a single point of failure like traditional ID systems — e.g. government databases, social networks. As such, one or two nodes of a blockchain can become inactive and users will still be able to use it, while the encryption involved prevents any publicly available data from being gleaned for sensitive info.

By removing the single point of failure, decentralized ID platforms make a large, Yahoo! style hack nigh-on impossible. Instead of being able to penetrate a centralized database that houses all user information in a single location, attackers will have to obtain the private keys for every individual on a one-by-one basis, something which is extremely unlikely in practice. Alastair Johnson agrees:

"The major benefit of a decentralized ledger of personal data over a centralized database is the security against hackers that it provides. We’re all familiar with the major data breaches that have occurred in recent years, such as that at Equifax in 2017. These centralized databases act like magnets to hackers who often only need to take advantage of a single vulnerability to either take them down or extract data from them."

By contrast, decentralized ledgers aren't so sensitive to cyberattacks. "The hijacking of a single node will not disrupt the ongoing functioning of the ledger, as the other nodes can continue to operate without the compromised node’s involvement and the network requires consensus to prove the blocks."

Security is part of the reason why the Indian government, for example, is turning to blockchain for its AADHAAR database — the world's biggest biometric ID system, containing the records of over one billion people – as the country has been the victim of repeated hackings over the past year.

With such a revamped platform, there will be a variety of security benefits. The transparency and immutability of blockchains would mean that users are able to see when their data has been accessed and by whom, thereby providing a deterrent to any would-be hacker. Similarly, this transparency and immutability can be violated only in the unlikely event that a bad actor assumes control of 51 percent of the blockchain's nodes, which in theory would enable to access data and then erase the corresponding records of this illegitimate access.

AADHAAR currently isn't blockchain-based, while a comparable project from the government in Dubai to use blockchain-based ID at the international airport is still under construction. However, one government-led ID system than does use distributed ledger technology (DLT) right now is in Estonia. Its KSI (Keyless Signature Infrastructure) Blockchain forms the backbone of various e-services, including e-Health Record system, e-Prescription database, e-Law and e-Court systems, e-Police data, e-Banking, e-Business Register and e-Land Registry.

Once again, the use of the KSI Blockchain provides greater transparency than previous systems, since it detects when user data has been accessed and when it has been changed. And as the e-Estonia FAQ explains, it's much quicker than traditional platforms in detecting misuses of data:

"[It] currently takes organizations […] about seven months to detect breaches and manipulations of electronic data. With blockchain [solutions] like the one Estonia is using, these breaches and manipulations can be detected immediately."

Not only are breaches capable of being detected immediately or quickly on a blockchain-based ID system, but they're more likely to be detected more quickly than with a centralized platform due to their public and continuous access to scrutiny from a wide range of armchair experts and professionals alike, as highlighted by PolySwarm CTO Paul Makowski in a December blog post on decentralized threat intelligence:

"Geographically diverse security experts proficient at reverse engineering or capable of providing unique insight will be able to exercise their knowledge from the comfort of their own home or wherever (and whenever) they choose to work."

Standardization, interoperability
At the present moment in history, the world's digital identity systems are siloed off from each other, separated in a way that forces people to create new accounts and new data for virtually every digital service they use. This causes personal data to proliferate to dangerous levels, making data breaches and cybercrime much likelier. For instance, the cost of identity theft reached $106 billion in the United States alone between 2011 and 2017, at a time when the average consumer has a staggering 118 online accounts (at least in the United Kingdom, where data was available).

Blockchain-based digital ID systems offer a way out of this. While most chains are currently cut off from each other, standards for sovereign digital identity are being devised by the Digital Identity Foundation (DIF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Similarly, a number of startups are building interoperability platforms connecting separate blockchains together, including Polkadot, Cosmos and Aion. By working to achieve an ecosystem in which the standards of one identity platform are accepted by all other platforms that require ID verification, such organizations could dramatically reduce the amount of personal data people need to produce. Instead, users would create an account with one blockchain-based ID service, which they'll then use to register with a host of other services and systems.

Never Stop Marketing CEO Jeremy Epstein said in a December blog:

"Interoperability standards free up capital and time to drive value. What’s more, it offers the possibility to pool security (making the whole system more robust against attack) and enable trust-free transactions across chains."

Blockchain interoperability is still a nascent field, and different organizations are pursuing different approaches to it. However, to take one example, Polkadot is aiming to achieve interoperability via its "heterogeneous multi-chain," which has three fundamental components. These are "parachains," which are in fact the individual blockchains being linked together, "bridges" that connect each parachain to the Polkadot network, and then the Polkadot network itself, which is a "relay chain" of the various parachains being connected.

Other routes to interoperability diverges from this, with Cosmos achieving inter-chain communication via use of the Tendermint consensus algorithm, and with the Aion network monetizing interchain transactions. However, assuming that an interoperability platform receives universal adoption within the blockchain ecosystem, users would find that they'll have to register their personal data only once. From then on, they'll be able to provide other platforms with ID attestations securely and quickly, all without having to reveal any of their data to the companies and services they use.

Scaling toward a new kind of blockchain
The benefits promised by blockchain-based ID systems — control, security and standardization — are all appealing, yet questions remain as to how feasible such systems are and how long we'll have to wait for them to be released in fully functioning form. Added to this, there's also the worry that — for all the improvements offered by blockchains — as a society we may still remain wedded to 'traditional' online services and the organizations responsible for them, which may actively resist the adoption of decentralized platforms that enable us to keep data to ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest issue with regard to feasibility is that of scalability, so often the achilles heal of many a crypto-based project. Given that an ID service should — by definition — be able to serve millions of people, any blockchain that forms the basis of such a service has to be significantly scalable. Yet, so far the most popular blockchain for decentralized applications (DApps) — Ethereum — was almost brought down by a popular video game last year, CryptoKitties. This is why most of the platforms mentioned above aren't built on any of the most well-known blockchains, but rather on proprietary ledgers, some of which don't meet the conventional definition of a decentralized blockchain.

For example, Enigma is a "decentralized computation platform" that has been designed for use with identity verification, among other things. As described in its white paper, it solves the scalability problem by delegating all "intensive computations to an off-chain network." This network also stores all the user data, while the blockchain itself merely stores "references” to this data. In other words, Enigma's platform isn't really a blockchain — and while its off-chain network is still distributed (although each node sees separate parts of the overall data), this isn't decentralization in the way that, say, the Bitcoin blockchain is.

Something similar could be said for other ‘blockchain-based' ID platforms: Estonia's KSI Blockchain isn't a full-fledged blockchain that uses asymmetric key cryptography, but rather a Merkle tree-based ledger. Meanwhile, the Sovrin network achieves consensus via a limited set of "validator nodes," arguably making it less decentralized than certain other blockchains. Together, what such tradeoffs reveal is that, if an ID platform is to be scalable (and also private), it needs to be less distributed in certain areas — and arguably less secure as a result. But more importantly, from a practical viewpoint, it also needs to redefine and adapt just what a 'blockchain' is, since the most familiar chains currently aren't up to the task of securing and communicating our personal data on a massive scale.

Vested interests
This is why even the most advanced projects have roadmaps that extend beyond 2020, since a viable ID platform requires a new kind of distributed ledger that squares the need for cryptographic transparency with the need for individual privacy. And even if any of the platforms above reach this goal anytime soon, they will have another massive hurdle to clear: the dominance of existing arbiters of identity, including social media giants like Facebook, as well as national governments.

Governmental initiatives
For instance, the U.K. and Australian governments have been investing millions in building their own centralized ID verification systems in recent years, making it unlikely that they'll easily give way to a decentralized alternative. Likewise, the idea of Facebook overhauling itself with a truly decentralized platform — where users keep their personal data a secret — is, well, frankly unthinkable, seeing as how the social network reaps billions in annual profit from selling our data to the highest bidder. It’s also widely used to identify people online, so it’s unlikely that it will give up its dominance to blockchain-based platforms easily.

That said, a small number of national and state-based governments (e.g., Singapore, Illinois) have been trialling blockchain-based ID systems. In addition, figures within the burgeoning crypto-ID industry are hopeful that public and private organizations alike will either be forced to decentralize or will fall by the wayside.

"When you operate a centralized system that provides your organization with control and allows you to benefit from this position, it’s understandable that you might be resistant to change," says Alastair Johnson. "But when there is a penalty if this information is breached in the form of fines, loss of share price and cost of recovering the situation and all the PR damage that comes with a breach, businesses will start to see that the model has to fundamentally change."

A key driver of this change could be public sentiment, which has already been shifting in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. "The blockchain provides clear benefits for customers in terms of control over personal data and digital identities and I expect the public recognition of this to move from an early adopter cohort to an early majority in the near future," Johnson says. "From the other side, I expect organizations that have already experienced breaches in their centralized databases to be amongst the most willing to adopt blockchain-based solutions, as they seek to rebuild trust with consumers."

It could be argued that slick, free-to-use, ad-based services such as Facebook will always be more attractive to the average user — a view strengthened by the fact that Facebook reported a 13 percent year-on-year increase of users in April, despite its recent loss of younger users in the wake of the aforementioned data harvesting scandal. However, Johnson believes that a gradual sea-change in attitudes is underway.

"The ‘Delete Facebook’ movement is one sign of change, as is the continuing scrutiny that the tech giant is being put under by American and European authorities. People are starting to wake up to the fact that their personal data is valuable. Not only could blockchain help them to monetize it for themselves, it will also eradicate the kinds of costly personal data loses that I have experienced myself."

And even if blockchain technology is still largely unproven outside the domain of cryptocurrencies, it will start winning converts as soon as it demonstrates its superiority to previous systems when it comes to privacy and security.

"Right now, there may be hesitation to adopt decentralized platforms, but its common sense that personal information should be owned and controlled by the person, and because of this it will prevail."


SOURCE: https://cointelegraph.com/news/online-id-control-blockchain-platforms-vs-governments-and-facebook