Going the Extra Mile (January 2020)
Welcome to the CyberMiles Foundation’s monthly newsletter #25
Happy new year, CyberMilers! A new virtual machine, a Warm preview, and a look into the next era of public blockchains. Read on for more blockchain and cryptocurrency news.
Announcements
SIG Asia Investment Venture Capital fund portfolio features CyberMiles, TikTok
CyberMiles, among such tech startup superstars as TikTok, has been featured in the SIG Asia Investment Venture Capital fund portfolio at annual gathering that also included PalFish. Here’s to a promising 2020!
Second State releases WebAssembly for the server side
A CyberMiles-powered blockchain startup has released a “developer preview” of its Second State virtual machine. This WebAssembly, a high performance execution engine inside web browsers, has a compatible runtime that is engineered from the ground up for server-side applications. Want to try for yourself? Get it from Github at github.com/second-state/SSVM.
CyberMiles co-founder shares his vision for blockchain’s future
As the 2020 Blockchain Trends Workshop looks forward to the year ahead (and beyond), CyberMiles’ co-founder, Dr. Lucas Lu, looked back at the past two years of public chains that were launched on a large scale.
While, at one time, the crypto industry believed that the public blockchain is the infrastructure of the future, is it still widely held? Has our understanding changed? What are the (future) opportunities? Share your thoughts with us at twitter.com.
In the News
Blockchain in Supply Chain and Transportation: The Benefits, Limitations and Opportunities
Logistics or managing the flow of things from the point of origin to the point of consumption is the backbone of almost any business. If you have a physical product, you need to deliver it to your end customers somehow. And they are unlikely to live next door.
In the era of globalization, sellers and buyers are typically separated by long distances, state borders, and oceans. Bridging them involves different means of transportation, tons of paperwork, and multiple parties involved. What is worse, these parties hardly know each other which results in a lack of trust.
According to Dr. Michael Yuan, this challenge can be addressed by using the blockchain technology, which offers businesses a totally new approach to logistics and entire supply chain management, namely:
Blockchain is moving from just another IT solution to an ecosystem builder. The geopolitical implications of this evolution are indeed far-reaching.
In spite of all challenges and institutional resistance, the potential of the technology to transform industries for the better will keep it moving forward. Read more at altexsoft.com.
Driving value with machine learning in banking
Algorithms are thought to reduce bias resulting from personal interactions and human sympathy. However, they open the door to other types of bias stemming from algorithmic settings and training data sets. If one particular group prevails and another group is underrepresented in the training data, the prediction results for the underrepresented group will be less accurate.
That’s why banks need to test machine learning algorithms for fairness and ensure that developers incorporate the necessary measures toward this end. According to CyberMiles’ Dr. Michael Yuan:
While enforcement by trusted computers, as opposed to unreliable humans, is leading to more reliable and cost-effective ways to do business, not every process
or operation can be — or ought to be — implemented with machine learning. Such zero-knowledge proof, where you can access data but not own it, is a technical problem we’re dealing with as well.
Learn more about which steps are recommended for ensuring fairness in machine learning algorithms at itransition.com.
Blockchain technology and the travel industry
Like many other industries (finance, supply chain, etc.), travel is poised for — or already in the midst of — disruption, given ongoing digitalization and decentralization. LiMaGo, one of CyberMiles’ validator nodes, is developing an insurance token for airlines — a unique aspect of a startup that is viewing the online travel industry differently in our blockchain 3.0 era.
Our “smart business contracts” can automate many aspects of business interactions that are done by humans today, including travel insurance.
Read more about blockchain and the future of travel at blockchainafrica.io.
The Crypto Countdown
- $6.4 Billion Worth of Crypto Staked, According to Binance Research (Source: CrytptoPotato)
- Argentina Sets New Trading Record After Central Bank Bans Bitcoin Buys (Source: CoinTelegraph)
- China’s Official Army Newspaper Urges Military to Adopt Blockchain Tech; Reward Soldiers in Tokens (Source: The Block)
- Coinbase Has Generated Close to $2 Billion in Transaction Fee Revenue Since 2012 (Source: The Block)
- Crypto-Related Fraud and Theft Resulted in $4.4B Loss in 2019 (Source: CoinTelegraph)
- How Weird Is It That a Company Lost Hundreds of Millions in Cryptocurrency Because Its CEO Died? (Source: Slate)
- Illegal Bitcoin Mining Operation in Ukraine Gets the Boot (Source: Decrypt)
- JPMorgan and Singapore’s Central Bank Develop a Blockchain System for Cross-Border Payments (Source: The Block)
- Pro Poker Player Pleads Guilty to Embezzling $22 Million, Using Most of It for Crypto Trading (Source: The Block)
- South Africa Plans New Rules to Stop Crypto From Being Used to Evade Currency Controls (Source: The Block)
- Thailand Considers Amending Crypto Regulations to Boost Growth (Source: Bitcoinist)
- TikTok Reportedly Working With Chinese State Media on Blockchain (Source: CoinTelegraph)
- Tunisia Testing World’s First Paper-Backed Central Bank Digital Currency (Source: The Daily Hodl)
- When Lambo? Lamborghini to Track Cars Using Blockchain (Source: CoinDesk)
Thanks for your support, CyberMilers! Help us spread the word, won’t you?
Have questions? Anything that you want to see included in our next newsletter? Email furao@cybermiles.io.
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