Decentralization — a new step of media evolution

The development of media has accelerated dramatically during the last 120 years. The first big revolution of the media was the radio, as it made instant communication possible. With the emergence of TV, information became visible. Following the media, the way we perceive and produce information changed dramatically. As H.M. McLuhan said, “the media is the message” — and he couldn’t have put it better.

Once the TV won all people’s hearts, it opened Pandora’s box of all kinds of media manipulation. From direct — like advertising and propaganda — to indirect — like fake news, manipulations with images and videos. These phenomena became one of the key features of the cold war period, and they keep going until now. No wonder that Barry Levinson’s “Wag the Dog” got two “Oscars” and three “Golden Globes”.

However, time is relentless, and now the TV is already outdated. The internet, which was, by the way, predicted by H.M. McLuhan in the 1960s, is the new media world dominator. In the early 2000s, everybody became a newsmaker thanks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, so that user generated content (UGC) evolved. You could have expected that this would lead to more transparency and honesty in the media. In some sense, this is true. But there are two sides of this coin.

Nobody moderates UGC. Nobody checks the facts. As against traditional media, the piece of news generated by a regular person doesn’t have to pass an editor before reaching general public. Anyone can publish anything, in the worst sense of these words. Fraudulent and dishonest information have become an integral part of our media consumption.

The problem of deceptive information becomes utterly urgent when it comes to money. Here comes the innovation of the decade: the blockchain. With the invention of the decentralized technology, a completely new market emerged. The ICO — initial coin offering — allows any person to raise funds for his/her project. On the other side, any person can now become an investor and receive the project’s “digital assets” (tokens) by taking part in the crowdsale.

One of the key features of this new market is its poor regulation. Since anyone can invest in anything, no one is responsible for the security of this investment. No wonder that a lot of scam projects emerged very soon. As a natural consequence, the blockchain community invented self-regulation mechanisms: escrow agents, trust criteria, etc. Nevertheless, the number of scams continues to rise with the growth of the market. The information about people and projects is dispersed and often cannot be verified. Dishonest articles, fake news and other manipulative media activities have become part of the blockchain world’s everyday life.

The blockchain community has a fascinating ability of self-regulation. When there is a problem, someone finds a solution and launches a corresponding project. This is exactly the case of CLOUT.

CLOUT is a project that aims to solve the problem of dishonest information in the blockchain world. The blockchain based platform allows users to share and evaluate content. When someone posts a piece of news, other users can approve or disapprove it, in case that the information is inaccurate or misleading. This feedback is reflected in the user’s rating. Consequently, authors that post fraudulent information, will be penalized by the community and the platform. On the contrary, people that post useful stuff will be rewarded. Besides, CLOUT users will be able to chat with each other, comment on posts and enjoy other typical social media activities. This makes CLOUT a one-stop-shop for all information related to the blockchain and cryptocurrency market and, most important, a community self-regulation tool.

The blockchain technology makes the process transparent and advantageous for honest content creators. All users will be rewarded in CLC, CLOUT’s daughter token, based on quality of platform interaction. Posting, commenting, upvoting and being a part of the “crowd wisdom voting polls” all earn users CLC. This system ensures that only high quality posts, comments, and ICO’s rise to the forefront of the platform. CLC is the fuel that runs the Network, CLOUT tokens are what generate CLC.

Behind CLOUT is a star-pledged team of founders and advisors. Sean Kirtz, Founder and President, is a renowned entrepreneur and fintech solution architect. He has solid experience in assessing and managing blockchain based projects and ICOs. One of the key founders, Henry Wang, is a prominent person in the blockchain business. He is Founder of International Blockchain Application Federation. The recent venture of Henry Wang, Smart Mesh, has recently sold out 99% of the tokens offered for ICO. Another dominant name is that of CLOUT’s Advisor, David Cohen, one of the pioneers of the decentralized technology. David was a member during the IOTA Token Cryptocurrency launch, which broke all previous records reaching a $1.7. Asian markets seem to be a priority for CLOUT: Jay Kim, CEO and Founder of ICO Schedule, is an Advisor as well.

CLOUT’s team is remarkable for being truly international, since it is formed by professionals from different states and even continents. The team and advisory board features members from the U.S., Europe, Australia, Russia, South Korea, Japan and China.

The project was started from scratch just a few months ago but rocketed up thanks to the team’s efforts. CLOUT has launched its ICO on the 17th of November and is now progressing with platform development. The project is to be listed on one of the world’s major exchanges in February 2018.

The initiative of CLOUT shows a great example of the market’s community self-regulation. It does not only stand for a media for all crypto enthusiasts regardless their experience, but provides for highly important mechanisms, such as information verification and ratings. With the help of blockchain technology, the CLOUT team is building a new type of media, combining three major trends: decentralization, social media and user generated content. This might be the first project of the absolutely new type of media, that might some day — in fact, very soon — lead to another leap in the media technology. Just like TV and the internet in the early days.

https://medium.com/@CLOUT_Official/decentralization-a-new-step-of-media-evolution-7b4bc64bc22b

[Partnerships] Hive Project to Use InsurePal`s Social-Proof Methodology

InsurePal shares a vision in which blockchain soon becomes the first choice of masses, recognizing all the more useful solutions that give added value to users and don`t feed hungry corporations. Therefore, already at the present stage we are doing what we believe is a necessity fort the bloom of crypto economy.

We are always looking for like-minded supporters, partners, visionaries, advisors, experts and good projects with solid foundation to connect. Conversations and constructive proposals are all essential ingredients of the new alternative ecosystem that is already laying the foundation for the current economy which no longer serves the need of the users, but only feeds itself.

One such project is the Hive Project (HVN), the first blockchain based platform providing ŞMEs worldwide fast and lowcost liquidity — and winner of “Best ICO 2017” at CoinAgenda Global in Barcelona — which we met in San Francisco, exchanged ideas and found that there are a lot of shared points between us. We will cooperate with them in order to run InsurePal patent-pending social proof methodology on their platform in the very near future.

https://medium.com/insurepal-blog/partnerships-hive-project-to-use-insurepal-s-social-proof-methodology-9625ff595021

New Year’s Special Gift
https://medium.com/@swissborg/new-years-special-gift-ba8ab8b9b3d5

We wish you Happy Holidays, and we would like to thank everyone for joining the SwissBorg Community this year with a special gift — AN EXTRA 10% BONUS on the total amount of tokens contributed as of 23:59 on December 31st.

BitcoinWhite is the future of the Crypto-currency
https://medium.com/@bitcoinwhite777/bitcoinwhite-is-the-future-of-the-crypto-currency-f937e8124c9e

Did not have time to buy Bitcoin and get rich? Anxiously taking notice of the growth price of Bitcoin and imagining what you could buy for those lost money.

Forget it, please! If catch luck with bitcoin is not in your power now, it’s best time to switch to something new… Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce new improved version of Bitcoin — BitcoinWhite! Now BitcoinWhite is at the beginning of it’s way, so costs of coins is minimal. Despite this, many advantages of this platform will give odds to any competitor on crypto-market.

Briefly about them:
1. Fast transactions;
2. Minimum and fixed fees;
3. Full privacy;
4. Ability to create own decentralized applications;
Stop making the same mistakes again and again, guys! Catch your lucky chance right now! BitcoinWhite is the future of the Crypto-currency, your future!

Retail Cap is Exceeded During the Token Sale!

Next steps of a company that has carried out one of the 20 leading token sales of all time

The project received support from 5 752 contributors from 123 countries. During the token sale, BANKEX has successfully collected $66 600 000. It is roughly 150% of our expected Retail Cap. Thank you very much for your warm support.

This amount is sufficient to implement all the technologies that we announced in BANKEX roadmap for the next few years. We will continue to push ahead with the integration of blockchain technologies into traditional finance
https://blog.bankex.org/retail-cap-is-exceeded-during-the-token-sale-fa1e0e781981

Hi, today I upgraded the rating to a member, please change in the table of participants

Airfox Bi-Weekly Update-December 22, 2017

Hello everyone and happy holidays from the Airfox Team!

The last few months of 2017 have been extremely busy around the office as we prepare for the Q1 2018 product launch! All hands are on deck as we work to ensure a successful introduction of our mobile app into the Brazilian market. This past week an Airfox community member asked a great question in our Discord Chat Channel that was worth sharing! They wanted to know why Airfox has set the product launch for Q1 as opposed to a specific day or month. There will be multiple phases of our product release, in the event we have more than one product launch we want to be able to include it in the quarter it was launched.

Annual Business Strategy Update — Our CEO, Victor will aim to address a majority of these questions in our Annual Business Strategy Update. This update will take place over YouTube Live at 3:00pm EST on Friday, January 5th, 2018. Victor will share the company’s performance throughout the prior year and provide a comprehensive strategic plan for the upcoming year. This strategic plan will include a high-level breakdown on how the firm aims to accomplish these goals. As the date approaches, we will post a link to the different Airfox media channels to let everyone know how to join.

Partnerships — The Business Development team is on pace to close partnerships that will enable our Q1 2018 product launch. Below are the different types of partnerships we aim to work with:

Product — These particular partnerships will be on-boarded to provide a more seamless and efficient experience to our app users. We’re committed to constantly expanding the functionality and capabilities of our app and we know that teaming up with the correct product partners will be vital to accomplishing this.
Marketing — User acquisition will be an ongoing focus for Airfox. We want to hit the ground running and a great way to do this is to leverage various marketing partnerships located in our target market. This encompasses working with mainstream brands in the local country to promote our products/services.
Blockchain — Blockchain technology is an integral part of our product and is a major contributing factor to our competitive advantage. We’ll constantly look to partner with other blockchain companies to expand our service and product capabilities.
As we continue to serve the Brazilian market, we will make product and service changes according to what our users want and need. We constantly aim to integrate our product and services into the daily lives of the unbanked and underbanked Brazilians.

https://medium.com/@AirFox/airfox-bi-weekly-update-december-22-2017-6aff38e3c354

Zcoin Update 23 December 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oESN6l2Gad8

AUC Token Model: How it works

We have recently updated our website and whitepaper to follow the changes made in our business model and go-to-market strategy. In this post, we want to present a more detailed description of the AUC token model: purpose, roles and features.



The Auctus Platform will provide users with the tools and services needed to achieve their retirement goals faster. The fundamental purpose of the AUC Token is to provide a result-oriented, transparent and low fee structure, aligning the interest of human and robo advisors with savers’ goals and ensuring transparency. The multi-purpose token was designed to fuel the platform and create a balanced ecosystem. Its main roles will be the following

https://blog.auctus.org/auc-token-model-how-it-works-a225c81af269

Key Benefits of Aigang DAO Insurance Protocol

How often will you contact the representatives of your insurance company? 3 to 4 times a year? Most of us will contact the insurance company only if there is a claim as the premiums can be paid online easily. So, the Insurance sector needs improvisation and innovation in mainly two areas which are given below

https://steemit.com/blockchain/@danizaharie/key-benefits-of-aigang-dao-insurance-protocol

How to earn passive revenue by simply taking control of your data

https://hackernoon.com/how-to-earn-passive-revenue-by-simply-taking-control-of-your-data-ece508202338
We have touched upon the inherent need for data a couple of times over the last few months. There have been a few data powerhouses entering the blockchain space at the moment. All of them jostling to be the organisation to put profits made from data into the hands of you and me, the creators of it.

Community Update — December 22nd

https://medium.com/@BlockCAT/community-update-december-22nd-54cc4e19304d
There’s no doubt about it: 2017 has been an incredible year for BlockCAT. We successfully completed our token sale, opened our new office, hired an incredible team and launched our contract simulator in a matter of months.

With our first contract simulation deployed, and the holiday season fast approaching, our team has been wrapping up projects this week so we can wind down and spend some quality time with our loved ones next week.

Social Media Today Predictions for 2018 [Infographic]

This past year was a hot year for the social media marketing world, especially for content creators.

Video, in particular, quickly swept over all social platforms and became a main focus for many marketers. And as content production is on the rise, consumer attention spans are on a fast decline. This leaves the rest of us in a constant battle to produce relevant, high-quality, captivating content in quick snippets. That's how short-form (10-30 second) videos have taken over social media in 2017.

That's only one of many trends we saw sprout up in 2017, but what should we be expecting in 2018?

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/social-media-today-predictions-for-2018-infographic/513179/

WeTrust Community Update — December 22, 2017

Welcome to a special holiday edition of the WeTrust update. The entire WeTrust Team would like to wish our amazing community a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Habari Gani to our friends celebrating Kwanzaa, and a Happy Holidays to everyone! In the spirit of the holiday season, we have a special gift for our community, read on to find out what it is!

We recently celebrated the holidays with a team dinner at Scratch in downtown Mountain View. See if you can recognize some familiar faces from WeTrust in the photo below.

https://blog.wetrust.io/wetrust-community-update-december-22-2017-7c873691c296

E-CHAT ANNOUNCES FIRST EVER BEAUTY AND FASHION PAGEANT, MISS E-CHAT 2017

Miss e-Chat 2017 welcomes all the contestants from the famous Miss Earth 2017 pageant to be elected as our beauty queen using the world’s most secure and transparent Blockchain-based voting system. The election contest is programmed for December 25th.

All active members of the e-Chat community are welcome to participate in the voting process. Please find the unique code at your and use it to claim access to our Blockchain-based voting system.

The winner of Miss e-Chat 2017 pageant will be awarded the main prize – the Miss e-Chat 2017 Crown and the title of e-Chat Ambassador alongside with worldwide promotion to top world fashion magazines covers.

We certainly don’t want any woman to feel left out or underappreciated during the holidays, or really ever. Therefore we are presenting every contestant an opportunity to join our fundraising and get the remuneration using our referral system! Feel free to support your favorite contestant since we are sending out a batch of latest iPhone X to the winners of the referral competition.

https://investors.echat.io/news/article/392

An abnormal Bitcoin network congestion is causing delays in moving bitcoin funds on the network, which is presently affecting Globitex clients' withdrawals. This situation is endemic on the core bitcoin network. https://twitter.com/globitex_/status/943510908969644032

Qtum Community Bounties



There are some services that we would like to outsource to the community in order to bring value to the ecosystem. We could build a lot of these ourselves, but there is a lot of talent within the Blockchain developer community we can utilize. All of the services listed will be third party, as in, they provide value to the end user. These will not affect the daily operation of the Qtum decentralized Blockchain in any way.

Any work submitted must be open sourced, public, and be open sourced. There must always be an emphasis on supporting Qtum Decentralized Applications, as in, each service should have an area for them to promote their brand. Participants in this bounty program may run 1 advertisement on their site (unless otherwise specified), anything above that will make them ineligible for payment.

This blog post will become a living document, as in, people who claim bounties will have their alias (or real identity)published here. Anyone wishing to claim a bounty must prove they are capable of doing so. Ownership of a Github/Bitbucket is good enough, but if that is not possible, please get in touch with us.

Bounty participants must prove they are competent system’s administrators. These services must be hosted on elastic servers, capable of 2000 daily visits minimum. If a service becomes very popular, and requires a server/VPS costing more than $20.00 per month, you may host 1 additional banner to cover these costs.

Incumbent Qtum service providers may claim bounties. This means if you have already developed a service for Qtum listed on this document, you must expand the functionality above and beyond what is listed here to be eligible for payment. For example, if you already host a block explorer, you must create custom functionality in addition to what you have already hosted to receive payment.

Payments will be made monthly, over a period of 5 months. Participants will receive 20% owed to them each month, provided the service maintains the requirements. Due dates will be 30 days after claiming the bounty, the Qtum nodes are required within 14 days. Payments are only made if the product is delivered, no exceptions allowed. Each month, the participant must coordinate with the bounty manager to receive payment.

To claim a bounty, please leave a comment on this Medium post. You will need to join the Qtum Discord channel to discuss it with a staff member. We will use this document to keep track of progress.

https://blog.qtum.org/qtum-community-bounties-289c476ed686

AirSwap Singapore Meetup 12/14

AirSwap co-founder, Michael Oved, discusses our progress and demos our public beta (https://trade.airswap.io/) in Singapore.
Relive and watch ovedm606 talk about our progress & roadmap and showcase our public beta in our Singapore meetup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoR0UAze7TI

DAO.Casino Development Update November — December 2017

In this article DAO.Casino team will share the results of the development and research of the last two months with our community. Throughout this time, we conducted an academic study of the RSA cryptographic algorithm, resulting in the RSA contract being adapted for implementation in the Dice game. Now we are ready to undergo an external audit of Signidice algorithm, followed up by official PRNG certification. Such certification is a key point on the path to the mainnet. We doubled the stability of opening and closing of the Game Channels. An alpha version of the Gamedev Toolkit was created, including documentation, examples and video (partially in English). The Gamedev Toolkit was tested by a focus group of six experienced developers. Practical studies of the Polkadot Network and Atomic Swap were conducted. A new game, “Find the Ethereum”, was released in alpha stage to showcase DC Lib (our own JS library), Win Streak Pattern and Advanced Dispute Resolving. The construction of an automated test system has begun.

https://medium.com/@dao.casino/dao-casino-development-update-november-december-2017-d0d3180bb36b

STORM Token Listed on HitBTC



HitBTC, one of the most advanced cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, has listed STORM Token (STORM) on its platform. The listing of STORM on HitBTC provides all token holders with increased utility in addition to helping expand the global presence of StormX, Inc.

The listing follows the recent close of the successful STORM Token Crowdsale, where over $32 million in STORM Tokens were sold and distributed to over 9500 different token holders. Throughout the sale period, StormX cemented strategic collaborations with Alchemist Ventures, QTUM, Changelly, Zencash, Kyber Network, Bancor, and Jaxx to expand the platform’s global presence and enhance the ongoing and future utility of STORM Tokens.

https://blog.stormtoken.com/storm-token-listed-on-hitbtc-f7b0d925d563