A floating Pacific island is in the works with its own government, cryptocurrency and 300 houses
Posted on June 13th, 2018
Cannabis Revolution and the Blockchain It Will Be Built On
Posted on June 13th, 2018
The Cannabis revolution has been raging for the past few years as many states in the US have legalized it, but its standardization, regulation and overall functioning as an economic ecosystem has been heavily fractured. This has caused Jessica Versteeg to head up Paragon to try and revolutionize the Cannabis industry on Blockchain technology.
Versteeg witnessed first hand how Cannabis could have saved her former boyfriend, Tyler Sash of the New York Giants, as she thought back to the times he would ask for her approval on using cannabis to help manage his pain vs the cocktail of painkillers dished to him by the NFL doctors.
However, Versteeg had fallen victim to the stigma and outdated image of Cannabis and has now witnessed first hand the difficult regulations and lack of standardization despite the drug gaining legal legitimacy in a number of states.
Versteeg has now decided to take another disruptive and revolutionary technology, the Blockchain, and utilize its power along with the healing power of Cannabis to hopefully push its image right up there to the white list alongside Big Pharma.
The pain of Sash
Versteeg’s story of how she became a believer in the power of Cannabis stems from her experiences with Super Bowl winning boyfriend Sash. The New York Giants player was in constant pain because of his vocation and would beg Versteeg to let him opt for a natural painkiller in Cannabis rather than the handful of pills prescribed to him.
The former Miss Iowa US would not allow it as her image of Cannabis was that it was a dangerous drug that could take your life, and conversely her understanding of opioids was that they were 100 percent safe. She also worried about the fallout of testing positive in a random drug test.
Versteeg recounts how Sash would throw up almost daily after retiring because of concussion symptoms, she was told that’s all it was from. Later she found numerous pill bottles with the labels ripped off and while doing some research she realized he was hiding an addiction from her and that addiction to pain killers can take a toll on one’s stomach, causing them to throw up. She mentioned that he was already falling into depression and after she confronted him about the pills he would bring up wanting to take his life.
Breaking the stigma
It took Versteeg a while, but through her research she started to understand the power of Cannabis and how its reputation was all wrong.
This led Versteeg to start a monthly subscription box for Cannabis products that was aimed for anyone to use without the negative stigma attached, breaking the grimy black market feel of Cannabis.
However, the young entrepreneur soon encountered the real problems within the Cannabis industry. Despite legislation in over 20 states, the marketplace for legal Cannabis is broken, fragmented and unregulated.
Creating Paragon
Versteeg has now identified the ability that Blockchain technology has in disrupting certain sectors of society and business, and she hopes that Paragon can be the vehicle that pushes the Cannabis revolution into something more mainstream.
Paragon uses Blockchain technology to store data from the seed to sell with everything from the water quality to fertilizers used, from the labs it was tested in to the actual lab results, in an immutable ledger that can be checked by anyone to ensure quality and standardization.
Additionally, doctor certification, patient ID’s and prescription details are stored on the blockchain and remain tamper-proof. Importantly, not all patient information will need to be stored on the blockchain as some may be personal and will be stored offline to remain HIPAA compliment.
The Paragon coin emerging from this blockchain is also supposed to solve the problem with funding a marketplace that is still unregulated and not accepted across all states or even the world.
Paragon Space
VerSteeg and her team at Paragon will also be erecting co-working spaces as part of their business model. Cannabis related startups in the industry will be able to utilize these spaces not only for working remotely but also as a specialized hub with industry specific guidance from Paragon – this model forms part of the Paragon incubator program.
JAYANAND SAGAR | SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 | 1:47 PM
Entertainment on the Blockchain: Meet SLATE
Posted on June 13th, 2018
The Future is Here: Blockchain, Smart Contracts & Procurement
Posted on June 13th, 2018
By: Colin Cantrell, Creator of Nexus
The digital commerce industry has taken many leaps over the last few decades, with major advances in transactional services such as e-commerce and escrow. However, most industries have relied on hefty fees from banks, centralized processing and long wait times for money to move. PayPal was a great bridge to solving this, until the creation of digital currencies.
The digital currency industry started with the invention of Bitcoin, which is based on B-Money and HashCash. Bitcoin was created to be a secure model that protects merchants against double-spending attacks by requiring large amounts of computing power to verify transaction-level data. Because a transaction is just a movement of data from one place to the next, securing it with a proof-of-work protocol (e.g. HashCash) allows major benefits to upstream and downstream businesses.
“Smart contracts” are perhaps one of the most noteworthy benefits of digital currency. Smart contracts can be understood in greater detail when one learns exactly how a blockchain works. A blockchain is a distributed worldwide database that cannot be altered once data is written. This database allows for the secure exchange of data ownership, which can be anything from currency units, to titles, to deeds on houses.
What is a Blockchain?
Blockchains are a relatively new technology first implemented in 2009 by a coder named Satoshi Nakamoto. Essentially, a blockchain is an unchangeable ledger of events recorded as transactions and ordered by time. Every transaction is therefore fully auditable. This means that there is always a link between transactions to combat any double-spend attempts (spending the same dollar twice).
One of the most notable features of blockchains is that they allow any individual to have control over their own money without the need for third-party services (e.g. banks, transfer services, card processors). It also breaks down the barriers of transferring internationally and drastically reduces fees compared to other methods of international wire transfers. When you swipe your debit card, you are authorizing the total amount in the transaction to be moved from your bank account to the merchant’s bank. This process usually takes three to five business days and requires hefty fees depending on how many middlemen it must go through to get to its destination. With Bitcoin, this process can take (on the slower side) over an hour, giving both the merchant and user a quicker settlement, without relying on central services or authorities to do the transfer.
What Are Smart Contracts?
If you are a procurement professional, you rely on making decisions quickly. The quality of your decisions is based on the quality of your data. This is where smart contracts come into play. For example, for companies that provide services, smart contracts are able to register new clients automatically once a payment is sent. This is possible because a blockchain simply transfers the ownership of data.
When data is able to move freely in a transparent way, processing can be done on it as well. A smart contract is executable code in a transactional environment, such as a blockchain. It is capable of executing code on a distributed network, which allows the simple streamlining of business services. Take the example of an e-commerce company requiring to stock up on merchandise once their supply becomes low. The company would be required to contact upstream supply chains to have the product manufactured, while the manufacturer would need to coordinate the required supplies to have it created. On the upstream side, the supply chain requires coordination with each business on each level. This can become a tedious process that increases the number of middlemen every step of the way, which ultimately means an increase in the cost to manufacture.
If a business sells a product to a client, it requires this product to be manufactured at a given pace to keep up with the demand of sales. They would have their own supply chain and manufacturer (many in some cases). If the sale of products is all done with smart contracts, this would mean users send their token to the business’s contract when requesting a certain product. This contract would automatically keep track of these sales and the inventory available.
This business and their manufacturer could also create another smart contract on the manufacturing side that would “talk” to the sales contract. This means that if inventory was ever running low, the sales contract could automatically contact the manufacturer contract and request more product to be produced based on a set of rules and, if validated, could send the required payment automatically from the sales contract. This means that downstream providers and even upstream providers could be very closely automated, saving the companies enormous amounts of money while making it run with unparalleled efficiency.
Why Would I Want to Get Involved in Blockchain?The answer is simple. Blockchain technology improves the quality of business and cuts out middlemen, giving more of your profit directly to your business. It is comparable to the invention of the internet, which changed everything about business through the decades that followed. If you position yourself wisely in the beginning stages of this technological revolution, you position yourself for a success that could compare to the success seen by leaders of the internet, such as Amazon, eBay, Google, and Facebook. Is it risky? Yes, the unknown is always a risk, but those that find prosperity are the ones that are willing to dive into it. They are the ones that forge pieces of the future through their business, research and inspiration when they discover something that can truly change the world.
https://www.procurementiq.com/procurementinsider/procurement-goals/set-strategy/the-future-is-here-blockchain-smart-contracts-procurement/
About the Author:
Colin Cantrell is the creator of Nexus, a peer-to-peer network designed to provide technology aimed at solving some of the most difficult challenges of the future, including financial technology, quantum-resistant cryptography, distributed computing and public, transparent ledgers. He is a hardware and software expert, inventor, composer, musician, philanthropist and entrepreneur. He enjoys the study of physics, philosophy, history and cryptography and hopes to apply his knowledge to make a positive change in the world.
Hackers Have Walked Off With About 14% of Big Digital Currencies
Posted on June 13th, 2018
Vector, Nexus Join the Space Race With Plans for Satellite-Based Blockchain Network
Posted on June 12th, 2018
Space company Vector and blockchain developer Nexus announced a partnership to host Nexus’s decentralized cryptocurrency on a satellite orbiting the Earth, using Vector’s GalacticSky platform.
According to the developers, Nexus technology offers improvements over existing blockchain systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum. For example, Nexusfeatures SHA-3 cryptography with 571-bit keys, which is believed to offer “quantum security” against future attacks based on next-generation quantum computers. Nexus is also developing a “3D Chain” (3DC) to address the current challenges of speed and scalability in the cryptocurrency industry.
“The future of Nexus combines satellites, ground-based mesh networks, and blockchain technology to facilitate the formation of a decentralized internet,” notes the joint press release. “Nexus is building the foundation to broadcast the blockchain and Nexus Network from space,” adds the Nexus website. Basing the Nexus cryptocurrency in space can, according to the developers, protect it from interference from governments and corporations.
“With Bitcoin’s valuation at an all-time high, people are beginning to accept cryptocurrency as a real form of payment, but there are still problems with storage and ownership,” Colin Cantrell, founder and lead core developer of Nexus, said in a statement. “The capabilities provided by the GalacticSky platform, combined with the flexibility of Vector’s launch model, bring us one step closer to accomplishing our mission of providing the world with a decentralized currency that can be accessed virtually anywhere, anytime.”
While the Nexus cryptocurrency is not directly related to decentralizing the internet, its future infrastructure, based on satellites and mesh networks, is.
Vector’s GalacticSky platform, launched in 2016, is a “satellite virtualization platform” that offers customers the possibility to test new space applications with satellites already in orbit, before committing to the costly process of designing and launching their own satellites. GalacticSky customers will be able to reconfigure existing micro satellites dynamically and in near real-time, just like software-defined radio systems. In fact, Vector describes GalacticSky as a software-defined satellite platform. Established to develop affordable launch capabilities and in-orbit platforms for the micro-spacecraft sector, Vector has been described as a hot space startup and a potential SpaceX competitor.
“Over the last year, we’ve made many advancements in order to solidify our standing as a leading nanosatellite launch company,” said Vector co-founder and CEO Jim Cantrell, the father of Nexus’s Colin Cantrell. “Housing Nexus’[s] cryptocurrency on our GalacticSky platform not only validates our proof of concept, but demonstrates how prolific this opportunity is for startups looking to innovate in space without the need to build their own satellite.”
Jim Cantrell was also on the founding team of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Moon Express, the first private company to attempt to land on the lunar surface. Earlier this year, Vector and Citrix partnered to bring data center and cloud virtualization technology into space. Vector also announced a partnershipwith Astro Digital to launch one of Astro Digital’s satellites in 2018.
The ambitious plans of Vector and Nexus can be compared to theBlockstream Satellite service, which broadcasts real-time Bitcoin blockchain data from satellites in space. An important difference is that Blockstream doesn’t operate satellites but uses existing commercial satellites as relays.
An even more important difference is that, with the new initiative, the new and independent Nexus cryptocurrency will be really based in space, running on a blockchain distributed across across multiple satellites. Therefore, according to the joint press release, “Nexus is no longer tied to a nation-state and can create the backbone for a more decentralized financial ecosystem.”
In a video, Colin Cantrell explains Nexus history, vision, current state and future plans. In another video, he provides an overall view of Nexus architecture and zooms in o scalability and quantum security aspects.
Dec 29, 2017 11:13 AM EST
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/vector-nexus-join-space-race-plans-satellite-based-blockchain-network/
