ConsenSys Quorum and China's BSN, Miami Is Serious About Crypto, Covid Travel Pass, Mitsubishi's P2P Energy Trading, Vaccine Cold-Chain Monitoring, Bernie Sanders Mitten NFTs
Today's January 27th catch up on what is hot in Blockchain and CryptoAssets brings you the following 6 stories:
ConsenSys Quorum will now be available on China’s Blockchain-based Service Network
Miami's Mayor Suarez Wants To Get Serious About Crypto
Emirates, Etihad, British Airlines, and Singapore Airlines trial Covid blockchain "passport" using IATA's Travel Pass
Mitsubishi Electric and Tokyo Institute of Technology develop blockchain tech for P2P energy trading
Everyware and Hedera Hashgraph Enabling Cold Chain Monitoring of COVID-19 Vaccine for NHS Facilities
Topps Digital releases Bernie Sanders and his mittens NFT collectibles
Be sure to check out the interview published yesterday with Corbin Page, Head of Product at ConsenSys Codefi, where we discuss decentralized finance, stablecoins, MetaMask, Filecoin, opportunities in DeFi, and much more.
🔊 https://cryptoassets.substack.com/p/corbin-page-codefi
ConsenSys Quorum will now be available on China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), the country’s nationwide blockchain project
ConsenSys has announced a partnership with China's Blockchain-based Service Network, the BSN, that aims to make blockchain solutions more accessible for enterprises and government organizations.
Quorum is an open-source protocol layer that enables enterprises to leverage Ethereum for their production blockchain applications. It can be integrated with product modules from ConsenSys, third-party vendors, or in-house developers to build high-performance, customizable applications.
As part of the partnership, ConsenSys Quorum will be available in about 80 different cities through BSN’s public city nodes throughout mainland China.
The BSN is a blockchain-specialized cloud environment with unified certificate management, gateway APIs, smart contract SDKs, encryption algorithms for permissioned frameworks, and stacked public chain nodes for easy access. The BSN aims to solve the high-cost problem of blockchain dApp deployment and maintenance by providing a shared resource environment and a one-stop-shop solution for developers. ConsenSys Quorum will be packaged with other mainstream permissioned and public blockchain networks to sell to enterprises and governments, offering a much larger and deeper market in China.
Backed by the State Information Center of China (SIC), a think tank under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the highest economic planning agency, the BSN is a cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framework, blockchain-based global infrastructure network to empower developers and companies to create, deploy and manage next-generation decentralized applications (dApps) more efficiently, conveniently and at low cost across multiple different protocols under a uniform standard. Red Date Technology, a Beijing-based software company, China UnionPay and China Mobile are the founding companies behind the BSN. Red Date Technology oversees the R&D, daily operations and maintenance of the BSN.
Since its launch in April 2020, the BSN has become one of the largest and fastest-growing enterprise blockchain ecosystems in the world. Designed as the backbone infrastructure of the Digital Silk Road, the BSN has deployed more than 2,000 blockchain applications across enterprises and government organizations in China. 108 public city nodes have been deployed connecting over 80 cities across mainland China and 8 public city nodes in other countries around the world. This year, the BSN aims to have over 10 permissioned and 30 more public blockchain protocols for developers to use at low cost on its global network.
The Founder of ConsenSys, Joe Lubin, says that
Decentralized protocols like Ethereum are a breakthrough in how we can imbue trust in all of our systems, by facilitating deeper collaboration and the creation of digital assets. ConsenSys Quorum is unique in that it spans the whole range of needs for enterprises in terms of privacy and permissioned features, yet is still compatible with the Ethereum mainnet. We believe that the different open source blockchain protocols need to interoperate, and with the BSN we are taking a significant step forward in bringing ConsenSys Quorum to many enterprises in China that could benefit from transparent collaborative business networks.
Source: press release
Miami's Mayor Suarez Wants To Get Serious About Crypto
One of my favorite experiences on the hot new audio-first app Clubhouse was a recent "room" with the mayors of San Francisco, Austin, and Miami discussing pandemic-induced tech migration and what's ahead for their ecosystems. Not be content with just pulling entrepreneurs, investors, and startups from San Francisco, Miami's Mayor Francis Suarez is also looking to make Miami the "most crypto competitive city on the planet."
Miami is studying how to accept cryptocurrencies for payment of city fees like permits and property taxes, and is also open to placing some of the city's treasury reserves in Bitcoin.
In a city with such a vibrant immigrant and transplant population, they are no strangers to paying exorbitant fees for money transfers, one of the most easily identifiable benefits of increased adoption of digital currencies.
In a recent interview with Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, he even advanced the idea of having them base a Latin America-focused HQ for their Gemini exchange and custody platform in Miami.
Go Mayor Suarez! 🙌🏻 🚀
Emirates, Etihad, British Airlines, and Singapore Airlines trial Covid blockchain "passport" using IATA's Travel Pass
As we previously discussed in November, the International Air Transport Association has been working on a digital health passport that would connect government organizations, airlines, and vaccination providers. It would provide travelers with clarity concerning travel requirements as well as availability and secure certified results of vaccination/testing.
Singapore Airlines and British Airways will begin testing the Travel Pass in February with Emirates and Etihad to follow in April. Etihad has been using a proprietary health passport since August.
As we aggressively move forward with vaccination, this is exactly the kind of solution that could enable business travel and conferences to start making a comeback.
Nick Careen, IATA Senior Vice President for Airport, Passenger, Cargo and Security said:
We’re proud to work with Emirates to make IATA Travel Pass available in the Middle East region. With its global customer base and network traffic, Emirates as a partner will also bring invaluable input and feedback to improve the Travel Pass programme. This is the first step in making international travel during the pandemic as convenient as possible giving people the confidence that they are meeting all COVID-19 entry requirements by governments. As borders re-open, IATA Travel Pass will be further enhanced with more capabilities to meet all governments testing or vaccination verification requirements and Emirates customers will be among the first to have these services.
In an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, IATA is also urging support for a common European Digital Vaccination Certificate calling on EU States to coordinate a policy that would see Europe safely gain the economic and social benefits of renewed freedom of movement, beginning with those who are vaccinated.
IATA Sources: Etihad release, Emirates release, EU release
Mitsubishi Electric and Tokyo Institute of Technology develop blockchain tech for P2P energy trading
A Tokyo Tech research team in collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed a new blockchain technology that can optimize peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. The technology is expected to contribute to more effective use of surplus electricity from renewable energy by creating trading environments that flexibly respond to shared trading needs, particularly to maximize the amount of surplus electricity available in the market at any given time.
In the collaboration, Mitsubishi Electric has taken charge of designing the P2P energy trading system and its clearing (transaction-completion) functions while Tokyo Tech has handled blockchain technology R&D and the design of an optimal clearing algorithm.
Using the new technology involves four steps. In the first step, information on buy and sell orders with a common trading goal (market surplus, profit, etc.) are shared by the network's nodes during a predetermined timeframe. Second, each server searches for buy and sell orders matched to the common goal in the first step. Third, each server shares its search results. In the fourth and final step, each server receives the search results and generates a new block by selecting trades that best meet the shared goal, which it then adds it to each blockchain.
Beginning in April, the P2P energy trading system's performance will be evaluated to further optimize the algorithm as required, aiming at the earliest possible commercialization.
Everyware and Hedera Hashgraph Enabling Cold Chain Monitoring of COVID-19 Vaccine for NHS Facilities
Everyware, a digital asset tracking and monitoring provider, together with Hedera Hashgraph, are working with an initial group of National Health Service (NHS) facilities to monitor the cold storage equipment being used to store the COVID-19 and other vaccines. The initial facilities in the South Warwickshire region adopting the technology include the Stratford Upon Avon and Warwick hospitals, with a wider rollout planned as vaccine distribution progresses.
Everyware provides asset tracking and monitoring software that can be configured to monitor a number of variables, including temperature, on a 24/7 basis, from anywhere. By leveraging Everyware’s asset monitoring solution at the ‘last mile’, hospitals and healthcare facilities can ensure that vaccines are being maintained at the proper temperature throughout the entire time in their custody, before they are administered to patients. In addition, Everyware enables healthcare facilities to share information with other parts of the vaccine delivery chain – including pharmaceutical providers, centralized storage facilities, and transportation companies, to respond and adjust to any issues as they arise. Everyware’s offering already provides this service for a number of other healthcare and pharmaceutical assets, including chemotherapy and other drugs, and blood and plasma, all of which have their own unique storage requirements.
Mance Harmon, Founder and CEO, explained how the Hedera network creates a secure, distributed base network layer for many kinds of supply chain, pharmaceutical, and healthcare services.
Hedera makes it practical and cost-effective for organizations to benefit from the transparency and accountability of distributed ledgers. Asset monitoring and management is a great example of this, and we’re so pleased to help bring that data integrity and trust to the important work that Everyware is doing with NHS hospitals in support of their emerging COVID-19 vaccination efforts.
Source: release
Topps Digital releases Bernie Sanders and his mittens NFT collectibles
Topps Digital is adding to the fun today by launching a Bernie Sander's Mitten-themed Bernventures set on the WAX Blockchain. Cards were launched using the Atomic Assets standard. Packs are available for purchase in WAX only, with the cost being $5 worth of WAX tokens. Each pack comes with 2 different digital cards.
The set contains 9 cards done with both a and b name versions making the total set 18 cards. Collectors can pull four different types of cards from packs as well as a chance to receive Golden Mitten cards and animated cards. The number of cards minted is not set and will be limited by the number of packs sold during the 3 day event.
You can check out the cards at https://gpkbernventures.com.
Source: article
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Ethan
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