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Supply Chain and Blockchain: IBM Launches a Blockchain Network for Supply Chain Management

IMB introduces new network for supply chain management

Overview

Supply chain management involves supervising the flow of goods and services. The products include tracking the movement and storage of raw resources, inventory, and final products. This has gotten acknowledged as one area that can benefit from blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology is a shared database conserved by a network of computers linked to the internet. Customary techniques of managing suppliers frequently involve cumbersome manual processes. The processes make it challenging to verify identities and track documents. Most companies have adopted the use of the decentralized methodology. They have as well linked the use of an immutable audit on blockchain.

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Common Misconceptions About Smart Contracts and Development Services

One of the most promising developments in blockchain is the use of smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing contracts in which the conditions of the agreement between buyer and seller are clearly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements enclosed within are stored across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. Simply, smart contracts are computerized transaction protocols that execute the terms of a contract.

The probable advantages of smart contracts have seen businesses paying huge attention to smart contract development services. Unfortunately, the big spike in interest has also promoted the growth of some major misconceptions about smart contract development services: what they do, what their products are meant for, and what their products can do?

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11 Best Tools for Blockchain Development

Solidity

Solidity is one of the most popular programming languages used in blockchain development. It supports an object-oriented paradigm and is used to write smart contracts. Ethereum dApps can also be coded with Solidity. Solidity is designed to target the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

So, what makes Solidity so unique? First of all, it is used in one of the most popular blockchain solutions, i.e., Ethereum. Secondly, it can be used to smart contracts that open up a variety of use-cases, especially when it comes to crowdfunding, voting, and multi-signature wallets.

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What You Need To Know About pBFT Consensus

For many, blockchain is a fairly new technology whose applications have yet to be explored. Despite this, it is difficult to find an area in which blockchain and a distributed ledger could not be applied. For example, IoT networks of smart devices can make it possible to create cost-efficient, fully networked, and secure smart cities using the blockchain.

Distributed ledger technologies solve a plethora of problems, including increased privacy, enhanced trust in the network, increased speed, and reduced cost of transactions.

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Top 5 Free Courses to Learn Blockchain Programming

Hello, all — hope you all are having a great time and are working towards your goals for this year. I have been sharing a lot of courses and tutorials recently about what to learn this year, starting from tools and frameworks to libraries and programming languages, but one of the most important technologies you can learn this year is blockchain development.

It's one of most talked about technologies at the moment and is considered to be the Next Big Thing after the invention of the Internet, as blockchain technology can provide a way to attain digital trust on via the Internet.

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A Covert Channel Over the Telegram

We used to think of Telegram as a reliable and secure transmission medium for messages of any sort. But under the hood, it has a rather common combination of a- and symmetric encryptions. Where’s fun in that? And why would anyone trust their messages to the third-party anyway?

Covert Channels

There are many workarounds to transmit data between two users avoiding direct contact. You can use middlemen, crypto-, and steganography methods, broadcasting relay networks, and other extensions of existing protocols. But sometimes, it’s useful being able to establish secure contact using only officially documented features. Or, as one should say, set up a covert channel.

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Facebook Announces Libra

Earlier this month, Facebook announced their cryptocurrency solution will utilize Libra.  Scheduled to be in place in 2020, Libra currency will allow end-users to perform financial transactions — like buying things or sending funds to another user — with little to zero fees.  

In a pseudo-anonymous fashion, the expectation is that Libra holders can use their Libra via integrations with third-party wallet applications to purchase goods. When ready to convert Libra to physical currency, there will be a number of brick-and-mortar locations — like grocery stores — accepting Libra and providing local currency exchange services.

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5 Real-World Applications of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology has garnered a significant amount of digital ink in recent years. In fact, it is as big of a game changer as the Internet was back in the 1990s. However, we often use the terms ‘blockchain’ and ‘Bitcoin’ interchangeably. What people don’t realize is that Bitcoin, or cryptocurrencies, are just an application of blockchain technology, and this decentralized and distributed digital ledger has been making its way to the core of multiple industries.

In this blog post, we are going to explore the different real-world applications of blockchain solutions.

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Developing Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform on Blockchain

Over the last few years, blockchain has taken over global financial markets with its disruptive power to transform industries. While multiple sectors have experienced a positive impact on the blockchain, the lending market is ready to be a part of this transition.

Blockchain is all set to reconstruct the model of the peer-to-peer lending platform by bringing more trust and transparency to the system. Companies like SALT Lending, Lendoit, and Jibrel Network have already launched a peer-to-peer lending platform using blockchain and smart contracts.

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Build a Blockchain PoC Application Using Hyperledger Fabric

This piece is about my experience in creating a blockchain PoC application for land and title recording on blockchain leveraging Hyperledger Fabric (HF) blockchain platform. It may benefit those who just got started on HF or intend to learn it, and for those who are already experienced in HF, it may offer another equally viable option. It’s pretty long, but for readers who are interested in blockchain technology, your time will be well spent.

Let us first set up our goal and see how we can achieve it.

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New WordProof Plugin Timestamps WordPress Content on the Blockchain

WordProof Timestamp is a new free plugin that bridges the WordPress and blockchain communities in an approachable, user-friendly way. It gives users the ability to timestamp their posts and pages to demonstrate transparency and claim ownership of content.

WordProof works with any EOSIO blockchain to create the timestamp and provides a custom certificate link with a frontend pop-up to display it.

The plugin adds a “View the blockchain certificate” link under each post or page, which pops up the URL, title, content, timestamp information, and will soon also display revisions. Users will be able to browse through different timestamps to view the changes.

WordProof Timestamp was first created by Van Ons, a WordPress agency based in Amsterdam. This is the same company that recently open sourced Laraberg, a package that allows developers building applications with Laravel to integrate the Gutenberg editor. Development has now been passed on to a dedicated WordProof team that is funded by Tenos.

“I have been working and investing with blockchain as a hobby since 2013,” Van Ons founder Sebastiaan van der Lans said. “After we built the WP GDPR Compliance plugin and started working Laraberg, I am trying to work more and more on open source projects. From my point of view, WordPress + blockchain could not only democratize publishing but also doing business as a whole.”

Van der Lans said he expects that any type of publishing website or any site with “Terms & Conditions” pages can benefit from timestamping. It’s especially useful in mediating claims of plagiarism and content theft. WordProof has no transaction costs and is almost instant (0.5s). Van der Lans said it was important for this solution to have no transaction fees, since it is fundamental to proving the author’s identity and the integrity of the content.

Right now the plugin offers the ability to timestamp an entire article, including the title and content. Block level time-stamping is not on the roadmap, but the team is open to adding it in the future. They are currently looking into time-stamping media files and legal documents.

After launching the plugin in beta, a team of 60 testers, from both the WordPress and EOS.IO blockchain communities, gave feedback that led to the creation of a WordProof Wizard to make it easier for users to set up the required accounts.

“Our testers’ main concern: it was too difficult to create an account on the blockchain and download and set-up a blockchain wallet afterwards,” Van Ons head of product Jelle van der Schoot said. “Therefore, we invested a lot of time into improving the UI/UX of the entire process (downloading the plugin, creating a blockchain account, downloading and setting up a wallet, timestamping).”

The wizard supports both Telos and EOS and guides users through the process of setting up an account directly inside the WordPress dashboard. The process takes approximately five minutes.

“We believe the WordProof Wizard can have a massive impact on the onboarding of new users to the blockchain in general, but more specifically to the Telos and EOS blockchains,” van der Schoot said.

Timestamping posts is by no means a new idea. There are already several free WordPress plugins that have similar functionality and work with various blockchain technology, such as WP Blockchain, STAMPD.IO, Po.et, and Mingrana WP to Blockchain. WordProof is different from many of them in that it doesn’t use a centralized middle layer.

The team behind the plugin is working on more tools that bring blockchain features to WordPress and will soon be adding cryptographically secured decentralized WordPress hosting to the WordProof lineup. van der Lans will also be speaking about more of the benefits of timestamping content with the blockchain at WordCamp Europe in his presentation titled “From WordPress to blockchain: the future is 100% open source.”

If you’re interested in the project, you can follow WordProof on Twitter or join the WordProof Telegram channel where users can also find support for the plugin.

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List of Top Blockchain Rapid Prototyping Tools

On one hand, blockchain and cryptocurrency use cases are making it to the headlines on a daily basis, yet the rate of decentralized solutions actually entering the market space is still on the lower side.

While the market is ready to be decentralized, businesses are taking their own sweet time to come up with a blockchain-based solution to present to the market.

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Blockchain Vs Tangle: Which Is Better?

Blockchain was a real technological breakthrough back in 2008. A new milestone in the world of money, security, e-commerce, and the Internet as a whole — it is literally everywhere now, and modern business utilizes it worldwide. The idea of recording the information without any ability to change it afterward was brilliant. Firstly, as you know, it was implemented in the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, but later, it came to banks, security providers, insurers, farmers, governments, etc.

Why were people so obsessed with the blockchain? Because this system guarantees that no one, no matter how powerful or rich this person is, can tamper with the information encoded within the public ledger. Yet, even the sun has dark spots. With time, people have realized that this system is not ideal, and there are problems to be solved. For example, the ledger gets heavier and slower with every new transaction, as the blockchain grows. Or, it cannot exist without miners, and thus — the fees are inevitable.

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Another Major Crypto Exchange Breach Reminds Us NOTHING Is Unhackable

Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has reportedly lost around $40 million dollars worth of Bitcoin to hackers.

“Hackers were able to obtain a large number of user API keys, 2FA codes, and potentially other info,” said CEO Zhao Changpeng in a press release. “The hackers used a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses and other attacks. We are still concluding all possible methods used. There may also be additional affected accounts that have not been identified yet.”

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AWS Just Made Blockchain a Helluva Lot Easier (and Cheaper) to Implement

With just a few clicks, businesses can now create, manage, and scale blockchain networks, Amazon Web Services announced in a press release Monday. While it revealed the initiative late last year, AWS is now making the service generally available.

“Customers want to use blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum to create blockchain networks so they can conduct business quickly, with an immutable record of transactions, but without the need for a centralized authority,” said Rahul Pathak, Amazon Managed Blockchain's general manager at AWS. “However, they find these frameworks difficult to install, configure, and manage.”

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If Bitcoin Fails, Will Blockchain Technology Ultimately Follow?

A year ago, on December 17, 2017, Bitcoin price reached its all-time maximum — $19,783.21. Since then, it has steadily declined, just like the faith of investors in cryptocurrencies, and today, it is close to just $3,000.

Experts say this downfall is happening due to disheartening discoveries, like the one that nearly 85 percent of ICO’s in 2017 were a scam, or that more than 50 percent of Bitcoin startups stop functioning in four months after their ICOs.

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Hyperledger vs. Ethereum: Which Will Benefit Your Business?

Initially, cryptocurrency markets started out on a slow incline, but this year, in the first week of April, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum demonstrated new momentum with a 20 percent gain in investment ratio.

“This is a time of great opportunity” for enterprises. How? The new changes and growth will facilitate greater adoption of Hyperledger and Ethereum among the leading enterprises and communities of respective organizations.

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Automation Testing Our Blockchain Significantly Improved Dev Speed and Quality (Part 2)

Today we discuss the importance of software testing in blockchain, outline benefits of automation testing and explain how to get involved in the Quality Assurance of our open source project. This is part two of the two part blog post.

Many blockchain projects don't survive long after hitting the initial production state. For most, a lack of proper software testing is one of the main reasons for their demise. It's estimated that over half a billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency has been lost due to bad code in the last year alone. You probably heard about The DAO's code loophole, which allowed attackers to drain out 3.6 million ETH (worth $70 million at the time) from the Ethereum-based smart contract. Another notorious case was the Parity bug which resulted in over $150 million permanently frozen. Even Bitcoin itself is not immune to hacks. Late last year, a bug discovered in the code allowed malicious individuals to artificially inflate Bitcoin's supply via double input. If the bug wasn't quickly identified and addressed, it could have had catastrophic effects on the network. This is just the tip of the iceberg — there are plenty of smaller incidents caused by inexperienced or inattentive developers that don't make the headlines.

What does this tell us? In development, things can go wrong fast and the outcome can be ugly. This is why software testing is so important for any project utilizing blockchain technology, such as blockchain platforms, blockchain applications or blockchain-based services.