This Week in Blockfolio Signal - Cardano, IOST, Enigma, IOTA
Every week we comb through hundreds of Blockfolio Signals to bring you the most significant team updates with brief analyses to help you understand the latest developments in blockchain.
But first, in macro crypto news this week:
Bitcoin Hash Rate Drops Nearly 50% from 2020 Peak
US Stimulus Bill Includes Language for a Digital Dollar
California Governor Newsom Warns Against Bitcoin Fraudsters
US Takes Regulatory Steps Toward Blockchain Technology Adoption
Top Blockfolio Signals of the past week:
Cardano Introduces “Hydra” Scaling Solution
IOST’s Enterprise Arm Officially Joins Hyperledger
Enigma Building SafeTrace for Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing
IOTA’s Tangle Used for Distributed Health Records Project
Cardano Introduces “Hydra” Scaling Solution
“Enter the Hydra: scaling distributed ledgers, the evidence-based way, by Prof Aggelos Kiayias.”Scalability is the greatest challenge to blockchain adoption… we have arrived at a solution: Hydra.” Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, IOHK’s Chief Scientist and Chair in Cybersecurity & Privacy at Edinburgh University
outlines the vision and its key components.Read and learn more about Hydra: the multi-headed ledger protocol in this extensive IOHK Blog post.”
— Niels Schoof, Community Manager
Summary
Hydra is an off-chain scalability architecture for distributed ledgers, which addresses all three of the main scalability challenges: high transaction throughput, low latency, and minimal storage per node.
The Hydra scalability architecture can be divided into four components: the head protocol, the tail protocol, the cross-head-and-tail communication protocol, as well as a set of supporting protocols for routing, reconfiguration, and virtualization.
The centerpiece is the ‘head’ protocol, which enables a set of high-performance and high-availability participants (such as stake pools) to very quickly process large numbers of transactions with minimal storage requirements by way of a multiparty state channel — a concept that generalizes two-party payment channels similar to the Lightning network.
A single Hydra head achieves up to roughly 1,000 TPS, so by running 1,000 heads in parallel (for example, one for each stake pool of the Shelley release), Cardano should be able to achieve a million TPS. And it can scale further, with 2,000 heads equating to 2 million TPS and so on.
Significance
This is huge news, as it demonstrates the potential for Cardano to be the leader in the industry in addressing the key bottleneck of scalability. This new solution suggests Cardano scales faster than Visa’s network and significantly expands the potential use cases for their smart contract platform.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.03. View ADA on Blockfolio.
IOST’s Enterprise Arm Officially Joins Hyperledger
“IOST’s Enterprise Arm Officially Joins Hyperledger Alongside Walmart, Clear and Conduent.
On March 3, 2020, during the first day of Hyperledger Global Forum 2020, Hyperledger announced the addition of eight new members, including IOST Enterprise Edition AIOU Technology, the renowned world’s top 500 companies Clear, business giant Conduent and Walmart, amongst other blockchain companies. Together with Hyperledger members, IOST will grow the commercial applications of blockchain technology.”
— Terrence Wang, Co-Founder and CTO
Summary
Hyperledger is the most widely used consortium chain system in the world. On March 3, during the first day of Hyperledger Global Forum 2020 — Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger, announced the addition of eight new members, including IOST.
As a company focusing on blockchain technology’s research and development, IOST is committed to constructing a consortium BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-service) platform and providing professional and targeted blockchain solutions for enterprises and governments.
Together, IOST and Hyperledger will jointly grow the commercial applications of blockchain technology. IOST will also work with Hyperledger sub-project Fabric to promote the development of distributed ledger technology DLT.
Significance
IOST will be able to pool resources and ideas with other Hyperledger members, furthering their goal of bringing blockchain solutions to enterprises. It will help them to build an efficient commercial network, benefiting not only IOST, but the wider blockchain sector.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.0036. View IOST on Blockfolio.
Enigma is Building SafeTrace — A Platform for Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing
“Announcing SafeTrace — a platform for privacy-preserving contact tracing to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. SafeTrace lets users share sensitive location and health data while protecting privacy. Come see what we’ve built and join us as collaborators!”
— Can Kisagun, Co-Founder and CPO
Summary
Fighting a pandemic and saving lives requires the effective use of data, which means doing comprehensive testing as well as understanding individual movements. However, privacy concerns abound.
Enigma has built a platform called SafeTrace to facilitate privacy-preserving contact tracing. It lets users share sensitive location and health data with other users and officials, without compromising privacy.
The objective of this tool is to help track social infection vectors to better understand the virus and slow the spread (flatten the curve).
Enigma is drawing on parts of their existing code-base that was built to bring privacy to smart contracts and public blockchains. They constructed a privacy-preserving database and a querying tool that runs inside a Trusted Execution Environment (Intel SGX) that is hosted on IBM Cloud.
This database takes in user location history and user infection status. Then, within a secure enclave, that data is decrypted and compared with the reports from all other users. This can show where and when people overlapped since testing positive for COVID-19.
Significance
While this is an open-source passion project for Engima, there is an immediate need for this type of solution, especially in the US where the government is less likely to make contact tracing compulsory. This provides the benefits of tracing the virus without compromising user privacy. It has the potential to save countless lives, while also demonstrating the power of blockchain technology and highlighting Engima’s privacy features. They are currently seeking collaborators to help finalize the tool.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.10. View ENG on Blockfolio.
IOTA’s Tangle Used for Distributed Health Records Community Project
“This week at IOTA Community Projects — our initiative to show hands-on projects powered by IOTA — we have a Distributed Health Record that uses IoT and the Tangle. The goal is to enable medical home monitoring & sharing with health care professionals.”
— Thabata Dias, Social Media Manager
Summary
This community project uses IOTA’s technology to enable medical home monitoring and shares the details with healthcare professionals.
The project introduces the concept of a Distributed Health Record (DHR). This is applied to an example of secure medical home monitoring using IOTA, Azure Sphere and openEHR.
The lack of interoperability between systems and the availability of health data is where IOTA can positively impact this proof-of-concept.
Significance
There is a clear need for better storage and sharing of medical records in a way that maximizes efficiency and protects patient data. In this solution, the creator found IOTA’s Tangle technology the best fit for achieving these ends. This proof of concept (POC) could be a starting point and key demonstration of the power of IOTA’s technology for a future commercial healthcare application. The potential here is massive given the size of the healthcare system and market fit for a distributed ledger solution.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.14. View IOTA on Blockfolio.
Quote of the Week:
“It takes a special kind of Government to spend $10,000 for every adult to give $1,200 to every adult. And it takes a special kind of public to cheer this Government into doing it. #America”
Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you our top Blockfolio Signals again next week.
Jason Hamlin
Ecosystem Insights & Development @ Blockfolio
Blockfolio Signal is a first-of-its-kind communications platform built exclusively for token teams to connect and engage with their communities. Over 400 token team CEOs and team leaders actively use the platform to provide relevant project updates directly to Blockfolio’s 5 million+ users. Learn more at www.blockfolio.com/signal.
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