Thursday, August 19, 2021

A little shady and hazy, but hereÅ› my PoL Proof of Life.

In 2008 the financial structure failed.

Greed and deceit and exploiltation came to light and proved to be too weak

Maybe crypto saw the light to break the monopoly of the few. As an attempt to redistribute funds more equally.

Make spending and money flows not a tool for the few, but for the many.

Would or will it be possible to battle institutional and systemic corruption ? Only the future will tell.

Fact is that national governments resqued an international industry, bailed a failed system out, with tax payers money.

And what lesson was learned ? Well, big money, now knew there was no boundary, to how many, how much, and how often they could screw.

So imho the blockchain of Satoshi , might as well have been divine intervention, of a world gone cruel.

Lets invest in a world where you do not have to pay interest, and proof of life becomes a stakable event, as a happy human might prevent

a world going down for greed and vested interests, do not care what breathes, what lives, or what goes dead around.

Money is a good servant, but a bad master as they say. Lets prove it, and give a little coin away, and an app, or way, to trade and pay.

For if mankind can break the oldest trade pair to date.

Being economy and politics. History is out of date.

And there still might be a living chance for humanity to survive, along with plant and animal as the earthly holy trinity.

For while the bitcoin community wants to remain pure and undiluted, its a far cry from a currency with fees commuted.

And if it takes a meme to bring back an ancient theme, to do good each day, and for the elite the illiterate get something to say, it only proves altcoins are here to stay.


Proof of Life, or maybe, remotely, divine intervention ;-)

In 2008 the financial structure failed.

Greed and deceit and exploiltation came to light and proved human ethics and morale to be too weak

Maybe crypto saw the light to break the monopoly of the few. As an attempt to redistribute funds more equally.

Make spending and money flows not a tool for the few, but for the many.

Would or will it be possible to battle institutional and systemic corruption ? Only the future will tell.

Fact is that national governments resqued an international industry, bailed a failed system out, with tax payers money.

And what lesson was learned ? Well, big money, now knew there was no boundary, to how many, how much, and how often they could screw.

So imho the blockchain of Satoshi , might as well have been divine intervention, of a world gone cruel.

Lets invest in a world where you do not have to pay interest, and proof of life becomes a stakable event, as a happy human might prevent

a world going down for greed and vested interests, do not care what breathes, what lives, or what goes dead around.

Money is a good servant, but a bad master as they say. Lets prove it, and give a little coin away, and an app, or way, to trade and pay.

For if mankind can break the oldest trade pair to date.

Being economy and politics. History is out of date.

And there still might be a living chance for humanity to survive, along with plant and animal as the earthly holy trinity.

For while the bitcoin community wants to remain pure and undiluted, its a far cry from a currency with fees commuted.

And if it takes a meme to bring back an ancient theme, to do good each day, and for the elite the illiterate get something to say, it only proves altcoins are here to stay.


Dfinity official engineers interpret how ICP leads Web3 from the bottom of the technology

With the gradual popularity of communication and visualization mobile terminal devices, people are flocking to the concept of web3 or meta universe. And how to take the road to a new world? But there is no clear answer. DFINITY has explored the path of “Internet computer” in 5 years of exploration experience. Will it become an effective solution?
Planet invited Paul Liu, the core technical engineer of DFINITY, to interpret it for us from the bottom of its technology.

Paul Liu is a core technical engineer at Dfinity. Before joining Dfinity, Paul worked as a research scientist at Intel Labs for 7 years. During the Intel Lab period, he built a highly optimized Haskell compiler for the X86 architecture. Paul has a Ph.D. from Yale University and studied under Dr. Paul Hudak, one of the inventors of the Haskell compiler. Paul is a member of the Haskell seminar and IFL, and has published a large number of academic papers.

Introduction

First, let me introduce DFINITY. This is a non-profit organization headquartered in Switzerland. All revenue can only be used for one purpose, which is to participate in the development and promotion of the Internet Computer, a decentralized open source network project. Although this project is led by DFINITY, the governance system has been launched since the day it went live, and the actual physical nodes of the network are also independently operated by many third-party independent operators. At present, it has been online for three months, and 53 operators have deployed 209 nodes in 20 data centers.

The entire project belongs to the holders of governance tokens, that is, the entire community. DFINITY will continue to participate in the development and promotion of the entire platform as a major technical contributor, but we are only one of the contributors. In just over three months of going online, many other community teams have already participated. The development of this platform is inseparable from the contribution of the entire community. To further promote decentralization is our main goal at the moment.

For answers to common questions, I prepared the answers in advance, so I may proceed faster. I also hope to leave more time for the on-site questioning session. I believe that some of the friends who participated in this AMA may have a certain understanding of Internet Computer, but many people may be exposed to some of the concepts here for the first time. So I will talk more about background knowledge at the beginning, I hope you can bear it.

As the creator of the Internet Computer platform, DFINITY’s vision is blockchain singularity, which means that all applications that can run on the Internet should be built with blockchain technology.

In order to do this, we have added a layer of protocol based on blockchain consensus technology above the TCP/IP level and below the application level. We call it Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). This set of protocols constructs a virtual subnet by exchanging data between multiple physical nodes (computers).

https://preview.redd.it/29ro2l8bffi71.png?width=689&format=png&auto=webp&s=6ad59d3c66f8e3eeeca223ac105e94266d2d22e4

The nodes in the subnet reach a consensus on the input and output, mutually verify the calculation results, and can communicate with other subnets. Multiple subnets are combined together to build a virtual computer. The capacity can increase with the increase of subnets. Anyone can run programs on it, access other people’s programs, and so on.

But this sounds no different from our current Internet, especially the concept of micro service. Then why can’t the current Internet be called Internet Computer?

The difference lies in this set of ICP protocols. The purpose of this protocol is to ensure that all programs are executed correctly and their status cannot be tampered with. When a program calls another program, it can trust that the call will be executed correctly. Due to the lack of this layer of protocol on the current Internet, all programs have to solve the cumbersome problems of availability, reliability, and mutual authorization, etc., and thus bring various incompatibility and security burdens.

The core of this is trustworthy computing. There is a saying called trustless trust, which I think is very appropriate, without trust (partial) trust (whole). The development of the blockchain from Bitcoin to today also proves the power of trusted computing. But most of the applications are still concentrated in the financial field, and our goal is to expand to a broader Internet field. Why can’t I run a website directly on the blockchain? Why is the historical data of the entire chain needed to verify the calculations on the blockchain? Only by solving these problems head-on can the blockchain become the core technology of the Internet, not just at the level of recording and transfer.

Community Super Visit

Q1: Internet Computer provides a brand-new program construction paradigm and has its own set of “jargon”. Can you briefly introduce these “jargon” and what do you think are the most useful infrastructure for developers?

Pail: You can talk about it from several different angles. From the end user’s point of view, accessing an application on an Internet Computer is basically the same as accessing an ordinary website, and the user does not need to pay any fees. This has the same meaning as when using traditional cloud services, the cost is borne by the project party. Most other blockchains charge users for gas, which requires pre-installed wallet software, and the threshold is relatively high.

The cost of operating an application, including computing and storage, is measured in cycles of Internet Computer’s native token. The price of cycles is anchored to SDR, 1SDR = 1 Trillion Cycles. The price of SDR is weighted by a basket of currencies set by the International Monetary Fund, including the US dollar and RMB, and is relatively stable.

Back to the user’s point of view, they don’t have to care about the concept of cycles. But many applications need to process user logins. For this reason, Internet Computer has also launched an anonymous identity management system, which we use as Internet Identity. This system is completely based on web standards, and users do not need to install wallet software to use it.

All of these are to lower the threshold for users to use, so that the application of blockchain can really go out. Internet Identity is mainly to solve the problem of logging in to multiple devices with one identity. Moreover, the code name of this identity is different in different applications, which can prevent the user’s behavior from being maliciously tracked.

Finally, users may also be interested in participating in the governance of Internet Computer. This is a neuron voting system called NNS, which is one of our innovations. It is also at the application level, but it has a special permission, that is, it can manage all the subnets of Internet Computer and all aspects of the entire system, including node running code, version upgrades, creating new subnets, accessing new nodes, etc. Etc.

Finally, users may also be interested in participating in the governance of Internet Computer. This is a neuron voting system called NNS, which is one of our innovations. It is also at the application level, but it has a special permission, that is, it can manage all the subnets of Internet Computer and all aspects of the entire system, including node running code, version upgrades, creating new subnets, accessing new nodes, etc. Etc.

To participate in voting, you first need to hold ICP tokens and lock a certain number of ICPs to get a neuron. The weight of the vote is related to the number of locks, the lock duration, and the age of the neuron. Participating in voting will also be rewarded. The amount of reward has nothing to do with whether you vote for or against. It can also follow the decisions of other neurons and automatically vote. In general, these settings are designed to link users’ voting behavior with the long-term interests of the platform and reward users for their contributions.

Talking about the user’s perspective, let’s look at it from the developer’s perspective. The application running on Internet Computer is encapsulated in a lightweight container called canister. The concept of the docker container that is usually familiar to everyone is a bit different. Canister not only encapsulates the code, but also automatically persists the state of the container. It can be simply understood as a long-running operating system process. The state of the process, including memory and message queue, is automatically saved and will not be lost due to power-on and shutdown. This means that the concept of file system has been stripped off Internet Computer, and developers do not need to consider reading and writing files and hard disks to save data, which is a considerable simplification.

Canister’s code uses the bytecode of WebAssembly (Wasm), the latest lightweight virtual machine technology. Any language that can be compiled into Wasm can be used as a development language. The two languages ​​that currently support better are Rust and Motoko, but it is also possible to use the C language. Motoko is a programming language developed by us. It takes advantage of some Internet Computer features and comes with automatic memory management. Unlike Rust and C at the bottom, it belongs to the abstraction level of Javascript, TypeScript or Swift. It is easier to get started. Of course, the ecology is still under development, and library functions have yet to be enriched.

Another thing that developers need to understand is that the communication mode between canisters is asynchronous and belongs to the actor model. That is, each canister is its own process, and communicates with other canisters by sending messages, that is, asynchronous method calls. The processing of a canister’s internal message queue is single-threaded, and there is no need to consider locks. Each method call is atomic. Familiar with actor model programming is easy to get started.

To develop an application, the canister container is usually used as the back-end, and the front-end interaction can be in the browser or a separate APP. It was mentioned before that Internet Computer can run the website directly. This means that canister can implement the http request interface by itself, and return the web page including Javascript to the user’s terminal. The front-end and back-end can be packaged together into a canister and deployed on Internet Computer.

For front-end development, we have ready-made libraries to use, both Javascript and Rust. When the front-end needs to call the back-end code, just make an asynchronous function await call directly, and the bottom layer has been implemented by library functions. If you need to know more, there is an interface and data encoding format called Candid, which supports the implementation of multiple languages. Canister uses Candid to describe external interfaces and data types.

In general, what developers need to understand is around the concept of Canister. WebAssembly, Actor model, Orthogonal Persistence (automatic persistence), Motoko, Candid. I also recommend to learn about SystemAPI, which is the standard of Internet Computer interface https://sdk.dfinity.org/docs/interface-spec/

This information is very detailed, involving all aspects of the entire system, and we have made a lot of formal efforts to define the semantics of the interface, which is convenient for developers to understand the behavior of the system.

If you are doing system-level development, such as consensus protocols, virtual machines, etc., then there is more to talk about. You can go to the video series of the technical library on the DFINITY official website https://dfinity.org/technicals

Q2: Compared with traditional platforms such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, AWS, etc., what is the difference between Internet Computer? They are also the company’s self-built private cloud services, and also use data centers, remote backup, and multi-node operation.

Pail: The current cloud service platforms are all based on a basic setup. You must rely on the provider of this platform to maintain the security of the platform, maintain network connectivity, uninterrupted computing, and no data loss, etc.

Although the interests of the commercial platform itself and the users it serves, although most of the time do not conflict, they are not completely consistent. There is a concept Platform Risk that everyone should be familiar with, so I won’t go into it here.
But the most important point is that these cloud platform infrastructure providers do not want to become commodities (replaceable commodities), and they are doing their best to retain and lock customers.

Internet Computer first exists as a decentralized network. The nodes inside are all operated by third parties and run in different data centers. The governance of a real network is handed over to users, and is not dominated by node operators or data centers.

Therefore, there is no centralized commercial organization to make all the decisions. The design of the entire governance system is to proceed from a long-term perspective as much as possible, hoping to maintain the consistency of the interests of users and the development of the platform. This platform is paid to node operators. Whether a certain node is run by Zhang San or Li Si has no influence at all. This is a free market. So for Internet Computer, the hardware and network infrastructure have become a commodity.

Looking back at the development history of the entire PC industry, we can actually see that it is an inevitable law of history that infrastructure (such as PC hardware) has become a commodity, and I believe it will not be an exception for cloud services.

It can be said that computing platforms such as Internet Computer have been separated from the construction of hardware infrastructure. This kind of business model, if there is no decentralization, if there is no blockchain technology, it is impossible to imagine. But today it can become a reality, which is the best interpretation of the progress of the times.

From Bitcoin to Ethereum all the way, some people just saw the currency price hype and Ponzi scam and took a negative attitude towards this emerging thing. In fact, the change of the times is just in sight.

In addition to the consistency of benefits, another aspect requires more advanced technology to simplify system redundancy, thereby saving the entire platform overhead, which also means saving users.

Earlier, we also talked about the advantages of trusted computing. In fact, there is a distributed advantage and the advantage of using cutting-edge encryption technology. They mean that many traditional technical maintenance tasks, such as firewalls, are basically no longer necessary. If a customer wants to make good use of these current cloud platforms, it must invest a lot in operation and maintenance. And Internet Computer can save a lot of costs in this regard.

The third point is tokenization, which is the tokenization of applications. This can be said to be the next trend in the development of the entire Internet application, which is unstoppable. Traditional cloud service providers also provide bridging components with the blockchain at best, and its architecture is inevitably quite bloated after a complete set. Since Internet Computer can directly run websites and applications, as a native blockchain, it is very easy to integrate tokenization.

Q3: Every smart contract on Internet Computer is “scalable”. Specifically, how does the protocol extension work at the technical level? Are there any cases of extension?

Pail: Scalability has several dimensions. One is storage space, one is network traffic, and the other is computing power. How many transactions can be processed per unit time. Whether it is scalable is mainly to see whether it can bypass known bottlenecks. On a public platform, we also need to consider how to allocate limited resources between different users and between different applications.

The main idea in the design of Internet Computer is to scale out, which is to solve the bottleneck by adding resources and creating new subnets. This is basically the same idea as mainstream web applications. When an application cannot handle all user requests through one canister, a reasonable approach is to use multiple canisters at the application level to process part of the user requests. That is to say, when designing an application, you need to take this into consideration, and at least leave a possibility of migrating to the new architecture. At present, I know that the design of OpenChat is based on multiple canisters. DSCVR also has such room, but it is still concentrated in one canister.

From the system level, through canister expansion, the current threshold of 4G memory can be surpassed. In terms of computing, it also started from the guiding ideology of concurrency, and did not choose the global atomic design of Ethereum. Therefore, different canisters process their own messages in their own threads. As long as the hardware load allows, the performance of other canisters will not be affected. As for the network, bandwidth basically determines the upper limit of expansion. Any blockchain cannot avoid this physical bottleneck. It can only be divided into different subnets corresponding to Internet Computer.

Of course, there are also various optimization schemes at the system level that can improve performance. We have been doing this work, hoping to give full play to the performance of the hardware.

Q4: Which types of Dapp are more suitable for loading on it? We found that there are relatively few DeFi protocols on Internet Computer. In the future, what direction will Dapp on Internet Computer have?

Pail: DeFi mainly needs liquidity to promote. For security reasons, the function of canister transfer ICP has not yet been opened, which also limits liquidity. However, this restriction is temporary. At present, since the launch of the entire network, the stability is still good. I believe that this restriction will be lifted through NNS voting at an appropriate time. I believe that many developers are ready, and the explosion of DeFi applications is only a matter of time.

Personally, I am still very optimistic about the social dapp on Internet Computer. Once this track has the blessing of tokenization, it will grow very quickly, and it will definitely not be inferior to DeFi and NFT games. There are also some social dapps on other blockchains, but they are all subject to the threshold of starting. After all, the correct use of wallets has already stumped many users. The dapp on Internet Computer uses Web standard technology and can be accessed by any browser.

Another direction I am optimistic about is applications for individual users and small and medium-sized enterprises. Like project management, file sharing, creator economy (podcast, vlog, web documents, etc.), although there are more mature solutions on the Internet, there are always platform risks. The platform risks of cloud services have also been mentioned earlier. I believe everyone has a certain personal experience of the monopoly of giants in various other fields. Now that the decentralized structure is a new possibility, the platform itself should become a transparent existence, instead of entrenched in the upper reaches of the food chain and swallowing the interests of users with overlord clauses.

In the final analysis, which track has a future depends on whether its application can quickly gather value. This value does not mean how much your project is locked, because this amount can change at any time. It’s about how many connections you have established with users, and how many connections you have established with other applications. As the trust deepens, as the use increases, it will become more and more valuable. The code can be pasted, but this association cannot be copied. If used properly, tokens can accelerate the accumulation of value to a certain extent, but ultimately it depends on the intrinsic value of the project itself.

Q5: Canister, as a container running by Webassembly, carries the environment running on the Dapp chain. What are the latest developments about Canister?

Paul: Just this Monday, DFINITY released a development roadmap, and the community is welcome to participate. https://dfinity.org/roadmap

Among them are related to canister:

  • Stable memory expansion
  • Canister ECDSA signature
  • Apply AMD SEV to protect data privacy

The expansion is currently mainly for stable memory, that is, memory management that is not affected by code upgrades. Previously, it was limited by the 4GB limit of the Wasm virtual machine, but now it can be released. The upper limit is subject to the total amount of memory in the subnet, which is currently around 300GB.

ECDSA threshold signature technology, in simple terms, is to allow each canister to sign data without storing the private key, and this signature can be verified by the public key, and each canister can get a unique public key. This is in the same line as the Chain Key technology we have implemented, and it has a wide range of applications. For example, canister can directly initiate a Bitcoin or Ethereum transaction and sign it.

This means that what originally had to be done in a private environment to give the private key to the program can now be done in a decentralized environment. It can also be used in the issuance of SSL certificates, DNS custom domain names, and so on.

The use of AMD SEV technology is mainly to protect Canister’s data privacy to a certain extent, so that even node operators cannot snoop on user data. We have been making preparations for this side, and the difficulty is relatively large. Fortunately, the hardware used by the nodes already supports SEV technology, so I hope it will be a smooth upgrade by then.

Q6: “Open Internet Services” can implement permanent APIs, allowing developers to build data or functions that depend on other services without the risk of revocation. How to deploy “Open Internet Services” on Internet computers?

Paul: The easiest way to provide a permanent API is to make its code unmodifiable by setting the canister controller to an empty set.

I personally made a very simple canister called blackhole. Its main purpose is to allow other canisters to set the controller as blackhole, so that not only the code becomes unmodifiable, but blackhole also provides additional query functions, such as checking the balance of book cycles or checking the hash value of the code. The controller of blackhole itself is set to itself, and its code is also public, so it is easy to verify the correctness of the hash value. If you need to make your canister trusted by others, setting its controller to blackhole is a simple way.

But if you still need to maintain the code upgrade function, this requires the introduction of community governance functions. The Service Neuron System we are developing allows applications to create neurons by locking tokens and then voting to manage all aspects of the application, including code upgrades. Of course, the SNS system we made is still under development, and there is no instance yet. And it is only one of the candidate solutions. The community has already made other attempts in this area, and I believe it will gradually mature.

Q7: Security is an important issue for computers. What mechanisms does Internet Computer use to replace functions such as firewalls? In terms of tamper resistance, what are the characteristics of DFINITY compared to other blockchain bottom layers?

Paul: One of the main functions of the firewall is to prevent hackers from invading the system and gaining intranet permissions to achieve the purpose of stealing or tampering with data. First of all, the division of authority between the intranet and the extranet is very problematic. It is quite fragile, because once it is breached, all the default permissions of the intranet are exposed to the attacker. Therefore, we have seen that many companies have abandoned this practice and changed to set permissions for each service and use unified identity management technology to authorize users.

Corresponding to it is the identity management on Internet Computer. A public key corresponds to the identity of a user, and then each canister can obtain the identity of the caller. This identity cannot be tampered with by a third party, whether it is a user calling canister or a call between canisters. This can be done because such calls must pass a consensus protocol, especially cross-subnet calls. Both the initiator and the responder must pass the consensus protocol, and will be recognized and executed after verification.

To quickly and efficiently verify the validity of any subnet signature, we must use the chain key technology developed by us. It can support dynamic node connection and removal while ensuring that the threshold signature public key remains unchanged. This is currently not possible with other blockchains, so Internet Computer is currently the leader in verifying transactions. Basically, there is no need to synchronize data between its subnets (except for the necessary public keys of the subnets and the public keys of the nodes. ).

To tamper with data on the Internet Computer, it is not enough to break the authority of a node. It must be able to control more than 2/3 of the number of nodes in a subnet. Therefore, the security of the subnet depends to a certain extent on the number of nodes. And through the irregular rotation of nodes, the security in this area can be further strengthened. Even if one subnet is compromised, it cannot fake the identity of other subnets, so the scope of the loss is controllable.

Ensuring that data is authentic and reliable from being tampered with is one aspect, while protecting data privacy is another aspect. Most blockchains are public data, so there is no privacy protection. True privacy protection can be achieved at the application level, using technologies such as homomorphic encryption, but the current efficiency is not enough. So our current plan is to apply AMD SEV technology to encrypt at the hardware level. However, the security of the entire Internet Computer does not depend on hardware, and the guarantee of SEV is a plus.

Q8: DFINITY’s name actually started 6 years ago. Although the mainnet launch process is relatively slow, we can see that the DFINITY team really wants to do something disruptive, and the consensus is also very strong. What are the factors affecting the transition from “Ethereum’s sister chain” to “world-class Internet computer”?

Paul: The slogan of World Computer was first put forward by Ethereum, and it has inspired many people, although now it is more focused on DeFi and digital assets. The direction of “world-class Internet computer” has always been the goal of DFINITY’s efforts, not a route that will be changed after financing.

At first, due to the constraints of the team, there were only clear innovations in BLS and consensus protocols, so the first step was to start with this aspect, launch a chain and then gradually iterate. But then we realized that if we don’t solve the problem of cross-subnet communication, we will always stay in the pit of “another blockchain” and it will be difficult to innovate. It is precisely because of the persistence of the team that a breakthrough in chain key has been achieved, the problem of cross-subnet verification has been solved, and the promise of scalability has been achieved.

Looking back, in fact, we just have to keep asking ourselves one question: Why can’t a decentralized blockchain run a website?

First of all, we must solve an efficiency problem, that is, access to a website requires a response in the millisecond level. How can it be done? Our answer is to separate the read-only query from the status modification, so 99% of the network traffic is read-only, which can be responded to in milliseconds. To modify the status, we also achieved a response within two to three seconds through innovation in the consensus protocol.

When the efficiency is reached, how to verify the correctness of the content? How to make ordinary browsers can do it? Then the conditions required for verification must be streamlined. Can you abandon the historical block and just pass a public key? How to solve the problem of dynamic changes of nodes with BLS public key? How to solve the problem of centralized domain name and SSL certificate? How to expand the capacity if the access traffic increases? Where are the bottlenecks and boundaries of expansion? What should I do if there is a conflict between the expansion requirements and the synchronization contract call method?
As long as you keep asking questions and searching for answers, I believe a practical plan will gradually emerge. This is what DFINITY has been doing in the past few years.

Q9: Ethereum has just completed the EIP-1559 upgrade and has taken the first step towards deflation, and the token price has gradually increased. Do you think that for decentralized infrastructure, is the performance of tokens more motivating to supporters or is technological disruption more important? How to achieve a relative balance between the two?

Paul: I look at it this way. The short-term performance of tokens depends on the confidence and expectations of market participants, and the long-term performance must return to the value of the platform itself. Ethereum’s technology can be said to have undergone the test of time. Despite its various shortcomings, it has been recognized by the entire cryptocurrency market.

As for deflation and inflation, each has its drawbacks. I can’t quite agree with the rhetoric of BTC maximalist. DeFi’s innovation in liquidity and incentives is also very exciting, but in the long run, most projects actually do not add value, and more of a digital game. Users who are acquired through a short-term increase in the price of tokens may also lose users because of the price drop or the rise of another project.

Technological innovation can easily be copied by competitors. However, from an overall perspective, these innovations have been pushing the entire industry forward. It is hard to say whether it can benefit from pure technological innovation if it falls on a single project. The industry is talking about ecological construction. How much protection can an ecological project have on a platform, especially a start-up platform, how to convince developers to invest is not an easy task.

I think the most worthwhile direction is to expand the circle of best efforts. From payment and transfer, to DeFi, to NFT and games, it is a continuous process of expanding the territory. Under this general trend, try to expand the blockchain technology to a wider range of fields, such as the goal of letting native websites run on the blockchain. Only by using technological innovation and token incentives to acquire new users can we flourish the ecology and enhance value.

Q10: Many people think that Internet Computer is the main position of web3 applications. Each public chain more or less has its own insights and technical implementation paths for web3, such as Polkadot and Ether. What is DFINITY’s insights and future plans/Roadmap on the road to web3?

Paul: The purpose of DFINITY is to put aside all unnecessary baggage and move towards the destination of Blockchain Singularity. There are still many imperfections in the Internet Computer project, and there is still a certain way to achieve this goal. We hope that more people can join in to promote the technological progress of the platform itself and build more colorful upper-level projects. To win customers.

The focus of each public chain is different. We believe that everything that can be built with blockchain will eventually be realized with blockchain. Therefore, it does not exclude the combination of other public chain technologies. For example, in our roadmap released on Monday, there are deep integration projects with Ethereum and Bitcoin, which are a perfect complement to both parties. This will further stimulate the cross-chain flow and integration of assets, simplify the application architecture, and discard the centralized baggage of cloud services, thereby improving the overall security and robustness of the application.

Running a website is an important step, but it is only the first step for Internet Computer. I believe that the foundation laid by Internet Computer will become part of the magnificent puzzle of Blockchain Singularity in the future.

Q11: What is Canister Signature? Where is the private key used by Canister for signing? In addition, does Canister support the Event mechanism similar to the Ethereum smart contract, which can be obtained by subscribing to an update call. Is the caller obtained based on the return value? Finally, when can ordinary Canister deal with ICP tokens?

Paul: Canister Signature refers to signing the calculation result (or contract status) of Canister with the public key of the subnet. Currently we use BLS threshold signature. It has a good feature that is the uniqueness of public key and signature, which is not available in other aggregate signature technologies (BLS can also be used as aggregate signature, and we also use it in the agreement) .

Threshold signatures are simply different nodes that have their own private keys to sign the calculation results. Once a limited number (threshold) of signatures are collected, a unique threshold signature can be obtained, using a public key. It can be verified, so this public key is treated as the public key of the subnet. There is no corresponding private key for the subnet here. The private key of each node is stored in its own way and is different.

A subnet can run many canisters. Using the merkle tree method, it is easy to get a path to one of the canister calculation results. Therefore, the signature of the subnet plus this path can be regarded as Canister’s signature of a certain piece of data.

Canister signature is equivalent to event log or receipt to a certain extent. Because we don’t require nodes to keep all historical blocks, it doesn’t make much sense to do this for event log alone. After all, such functions can be achieved through query call and certified var, and they are more powerful.

Canister’s handling of ICP tokens has long been technically not a problem, because it has not let go of permissions due to security considerations. With the stability of the system, our confidence has also increased a lot, so if there are no accidents, it is estimated that the decision will be made through community voting in the near future.


Are we really going to ignore the fact that Billionaires are preparing for a climate apocalypse? How do we live our lives knowing the end of industrial civilization may very well be just around the corner.

So much of our attention is focused on meaningless bullshit like celebrities or random geopolitical squabbling overseas while in the real world, billionaires are preparing for a global collapse of civilization and are trying to figure out whether they can keep control of their security forces with shock collars or if using robot slaves would be better.

Taken from Douglas Rushkoff's piece, How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse:

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk – about half my annual professor’s salary – all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology”.

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, Crispr. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys – yes, all men – from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less affected by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

They keep putting carbon in the atmosphere to maintain their obscene levels of wealth, knowing full well it will destroy human civilization on this planet. We are ruled by actual psychopaths.

Read the IPCC reports. We are headed for 3 or 4 degrees of warming by 2050. The USA spends 6 times as much on policing as we do on climate change adaptation and mitigation. With more warming comes more extreme weather, failing crops, supply chain disruptions, refugee flows, which leads to social strife, dictatorship and so on and so on.

Long story short is We are royally FUCKED* and nobody seems to acknowledge this in their day-to-day life. We get up, shit, brush our teeth, force feed, go to work for wages that pay for less and less of what we need every year as "once-in-a-century" climate disasters seem to be popping up every year. Just look at the heat dome over the Pacific Northwest this summer that killed hundreds of people. Before that weekend, the highest recorded temperature in Portland was 107 F. After, it was 112. An 80 year record. This wasn't supposed to be possible under the old climate system. Fully **half of all human CO2 emissions have been put out since 1990. 80% since the end of the Second World War. We have drastically altered the composition of our atmosphere in the span of a single human life.

The sky in my California town is orange because of the smoke from the Dixie fire. They can't put it out, they're just waiting for rain in the fall. This doesn't even begin to touch on how much of the global south will become uninhabitable leading to massive refugee flows. Hundreds of millions of people are going to flee their homes for cooler climates. Imagine the social strife that will cause. The disruption to the economy as food becomes scarce as crops dry up. And all our elites can think about is funding their security forces to kill the poors when they riot. The scientists who study this for a living tell us we'll be at that point in a matter of years, not decades at this point.

I'm not sure where I was going with this post but I think I'll leave you with this: I want you to think about the reality of your own death. Not as some kind of abstract concept like "I will die someday" but rather "My job could cease to exist and I may be forced to live with the gutter people in a camp somewhere, fighting armed riot cops for my daily survival." kind of death. In some parts of the world, this is already their reality. It could will happen here. I just want you to take it in and think about it a little. All the excesses of the last 60 years of industrialization aren't free. The last time there was this much carbon in the atmosphere, sea levels were 60 feet higher. Just reflect on that a little bit tonight.

Thanks for listening to my rant and take care of yourself and your loved ones.


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This is Hal Finney's last post to bitcointalk.org. For those who don't know, Hal was the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction, directly from Satoshi himself

I thought I'd write about the last four years, an eventful time for Bitcoin and me.

For those who don't know me, I'm Hal Finney. I got my start in crypto working on an early version of PGP, working closely with Phil Zimmermann. When Phil decided to start PGP Corporation, I was one of the first hires. I would work on PGP until my retirement. At the same time, I got involved with the Cypherpunks. I ran the first cryptographically based anonymous remailer, among other activities.

Fast forward to late 2008 and the announcement of Bitcoin. I've noticed that cryptographic graybeards (I was in my mid 50's) tend to get cynical. I was more idealistic; I have always loved crypto, the mystery and the paradox of it.

When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.

I was more positive. I had long been interested in cryptographic payment schemes. Plus I was lucky enough to meet and extensively correspond with both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, generally acknowledged to have created ideas that would be realized with Bitcoin. I had made an attempt to create my own proof of work based currency, called RPOW. So I found Bitcoin facinating.

When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.

Today, Satoshi's true identity has become a mystery. But at the time, I thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart and sincere. I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.

After a few days, bitcoin was running pretty stably, so I left it running. Those were the days when difficulty was 1, and you could find blocks with a CPU, not even a GPU. I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me. In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning. It's one of those glass half full half empty things.

The next I heard of Bitcoin was late 2010, when I was surprised to find that it was not only still going, bitcoins actually had monetary value. I dusted off my old wallet, and was relieved to discover that my bitcoins were still there. As the price climbed up to real money, I transferred the coins into an offline wallet, where hopefully they'll be worth something to my heirs.

Speaking of heirs, I got a surprise in 2009, when I was suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease. I was in the best shape of my life at the start of that year, I'd lost a lot of weight and taken up distance running. I'd run several half marathons, and I was starting to train for a full marathon. I worked my way up to 20+ mile runs, and I thought I was all set. That's when everything went wrong.

My body began to fail. I slurred my speech, lost strength in my hands, and my legs were slow to recover. In August, 2009, I was given the diagnosis of ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease, after the famous baseball player who got it.

ALS is a disease that kills moter neurons, which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. It causes first weakness, then gradually increasing paralysis. It is usually fatal in 2 to 5 years. My symptoms were mild at first and I continued to work, but fatigue and voice problems forced me to retire in early 2011. Since then the disease has continued its inexorable progression.

Today, I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a commercial eyetracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked up an interface using an arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair's position using my eyes.

It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It's very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals. Currently I'm working on something Mike Hearn suggested, using the security features of modern processors, designed to support "Trusted Computing", to harden Bitcoin wallets. It's almost ready to release. I just have to do the documentation.

And of course the price gyrations of bitcoins are entertaining to me. I have skin in the game. But I came by my bitcoins through luck, with little credit to me. I lived through the crash of 2011. So I've seen it before. Easy come, easy go.

That's my story. I'm pretty lucky overall. Even with the ALS, my life is very satisfying. But my life expectancy is limited. Those discussions about inheriting your bitcoins are of more than academic interest. My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech savvy. I think they're safe enough. I'm comfortable with my legacy.


When do you predict the Flippening will happen?

For those unaware, the flippening is a hypothetical event in which ETH overtakes Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) in terms of market capitalization. While this hasn't happened yet, it may not be too far off.

View Poll


Curriculum of Events and Possible Events in The Near Future

• 20 year anniversary of 9/11. (Insert attack from _________ here)

• Black flag event (unrelated to 9/11 anniversary) narrated as right wing terrorism, which begins a hunt for all citizens with any beliefs that are center or right of center leaning. We only need to look at the Bolsheviks rise in Russia and the rise of Chinese communism under Mao. We can also see similarities in Operation Northwoods, which was never executed, but was declassified and easy to research.

• “Internment Camps” being activated nationwide by HLS and operated by FEMA now that we have a couple of generations of freshly trained and experienced soldiers in dealing with insurgents that have recently been sent home from AF. The 20 years of trial and error “missions” along with the development of technologies were all an active and live simulation for training a military, civil services, intelligence agency’s, and its leadership on how to govern citizens of a shattered nation. The “greatest” part about all of this, is that no one even has to know they are being groomed for this. Govern and analyze a war torn country for twenty something years followed by the collapse of your own, and all of a sudden you are conveniently prepared to handle it. The great success of our countless HUMINT personnel and task forces operating in AF under the DIA were collecting the same data of how we are all going to feel and live in the coming years. The fraction of us who initially survive are going to adapt, survive, and even be forced to compromise on our own ideals and values just to stay alive. Our future was planned out as such where “learning as you go” in a post collapse United States of America left too much of a margin of error that was acceptable.

• China gaining enough countries in their neocolonialism venture that we all know as “The Belt and Road Initiative” to thwart any chances of an alliance from forming against further Chinese expansion. Pakistan, Egypt, and ASEAN partners being the most compromised so far. I really want to encourage you to look into this further. The information that is available is really simple to establish just how much The Belt and Roads Initiative is an eminent threat to the world. It goes back as recent as 2013, which makes it easier to digest and requires less of a historical understanding and connecting of events to come to a final conclusion.

• Cryptocurrency becoming fully regulated either in anticipation of, or after a hard and final collapse of the US dollar. A decentralized network will be touted and promised, with UBI possibly being dangled to desperate citizens in exchange for relinquishing more freedoms. Similar to the NSA claiming they aren’t currently intercepting our cellular data and it will just turn into an openly known and accepted lie like it is today. Tracking of all purchases and sales will become available to law enforcement and scrutinized while restrictions on legacy financial instruments will increase more as time goes on. (Bonus Fact: Bitcoin was “partly” created by the NSA in a joint venture project with another agency I’m not familiar with or comfortable typing out. They also created Satoshi as the hero that blessed mankind with this economic gift when really it was to start the timely process of natural, but mass adoption, leading into an NWO currency. I will make this clear right now about this bonus fact. I cannot source this, so be mature, take it with a grain of salt, and watch as time goes on if slipping some of this information out becomes beneficial for them. OR be a douche and tell us how smart you are, but regardless I won’t engage you)


The direction of the game and my issues with it

A bit of information about myself:

I have 3700 hours overall, I would identify as a chad, and running around and shooting ppl is fun what good is 100 mil gonna do in your stash if you run around without fun gear. This wipe I did quests until level 32 then I did the 100 Killa kills and after that fun I was like yeah let's play labs (after all need that exp for kappa) first ten runs (EU) I had 5 cheaters that was super fun. I haven't really played the last 2-3 weeks because I'm not going to reach kappa so what is the point what am i aiming for. Have fun with my thoughts about the game.

Game design direction

I do not like the direction the game is going into this hardcore game and that is where they want the game to go if you do not understand this then pls watch some podcasts with Nikita. I will try to accurately describe where I think they want the game to be and feel like. Tier 4 armor will be the new meta and the casuals will play tier 2-3, good ammo will be super rare meta guns will not really be a thing anymore because traders do not have these meta parts in stock anymore, and finding them will be hard. Actually, to say this more easily they want the game to be more like the first week of wipe just all the time (sure some 0.05 % of players might still run around with very good gear) but everyone else will be a pleb. Misfires, guns heating up, and stuff like that will be added more and more maybe the vog you are throwing will blow up in your face that sounds like something they might add. Using too many painkillers will get you addicted and make the effects even lower than they already are so you can use up one bottle of ibu per raid. (but what do you do when someone shoots you first you need the painkiller to even have a chance at winning the gunfight you are already at a disadvantage because the other player saw you first shot first and so on). The point I'm trying to make is what about the other half or more of the players that like how the game is right now and has been for a while? we that love the game as it is now not for what it could be in a more hardcore scenario. Why do we not matter at all and I'm not wrong in saying we are a fuckton of ppl. And if you anwser is going to be if you dont like it leave or whatever you can fuck off right about now.

Kappa

Kappa at level 71 is fucking retarded it forces you to play in a certain way you might now want to play. Usually, you got rid of this feeling of being forced to play in a certain way after you had finished all the quests or had all traders max now you have that feeling from level 1 until level 71 (and let us be real no one that reached level 50 or so last wipe will get the kappa). Also, the last wipe lasted like 6-7 months and 2 % reached kappa ist that really too much that you need to nerf it where only the 0.05 % can reach kappa? Why gatekeep kappa behind time and not skill? Also, the ppl that get kappa are already much better at the game than the other players why do the 0.05 % need another advantage?

Scav

In the last couple of patches, you have brought a lot of changes to Scav's, in my opinion, it's a waste of time but as I do not have the numbers of how many players play Scav I can't say its waste of resources because if a lot of ppl play than I guess it makes sense. But you made a system where it is difficult to level your scav karma then you decide hi hello see this new event you want free scav karma here you go which in a way is a punch to the face to players who grinded that scav karma up. (I can already hear ppl crying oh but it's beta they need to test stuff no one cares that it's a beta it has been out for a while and I and others paid like 50-150 euros this is not a beta anymore it's just a convenient tag for companies). As a PMC player, I can also not understand why scavs can go into a raid and get a lot of ai scavs to follow them and try to use them to kill a PMC player. They already get to go into raid for free and let's be real if you get shot by a scav with a shotgun you have gotta heal for a while and it's annoying so imagine a couple of scavs go and try to kill you it's just stupid. Scav stands for Scavenger which in turn means this "a person who searches for and collects discarded items" so the purpose of a Scav is to loot shit that is left behind not to gather up a band of other scavs to try and kill pmcs. In my opinion, player scavs should have less health a pistol and that's fine. After all, they don't bring any of their own "value" into the raid so they don't lose anything. (ofc scavs spawn with some items but 99% are worthless)

Gamma

Why is stuffing shit in your asshole still a thing, why do we need to compete with ppl that have better spawns to get there first I can get the point about making more money but what about the ppl that have already supported you? we the players with eod or whatever version they bought. You are supposed to make a better game for us and the way the game is right now if you have shit spawn there is no need to run to techlight or whatever high loot area and surviving doesnt really matter if you bring in shit gear and take the high tier loot.

Loot, Economy,QoL & Hideout

Loot feels fucking trash same with the hideout and it feels like BSG has no idea how to design a good economy in Tarkov. The Hideout doesn't even have a favourite button or an option to just continue to craft the same thing even when I'm offline. I have a max hideout and all I ever use is the bitcoin farm, lavatory and the workbench (maybe intelligence if there is something worthwhile available) these are simple changes to make the hideout a more viable option without all the time wasted searching for the craft. In a way Tarkov is special because of the barter system but why can't I see how much the barter costs with current prices and just pay the cheaper price for the barter/craft instead of buying each item seperatly. Why are there not more good crafts/barters for armor or whatever that take items that lose a lot of value the longer the wipe takes so they get more value the more ppl do the craft?

Yeah I'm done with the rant but as far as Tarkov goes I think I might play at most 1-2 more wipes by then I believe all the fun will be patched out of the game.


Validating _ Buy SOL

Thanks so much in advance for any responses :)

I read a fair bit, but I have never posted.

In any event, I have been in investing in cryptocurrencies for some time. Did well off of Bitcoin in the beginning and sold it for a divorce. That is just how life goes ya.

Recently, I started investing again, but in ETH and SOL.

My intuition says go with SOL and pair down my ETH while paying close attention. Moreover, I am interested in validating SOL. To that end, I have purchased a nice PC as my background is in tech -- but I am so weak on software / coding. I can do minimal work and intend on teaching myself as efficiently as I can.

I plan on running Ubuntu etc...

Any general advice out there? Anyone around the front range of CO reading this?

Thanks!


When The Price Drops: The Psychological Effects

This post focuses on the psychological effects of a price drop. Specifically, the reinforcing roles of social media (looking at you Reddit) and news are highlighted. When you know what a price drop does to the human psyche, you might be able take advantage of this.

There are various methods to estimate whether the price of Bitcoin (BTC) or other crypto will rise or fall. For example, you can perform technical or fundamental analyzes on your cryptocurrency to determine the expected price. In addition to these two more well-known forms of analysis, there is also a slightly less well-known alternative: sentiment analysis.

The investor's feeling is central here. This feeling is partly determined by the share price, but is also fed by external factors such as the news and opinions of others. We'll discuss the sentiment analysis in this post, with a central focus on the psychological effect of a price decline.

The current market sentiment

Q1-Q3 2021

​​​​​​​​​This year has been a great time for the crypto world. Making a loss seemed impossible and returns of hundreds of percent seemed up for grabs. Investor sentiment peaked and euphoria set in.

Crypto investors sprang up like mushrooms. How different this is past the month of May. The events of 2017 seem to be repeating themselves. But what consequences does this have for the price of the various cryptocurrencies? And what is the consequence for the sentiment on the stock market?

The cryptomarket has been taken some serious blows and the burning question is, do we stay in the corner where the final blows falls? Or will the cryptomarket recover and flip the price back up like a bull?

At the time of writing, BTC is trying to breach through the 48K resistance-level. This means that we are in what seems like a recovery phase, something we saw in the bullrun of 2013 as well.

In itself there is nothing strange about a number of strong corrections of as much as 20 to 30% during a strong bull market. As mentioned before, this also happened during the bull run in 2017 and in 2013. If it's your first time as a crypto investor, such a ride down seems pretty scary. It is difficult to determine whether these price drops are just corrections or a crash.

What is the current market sentiment?

At the time of writing, there is a positve sentiment in the crypto market, as you can see in the image below. The image shows the Fear & Greed Index. The general market segment is measured via various variables. Examples of these variables are social media, research and market volume.

https://preview.redd.it/m8mwnu6fx9i71.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=6a3b39553ec1440824c9dd8b477b55c1995b56d1

The positive sentiment results in a bullish mentality among investors, due to the price of BTC (and other coins) going up strong. We're currently sitting at a greed index of 70, which is caused by the current resistance level at 48K.

What matters now is whether the positive sentiment continues. Nowadays you even discuss crypto with the local baker or that annoying drunk uncle at birthday parties. Even Paris Hilton gave advice on crypto. If everyone in your area has an opinion about crypto and says that you achieve brilliant returns without any effort, this can be a signal that a hype is coming to an end. Of course, this does not mean that the bull run is over.

The causes of the sharp price declines this year

  1. Bad news (FUD).
  2. The role of social media.

Bad news

In May 2021, the Chinese State Council released a summary of the Chinese government's plans for mining and trading Bitcoin. It stated that the Chinese government wants to stop mining and trading in Bitcoin.

Half a day later, this news item led to a fall in the Bitcoin price of more than 10%. But not only Bitcoin had to suffer, the altcoins also experienced a drop in price. This isn't the first time China has released a similar news story.

In addition to the bad news from China, there have been more examples of negative news lately. A similar message came a month earlier from Turkey where the Turkish Central Bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. The rationale for the ban is the risks associated with the transactions and protecting the national lira.

The latest news came from the US, where the Senate approved the infrastructure bill, which contains stricter tax-reporting requirements for cryptocurrency brokers.

Social media

Elon Musk pushed the price of Bitcoin up in February 2021 by reporting that Tesla had purchased 1.5 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin and that it is possible for customers to pay with Bitcoin. Then the opposite happens. In the tweet, the 'Dogefather' said that Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin as a means of payment. The reason for this is that mining Bitcoin is too polluting for the environment, according to Musk. This resulted in a price drop of Bitcoin.

The psychological consequences for investors after a price drop

Why is the crypto market reacting so strongly to these news reports and social media content? Let's first distinguish different types of investors within the crypto world. To date, there is a relatively small diversity of investors within the crypto world compared to traditional investors.

The different types of investors explained are the early adopters, institutional investors and the lazy investors. The market cycle is then discussed and finally, the psychological consequences of a price drop are explained.

Types of investors

You have the early adopters, these investors got in early and know the ropes. The large price fluctuations are nothing new and the early adopters are not impressed. These investors are usually steadfast with a strong belief in the product, after all they were one of the first to get in for a reason.

In recent years there has been an influx of institutional money. This means that investment funds, investment companies and banks are entering the market, as well as leading companies such as PayPal and Google.

This is a change from the bull run in 2017 where the increase was mainly driven by retail investors. These new entrants have a strong capital which drives the price of cryptocurrency further up.

Finally, there are lazy investors. These are investors who want to quickly profit from the success of the rising cryptocurrency. They step in on the advice of someone from their social circle in an upward trend. This is called the FOMO phenomenon.

The fear of missing out takes over from rational thinking and people step in blind. These investors have done little to no analysis and are in it for the money, limiting their crypto knowledge: There is too little knowledge about technological developments, BTC price history and an investment strategy is unknown to them

Little diversity

A consequence of this small diversity of investors is that the chance that they use the same investment strategy increases. The investors in the crypto market tend to follow a large group (r/CryptoCurrency) and therefore also use the same decision strategy. This increases the volatility within the crypto market. When fear reigns, the investment strategy is forgotten. Potential gains evaporate and losses are taken (buy high, sell low).

The market cycle

A market cycle is the movement within the market with psychological causes. The different motivations within the cycle can be seen in the following figure. The upward movement is mainly driven by enthusiasm, FOMO and following other investors.

Greed and faith play an important role in this. Rational thinking turns into irrational thinking. An overconfidence bias arises, which means that you have too much faith in the choices you have made. Risks are lost sight of and making a loss seems impossible at this stage.

Then, when prices start to fall, greed gives way to fear, denial and panic. Moreover, the ego gets a bang because the big drop shows that your judgment was not as good as you thought.

https://preview.redd.it/4saxsfwyu9i71.jpg?width=816&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2299b78eb6eb69210ddf8eec045f9b692c1e973

The psychological effects of a price drop

The crypto world lacks objective information and this results in uncertainty. There are no annual reports available as is the case on the stock exchange. In the crypto world, the value is determined by supply and demand, potential, the development team, speculations, social media and news reports.

Moreover, many projects are still in the start-up phase where ideas are fully developed. Bad or good news can therefore do a lot to the value of a price, let alone the opinion of a very influential person involved in a tweet (Elon Musk).

This can make the price rise tens of percent but just as easily as dropping like a brick. Early adopters are less impressed by this. But the unwitting investor develops fear which can result in a wave of sell orders. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. Another example is the Chinese news item mentioned earlier in this article, a similar message also came out in 2017 and 2013.

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant feeling that arises when making choices. Nobody likes to make the wrong choice. And certainly not when money is at stake. For example, when you purchase a cryptocurrency, you will convince yourself that this is the right choice. After all, you want to keep the good feeling and not regret your purchase. You adjust your attitude, behavior or your thoughts to avoid the bad feeling.

You look for messages and sounds to confirm the good feeling. To avoid the bad feeling after a purchase, investors tend to herd and look for confirmation. Because if everyone else does it, then it must be good right?

If we look at the negative tweet from Elon Musk, we see this happening. One negative tweet from a person highly regarded in the investment world resulting in a whole bunch of people wanting to sell their crypto.

It seems that all these investors have blind faith in Musk and are willing to sell their crypto without a long reflection. This is due to the previously mentioned lack of knowledge and experience of investors.

The influence of social media on the course

Herd behavior is a fertile ground for the emergence of hypes. The crypto world is an example of this, but also think of the internet bubble or the housing market bubble. The internet and social media amplify herd behavior through the enormous reach, especially of influential people with millions of followers.

A tweet with a maximum of 280 words can shake the entire crypto world to its foundations. For example, Mr. Musk has influenced the market several times in both a positive and negative sense. The question that arises from this is why would he do this?

The reason he is trying to push the price up seems simple, more profit for Elon. But why would Musk want his investments to be worth less? And then buy cheaper again? Elon Musk knows the market like no other, he knows when he expresses himself negatively that a large herd follows his 'advice', causing the price to fall.

When investors panic, it ignites other investors and investor behavior becomes predictable. This is precisely where opportunities lie for investors who keep their cool and do the opposite of the herd.

Invest when no one dares. Don't be fooled by whales. But remember if you buy then someone else sells but for what reason? Enough profit? No more confidence? Behind the purchase and sale of this transaction is a motivation, a train of thought.

We are looking for confirmation

Social media is also a place where investors look for confirmation (social proof), especially with existing algorithms on social media, you will be linked to like-minded people. A danger of this is that tunnel vision arises because you are only looking for confirmation.

The positives stand out but the negatives of the investment are ignored. The right and above all diverse sources of information help to prevent tunnel vision. This phenomenon is called confirmation bias.

Another danger of social media is repetitive and simple information, which sticks in your memory better than complicated white papers. In addition, the search for confirmation is reinforced on certain forums, communities and Facebook groups.

Conclusion

Social media and news channels amplify fear and uncertainty among investors, especially inexperienced and ignorant investors. This group is more sensitive to reports than other investors such as the early adopters. Media platform forums increase the herd behavior and irrational thinking of investors during a price drop. A number of psychological consequences follow from this:

  • Tunnel vision
  • Herd Behavior
  • Social proof
  • The same decision moments
  • Panic Selling & Growing Uncertainty
  • Confirmation bias
  • Anchoring heuristic

A cocktail of these consequences results in high volatility within the crypto market. If negative sentiment takes over, the price could decline and could end in a bear market. It is striking that after such big correction as the we saw this year, large numbers of crypto are often purchased by the so-called whales, early adopters and other parties, which gives the price a small boost. It may go against your logic to invest in a downtrend. But making money succeeds where others panic. If the majority of people sell, then there are opportunities there for the calm investor.


Cardano Rumor Rundown August 19, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

  1. CNFT.io is back in action after a brief period of absence! https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/142808300944668262
  2. The Djed Stablecoin paper and an explanatory article are now out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427933093210607619
  3. In nation-state crypto adoption news (an area that is very relevant to Cardano), it looks like the Salvadorean Finance Minister is now saying that Bitcoin acceptance by merchants in El Salvador will actually be optional despite the language in the law. https://www.coindesk.com/el-salvador-bitcoin-not-mandatory-businesses

Previously Covered but still interesting:

  1. The Cardano Foundation’s Cardano Developer Portal is now up and running. https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung/status/1414640913612255234
  2. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party has won re-election in a landslide election. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57791868
  3. Avanti Bank of Wyoming files comments with the Federal Reserve on their new guidelines that could massively impact how the traditional banking system interacts with cryptocurrencies like Cardano. Given what role ADA is likely to play in the future of crypto financial transactions, this is extremely relevant for ADA holders. https://avantibank.com/press/avanti-submits-comments-to-federal-reserve https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1414783323193364482
  4. Cardano is still destroying everyone in terms of value staked! https://twitter.com/StakingRewards/status/1414895205384327168
  5. The Cardano ecosystem maps keep getting bigger and more complicated. https://poolg.de/Eco/CardanoEcosystemMap.html
  6. In news that could have significant repercussions for many stablecoin reliant Cardano DeFi projects, Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave some hard signals that they will regulate stablecoins in House Committee testimony. He revealed that the Fed will issue its long-awaited paper on stablecoins, CBDCs, and other digital assets in September. Powell also went as far as to say "You wouldn't need stable coins you wouldn't need cryptocurrencies if you had a digital US currency, I think that's one of the stronger arguments in its favor." https://twitter.com/Nate_DiCamillo/status/1415349008034418691
  7. We experienced a successful fork to the Alonzo White testnet! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1415399456841863177
  8. The European Central Bank drops news of “a project to prepare for possibly issuing a digital euro.” A digital Euro is coming and regulation of private fiat-pegged stablecoins is coming with it. https://twitter.com/ecb/status/1415273625385644036
  9. IOHK releases a paper on a crypto-backed algorithmic stablecoin. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1415531260470972423
  10. A crypto media personality recently uncovered links between the Priviledge EU Project, Horizon Europe Grant Agreement 780477, and Cardano. https://twitter.com/BreakingADA/status/1415653936703295488
  11. Always the GitHub activity champs! https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1416065097794002946
  12. We are now seeing the advent of a so-called “Fair Initial Stakepool Offering”. https://twitter.com/MinswapDEX/status/1416110973690122240
  13. The weekly development update is out. https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/status-updates/update/2021-07-16/
  14. Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, is calling a meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets to discuss stablecoins on Monday. Prepare for regulation. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0276
  15. Coindesk really hates us. Now they are writing articles about Cardano and using words like “crypto-colonialism”. https://www.coindesk.com/the-headache-of-crypto-colonialism
  16. Liqwid says it is on target to be live on day 1 after the Alonzo hardfork combinator event. https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1416363542975074305
  17. According to maximalists you’re apparently not allowed to be busy with your company authoring papers if you’re in Cardano. https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1415761569082789890
  18. The IOHK mid-month development update for July is out and available for viewing. https://youtu.be/U9K-8jILGcg
  19. Apparently “unsigned Phalices” are a thing in the Cardano ecosystem now. https://twitter.com/unsigned_algo/status/1416909454100992000
  20. The El Faro article reporting meetings between Cardano, Whizgrid of Cyprus, and the brothers of President Bukele of El Salvador definitely contain some extremely interesting details related to a possible Salvadorean national stablecoin by the end of the year and a possible digitization and blockchain storage of a wide range of government related documents next year. This could be huge!!!!!! https://elfaro.net/en/202107/el_salvador/25611/Bukele-Plans-to-Launch-a-National-Cryptocurrency-This-Year.htm
  21. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told regulators in the Presidents Working Group on Financial Markets that they must move quickly to regulate stablecoins. So, a Salvadorean market for stablecoins might be good for Cardano. https://www.reuters.com/technology/yellen-says-us-must-move-quickly-establish-stablecoin-rule-framework-2021-07-19/
  22. Notable news for upcoming Cardano DeFi projects. There may be slightly less competition in the “get a return on your crypto assets” game very soon. The New Jersey AG’s office has delivered a cease and desist letter to BlockFi. The AG’s press release cited BlockFi’s interest bearing deposit accounts as unregistered securities and also mentioned the lack of FDIC or SPIC insurance for it’s depositors. This leaves some lingering questions for Cardano DeFi projects that might be planning to accept deposits or other transfers of value and offering a return of sorts. You could argue that these projects are decentralized where BlockFi was not. But, the AG’s press release seems to cite decentralization as one of the risks of DeFi projects. Also, as a practical matter, there is a question whether decentralization will be a good shield from regulators since many of these projects have companies and real humans with faces and names behind them unlike a truly anonymous founder such as Satoshi Nakamoto. https://www.njoag.gov/new-jersey-bureau-of-securities-orders-cryptocurrency-company-blockfi-to-stop-offering-interest-bearing-accounts/ https://twitter.com/BlockFiZac/status/1417316834244796416
  23. EU is planning to introduce regulations on anonymous crypto wallets. This is a big deal. But, Cardano is probably more prepared than any with its identity solutions that could be used for KYC/AML. https://twitter.com/Wiiinnie/status/1417575921565978628
  24. Cardano didn’t come up in the Cathie Wood, Jack Dorsey, and Elon Musk panel discussion at “The B Word” event. But, given how Elon repeatedly shot down maximalist explanations for the shortcomings of proof-of-work chains in energy consumption and throughput, the whole thing ended up sounding like a long-form pitch for proof-of-stake and Cardano. Seriously, you should check it out. https://www.thebword.org/c/track-2-Bitcoin-As-A-Tool-For-Economic-Empowerment
  25. Gary Gensler, SEC Chair, indicates that crypto assets providing synthetic exposure to securities will be regulated as securities. This should be scary news for any Cardano projects that are aimed at exactly that! https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/gensler-remarks-aba-derivatives-futures-law-committee-virtual-mid-year-program-072121
  26. The mainstream press is suddenly realizing the behavioral economics tools that a central bank with CBDCs could wield. There is definitely a universe where this becomes a very dystopian and jarring introduction to virtual currencies for the mainstream. https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/1418168477429424135
  27. Wolfram CEO, John Woodard, drops a guest article with IOHK on NFT liveminting. The article seems to have a good amount of focus on the community building potential of NFTs. I think that could be a big growth area for the future. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/07/22/wolfram-and-cardano-build-communities-with-nfts-and-liveminting/
  28. IOHK has released its Conclave paper on collective stakepools. https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/742.pdf
  29. Here’s the IOHK Development Update for July 23! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1418635822987943939
  30. Cardano received some coverage in the Motley Fool as an eco-friendly crypto! https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/cryptocurrency/articles/4-eco-friendly-cryptos-you-should-know-about/
  31. Big lesson for future Cardano DeFi projects: Uniswap Labs just had to censor the Uniswap UI to ban synthetics of underlying securities. Bucket shops have been around for 150 years and illegal for 100 years. It turns out that you can’t do it in crypto either. https://twitter.com/Uniswap/status/1418697012095164420 https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1418961999539712006
  32. Check out this new video of the World Mobile Team on the ground in Zanzibar. Doesn’t this feel like a better mission for our ecosystem than DeFi? https://twitter.com/WorldMobileTeam/status/1419051567878221828
  33. Reports are coming in that Amazon plans to integrate Bitcoin, Cardano, ETH, & BCH in the very near future. This has apparently been a work in progress for several years. https://www.cityam.com/amazon-definitely-lining-up-bitcoin-payments-and-token-confirms-insider/
  34. Adam Dean brings us open source code to accept ADA in your Woo Commerce store. https://twitter.com/adamKDean/status/1419495005983371264
  35. Weiss Crypto has very good things to say about Cardano. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1419685634566938634
  36. Check out this new bot that tweets every time it discovers a Cardano Giveaway Scam! The tweets show ISP and geolocation info for the scammers. Follow this bot and report the scammers! Brought to us by @nicknikiforakis. Thanks for building this, Nick! https://twitter.com/CardanoPhishing
  37. The regulatory purge of stablecoins is getting into full swing now with Bloomberg running a piece on a DOJ criminal probe of the Tether founders. Of particular note for the Cardano ecosystem is that the first attack surface for regulators is the relationship of the stablecoin with legacy banking institutions. This is something that Cardano ecosystem stablecoin, Djed, may already fix with its own crypto backed reserve system. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-26/tether-executives-said-to-face-criminal-probe-into-bank-fraud?srnd=economics-vp
  38. Nami Wallet now allows you to mint NFTs for no extra fees (only Cardano network fees) inside the wallet. https://twitter.com/NamiWallet/status/1420031000017608717
  39. More pressure for Crypto regulation is coming to bear today in the U.S. This time it comes in the form of a letter from Senator Elizabethe Warren to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (in her position as Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council which brings together 10 different financial regulators including the SEC, CFTC, and the Federal Reserve). The letter was sent after a Senate Banking Committee hearing titled “Cryptocurrencies: What are they good for?” https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/elizabeth-warren-presses-yellen-financial-regulator-to-manage-crypto.html
  40. Stephen Wolfram does the first NFT liveminting event where he creates NFTs of cellular automata from the computational universe while live on stream. The first two created were “Crashing Waves” and “Down Arrows”. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1420087229104283656
  41. A new Cardano NFT Marketplace is now live and receiving a lot of attention. https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/1419655915226152961
  42. Project Catalyst now has 30k members! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1420474342253678599
  43. Emurgo has released an article about what we can expect from the Yoroi dApp Connector. https://emurgo.io/blog/emurgo-is-thrilled-to-announce-the-yoroi-dapp-connector
  44. Reports are coming in that the new bipartisan Infrastructure Bill contains new provisions that might require a whole host of actors within crypto ecosystems like Cardano to report transactions over $10k. https://www.coindesk.com/new-infrastructure-bill-looks-to-raise-30b-through-crypto-tax https://www.marketwatch.com/story/crypto-allies-rally-against-ignorant-new-tax-rules-in-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal-11627578844 https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1420724068286926853
  45. But this bill is an even bigger deal. If passed as-is, we can probably say RIP to the Wild West Era of crypto (2009-2021). https://beyer.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5307
  46. The July Cardano 360 can now be viewed on Youtube. https://youtu.be/AG5DspF9tuA
  47. John O’Connor was on SkyNews discussing the Ethiopian Ministry of Education project! He stressed that this was not a profit center for IOHK, and had a chance to refute the “crypto colonialism” strain of thought. https://vimeo.com/581137605
  48. We are kings of the github commits once again! https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1421138529908842502
  49. The differences between the currently dominant smart contract blockchain and Cardano’s upcoming smart contract architecture keep getting highlighted by dramatic failures of the former. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1421064543900418048
  50. Don’t forget that registration for the Cardano Summit is live. https://summit.cardano.org
  51. In case you missed the July Cardano 360 and don’t have a lot of time. Here is the always great Cardano 360 Mini! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1421803459997835266
  52. Reports are coming in that we’ve got final language from the crypto tax reporting piece of the Infrastructure Bill. It’s better but not great or even good. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1422002228102107142
  53. The Charles AMAs returned on August 1 after a brief break. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKY6VwVq02s
  54. A quarter million votes were cast in Catalyst Fund 5 voting! Apparently, this is over 10x what we saw in Fund 2. https://twitter.com/danny_cryptofay/status/1422253955816505345
  55. Here’s a very good read on one vision for prosperity via CBDC and how such a currency should interact with existing blockchains like Cardano. https://twitter.com/RealNatashaChe/status/1422270993498705921
  56. Cardano has been listed by Bitpoint in Japan! https://www.bitpoint.co.jp/news/info/info-2021080301/
  57. Senators Wyden and Toomey are trying to fix the crypto provisions in the Infrastructure Bill! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-03/crypto-rules-in-infrastructure-bill-eyed-for-bipartisan-rewrite
  58. SEC Chair Gensler gave another speech strongly signaling that a lot of stablecoins, lending platforms, synthetics platforms, and other DeFi projects are probably non-compliant in the eyes of the SEC. I would heed this warning very carefully if I were one of those projects. https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/gensler-aspen-security-forum-2021-08-03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tusQLLCgrDs
  59. The Yoroi Wallet is already making improvements in preparation for the dApp Connector release! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1422905221793996809
  60. We’re now up to 5 different states that are getting after BlockFi for their crypto lending activities. Reportedly, this includes New Jersey, Vermont, Alabama, Kentucky, & Texas. Probably relevant for those building lending solutions on Cardano. https://www.coindesk.com/blockfi-receives-fifth-cease-and-desist-from-kentucky-financial-regulator
  61. Charles dropped an update to let us know that Light Purple Alonzo will come next week. That will bring in exchange partners. Mid-month there will be an update with official dates given for a primary date and a fallback date for triggering the hardfork combinator event. The fallback date will likely be one epoch (five days later). Part of this depends on how the exchange partners are doing with their integrations. Charles says it looks like late August or the first week of September. There will be a live HFC party where they will deploy “some things” minutes after the HFC. The Plutus Application Backend (PAB) might be integrated on something like September 10th. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y261_eImsE
  62. Cardano’s closest competitor, Ethereum, carries out it’s EIP-1559 London Fork which creates a new transaction fee scheme including some burning of fees and a more predictable base fee with an additional tip option on top. While the long term impact is unclear, the immediate aftermath of the fork seems to be even higher fees. We’ll see if this is just due to high transaction volume at the moment. Of course, part of this is already solved by Cardano’s deterministic fee system enabled by its local state as opposed to the global state in the Ethereum system. https://twitter.com/Birdson64827145/status/1423324771303972867
  63. Senators Toomey, Wyden, & Lummis took to the Senate Floor to plead for a vote on their amendment which would fix the overly broad crypto tax reporting provisions in the Infrastructure Bill. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1423381402905726983 https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1423413806634577922
  64. The Toomey, Lummis, Wyden Amendment was then challenged by a competing amendment from Senators Warner, Portman, and Sinema which only excluded proof-of-work block validators and sellers of wallets from the tax reporting requirements. This terrible competing amendment was then immediately endorsed by the White House. This is a serious danger to our industry! Please call your Senators and ask them to support the Toomey/Wyden/Lummis Amendment! https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1423429377459736577 https://twitter.com/WardDPatrick/status/1423464991441702912
  65. Charles announces the Alonzo Purple testnet is out! Many new segments of partners and others will be onboarding with availability to any developer soon! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1423704788512952331 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTExHbqVHAM
  66. It turns out that Janet Yellen lobbied lawmakers on Thursday against the Wyden-Toomey-Lummis Amendment according to the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/06/crypto-bitcoin-infrastructure-senat
  67. Check out this awesome “12 Facts” style article about Alonzo from Sebastien Guillemot form dcSpark. https://medium.com/dcspark/do-you-know-what-is-included-in-cardanos-alonzo-hardfork-changes-96cde16a8305
  68. Senator Warner made not one but two revisions to his amendment to the crypto provisions in the Infrastructure Bill. Both revisions were good for Cardano since they included proof-of-stake implicitly and then explicitly. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424040216961114112 https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424074177770921992
  69. Both Gene Simmons and Ted Cruz came out in support of the competing Wyden-Lummis-Toomey Amendment to the Infrastructure Bill. Gene Simmons has previously revealed his Cardano purchases. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1424097173172637697
  70. After the Senate called it a day on the Infrastructure Bill Amendment debate, it sounded like there might have been some dealmaking going on among Wyden, Portman, Warner, and Toomey. The Senate will be back at it tomorrow at Noon. https://twitter.com/mikedebonis/status/1424143941914566659
  71. No agreement on an amendment to the crypto tax reporting provisions of the Infrastructure Bill materialized today. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424543439396429828
  72. Senator Lummis (a co-sponsor of the proposed crypto-friendly Toomey-Lummis-Wyden Amendment) is holding out hope that they may be able to get a vote on amendments tomorrow. https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1424556793506635776
  73. Charles is already planning a strategy for dealing with the bill once it’s in the House of Representatives. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1424561446973628421
  74. Very action packed day today (Aug 9). The Toomey-Lummis-Portman-Sinema came together and proposed a compromise amendment to the crypto tax reporting provisions in the Infrastructure Bill. They were not able to include any section for exclusion of developers from the “broker” definition but did cover the previous progress on transaction validators and wallet sellers. https://twitter.com/SenToomey/status/1424777137500864513
  75. Toomey-Lummis-Portman-Sinema sought the required unanimous consent, but their attempt was thwarted by a disagreement over $50 billion in defense spending. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424832132204138503
  76. Several co-chairs of the Blockchain Caucus have already written a letter to all the members of the House of Representatives letting them know of the dire need to fix these crypto provisions once the bill hits the House. https://twitter.com/RepTomEmmer/status/1424845416697323522
  77. There’s a new CIP to create an off-chain metadata standard from Matthias Benkort, Michael Peyton Jones, and Polina Vinogradova. https://twitter.com/_KtorZ_/status/1425162918363111425 https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/pull/112
  78. The Biggest Lobster Trap Harvest ever!!! A hacker decided to harvest over $600 million from the Polynetwork Bridge. We learned this lesson in the 2016 DAO Hack, but it’s really time that people stop giving up custody of their coins. https://twitter.com/ksatyarth2/status/1425140128784084994
  79. Senator Shelby laughably tried to claim he actually supported the crypto amendment in a tweet. The derision from the crypto community flowed like water out of the Amazon. https://twitter.com/SenShelby/status/1425142857199980550
  80. IOHK’s “Essential Cardano” list of projects keeps growing! https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md
  81. dcSpark is hiring for a few non-programmer positions. https://twitter.com/dcspark_io/status/1425490454787739649
  82. We got some coverage in Forbes over the Alonzo date reveal. https://twitter.com/ForbesCrypto/status/1425409227594555393
  83. Over $1 million in NFTs has now been sold on cnft.io. https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/1425550638507769859
  84. This graphic pretty much sums up all the Cardano criticism. https://twitter.com/SmaugPool/status/1425403742925565956
  85. Emurgo has published an article about the status of Yoroi as the Metamask of Cardano. https://emurgo.io/blog/yoroi-wallet-what-it-means-to-be-the-metamask-wallet-of-cardano
  86. We’ll get the August mid-Month Development Update today (Aug 13) and we’ll also find out the exact date for Alonzo! https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1425791321168568330
  87. Alonzo (smart contracts on mainnet) is scheduled for the 12th of September! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1426182060683796483
  88. The Cardano Ecosystem Infographics are still getting bigger and bigger. https://twitter.com/Coin98Analytics/status/1426051817876586499
  89. The rankings looked a little different today! https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1426331710107619328
  90. An insane amount of native assets have been issued on Cardano already. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1426692124448333826
  91. We may see treasury guidelines on the tax reporting provisions soon (as of Aug 14). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-13/treasury-seeks-to-quell-fears-crypto-tax-rules-are-overly-broad
  92. Senator Lummis is asking for requests if anyone wants to hear about what actually happened with the Senate mayhem. https://twitter.com/CynthiaMLummis/status/1426631432223481860
  93. The maximalists of other projects seem to be really loving us lately. https://twitter.com/Bquittem/status/1426639546616254469 https://twitter.com/novogratz/status/1426757593737879552 https://twitter.com/joebirks/status/1426920500249481220
  94. The Cardano Community breathes a collective sigh of relief that it doesn’t suffer from the incredibly high fees seen on Ethereum recently. https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1427006419463778307
  95. The Cardano treasury is getting unbelievably huge at almost $1 Billion! https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1426789664338284546
  96. Looks like 40% of crypto holders in Singapore have Cardano according to the Gemini 2021 Crypto in Singapore report. https://www.gemini.com/state-of-sg-crypto
  97. The Wyoming Blockchain Stampede will be going on at the same time as the Cardano Summit and in the preceding days. If you’re going to Wyoming, you may consider attending both. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1427316556476866561
  98. Apparently a “huge increase in user base” is responsible for the Yoroi downtime. That doesn’t sound all bad! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1427283658432417794
  99. The Plutus Mainnet Candidate has been released to the Node Team. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427359174220996612
  100. Weiss Crypto really loves the Cardano consensus protocol. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1427646299936014337
  101. Applications are now open to be a local Cardano Meet-Up host for the Cardano Summit 2020. https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1427309534226300928
  102. Anticipation for Cardano smart contracts keeps growing stronger as more and more ETH users are publicly venting frustration over fees and throwing their support behind Cardano. https://twitter.com/RandCorp_/status/1427473742742052865

~Army of Spies