State of the FLO
News from the FLO Blockchain (Block Height: 3,754,633)
Real Usecases and Real Use
That’s FLO’s 2019 story so far. From large corporations — to scientists — to startups — an increasing number of users are taking advantage of FLO’s unique floData feature to create an immutable public record via millions of transactions on the FLO Blockchain.
Medici Land Governance used FLO and the Open Index Protocol (OIP) to record and index more than 187,000 mortgages, deeds, warranties, and other land registry documents. A group of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists also published a peer reviewed study on how they used FLO to enhance their research by effectively recording, indexing, and distributing scientific data. And Digix Global used Flotorizer and the FLO Blockchain to notarize a $4MM development deal.
There can be no doubt FLO and floData are gaining use, and with other ongoing developments, an influx of additional usecases and users seems imminent.
In other news:
- The FLO Foundation announced Trezor support.
- The Abra App added FLO.
- The OIP team won a WyoHackathon competition by demonstrating how FLO and OIP can be leveraged to help build a more decentralized and open Web 3.0.
- The OIP Team continued its work on the Distributed Database of X (DDX).
- The FLO Community created a repository of FLO-related information at wiki.flo.cash.
Medici Land Governance recorded 187,000 documents via 1.5 million FLO transactions
Medici Land Governance (MLG), Teton County, Wyoming (Teton County), and the FLO Blockchain (FLO) recently made history by being the first to record land registry information on a distributed public ledger. MLG, a subsidiary of retail giant Overstock.com, Inc., uses blockchain and other technologies to support land governance, titling, and administration. Teton County, like much of Wyoming, has embraced blockchain-based innovation. Both leveraged FLO’s metadata feature to immutably record 187,000 mortgages, warranties, releases, and other similar land registry documents via 1,500,000 floData transactions.
“Wyoming’s adoption of advanced technology to validate property ownership in Teton County is a perfect example of an MLG blockchain-based product in production. This is the first instance of MLG’s work in the United States to implement a blockchain-based registry that assures immutability of records and indicates a clear chain of title. This provides an additional critical layer of protection and facilitates transparency for title holders in any property transaction in Teton County.”
— Ali El Husseini, PhD, CEO, Medici Land Governance
Incidentally, the record set only included documents filed by the Teton County Clerk since 1996. MLG is working on similar projects in Mexico, Zambia, Liberia, and Rwanda. If the scope of these projects is similar to or exceeds Teton County (population 23,265), millions of additional property record transactions may be recorded on FLO in the future. And MLG’s plans are much grander.
“The Teton County Blockchain Pilot marks the first step toward full-blown digital asset tokenization of real property. Over time more property records from around the globe will enter the public property register. When trust in the register’s records reaches a critical mass of acceptance, digital assets linked to those records can realize [Patrick] Bryne’s vision of consensual peer-to-peer exchange of real property.”
— Chris Chrysostom, Developer Lead, Medici Land Governance
As news of Medici’s land registry success spreads, more jurisdictions will explore this potential usecase. And as projects like Ravencoin begin to proliferate, digital assets can be linked to FLO transactions via the Open Index Protocol, unlocking the potential of fractional ownership and facilitating the near friction-less transfer of hundreds of trillions of dollars of real property in the world.
These are exciting times, to say the least. If you would like to read more about the Teton County project check out this article from MLG’s Chris Chrysostom.
Caltech scientists published a peer reviewed study of the FLO Blockchain as a distributed public database for electron tomography
A group of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists, including FLO Core Developer and PhD Biophysicist Davi Ortega, recently published a research article entitled ETDB-Caltech: A blockchain-based distributed public database for electron tomography. The study detailed the scientists’ work to record, index, and store more than 11,000 electron tomograms using FLO, the Open Index Protocol, and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS):
We were curious to see if this blockchain-based data distribution model would be effective to openly and securely share our scientific imaging data. In the scheme, each dataset would be distributed to IPFS and its metadata recorded in the FLO blockchain. Any interested party, typically through a user-friendly front-end in their web browser, could query the blockchain for datasets of interest and retrieve them from IPFS. We called the resulting distributed database the public Electron Tomography Database — Caltech (ETDB-Caltech)….
The results: using FLO and OIP to create the ETDB was a smashing success. Coupling FLO with OIP allowed the Caltech scientists to create and curate a distributed research resource that could be used by their peers in the broader scientific and medical communities. The benefits, which are detailed in the study, are numerous. And what is even more exciting is that this proof-of-concept could be applied broadly and data from many labs could be incorporated, creating a flexible decentralized repository. A similar Distributed Database of X, where X could be anything from a tomogram to a traditional x-ray image, could enable large-scale community sharing of varied datasets for biological and technological projects.
Caltech’s study proved that FLO and OIP can achieve the goal of providing a public space for laboratories to publish large volumes of raw, unpublished electron tomography datasets. This work is sure to inspire other scientists to follow suit and employ blockchain-based solutions to a variety of problems in their respective fields.
If you are curious about the ETDB, you can view its contents here.
Digix Global used the FLO to notarize a $4MM development deal.
On September 23, 2019, Digix Global, a Singapore-based developer of the gold-backed Digix Gold (DGX) token, used FLO and the Flotorizer application to notarize a $4MM development deal. The DGX developers were interested in memorializing and immutably recording the agreement in a decentralized and easily verifiable way, and Flotorizer answered the call.
Flotorizer is a Proof of Existence application that uses the SHA-512 Algorithm and FLO to immutably capture and record the existence of a file. In this instance, Digix recorded a Letter of Undertaking and Declaration for its DGX@NeutralG Project on DigixDao. It simply ran the written agreement file through the Flotorizer application which created a SHA-512 hash that was immutably recorded to the FLO block via floData. A similar use case was recently detailed in a recent article: GNU Privacy Guard and Flotorizer: A Match Made in Cryptography. As outlined in the article, Flotorizer is a very simple and very powerful tool that can be used in a variety of settings.
The Flotorizer app is currently undergoing an update and UI overhaul. You can follow the progress on the FLO Telegram Channel.
Other News:
The FLO Foundation announced Trezor support.
The FLO Foundation recently announced Trezor support is now available for FLO via https://wallet.chaintek.net/. The current version of the Chaintek interface also supports both Bitcoin and Ravencoin, and offers Ledger integration for both. Ledger may be added for FLO in the future.
Telegram user Scotty0448 graciously donated his time to this project. FLO truly has quite an awesome community of volunteer developers.
The Abra App added FLO
This week Abra announced the addition of 60 new crypto currencies, including FLO, to its platform for United States customers. The wallet and investment app also announced that it doubled its deposit and withdraw limits.
With these additions, Abra now offers over 96 crypto assets to its US-based users. Abra users outside of the US will soon be able to invest in more than 200 additional cryptocurrencies.
Abra is unique inasmuch as users can freely exchange assets without traditional trading pair limitations. We look forward to using Abra to buy and sell FLO.
The Open Index Protocol won the Sandcastle Startups Challenge
The Sandcastle Foundation, an international organization with a mission to enable and facilitate public-private cooperation, innovation, and interoperability in the blockchain space, recently held a qualifying round for its Sandcastle Startups Challenge at Wyoming Blockchain Stampede’s WyoHackathon. The OIP team won the head-to-head bracket-style venture challenge and will have a chance to win a trip to Dubai to compete in the finals in Fall of 2020 and a share of $500,000 worth of prizes and global recognition.
You can watch OIP’s presentation here: Round 1 | Round 2 / Round 3.
Congratulations and continued success to OIP.
Work on the Distributed Database of X (DDX) continued
Scientists at Caltech and developers from Alexandria.io continued their collaborative work on the Distributed Database of X (DDX), a framework for building new database applications on OIP using templates. You can check out their progress here. OIP has also shared a series of videos with details:
According to the OIP website, the short term goal is to use DDX to develop a DDEM (Distributed Database of Electron Micrographs):
Expanding on the work started with ETDB, our team is first building DDX, or the “Distributed Database of X”, a framework for building new database applications on OIP using templates. Then we will use this framework to quickly build DDEM, the Distributed Database of Electron Micrographs with over half a million datasets.
And with DDX’s success, an increasing number of interesting new usecases should emerge. We are excited to watch OIP develop this project.
The FLO Community created a repository of FLO-related information at wiki.flo.cash
The FLO Community recently created a Wikipedia page with a trove of information, including the history of FLO, an index of recent press and publications, information regarding the various FLO mining pools, FLO’s various current usecases, and an index of current exchange listings.
You can check it out here: wiki.flo.cash.
