ICONLOOP:

 ICONLOOP signed a Collaboration Arrangement with ITU (International Telecommunication Union), which is the United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technologies, to establish a high-level framework of cooperation in the area of the ITU Smart Incubator Programme with the aim of providing support and know-how on blockchain related technologies to the global start-up ecosystems.

The ITU is the United Nations’ oldest specialized agency, and is responsible for “issues that concern information and communication technologies.” Among other things, the ITU’s responsibilities include coordinating usage of radio spectrum and satellite orbits, as well as assisting in the development of global technical standards. As part of its Smart Incubator Programme, which aims to assist AI, blockchain, and IoT startups, the ITU has chosen ICONLOOP as its blockchain knowledge partner. Let that sink in for one moment. The ITU, which focuses on global technical standards in the information and communications realm has selected ICONLOOP as its blockchain knowledge partner. This collaboration is likely a direct result from ICONLOOP’s recruitment of Josh Choi, the ITU’s former Programme Lead, and it makes sense from a technological perspective as well. ICONLOOP is essentially the private implementation department of ICON, a public blockchain project that is all about interoperability and facilitating communication across blockchains.

ICONLOOP plans to support the growth and expansion of start-up businesses in African developing countries through pilot projects with a focus on 3 core pillars: technical know-how, business development, and outreach and networking. As part of the incubation programme, ICONLOOP will support the startups through offering access to its industry network to increase awareness and offer opportunities to secure investment through large blockchain events and marketing.

The focus on developing African countries is a change of pace for ICONLOOP, a company that is mostly known for its extensive blockchain integration pilots in South Korea. It’s great to see ICONLOOP expanding outside Korea, and I think a number of positive things will result from this collaboration with the ITU. Developing nations are by definition, developing. In most cases, this means banking and regulatory frameworks are not as well developed as nations like the USA, UK, Japan, etc. As a result, these kinds of environments may be more favorable to new technologies coming in and shaking things up. If the blockchain pilots in these developing countries do work out, it would be a huge win for the overall industry in general, and could go a long way to legitimizing blockchain as a truly usable technology around the world.

While ICONLOOP’s collaboration with the ITU doesn’t have a large effect on the public ICON blockchain in the short term, the magnitude of this development over the longterm cannot be understated. As the ITU’s exclusive blockchain knowledge partner for the Smart Incubator Programme, ICONLOOP will have the ability to make a direct impact on startups coming through the program. This is yet another example of ICONLOOP strategically working with partners around the world to develop real use cases for blockchain technology – use cases that may very well require an interoperability layer like the public ICON blockchain in the future.

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Abram Cookson:

No delay, no misses. Estimates are estimates, the more we know the more accurate they become. This has nothing to do with the skill or working hours. If you want me to post a fake deadline I’m not going to do it. We’ve never as a dev team stated anything regarding dates until we began in January offering show and tells. Everyone is an expert predicting when things can be done until they have to do it themselves. No over promises, we are just showing the data every week and will continue to do so. Some weeks we will have little movement, other weeks we will see massive increase in completed work. If you look at the past 3 weeks (16, 13, 18). It will fluctuate.

According to Substratum’s most recent “Show & Tell,” SubstratumNode’s V1 release is still 18 weeks away. Considering last week’s estimate was 13 weeks, it appears that Substratum’s estimations, along with everything else about the project, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Substratum CIO Abram Cookson’s response to the new 18 week estimate is comical. Despite CEO Justin Tabb’s continuous V1 release date shilling since December 2017, Cookson claims the Substratum dev team has never “stated anything regarding dates” until very recently. This statement is all you need to make a judgement on the quality of the Substratum executive team. Instead of admitting that Justin Tabb is a spokesperson for the entire company, including the “dev team,” Cookson downplays the s***show that is Substratum, throws the Justin Tabb under the bus, and tells a white lie to remind the brainwashed Substratum community that everything is okay.

Is everything really okay?

Substratum has 4,399 ETH left in the bank. Based on today’s ETH prices, that’s enough money for 6-8 months of operation. With the current estimate of 18 weeks (4.5 months), Substratum would theoretically have 2-4 months to completely turn the company’s financial situation around. Gambling on the success of SubstratumNode is extremely risky for three reasons.

1. The network’s native payment token, SUB, sees ~$20,000 in daily trading volume on small exchanges like COSS and HitBTC. Substratum won’t be able to do anything with its huge stash of SUB unless the token magically gets listed on large exchanges and captures the attention of market makers and traders within weeks after the release of V1.
2. SubstratumNode may have a use case, but essentially no one knows about it. Substratum’s target markets include China, Russia, and other heavily censored parts of the world. How are those people going to find out about SubstratumNode? How are those people going to purchase SUB to pay for usage of SubstratumNode? No usage, no revenue.
3. Even if the idea catches on, it’ll take time to ramp up the network. Time is something Substratum as a company doesn’t have much of. Things would be very different if Substratum had $5 million sitting in USD. Unfortunately, the executive team gambled away most of the company’s initial funding by holding it in the world’s most volatile asset class. How’s that for proper financial management?

Nah, everything’s not okay.

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I’ve literally visited Japan dozens of times over the last few years, but never in April. Now that I live in Tokyo, I was finally able to experience the cherry blossom frenzy at Shinjuku Gyoen (新宿御苑) firsthand.

ICON Foundation:

ICON’s public blockchain used by Seoul Citizens Hall — appointing 162 members of its ‘Policy Communications Team’, another use-case of blockchain based public certificates.

As a followup to the recent collaboration with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, ICON revealed that the Seoul Citizens Hall has appointed its Policy Communications Team on the ICON blockchain. The 162 appointments come in the form of timestamped ICX transactions with an embedded certificate image in the data field, and can be found here.

In ICON’s previous demonstration with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, appointments in plain text format were recorded on the ICON blockchain. This time around, the Seoul Citizens Hall has embedded images into ICX transaction data fields. This is done by running images through a base64 encoder, which effectively turns an image file (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc.) into a long string of text. The base64-encoded string below is used to render the Twitter icon you see on the top left hand corner of this page.

data:image/png;base64,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

The significance of this development is twofold.

1. Regarding ICON, this collaboration with the Seoul Citizens Hall is yet another example of two of ICON’s biggest strengths – networking and finding use cases for its public chain. As a result of this demonstration, more than 160 people are going to go home and tell their family and friends about how their appointment to the Policy Communications Team was recorded on the ICON public blockchain.
2. Regarding general public blockchain usage, timestamping images is a legitimate use case because it allows users to store tamperproof documents, receipts, and even important photographs “forever”.

If you’re interested in timestamping an image on the ICON blockchain, here’s how you can do it in four simple steps.

1. If necessary, resize the image file so it’s under 200KB in size.
2. Run the image file through a base64 encoder.
3. Make an ICX transaction with the ICONex wallet, and paste the encoded data string in the data field.
4. View your transaction on the ICON tracker.

Here’s an ICX transaction showing a photo I took at the park yesterday.

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Jem Turner:

pipdig, one of the biggest WordPress theme providers to bloggers, is distributing code dressed up as the “pipdig Power Pack” plugin which amongst other things:

A great post by Jem. I highly recommend giving it a read if you’re a pipdig customer or just someone who’s interested about how easy it is for a theme provider to inject b***shit into your WordPress site. In short, here’s what pipdig does with your site.

• Uses your site to issue DDoS attacks on competitors.
• Change links in your WordPress database to point to pipdig.com.
• Violates GDPR laws.
• Disables other plugins without asking you first.

The story doesn’t end there though. Regarding that last point, Nicky Bloor discovered that pipdig disables Bluehost’s and SiteGround’s caching plugins, and then prompts users with a message that reads, “Is your host slowing you down?”. Disgusting behavior from pipdig. I hope they lose customers over this.

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We took the Hokuriku Shinkansen to Karuizawa for a few days of R&R last week. Since we usually take the Tokaido Shinkansen, we decided to splurge for Gran Class this time around. The seats were very comfortable, and the cabin resembled that of an airplane – definitely a step up from our usual Green Car experience. It’s a shame that the journey to Karuizawa only lasted an hour.

ICONLOOP:

April 1st, Seoul  —  ICONLOOP has integrated its blockchain technology to SBI Savings Bank’s personal authentication service. ‘SBI Simple Authentication,’ the first blockchain-based authentication service launched in the Korean savings bank industry is now open to public.

SBI Savings Bank is a leading savings bank in South Korea with over $6.5 billion in assets. It is majority-owned by SBI Group, one of the largest financial services companies in Japan. ICONLOOP’s cooperation with SBI Savings Bank to build an authentication product is incredible news, but shouldn’t come as a surprise to followers of the ICON project

In a press release dated September 12, 2017, SBI Group announced a collaboration with DAYLI Intelligence to build financial service solutions using distributed ledger technology. Since DAYLI Intelligence is under the same corporate umbrella as ICONLOOP, it’s no surprise that loopchain, the engine that powers both ICONLOOP private chains and the ICON public chain, was the blockchain technology of choice for SBI Savings Bank’s consumer-facing personal authentication service.

Together, ICONLOOP and SBI Savings Bank have developed SBI Simple Authentication, a service that is now available for user in the bank’s mobile app. The new system allows users to use a PIN number or fingerprint “without a public certificate, security card, or one-time password (OTP).” Instead of authenticating user identification information through a central certificate authority, SBI Simple Authentication “stores” PIN and fingerprint information through node consensus, and uses a smart contract developed with ICONLOOP’s SCORE to verify data integrity.

From a user experience perspective, SBI Simple Authentication is a giant leap in the right direction. Previously, certificate issuance in Korea was handled via centralized certificate authorities, and the process of authentication for using financial services was literally a blast from the past. In order to access basic financial services, including online shopping, residents of Korea were bound to an outdated certificate authentication system powered by an ActiveX plugin.

Never heard of ActiveX? That’s not surprising at all. ActiveX was a plugin standard developed by Microsoft to extend the functionality of Internet Explorer, a once-popular web browser that now only accounts for 5% of usage worldwide. So, where is ActiveX now? It’s unsupported by Microsoft’s own Edge browser – that’s all you need to know.

SBI Simple Authentication is a positive development for all parties involved. SBI will have “noteworthy cost savings,” while users will no longer have to fiddle with Internet Explorer and outdated ActiveX plugins. The latter point is very significant because it effectively reduces the level of friction in the financial transaction process. Imagine a world where you have to hunt down a computer with Internet Explorer installed every time you needed to make an online purchase or bank transfer. Now, imagine a world where you don’t have to do any of that. Which world would you rather live in?

ICONLOOP has been working with SBI Savings Bank since November of 2018 to certify electronic documents, as well as to provide blockchain-based authentication services. SBI Savings Bank employees are currently uploading file attachments from SBI Groupware boxes, such as draft documents and official notices, to a blockchain-based document certification system.

Timestamping is a legitimate use case of blockchain technology, which ICON has recently demonstrated in a collaboration with the Seoul Metropolitan Government on the public ICON chain. For now, SBI’s timestamping and document certification doesn’t appear to involve ICON’s public chain, though according to the press release, public chain use cases may arise in the future. I don’t view this as a negative for supporters of the public ICON chain, and I certainly don’t subscribe to the ideology that ICON is somehow insulated from ICONLOOP’s success and more importantly, business connections. ICONLOOP has a foot in the door with one of the largest financial services providers in the world. With this in mind, it only makes sense to push adoption of the public ICON chain, well, when it makes sense.

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Jeremy Wall, writing for Invest in Blockchain:

The latest development to come out of the crypto-friendly nation is from the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) who will soon enable Japanese commuters and tourists alike to pay for their journeys with a variety of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

If you’ve visited Japan, chances are you’ve found yourself on a train operated by one of the companies in the Japan Railways Group (JR Group). JR East is the largest company in the JR Group, and currently operates a number of regional and high-speed Shinkansen lines that together boast a ridership of over 6 billion passengers per year. In other words, JR East is a pretty big deal.

So, here’s the story. JR East is supposedly working with Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), one of the country’s largest network service providers, to “enable customers to pay in cryptocurrencies with their Suica smartcard” with crypto to fiat liquidity provided by DeCurret, a Japan-based exchange that was recently cleared for operation by the JFSA.

Suica is a prepaid cash card that can be used at train stations, restaurants, convenience stores, and more. Millions of people in Japan use Suica cards on a daily basis, and it’s very much apart of daily life – especially in Tokyo. I was out all day today, and the only form of payment I used was my Suica card.

Once again, I think this development is interesting because it could potentially change public perception of crypto and transform it into a legitimate form of payment for normal people. If anything, it would definitely expose more people to crypto vocabulary like Bitcoin and Ethereum. What I don’t understand at the moment is how this crypto integration is going to work UX-wise.

1. Will Suica users be able to reload their cards using crypto?
2. Will Suica users be able to pay with crypto through their Suica cards?

These two use cases are radically different. The only similarity is that I don’t see either use case resulting in mainstream adoption of crypto.

1. Why would the average person choose to reload their Suica card with crypto? The process of loading crypto onto a Suica card adds an additional layer of friction, and I’m not sure where the transaction would take place for physical Suica card users who don’t have smartphones. For NFC Suica card users, topping up is literally a one click process in the Apple Wallet app – no need to deal with addresses, exchange rates, etc.
2. Similarly, why would the average person choose to pay in crypto through their Suica cards? How will people be able to choose which form of payment to use? Suica terminals are in hundreds of train stations around the country, and they’re not equipped with any sort of touch interface.

The only way I can see this catching on is if JR East incentivizes Suica users to pay with crypto via discounts or rewards. Since JR East is an investor in DeCurret, incentivizing Suica users to pay with crypto could provide a liquidity pool for the exchange – a powerful tool that can be leveraged to provide traders with highly liquid markets that generate enough revenue through trading fees to offset the costs of incentivizing Suica users to use crypto.

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Cloudflare is a popular service that offers DNS, CDN, security services, and more. It is often used by WordPress site owners to speed up and secure their websites. By default, Cloudflare automatically caches static assets like CSS, JS, and images. With a little extra work, Cloudflare can also be configured to “cache everything,” which means a static HTML copy of your website will be cached and served from Cloudflare’s extensive network of data centers around the world. In this post, you’ll learn more about Cloudflare’s “full page cache” feature, and if it’s a good option for your WordPress site.

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The Tokyo 2020 Olympic torch is stunning. Bravo. The design is inspired by the cherry blossom, and apparently shares the same “aluminum extrusion technology” that’s used to build Japan’s Shinksansen (bullet trains). Regarding the torch’s physical material, the aluminum was sourced from temporary housing that was built after the Great East Japan Earthquake. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about this torch – amazing and meaningful design.

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