decentralized web

Jack Dorsey’s TBD Presents Bitcoin-Based Decentralized Web5

10/06/2022 by Idelto Editor

TBD’s Web5 takes a different approach than Web3 on how to build a properly decentralized internet, with Bitcoin being the single blockchain used in the project.

Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin-focused TBD business unit, a subsidiary of Block Inc., announced Friday that it is building a new decentralized web: Web5.

Web5 is based on the assumption that Web3, the idea of building a decentralized web with blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, has the right intentions but is using the wrong tools.

Web5 leverages Bitcoin, the decentralized monetary network, and a plethora of sound computer science technologies to create a new ecosystem of decentralized identities, data storage and applications in which the users are in control of their personal information.

Fairly decentralized developments in the internet over the past couple of decades such as BitTorrent and Tor have shown that blockchain technology is not a necessary component for decentralization. Rather, the blockchain has only proven to be needed for a very specific purpose – mitigate the double-spend problem to successfully bring peer-to-peer money to the digital realm with Bitcoin.

TBD’s Web5 is made up of software components and services such as decentralized identifiers (DIDs), decentralized web node (DWNs), self-sovereign identity service (SSIS) and a self-sovereign identity software development kit (ssi-sdk). These components let developers focus on building user experiences while more easily enabling decentralized identity and data storage in applications.

Decentralized Identifiers

Web5’s DID component leverages ION, an open, public and permissionless second-layer DID network that runs atop the Bitcoin blockchain. It is based on the deterministic Sidetree protocol, which requires no special tokens, trusted validators or additional consensus mechanisms to function.

A DID is essentially a globally unique persistent identifier that doesn’t require a centralized registration authority and is often generated and registered cryptographically. It consists of a unique uniform resource identifier (URI) string that serves as an ID with additional public key infrastructure (PKI) metadata describing the cryptographic keys and other fundamental PKI values linked to a unique, user-controlled, self-sovereign identifier in a target system such as the Bitcoin blockchain.

ION only allows DIDs to be deactivated by their owners, being hence censorship-resistant, and includes registry capabilities to support decentralized package managers and app stores. The decentralized network can in theory process thousands of DID operations per second.

Decentralized Web Node

The DWN leveraged by Web5 is a reference implementation of the Decentralized Identity Foundation’s DWN draft specification. Two people from Block have contributed to the specification: Moe Jangda as a contributor and Daniel Bucher as an editor.

According to the specification, a DWN is a mechanism for data storage and message transmission that participants can leverage to locate public or private data linked to a given DID. It enables the interaction between different entities that need to verify the identity of each other in order to transfer information to one another.

“Decentralized Web Nodes are a mesh-like datastore construction that enable an entity to operate multiple nodes that sync to the same state across one another, enabling the owning entity to secure, manage, and transact their data with others without reliance on location or provider-specific infrastructure, interfaces, or routing mechanisms,” per the specification.

*Topology of decentralized web nodes. Source:* *DIF*.

TBD’s goal is to produce a first version of the current draft specification along with a reference implementation by July 1, 2022.

Contributions from the development community are welcome. Interested developers can submit proposals as pull requests to the GitHub repository. Likewise, issues can also be submitted on the same GitHub repository.

Self-Sovereign Identity Service

Web5’s SSIS is a web service that wraps the ssi-sdk.

The SSIS interacts with the standards around verifiable credentials, credential revocations, requesting credentials, exchanging credentials, data schemas for credentials and other verifiable data, messaging using DWN and usage of DIDs.

*The SSIS facilitates everything related to DIDs and verifiable credentials. Source: TBD.*

“Using these core standards, the SSIS enables robust functionality to facilitate all verifiable interactions such as creating, signing, issuing, curating, requesting, revoking, exchanging, validating, verifying credentials in varying degrees of complexity,” per its webpage.

Self-Sovereign Identity SDK

The ssi-sdk encapsulates standards related to self-sovereign identity.

*A preliminary view of the SDK’s vision. Standards included are under active development and are therefore subject to be added or removed. Source: TBD.*

“The ssi-sdk intends to provide flexible functionality based on a set of standards-based primitives for building decentralized identity applications in a modular manner: with limited dependencies between components,” per its webpage.

Bitcoin Is The Trojan Horse For A Decentralized Internet

24/03/2022 by Idelto Editor

The hosts of “Simply Bitcoin” discuss how the censorship-resistant nature of Bitcoin can lead to a disintermediated internet where free speech reigns.

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Simply Bitcoin” hosts Nico and Phil joined the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast” for a discussion about censorship and global events.

Starting the podcast off with freedom at the forefront, the hosts of “Simply Bitcoin” say, “I think Bitcoin is going to usher in this mental idea that no human being should have the right to censor another human being’s speech. Period. And speech includes your ability to transact with somebody else.”

They go on to posit that Bitcoin could be the Trojan horse for a decentralized internet because communications can go from one person to a server to another person with Bitcoin nodes acting as that server, instead of a centralized hub.

The speakers move on to discuss their concerns about commodity prices and how those relate to the rising costs of everything else. When oil prices rise, the price of shipping goods goes up, resulting in increased prices. Wheat is another commodity that impacts the global food supply. Food scarcity and the ensuing hunger can lead to societal unrest which may bring about Orweillian means of control reacting to actions of hungry citizens. Phil and Nico recognize that even discussing this possibility makes them sound like conspiracy theorists.

Phil and Nico make the bold claim, “In 2003, if social media was around, we would not have invaded Iraq.” Because of the media’s ability to control information as well as the narrative around it, meant they could act as gatekeepers of information. The internet has disintermediated the legacy media and they don’t know how to control information anymore, so they are relying on censorship.

If Bitcoin can bring about a means of communicating and transacting with anyone around the globe without relying on a centralized internet, then it may create a world with incorruptible freedom of speech.

Polkadot Top 10 Redenomination Shot: Is the Token Now Bigger Than Chainlink?

30/08/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Polkadot token, which recently underwent a redenomination, has seen its value more than double in less than seven days. Now with a reported (but unverified) circulating supply of 897,657,920 tokens, the Dot token claims its place as the fifth-ranked token.

At the time of writing, the token traded at $6.23, which translates to a market capitalisation of $5.63 billion. This market capitalisation is just about enough for Dot to displace the Link token from its current position.

Coinmarketcap officially ranks the token at number 2172. The market capitalisation of a token or coin is determined by multiplying the price of a token with the circulating supply. Information on the Coinmarketcap website suggests “the organisation has not sufficiently verified the circulating supply and resulting market cap yet.”

Still, there is another metric which seemingly supports Dot’s status as a top tier token–the traded volumes. According to Coinmarketcap data, the Dot token’s traded volumes on August 27 surged to $1,4 billion, a figure higher than Chainlink’s volumes of $1.28 billion on the same day.

In fact, Dot’s 24 hour traded volumes have been exceeding $480 million since August 22. Yet, before this spike, the token’s previous traded volumes did not exceed $50 million. According to the data, on August 20 and 21 the token’s traded volumes were $48.8 million and $49.3 million respectively.

These are the only known trades to occur just before the redenomination event.

Meanwhile, in a public notice explaining the process of redenomination on August 17, the team at Polkadot Network said: “the redenomination of the token (was) scheduled to occur on 21 August 2020 at 16:40 UTC block number 1,248,328.”

The Dot token is used for governance, staking and bonding on the Polkadot network. The community had voted for the redenomination to take place on August 21. The notice adds that after redenomination, the “New Dot is 100 times smaller than DOT (OLD).”

Similar to a Share Split

Similar to a share split, a redenomination ordinarily increases the circulating supply of a token while market capitalisation remains unchanged. The notice also attempts to clarify this point.

However, immediately after redenomination, the price of the token went up from the closing price of $2.88 on August 21 to $4.48 the following day. The token has since peaked at $6.79, which was recorded on August 27.

In the meantime, Dot’s price surge comes after the Polkadot Network team previously warned that “some unscrupulous exchanges may choose to enact the redenomination prior to the date agreed by the Polkadot community.”

At the time, the Polkadot team said such an act would result in the token trading “at approximately 100 times lower than the actual market price.” The statement, which does not provide the names of exchanges behind this plot, also adds:

“We believe such action is irresponsible, possibly constituting fraud through deceptive advertising and certainly puts Polkadot stakeholders at risk.”

Binance and Kraken are reportedly the two exchanges accused of listing the token on August 18, three days before the agreed-upon redenomination.

Although the notice explained the redenomination process, some supporters of the token were still not unsure of the circulating supply before August 21. For instance, one Reddit user, SalesFromTheCrypt asked:

I know tomorrow is redenomination day, so the total supply goes from 10M to 1B and I read on their website at least 20% (is) withheld for infrastructure. That means as of tomorrow it should be no more than 800M, could be less. But, it is also an inflationary token. Let’s hope someone more knowledgeable replies because I made sure to scoop up a bag.

However, other users (possibly holders of the token) expressed confidence it would be worth billions and that it would immediately feature in top ten of the best ranked digital assets.

Polkadot is the flagship project of Web3 Foundation, a Swiss Foundation founded to facilitate a fully functional and user-friendly decentralized web.

What do you think of Polkadot’s price pump? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The post Polkadot Top 10 Redenomination Shot: Is the Token Now Bigger Than Chainlink? appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Stacks Network Plans to Leverage BTC’s Proof of Work and Burn Bitcoins

03/02/2019 by Idelto Editor

Blockchain startup Blockstack has revealed the company is in the midst of developing a new distributed ledger protocol called Stacks, a chain that leverages the hash power from the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network. Not only is the Stacks network secured by over 45 exahash of distributed hashrate, but its consensus algorithm also burns BTC by using a mechanism known as proof of burn (PoB).

Also read: Properties Are Still Being Sold for Cryptocurrency Despite the Bear Market

Proof of Burn

Blockstack, formerly called Onename, and Stacks lead developer Jude Nelson have published a video that describes a newly designed blockchain consensus algorithm. It utilizes Bitcoin Core’s proof of work (PoW), alongside the burning of coins (PoB) in order to process blocks on the Stacks chain. Nelson details there are inherent issues with proof-of-stake consensus models and the PoB consensus mechanism is meant to bootstrap itself from the established hash power stemming from the BTC chain. Over time, the Stacks chain will slowly transition away from BTC’s hash power, but using it initially will help curb 51% attacks that have been seen in recent months with networks that have an extremely low amount of PoW.

Nelson believes it would be better to build on top of the security of BTC rather than try to mimic that success.

“Instead of expending electrical and hardware costs, participants in proof-of-burn consensus do just that — They provably destroy (or “burn”) their own bitcoin as the economic cost for their participation,” explains Nelson’s recent video describing the Stacks chain. “Every participant competing for the opportunity to write the next block must burn a certain amount of proof-of-work token (bitcoin) to enter the competition.”

The Blockstack developer continued by stating:

A participant’s likelihood of winning the competition increases with the percentage of bitcoin they burn compared to other participants — The competition’s winner writes the block, collects transaction fees, and earns the block reward of Stacks tokens.

Building on Top of the Largest PoW Chain

Nelson’s blog post and recently published video also explains that the Stacks blockchain has its own memory-hard PoW process, but only 5 percent is allocated and the other 95 percent stems from BTC’s hash power. The process is tunable so that in future the Stacks developers can lessen the dependency on the BTC chain. “As the Stacks blockchain starts to get significant hash power there is a path available (by changing the tunable threshold) to reduce the percentage for Bitcoin and slowly transition away from it,” Nelson’s report notes.

A Stacks block is found by using a mechanism called “cryptographic sortition” and each block with the burns from all participants is used to calculate a probability distribution at random. If a participant spends a lot of bitcoin during the burn process and doesn’t receive any incentive, the loss is similar to BTC miners using electricity and losing the block race, Nelson explains. “If you contribute 90% of all burns in an epoch, there’s still a 10% chance that you will lose (but your Bitcoin is destroyed either way,” the developer adds.

Nelson states further:

It’s worth noting though; the burns aren’t truly “wasted” — they still improve the chain quality since their (wasted) burns get used to calculate a “burn quota” which helps slow down attackers.

The Blockstack programmer says the firm is building the chain in this manner because they believe it would be “fruitless” to compete with the security of BTC. Rather the team decided to build on top of the largest PoW chain in order to create a more distributed and censorship-resistant web. Blockstack’s main intentions have always been working toward the decentralization of the internet. Nelson believes it’s even better when there’s a blockchain system that’s verified by individuals and organizations “acting out of rational economic self-interest.” In Hong Kong, Nelson detailed that Stacks version 2 is currently under development during his recent keynote discussion concerning the protocol. At the moment developers can review the two open SIPs or Stacks Improvement Proposals.

What do you think about Blockstack’s Stacks proof-of-burn consensus model? Let us know what you think about this project in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Blockstack, Pixabay, and the Blockstack white paper.

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Founder of Tron Altcoin Justin Sun Takes Over Bittorrent Inc

12/06/2018 by Idelto Editor

Justin Sun, the founder of “decentralized web” altcoin Tron, has reportedly taken over Bittorrent Inc, the San Francisco-headquartered company founded in 2004 to manage the ongoing development of the Bittorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol.

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TRX Founder Buys Bittorrent

Justin Sun, a former Chief Representative of the Greater China Region for Ripple, closed an acquisition deal for Bittorrent last week and employees have been notified but asked not to talk about it with the media, Variety has now reported, ending weeks of speculation. The financial details of the deal weren’t made publicly available as the two sides haven’t officially announced the acquisition yet. Additionally, just a number of Bittorent’s shareholders have already been contacted by the transfer agent responsible for the transaction according to the report.

Comparing the two ventures Sun is involved with now can tell us a lot about the current state of the cryptocurrency scene, as well as the possible impact of the ease of crowd-funding on crypto projects’ relationship with the established technology industry.

Sign of Things to Come?

While the Bittorrent protocol is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and constitutes a significant share of all internet traffic, the company behind it has found few ways to monetize, like running ads on the µtorrent client. And in total, Bittorrent has raised only $35.8 million in three funding rounds over the fourteen years of its existence.

In contrast to Bittorrent Inc, Tron is barely out of the gate and already has a market capitalization of about $3 billion right now (down from as high as over $6 billion) thanks to the price of its TRX token. In fact, Tron only had its official launch for the mainnet a few days ago (on May 31) and its planned “Independence Day” is still twelve days away, meaning when TRX will no longer be just another ERC20 token.

Those who believe that Tron will fulfil its dream of building a decentralized web may see this as an indication that crypto companies are taking over the old guard. Cynics, on the other hand, might say that we’ve finally found a good business model for ICOs: raise ungodly amounts of money with no actual product or service and then use those funds to take over existing companies.

Is this a sign that the cryptocurrency industry has begun taking over the internet? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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