[Qora gets the amount of attention it truly deserves]

I really hope Qora gets the amount of attention it truly deserves. A lot of innovation went into this coin, but unfortunately it wasn't noticed by the wider crypto community. Kinda unexpected if you ask me and it creates an impression that the crypto community is not encouraging innovation as much as it should.

Qora has been undervalued for quite some time, but innovations like these might help the price go higher as interest grows into this coin.
I think this alt coin should be considered for investing since its price may explode once people realize the true potential of it.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1358722.msg16838055#msg16838055

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1358722.msg16714094#msg16714094

Ribbit.me

“Blockchain is essential to Ribbit.me’s business,” said Gregory Simon, CEO and co-founder, Ribbit.me. “It was a natural step for us to join the Hyperledger Project to help advance this critical technology.”

HyperLedger Project Press Release announcing 10 new member companies, including yours truly Ribbit.me
Thomson Reuters, Blockstream, ItBit, Gem, Bloq, EVUE Digital Labs, Milligan Partners, Montran Labs and Tequa Creek Holdings.
Open Source Blockchain Effort for the Enterprise Elects Leadership Positions and Gains New Investments
hyperledger.org

Open Source Blockchain Effort for the Enterprise Elects Leadership Positions and Gains New Investments Hyperledger Project Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee chair elected; new member investments underscore demand for open source...

Open Source Blockchain Effort for the Enterprise Elects Leadership Positions and Gains New Investments
Announcement

Open Source Blockchain Effort for the Enterprise Elects Leadership Positions and Gains New Investments

Hyperledger Project Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee chair elected; new member investments underscore demand for open source blockchain platform development

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Collaboration Summit – March 29, 2016 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing the Hyperledger Project has filled key leadership positions and is welcoming new members. The Hyperledger Project is a collaborative effort to establish, build and sustain an open, distributed ledger platform that will satisfy a variety of use cases across multiple industries.

The results of the Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee elections for the Hyperledger Project include the following:

Technical Steering Committee Chair: Chris Ferris, distinguished engineer and CTO of open technology at IBM
Technical Steering Committee members include: Tamás Blummer, Digital Asset Holdings; Mic Bowman, Intel; Richard Brown, R3; Stanislav Liberman, CME Group; Hart Montgomery, Fujitsu; Satoshi Oshima, Hitachi; Stefan Teis, Deutsche Börse; Emmanuel Viale, Accenture; Pardha Vishnumolakala, DTCC; and David Voell, J.P. Morgan.
Board Chair: Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset HoldingsGoverning Board members: Charles Cascarilla, CEO, itBit; Toshiya Cho, Hitachi; Jerry Cuomo, IBM; Chris Ferris, IBM; Dirk Hohndel, Intel; Todd McDonald, cofounder and COO, R3; Robert Palatnick, DTCC; Kireeti Reddy, CME Group; Stefan Teis, Deutsche Börse; Dave Treat, Accenture; Yoshinobu Sawano, Fujitsu; Santiago Suarez, J.P. Morgan; and Craig Young, CTO, SWIFT. itBit’s Cascarilla and SWIFT’s Young are newly elected board representatives since the formation in December 2015.

These appointments are made by member vote. The TSC drives technical direction of the Hyperledger Project, while the Governing Board manages business direction, including governance, marketing and operational decisions.

The Hyperledger Project today is also announcing ten new companies are joining the effort and investing in the future of an open blockchain ledger: Blockstream, Bloq, eVue Digital Labs, Gem, itBit, Milligan Partners, Montran Labs, Ribbit.me, Tequa Creek Holdings and Thomson Reuters.

“There is no other effort advancing an open blockchain with this level of broad industry representation and level of leadership,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The Hyperledger Project is among our fastest growing projects at The Linux Foundation. The opportunity is great. This leadership team and the community investments among members across industries put the project in the best position possible to accomplish its mission.”

Peer-to-peer in nature, distributed ledger technology is shared, transparent and decentralized, making it ideal for application in finance and countless other areas such as manufacturing, banking, insurance and the Internet of Things. Research reports estimate that the investment in blockchain by financial institutions alone will grow to $400 million by 2019 (see: Aite Group Blockchain Players in Capital Markets: Where Are the Pioneers Headed?, 2015). By creating a cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers, virtually any digital exchange with value, such as real estate contracts, energy trades, marriage licenses, can securely and cost-effectively be tracked and traded.

“The Hyperledger Project is gaining traction on a daily basis, displaying how vital this effort is in advancing distributed ledger technology,” said Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings and Board chair for the Hyperledger Project. “Uniting the industry to drive this initiative forward is paramount to the success of distributed ledger technology. The Linux Foundation and its members are collaborating on an open source infrastructure that will increase privacy and scalability, among many other benefits.”

“These member investments demonstrate that blockchain technology continues to grow in importance as the alternative approach to multinational business transactions,” said Chris Ferris, IBM Distinguished Engineer, CTO Open Technology, and Technical Steering Committee chair, Hyperledger Project. “By providing a community for members to collaborate and contribute to an open source blockchain solution, we’re able to advance the technology collectively and ultimately drive quicker adoption and higher value across industries.”

[RApp or Rewards Application]

Ribbit.me
Great Interview by Airline Information with our Co-founder, Sean Dennis focusing on the Airline/Travel Industry

First Published, 23rd March 2016

Ai Editorial: Travellers want their points right away, and they want more redemption options.
How can blockchain technology play its part, Ai’s Ritesh Gupta finds out 

 
There are several challenges that continue to impede the lure of FFPs.

One of them is how quickly do I earn when I spend? Can it be real-time? For merchants, it is imperative to plan their liability management,
 i. e. how to reduce, allocate, share, track, or liquidate rewards liability.

Interestingly, tradable, blockchain-based loyalty tokens promise to combat such hurdles.

As a blockchain technology specialist, Ribbit.me, intends to lend a new dimension to loyalty.   

“People want their points right away, and they want more redemption options,” says Sean Dennis, Co-Founder and COO, Ribbit.me.

So what disappoints Dennis when it comes to loyalty programs? “…complications and inefficiencies associated with the loyalty programs. The lack of innovation and options as a client. It all feels rather bulky and outdated,” pointed out Dennis.

In one of his blog posts, Dennis pointed out that Millennials can be very loyal, they “just want points that are applicable to them and their needs. They want easier to earn and redeem and a broader range of redemption options.”

RApp or Rewards Application

For its part, the company has come up with its offering, the LoyaltyPlatform.

As Dennis explains, program operators are able to leverage blockchain and smart contract technology in order to:

- Either create or make far better, their redemption networks (reduction in friction for inter operator    redemption),
- Manage program liabilities, and
- Offer dynamic issuance and redemption options to their customers via SmartRewards

Referring to the concept of the Token Tree, Dennis explained: Operators of a network are able to create a Rewards Application (RApp) with set rules and parameters. Below this, every partner operator in the program is able to create a Sub Rewards Application (Sub RApp) that must follow the rules and parameters set by the RApp above. These rules may cascade from top to bottom, creating the uniformity of a coalition program, but with the benefit of being able to individually brand, issue and redeem every Sub RApp. “Imagine if the airline coalition groups decide to utilize this feature and individually brand the partner operators, whilst still being under the Coalition rewards program,” said Dennis.

The company has partnered with a number of the largest financial, advisory and banking technology providers to approach operators and provide them with a platform that meets their individual needs.

The feeling of “being valued”

The company’s platform makes it so easy to include redemption partners in a program, without the high cost of implementation.

“The underlying blockchain and smart contract technology allows for speedier issuance, giving the consumer higher perceived utility and a feeling of being valued,” asserted Dennis.

“As a customer, I often feel undervalued in loyalty programs. Examples include the `event-type’ reduction in the value of points that I have already earned, in order to limit the operator's liability,” he said.

Through using the LoyaltyNetwork, operators are able to actually target levels of breakage and reduce redemption variance risk. Breakage can be embedded into the rewards point. The operators within the redemption network are also able to share the liability in a frictionless manor between the issuing and redeeming partners at an agreed upon rate.

Benefits

With this emerging technology, reward points are going to generated by an algorithm and issued in the form of a digital token on the blockchain.

So what sort of impact is going to be there on the profitability of an airline’s loyalty program?

From a B2B business perspective, Dennis says the company clearly provides a platform for these operators to function in a far more efficient environment with regards to their loyalty offering.

Operators may benefit from liability and network redemption management tools, better targeting of their customers through dynamic issuance, resulting in more sales and last but not least, lower loyalty program operation costs. This way one also ends up adding effective liability management tools including targeted breakage outcomes.

Also, there would be zero lag in reward redemption with blockchain technology. “Because all partners in a redemption network share a secure platform, the rewards can be transferred instantly between clients as needed. Think of the blockchain as the Internet of value,” shared Dennis.

Investment – if any?

As for what sort of preparation is required, Dennis says integration with the platform is relatively simple, and legacy system integration with operators (which is most likely with existing large operators) is easy and “we will work with large operators like airlines and hotels to customize as needed”.

“The smaller operators in the industry are likely to choose something more of a “plug and play” option when it comes to their Rewards Application,” said Dennis. “The larger operators will develop their own highly customizable Rewards Application (most of which they already have in terms of parameters or desired outcomes).”

Blockchain as a technology

Payment specialists point out that blockchain has a way to go before a critical infrastructure like one for payments should be built on it.

Dennis agreed on this, and said payments and settlement are areas that are being highly focused on for blockchain application. But for large operators, there is a way to go before adoption due to hurdles and regulations that need to be overcome. This is a major reason why the loyalty industry is the perfect application, he said. “The payments industry has undergone constant innovation, while the loyalty industry has remained fairly stagnant, and is built on a system that no longer satisfies the consumer, and is inefficient for the operators to run. Our technology stack using blockchain (Distributed Ledger) and Smart Contracts addresses this need,” he said.