The latest in the business of blockchain roundup: Google and Facebook continue their blockchain activities, lessons learned and pivots taken and how consumers really view blockchain.

Here we go again…

The internet is dominated by FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and now, they’ve set their sights on blockchain.

Following big moves from Facebook and Amazon, Google has just released six new blockchain datasets for Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Dogecoin, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, and Zcash.

Speaking of FAANG, Facebook has acquired the smart-contract startup, Chainspace. Chainspace uses sharding to make blockchain transactions more scalable, something that should be very important to Facebook if they are really working on the blockchain-based remittance platform as widely reported. …

Tel Aviv, Israel — December 20, 2018 — Orbs, the hybrid blockchain, announced today the launch of Gamma, a local testing environment that enables developers to prepare for the launch of the Orbs production platform. In addition, Orbs will be launching a new command line interface “Gamma-cli” enabling developers to interact with their personal Orbs Blockchain and design partners to access the full testnet. Gamma will create a local blockchain on each machine to allow developers to write and test smart contracts using the Orbs Smart Contract SDK.

The launch of Gamma comes in the build up to the release of the full production layer in early 2019 enabling developers and businesses to begin testing the platform. …

Korean Conglomerate Kakao’s Investment Arm, Kakao Investment Makes First Blockchain Infrastructure Investment in Orbs

Investment comes alongside partnership with Kakao’s blockchain subsidiary Ground X to develop blockchain applications for the Kakao network

Tel Aviv, Israel — 13 December, 2018 — Orbs, the hybrid blockchain, announced today that Kakao Investment, the venture arm of the leading South Korean internet conglomerate, will be investing in the Orbs infrastructure. The investment builds on Orbs’ existing partnership with Kakao blockchain subsidiary Ground X, where the two companies agreed to partner on blockchain applications and research and development projects. …

Following the launch of our full roadmap in early November, we saw significant progress in several different avenues. New partnerships closed, the technology continued to advance and an increasing number of potential customers have been in our offices to receive direct feedback on how best to build on Orbs.

New Partners

This article is by Daniel Buchuk

Transparency and security are two essential pillars for any business. Over the past decade, the digital advertising industry’s reputation has been tarnished with a seemingly endless string of scandals, rising fraud, and finally misleading or dishonest campaign metrics. As a result of this, customers are turning to ad blockers, and concerns around privacy and information tracking are growing. However, it is important to point out that digital marketing spending has overtaken television advertising and is expected to reach in excess of $600 billion in 2018.

With digital advertising share expected to approach 50 percent of all advertising by 2020, the industry is ripe for change. It is also desperate to find solutions that will create a healthier ecosystem for customers, advertisers, and publishers. …

This post was written by Daniel Buchuk

The tourism industry is estimated to be worth US$ 8.7 trillion annually, with sales expected to hit $817 billion in 2018. This industry by itself accounts for almost 10 percent of global GDP and moves millions each year. Since the ecosystem relies upon multiple companies passing information between one another, the potential applications of blockchain technologies to improve are endless, making travel and tourism the next prime targets to benefit from blockchain-enabled solutions.

In a not-so-distant future, people might be able to bypass the process of booking through third-party websites or just go to an airport without the need to stand in endless queues. The introduction of blockchain in tourism has the potential to help both travelers and companies within the ecosystem. Hotels, airlines, car rental, tours, pricing, and many other operations have an opportunity to evolve. Through a more intelligent and secure orchestration of data across companies, as well as the ability for customers to set their own preferences and manage their choices in a transparent ecosystem, the industry can improve tremendously. …

Roadmap!

Over the last few months, tremendous efforts have been placed in finalizing our roadmap and moving towards production readiness. We can now confidently state that Orbs will reach full production capabilities no later than April of 2019.

It’s important to note that we see this as a continuous, not a binary, event. Since we are building an IaaS for developers, our priorities are directly driven by the needs of and feedback from our clients and design partners. This is why we will run in test environments from December to ensure that Orbs runs as smoothly as possible.

What does this mean for the time until then?

To help shed some light on what we’ll be working on in the interim and the strategy behind this process, we can break down the next 5–6 months as…

Orbs is happy to announce that Gartner — the international research and business consulting company — has named Orbs one of the world’s four Cool Vendors for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in 2018. This is a major milestone for the company and its progress to bring the value of the technology to the business world.

The Gartner report recognizes “emerging blockchain technology vendors that enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders should evaluate for blockchain identity and decentralized application services.” The other three Cool Vendors are Brave, Civic, and Evernym.

“It is an honor to be recognized by Gartner as a blockchain vendor for their enterprise clients,” said Uriel Peled, co-founder of Orbs. “To appear among just four blockchain companies named globally, we feel is a mark of Orbs’ continued innovation and progress toward driving mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.” …