China’s top digital bank WeBank has announced its partnership with Singaporean government-backed OpenNodes. This partnership will allow China’s FISCO BCOS blockchain platform to be brought to Singaporean academics for innovation and new initiatives. FISCO BCOS was deemed to be China’s version of Hyperledger Fabric when it was launched in 2018. 
 
 
The Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium (FISCO) is backed by more than 100 Chinese organizations, including Huawei, Tencent, JD Finance, and WeBank, which is partly backed by Tencent. Developed by FISCO, the enterprise blockchain protocol was the first blockchain to be supported by China’s Blockchain Service Network.
 
WeBank’s executive vice president and Chief Information Officer, Henry Ma said, “We seek to spur the next-generation talents into building viable solutions using blockchain to serve the general public. Providing this open-source technology as a developer arena will also help us strengthen the stack of our technologies in the process while allowing for better products and services for the general public.”
 
This also became the first move in taking FISCO BCOS international, which also support the Blockchain Services Network’s ambition to go global. The partnership aims to introduce Singapore’s university students to FISCO BCOS. Ma added, “Combining forces is the first stepping stone to expanding the consortium into Southeast Asia, and ensures we are well fed by a constant source of knowledge, technology expertise, and domain experience.”
 
As previously reported by Blockchain.News, the digital bank is leading the global banking community in banking technology patents climbing ahead of US giants JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America with 632 filed patents in 2019.
 
China’s international blockchain ambitions
 
China’s Blockchain Services Network (BSN), ChinaChain has been opened since late April for commercial use after six months of internal testing. 
 
The Blockchain Services Network is built by a consortium of China’s biggest corporations including telecommunications companies and banks, connecting nodes in 128 cities in the country. Companies including China Mobile, China UnionPay, and Huobi China have also taken part in the creation of the BSN. The network also includes 7 areas outside of China including Paris, Sydney, San Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Johannesburg, and California. This would facilitate the interested parties to conduct business in China to be able to use the network and to follow the network’s rules.
 
Along with WeBank’s FISCO BCOS, Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, EOS, ChainSQL, and Baidu’s Xuperchain were also part of the plan to be added to the “ecosystem play,” and “internet environment,” as explained by Zhiguang Shan, the Chairman of the BSN’s Development Association. This network of blockchains will be available for those who are interested to take part in it, including small to medium-sized businesses.
 
OpenNodes: Encouraging engagement in blockchain
 
Tribe Accelerator announced the launch of its digital media and engagement platform, OpenNodes in August 2019. Founded by 25 founding members and led by Tribe Accelerator, OpenNodes is also supported by the Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), as well as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Temasek. Yi Ming Ng, Managing Director of Tribe added, “All the stakeholders in the ecosystem have come together to collectively drive this blockchain ecosystem for more mass adoption to happen.” OpenNodes allows for more engagement and collaboration between the stakeholders in the blockchain ecosystem, allowing for a better reach of the audience, showcasing the use cases in the blockchain ecosystem.
 
OpenNodes is funded by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), along with other government stakeholders, as well as IBM, R3, ConsenSys, Ethereum, BMW, PwC, and Singapore stock exchange (SGX). Its aim is to support and educate corporates and connect them with technology solution providers. 
 
 
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Share and get +16 +16 Samer Falah, Head of Quorum Blockchain Engineering, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. * Imran Bashir, Quorum Engineer, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. *IntroductionQuorum® is an enterprise blockchain platform. It is a fork of the public ethereum client ‘geth’ with several protocol level enhancements to support business needs. The primary purpose of the Quorum project is to develop an enterprise ethereum client which empowers businesses to embrace and benefit from blockchain technology. As Quorum is an open-source project, the code base of the platform is open for anyone to audit, which promotes trust in the platform. Open-sourcing further increases adoption and attracts developers from different industries to participate in the development of this platform.Blockchain and enterprise needsThe very nature of blockchain or distributed ledger provides a secure, shared platform for decentralised applications (DAPPs) and data thanks to its cryptographically secure, auditable and immutable characteristics. However, there are several enterprise-driven requirements which need to be met for a blockchain to be suitable for enterprises. These requirements primarily include privacy, performance and permissioning.ensures the confidentiality of transactions. It is a required feature in many industries such as financial services, health, law and government. For example in the financial industry it is mandated that the transaction details are kept confidential and shared only between the authorised parties involved in the transaction. Similarly in the health industry, patient records are extremely sensitive information and must only be visible to authorised persons.ensures that speed and scalability of the network is adequate to handle enterprise use cases.ensures that the blockchain network is only accessible to authorised entities.All the requirements mentioned above are of paramount importance in any enterprise use case.Now that we have introduced enterprise features briefly, we can now look at how Quorum achieves these features. First we introduce the Quorum architecture.Quorum architectureAs compared to public ethereum, Quorum provides several enterprise features which are listed belowTransaction privacyMultiple pluggable consensus mechanisms suitable for enterprise use casesEnterprise-grade permissions management (access control) for network nodes and participantsEnterprise-grade performanceFundamentally, Quorum is the public ethereum client which is enhanced with enterprise features. It provides privacy features, enterprise permissioning and improved performance in a permissioned network. A component called private transactions manager serves as an off-chain privacy mechanism. Quorum communicates with the private transaction manager using HTTPS and keeps a reference to private transactions with relevant state trees on the blockchain.This high level architecture is shown below in Diagram 1. We will cover all these aspects in greater detail in the upcoming sections.Now we look at all these elements in more detailDiagram 1 : Quorum high level architectureQuorum nodeThe Quorum node is a lightweight fork of geth. Since it is a fork of geth, it continues to take advantage of the research and development that is continuously taking place within the ever growing ethereum community and the amazing work of the geth development team. As such, Quorum is regularly updated inline with geth releases to keep up with the latest improvements.The Quorum node includes the following modifications as compared to public geth client:The consensus is achieved with RAFT, PoA or Istanbul BFT consensus algorithms instead of using Proof-of-Work. Availability of all these different protocols allows flexibility to choose any of these algorithms according to business needs.The Peer to Peer (P2P) layer has been modified to only allow connections to/from permissioned nodes.The block generation logic has been modified to replace the ‘global state root’ check with a new ‘global public state root’.The State Patricia trie has been split into two: a public state trie and a private state trie.The block validation logic has been modified to replace the ‘global state root’ in the block header with the ‘global public state root’Block validation logic has been modified to handle ‘Private Transactions’Transaction creation has been modified to allow for Transaction data to be replaced by hashes of the encrypted payloads in order to preserve private data where requiredThe pricing of Gas has been removed, although the Gas itself remains.Quorum supports both public and private transactions. Public transactions work normally as in public ethereum where private transactions are enabled through a separate component called private transaction manager (privacy manager).Now that we have introduced the Quorum node, let’s look at the privacy manager.Privacy managerThe privacy manager component (private transaction manager) is responsible for providing transaction privacy on the Quorum network. In other words, this component allows Quorum nodes to share transaction payload securely between authorised parties of the transaction. It consists of two sub elements, namely the transaction manager and enclave.Transaction managerIt is a restful and stateless service which is primarily responsible for the following operations.Automatic discovery of the other transaction manager nodes on the networkExchanges encrypted payloads with other nodes’ transaction managersStores and allows access to encrypted transaction dataCurrently, there are two types of transaction managers available, namely Constellation℠ and Tessera℠. Constellation is the original privacy manager developed in Haskell. It is not being developed further in favour of Tessera, which is a more feature-rich and actively developed project. As such, we only focus on Tessera in this article. Transaction manager provides a general-purpose mechanism for securely exchanging information. It is comparable to a network of MTA (Message Transfer Agents) where PGP provides encryption of messages. The private transaction manager is not a blockchain-specific technology. Itcan be used in any application where individually sealed and secure message exchange within a network of participants is required.TesseraTessera is an Enterprise transaction manager. It is a java based stateless software used to enable the encryption, decryption, and distribution of private transactions for Quorum.A Tessera node performs the following functions:Generates and hosts multiple public/private key pairs.Automatically discovers all nodes on the network (i.e., their public keys) by connecting to as few as only one other node.Provides two way SSL using TLS certificates (mutually authenticated TLS)Supports various trust models like Trust On First Use (TOFU), IP whitelist and certificate authority.Connects to any SQL database which supports the JDBC clientSynchronises a directory of public keys mapped to recipient hosts with other nodes on the network.Exposes a public API which is used for communication between Tessera peer nodes.Provides a private API which is used for communication with Quorum node and:Allows to send a byte string to one or more public keys, returning a content-addressable identifier. This byte string is encrypted transparently and efficiently (at symmetric encryption speeds) before being transmitted over the wire to the correct recipient nodes (and only those nodes). The identifier is a hash digest of the encrypted payload that every recipient node receives. Each recipient node also receives a small blob encrypted for their public key which contains the Master Key for the encrypted payload.Allows to receive a decrypted payload based on an identifier. Payloads which your node has sent or received can be decrypted and retrieved in this way.Supports several storage backends including LevelDB, BerkeleyDB, SQLite, and Directory/Maildir style file storage suitable for use with any Filesystem in Userspace – FUSE adapter, e.g., for AWS S3. Conceptually, one can think of Tessera as a blend of a distributed key
server, PGP encryption (using modern cryptography) and Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs).EnclaveDistributed Ledger protocols typically leverage cryptographic techniques for transaction authenticity, participant authentication, and historical data preservation (i.e., through a chain of cryptographically linked data). To achieve the “separation of concerns” most of the cryptographic operations, including symmetric key generation and data encryption/decryption is delegated to the Enclave. As a result, this separation enhances security due to modularisation and also allows for performance improvements through parallelisation of certain cryptographic operations.The Enclave works in conjunction with the Transaction Manager to strengthen privacy by independently managing the cryptography operations. It holds private keys and can be considered a “Virtual HSM” isolated from other elements of the system. An enclave communicates only with its own associated transaction manager.The enclave handles the following data:Public/Private key accessPublic keys of extra recipientsDefault identity of attached nodesSpecific operations that an enclave performs are listed below:Fetching the default identity for attached nodes (default public key)Providing forwarding keys for all transactionsReturning all public keys managed by the enclaveEncrypting a payload for given sender and recipient(s)Encrypting raw payloads for a given senderDecrypting transactions for a given recipient (or sender)Adding new recipients for existing payloadsNow that we understand Quorum high level architecture, let’s now see how quorum achieves all the enterprise features we introduced earlier. How Quorum Blockchain worksIn the section, we will explore how Quorum supports the key enterprise features including privacy, performance and permissioning.First, we’ll see how private transactions are supported on Quorum.Private transactionsAs introduced earlier, private transactions are supported in Quorum through an off-chain mechanism called Privacy transaction manager. We now describe, with an end to end example, how privacy transaction manager works to enable private transactions. With this example, it will become clear how all components of Quorum work together to provide privacy features.Just before we dive into the example, note that Quorum does not only support private transactions, it supports standard public transactions too. As usual, all transactions need to be signed by the sender. There are two transaction signing mechanisms in Quorum. For public transactions, ethereum EIP-155 based transaction signing mechanism is used, and for private transactions, ethereum Homestead based transaction signing mechanism is used. Also, Quorum supports raw private transactions which means that transactions can also be signed externally without using Quorum’s signing mechanism. This feature allows for greater flexibility and security.Now back to our example:Imagine there are three Parties, A, B and C. A & B are privy to a transaction called ‘AB’, but C is not.We now look at the transaction flow from the view of each of these parties. View of Parties A & BDiagram 2: Parties A & B Looking at the diagram above, we can describe the process step by step as presented below.Party A sends a Transaction to their Quorum Node, specifying the Transaction payload and setting privateFor to be the public keys for Party B. It can be set optionally for party A too.Party A’s Quorum Node sends the Transaction to its paired transaction Manager with a request to store the transaction payload.Party A’s Transaction Manager makes a call to its associated Enclave to validate the sender and encrypt the payload.Party A’s Enclave verifies the private key for Party A, if validated, processes the transaction.Party A’s Transaction Manager calculates the SHA3-512 hash of the encrypted payload then stores the encrypted payload and encrypted random master keys (RMKs) against the hash in the databaseParty A’s Transaction Manager then securely transfers (via HTTPS):The encrypted payloadRMK that has been encrypted with the shared key produced by enclave processing from step 4The nonces to Party B’s Transaction Manager.Party B’s Transaction Manager responds with an ACK/NACK response. Note that if Party A does not receive a response/receives a Nack from Party B then the Transaction will not be propagated to the network. It is a prerequisite for the recipients to store the communicated payload.Once the data transmission to Party B’s Transaction Manager has been successful, Party A’s Transaction Manager returns the hash to the Quorum Node which then replaces the Transaction’s original payload with that hash. It also changes the transaction’s V value to 37 or 38. This value will indicate to other nodes that this hash represents a private transaction with an associated encrypted payload as opposed  to a public transaction with nonsensical bytecode.The Transaction is then propagated to the rest of the network using the standard ethereum P2P Protocol.A block containing Transaction ‘AB’ is created and distributed to each Party on the network.View of party CDiagram 3: Party CWhen processing the block, all Parties will attempt to process the transaction. Each Quorum node will recognise a V value of 37 or 38 which identifies the transaction as a private transaction whose payload requires decryption. The node then makes a call to their associated Transaction Manager to determine if they hold the Transaction. This lookup is made using the hash as the index.Since Party C does not hold the Transaction, it will receive a NotARecipient message and will skip the Transaction – it  will  not update its Private StateDB. Party A & B will look up the hash in their local Transaction Managers and discover that they do hold the Transaction. Each transaction manager will then make a call  to  its paired Enclave, passing in the  Encrypted  Payload,  Encrypted symmetric key (RMK) and Signature.View of Party BDiagram 4: Party B The Enclave validates the signature and then decrypts the symmetric key using the Party’s private key that is held in The Enclave, decrypts the Transaction Payload using the now-revealed symmetric key and returns the decrypted payload to the Transaction Manager.The Transaction Managers for Parties A and B then send the decrypted payload to the EVM for contract code execution. This execution will update the state in the Quorum Node’s Private StateDB only. NOTE: Once the code has been executed it is discarded so it is never available for reading without going through the above process. What happens inside the enclave?Now we expand on step 4 from above, which involves enclave processing.Diagram 5: Enclave processing “Party A’s Enclave verifies the private key for Party A and, if validated, processes the transaction.”This processing comprises of several steps shown belowGenerate a random master key (symmetric key) and a random nonce.Encryption of transaction payload with the symmetric key generated in step 1. Payload container is produced using xsalsa20poly1305 which is an authenticated encryption algorithm. It is based on Salsa20 stream cipher and a universal hash function called poly1305. The ‘crypto_box’ is produced using a public-key authenticated-encryption scheme which is a combination of three constructs, namely Curve25519, XSalsa20 and Poly1305.Calculate the hash (SHA3 – 512 bit) of the encrypted payload from the previous step.Encrypting the symmetric key from step 1 with the recipients public key. This process is repeated for all recipients one by one. In our example it is only for Party A and B.Enclave returns three objects to the transaction manager.Encrypted transaction payload from step 2Hash from step 3Encrypted symmetric keys for each recipients from step 4 Tessera also supports other Elliptic curves for the creation of public/private key pairs and data encryption and decryption. Also, Tessera supports integration with external hardware security modules(HSMs) or cloud-hosted key management. A notable feature of Tessera is its support for extern
al key vault integration with third-party key vaults such as Azure, Hashicorp, and AWS. This feature allows for fully decoupled and reliable key management.Now let’s discuss how enterprise-grade performance is achieved in QuorumEnterprise-grade performanceQuorum incorporates several suitable consensus mechanisms for enterprise networks. These consensus algorithms provide immediate finality and higher transaction throughput as compared to a typical proof of work mechanism on public blockchains like Bitcoin and ethereum.In an independent performance evaluation study, the transaction per second (TPS) speed is reported as high as approx. 2500 TPS. This study is available on the link here:In another study, the transaction throughput of private contract deployments is measured as high as approx. 700 TPS and performance of normal transactions have been measured up to approx. 2000 TPS. This paper is available hereThis degree of enhanced performance makes Quorum a suitable choice for enterprise use cases.Enterprise permissioning mechanismA common and standard enterprise grade scheme used for providing organisational level access control is Role Based Access Control RBAC mechanism. RBAC is an ANSI standard. The standards document is available from ANSI here It is a de facto mechanism for providing enterprise systems with a common enterprise grade access control mechanism. It is implemented in many enterprise systems. Operating systems such as Windows, and RedHat also have a RBAC implementation which shows its industry wide acceptance and usability.Quorum implements a modified subset of the RBAC standard. It works on the same principles as standard RBAC. It allows role based access along with rule-based permissioning, which ensures necessary control over who can join the network and how it can be operated.To understand permissioning features in Quorum, first we need to define some terminologies that will help us to understand the permissioning model better.Network – A set of interconnected nodes representing an enterprise blockchainOrganisation – A set of roles, ethereum accounts and nodes with a set of network access control permissionsSub Organisation – A group within an organisation.Account – An ethereum EOA (Externally Owned Account)Voter – An account with permissions to vote.Role – A named job function in an organisationNode – A geth node which is part of the network and belongs to an organisation or a sub organisationPermission – A description of the type of actions that an account is authorised to perform. ( e.g. value transfer, deploy smart contract or execute smart contract) Diagram 6 : Quorum Permissioning mechanismQuorum permissioning mechanism is implemented using smart contracts and some necessary changes in the client software. As such, this model can be divided into two parts, the first one that deals with the access control decision output, which represents a decision that if an account is allowed to perform a function or not. This part can be considered the ‘enforcement logic’ and is implemented in the Quorum client software.The other part is responsible for the administration of the underlying rules associated with the permissioning logic. This “rule engine” derives an access control decision based on the roles assigned to an entity. It governs what an object is allowed to do on a blockchain network. This part can be called ‘policy management’. This component is fully implemented using smart contracts written in the solidity language. Both of these elements coupled make up the Quorum permissioning mechanism. Quorum permissioning mechanism currently works with RAFT, IBFT and PoA consensus mechanisms.As shown in diagram 6, in the Quorum permissions model, the network is composed of different organisations. The network administrator account(s) defined at the network level can propose and approve new organisations requesting to join the network. They can also assign administrative privileges to an account to act as an organisation’s administration account. The organisation administrator account can perform several functions, which are listed below.Create new rolesCreate sub organisationsAssign roles to its domain accountsAdd new nodes to the organisation. In addition, a sub organisation can have its own set of roles, accounts and sub organisations. The organisation administration account manages and controls all activities at the organisation level. The organisation administrator can create an administrator role and assign that to a different account to allow that account to administer the sub organisation.The access rights of an account are derived from the role assigned to it. For example an administrator role is able to execute a smart contract, whereas as a trainee role is only able to read. An account that exists at an organisation level can transact through any node which is present either in the sub organisations underneath or at top organisations level.Diagram 7: relationship of different entities in Quorum permissioning model In diagram 7, we present this architecture, where network is the top level entity, containing an organisation or several organisations, with each organisation containing accounts and nodes and relevant access and status types.Also note that user is an external entity that exists outside the network. It can be an organisation or an individual user. The key idea here is that a user is mapped to ethereum accounts in the permissioning mechanism. It can be a 1 to many, many to 1 or 1 to one relationship. For example, a single organisation represented by a username can be mapped to several accounts on the blockchain. Similarly many external entities can be represented by the same account on the chain. A single user can also be mapped to a single account. The advantage of this approach is that there is no need to maintain on-chain records of users, which not only can result in high storage costs but is also not appropriate to be stored on chain for privacy reasons.Accounts are assigned roles and statuses depending on their business function and access level whereas nodes are allocated statuses which represent their access level on the network. Organisations can also be assigned with statuses. This feature is particularly useful when an entire organisation is required to be assigned with a status on the network, for example when an organisation leaves the network, the administrator can simply assign suspended status to the organisation which will apply to all the entities within that organisation including accounts and sub organisations.ConsensusSince consortium chains are permissioned there is no need for an expensive Proof of Work consensus mechanism. Moreover, due to performance requirements, slower public chain consensus mechanisms are not appropriate for consortium chains. Therefore, Quorum offers different consensus mechanisms that are more suitable for private blockchains. These mechanisms are listed below.RAFT-based Consensus: A Crash fault tolerant (CFT) consensus model for faster block generation, transaction  finality,  and  on-demand block creation.Istanbul BFT Consensus: It is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) algorithm which is based on Practical byzantine fault tolerant (PBFT) consensus algorithm. It supports immediate transaction finality. It provides liveness and safety under standard Byzantine fault threshold assumptions of ⌊ n-1 / 3 ⌋ under a partially synchronous network and 3f + 1 network configuration. Clique Consensus: Clique is a Proof of Authority (POA) consensus algorithm which is available with public Go ethereum client (geth).Example use caseQuorum is used in many use cases including, but not limited to logistics, healthcare, Identity, property, payments, capital markets and post trade. We provide a list and brief description of some of the projects below. These are just some of the many use cases that Quorum has been used in. A comprehensive list is being maintained on the official Quorum website under section “Built on Quorum”. Readers are encouraged to refer to the Quorum website Quorum Blockchain exampleTools and developmentThere
are also many tools available for the Quorum ecosystem, which helps to improve both user and developer experience. These tools   mainly include network management, deployment and monitoring utilities. As Quorum is continuously growing and has an active developer community, several user and developer tools have emerged. This trend is only expected to grow. A short list of different tools is shown below, with a link for further details.Quorum is also available on different cloud platforms, mainly this includesThis is just a small list from a large pool of tools and developer platforms available for Quorum. For new updates, visit hereQuorum Blockchain SummaryIn conclusion, Quorum provides an enterprise grade blockchain platform with high performance, enterprise oriented access control mechanism and privacy. All these features make Quorum an excellent choice for use in any enterprise use case.If you need technical assistance you can contact Quorum engineering teamMeetups and conferences are also held regularly all around the world you can find more information about these events here In this article we have covered the core aspects of Quorum. For more in-depth details on development, relevant tools and specific details on various components of Quorum, we refer readers to comprehensive official quorum documentation which is available here.© 2020 JPMorgan Chase & Co. All Rights Reserved. *The information and viewpoints expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of JPMorgan Chase & Co. or its affiliates. 

Sunday’s episode of the Showtime series Billions featured a cryptocurrency mining scheme being executed in a prep school.
The Bitcoin focused episode was written by Ben Mezrich, who also wrote the book Bitcoin Billionaires which tells the story of the Winklevoss twins, the venture capitalist’s behind the Gemini crypto exchange who are reported to own about 1% of Bitcoin’s total supply between them.
Mezrich teased the episode on Twitter:

Billions this Sunday night… I’m not sayin’ there’s definitely gonna be some Bitcoin… I’m just saying I did happen to write the episode…I mean, just sayin’…
— Ben Mezrich (@benmezrich) May 14, 2020
Beg, Bribe, Bully
The episode entitled “Beg, Bribe, Bully” told the story of Gordie Axelrod, son of the shows main character Bobby Axelrod. Gordie is a prep school student operating a Bitcoin mining farm in his dormitory who gets in trouble when the principal of the school accuses him of damaging the school’s electrical supply.
According to the show, Gordie’s mining operation did require almost 24 kilowatts per hour for the infrastructure but he insists that the school’s power is damaged by a power surge.
Billions and Bitcoin
The episode marks the second time this season that Billionaires had featured a Bitcoin plot.
The premier episode this year also focused on cryptocurrency mining but at an illegal Bitcoin farm.
The episode drew huge reactions from the cryptocurrency community and even applause from CZ Changpeng Zhao of Binance himself.

#Adoption https://t.co/6LgPb1griI
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) May 4, 2020

Share and get +16 +16 blockchain oracles are third-party services that provide smart contract with external information. They serve as bridges between blockchains and the outside world.Scalability and interoperability are often considered the two holy grails of the crypto space. Interoperability is defined as the ability of different softwares to communicate and exchange information with each other effectively. Oracles are a powerful tool that can provide interoperability between different blockchains and communicate with external data sources.Why interoperability is importantThere are several centralized points of failure currently within the decentralized space. Eg. The exchanges act as a portal between the centralized and the decentralized space. However, since they are highly vulnerable, they are always under attack by hackers.For blockchains to succeed, they must be able to interact with legacy systems like financial institutions, etc. It is essential to maintain a robust point of contact between the two.Initially, the community thought that the smart contract ecosystem would be governed by chain maximalism i.e., one dominant chain that hosts a bunch of smart contracts. However, we already know that there are multiple smart contract platforms out there. To achieve maximum functionality, it is critical for these platforms to know how to “talk” to each other.Classifying oraclesThere are two kinds of interoperability that blockchain projects can use:On-Chain InteroperabilityThis method uses a third blockchain as a bridge between two different blockchains. Projects like AION, Wanchain and ICON use this method. The following three are the most common approaches to on-chain interoperability:Off-chain InteroperabilityThis method uses off-chain or middleware systems to facilitate interoperability.Atomic Swaps: Atomic swaps are a decentralized method used to exchange two assets without having to go through a centralized exchange. If you want to know more about Atomic Swaps then read this.State Channels: Layer-2 implementations like state channels can allow for off-chain interaction and atomic swaps.Operation System: A blockchain operating system enables cross-chain messaging and atomic swaps by running on top of the participating blockchains.Oracles: Oracles can allow a wide-degree of cross-communication across blockchains and enterprise systems, as well.Apart from this, we can also categorize oracles into software and hardware oracles:Software Oracle: The information relayed within the software oracles comes from online sources like websites, backend APIs, or even other smart contracts.  The type of information included here can range from stock prices to sporting event data.Hardware Oracle: Hardware oracles use IoT devices to track and verify real-world data before sending it to the smart contract.Why do we need Blockchain Oracles?Smart contracts have been designed to execute irreversible operations. This is why the information fed into the contract must come from a relatively trusted source. This is why, when data is coming from an external source, it can be a bit of a dilemma. However, on the flip side, it does increase the number of use cases exponentially.An oracle signs claims about the state of the world and uploads it to the blockchain. Blockchains seem to live in their isolated reality, completely cut off from the rest of the world. An oracle can connect the blockchain to the real world by providing it with relevant information. The information may be retrieved or aggregated from one or multiple trusted sources by one or multiple oracles. Let’s take a simple example to see how oracles work.Alice and Bob place a bet on who is going to win the NBA finals.Alice believes that LA Lakers are going to win, while Bob is betting on the Milwaukee Bucks.After agreeing on the payouts, they sign the deal by locking up their funds in a smart contract. The smart contract releases funds to the winner based on the results.Now, how exactly will the contract know who the winner of the match was? It depends on the oracle to feed it the relevant information.The oracle queries a trusted API to find out which team won relays this information to the smart contract. The contract then sends the funds to Alice or Bob, depending on the outcome.Without the oracle doing its job, the smart contract will have no way to know who the winner of the match was.Blockchain use cases#1 Prediction marketDecentralized prediction markets like Augur and Gnosis leverage the “knowledge of the crowd” to predict the future state of the markets. These markets must capture knowledge via multiple oracles or off-chain event settlements.#2 DefiThe combination of smart contracts and finance has ushered in the era of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). These products need access to trustless data feeds, which could be provided by oracles.#3 InsuranceIt could be possible to buy insurance products over the blockchain via oracles. Since the biggest issue in insurance is fraud, the decentralization of the blockchain and the reliability of oracles are a perfect combo to resolve this issue.#4 ShipmentOracles can replace the existing, centralized GPS systems to provide reliable location mapping for dApps to track shipments.#5 Putting the stable in “stablecoins”MakerDAO’s Dai stablecoin uses a network of multiple Oracles to report to it the price of Ether continually. They need to be constantly aware of the price so that they can know if they need to consolidate or liquidate their collateral to keep Dai’s price stable.How to maintain Blockchain Oracle’s reliability?There are four techniques that oracles can use to maintain its reliability:Multiple data sources.Multiple Oracles.Incentive mechanisms.Trusted execution environment.Multiple data sourcesIf your oracle is collecting info from multiple data sources, the probability of it receiving wrong information is low. However, the oracle itself can act as a point-of-failure.Multiple oraclesAnother approach is to use multiple oracles to collect info which negates the “single-point-of-failure” problem. However, the risk here is that there is a chance a majority of these oracles may have compromised sources of information.Incentive mechanismOracles can take a page out of Casper protocol and include a “stake-slashing” mechanism to ensure that the actors involved are incentivized to act honestly. The key here is to incorporate a form of tokenomics that forces the nodes in the oracle network to perform honest work and behave well. If they perform well, they get a reward, if not, then they can be punished via a slashing mechanism.Trusted execution environment (TEEs)TEEs allows an application to be executed in a secluded environment called “enclave” that provides it with hardware protection. The enclave:Ensures the integrity of the project.Keeps the operations confidential.It allows the application to read and write memory outside the enclave. In other words, it can prove its honesty and work integrity without having to spill exactly what they are doing.Promising blockchain oracle projectsThere are three oracle projects that we will be putting under the microscope. They are: ChainLink.Augur.RIF Gateways ChainLinkChainLink is a decentralized oracle network built on ethereum. It aims to be a secure blockchain middleware that intends to connect different smart contracts across blockchains. The network went live on May 30th, 2019. The company behind this is called “SmartContract.” Back in September 2017, ChainLink raised a whopping $32 million in its ICO. ChainLink plans on creating smart contracts to securely interact with resources external to the blockchain, such as cryptographically secure data feeds, as well as facilitating interoperability in-between blockchains. ChainLink is currently focussed on creating a decentralized network of oracles that are compatible with the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger blockchains.ChainLink Network: On-Chain and Off-ChainThe ChainLink protocol uses both on-chain and off-chain components.On-Chain ComponentFilters the oracles based on the metrics requested
by a party to a smart contract.Collects the oracles corresponding to the SLA queries and sorts them using reputational and aggregation models.Provides a final collective result based on the query. Off-Chain ComponentThis component consists of oracle nodes that are connected to the Ethereum network. These nodes independently respond to the appropriate off-chain requests.The off-chain nodes which fulfill specific, pre-determined requirements, gather the information requested by these contracts.ChainLink acts as a low-cost middleman to re-route and allocate data.Off-chain nodes are rewarded with the native LINK token for their services.AugurAugur is a trustless, decentralized oracle, and prediction market platform. It leverages the wisdom of the crowd to speculate on and report the objective outcome of any event.Prediction markets are speculative markets that allow users to purchase and sell shares in the outcome of an event. Suppose you have specialized knowledge in a particular field. E.g. A basketball match. By considering various factors, you wager on a favorable outcome. How does Augur work?There are three kinds of people who use augur: The Reporters aka Oracles: They report on the outcomes of their fields of choice. When an event is near maturation, they report on the outcome. If they report wrongly or they do not report at all they risk losing 20% of their REP (native Augur tokens). The value of augur is directly proportional to the quality of the reporters. Why? Because if a lot of the reporters are dishonest, then no one will want to use augur, which will significantly decrease the demand. This forces all the reporters to remain honest.The Wagerers: They bet on the future of the markets based on the reports by the reporters.The Market Creators: They will be creating the markets for the reporters to report on and earn market fees as a result.The Reporting PeriodThe reporting is done in two phases. Within the first month of the completion of the event, the reporters submit their report to the network, which is tightly secured and kept away from the public. A month later, the second phase happens where the reports are shown in an open ledger, which is free for all to see. When that is done, we reach a final consensus.Aftermath Of The ConsensusThe wagerers get their appropriate reward for putting their bets.The reporters who reported honestly get fees from the wagerers.The reporters who didn’t report correctly get 20% of their REP deducted and that, in turn, goes to the reporters who reported honestly and accurately.RIF GatewaysRootstock (RSK) is a smart contract platform that is connected to Bitcoin´s blockchain through sidechain technology. Rootstock allows you to create applications compatible with ethereum (the web3/EVM/Solidity model) while still enjoying the security provided by Bitcoin’s blockchain. At its very core, Rootstock is a combination of:A Turing-complete resource-accounted deterministic virtual machine (for smart contracts) is compatible with the Ethereum’s EVM.A two-way pegged bitcoin sidechain (for BTC denominated trade) based on a strong federation.A SHA256D merge-mining consensus protocol (for consensus security relying on Bitcoin’s miners) with 30-seconds block interval. (for fast payments).Rootstock will also be using its tech stack – the Rootstock Infrastructure Framework Open Standard (RIFOS) to help build a healthy economic system on top of Bitcoin, sort of like a decentralized AWS. It’ll facilitate the use of blockchain technology by making it as simple for everyone as possible. Keep in mind the following features when it comes to RIFOS:As long as a product is compatible with the underlying protocols, developers can seamlessly integrate it within the RIFOS ecosystem.All the individual components of RIFOS have been designed to maximize the potential benefits for those who want to offer their infrastructure services within the protocol’s ecosystem.All the components are protected by the security provided by the bitcoin Network.Its protocols will include mechanisms to trigger network effects and economies of scale.Most of the services running in RIFOS will be consumed utilizing a single token (RIF). RIF Gateways brief overviewRIF Gateways provides a network of oracles to enable secure and tamper-proof interactions with the external world. It proposes an interface layer that unifies access to oracle services and cross-chain integrations, providing blockchains with an implementation-agnostic protocol for both internal and external data consumption. Here are some points about RIF Gateways to keep in mind:Builds bridges between blockchains.It allows data providers and consumers to engage in secure and standardized data transfers.Supports a wide range of data consumption, subscription, and payment models. RIF Gateways provides three distinct oracle services:Data services: To consume external data from the blockchain.Triggers service: Consuming external data from within the blockchain.Scheduler service: Request future execution of a blockchain transaction. #1 Data ServicesA data service provides a specific kind of external-world data. External data can come from a single data source or a network of multiple data sources. This is how it works:The creator and offeror of a data service is called “Data Service Provider.”Consumers can choose among different types of data services and then interact with the corresponding Data Service Provider’s smart contract for getting the external data.The Service Provider must implement the Data Service interfaces in their smart contracts.The Provider must periodically update their data since their consumer may need that data that’s latest or the one that was published a little time back.How does the interaction between the Provider and Consumer works?There are two methods that a consumer can use to consume the Provider’s data – a direct pull model or a subscription service.Pull modelConsumer pays for the data on a per-query basis. The requested data is taken directly from the provider. This is a more expensive and slower model.Subscription modelA consumer pays a fixed price for access. Serving a single piece of data to multiple customers allows the Service Provider to split the cost of fetching the external-world data among all the subscribers. RIF provides two subscription models:On-demand: Consumer asks the Provider for the value on an as-needed basis, as long as the subscription is valid.Push: Provider pushes the new data to the subscribers periodically.#2 Trigger ServicesA trigger service allows the Provider to procure information from within the blockchain and give it to the consumer for a price. The consumer can build their own notification solution on the API provided by the Provider. The features of the Trigger services are as follows.Each Trigger Provider should be associated with a unique domain name. This ensures ease of user accessibility.Providers must comply with a predefined interface that has been designed to be consumed by third-party applications.Consumers have the freedom to choose between a single Provider or subscribe to a set of Providers.Pre-defined triggersThe Provider can offer a notification service about certain smart contracts or events within the blockchain. He does so by notifying a fixed set of events emitted by the contract being observed.Custom triggersThe consumer can also build a trigger specifically for their own needs. They must specify to the Provider the source of the events they want to be notified about, eg. the smart contract address.Even a non-technical-user to create their own notification service.To trigger some action, the Provider allows consumers to specify which action is executed once a matching event is received.Consumers have the freedom to set the list of events which will be notified by the Trigger Provider.How does the interaction between the Provider and Consumer works?The trigger service offers the pull and subscription modelsPull modelThe consumer specifically requests a notification about one particular event.Subscription modelAs with Data Services, a consumer pays a predefined price for the
service. However, triggers only have the push subscription model.#3 Transaction scheduling servicesThe transaction scheduling service is a decentralized solution that allows a customer to program future executions of on-chain transactions. As with Data Services and Trigger Services, new scheduling service providers can join by registering a new scheduler service that will be discovered through the RIF Marketplace. Consumers may be internal/on-chain or external/off-chain.How does the interaction between the Provider and Consumer works?The scheduler service can also offer pull and subscription models.Pull modelThe consumer pays the amount required after he requests a single transaction schedule for a delegated execution. The execution can be scheduled for a specific time and a given “execution window.”Subscription modelConsumers can subscribe to delegate the execution of a specific function recurrently. The consumer pays a negotiated price for executing a function recurrently. RIF Scheduler Services protocol proposes just has the push subscription mode for delegating a repetitive execution. 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) suggested that leaders around the world need to do more to ensure a quicker and more sustainable recovery for the global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 
 
 
Amongst the 350 top risk professionals in the world surveyed, these risk managers expect a prolonged global recession, as a number of areas of concern were identified in the report compiled by the Forum’s Global Risks Advisory Board, Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc, and Zurich Insurance Group.
 
Half of the respondents expressed expected bankruptcies and industry consolidation, and failure of industries to recover, and a disruption of supply chains. The World Economic Forum published a report on the importance of blockchain in supply chain disruption amid the pandemic. 
 
Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum said, “The crisis has devastated lives and livelihoods. It has triggered an economic crisis with far-reaching implications and revealed the inadequacies of the past.”
 
With the onset of the new infectious disease, cybercrimes and the breakdown of IT infrastructure and networks have taken a swerve for the worst. The Forum concluded that around 500 million people would be at risk of falling into poverty, an anticipated fall of 13 to 32 percent in global trade, and a 1 percent of increase in unemployment, which could result in a 2 percent increase in chronic illness.
 
Levels of unemployment continue to grow, especially in the younger cohort, a lack of progress in reducing carbon emissions are also possible side effects of the pandemic as well. The US federal authorities found that a group of international fraudsters may have been attacking the US unemployment systems, funneling millions of dollars in payments that were intended to support those who were affected economically by COVID-19.
 
The Forum’s take on blockchain and digitization to address supply chain disruption
 
The World Economic Forum recently published a new blockchain deployment toolkit aimed to help governments, major institutions, and companies of any size to be able to maximize the benefits of integrating blockchain technology in the supply chain sector. The Forum also highlighted the importance of blockchain for addressing the disruption of supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
The toolkit was tested by businesses for a period of time, to make sure it is user-friendly and can have an impact on companies in the future. Nadia Hewett, Blockchain Lead at the World Economic Forum said, “Not only are we now providing the toolkit and all the lessons in subsequent COVID blockchain activities to our partners, governments and private sector; while we developed the toolkit and other ongoing projects, we brought in partners to help co-create and design it with a user-centric approach in mind.”
 
The World Economic Forum believes with the accelerated release of the blockchain deployment toolkit will also help with the economic recovery post-pandemic. Hewett says that many countries will rely on digitization for its economic recovery, as digitization for trade could act as a way to reduce trade barriers, given all the geopolitical issues.
 
Feds suspect fraudsters attacked US unemployment systems costing millions
 
With the number of infections in the US growing at an appalling rate, so far, 1.5 million American citizens have been infected, with over 90,000 related deaths. The unemployment crisis in the country has surpassed the rate since the Great Depression, as the official US unemployment rate is at its highest in recorded history, at an alarming 14.7 percent.
 
The New York Times obtained a memo from the US Secret Service, indicating that the fraud scheme was coming from a “well-organized Nigerian fraud ring,” and could result in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in the American financial system.
 
These fraudsters may have leveraged detailed information about US citizens, including social security numbers, which have been obtained from previous cyber attacks. The attackers have also filed claims on behalf of people who have not been laid off, according to officials.
 
Risks of UK supply chains ahead of Brexit
 
Ahead of Brexit, the British are facing issues in disrupted supply chains due to the coronavirus pandemic. With just seven months to go before Brexit takes place, 82 percent of small to medium-sized manufacturers say that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their supply chains. 
 
 
Image via Shutterstock

Share and get +16 +16 This article will analyze the developments about Blockchain evidence and courts in the USA, China, Azerbaijan, the United Kingdom and Italy.A number of major jurisdictions across the globe have recently addressed the issue of the admissibility of evidence recorded on blockchain in courts. These developments have taken place in a number of ways; some jurisdictions have passed new laws to specifically regulate the legal recognition of blockchain evidence, others have amended existing laws, while certain jurisdictions have published statements clarifying their regulation under existing law.Blockchain Evidence and CourtsUSAThe Federal Government of the United States has not exercised its constitutional power to implement legislation regulating the admissibility of blockchain evidence in court. Thus, states enjoy residual power to implement their own legislation. The Federal Rules of Evidence establish a minimum requirement in what is referred to as the ‘best evidence rule’ which establishes that the best evidence must be used at trial. Rule 1002 of the Federal Rules of Evidence states “An original writing, recording, or photograph is required in order to prove its content unless these rules or a federal statute provides otherwise”.Several states have regulated blockchain through introducing their own legislation and rules, particularly with regard to the regulation of cryptocurrency – or as termed by various legislators, virtual currencies. New York kickstarted legislative developments in the USA through the regulation of virtual currency companies, and eventually, several states followed suit, with 32 states implementing their own rules and regulations. The states of Illinois, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Arizona, New York and Ohio have passed or introduced legislation that specifically regulates the admissibility of blockchain evidence in court.IllinoisThe Blockchain Technology Act House Bill 3575, which was passed by the House of Representatives on the 29th May 2019 and came into effect in January 2020, regulates the use of blockchain technology in transactions and proceedings, provides limitations, and also defines terms such as blockchain and electronic record. The Act states that “a smart contract, record, or signature may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because a blockchain was used to create, store or verify the smart contract, record or signature”.  Evidence of a smart contract, record or signature which was created, stored or verified through blockchain cannot be excluded in proceedings. Furthermore, where the law requires records to be in writing, electronic evidence recorded on blockchain is sufficient. Where a signature is required, submission of a signature recorded electronically on blockchain or blockchain evidence verifying the intent of a person to provide a signature is likewise sufficient.Certain limitations to the use of blockchain are also stipulated in the Act. A notable limitation is that where an agreement between the parties exists to conduct a transaction by using blockchain, and the law requires that such contract or record relating to the transaction is in writing, the legal validity of the contract may be denied if the blockchain containing the electronic record of the transaction is not in a form which may be stored and accurately reproduced for all parties. Another limitation is that where a notice or acknowledgement must be given in writing, this requirement is not satisfied by delivering or recording the notice or acknowledgement on blockchain where the notice is of cancellation or termination of a public utility, matters related to primary residences, health and life insurance policies, and recall of products.VermontHouse Act 868, ergo ‘An act relating to miscellaneous economic development’, passed on the 2nd June 2016 includes a section dedicated to the recognition of the validity of blockchain records and their admissibility in court. In essence, the Act brings digital records electronically stored on blockchain on par with Vermont’s rules of evidence, thus such records are admissible in court and have legal bearing. The Act states that a digital record electronically registered in a blockchain is self-authenticating if it is accompanied by a written declaration of a qualified person, made under oath, stating the qualification of the person making such certification and the date and time the record entered the blockchain, the date and time the record was received from the blockchain, that the record was maintained on the blockchain as a regular conducted activity, and that the record was made by the regularly conducted activity as a regular practice. However, the presumption does not extend to the truthfulness, validity, or legal status of the contents of the fact or record. Such digital record is considered as a record of regularly conducted business activity, unless the source of the information, the method or circumstance lack trustworthiness. The Act also lays down several presumptions. Firstly, the record is considered to be authentic. Furthermore, the date and time of the record is the date and time that the record was added to the blockchain. The person presumed to have made the recordation is also the one which the blockchain establishes. Persons against whom electronically stored evidence is presented may challenge the authenticity of such records by producing evidence demonstrating that the “presumed fact, record, time or identity is not authentic as set forth on the date added to the blockchain”.While the law still requires an element of human verification, the provisions of this act are still significant as they affirm the evidentiary potential of blockchain records. The ramifications of this Act would be further magnified if states such as New York and California implement similar provisions, where this type of evidence is more likely to be utilized.VirginiaHouse Bill 2415 titled ‘Business records; electronically registered on a blockchain self-authenticating document’ was submitted as a bill on  the 1st September 2019 and has not yet been passed into law by the House of Representatives. The bill seeks to amend the Code of Virginia, and the provisions outlined in this bill are very similar to those contained in Vermont’s H.A. 868. The bill lays down that “in any civil proceeding where a business record electronically registered on a blockchain is material and otherwise admissible, the record shall be presumed to be self-authenticating and requires no extrinsic evidence of authenticity”. However, this presumption does not extend to the truthfulness, validity or legal status of the contents of the record. The presumptions established by the bill are identical to those laid down in Vermont’s H.A.868, regarding, inter alia, the authenticity of the record, the date and time, and the person who made the record. Another identical provision states that records meeting such requirements will be considered as records of regularly conducted business activity, unless the source of information lacks trustworthiness.WashingtonIn the State of Washington, Senate Bill 5638, an Act ‘Relating to recognizing the validity of distributed ledger technology’ was passed into law on the 26th April 2019 and came into effect on the 28th July 2019. The Act defines an electronic record as “a record generated, communicated, received, or stored by electronic means for use in an information system or for transmission from one information system to another”. Electronic records may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability on the grounds that they are generated, communicated, received, or stored using distributed ledger technology.Arizona & New YorkArizona House Bill 2417 was signed into law on the 29th March 2017 and amended the Arizona Revised Statutes by adding a new section on electronic transactions. Through this amendment, a signature secured through blockchain is considered to be in electronic form and constitutes an electronic signature, and records or contracts secured through bloc
kchain are also considered to be in electronic form and to constitute electronic records. Furthermore, smart contracts may exist in commerce and contracts related to a transaction cannot be denied legal effect, validity or enforceability on the grounds that such contracts contain a smart contract term. Thus, legal certainty is provided regarding the enforceability and validity of smart contracts.In the State of New York, Assembly Bill 1683 and Senate Bill 4142 propose practically identical amendments to those presented in Arizona H.B. 2417 to the Electronic Signature and Records Act of the State Technology law. The Bills contain the same provisions regarding the recognition of electronic signatures and contracts secured through blockchain and the validity of smart contracts. A.B. 1683 is currently in Assembly Committee, while S.B. 4142 has passed Senate.OhioSenate Bill 300 was introduced in May 2018 and sought to amend the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, with the original text containing provisions stating that “a record or signature may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form”. The bill also stated that where law requires records to be in writing or requires a signature, electronic records and electronic signatures satisfy such requirements. Furthermore, the bill proposed the recognition of smart contracts having full legal effect and enforceability even if “an electronic record was used in its formation or…contains a smart contract term”.Some of these provisions included in Senate Bill 300 were incorporated into Senate Bill 200 which was signed into law on the 3rd August 2018. Through the promulgation of this bill, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act was amended to state that “a record or contract that is secured through blockchain technology is considered to be in electronic form and to be an electronic record”, and electronic signatures secured through blockchain technology are also recognized as electronic signatures. However, the provisions in Senate Bill 300 recognizing the validity of smart contracts were omitted from Senate Bill 200. Thus, while the provisions regarding electronic records and signatures are similar to those passed in Arizona, the State of Ohio does not currently recognize smart contracts as valid unlike the State of Arizona.ChinaThe Hangzhou Internet Court in China was the first court to accept evidence recorded on blockchain in June 2018 in the case Hangzhou Huatai Yimei Culture Media Co. Ltd. v. Shenzhen Daotong Technology Development Co. Ltd. The plaintiff company had obtained a license to publish an article online from City Express Newspaper, which the website First Female Fashion Network, owned by the defendant company, republished without authorization. The plaintiff was authorized to enforce online infringements thus instituted proceedings in January 2018.The plaintiff had stored evidence of the copyright consisting of snapshots of the article webpages on a blockchain deposition service called Baoquan.com. The court examined the validity of the evidence presented by the plaintiff by analyzing the way Baoquan.com preserved the data, which consisted of obtaining a copy of the snapshot, source code of the webpage and invocation log and storing them in a package file. The package file’s hash value was then calculated and stored on the Factom and Bitcoin blockchains. The Court deemed this as reliable. The Court then proceeded to confirm that the hash values recorded on the two blockchains and the hash value represented by the plaintiff were identical, and the time stamps were also cohesive with the time when the webpage content was captured.The Court reiterated that blockchain is capable of providing secure electronic data and when examining the admissibility of this data as evidence, attention should be paid to the source of the data, whether the methods used for its collection and storage were reliable, and whether such evidence is associated with other evidence available.Through this judgement by one of the Internet Courts established in China, it is clear that China is laying the very foundations for admissibility of blockchain evidence in courts around the world.On the 7th September 2018, China’s Supreme People’s Court issued ‘Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Cases by Internet Courts’. These provisions regulate the proceedings of the country’s three Internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou which primarily deal with disputes involving online shopping, network service contract disputes, copyright infringement of work published online, and ownership issues of Internet domain names among others. Generally, the entire litigation process takes place online.Article 11 of the provisions regulate the admissibility of blockchain evidence and state that;“electronic data submitted by the parties concerned, if collected through electronic signature, trusted timestamping, hash value verification, blockchain and other evidence collection, and verified with retention and tamper-proof technical means or via the electronic forensics and deposit platform, which are able to prove its authenticity, the Internet Court shall confirm its authenticity”.This essentially confirms the decision taken by the Hangzhou Internet Court earlier in 2018, and extends the rules established therein to the other Internet courts.The Jiangsu High Court also issued ‘Guidelines on Implementation of the Most Stringent Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights to Provide Judicial Guarantees for High Quality Development’ in September 2019. These guidelines cover several issues, including the admissibility of blockchain evidence. Article 9 specifically states that evidence collected or preserved technologically should be recognized at law, and judges should recognize evidence stored on blockchain as valid if it meets the standard of proof.On the 30th October 2019, the Beijing Internet Court decided its first case instituted by the plaintiffs ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok against HuoPai Video. TikTok is a mobile application where users upload and share short video clips, which has gained popularity globally. Baidu Technologies developed a very similar application called HuoPai, and uploaded one of the videos originally uploaded on TikTok without permission and even offered its users the ability to download such video. ByteDance sued for an injunction and damages. The case was filed online and the hearing was also conducted online, and the Court even accepted digital evidence recorded on blockchain. The third party platform Zhongjing Tianping Technology had stored evidence which proved that the video had been stolen, thus the Court was able to find Baidu guilty of copyright infringement.AzerbaijanIn October 2018, discussions were underway among the Azerbaijani Internet Forum (AIF) for the Ministry of Justice to implement blockchain technology in several departments within its remit. Currently, the Ministry provides more than 30 electronic services and 15 information systems and registries, including “electronic notary, electronic courts, penitentiary service, information systems of non-governmental organizations”, and the register of the population, among others. Part of the AIF’s plans is to introduce a “mobile notary office” which would involve the notarization of electronic documents. Through this process, the registry’s entries will be stored on blockchain which parties will be able to access but not change, thus preventing falsification. Future plans also include employing smart contracts in public utility services such as water, gas and electricity.United KingdomThe Digital Architecture and Cyber Security at Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) announced plans to conduct a pilot project whereby DLT would be employed to securely store digital evidence in August 2018. £1.2 billion have already been invested in the modernization of courts in the United Kingdom, with the ultimate aim of digital transformation eliminating the use of paper to streamline the
courts’ processes and facilitate access to information.Through this innovative system, a digital audit trail would be created which provides a record of the ways in which digital evidence is created, accessed, and modified, and by which entity and from which location, which would enable a thorough examination of the event which led to such evidence. The project aims to harness the integrity and decentralization provided by DLT for improved “evidence sharing, identity management and ensuring citizens have maximum control over their own information”. The implementation of DLT would also reduce the cost and time taken up by the process of storing evidence, while preventing the tampering of evidence.In November 2019, the legal treatment of cryptoassets and smart contracts was ascertained through the publishing of the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce’s (UKJT) legal statement following consultation earlier in the year. UKJT, which forms part of the LawTech Delivery Panel, confirmed that smarts contracts have legal contractual force under English law, which requires the agreement of two or more parties intending to create a legal relationship through such agreement and who will each derive some form of benefit from such contract. These requirements may very well be satisfied by smart contracts, however, the Courts would enquire into each individual case, and more specifically the “parties’ words and conduct”, to determine whether these requirements were in fact satisfied when presented with a smart contract – just as it would enquire with any other contract. The statement reads that “in principle a smart contract can be identified, interpreted and enforced using ordinary and well-established legal principles”, both where code is used to define the parties’ contractual obligations or simply to create an agreement the meaning of which is found externally. The statement also confirms that both unilateral smart contracts such as those involving Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), as well as lesser-used bilateral smart contracts, are recognized at law. Finally, where the law requires a written signature, this requirement can be satisfied by using a private key. On a practical note, when it comes to interpretation by the courts, it is clarified that smart contracts will be treated in the same way as other contracts, with the judges focusing their interpretation on the parties’ intentions as to what the nature of their obligations ought to be; however, expert evidence may be needed to interpret computer code.ItalyIn January 2019, the Italian Parliament passed Law No. 12/2019 which confirmed the legal validity of smart contracts and DLT. The law defines DLT as:“technologies and information protocols that use a shared, distributed, replicable, simultaneously accessible, architecturally decentralized registry on a cryptographic basis, such as to allow registration, validation, updating and archiving of data, both in clear and further protected by cryptography, that are verifiable by each participant, are not alterable and not modifiable”.The law states that the storage of a computerized document on DLT has the same legal effects as an electronic time stamp  under Article 41 of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, also known as the eIDAS Regulation. The Regulation defines an electronic time stamp as “data in electronic form which binds other data in electronic form to a particular time establishing evidence that the latter data existed at that time”. Article 41(1) of the Regulation states:“1.   An electronic time stamp shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements of the qualified electronic time stamp.”However, Article 41 goes on to state that only qualified electronic time stamps “enjoy the presumption of the accuracy of the date and the time it indicates and the integrity of the data to which the date and time are bound”. In order for an electronic time stamp to be considered qualified, the following three requirements must be satisfied as set out in Article 42 of eIDAS:“1.   A qualified electronic time stamp shall meet the following requirements:(a) it binds the date and time to data in such a manner as to reasonably preclude the possibility of the data being changed undetectably;(b) it is based on an accurate time source linked to Coordinated Universal Time; and(c) it is signed using an advanced electronic signature or sealed with an advanced electronic seal of the qualified trust service provider, or by some equivalent method.”Therefore, a qualified electronic time stamp would have to be made by an authorized certification body such as a qualified trust service provider, which is not common practice in most blockchains. This requirement runs counter to one of blockchain technology’s most important characteristic – decentralization – however, this categorization would only be required if the evidence presented is challenged to demonstrate the accuracy of the data presented. One can perhaps debate the possibility of expanding on the part relating to ‘equivalent methods’ in order to include trusted technologies such as DLT.Law No. 12/2019 also provides a definition of smart contracts, and states that where the law requires a written contract, smart contracts satisfy such requirement once the contracting parties are identified digitally.Through these clarifications, data stored on DLT as well as smart contracts are granted legal validity and are admissible in a court of law in Italy.The Future of Blockchain EvidenceIt is evident that several major jurisdictions are making noticeable developments towards granting blockchain evidence, particularly smart contracts, legal validity in an effort at providing more legal certainty on the regulation of blockchain technology. Out of the five countries analyzed, four countries have specifically amended legislation in this regard, with most laws providing similar definitions of smart contracts, DLT, cryptoassets and digital signatures. However, while these legislative developments set the foundation for the admissibility of blockchain evidence, in most jurisdictions courts are yet to give practical application to these provisions. China is an exception to this observation, with its Internet Courts hearing two separate cases where blockchain evidence was admitted and even affected the judgement given. With rapid developments in the industry seeing the increased dependability on DLT for a variety of transactions, even by national authorities such as Azerbaijan’s registries, courts will eventually be faced with numerous scenarios where parties will seek to support their claims with blockchain evidence. To this end, legal certainty must be ensured in every jurisdiction seeking to keep abreast with these technological developments. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many subjects to the forefront: our reliance on oil, manufacturing in China, the need for digital dollars, the frailty of our global supply chain, and our lack of preparation to deal with the outbreak.
However, perhaps the strangest topic online and the most unavoidable has been the conspiracy theory chasing Bill Gates and his foundation’s efforts to produce a Covid-19 vaccine. The accusations range from him directly being the cause of the pandemic, to being the head of an Illuminati like circular cabal bent on controlling the world through microchips, and now an insidious plan to depopulate the planet of billions of people.
Where we Came In
We are a blockchain news site, while we absolutely love discussing technologies that may appear to border on fantasy, it has never been our intention to dive into the realm of conspiracy and allegations. However, while this conspiracy began for us as a simple write up on a cutting-edge Microsoft crypto mining patent, the story was bigger to some people than we ever could have imagined and has now taken on a life of its own.
In an effort to put this story to bed once and for all, as far as we are concerned, we have decided to look a little more closely at the allegations and perhaps shed some light, for some, on why they may be getting carried away with their perceptions of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their effort to combat the coronavirus.
The Devil’s Patent
In March 2020, Microsoft filed a patent with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for a new system that proposes using sensors, not microchips, to detect and calculate the amount of energy and time spent on a pre-determined activity, like engaging with an advertisement. The sensors apparently are capable of gauging both physical and brain activity and convert that sum into data which can be used by computers to solve computational problems and create new blocks.
What we did not really pay attention to, at the time, was the peculiar patent number of the Microsoft technology – WO/2020/060606. This number, however, did not slip past the Oscar-winning Russian director, Nikita Mikhalkov. A devout Christian, Mikhalkov immediately noticed that the last few numbers of the patent seemed to include the devil’s number, “666” in the application.
Appearing on Russian TV, Mikhalkov said, “The 060606 part is somewhat alarming. You probably understand this, right? Is this a coincidence or an intentional selection of such a symbol, which in the Apocalypse of John is called the ‘number of the beast’ – the 666.”
While Gates has been commended by most for his proactive efforts, Mikahlkov has claimed that the coming COVID-19 vaccination distributed by the Bill Gates Foundation will be a trojan horse for a microchip, in an insidious scheme to enslave the world.
The Oscar-winning director is so confident in his claims that he went on to name Herman Graf, the Head of Russian bank Sberbank, as a co-conspirator, and his arguments have been convincing enough for former Tennis champion and now Russian politician Marat Safin—who has shown public support for the director’s theory.
The Obvious Possible Explanation
Perhaps unknown to both Mikhalkov and Safin, is that patent filing numbers are simply generated according to the guidelines of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. And both of these men do not ever contend with Microsoft’s US patent number, which was published in the United States as US20200097951. We assume it is because there are no numbers linked to biblical prophecies or ‘Satan’ in this filing. 
The first numbers ‘2020’ simply represent the year, and the rest is simply the order it was filed in. Not too much to this one. 
Plandemic and the Anti-Vaxxer Virologist
A week ago, a clip from a soon to be released documentary called ‘Plandemic’ went viral on YouTube before being removed. The clip featured a disgraced virologist named Dr. Judy Mikovits accusing a sinister corporate-controlled “circular cabal” led by Bill Gates himself, of creating the coronavirus pandemic.
Mikovits is adamant that this group she refers to as a “circular cabal” is led by Microsoft Founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates and she even goes on to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of burying her research which allegedly proved that vaccines weaken people’s immune systems and made them more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
In the viral clip from Plandemic, Mikovits insists that her research was buried and she even goes as far as saying that wearing a mask actually activates the coronavirus. She alleges that Dr. Fauci, who is the face of the Trump administration’s outbreak containment efforts, has censored her warnings to the public. Unfortunately, a little fuel was added to this fire when Trump himself began to publicly question the origins and spread of COVID-19, suggesting it was man-made.
The Obvious Possible Explanation
Prior to the clip of Plandemic being released, Mikovits had already authored and published a book entitled the ‘Plague of Corruption’ which frames herself as the brave whistleblower being held at bay by an Illuminati-like ‘deep state’ organization.
Mikovits has received a lot of support, unfortunately, due to her training as a virologist. But in her excuses regarding her lack of legitimate support, she and her following have consistently failed to mention that her research has never been successfully replicated in other laboratories—meaning it has failed the scientific research standard of peer review. This is basically the reason why anyone’s research would be disregarded, and another point many do not want to contend with is that Mikovits does appear to have a notorious anti-vaxxer history and her research also appears to be driven by her agenda allowing her to draw the conclusions she would like to see. If this were not the case, her research would have held up. But it didn’t.
Mikovits down. 
Italy Calls for the Arrest of Bill Gates
The most recent in the line of allegations came less than a week ago, this time by Italian politician Anna Cunial who took to the house floor to call for the arrest of Bill Gates as she believes he is on a mission to depopulate the world by up to 15%.
Cunial alleges that Gates has been working on depopulation and dictatorial control plans on global politics, aiming to obtain control over agriculture, technology, and energy. Cunial’s allegations appear to fit in with Mikovits’ own accusations, alluding to a powerful deep-state government that Gates himself controls. She subscribes to the claim circulating on social media, that Gates owns the “patent” for the SARS-CoV2, a virus that wasn’t even discovered until January 2020. The theory goes that this entire pandemic is just to create a need for a vaccine from which Gates will subsequently profit.
Cunial points to  Event 201 which took place in Davos Switzerland, and officially served as a simulation for the prevention and control of such a pandemic. She quotes Bill Gates from the day of the simulation, who she claims said, “If we do a good job on vaccines, health, and reproduction, we can reduce the world population by 10-15%, only a genocide can save the world.”
Cunial goes on to put an unsupported, by anyone of substance, spin on some of the Gates Foundation’s achievements, “With his vaccines, Gates managed to sterilize millions of women in Africa. Gates caused a polio epidemic that paralyzed 500,000 children in India, and still, today with the DPT vaccines, Gates causes more death than the disease itself.”
The Obvious Possible Explanation
First, let’s dispel the myth that Italy is out for the arrest of Gates. No, the Italian authorities have not been as compelled as the red-eyed Youtube users and underground chat scene to take up arms against the philanthropist. 
While Cunial’s argument was lengthy and quite articulate on the Italian parliament floor, and she did cover all her bases mentioning everything from the Bilderberg Group to Monsanto GMOs—Cunial’s argument seemed to really fall down when she kept returning to Gates’ motivations as simply being to control-everything.
She is especially disturbed and perplexed with Gates’ ability to have predicted the pandemic after only spending a decade speaking to the most intelligent minds the world has to offer on the subject. It seems for his accusers, Gates’s most significant and obvious flaw has been his long campaign to prevent these diseases and to continue to pursue vaccines for diseases that really should no longer exist and have a larger impact on the third world and developing nations. 
The reality at this point is that Cunial has never seen a vaccine that she liked, and so far she has not published or provided any hard evidence for her accusations, which may sound powerful when spoken but really falls apart quite quickly when any actual research goes into them. She claims money and control to be his main motivations, “The Italian contribution to the International Alliance against the coronavirus will be 140 million Euros of which 120 million Euros will be given to Gavi Alliance the no-profit created by the Gates Foundation. This is just part of the 7.4 billion funds by the EU to find a vaccine against coronavirus which will be used.” 
Again lets layout these motivations for the alleged evil of Bill Gates logically—yes, Cunial is actually saying that Gates is in pursuit of money and control?
Unless you have been living under a rock since the 1990s, you are probably aware that Gates is the founder of a little company called Microsoft and this has made him incredibly rich. In fact, rich beyond our, and definitely Cunial’s, narrow comprehension. 120 million Euros is definitely a lot of money, but not really to someone who has over 100 Billion USD and change, and is still earning exponentially. Gates and his family for generations upon generations will never ever be in need of money. 
Additionally, there are a lot of easier ways to make money than selling vaccines, which have to go through very extensive testing and regulatory requirements. Vaccines also do not even have anything close to the profit margins of other non-essential medications like a Viagra or even a basic health supplement.
As far as global control goes, again perhaps Cunial has not visited an actual office in the last 30 years, but Microsoft’s technology is more than likely the glue that holds most offices together. Gates does not need to infiltrate us with his technology, we are already on board. If he wanted to infiltrate us, he could do it the next time Windows tells you it’s time for an update. 

Share and get +16 +16 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is the cryptocurrency’s world public crowdsale. Whenever a project wants to launch a new coin or dApp, they can conduct an ICO to attract investors into their ecosystem.ICO DefinitionThe most alluring part of ICOs is the lack of red tape and formality. More often than not, a company simply has to submit a whitepaper to qualify for an ICO. Companies have been able to raise millions of dollars in mere seconds, thanks to ICOs.In fact, the amount of money that ICOs have raised over the last two years is truly astonishing. In 2017, ICOs raised a total of $5.6 billion. If that sounds shocking to you then think about this.ICOs have already raised $6.3 billion, 4.5 months into 2018 alone!After seeing all these stats, it makes sense as to why more and more people are getting intrigued with ICOs. Our guide gives an overview on Initial Coin Offering- ICO and presents the hottest past, current, and future ICOs. What is An Initial Coin Offering?ICOs are basically blockchain crowdsales, the cryptocurrency version of crowdfunding. The ICOs have been truly revolutionary and have managed to accomplish many amazing tasks:They have provided the simplest path by which DAPP developers can get the required funding for their project.Anyone can become invested in a project they are interested in by purchasing the tokens of that particular DAPP and become a part of the project themselves.It was in July 2014 when ICOs well and truly came into the public’s attention. That was when the ICO ethereum raised .4 million and ushered in a new age of ICOs. Since 2013 ICOs are often used to fund the development of new cryptocurrencies. The pre-created token can be easily sold and traded on all cryptocurrency exchanges if there is demand for them.With the success of ethereum, ICOs have become the de-facto method of funding the development of a crypto project by releasing a token which is somehow integrated into the project. Short History of Initial Coin OfferingMaybe the first cryptocurrency distributed by an ICO was Ripple. In early 2013 Ripple Labs started to develop the Ripple called payment system and created around 100 billion XRP token. The company sold these token to fund the development of the Ripple platform.Later in 2013, Mastercoin promised to create a layer on top of bitcoin to execute smart contracts and tokenize Bitcoin transactions. The developer sold some million Mastercoin token against bitcoin and received around mio.Several other cryptocurrencies have been funded with ICO, for example, Lisk, which sold its coins for around $5mio in early 2016. Most prominent however is ethereum. In mid-2014 the Ethereum Foundation sold ETH against 0.0005 bitcoin each. With this, they receive nearly $20mio, which has become one of the largest crowdfunding ever and serves as the capital base for the development of Ethereum.As ethereum itself unleashed the power of smart contracts, it opened the door for a new generation of Initial Coin Offering.Ethereum – The Initial Coin Offering? ICO Crowdfunding MachineOne of the easiest application of ethereum’s smart contract system is to create a simple token which can be transacted on the Ethereum blockchain instead of Ether. This kind of contract was standardized with ERC#20. It made ethereum host of such a wide scope of ICO that you can safely say that Ethereum found its Killer App as a distributed platform for crowdfunding and fundraising. The most prominent demonstration of the potential of Ethereum’s smart contracts has been The DAO. The distributed investment company was fuelled with Ether worth $100m. The investors received in exchange against Ether Dao Token which had their own market price and enabled the holder to participate in the governance of the DAO. After it was hacked, the DAO however failed.The concept of funding projects with a token on Ethereum became the blueprint for a new and highly successful generation of crowdfunding projects. If you already tried out, you know that investing in token on top of ethereum is charmingly easy: You transfer ETH, paste the contract in your wallet – and, tata: The token appear in your account and you are free to transfer them as you want.Before we go any further, let’s understand what tokens mean.Tokens = ICO Cryptocurrency?Image Credit: IB TimesThe word “token” gets thrown around a lot, however, more often than not, people simply don’t know what it means. To be honest, it can be extremely difficult to pinpoint an exact definition. Let’s at least start with a very broad definition: A token is a representation of something in its particular ecosystem. It could value, stake, voting right, or anything. A token is not limited to one particular role; it can fulfill a lot of roles in its native ecosystemHaving said that, there is a difference between cryptocurrency coin and token. Coins like ethereum, Bitcoin, and Bitcoin Cash are examples of cryptocurrency coin, since they have value outside their native environment.However, projects like OmiseGO and Golem are tokens because they exist on top of an existing smart contract platform, like ethereum.According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) there are two kinds of tokens out there:Security TokensA crypto token that passes the Howey Test is deemed a security token. For a token to pass the Howey Test, it must fulfill the following conditions:Is it an investment of money?Is the investment in a common enterprise?Is there an expectation of profit from the work of the promoters or the third party?Note: “Common Enterprise” is still open to interpretation. However, the majority of the federal courts define it as a horizontal enterprise where investors pool in their Since most ICOs are investment opportunities in the company itself, the tokens classify as security. Security tokens are subject to federal securities and regulations since they derive their value from external, tradable assets.Utility TokensOn the other hand, if the token doesn’t pass the Howey test, then it classifies as a utility token. These tokens simply provide users with a product and/or service. Think of them like gateway tokens which can:Give holders a right to use the networkGive holders a right to take advantage of the network by votingSo, now we know what an ICO is and what tokens are. Let’s actually look into the mechanism of how an ICO works.How Does the ICO Crowdsale Work?Image Credit: ApplicatureSmart Contract platforms like ethereum and Neo allow developers to create their Dapps on them. Think of them like a decentralized supercomputer and the Dapps as the applications that one can execute inside.In order to gain funding for the project, the developer issues a limited amount of tokens (could be utility or security). It is important that the tokens have a limited amount because:It makes sure that the ICO has a goal to aim forAs the demand rises and the supply of token diminishes, it makes sure that the value of the tokens will go up. The tokens have a predetermined price which may go up or down depending on the demand.ICO trading is pretty simple and straightforward. If you want to buy some tokens, then you send some cryptocurrency (Ether if the platform is ethereum) to the crowd-sale address. The moment you do that, you get the corresponding amount of tokens sent to your wallet.Obviously, this is just a general overview. There is a lot of marketing that goes on leading up to the date of the ICO. In fact, paid advertising used to be so rampant that social media giants like Facebook and Twitter had to ban ICO-related ads on their platforms.Pros and Cons of ICO ExplainedImage Credit: BlueoceanProsMost importantly, ICOs give promising projects an opportunity to shine. The prime example of this has to be ethereum. Look at what it has achieved over the last 3 years. Not only has it become a part of our zeitgeist, they have provided an ideal platform for other projects to develop on top of them.Many projects in the “centralized world” never get to do their IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) because of the sheer amount of unnecessary paperwork inv
olved. However, blockchain projects can simply take part in an ICO by presenting a good quality ICO whitepaper. What is ICO whitepaper you ask?It is a concisely written piece of documentation which presents the problem that the project is aiming to solve and the method that they will be following in order to solve it. Upon reading the white paper, the potential investors can choose to invest or not in the project.Another brilliant thing that an ICO manages to do is to establish a rapport between the project and their community. Any ICO creator worth their salt will tell you how critical it is for them to develop a healthy community.Quantstamp is a perfect example of this. They were able to raise all their ICO money organically because of their healthy relationship with their community.The fact that blockchain crowdfunding was able to collect $6.8 billion in 4.5 months just goes to show how much hype and demand there is behind these projects. Such kind of exposure will do wonders for them.In a similar vein, ICO funding provides a huge incentive for developers to go the extra step and come up with more exciting and innovative projects.For investors, ICOs provide an opportunity for them to invest and discover the “next big thing.” Let’s give you the perfect example, Ethereum. During the ICO, 1 Ether was trading for 40-50 cents. As of right now, they are trading for $477 each.ConsRemember how we told you earlier that one of the biggest pros of ICOs is the lack of paperwork involved? Unfortunately, it is a double-edged sword. Loads of scammers have entered this space hoping to make a quick buck.They simply create a bogus white paper or omit some of the more important details off their whitepaper to make their projects seem more important and intricate than what they actually are. When you are investing in a project’s ICO you are not actually investing in the project, you are investing in the idea of the project. As such, it works on pure speculation which is based on the quality of the white paper and the credibility of the team. So, you simply have no idea whether the project is actually going to be a success or not when you invest.This is where certain cold-hard facts should be considered. 90% of the startups fails. Either the product doesn’t work or the developers get lazy. Also, as the DAO attack has shown us, even if everything is in place, a slight mistake in the code could be enough to send a project crashing down.During the ICO sale, the presence of “crypto whales” could be problematic. The most infamous example of this is the BAT ICO. The ICO was able to raise a staggering $35 million in 24 seconds! It turned out that majority of the tokens were owned by certain individuals, which simply defeats the purpose of decentralization.These individuals are called “crypto whales” or simply “whales.” These individuals use their significant financial clout to pay exorbitantly high transaction fees to “cut in line” of the waiting queue. During the BAT ICO whales paid as much as $2220 in transaction fees!An ICO is an extremely laborious event for the blockchain, at least the way it is designed right now. The fact remains that blockchains are simply not scalable enough to take up heavy duty activity. The 0 million Status ICO clogged up the ethereum blockchain so badly that a lot of people simply weren’t able to participate because their transactions didn’t come through.This can work in reverse as well.The SophiaTX ICO had to postpone its date because the Cryptokitties game had clogged up and slowed down everything in the ethereum blockchain.Ethereum based ICO tokens are easy to store because they can be stored in any Ethereum wallet. However, things get tricky when it comes to other platforms. More often than not, these tokens may not be compatible with your wallet and storing them may be an extremely tiring and annoying exercise.Also, as you may already be aware of, ICOs are increasingly coming under the radar of regulatory bodies like SEC and CFTC. They have already made their presence known by making it compulsory for US-based ICOs to declare whether their tokens are securities or not.Finally, the next step to increased regulation is government intervention. Because of the vast amount of unregulated money that ICOs are dealing with, the government may consider them unsafe and simply ban them in their countries. China and India are ideal examples of this.Legality of ICOsThe legal state of ICO is mostly undefined. Ideally, the token is sold not as a financial asset but as a digital good like many other things. This is why ICO is often called “crowd sale”. In this case, in the most jurisdiction, the funding with an ICO is not regulated, which makes it extremely easy and paperless, given a lawyer experienced with the issue is on board.Having said that, ICOs have increasingly come under the scrutiny of regulatory bodies like the SEC and the CFTC because of the fact that most of the ICOs are securities. This gained a lot of traction when the SEC declared the Dao ICO as security. Ash Bennington from Coindesk, breaks down why the Dao was deemed a security in the form of a tale:“Not so long ago, a group of developers started a DAO.The DAO developers said:“There are all these decentralized projects and there’s no way for them to get funding – because they need money to make money.”Tell you what. We’re going to write code and sell a token and, in exchange, people who buy the token will get whatever profits are made from those projects.We’ll work the code. They’ll pick the projects. The projects will flourish and everyone will profit.The SEC said: “That’s a security.”The DAO developers said: “No, no. That’s just selling tokens.”Ultimately, the SEC said: “That’s a security” – because of the application of the Howey Test: There was an investment of money. And a common enterprise. With the expectation of profit, primarily from the efforts of others.”So, why was this investigation and ruling done in the first place?This is where we come to another reason as to why this space has become and will become increasingly regulated. The Dao was supposed to be the biggest ICO ever, however, a flaw in its code made it vulnerable and it imploded quite spectacularly.We have covered this in detail before, but just to give you an overview:There was a flaw in the Dao smart contractThe hacker exploited that flaw to execute a re-entrancy attack.Over $150 million worth of ether was siphoned away.Because a lot of people invested and got back nothing in return, the SEC intervened to “protect” the interest of the investors and deemed the tokens a security.As SEC CEO Jay Clayton puts it, “The SEC is studying the effects of the distributed ledger and other innovative technologies and encourages market participants to engage with us. We seek to foster innovative and beneficial ways to raise capital, while ensuring – first and foremost – that investors and our markets are protected.”This decision was met with a mixed reception in the Crypto community:Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple Ceo, said, “Regulators aren’t going away – and shouldn’t. For generations, they have protected from fraud (some is happening w/ the ICO market).”Roger Ver, bitcoin.com founder, however, disagreed with the decision,“Call this what it is: A bunch of strangers in a far-off land threatening peaceful people all over the world with violence if they don’t obey.”The Hottest Initial Coin Offering of Yesterday, Today and TomorrowLet’s have a look what’s going on of the market for ICO. In the past years, there have been a couple of wildly successful ICO.RippleRipple Labs created 100 billion XRP-token which serve as an anti-spam mechanism in the payment network Ripple, as you have to pay your network fees in XRP. The XRP are sold by Ripple Labs; their value doesn’t move in a clear direction, while the trend is more downwards. It started with around 5,000 Satoshi, sometimes felt below 1,000 Satoshi, raised above 7,000 and finally fell again to a new low of 600 Satoshi, before again raising on 3,000. MastercoinIn 2013 M
astercoin announced to build a layer on top of Bitcoin and sold the Mastercoin-token to investors. The developers received around 10,000 bitcoin, which has been worth $1mio at this time. Mastercoin token gained value some month later; some investors made huge profits. Later Mastercoin merged with Counterparty and Omni. EthereumThe largest ICO by now was made by ethereum. With a presale of around 60mio ETH, the Ethereum Foundation raised around 31,500 bitcoin. This event has become one of the biggest crowdfunding ever and the start of a wildly successful cryptocurrency. The investors of the ETH-presale profited massively. EOSThe blockchain startup Block.one launched the ICO for its EOS platform in June 2017 and concluded the token sale in June 2018. Yup, you read that right, it was a year-long ICO which raised a record-breaking $4.1 billion. This is far and away the biggest ICO of all time.  EOS’s X-Factor lies in the fact that this is Dan Larimer’s latest pet project after Steemit and BitShares. EOS plans to become the platform for industrial-scale Dapps. Lately, they have faced some setbacks due to some vulnerabilities. However, EOS still has a lot of potential. AugurRemember that old game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Every participant on that show had 3 lifelines, one of which was audience poll. Basically, if they were stuck on a question, they could ask the audience that question. The audience was then supposed to vote on the option that they felt (or knew) was to be correct. More often than not, the audience got it right. This phenomenon is called the “Wisdom Of The Crowd”, which states that groups of people, in general, are correct more often than individuals.  Augur is using this property to create a prediction market and raised $5.2 million in their ICO. TelegramThe company behind the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app Telegram managed to raise $1.7 billion during a private sale involving SAFT agreements, which led to the company scrapping its public sale. Pavel Valerievich Durov aka the Zuckerberg of Russia is the CEO of Telegram. There were two sales of $850 million each and the funding was done to develop the Telegram Open Network (TON), which will be supported by the GRAM token.They are planning to create a scalable blockchain network which can process millions of transactions per second through the use of “infinite sharding” and “hypercube routing”.DragonDespite its rumored association with a Macau-based gangster and its business relationship with Cambridge Analytica, Dragon has managed to become one of the most successful ICOs in history raising a staggering $320 million. It was the first ICO that conducted to fund a floating casino in Asia’s gambling haven Macau. The Dragon Coin, DRG, is a digital currency targeted at VIP gamblers in Macau and its value is driven by the success of a large gambling venture.Through the Dragon Coin, Dragon is aiming to help users save money by letting them convert their currency into money that they can use to gamble in Macau without going through a middleman.  Conclusion: Initial Coin OfferingICOs have been an extremely hot topic for a couple of years now and we hope that we were able to throw some light on the subject for you. It will be interesting to see how future ICOs pan out and the regulations become more and more strict. Let’s hope that the increased regulations are going to have a positive effect by flushing out scammy ICOs. 

A recent clip from a soon to be released documentary called ‘Plandemic’ features a disgraced virologist, Dr. Judy Mikovits accusing a sinister corporate-controlled “circular cabal” led by Bill Gates himself, of creating the coronavirus pandemic.
Mikovits is adamant that this group she refers to as a “circular cabal” is led by Microsoft Founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates and she even goes on to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of burying her research which allegedly proved that vaccines weaken people’s immune systems and made them more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
Disgraced Doctor’s COVID Theory
Prior to the clip of Plandemic being released, Mikovits authored and published a book entitled ‘Plague of Corruption’ which frames herself as the brave whistleblower being held at bay by an Illuminati-like ‘deep state’ organization.
The story began in 2009, when Mikovits wrote a research paper on how the spread of a retrovirus through mice contributed to ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’. Unfortunately, no other research teams were able to replicate her findings in their own versions of the experiment, and Mikovit’s research was disregarded less than two years later. Mikovits decided that it was an effort by the cabal to discredit her.
 
Image: Judy Mikovits in 2011Source: David Calpert 
In the viral clip from Plandemic, Mikovits insists that her research was buried and she even goes as far as saying that wearing a mask actually activates the coronavirus. She alleges that Dr. Fauci, who is the face of the Trump administration’s outbreak containment efforts, has censored her warnings to the public. Unfortunately, a little fuel was added to this fire when Trump himself began to publicly question the origins and spread of COVID-19, suggesting it was man-made.
But how does Bill Gates, and his philanthropic foundation, fit into all of this?
Bill Gates Leader of Circular Cabal Conspiracy
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have very publicly spent much of their time and resources supporting efforts to prevent and control infectious diseases. Despite these efforts, now that the world is in the clutches of the coronavirus pandemic, it seems the words of a disgraced doctor, a peculiar Microsoft patent number and Gates’s own altruistic determination to create a cure and vaccine for COVID-19 — have made him the target of one of the strangest and far-reaching conspiracies in modern times.
Nearly five years ago, Bill Gates appeared in a TED Talk warning the world about the lack of preparation and systems in place for our society to be able to properly deal with an airborne infectious disease. This would not be the only warning from the Microsoft founder and in fact, Gates went on to repeat his message in the years after.
In 2017 at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, appearing on behalf of his philanthropic Foundation Gates said, “Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year. And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years.”
Mikovits appeared on an alt-right news site known as the Truth News Network on the 12 April, claiming that the COVD-19 crisis is just the latest in a series of fake epidemics created by big pharma and the Gate Foundation for profit. Mikovits appeared on an alt-right news site known as the Truth News Network on the 12 April, claiming that the COVID-19 crisis is just the latest in a series of fake epidemics created by big pharma and the Gate Foundation for profit. She said, “We’ve gone through swine flu, bird flu, Aids. All of the pandemics, epidemics are perpetrated a fraud to control, to drive our healthcare system. Literally it’s bankrupting our country,” she said. “A third of our gross national product is this medical cabal. Health insurance that we never had to have before that costs us thousands of dollars a month. Insurance for what? So you can buy their chemotherapies which literally help no one.”
While it may be easy for most of us to dismiss her story, it appears that Dr.Mikovits’ medical background may be giving the conspiracy more life than it deserves and she is not the only one pointing fingers.
Oscar Winner Believes Gates Conspiracy is Satanic
Nikita Mikhalkov, the Oscar-winning Russian director, recently unleashed his own conspiracy after taking a closer look at a patent number for a new cryptocurrency mining system recently patented by Microsoft – WO/2020/060606. Appearing on an episode of ‘Besogan TV’, Mikhalkov was adamant that the patent is the first step in a satanic plan to microchip the entire global population and it was clear to him by the appearance of the devil’s number “666” in the patent application.
On the program, Mikhalkov was quoted, “The 060606 part is somewhat alarming. You probably understand this, right? Is this a coincidence or an intentional selection of such a symbol, which in the Apocalypse of John is called the ‘number of the beast’ – the 666.”
Since the actual outbreak began, Bill Gates and his foundation have been popping up regularly in the media determined to help the world by developing and distributing a vaccine to the global population.
In a blog post on April 30, Bill Gates wrote, “We need to manufacture at least 7 billion doses of the vaccine.” He said the vaccines should be distributed “as soon as the first batch is ready to go.
While Mikahlkov did not reference Mikovits’ book, he did claim that the coming COVID-19 vaccination distributed by the Bill Gates Foundation will be a trojan horse for a microchip in an insidious scheme to enslave the world.
The Academy Award-winning director has even named Herman Graf, the Head of Russian bank Sberbank, as a co-conspirator and has gained the support of ex-Tennis superstar and Russian politician Marat Safin.
It is unclear what part Mikhalkov believes the sensor-based cryptocurrency mining system developed by Microsoft will play in the satanic conspiracy beyond its curious filing number, as the project makes no mention of microchips. The patent was also published in the United States under the far less sinister number – US20200097951. 
For our final chapter on the conspiracy, please click here.