Oman Incorporates the IBM TradeLens Transport Platform to Implement Blockchain ​​In Its Ports

Maria Rodríguez
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Oman Incorporates the IBM TradeLens Transport Platform to Implement Blockchain ​​In Its Ports

IBM TradeLens helps exchange vital information within the supply chain of the port of Oman.

According to a note published by a local newspaper called Time of Oman, it was confirmed that one of the largest ports in this Arab country, Port of Salalah, has joined the TradeLens service, a blockchain platform designed by IBM which seeks to help organize the supply chain. This transport program was launched by the technology giant IBM and the shipping company Maersk in 2018.

During an interview with IBM executives on a news website, it was known that, until now, the incorporation of the Port of Salalah makes the TradeLens platform one of the most productive in the world, with more than 150 participants worldwide and adding its presence in more than 90 ports and terminals.

The Port of Salalah is one of the largest port roads in the country, and according to Time of Oman data, it has to date a large record number of more than 4 million containers entering by sea per year. In this way, it is reported that Oman is now one of the countries that involve TradeLens services, and therefore blockchain technology in the port industry.

According to data provided by Time of Oman’s press release, this movement is part of an initiative that seeks to improve the customer experience using the new digital technology. It also explains that this initiative also seeks to standardize its services with the rest of the world, as well as to do it more transparently, compared to other ecosystems of the supply chain.

The Operation of TradeLens

The renowned TradeLens supply chain platform uses IBM blockchain technology to allow multiple business partners to collaborate with each other. In this way, TradeLens provides a real-time view of all transactions and data related to sending within a blockchain network shared with members. This helps to make the collaboration more efficient and supervised among all the companies involved, including ports and terminals, shipping lines, vessels, freight forwarders, internal transportation, and customs authorities.

According to information shared by the press release, the TradeLens service allows its clients to send vital information, securely, to those involved in the port process, so the data runs from one point to another in the supply chain, which helps the data not to be diverted at any time and form a range of ways of collaboration. This will improve trade flows between ports around the world.

The General Director of the Port of Salalah, Mark Hardiman, explained that the incorporation of this technology into the port will allow opening new business models to take advantage of the potential of its location.

“The adoption and incorporation of Blockchain technology in all aspects of the supply chain will not only increase Salalah’s appeal to these companies but will also support the development of new business models that can further take advantage of Salalah’s geographic location”, Hardiman said.

Since the birth of this platform in 2018, its incorporation into transport services in different aspects has achieved its wide recognition, processing to date a total of 10 million maritime events per week. The Port of Salalah in Oman is not the only one incorporated into this system recently, since Vietnam’s international terminal, CMIT, also joined the platform to attract foreign trade investment for the country.

By María Rodríguez

No Security Interest Needed to Access Loans Thanks to New DeFi Platform

Alexander Salazar
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No Security Interest Needed to Access Loans Thanks to New DeFi Platform

The option, known as “flash loans”, charges a rate of 0.35% on the requested amount. The platform works with 16 different assets, including five pegged cryptocurrencies.

In recent days, the Aave protocol began to work in the Ethereum mainnet. This tool allows users of the platform to request loans in cryptocurrencies without granting a security interest in exchange, according to the developers.

Aave is an open-source project specializing in decentralized finance (DeFi) services, founded in 2017 by Stani Kulechov. The protocol is focused on the deposit, exchange, and handling of cryptocurrencies, including additional services such as loans and interest rates for savings. Among the most prominent tools of the protocol are “flash loans”, a term with which the Aave board baptized its unsecured loans.

This type of service is known in the financial industry because, as the name implies, borrowers do not need to grant a security interest to the lender to receive money in return. In other words, the loan is accepted without the need for a good, asset or guarantor to secure the payment.

The Aave platform has a smart contract that establishes and guarantees the fulfillment of the loan terms for both parties. Each contract is personalized, indicating which and how many assets the reserve user will receive. The borrower receives cryptocurrencies by conducting a single transaction, which is conditioned by the payment of this loan within a given time. If this is not complied with, the transaction will be reversed and all the actions executed with the loan up to that point will be canceled.

Flash loans have a rate of 0.35% of the requested amount, a cost considerably higher than the normal loans of the platform, for which 0.025% is requested. The platform has about 16 different cryptocurrencies, five of which are pegged cryptocurrencies or stablecoins. Assets such as Ether (ETH), Dai (DAI), Basic Attention Token (BAT), USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT) and TrustToken (TUSD) are part of its ecosystem.

New DeFi Platform

In addition to flash loans, Aave also offers new models of interest rates and tokenization. The first is the “ATokens”, tokens that can be tokenized with a value of 1:1 on their active support. The developers assure that in this way users will be able to receive more profits since they will not depend on the exchange rate of the asset but its market value.

The “stable rate” is another new model of the interest rate of this platform. It allows all platform loans to have a fixed short-term rate, which can be rebalanced over the months based on market fluctuations. The developers say that this option will protect users from the volatility of the cryptocurrency market.

The protocol also has its price oracle, called Oracle Aave and powered by Chainlink. The tool allows calculating in a decentralized way new loan rates for the server and the users. In this way, the service uses about 16 different price rates to determine which one should be charged by the platform.

The DeFi platform will have a fully decentralized government and its own cryptocurrency, LEND. The board said that, despite still being in audit processes, they are working on a network that will be under the sole control of its users. The holders of LEND will be the ones making decisions about the governance of Aave in the future. However, as it is in its launch phase, the board will be responsible for managing the entire platform.

By Alexander Salazar

The Agharta Hard Fork Was Successfully Completed by Ethereum Classic

Willmen Blanco
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The Agharta Hard Fork Was Successfully Completed by Ethereum Classic

The hard fork occurred at the height of block 9,573,000 during the early hours of Sunday, January 12th. After the fork, the hash rate remained stable at 12 EH/s.

As announced, Ethereum Classic’s hard fork Agharta was completed during the early hours of January 12th at the height of block 9,573,000. The programmers reported, through the twitter account @eth_classic, that the process was conducted without complications or delays in the mainnet.

With Agharta, Ethereum Classic adds Ethereum’s Constantinople bit-by-bit information processing code to the ETC mainnet, which will generate greater compatibility between both. Besides, the programmers would improve the capabilities of the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM). Another element is the addition of the create2 operation code that will be in a position to boost scalability for transactions outside the Ethereum Classic network. It was also considered to add the EXTCODEHASH opcode, which serves to optimize executions on a larger scale in smart contracts.

The ECIP 1056 improvement proposal, created on March 25th, 2019 by Isaac Ardis and Wei Tang, summarizes the objectives as follows: “to enable excellent updates of the Constantinople and Petersburg protocols from the Ethereum network to the Ethereum Classic network on a hard fork called Agharta to allow for maximum compatibility between these networks.” In other words, ETC added Ethereum improvement proposals EIP 145, EIP 1014 and EIP 1052.

The processing power of the network was not affected by the hard fork. According to data from Coinwarz, the hash rate of the blockchain remained around 12.2 exa hashes per second (EH/s) before the hard fork was applied, and then between 12.1 and 12.2 during Sunday afternoon. Regarding difficulty, it remained at 153.51 T.

Second Fork in 4 Months

Agharta has been the second Ethereum Classic’s hard fork within four months. In September 2019, the developers applied the Atlantis hard fork to the mainnet, which generated a decrease close to 50% in processing power. On that occasion, the application was also conducted smoothly, but with the passing of the hours, the hash rate fell significantly, which has not been registered after applying the current changes at the time of writing this article.

It should be remembered that Ethereum Classic’s hard fork is not contentious, that is, all the groups making life in this particular cryptosystem agreed with the changes, which did not generate a new network or a new cryptocurrency.

Regarding the process of updating the nodes, the website etcnodes.org indicated that, so far, 57% of the operators have updated their clients. For this network, the most popular clients are Parity Ethereum, Geth and Multigeth.

The Ethereum Classic project represented in 2016 Ethereum’s first hard fork after the theft, following an attack, of the Ethereum DAO that led to the loss of 3.6 million ethers (ETH), Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency. The solution considered at that time was that of applying a hard fork, from which ETC was born, to recover the stolen funds.

At the time of writing this article, the price of ETC is USD 5.41, with a negative variation of 6% in the last 24 hours.

By Willmen Blanco

Taproot Upgrade Proposal Is Almost Completed

Willmen Blanco
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Taproot Upgrade Proposal Is Almost Completed

Besides Taproot, other updates are considered by Bitcoin Core developers. Bitcoin has not undergone any hard or soft forks for over two years after SegWit.

The Taproot proposal, an anticipated technological change for Bitcoin, is almost complete, according to Bitcoin Core developers. This can be considered as a remarkable update that arrives almost two years after its introduction.

First disclosed by developer Greg Maxwell in January 2018, Taproot offers a new degree of privacy by making all transactions, regardless of difficulties, seem the same as the blockchain’s data processors. The code adds to the network a very necessary function and brings with it important implications for scalability, fungibility and scripting innovation.

Taproot is expected to group with Schnorr, a related update that seeks to allow incorporating multiple signatures and allow the implementation of Taproot.

At the moment, the soft fork Taproot/Schnorr, proposed in May 2019 by Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille, is undergoing the feedback phase, in which developers recommend and review possible changes in the draft proposal.

Last December 17th, Wuille published an upgrade of the project, in which he revealed that the developers were completing the assessment of all the comments on the review and that the Taproot proposal was almost completed.

The proposal that is being conducted is designed to save between 30% and 75% in transaction fees and to accelerate block validation up to 2.5 times, as predicted by Square Crypto product manager Steve Lee.

This process has generated a lot of interest and excitement among different parts of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. According to recent survey data, Taproot leads the list of technological developments around Bitcoin that are being followed.

Taproot Explained

Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography to validate transactions. The elliptical curve digital signature algorithm has several flaws regarding privacy and fungibility, which the soft fork Taproot/Schnorr seeks to fix by hiding specific types of payments from external observers.

Lee provides the example of an exchange house that includes an online key, a trusted third-party password and an emergency backup key for the cold wallet. Conventionally, the participants would need to pass on the three keys, as well as the two signatures used to spend the money.

However, the proposed upgrade would add these keys in a single Schnorr signature, which would then be used to validate a Taproot exit key that represents all the complexities involved.

As a consequence, the observers of the blockchain observers would just see a single exit without knowing which of the two keys was deployed to validate the transaction. This would reduce the size of the transaction, save expenditures and improve privacy, according to Lee.

Taproot also facilitates innovation in signature management, since it allows for complicated signature and password arrangements and eliminates limitations on the number of scripts to spend money.

Community Interest

Taproot is attracting great interest from the Bitcoin community, according to survey data. The Taproot/Schnorr upgrade was the third most popular topic that industry participants said to be most excited about seeing in 2020.

Jimmy Song, a developer at Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Fellow at Blockchain Capital, echoed this optimism and predicted that Taproot will not only save money and block space but will also allow new features and generate more interest from the network.

By Willmen Blanco

Between the Ban on Bitcoin and the Search for Leadership in Blockchain

Alexander Salazar
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Between the Ban on Bitcoin and the Search for Leadership in Blockchain

Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke in favor of blockchains in October 2019. In November, the government reinforced regulatory pressure on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

When President Xi Jinping expressed the need for China to become a leader in the development of blockchains, the cryptocurrency ecosystem exploded. “China is on the side of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies,” was one of the positions on the Chinese president’s words.

However, the statements of the Chinese president do not change his government’s position on cryptocurrencies. The restrictions on Bitcoin trading have been reinforced, even shortly after the president publicly stated that they need to lead the blockchains ecosystem.

It can be seen that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) intends to strengthen regulation and control, through which it seeks to reduce cryptocurrency trading. Besides, the central bank declared that the issuance, financing, and trading of virtual currencies involve multiple risks.

Blockchain, Not Bitcoin

A series of meetings with Bitcoin exchange houses held in China in 2017 did not give rise to agreements but the suspension of exchange services with Bitcoin, inspections against exchange houses and even a fixed rate for such platforms.

Similarly, in early 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) approved the Regulations on the Management of Blockchain Information Services, under which companies that offer services with blockchains are required to censor content and record the identity of each user, thus allowing the government to access that information.

Beyond the attempts against Bitcoin, the country has even recognized it as a virtual property with value on more than one occasion, through courts in different regions. Chinese cryptocurrency analyst Dovey Wan considers that this gives legality to the cryptocurrency and other personalities of the field believe that the government has been softening its position.

After many obstacles and inspections, among other negative factors, China relaxed its position on companies in the blockchain sector. In a first wave, about 200 of these companies passed the regulatory filter, preceding the pro-blockchains position shown by Xi Jinping.

Their Own Cryptocurrency

It is a fact that the Chinese government has a clear position on this issue. It wants the development of blockchains in the country to grow. At the same time, it intends to launch its cryptocurrency as a digital alternative to the yuan.

By March 2018, there was no hurry about developing the cryptocurrency, but now the plans have a set time, according to the director of the PBOC. After a time when it seemed as though the Chinese cryptocurrency would not be issued, the Facebook cryptocurrency Libra was announced, worrying the authorities and leading them to retake their digital yuan initiative.

According to Wang Xin, research director at the PBOC, their main concern was the possibility that Libra would threaten Chinese stability and sovereignty, especially if citizens adopted it massively for cross-border payments. After those movements, rumors have not stopped, but the development of the Chinese cryptocurrency is being conducted with great suspicion.

This is how China wants blockchain and, therefore it cannot be expected to resemble Bitcoin. The intention behind the plans of the Chinese government seems to respond to a need to defend against decentralized cryptocurrencies and strengthen its governing capacity.

By Alexander Salazar

How the Next Bitcoin Halving Could Affect the Mining Industry

Alexander Salazar
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How the Next Bitcoin Halving Could Affect the Mining Industry

The third Bitcoin halving will reduce the reward per mined block from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. Miners’ profits depend mostly on this reward.

The third Bitcoin halving is soon to occur and will have a significant impact on the cryptocurrency mining industry. Token Insight analysts recently revealed that almost 97% of miners’ profits come exclusively from the reward per mined block. As the reduction in the reward will directly affect this source of income, it can be predicted that the mining industry will undergo a difficult period in 2020.

However, to understand the impact of this situation, it is first necessary to know the concept of halving. This is a mechanism incorporated into the code of Bitcoin and other blockchains platforms, intending to control cryptocurrency inflation. To achieve this, the tool halves the reward that miners receive every 210,000 blocks. In other words, it decreases the number of bitcoins issued by the Coinbase deposit at the time of processing a block and registering it on the network. The idea is that, at some point, the blockchain stops issuing new bitcoins, thus becoming a limited asset.

It should be noted that two halving events have already occurred in the Bitcoin network and a third one is expected for mid-May 2020, with which the reward of 12.5 BTC per mined block will be reduced to just 6.25 BTC. This reduction directly affects miners, since they have only two sources of income for their activities.

The first, and currently the main one, is the aforementioned Coinbase deposit, which miners receive after their equipment finds the correct solution for the block that they are mining. The second source comes from transaction fees, which are paid by each user when sending bitcoins to another address and then received by miners when they register the block on the network.

According to Satoshi Nakamoto’s plan, when the Coinbase deposit ceases to issue rewards, miners will profit only and exclusively from transaction fees. However, this is currently said to be a difficult project to execute, considering that almost all the profits of miners come from the reward per mined block. The report by Token Insight reveals that only 3.07% of mining revenues are from the fees paid by users.

In this way, it can be concluded that the next halving will be reduced by almost half the income in bitcoins currently earned by the mining industry.

In this sense, the consequences of these reductions were proven in 2019 to the Litecoin community. The altcoin conducted the process in mid-2019, reducing its reward from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. Although the price of the cryptocurrency increased by 11% in just 24 hours, within a few months its hash rate dropped by 60%. This fact proves that an important group of miners disconnected their equipment due to low profitability and high costs.

Given these probabilities, it is not surprising that large companies linked to Bitcoin mining have begun to take action on this since last year. For instance, the ASIC miner manufacturing firm, Bitmain, initiated a round of dismissals to reduce its expenditures.

By Alexander Salazar

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