Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology and Designing the Future
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Blockchain and Initial Coin Offerings: Blockchain´S Implications for Crowdfunding
Blockchain and Initial Coin Offerings: Blockchain´s Implications for Crowdfunding by Laurin Arnold, Martin Brennecke, Patrick Camus, Gilbert Fridgen, Tobias Guggenberger, Sven Radszuwill, Alexander Rieger, Andre Schweizer, Nils Urbach December 2018 in: Business Transformation through Blockchain (Hrsg. Treiblmaier, H., Beck, R.) University of Augsburg, D-86135 Augsburg Visitors: Universitätsstr. 12, 86159 Augsburg Phone: +49 821 598-4801 (Fax: -4899) 843 University of Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth - I Visitors: Wittelsbacherring 10, 95444 Bayreuth W Phone: +49 921 55-4710 (Fax: -844710) www.fim-rc.de Blockchain and Initial Coin Offerings: Blockchain’s Implications for Crowdfunding Abstract Interest in Blockchain technology is growing rapidly and at a global scale. As scrutiny from practitioners and researchers intensifies, various industries and use cases are identified that may benefit from adopting Blockchain. In this context, peer-to-peer (P2P) funding through initial coin offerings (ICOs) is often singled out as one of the most visible and promising use cases. ICOs are novel forms of crowdfunding that collect funds in exchange for so-called Blockchain tokens. These tokens can represent any traditional form of underlying asset and have already been used, among others, to denote shares in a company, user reputations in online systems, deposits of fiat currencies, and balances in cryptocurrency systems. Importantly, ICOs allow for P2P investments without intermediaries. In this chapter, we explain the fundamentals of ICOs, highlight their differences to traditional financing, and analyze their potential impacts on crowdfunding. Keywords Blockchain, Initial Coin Offering, ICO, Distributed Ledger Technology, Crowdfunding, Cryptocurrency, Crypto-token, Use Case Analysis Table of Contents 1. Crowdfunding and Blockchain ....................................................................................................... -
The Allegheny County Bar in the Eighties Frank C
The Allegheny County Bar in the Eighties Frank C. McGirk That Iwas admitted to the Bar of Allegheny County in 1880, and am still in the practice of my profession, is most likely the reason Iwas chosen to deliver this address. Iknew the great lawyers of that decade, —many of them intimately, —and frequently tried cases with and against them, and while Ithen knew their peculiarities and abilities, and the many stories then current about them, lapse of time and a failing memory willprevent the repetition of a great many matters of much interest, and jovial happen- ings of those old days. From the earliest days of this County, it has been noted for its great lawyers. Such men as Alexander Ad- dison, James Ross, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, John Woods, Thomas Collins, William Wilkins, Henry Baldwin, James Mountain, Samuel Roberts, Walter Forward, John H. Chap- lin,Neville B. Craig, Charles Shaler, Richard Biddle, John Henry Hopkins, and James Hall, of the early Pittsburgh Bar, and concerning whom, the late Judge Daniel Agnew delivered a most interesting address before the Allegheny County Bar Association on December 1, 1888, made our Bar famous throughout the land and shed great glory on the Pittsburgh lawyer. But the lawyers of the Eighties were just as great. The limits of time allowed me for this address willpermit me to refer only to a small number of those who were fam- ous in the Eighties, and no doubt Imay overlook some whom my brethren at the Bar will think well deserve remem- brance. As Judge Agnew said in his address : "The life of an upright, honorable and learned lawyer is full of instruction. -
Crypto-Asset Markets: Potential Channels for Future Financial Stability
Crypto-asset markets Potential channels for future financial stability implications 10 October 2018 The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is established to coordinate at the international level the work of national financial authorities and international standard-setting bodies in order to develop and promote the implementation of effective regulatory, supervisory and other financial sector policies. Its mandate is set out in the FSB Charter, which governs the policymaking and related activities of the FSB. These activities, including any decisions reached in their context, shall not be binding or give rise to any legal rights or obligations under the FSB’s Articles of Association. Contacting the Financial Stability Board Sign up for e-mail alerts: www.fsb.org/emailalert Follow the FSB on Twitter: @FinStbBoard E-mail the FSB at: [email protected] Copyright © 2018 Financial Stability Board. Please refer to: www.fsb.org/terms_conditions/ Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3 2. Primary risks in crypto-asset markets ................................................................................. 5 2.1 Market liquidity risks ............................................................................................... 5 2.2 Volatility risks ......................................................................................................... -
Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technologies
Science, Technology Assessment, SEPTEMBER 2019 and Analytics WHY THIS MATTERS Distributed ledger technology (e.g. blockchain) allows users to carry out digital transactions without the need SCIENCE & TECH SPOTLIGHT: for a centralized authority. It could fundamentally change the way government and industry conduct BLOCKCHAIN & DISTRIBUTED business, but questions remain about how to mitigate fraud, money laundering, and excessive energy use. LEDGER TECHNOLOGIES /// THE TECHNOLOGY What is it? Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) like blockchain are a secure way of conducting and recording transfers of digital assets without the need for a central authority. DLT is “distributed” because multiple participants in a computer network (individuals, businesses, etc.), share and synchronize copies of the ledger. New transactions are added in a manner that is cryptographically secured, permanent, and visible to all participants in near real time. Figure 2. How blockchain, a form of distributed ledger technology, acts as a means of payment for cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are a digital representation of value and represent the best-known use case for DLT. The regulatory and legal frameworks surrounding cryptocurrencies remain fragmented across Figure 1. Difference between centralized and distributed ledgers. countries, with some implicitly or explicitly banning them, and others allowing them. How does it work? Distributed ledgers do not need a central, trusted authority because as transactions are added, they are verified using what In addition to cryptocurrencies, there are a number of other efforts is known as a consensus protocol. Blockchain, for example, ensures the underway to make use of DLT. For example, Hyperledger Fabric is ledger is valid because each “block” of transactions is cryptographically a permissioned and private blockchain framework created by the linked to the previous block so that any change would alert all other Hyperledger consortium to help develop DLT for a variety of business users. -
Evmpatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts
EVMPatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts Michael Rodler Wenting Li Ghassan O. Karame University of Duisburg-Essen NEC Laboratories Europe NEC Laboratories Europe Lucas Davi University of Duisburg-Essen Abstract some of these contracts hold, smart contracts have become an appealing target for attacks. Programming errors in smart Recent attacks exploiting errors in smart contract code had contract code can have devastating consequences as an attacker devastating consequences thereby questioning the benefits of can exploit these bugs to steal cryptocurrency or tokens. this technology. It is currently highly challenging to fix er- rors and deploy a patched contract in time. Instant patching is Recently, the blockchain community has witnessed several especially important since smart contracts are always online incidents due smart contract errors [7, 39]. One especially due to the distributed nature of blockchain systems. They also infamous incident is the “TheDAO” reentrancy attack, which manage considerable amounts of assets, which are at risk and resulted in a loss of over 50 million US Dollars worth of often beyond recovery after an attack. Existing solutions to Ether [31]. This led to a highly debated hard-fork of the upgrade smart contracts depend on manual and error-prone pro- Ethereum blockchain. Several proposals demonstrated how to defend against reentrancy vulnerabilities either by means of cesses. This paper presents a framework, called EVMPATCH, to instantly and automatically patch faulty smart contracts. offline analysis at development time or by performing run-time validation [16, 23, 32, 42]. Another infamous incident is the EVMPATCH features a bytecode rewriting engine for the pop- ular Ethereum blockchain, and transparently/automatically parity wallet attack [39]. -
Dani Brunstein Intel Israel November 2014 Agenda
Dani Brunstein Intel Israel November 2014 Agenda Mutual Introduction, Target and Disclaimer Quick intro on cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin Rate of global acceptance Understanding the Why Disruptive Market On purpose: The technology behind First overview Bitcoin in Israel and the Academy then technicalities Friendly directives • This is a non technical, mostly an informative presentation • Lots to cover – feel free to ask, but we will take discussions offline Quick Intro Dani Brunstein, MSc in Comp. Science, Technion Software Engineer at Microprocessor Design Automation in Intel Israel mailto: [email protected] Special thanks to • Kosta Zertsekel - organizer of the Haifa Meetup Group (actual hands-on experience with bitcoin code) • Shaul Kfir – Bits of Gold • Dr. Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda - Haifux organizer • Prof. Eli Ben-Sasson – Technion CryptoCurrency research How many of you “know anything on Bitcoins” ? How many of you own Bitcoins ? Target and Disclaimer Target 1. Educate you 2. Getting you excited and involved Disclaimer I am NOT advising you ANYTHING! I am NOT representing any company or group This lecture is given without warranty. The author makes no representation or warranty, either express or implied, with respect to the content, its quality, accuracy or fitness. Therefore the author shell have no liability with respect to any loss, or damage caused directly or indirectly by this lecture. What are Crypto Currencies ? Bitcoin is the first practical solution for peer-to-peer ownership transfer with no trusted third party involved -
Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement."
ARTICLE 1 - PROVISIONS 17-31-101. Short title. This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Wyoming Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement." 17-31-102. Definitions. (a) As used in this chapter: (i) "Blockchain" means as defined in W.S. 34-29- 106(g)(i); (ii) "Decentralized autonomous organization" means a limited liability company organized under this chapter; (iii) "Digital asset" means as defined in W.S. 34-29- 101(a)(i); (iv) "Limited liability autonomous organization" or "LAO" means a decentralized autonomous organization; (v) "Majority of the members," means the approval of more than fifty percent (50%) of participating membership interests in a vote for which a quorum of members is participating. A person dissociated as a member as set forth in W.S. 17-29-602 shall not be included for the purposes of calculating the majority of the members; (vi) "Membership interest" means a member's ownership share in a member managed decentralized autonomous organization, which may be defined in the entity's articles of organization, smart contract or operating agreement. A membership interest may also be characterized as either a digital security or a digital consumer asset as defined in W.S. 34-29-101, if designated as such in the organization's articles of organization or operating agreement; (vii) "Open blockchain" means a blockchain as defined in W.S. 34-29-106(g)(i) that is publicly accessible and its ledger of transactions is transparent; (viii) "Quorum" means a minimum requirement on the sum of membership interests participating in a vote for that vote to be valid; 1 (ix) "Smart contract" means an automated transaction, as defined in W.S. -
Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token
Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales Sabrina T. Howell, Marina Niessner, and David Yermack⇤ June 21, 2018 Abstract Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are sales of blockchain-based digital tokens associated with specific platforms or assets. Since 2014 ICOs have emerged as a new financing instrument, with some parallels to IPOs, venture capital, and pre-sale crowdfunding. We examine the relationship between issuer characteristics and measures of success, with a focus on liquidity, using 453 ICOs that collectively raise $5.7 billion. We also employ propriety transaction data in a case study of Filecoin, one of the most successful ICOs. We find that liquidity and trading volume are higher when issuers offer voluntary disclosure, credibly commit to the project, and signal quality. s s ss s ss ss ss s ⇤NYU Stern and NBER; Yale SOM; NYU Stern, ECGI and NBER. Email: [email protected]. For helpful comments, we are grateful to Bruno Biais, Darrell Duffie, seminar participants at the OECD Paris Workshop on Digital Financial Assets, Erasmus University, and the Swedish House of Finance. We thank Protocol Labs and particularly Evan Miyazono and Juan Benet for providing data. Sabrina Howell thanks the Kauffman Foundation for financial support. We are also grateful to all of our research assistants, especially Jae Hyung (Fred) Kim. Part of this paper was written while David Yermack was a visiting professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam. 1Introduction Initial coin offerings (ICOs) may be a significant innovation in entrepreneurial finance. In an ICO, a blockchain-based venture raises capital by selling cryptographically secured digital assets, usually called “tokens.” These ventures often resemble the startups that conventionally finance themselves with angel or venture capital (VC) investment, though there are many scams, jokes, and tokens that have nothing to do with a new product or business. -
Consensgx: Scaling Anonymous Communications Networks With
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ; 2019 (3):331–349 Sajin Sasy* and Ian Goldberg* ConsenSGX: Scaling Anonymous Communications Networks with Trusted Execution Environments Abstract: Anonymous communications networks enable 1 Introduction individuals to maintain their privacy online. The most popular such network is Tor, with about two million Privacy is an integral right of every individual in daily users; however, Tor is reaching limits of its scala- society [72]. With almost every day-to-day interaction bility. One of the main scalability bottlenecks of Tor and shifting towards using the internet as a medium, it similar network designs originates from the requirement becomes essential to ensure that we can maintain the of distributing a global view of the servers in the network privacy of our actions online. Furthermore, in light to all network clients. This requirement is in place to of nation-state surveillance and censorship, it is all avoid epistemic attacks, in which adversaries who know the more important that we enable individuals and which parts of the network certain clients do and do not organizations to communicate online without revealing know about can rule in or out those clients from being their identities. There are a number of tools aiming to responsible for particular network traffic. provide such private communication, the most popular In this work, we introduce a novel solution to this of which is the Tor network [21]. scalability problem by leveraging oblivious RAM con- Tor is used by millions of people every day to structions and trusted execution environments in order protect their privacy online [70]. -
Bypassing Non-Outsourceable Proof-Of-Work Schemes Using Collateralized Smart Contracts
Bypassing Non-Outsourceable Proof-of-Work Schemes Using Collateralized Smart Contracts Alexander Chepurnoy1;2, Amitabh Saxena1 1 Ergo Platform [email protected], [email protected] 2 IOHK Research [email protected] Abstract. Centralized pools and renting of mining power are considered as sources of possible censorship threats and even 51% attacks for de- centralized cryptocurrencies. Non-outsourceable Proof-of-Work schemes have been proposed to tackle these issues. However, tenets in the folk- lore say that such schemes could potentially be bypassed by using es- crow mechanisms. In this work, we propose a concrete example of such a mechanism which is using collateralized smart contracts. Our approach allows miners to bypass non-outsourceable Proof-of-Work schemes if the underlying blockchain platform supports smart contracts in a sufficiently advanced language. In particular, the language should allow access to the PoW solution. At a high level, our approach requires the miner to lock collateral covering the reward amount and protected by a smart contract that acts as an escrow. The smart contract has logic that allows the pool to collect the collateral as soon as the miner collects any block reward. We propose two variants of the approach depending on when the collat- eral is bound to the block solution. Using this, we show how to bypass previously proposed non-outsourceable Proof-of-Work schemes (with the notable exception for strong non-outsourceable schemes) and show how to build mining pools for such schemes. 1 Introduction Security of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies relies on so called Proof-of- Work (PoW) schemes (also known as scratch-off puzzles), which are mechanisms to reach fast consensus and guarantee immutability of the ledger. -
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation Third Edition Contributing Editor: Josias N. Dewey Global Legal Insights Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation 2021, Third Edition Contributing Editor: Josias N. Dewey Published by Global Legal Group GLOBAL LEGAL INSIGHTS – BLOCKCHAIN & CRYPTOCURRENCY REGULATION 2021, THIRD EDITION Contributing Editor Josias N. Dewey, Holland & Knight LLP Head of Production Suzie Levy Senior Editor Sam Friend Sub Editor Megan Hylton Consulting Group Publisher Rory Smith Chief Media Officer Fraser Allan We are extremely grateful for all contributions to this edition. Special thanks are reserved for Josias N. Dewey of Holland & Knight LLP for all of his assistance. Published by Global Legal Group Ltd. 59 Tanner Street, London SE1 3PL, United Kingdom Tel: +44 207 367 0720 / URL: www.glgroup.co.uk Copyright © 2020 Global Legal Group Ltd. All rights reserved No photocopying ISBN 978-1-83918-077-4 ISSN 2631-2999 This publication is for general information purposes only. It does not purport to provide comprehensive full legal or other advice. Global Legal Group Ltd. and the contributors accept no responsibility for losses that may arise from reliance upon information contained in this publication. This publication is intended to give an indication of legal issues upon which you may need advice. Full legal advice should be taken from a qualified professional when dealing with specific situations. The information contained herein is accurate as of the date of publication. Printed and bound by TJ International, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall, PL28 8RW October 2020 PREFACE nother year has passed and virtual currency and other blockchain-based digital assets continue to attract the attention of policymakers across the globe. -
Doswell, Stephen (2016) Measurement and Management of the Impact of Mobility on Low-Latency Anonymity Networks
Citation: Doswell, Stephen (2016) Measurement and management of the impact of mobility on low-latency anonymity networks. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University. This version was downloaded from Northumbria Research Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/30242/ Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html MEASUREMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF THE IMPACT OF MOBILITY ON LOW-LATENCY ANONYMITY NETWORKS S.DOSWELL Ph.D 2016 Measurement and management of the impact of mobility on low-latency anonymity networks Stephen Doswell A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Research undertaken in the Department of Computer Science and Digital Technologies, Faculty of Engineering and Environment October 2016 Declaration I declare that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work.