Lifeboat Foundation

Lifeboat Foundation readers are aware that the world has become progressively more chaotic. Part of the danger comes from centralized points of failure. While large institutions can bear great stress, they also cause more harm when they fail. Because there are so few pillars, if one collapses, the whole system is destroyed.

For instance, prior to the federal reserve system, bank runs we extremely common. However, since the financial system consisted of small, competing institutions, failure was confined to deficient banks. So while failure was frequent, it was less impactful and systemic. In contrast, after the establishment of the federal reserve, banks became fewer and larger. Failures, while more infrequent, were large scale catastrophes when they occurred. They affected the whole economy and had longer impact.

This is even more important in political systems, which are the foundation of how a society operates. In order to have a more robust, antifragile social order, systems must be decentralized. Rather than a monopolistic, static political order, there must be a series of decentralized experiments. While failures are inevitable, it can be localized to these small experiments rather than the whole structure.

Continue reading “Startup Societies Summit: A Decentralized Governance Trade Show” »

The International Economic Forum, which just wrapped up in St. Petersburg, reportedly resulted in more than €30 bln of investments. The final and the most important result, however, is measured not in numbers, but in the mood and attitude of those who attended the Forum and who was keeping an eye on the events and meetings held in the North “capital” of Russia.

The cryptocurrency community is for sure left stunned by the recent meeting between Russian President Putin and the founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin.

As commented by Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, during the meeting, Putin and Buterin discussed the application of technologies in the country. Reportedly, the president supported the idea of establishing new business relationships following the road paved by Blockchain technology.

Continue reading “Suddenly Vladimir Putin Meets Vitalik Buterin, Endorses Ethereum” »

3½ years ago, I wrote a Bitcoin wallet safety primer for Naked Security, a newsletter by Sophos, the European antivirus lab. Articles are limited to just 500 hundred words, and so my primer barely conveyed a mindset—It outlined broad steps for protecting a Bitcoin wallet.

In retrospect, that article may have been a disservice to digital currency novices. For example, did you know that a mobile text message is not a good form of two-factor authentication? Relying on SMS can get your life savings wiped out. Who knew?!

With a tip of the hat to Cody Brown, here is an online wallet security narrative that beats my article by a mile. Actually, it is more of a warning than a tutorial. But, read it closely. Learn from Cody’s misfortune. Practice safe storage. If you glean anything from the article, at least do this:

• Install Google Authenticator. Require it for any online account with stored value. If someone hijacks your phone account, they cannot authenticate an exchange or wallet transaction—even with Authenticator.
• Many exchanges (like Coinbase) offer a “vault”. Sweep most of your savings into the vault instead of the daily-use wallet. This gives you time to detect a scam or intrusion and to halt withdrawals. What is a vault? In my opinion, it is better than a paper wallet! Like a bank account, it is a wallet administered by a trusted vendor, but with no internet connection and forced access delay.

Exchange and cloud users want instant response. They want to purchase things without delay and they want quick settlement of currency exchange. But online wallets come with great risk. They can be emptied in an instant. It is not as difficult to spoof your identity as you may think (Again: Read Cody’s article below!)

Continue reading “Wallet Security: Cloud/Exchange Services” »

For the first time ever since bitcoin’s invention, a new digital currency has reached higher trading volumes, Ethereum. The currency is now trading $11 million more than bitcoin.

Ethereum has further risen above 50% of bitcoin’s market cap, reaching a high of 54%, less than two years since its invention in 2015, in a remarkable rise that has never been seen before in this space and even beyond consdering the timeframe.

The currency has now taken almost 25% market share of all digital currencies, while bitcoin has fallen to around 45% from a near dominance of 95% just months ago when it was the center of the entire ecosystem.

Continue reading “Ethereum’s Trading Volumes Surpass Bitcoin’s For the First Time” »

Individuals who mine Bitcoins needn’t be miners. We call them ‘miners’ because they are awarded BTC as they solve mathematical computations. The competition to unearth these reserve coins also serves a vital purpose. They validate the transactions of Bitcoin users all over the world: buyers, loans & debt settlement, exchange transactions, inter-bank transfers, etc. They are not really miners. They are more accurately engaged in transaction validation or ‘bookkeeping’.

There are numerous proposals for how to incentivize miners once all 21 million coins have been mined/awarded in May 2140. Depending upon the network load and the value of each coin, we may need to agree on an alternate incentive earlier than 2140. At the opening of the 2015 MIT Bitcoin Expo, Andreas Antonopolous proposed some validator incentive alternatives. One very novel suggestion was based on game theory and involved competition and status rather than cash payments.

I envision an alternative approach—one that also addresses the problem of miners and users having different goals. In an ideal world the locus of users should intersect more fully with the overseers…

To achieve this, I have proposed that every wallet be capable of also mining, even if the wallet is simply a smartphone app or part of a cloud account at an exchange service. To get uses participating in validating the transactions of peers, any transaction fee could be waived for anyone who completes 1 validation for each n transactions. (Say one validation for every five or ten transactions). In this manner, everyone pitches in a small amount of resources to maintain a robust network.

Continue reading “How to Incentivize Bitcoin miners after all 21M BTC are awarded” »

Quantum computing and the blockchain both get plenty of attention in 2017, and now researchers in Russia have combined the two to create what they claim is an unhackable distributed-ledger platform.

The new technology, described as the “first quantum-safe blockchain,” promises to make it secure for organizations to transfer data without the fear of hacking from even the most powerful computers, in this case, the emerging field of quantum computing. Quantum computers make use of the quantum states of subatomic particles to store information, with the potential to do some calculations far faster than current computers. There’s some dispute whether we have actually reached that point yet, but companies such as Google Inc. are promising that true quantum computing is just around the corner.

“Quantum computers pose a major threat to data security today and could even be used to hack blockchains, destroying everything from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to secure government communications,” a spokesperson for the Russian Quantum Center told SiliconANGLE. “Because quantum computers can test a large number of combinations at once, they will be able to destroy these digital signatures, leaving the blockchain vulnerable.”

Continue reading “Russian group delivers the first unhackable quantum-safe blockchain” »

At the beginning of 2016, Bitcoin was fairly steady at $430. Richelle Ross predicted that it would finish the year at $650. She would have been right, if the year had ended in November. During 2016, Bitcoin’s US dollar exchange rose from $433 to $1000. In the past 2 months (March 24~May 20, 2017), Bitcoin has tacked on 114%, rising from $936 to $2000. _{[continue below image]…}

If this were stock in a corporation, I would recommend liquidating or cutting back on holdings. But the value of Bitcoin is not tied to the future earnings or property value of an organization. In this case, supply demand is fueled—in part—by speculation. Yes, of course. But, it is also fueled by a two-sided network built on the growing base of utilitarian adoption. And not just an adoption fad, but adoption that mirrors the shift in our very understanding of bookkeeping, trust and transparency.

Despite problems of growth, governance and regulation, Bitcoin is more clearly taking its place as the future of money. Even if it never becomes “legal tender” in any country—and is used only as a mechanism of payments and settlement, it is still woefully undervalued. $2000 is not an end-game. It is a beginning.

Continue reading “Bitcoin closes in on (US) $2000; Why it matters” »

• The UN will be using the blockchain Ethereum to distribute funds from the World Food Program to more than 10,000 people in Jordan this summer.
• The computer network is making humanitarian giving simpler and more secure than ever.

Technology has the power to improve people’s lives — and not just by supplying flying cars to millionaires. The computer networks that brought us Bitcoins are advancing in ways that will make humanitarian giving simpler and more secure than ever.

Blockchain, which serves as the underlying infrastructure for Bitcoin, is form of cryptocurrency that has become increasingly popular and experienced all-time high values in the last few months. One blockchain developer, Ethereum, has seen an all-time high in value: in recent weeks it’s topped out trading at over $40 per share.