The audit domain is facing clients who are interested in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), cryptoexchanges, digital wallets and other similar projects which will be requiring financial statement or other types of assurances services, raising various challenges both on the audit side and the regulatory side. The audits challenges are mainly due to a number of factors which will perhaps take longer to understand and adapt to, such that this article considers some of the salient particularities in auditing DLT-centric clients.

Due to the particularities of DLT and blockchain technology, personnel forming part of the financial statements audit team will need to understand the technology itself, which often requires specialisation in IT auditing, cryptography and historical knowledge of the technology. In addition, legal considerations need also be taken into consideration, especially when auditing smart contracts and their derivatives.

Furthermore system audits need to be performed by personnel that are aptly educated an experienced in or at the very least have a strong base in ITC, assurance and accounting and legal aspects of DLT technology.

Some of the practitioners involved in the audit of DLT technologies have proposed specialised and specific International Auditing Standards (IAS) specifically for tackling DLT audits. To date, literature is largely unknown, and the few pieces which are available on the subject matter of auditing DLTs are by unknown and unverified sources.

Developing industry-adhered guidelines in order to ensure that an adequate level of assurance is given to the public is a prerequisite. More so, regulators will need to understand that the development of guidelines will require adaptation and must remain flexible. Furthermore a hybrid of an auditor-software-engineer-lawyer role or a team of such professionals tightly-knit and working seamlessly will be necessary to cater for DLT-intensive clients from an audit perspective. Such a role or team would entail significant support and investment for audit entities as they would have to furnish specific training for their personnel.

The rapid development of the technology and also to a certain extent the volatility of some of the various implementations of DLT technology (cryptocurrencies) again pose substantial challenges from an audit perspective. A team composed of specialist DLT auditors is a must for the technology itself is also complex, touching on compound mathematics, cryptography, networking, economics and finance.

Moreover, different countries and/or economic-cooperation zones have adopted different positions in relation to DLT technology, or are playing a wait-and-see game, which creates a scenario whereby the same transaction is treated differently in one domicile as against another for law and accounting purposes.

While the above highlights some of the major challenges of auditing enterprises involved in DLT technology, the adoption of DLT by the client under review in itself could enhance the audit process. DLT technology is designed in such a manner where if structured correctly, with the right tools, it would provide an auditor a level of assurance which would otherwise not be available in reviewing non-DLT clients. The technology of itself could increase or enhance transparency , especially in tracing and tracking transactions through the audit chain, with the real possibility of the permanent ledger being available for recomputations and tracing beyond the period under testing, giving an auditor more options in testing data. In confirming the Ledger itself, an auditor should be in a position to place reliance on the completeness and accuracy of the transactions within, a unique advantage for an auditor.

The adoption of DLT by the client under review in itself could enhance the audit process

Also, in the long run by embracing a number of tools the audit process could become more risk-focussed, while at the same time cheaper to conclude on.

On a general note, in order to cater for DLT clients and support our Blockchain Island, Maltese professionals, from auditors to lawyers, will need to continue investing significant time and resources in order to stretch and strengthen their skill set to prepare for what is surely to be an exciting time for the Maltese economy.

Here is the original post:
An introduction to auditing DLT and blockchain enterprises - Times of Malta

Julie Love discusses the merits of Microsoft's Q# programming language and the Quantum Developer Kit (QDK) alongside announcements from Ignite, including partnerships with Honeywell, IonQ, and QCI.

James Sanders spoke with Julie Love, senior director, Microsoft Quantum Business Development, at Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando about Microsoft's role in quantum computing. The following is a transcript of the interview.

Julie Love: At Microsoft Quantum, we're all about quantum impact. Delivering solutions, helping our customers solve their toughest compute challenges by building the world's most scalable compute stack. It's really this ambition for scale that we took the next step on our quantum journey to deliver impact through announcing Azure Quantum. Azure Quantum is a full end-to-end open cloud ecosystem for quantum development, really bringing the tools of quantum computing to developers at organizations, people around the world.

SEE:Programming languages: Which was most popular each year? (free PDF)(TechRepublic)

We're doing this building on the work that we've been doing on applications, solving tough problems like the ones that we solved with Case Western Reserve University that Satya Nadella talked about this morning, our work on quantum cryptography and post quantum cryptography to secure our data in a quantum world, building on Q#, our quantum native programming language in the quantum development kit, which has now been downloaded more than 200,000 times by developers around the world, and breakthroughs that we've had across devices, cryogenic controllers across the whole stack. We've announced Azure Quantum to bring this ecosystem to the world together with partners. We've partnered with IonQ, Honeywell, QCI, and 1QBit to bring the most diverse, most scalable quantum solutions across software solutions and hardware.

Cryptography is one of the areas where there's been a lot of excitement and talk because there's a notable quantum algorithm which will break modern cryptography. Microsoft is at the forefront of developing post quantum cryptographic solutions, so these are cryptographic protocols which are resistant to both classical and quantum attacks. I think it's hard to say when exactly that will be a reality. There is advancements happening every day across all elements of the stack. But, we look at it from a position, is if you believe that quantum is coming, which we do, we think it's important to get ahead of this technology. If you think that might be a possibility within the next decade, it's time for organizations to start implementing these quantum resistant protocols now, so ensuring that they have quantum agility to be able to shift their cryptographic systems to new protocols, and to start testing these systems in their environment today.

We've had quantum software efforts at Microsoft for a long time, and as we developed earlier systems that we used for programming scalable quantum computers, we discovered that we really needed a new language. And so, we developed a quantum-native language and it really understands the language of quantum mechanics. There's a lot of things that come with having a quantum native language that make it easier and more scalable for developers to develop for that language. For example, in quantum mechanics and quantum computing, all operations have to be reversible. And so, Q# has built in the mechanisms to take care of that for developers, and so you're not having to take care of that overhead for yourself. It's allowed us to create really a modern programming environment with the abstraction layers needed for developers to create durable, scalable code.

Our aim is also to make this incredibly accessible for developers. We see this as a need, not just to create a language for physicists working in the lab, but for programmers around the world. This goes back to the whole aspiration for impact. For us to achieve the impact that we want to have from quantum computing, we need this to be accessible for a whole range of people. Not just programmers, but domain experts in areas like quantum chemistry, material science, optimization. We've expanded on what we've offered with Q# and the quantum development kit to do integrations with languages like Python.

Classical computers will continue to play a huge role in the quantum future. If you think about the environment that we've deployed in Azure today, it's a highly heterogeneous compute fabric where you have CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs deployed at scale, and those are accelerators to the main core classical workloads. For the foreseeable future, we see quantum as being one of those acceleration options that will exist within Azure.

Image: James Sanders

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Originally posted here:
Microsoft: Creating quantum developer tools and delivering access to quantum systems - TechRepublic

NEW YORK, Nov. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --Unbound Tech, a global leader in software-defined cryptography, today announced a new partnership with Cryptosense, the leading supplier of security analysis software for cryptography, to further verify the security of its virtual HSM. Unbound Tech will leverage the Cryptosense Analyzer Platform (CAP) to perform automated, systematic penetration tests of its Unbound Key Control (UKC), a virtual HSM and key management solution, and Crypto-of-Things (COT) virtual crypto key management and security solution.

Through this partnership, Unbound Tech will utilize the Cryptosense Fuzzer, a mutation-based fuzzing engine, to test the Unbound Key Control (UKC) and Crypto-of-Things (COT) PKCS#11 implementations. By sending commands to a device's PKCS#11 interface and logging the responses, the Cryptosense Fuzzer will test traces of exchanges between an application and a cryptographic library to ensure these virtual appliances are properly secured in the event of a PCKS#11 API attackone of the most common attacks on HSM and Virtual HSM devices.

"Our software enables our customers to move securely to cloud cryptography services," said Graham Steel, CEO of Cryptosense. "CAP is the only tool on the market that provides everything you need for a secure and simple migration from start to finish. Our software looks inside a running application to see what cryptography is really being used, tests the use of the cloud crypto service to check for vulnerabilities and monitors the security of the migrated application in the cloud. By partnering with Unbound, we're able to reassure our customers of the continued security of their Virtual HSM and the applications that use it."

Testing with the Cryptosense Analyzer is the latest step in a series of third-party security validations in support of Unbound's virtual HSM. In early 2019, UKC also received FIPS 140-2 Level 1 and Level 2 certification from the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). They are the first and only vendor to obtain FIPS 140-2 certification for a cryptographic module that spans multiple separate machines and uses secure multiparty computation (MPC) rather than relying on physical security measures to protect keys.

"There are often misconceptions around the level of security provided and benefits of protecting encryption keys with virtual appliances versus traditional HSMs," said Guy Peer, Co-founder at Unbound Tech. "The security provided by Unbound Key Control has now been industry tested and proven to be equal to, if not better, than that provided by a physical HSM. UKC is an operational and cost-friendly alternative to hardware that provides scalable key management and secure encryption from both physical and software-based attacks, while running on any existing physical or cloud infrastructure. With Cryptosense's stamp of approval, our clients can now feel more confident in adopting this approach to securing their sensitive information."

As a software-only solution, UKC offers unique benefits not common with physical HSMs - requiring minimal effort to setup, use and maintain in a variety of environments and application delivery models. All key management and user management operations are fully automated using the CLI or REST API, giving companies the ability to scale up or down, create partitions and users, register clients and revoke keys immediately across their entire global infrastructure from a single pane of glass.

Story continues

About Unbound Tech:

Unbound Tech equips companies with the first pure-software solution that protects secrets such as cryptographic keys, credentials or other private data by ensuring they never exist anywhere in complete form. The Unbound Distributed Trust Platform stands as a new foundation for trust using secure multiparty computation to ensure secrets are always split into multiple shares and thereby eliminate any single point of compromise. Adopted by Fortune 500 companies, Unbound's elastic and agile platform protects secrets on untrusted infrastructure and removes existing dependence on dedicated security hardware, delivering a novel approach to security and privacy designed for the digital era. Serving as an engine for uninhibited growth, it allows enterprises to gain new levels of control over their secrets on any cloud, server or endpoint, and opens new possibilities for digital innovation. Founded in 2014, Unbound has been recognized with numerous industry awards and named in multiple Gartner Hype Cycle Reports. Be Trusted. Be Unbound. Visit unboundtech.com.

About Cryptosense:

Cryptosense provides software to manage cryptography throughout an organization, enabling innovation and simplifying compliance. The Cryptosense Analyzer Platform discovers cryptography use inside applications and verifies use of secure hardware, both on-premise and in the cloud. Adopted by major financial institutions and payment infrastructure providers worldwide, Cryptosense is built on years of academic research. Customers use it to save time and money by automating audits, operate securely using cloud cryptography services, and integrate crypto testing into the CI/CD toolchain. For secure cryptography everywhere, visit Cryptosense.com.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unbound-tech-partners-with-cryptosense-to-verify-security-of-virtual-hsm-300951473.html

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Unbound Tech Partners With Cryptosense to Verify Security of Virtual HSM - Yahoo Finance

Binance has grown to be one of the firms which have taken the lead in innovation in the field of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. It has focused on creation of core infrastructure services that would have a long-term effect on the crypto world. Binance has also made contributions to the Binance Chain blockchain software system and is now planning to do the same w.r.t. open-source ecosystem. The contributions of the open-source community have already been recognized and acknowledged in the crypto and blockchain realm. Binance has taken the first step towards making a mark in this field by launching the open-source implementation of a Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS) library for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). This will be of immense benefit to Wallet providers and custodians as they will be able to bypass single points of failure in private keys via distributed key management. With this implementation, Binance moves a step closer to providing better security of funds while at the same time generating greater awareness about Binance chain, Binance networks and so on.

Changpeng Zhao mentioned in a recent tweet about this as:

TSS is a cryptographic protocol used for signing and distributed key generation and enables users to outline a flexible threshold policy. This technology helps in substituting the signing commands with distributed computations so that one can avoid obstruction if the private key fails. In the case of individuals, threshold signatures enable the splitting of the signature between two or more devices. This poses a lower degree of risk because even if one device is compromised, the assets would not be adversely affected altogether. Threshold signatures also enable access control policies to be realized in their full potential which minimizes the chances of insider or outsider theft of corporate funds in case of corporate users. Unlike the convention Multisig (multi-signature), which uses cryptography on-chain, the TSS uses cryptography off-chain. The advantage here vis-a-vis the on-chain is that this technique causes a higher consumption of resources, and signers can also become potential attack surfaces as they are left open in the blockchain network.

There are certain steps to be followed to complete the signing process for TSS, and the TSS library has been integrated with the Binance Chain blockchain to provide a complete guide. A few of the steps are:

Binance has just started its work with TSS and this seems to be only the beginning of this association. It has plans to continue this work in the future and also integrate with the Binance Chain community which would help to advance greater TSS support for higher-level use cases. Cryptocurrency and blockchain is a growing field, and Binance intends to continue its association with the community to create, develop and sustain a healthy and holistic open-source ecosystem on cryptography, which would help in the further development of this already dynamic field.

Read more here:
Binance is on Its Way of Implementing a Threshold Signature Scheme Library for Elliptic Curve Digital Sign ... - CryptoNewsZ

This series looks back on the history of Bitcoin. Read part one here.

October 31, 2008 will forever hold a special place in the history of Bitcoin, for it was on that date that Satoshi Nakamoto announced the publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper. That moment in time will forever be when Satoshis original vision of Bitcoin was first set out, when Bitcoins creator began to define for the world what Bitcoin would become, and when its first detractor sought to redefine it for his own purposes.

At 2:10 p.m. EDT on October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto made his announcement of the white paper to the cryptography email list where several experts had assembled to explore how their expertise might help solve the political problems of their time. Satoshis suggestion of a peer to peer system of electronic cash, not beholden to the whims of a trusted third party and allowing perfect accountability of funds, was immediately recognized as a great solution in the face of the Great Recession which was becoming an obvious threat at the time.

Dr. Craig S. Wright, who has since revealed himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto, has explained that he created Bitcoin as a better method of transaction than what had existed at the time: the banking system that had failed the world with a lack of transparency.

The first person to respond to the Bitcoin whitepaper would forever start a debate on what Bitcoin should be. James A Donald, on November 2, 2008, questioned how big of a network would be needed to create a world where Bitcoin was the dominant currency. Satoshi explained that the secret to Bitcoins future success could be found in scaling:

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section 8) to check for double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or about 12KB per day.

The bandwidth might not be as prohibitive as you think. A typical transaction would be about 400 bytes (ECC is nicely compact). Each transaction has to be broadcast twice, so lets say 1KB per transaction. Visa processed 37 billion transactions in FY2008, or an average of 100 million transactions per day. That many transactions would take 100GB of bandwidth, or the size of 12 DVD or 2 HD quality movies, or about $18 worth of bandwidth at current prices.

If the network were to get that big, it would take several years, and by then, sending 2 HD movies over the Internet would probably not seem like a big deal.

Bitcoin became the hot topic of the cryptography mailing list, representing 32 of the 68 emails sent to the list in November 2018. Hal Finney showed his support for the idea, writing, Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea, but he wanted to see the code before making any final decisions. Others, still not fully grasping the idea, suggested that it might be vulnerable to outside attacks.

But the bulk of the conversation was between Satoshi and James A Donald, his first rival. Donald questioned the viability of Simplified Payment Verification (SPV). He suggested networks would never be able to handle the bandwidth of Bitcoin transactions, suggesting Bitcoin be like a settlement layer to other transactions (much like what the Lightning Network has been developed to be). He questioned how a blockchain could work around the problem of double-spends.

In response, Satoshi patiently explained to him how each piece works. He explained that the distributed ledger was a natural defense against brute force attacks and government intervention. He explained how the blockchain works to weed out double spends. And of course, he had confidence in his original design to scale massively, solving the problems Donald thought hed avoid with a settlement layer.

In Donalds eyes, Satoshi hadnt figured out what the full picture of Bitcoin should be. He dismissively wrote on November 15, I really should provide a fleshed out version of your proposal, rather than nagging you to fill out the blind spots.

At the time, Satoshi was polite about it, with maybe one exception where he summarized Donalds argument as a lengthy exposition of vulnerability. Even when Donald was at his most dismissive, Satoshi offered to share his work and teased the upcoming launch of Bitcoin, noting his faith in his year and a half of work on the project.

But in the years that have followed, Dr. Craig Wright has expressed his true feelings during those fateful weeks after the white papers release. He was trying to make a better system of money, and Donald was fearful of government intervention. Donald wanted a censorship resistant and anonymous form of money, which Wright has since linked to Donalds seedier history with child pornography. Wright wantedtraceable money. Donald wanted to disappear from the radar of the law.

Everything found in this November 2008 exchange, as these cryptography experts explored what the Bitcoin white paper could be, have come to define the history of Bitcoin that followed. Wright mined the Genesis Block on the January 3 of 2009 and released the first version of the Bitcoin software a few days later on January 9, giving birth to Bitcoin. The original vision of Bitcoin, using the ticker symbol BSV, has stuck to the original whitepaper and views that Satoshi expressed in the weeks that followed. It scales to the needs of the world, and does everything the white paper promised it would.

BTC was created from those who would have argued with Satoshi in November 2009. The BTC developers seek to guard it against governments rather than work with them, and focus on the anonymous nature they believe it should have. Crucially, they refuse to allow it to scale, limiting its usage and think by doing so it will remain as a store of value for those who wish to pursue illicit activity.

October 31, 2008 will forever be the birthday of Bitcoin, which now only lives as BSV. Its the only coin the Satoshi of 2008 would recognize as his creation.

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The origins of Bitcoin: Satoshi's Vision - CoinGeek

- Volvo emerges as the first car manufacturer to implement blockchain technology

- A blockchain is a digital ledger containing a list of records linked to each other via cryptography

- In this case, data in the blockchain includes the cobalts origin along with its weight and size

Swedish car manufacturer, Volvo claims to be the first car manufacturer to implement global traceability of cobalt used in its batteries by applying blockchain technology. The new announcement comes at a time when the company has introduced its first fully electric car, the XC40 Recharge. Volvo further states that traceability of raw materials used in the production of lithium ion batteries, such as cobalt, is one of the main sustainability challenges faced by car makers.

For the uninitiated, a blockchain is a digital ledger containing a list of records linked to each other via cryptography. Within supply chains, the technology creates records of transactions which cannot be changed, while also enforcing a common set of rules for what data can be recorded. This allows participants to verify and audit transactions independently. In this particular case, data in the blockchain includes the cobalts origin, attributes such as weight and size, the chain of custody and information establishing that the participants behaviour is consistent with OECD supply chain guidelines.

The blockchain technology establishes a transparent and reliable shared data network. Volvo cars claim that the technology significantly boosts transparency of the raw material supply chain as the information about the materials origin cannot be changed undetected. The company has reportedly entered into an agreement with two global battery suppliers, CATL of China and LG Chem of South Korea, and leading global blockchain technology firms to implement traceability of cobalt starting this year.

Technology firms Circulor and Oracle operate the blockchain technology across CATLs supply chain, while the Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network (RSBN), together with responsible sourcing specialists RCS Global and IBM, is rolling out the technology in LG Chems supply chain.

Speaking on the occasion, Martina Buchhauser, Head of Procurement at Volvo Cars, said, We have always been committed to an ethical supply chain for our raw materials. With blockchain technology we can take the next step towards ensuring full traceability of our supply chain and minimising any related risks, in close collaboration with our suppliers.

More:
Volvo Cars implement blockchain technology for global traceability of cobalt used in batteries - CarWale

Is Blockchain the New Redeemer?

The Blockchain is technology built in association with cryptography. It is an online transaction mode that uses cryptocurrencies to make the transactions. These transactions are made with the help of many cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple and Ethereum so on. The Bitcoin technologies are operated on the cluster of computers or on a robust computer; hence, it is promoted by the digital market. The traditional kind of monitory system is being replaced by the occurrence of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and crypto trading, and so on.

Let us see the new things that Blockchain can bring us shortly.

Since we all know that Blockchain is a decentralized technology that involves no single administrator to monitor it and has a unique ledger that records every transaction in terms of blocks and is added to the Blockchain. The blockchain ledger can enable the coding to contract several tasks when the protocol is completely fulfilled. Ethereum is an open-source of Blockchain that is built to witness the relevance of the blockchain possibilities. And to our surprise, Ehtereum has exhibited potential leverages that have left the Cryptocurrency users jaw-dropping through some world-changing scales. For more information regarding money making through crypto trading, click this link Forex Academy .

The achievements of technology have made it very popular and are encouraging world-class businessmen and women for the robustness and efficiency of the technologies. The technology is developing programs in such a way that the contracts retrieving are achieved in a smarter way. This will pave the way in multiple directions and is going to boom the world with magnificent comfort and transaction clarity. The payments and payouts are going to be automated with the help of Blockchain and cryptography.

The sharing economy is the beauty of the current worlds market. The success stories of the sharing economies are now the hot topics of the very business platform. The global market is pleasing the business tycoons to develop more interests in the economic sharing system that can increase the economic status of the globe to the next level. The companies like Airbnb, Uber, Amazon etc. are very much involved in the economic sharing strategy that is helping them increase their financial outcome in the positive elevation. By initiating the peer to peer payments, the Blockchain has made the interaction greatly accessible to the digital world.

There are a lot of benefits of decentralization of file storages. The data is the living entity of the digital world. The data market is growing huge in volume, size and also popular day by day. The emergence of the Internet has contributed a lot to data creation. The Technologies that are already in the market are not ready for the amount of data that will be generated in the near future. The big data, Hadoop, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, deep learning and Internet of things are the show stopper of the digital cravings of the world. When the data is made available of the network, the distribution of the data will be the best way to protect files from getting hacked.

The web operations can be made more efficient with the distribution strategies. The decentralization of any technology has a greater speed of transfer of actions. The streaming rates are very high, and the security of the potential data is coherent. These kinds of improvements can be offered by the blockchain technology with necessary up-gradation and content delivery.

The data management is the biggest challenge of the current world. The social media emergence has pulled down the collection of random data. The data is generated in millions and millions with no space of storage. The exchange of personal data using social media is increasing day by day. Especially from the platform of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. The near future is threatened by the ill management of these data. Because of the increasing volume of data generated, the ability to manage it is shrinking. There is a lot of platforms that can offer personal data management market place. For example, Enigma uses cryptographic techniques to allow individual data set to split between nodes to make the data groups run in bulk.

Stock trading is one of the potential calibres of blockchain technology. It provides tremendous settlements in the case of stock trading. When executed from peer to peer, the trade confirms the transactions and allows the user to involve in the system generated protocols. It provides space for digital learning of the stock market and trading, respectively. Potentially, the intermediate clearness of the technology is attributing to the excellence of the digital trending and vitalize for the smooth occurrence of effective trading through these technologies.

Excerpt from:
Is Blockchain the New Redeemer? - The TechNews

Quantum computing has been in the news a lot lately. Most recently, Google announced that it has achieved quantum supremacy the ability to perform calculations of immense complexity with tremendous speed. To illustrate what this means, Google says its quantum computer performed a task in 200 seconds that would have taken the worlds most advanced conventional supercomputer over 10,000 years.

Naturally, this has spurred much reaction, both from excited supporters and members of the scientific community who have compared it to the Wright brothers first flight, and from detractors who claim Google is exaggerating its accomplishment. It even set off a rare intra-industry war of words, with IBM accusing its competitor of grossly overstating the importance of its achievement. Exaggerated or not, Googles announcement is significant as it relates to quantum computing generally. This technology will, sooner or later, come into the mainstream, with major implications across the technology sector.

The topic of quantum computing is of particular interest in another corner of the emerging technology universe: the blockchain community. And seemingly with good reason. Many people believe the advent of quantum computing will render blockchains obsolete. The security of blockchains is premised on the difficulty of solving their underlying math. Therefore, a quantum computer capable of lightspeed calculations might seem to pose an existential threat. After all, if there is a computer that can guess every possible 1,000-digit combination in a minute, the technical underpinning of blockchain could crumble. For those excited by the game-changing potential of blockchain technology in industries from financing to supply chain to IoT, this threat could be catastrophic.

But the naysayers are wrong. The simple fact of achieving quantum supremacy does not mean that Google or any individual or corporation can now overpower a blockchain. In fact, from a technical perspective, the short-term implications of Googles breakthrough are modest. Nevertheless, the blockchain community should be aware of the progress being made on quantum computers. As the technology improves, blockchains will have to keep pace to avoid being overtaken. There are a few things blockchain and its supporters should begin working on immediately to stay ahead of the quantum threat.

The first is a process, already initiated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), of standardizing quantum-resistant cryptography. Developing and implementing capabilities specifically designed to resist quantum computers will be key for the future of blockchains, as well as their survival. Blockchain supporters and developers should therefore closely monitor the standardization process and prepare to integrate the results into existing and future blockchain projects.

Giant letters, reading the word 'blockchain', are displayed at the blockchain centre, which aims at boosting start-ups in Lithuania's capital Vilnius, Feb. 7, 2018. Photo: PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty Images

The second capability for blockchain enthusiasts to focus on is known as cryptographic agility. This concept is highly technical, but essentially refers to the ability of developers to improve a blockchain so that quantum-resistant features can be put in place after the network is operational. Given the number of projects being built on existing blockchains like Ethereum, their capacity to upgrade their own components in an ongoing way will be crucial.

The third area in need of attention is blockchain governance. This has been a topic of vigorous discussion and debate since the advent of blockchains. Due to the uncertainty around when quantum computers will be built at scale, blockchain projects must establish procedures to determine when and how to implement quantum-safe upgrades to their networks. This may prove to be the greatest challenge of all, given how difficult optimal governance has been for blockchains to date. It is critical that people across the crypto space begin seriously thinking and experimenting with ways to ensure governance is not a hindrance to the improvement of technology.

There is no doubt that quantum computing is coming, and it will have major effects across the technology space. But those who believe that its simple existence is a death knell for blockchain fail to consider that the latter will grow and evolve alongside quantum computing. There is much that can be done to make blockchains more dynamic and robust -- and if we do those things, we will not have to worry about quantum supremacy any time soon.

(Xinxin Fan is head of Cryptography of IoTeX, a technology company that uses blockchain, secure hardware, and trusted computing to build end-to-end encrypted device ecosystems for the Internet of Trusted Things.)

View original post here:
Quantum Computing Wont Kill The Blockchain - International Business Times

Today at CryptoNewsZ, we are joined by entrepreneur, blockchain enthusiast, and crypto expert Johann Polecsak, CTO at QAN blockchain platform, CTO and co-founder of Centrum Circle.

CryptoNewsZ: Hello and welcome to CryptoNewsZ, Johann, our readers would love to know more about you and your journey which brought you into the blockchain space.

Hi, thank you very much for the opportunity.

Well, I got into the ecosystem like most techies did I think, and that is through mining. A friend of mine asked me if I could source GPUs every month because there was no supply. I said sure, because it was a significant amount, I felt pretty assured I could make a deal with a distributor. But then realized that there were no GPUs for sale at that moment in Europe. Wow. This must be huge, I thought. So, I started digging deep, its all hardware and software, so why not try it? We eventually bought some machines and never looked back from crypto since then.

CryptoNewsZ: QAN is building a quantum-proof, energy-efficient, and fast platform. Please tell us more about the QAN platform and its key features?

The crypto world is at a crossroads it either continues to run its vital transactions on outdated, slow, archaic platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum or it reforms and adopts a new platform which can provide a strong, stable, and economically viable base to accommodate the requirements and growth pattern of all industries actively using blockchain technology.

QAN is a quantum-resistant blockchain platform powered by blockchain fintech brand Centrum Circle. QAN uses Lattice based cryptography, making it resilient to quantum attacks that are expected to become possible within the next five years, and which all major crypto networks are vulnerable to. QAN is based on a Proof of Randomness (PoR) consensus mechanism, with verifiable pseudorandomness. It is a new development that is basically a generalization of Algorands algorithm, with added scalability. By creating a permissioned ledger, QAN allows much more energy efficiency and better sustainability, especially when comparing to PoW networks. When comparing to PoS networks, they are considered not biased due to wealth distribution and first mover advantage. With PoR, the process is random, therefore unbiased, and theres no advantage for your wealth. Lastly, QAN offers Multi Programming Language support which helps mass adoption. Developers can write smart contracts in the language they already know.

CryptoNewsZ: Security features are inherent in blockchains which make them resistant to attack but do not make them totally immune. Do you think QANs fully quantum-resistant stack of security will usher in the much-needed security in the blockchain domain?

I always believe in showing a good example. In this case, it means we have to begin preparing for Quantum Computing related attacks right now, as the Quantum problem is closer than anyone would imagine. The issue, by the way, is actually a lot broader than the blockchain ecosystem. Every large enterprise and government is aware of the risk Quantum computing has to its data systems, and we cannot expect them to wait 5 years and adopt Quantum-resistant cryptography when the attack is so near. They need to start preparations at this very moment.

CryptoNewsZ: Quantum computing is the next generation computing machine that aims to make every work easy and fast; According to you, how will quantum computing impact blockchain technology?

Quantum Computing will force all cryptocurrencies to adopt new signing algorithms, as current ones (the ones used by Bitcoin and Ethereum as well) are proven to be vulnerable to signature forgery. Asymmetric cryptography relies on keypairs, namely a private and public key. Public keys can be calculated from their private counterpart, but not the other way around. This is due to the impossibility of certain mathematical problems. For instance, you would need to factorize a number thats a product of large primes in the case of RSA, or calculate the multiplicand of the generator (that resulted in a public key) in the case of Elliptic Curves, which most blockchains and cryptographic systems use.

Quantum computers are more efficient in accomplishing this by magnitudes, and if the calculation is done the other way (we could calculate private keys FROM public keys) then the whole scheme breaks. This is proven and we only need more qubits and stability in these systems, which are continuously developed further. QAN released an ebook, Quantum Computing and Blockchain: The Definitive Guide, if you want to learn more about the topic.

CryptoNewsZ: What are your thoughts on the increased scalability and tremendous adoption of blockchain technology? Is the present rate satisfactory?

Scalability is one of the biggest problems our industry is facing. Over time, it will be addressed using off-chain methods built in a secure and safe way.

However, while scalability is a concern these days, I believe mass adoption doesnt really depend on it. In fact, it has not started yet because the backbone of the whole infrastructure is basically missing, and the UI / UX in the whole ecosystem is almost non-existent, if we inspect it from a regular user perspective.

If we want to bring blockchain closer to end-users, we need credible brands behind the movement, education about how it works and to be able to emphasize how and why its different from traditional systems.

Whether this is satisfactory, it is a subjective question. We at QAN are working hard to bring this technology closer to everyday people by helping the inclusion of blockchain at enterprise level.

CryptoNewsZ: Blockchain has immense power to unleash the potential in enterprises; according to you, how is QAN one step ahead compared to the existing players in the highly competitive industry?

We are in close relation with many enterprises (10+) from different industries, and what we clearly see that their Tech departments fancy blockchain and are mostly experimenting with it as private individuals. But when it comes to including the technology on the corporate level, things become difficult. The reason is that the current staff is usually busy with other tasks, the entry barriers are quite high (different hardware and network architecture, different execution model, new programming languages etc.), and the additional HR costs reach the level these companies mostly are not willing to take if there is no direct, calculable profit for establishing a separate Blockchain Development Department.

How we combat these barriers is that we give the current staff education, easy-to-use tools, combined with QAN Platforms ability to write smart contracts in any major programming language they already know.

This reduces like 90% of the overhead (which equals 90% of otherwise wasted time), and enables the companys existing developers to start experimenting and working with blockchain right away.

CryptoNewsZ: Any parting advice to novices and young entrepreneurs who want to start their careers in the blockchain industry?

Sure, our (harsh) advice is not to waste time learning about 20 different platforms to find out which will give you the least overhead to start, and cause you compromises on many other sides.

Wait for QAN to release the beta and testnet, and start experimenting without the hassle, we will provide you a much smoother learning curve, and give you the satisfaction which you are looking for.

Develop in (almost) any of the languages you already know, and spin up a blockchain network with a click of a button to start right away.

Team CryptoNewsZ thanks you for sharing your valuable insights and time with us, Johann and wish you tremendous success for the future.

The rest is here:
QAN's CTO and Co-founder Johann Polecsak in an Exclusive Interview with CryptoNewsZ - CryptoNewsZ

Thanks to Sanbase, a tool for crypto sleuths, we noticed another unknown coin dominating the grapevines of crypto groups across social media.

It is the coins with ticker ARPA token issued by the eponymous company on the ArpaChain.

Arpa touts itself as the first-ever privacy-computation network and the worlds firstChina-South Koreajoint initial exchange offering (IEO) project is building a secure computation network thats compatible with blockchain. (Its compatible with existing chains such as Ethereum and EOS.)

The company and the project were founded inApril 2018, and has backing from over a dozen institutional investors, including TechCrunchs founders Arrington XRP, GBIC, Genesis Capital and Metropolis VC. Currently, ARPA token is being traded on Gate.io, Huobi, KuCoin, and soon on Binance DEX.

ARPAs platform gives developers secure analysis and utilization, but also protects data from getting exposed to third parties.

ARPA Chain (ARPA) priceis$0.01849773with a 24-hour trading volume of$2,567,754. Price is up2.5%in the last 24 hours. It has a max supply of 1.4 Billion coins. The most active exchange that is trading ARPA Chain isGate.io.

One of the core problems with cryptocurrency exchanges is transparency.

Add in the notion that thevast majorityof cryptocurrency exchange actively engage in wash trading and report fake volumes, and transparency clearly is a cardinal issue in the exchange ecosystem.

Transparency primarily involves two areas: proof of solvency and proof of legitimate trading volumes. Proof of solvency is critical because investors need to know the risk of engaging with a financial entity that holds their funds. However, the issue that exchanges take with this is that they do not want to publicly disclose the financial details of their internal operations.

Arpa relies on a fascinating subfield of cryptography calledsecure multi-party computation, which applied to exchanges, would enable them to jointly compute the average solvency of their exchanges without actually exposing the full solvency data to competitors.

Proof of solvency presents a= problem of its own for exchanges. For example, an exchange may not want to publicly report revenue or other fiscal details due to fear of competition taking advantage of their transparency a reasonable concern on their part.

ArpaChain relies on a cryptographic technique called secure multi-party computation, which allows multiple participants to compute a function without revealing their independent inputs.

In the context of exchanges, that could meanexchanges joining forces to self-regulate, and to expose that they are solvent beyond a precise threshold without revealing the exact financial details of each exchange.

CaptainAltcoin's writers and guest post authors may or may not have a vested interest in any of the mentioned projects and businesses. None of the content on CaptainAltcoin is investment advice nor is it a replacement for advice from a certified financial planner. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CaptainAltcoin.com

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ArpaChain (ARPA) Is The New Kid On The Block You Should Know About - Captain Altcoin