Adrealm Weekly Update

September 19 — September 25, 2018

5 min readSep 25, 2018

Ai posteri l’ardua sentenza.
Alessandro Manzoni, “5 maggio”

Dear Adrealm community,

“Ai posteri l’ardua sentenza.” It means “posterity will judge.” The line is by the Italian poet Alessandro Manzoni, and appears in his masterpiece (probably his most famous work of poetry) “May, 5th”. The occasion was the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the poet cannot help but ask himself if the mark that Napoleon left on history was beneficial or detrimental to the course of Europe — and the entire world.

Shouldn’t we question blockchain technology in the same way?

Last week our in-house philosopher Dr J Ellis Cameron-Perry wrote an article entitled “Can’t we have blockchain without the ideology?”. The article’s focus is the (too often implied) statement that blockchain technology is “not just a technology.” But why should blockchain assume the mantle of messianic tech? Is blockchain technology going to change the world? And if so, where’s the guarantee that it will do so in a positive way?

What are the criteria to determine the power of an emerging technology, in quantitative and qualitative terms? Not only has blockchain technology attracted ideologues; it seems at times a plaything in the hands of many whose experimental results may go far, far beyond their best intentions.

Did Satoshi Nakamoto intend for Bitcoin to become a tool for illegal activities? (Did the Swedish founder of the Nobel prize Alfred Nobel wish for its greatest invention, dynamite, to become a war weapon in the hands of reckless humankind?)

As we’ve had occasion to note in our previous weekly updates, blockchain technology can be used for noble purposes, like anti-corruption or the advancement of commercial and regulatory transparency. But how far can its power go?

Join us in asking these questions, and discuss in our Telegram Channel:

What’s the downside of blockchain technology? Is there one? And can we enjoy the technology without the ideology?

World Wide Hot Spots

Dubai: Dubai’s Department of Finance together with Smart Dubai Office are planning to launch a blockchain-powered payment system. No, we don’t question Dubai needs one. (Cointelegraph)
Brazil: A new exchange platform from Brazil on the list, and not a small one. Grupo XP, which owns brokerage firm XP Investimentos, Brazil’s largest independent broker, plans to launch the platform in the following months. Why? Around 3 million Brazilians own bitcoins, while only ca. 600.000 have holdings in stocks. Smart move, especially while in neighbouring Venezuela is experiencing a financial storm that prompted its citizens to resort to cryptos, especially to its national cryptocurrency, the Petro. (Coindesk)
Mining without coal dust?: Bitmain, China’s biggest mining company based in Beijing, is planning to overcome mining’s energy issue, i.e. its huge energy consumption. How? With a new ASIC — application-specific integrated circuit — for better hashing power and energy efficiency. Will mining survive? Does this measure represent a step towards sustainability and a shift in the mining concept? We hope so. (Coindesk)
On-thin ice relations with Bitcoin: And if someone sees a prosperous future in mining, Iceland decided to bet on blockchain but not on Bitcoin. Mixed messages from the industry’s actors, up to you to decide on which side you want to be. (Cointelegraph)
US Navy's’ paper forms: The US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is researching the potential of blockchain technology to track its aircraft parts, their life cycle, and bring an overall improvement without relying on paper-based tracking system or a database where data are manually input. Oh, we were fools when we thought that google forms do already belong to the Stone age. (Coindesk)
Altcoin outages: Despite the promises made by blockchain developers to never have cracks in the system, outages are actually increasing in number. Why? Coindesk’s report says it’s due to new consensus mechanisms. The CAP theorem- consistency, availability and partition tolerance — represents one of blockchains’ biggest limitation, and means that blockchains can only implement two of the three characteristics. BTC & ETH prefer accessibility - but hard forks are just behind the corner, while EOS or NEO favour consistency. The risk? Outages, as we just said. (Coindesk).
A black-and-white blockchain in Italy: This year the Italian football team Juventus won’t only feature a new team player — the football star Ronaldo, but will also consider implementing a Fan Token to allow its “Tifosi” (‘fans’ in Italian) to participate in polls and vote. (Cointelegraph).

Events

We were at the Facebook Audience Network event in Beijing on September 19th. What were the highlights? Facebook’s new measures to improve their ad experience, like Click & Browse (to see a website’s preview) and Detect & Report (for low-quality ads). Here are some pictures:

Community

Adrealm is gearing up for a dev meeting in Beijing on October 24–25th. Details coming soon.
Our Inner Circle is online and active on Telegram. It also has a new Referral Bounty to grow our Adrealm community. We reward both the friend you referred to Adrealm with 50 ARM as well as you with scaling prizes: