Weekly Blockchain Industry Report-20th Issue: Blockchain technology’s application in data protection

Published in

OK Research

8 min readSep 5, 2018

(August 25th –August 31th, 2018)

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Market Overview

This week, the daily average global cryptocurrency’s market capitalization was $220.094 billion, representing a 3.96% increase from last week. Among them, the Top 5 cryptocurrencies’ market cap increased by 4.58%;The daily average transaction volume was $11.65 billion, representing a 6.36% decrease. However, the Top 5 cryptocurrencies’ transaction volume increased by 6.36%. All of them had price recovery, EOS experienced a maximum increase of 32.24% and XRP had a maximum increase of 11.3%.

Among the top 10 cryptocurrency gainers this week, most of the projects were in the direct application field. EPLUS Coin, a token in entertainment industry, experienced the greatest increase in price by 207.49%.

Analysis of Top 200 Market Cap Projects

Until 12:00 p.m. of the releasing date, the market capitalization of the top 200 projects increased by 7.8% compared with last week. Based on our classification of 4 categories: cryptocurrency and payment, basic chain and protocol, vertical chain and protocol, and vertical industrial application, the projects of the vertical chain and protocol sector decreased the most.

Through further classification of the vertical chain and protocol and the vertical industrial application sectors, it was found that IoT sector experienced market cap increase as high as 97.19% (This is because there are 2 new IoT projects included in the TOP200 list), notary field’s market cap increased by 87.08%. But the company service projects took a hit, decreased by 10.03%.

Analysis of Newly Listed Projects

According to latest announcements from more than 30 exchanges including OKEx, Binance, Huobi, Bitfinex, Bithumb, ZB.com, Upbit, HitBTC, Bittrex, Poloniex, there are 17 newly listed cryptocurrencies. Only CCL and PROC increased in price, other tokens’ price went down.

Analysis of Closed Public Offering Projects

There have been 83 closed public-offering projects this past week, with the soft cap totaling nearly 900 million USD. Among these projects, HYT has the largest soft cap, exceeding 300 million USD.

Important News on Global Governmental Policies this Past Week

Iran: A subsidiary of the central bank announced that Iran’s future cryptocurrency will be developed on the basis of Hyperledger technology, and be backed by the rial. It will be used first as an inter-bank payment tool, before becoming a local payment medium. It cannot be mined, and its records can only be accessed on a private chain.

Russia: Moscow will use Ethereum to document commercial land transaction applications submitted by farmers. Increased transparency of application data will promote the transparency of the weekend farmers’ market distribution system.

The Pension Fund of the Russian Federation is Russia’s largest social service organization. It has recently recommended the implementation of blockchain technology in industrial relations. The Fund plans to introduce smart contracts between employers and employees.

China: The National Internet Finance Association of China, a self-regulatory organization set up by the Peoples Bank of China, is adding token sales to the scope of its regulation, allowing the public to report possible illegal financing activities.

India: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has set up a new internal department to research and draft new rules on emerging technologies such as blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and AI.

Japan: Japan’s National Police Agency plans to launch new software to track the history of cryptocurrency transactions, in order to mitigate their misuse and theft.

Keeping Up with the Blockchain Giants

August 25th

The Singapore Exchange and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) are cooperating to automate transactions through smart contracts, improving the efficiency of securities settlement. Their joint plan is to develop a distributed network to enable financial institutions and investors to trade securities that have already been converted into tokens, through different blockchain platforms.

August 26th

Japan’s New Energy and Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and NTT Data, Japan’s largest IT company, are cooperating on a blockchain-based data sharing platform, aimed at establishing a foundation system to enhance the process of data sharing between logistics entities such as shipping companies, port authorities, banks, and insurers.

August 27th

Digital CarPass, Volkswagon’s blockchain project in cooperation with IOTA, may be launched in September. Digital CarPass is an IOTA blockchain application used for vehicle telematics data. It will provide tamper-proof mileage records, preventing odometer fraud.

August 28th

Samsung SDS is cooperating with the Korea Federation of Banks to develop a blockchain certification platform called BankSign, enabling interaction between different mobile banking systems; The Japanese ICT group Fujitsu is working on a proof-of-concept based on IOTA for tracking audit processes in the manufacturing industry. The project is used for audit tracking in industrial production environments and supply chains, aiming to improve transparency and data security.

August 29th

Ant Financial, Tmall, Cainiao, and the Wuchang municipal government are cooperating to use Ant Financial’s blockchain tracing technology for Wuchang Rice. Every bag of rice sold on thw Wuchang Rice Tmall flagship store will bear a special “seal,” recording detailed information including its seed selection, fertilizer use, and logistics process.

August 30th

The Associated Press (AP) has signed a content licensing agreement with the blockchain startup Civil. AP hopes to explore the use of blockchain technology to protect intellectual property and track news and content usage.

August 31st

Beijing Dinglu Zhongyuan Technology Co., Ltd., under Baidu, has injected RMB 50 million of capital to set up Dulian Network Technology Co., Ltd., chaired by Baidu Senior Vice President Xiang Hailong. Dulian’s operating scope includes blockchain development, technology transfer, and technical applications.

Hot topic of this week: Famous Chinese hotel company’s data was compromised, could blockchain help to protect data leaking?

User data from Huazhu Hotel Group, one of China’s largest multi-brand hotel companies, is suspected to have been sold. The blockchain may bring about new data protection solutions.

The data involves around 500 million pieces of personal information on 130 million people. Huazhu has almost 4,000 hotels nationwide, and over 100 million members. It was listed on NASDAQ in March 2010. Authorities are investigating.

1.Event Summary

On August 28, a post on the “Darknet” Chinese forum said that about 500 million pieces of user information from Huazhu Hotel Group were sold for the price of 8 BTC. The total amount of suspected leaked data exceeded 100G, including website login information, IDs used for hotel check-in, and check-in information.

The event was first discovered by the private internet security team “JDSEC” and the internet security company ZPower. ZPower issued a statement saying that its intelligence experts had verified the data through technical means, and confirmed the leakage of a large amount of data. The report also mentioned that a programmer with the Github ID DENGXIANGLONG001 (suspected to be a programmer from Huazhu) had uploaded a program called “CMS,” whose configuration file code contained sensitive information about the Huazhong server and databases. The information was exploited by the hacker, causing the massive leak and sale.

2. Event Analysis

This event reflects two issues:

Data security remains a challenge for businesses in the internet era. System vulnerabilities or improper practices by internal personnel can be exploited by hackers to illegally acquire data. Some companies which lack the ability to secure their own systems work with specialized security providers, but the addition of a third party also implicitly increases security risks.

User data has high commercial value, but users do not profit from it. Most websites have privacy conditions to which users can agree, but the reality is that if they don’t agree, they can’t use the services in full. In this semi-compulsory way, websites gain user data collection rights, and thereby provide more personalized services. Users, as data producers, do not give them the right to reap its benefits, therefore they essentially forfeit the ability to benefit from the internet value chain.

3. Solutions from Blockchain

Regarding data security:

The global ledger that records transaction data in the blockchain is publicly available on the network. Any attacker can acquire all transaction data, causing privacy risks to those using the system for transactions. Although some new technologies and methods have attempted to improve on-chain data security, the intrinsic decentralization and transparency of the blockchain increases the difficulty of data privacy protection.

Regarding the value of user data:

Data is limited and valuable. Users as data producers, therefore must decide for themselves whether or not to transfer their data and receive economic benefits — an idea which can be combined with some aspects of the token economy. Platforms can use tokens to reward users within the ecosystem for producing data and allowing for its use, analysis, and transaction. In this way, the value of the data is returned to its original producer, motivating users to more actively produce and share data, for additional value creation.