Yesterday at the CogX conference, I sat in a room listening to companies pitch their blockchain based startups. Because I hate myself. One in particular caught my attention. On the surface it seems to solve an important economic problem - art forgery and provenance. By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain", Verisart will ✨hand wavy magic✨ increase the trust in art dealers and reduce fraud. That's a pretty neat idea. A distributed public ledger of who I have sold my art to. And, if …
Continue reading →
(A hastily written and grumpy post.) Another day, another Blockchain Bullshit project. Someone "claimed" one of my Tweets and added it to the Blockchain. I'm not particularly happy about that. Nor am I happy with the hoops I had to jump through to contact the company and remove my work. You can read the whole sorry thread on Twitter. But, mostly, I'm unhappy with this whole scammy "industry". Now my Tweet is an "NFT" - Non-Fungible Token - tradeable with other people for cold-hard-cash. …
Continue reading →
A few weeks ago, someone wanted to send me some crypto. After spending months studying for a Blockchain exam, I usually avoid such things. But, hey, $20 is $20. So I signed up for a wallet, installed an extension, verified my credentials, saved a seed phrase, and - without too much technical fuss - had some crypto transferred to my account. So far, so good. Compared to a traditional financial institution it had some advantages - there were no KYC checks or ID verification requirements. But…
Continue reading →
When I was young, I had a piggy bank. A piggy bank is incredibly secure. It's fairly big - so it is hard to lose. It is brightly coloured - so you can find it easily. No one else can see how much money there is in there. The only way to get money out is to smash it - providing visible evidence if someone has robbed you. And smashing makes a noise - deterring would-be thieves. A piggy bank is close to perfect security. If you are seven and your adversary is a younger sibling. Storing your own …
Continue reading →
In the early days of the web, I used to go hunting for Beatles Bootlegs. I scoured forums, emailed dodgy geezers, and swapped poorly encoded RealAudio™ files on USENET. The Beatles had recently released their Anthology series, and us nerds were desperate to hear more unreleased goodies. Sure, there were rarities and out-takes, but we wanted more. We wanted Ultra Rare tracks. That one song no one had ever heard since it was first recorded. Digital music is now done. There is nothing more w…
Continue reading →
Kevin Kelly has written an insightful blog post about Class 1 / Class 2 Problems. I encourage you to read it. I agree with the thesis, but not the specific conclusion. Blockchain tech could unleash collaborations of several million members working on one project in real time, or orgs that are far more leaderless than today. How? Projects like the Linux Kernel already have thousands of contributors - it may well be the largest, most distributed successful tech project. But it's not clear…
Continue reading →
Dear the venture capitalists. I am a very charming white man and am prepared to drop out of university if you'll invest in these ideas. In the future, all your clothes are an NFT. "Wow! I love your blouse." "Thanks, here's a smart contract showing where I purchased it from. If you buy one, I get 10% of the sale price back in WoolworthsCoin." Applause Tokens™. A smart monitor under your theatre seat detects how long (and how loud) you applaud for. Remember, the more enthusiastic you are a…
Continue reading →
I blog about my solar panels - probably a bit too much! Recently, a reader asked me if I'd heard of Rowan Energy's solar payback scheme - so I took a look into it. Here's how it works: Rowan installer a "miner" next to your solar inverter (the big box that turns DC from solar panels into AC for home use). The "miner" monitors how much electricity you produce and reports it back via your home Internet connection. The readings are written onto a blockchain. Rowan pays you 10p per kWh your…
Continue reading →
Here's a (possibly) daft idea. What if you could pay for goods using a transferable bank account? Say you want to pay a friend some money. But you're not physically close enough to hand over cash. You create a new bank account with a unique username and password. As quickly and easily as getting a new email address. Couple of clicks and it is done. You move money from your main account into the new account. This happens instantly and is free. A property of these accounts is that anyone…
Continue reading →
As previously discussed, I'm doing the Certified Blockchain Professional course. It is self-directed learning, so I'm going through it at my own pace. In order to consolidate my learning, and help organise my thoughts, I'm blogging about my reflections on each module. These are mostly notes to myself - but I hope if you find something interesting (or incorrect) that you'll leave a comment. Module 1 is huge. It is also fairly light on details. This means that there is no central controller in …
Continue reading →
One of the problems with the BlockChain goldrush is that it attracts a lot of people who don't necessarily have the required technical skill to safely run a service. This in turn reduces trust in the ecosystem. I'd like to discuss ArtChain.info - "Certifying Art Using the Bitcoin Blockchain" - and the some of the security issues I found there. XSS This is one of those simple bugs which every web developer should be aware of and be able to defend against. A site should properly escape…
Continue reading →
NB: The bit about NFT and smart contracts is at the end. As I discussed yesterday, being able to resell digital art via an NFT means that the price of art falls to zero. Let's assume that I'm correct and, through a combination of technology and changing social attitudes, no one wants to pay for music, books, films, or art any more. What are the ways that art and artists could get funded? Here are a few sketched out ideas - they all overlap a little. And then a brief discussion about how…
Continue reading →
