More Chinese Courts Are Using Blockchain to Solve Cases

Maria Rodríguez
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More Chinese Courts Are Using Blockchain to Solve Cases

China’s smart courts apply new technologies such as blockchain or Artificial Intelligence (AI) to decide legal cases.

Blockchain technology is achieving more spaces in daily life and also in important fields such as legal cases. The official news agency Xinhua revealed that more than 3.1 million Chinese litigation activities, from March to October, were settled through blockchain.

These are called “courts of the future” since citizens can communicate with non-human, virtual, AI-powered judges through multiple screens. This is useful when human judges cannot be present physically in the curt but they could be present thanks to blockchain.

Another interesting aspect of the operation of this current system is that citizens also can receive court decisions by text or through major messaging services. This is an example of the versatility and the capability that blockchain technology has to execute different activities.

“In the current use of AI as an assistant to make rulings, efficiency is prioritized over accuracy. A human judge is ultimately responsible for the fair ruling (…) But we are heading toward a future when we can see an AI judge sitting at the podium”, Zhang Wen, President of the Beijing Internet Court said last April.

The legal profession in China takes advantage of new technologies such as machine learning, online communication tools, and, of course, blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.

A Year Full of Blockchain Developments

During 2019, China has solved an increasing number of contentious cases using blockchain technology. This means more than one million citizens and approximately 73,200 lawyers had signed up for a smart court request.

After establishing the “world-first” smart Internet court in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2017, China launched similar operations in other cities of that Asian country like Guangzhou and, of course, Beijing. Today, these procedures are practiced regularly in more than 12 regions at the provincial level.

Besides, the Supreme Court of China announced that smart courts would use blockchain to analyze the collected evidence and store it with precise timestamps. The positive aspect is that the tamper-proof platform guarantees the authenticity of the data collected and stored for legal cases.

Zhang added that blockchain technology is being leveraged to prioritize efficiency over accuracy.

But although blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligence would facilitate all legal proceedings, the final decision would be taken by a human judge.

For these reasons, crypto users, who know about blockchain, consider that the day is not far away when technology will replace a practicing judge on the podium.

During September 2018, the Supreme Court declared that “Internet courts shall recognize digital data that are submitted as evidence if relevant parties collected and stored these data via blockchain with digital signatures, reliable timestamps and hash value verification or via a digital deposition platform, and can prove the authenticity of such technology used”.

The majority of the crypto users think that China would continue to make grow Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in legal cases so blockchain is being more than a platform to store only digital payments.

By María Rodríguez

KeepKey Cold Wallets Show Great Vulnerability

Willmen Blanco
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KeepKey Cold Wallets Show Great Vulnerability

The fault had already been identified last June at a conference in the Netherlands. Users are advised to use additional protection and prevent strangers from manipulating the device.

It was reported that the Kraken Security Labs team found a serious vulnerability in the KeepKey cryptocurrency cold wallets, which allowed them to find ways to extract seeds, by just having physical access to the wallet for about 15 minutes.

In the information, published on December 10th, the analysts at Kraken Security Labs note that, in order to identify the vulnerability, they conducted a voltage glitching attack through which they managed to extract the encrypted seed.

According to experts, voltage glitching attacks involve the manipulation of hardware variables and are usually used to cause temporary problems in secure devices, which manipulate or retain confidential data. In this way, the attack that was made against the hardware took advantage of the failures inherent in the microcontroller used in KeepKey.

At a technical level, Kraken Security Labs research determined that the vulnerability is based on the manufacturer’s firmware, which is the computer program establishing the logic that controls electronic circuits. Thus, the voltage glitching attack is targeted at the memory of the microcontrollers that is executed during the boot of the device, at which point the security configuration of the chip is loaded.

In this way, the researchers conclude that it is “an inherent hardware vulnerability that cannot be patched and requires that the underlying hardware be completely replaced.”

Considering this fact, the failure makes it possible to use specialized electronic devices to read encrypted data from the storage location. Then software can be used to guess the 1-9 digit PIN code by testing all possible combinations, which is how the encrypted seed was deciphered, despite being protected. The analysts explain that decryption is trivial if a “brute-force” attack is conducted. This method simply tries all possible combinations of the key, until it finds the required one.

Considering figures, letters and special characters, 62 in total, a 9-character key would require hundreds of billions of attempts (629). However, with current techniques, a supercomputer, which can test 1 billion combinations in 1 second, would need less half an hour to decrypt the seed.

The note adds that, although this type of attack requires specialized knowledge and physical access to the hardware, it is possible to create a user-friendly fault device, whose cost would be around USD 75. “Unfortunately, this means that it is difficult for the KeepKey team to do something about this vulnerability without redesigning the hardware,” they reiterate.

Known Vulnerability

It should be noted that the vulnerability of these cold wallets had already been previously identified last June at a conference held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Security Director Charles Guillemet made a presentation in which he mentioned the failures present in several open hardware wallets, among which is KeepKey.

In this regard, the exchange house ShapeShift, associated with KeepKey since 2017, also said that it was aware of the failure even at the time of the alliance. In a note published on its blog in June 2019 it mentioned the problem. At that time, they said that most of the wallets, including KeepKey, are designed to protect the user from more common attacks such as malware, viruses and remote hackers that seek to steal private keys. But voltage glitching attacks seek to extract the seeds differently.

In order to protect devices from this type of attack, the Kraken Security Labs team advises users to prevent other people from manipulating the cold wallet. Security measures include enabling additional BIP39 passphrases with the KeepKey customer that, despite being a bit more difficult to use in practice, are not stored on the device.

By Willmen Blanco

Croatian Post Launches Crypto Exchange Pilot Program

Maria Rodríguez
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Croatian Post Launches Crypto Exchange Pilot Program

Five cryptocurrencies are supported in the first stage of the project that is being successful. The company plans to offer more crypto services in the future.

The largest postal service in the Republic of Croatia, the Croatian Post, launches a cryptographic plan, a crypto exchange that will be available in 55 of its offices around the country.

“Digitization is one of our development strategies and a driver of numerous business projects”, it commented.

Currently, the project is in its pilot stage. It supports, in the beginning, five cryptocurrencies. But in this first stage, the project is being successful so it may soon start the second phase. These five cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Stellar (XLM), XRP, and EOS.

In this way, customers can now exchange five cryptocurrencies for Croatian kuna (the national and fiat currency) in the Croatian Post’s offices.

The biggest provider of postal services in Croatia not only offers postal, financial, retail and insurance services. The company recently announced its crypto plans.

“Starting December 11, all Croatian and foreign service users will be able to convert their cryptocurrencies to HRK in just a few simple steps”, it said.

The Procedure

Once the user submits a crypto exchange request “a QR code will be scanned and you will receive cash at a post office”.

Croatian Post provides a calculator for customers to know how much HRK they will receive when exchanging their cryptocurrencies.

It also talked about its future crypto plans. “In the future, we also plan to introduce the option to buy cryptocurrencies at Croatian Post’s post offices, thus making them the central points for cryptocurrency transactions across Croatia”, the Croatian Post explained.

The pilot project was implemented in Croatian cities like Zadar, where there are three post offices.

Post offices in other countries have been offering similar services, especially in Austria and Liechtenstein. In the last city, they sold Bitcoin (BTC) in February. Then, they sold Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP).

In July, the regional Director of Liechtenstein postal branches, Gustav Gstoehl, said the program had been a success there. The daily exchange limit went form 1,000 Swiss francs (USD $1,009) to 20,000 francs (USD $20,189).

In the case of Austria, over 400 post office branches and about 1,350 post partner stores in that country sell Bitpanda crypto vouchers.

Currently, consumers in Croatia can also trade Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on Bitcoin.com’s non-custodian peer-to-peer (P2P) market place.

Now, the Croatian Post aims to spread the service to major cities and tourist centers in all the country. The crypto-to-cash service has been running since July 15, according to local news.

Among the results of the pilot programs is that now the Croatian Post knows that customers have an important interest in exchanging their cryptocurrencies through this type of services.

Crypto users have celebrated this news because they consider that the service promotes the adoption of these digital currencies. Currently, the Croatian Post has 1,016 post offices, 2,135 countries, and more than 10,000 employees, according to its official website.

Probably, the service will be available in the near future in the majority of the offices around the world to benefit, this way, more customers and tourists.

By María Rodríguez

Loans and Credits with Bitcoin Will Be Possible Thanks to This New Protocol

Willmen Blanco
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Loans and Credits with Bitcoin Will Be Possible Thanks to This New Protocol

The new protocol, called Money on Chain, allows users to trade stablecoins backed by Bitcoin. The two tokens owned by the platform are DoC, which is anchored to the US dollar, and BPRO, which generates liabilities in Bitcoin.

It was announced that a new platform for anchored cryptocurrencies or stablecoins, backed by smart contracts using bitcoins, is already active in the RSK network. On Thursday, December 12th, the companies Money on Chain and IOVLabs confirmed the launch of the initiative, after having spent 11 months developing the new software.

It was explained that Money on Chain is a protocol that uses RSK smart contracts to generate stable cryptocurrencies (stablecoins), that is, those anchored to the price of another asset. In this way, crypto assets are collateralized by Bitcoin, thus providing decentralized financial services for BTC holders.

The protocol consists of two different tokens, which are called Dollar on Chain (DoC) and BitPRO (BPRO). The DoC token is anchored to the value of the US dollar, as are the stablecoins Tether, USDC and DAI. Users can send, receive or save in DoC when using the protocol, according to the company.

It should be remembered that DoC has a stable price with parity to the US, which makes it an ideal option for those with Bitcoin risk aversion seeking stability in the volatile environment of cryptocurrencies. On the other hand, BPRO is a token aimed at Bitcoin holders that absorbs the unwanted volatility of Bitcoin from DoC. In turn, part of this volatility is passed to the exchange of leveraged Bitcoin operations, thus giving BPRO holders a passive income for the loan at the same time as they receive small leverage for free.

It was also noted that Bitcoin holders can generate liabilities with their saved cryptocurrencies, by using the BPRO token. It should be noted that all users who purchase BPRO will receive a percentage of the fees charged by the Money on Chain platform. They will also receive interest rate gains and leverage on the price of Bitcoin.

It was reported that the developers, of both RSK and Money on Chain, had been working on the execution of this protocol for 11 months before the announcement. During that period of time, several simulations, performance tests, and two audits were conducted before the launch of the Alpha version to the market.

The idea of ​​the creators of Money on Chain and IOVLabs is to generate a decentralized financial (DeFi) services platform for Bitcoin holders. Max Cajurzaa, CEO of Money on Chain, stressed that through this platform users can develop a loan, credit and trade market for Bitcoin users. It is worth mentioning that this idea has also been explored by Venezuelan entrepreneur Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, in his Ledn project.

The fact that this RSK network is using the Money on Chain protocol provides an opportunity for potential investors that do not like to take risks, since it owns two stablecoins that help users avoid the volatility of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

By Willmen Blanco

Assignment of Names to Ethereum Addresses through ENS Service

Willmen Blanco
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Assignment of Names to Ethereum Addresses through ENS Service

In this article, the basics of how to use ENS are explained. The characteristics of the ENS service are also described here.

The Ethereum name service (ENS) allows users to conduct transactions without directly needing to use the recipient’s public address or key since it links it to a readable name similar to that of a web page.

A typical Ethereum address consists of 42 alphanumeric characters that are case sensitive. However, trying to memorize this entire sequence of characters would require a prodigious memory. Therefore, when sending transactions, users usually copy and paste the address or scan its abstraction in QR code.

The ENS service uses Ethereum smart contracts to link names readable by humans, such as hector.eth, to machine-readable cryptographic identifiers such as hashes, cryptocurrency addresses or metadata. All this is done through a decentralized network like that of the Ethereum network.

ENS Aims to Simplify Processes

This service allows Ether holders to buy a single domain and assign it to a wallet address. The service allows acquiring the name of an .eth domain, such as miguel.eth, and sending payments both in ETH and in any other token in the Ethereum network from wallets compatible with this system, by simply sharing it.

The rental of a domain name in ENS starts on a yearly basis and allows buying names of three or more characters. In addition, these domains can be transferred to a new owner, as provided by its proprietor.

Likewise, ENS allows creating subdomains, in which different wallet addresses or any other type of information can be managed, according to the user’s demands. For example, it is possible to own the cryptoworldjournal.eth domain and have sub-domains next to it such as payments.cryptoworldjournal.eth, help.cryptoworldjournal.eth, or those defined by the user.

DNS and ENS are Relatives

Perhaps DNS (domain name system) is little known, but this service has been used since the beginning of Internet as it is known today.

Visiting a web page is a simple task since users simply place the address that they want to access, such as in the case of www.cryptoworldjournal.com. However, at the level of network architecture, it is not so simple.

First, the web portal is hosted on a server which can be accessed through an IP address like this: 200.84.168.218. Since it is much more complicated to memorize an IP address than the name of a website, it is here that DNS comes into play as they have a record of all web addresses along with their associated IP addresses. Therefore, when accessing a web portal, the DNS will be responsible for resolving the IP address where the web page is hosted and redirecting the user there.

Obviously, the above is just a very general view of the operation of a DNS in the network. However, it serves as a reference point to establish similarities between both services. In the first place, both services are responsible for solving addresses, but ENS has a much larger application since it also allows indexing in the same domain different types of information such as plain texts, e-mails, cryptocurrency addresses, and even web addresses. It should be noted that this last proposal is under development.

ENS Architecture

ENS is a system that works directly in the Ethereum network through smart contracts that allow executing its protocol, which is divided into 2 parts: the ENS registry and the resolvers.

The ENS registry is a smart contract that stores individual records with the following data: public address that owns the domain (the same to which the domain redirects), address of the domain resolver, and life of the domain.

Regarding the resolver, this is responsible for much of the work, since the ENS record is only for storage. Its function is to “translate” the domain name in the destination public address, since the address or information that is linked to a particular domain is registered in the resolver. This is because, when buying a domain, the owner’s address is not necessarily linked to the domain but the link is made after its acquisition.

Similarly, resolvers are smart contracts developed by third parties with ENS system standards. Public resolvers, suggested at the time of domain registration, or private ones, developed by third parties, can be used.

In the first step, the wallet (user code) asks the ENS registry what the public address of the foo.eth domain resolver is, and it returns the request. Next, the wallet asks the resolver for the address indexed to the foo.eth domain and it returns it to the destination address.

In this way, the resolver can find the public address associated with a domain. However, the information that is directly associated with the domain can be very extensive. It may be domain names, plain texts, other wallet addresses, even cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and web addresses, with the resolver being in charge of finding the information required by the user.

By Willmen Blanco

Blockchain to Be Used by the IDB for Registering Green Bonds

Willmen Blanco
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Blockchain to Be Used by the IDB for Registering Green Bonds

The announcement was made during a summit on climate change in Madrid. The platform will be available in mid-2020.

It was reported that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is working on the development of a platform for the issuance of green or ecological bonds, focused on the Latin American market. This project, known as the Green Bond Transparency Platform (PTBV), will be based on a blockchain, according to the IDB.

The multilateral institution announced the creation of the new tool last Wednesday, December 11th, during the United Nations Organization (UN) climate change summit (COP25), in Madrid, the Spanish capital.

The IDB explained that this tool will allow bond issuers and investors, among other instances involved to incorporate information or verify transactions. In addition, details on the performance of bonds and the use of proceeds will be available on the platform. The institution noted that the environmental impact of green bond issues on the region will also be recorded.

The Chief of the Connectivity Markets and Finance Division, Juan Antonio Ketterer, said that the PBTV seeks to solve one of the main challenges of the green bond market. He was referring to the ability for investors to access the additional information that they demand concerning the use of the proceeds of the bonds that they acquire.

Ketterer considers that the solution to that problem would also lead to a considerable increase in the growth of the green bond market. The IDB representative held that this product is vital for attracting private capital to Latin America.

It should be noted that that the development of the platform is still in beta phase and its official launch is scheduled for the middle of next year. However, the announcement did not make it clear whether the platform will be based on the permissioned blockchain LAC-Chain, launched in 2018 by the IDB, or another network.

The project is said to have the support of more than 30 organizations, among which the most prominent is the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The IDB and Blockchains

It is worth mentioning that it is not the first time that the international organization has joined the blockchain industry. In late November, the IDB’s innovation arm approved a contribution of USD 600,000 for the project of a blockchain conducted by the company EthicHub, willing to finance small farmers in Mexico.

An entity under the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Peru announced last April that it would use the LAC-Chain test network in order to verify the purchases of different entities of the Peruvian State. In this case, LAC-Chain would work to intermediate between these agencies and electronic purchasing services.

Previously, the institution had invited to a contest focused on companies specialized in the blockchain. The competition, called “Idear Soluciones,” included a USD 25,000 prize for the most successful creative solution for development challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It can be observed that the use of blockchains for environmental initiatives has been growing in popularity. During the aforementioned event alone, there were several announcements involving these technologies that seek to promote large-scale ecological practices.

By Willmen Blanco

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