with a Special Presentation from the Hcash Nucleus Development Team.
The event, held at the Cisco Meraki building, San Francisco, was kicked off with an introduction from Zane Witherspoon, CTO at Dispatch Labs and Founding Partner at The Bureau, followed by a word from Colin Lowenberg of Cisco Meraki.
The main event commenced with Mo Sen and John Woeltz giving a short introduction about themselves. “We’re the nucleus team and we’ll be giving you guys some technical updates from the Hcash roadmap, and how we plan on working with, and interoperating with Ethereum, and how we hopefully have some ideas that
could help be pretty good scaling solutions for Ethereum.”
They then explained the focus of Hcash; acting as a new store of value, focused on interoperability, private transactions, security, quantum resistance, with a side chain type of approach, already having implemented a protocol called Bitcoin-NG on top of the Decred Blockchain. Mo explained that he is very excited to be working with engineers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, having seen their promising accomplishments in cryptography. He then spoke about the QRC team — technical researchers who have published papers around evaluating the feasibility of quantum attacks, and schemes on potential defense mechanisms.
The two will be leading a team of core developers, as well as a team of ecosystem developers across Silicon Valley and the US, and will be coordinating with teams across Asia to create a great product.
Mo mentioned the scaling issues with Ethereum, which came to light recently, with the Blockchain ceasing up following highly demanding ICO’s, notably, the infamous game, CryptoKitties. Bitcoin’s weaknesses were then outlined, among which high transaction fees were a main issue. He went into the potential which China brings to the FinTech and cryptocurrency community — Ethereum not having gained as much traction as Bitcoin — the team hoping to increase both the Ethereum and Hcash user base there.
He then went on to explain DAG-based cryptocurrencies, using the analogy:
“Blockchain is kind of like driving down a single-lane road, but DAG is like driving down an open, multi-lane highway.”
He then mentioned the promise such a system would have in an industry with an exponentially growing user-base, John then going into more technical details.
Mo and John will be visiting China, Korea, and other parts of Asia, to meet users, and to get an understanding of what the community wants from the project. They will be publishing whitepapers, and technical yellow papers as time goes on.
John demonstrated Hcash in action, achieving consensus after a few milliseconds from both a node, and an external client. He then launched a simple smart contract successfully, making sure to verify the balance is the same as the balance programmed into the smart contract, also transferring tokens with a receipt successfully.
Then came a panel discussion, consisted of 3 panelists, all experts in their fields:
- Nipun Gupta works with Deloitte’s innovation Partnerships team with a focus on quantum computing and cryptography. His work with exponential technologies was featured in this year’s “2018 Tech Trends Report” https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/tech-trends/2018/exponential-technology-digital-innovation.html. Nipun previously worked as a security engineer with iSec Partners and PwC. He studied security at Carnegie Mellon University.
Paul Neubecker works at Softbank Capital NY. He is a founder of Blockchain Buffalo and brings an investor’s perspective to the panel. Previously, he worked as a senior associate in the banking and capital markets group with PriceWaterhouseCooper, a leading global consulting firm. He holds a CPA and a degree in finance from Fordham University.
Mike Pozmantier, a security consultant who brings a privacy perspective to the panel. He formerly managed the Transition to Practice program for the US Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity research: http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/prime-minister-netanyahu-open-cybertech-2016. He studied at the University of Texas at Austin.
Paul, from an investment perspective, believes: With the tremendous growth the industry has seen, and without any sign of it slowing down, especially from an investor’s viewpoint, issues pertaining to scalability (the ability of a Blockchain to continue to function
well when its user base increases in size, in order to meet demand), and, transactional throughput (the number of transactions a Blockchain can process in a given amount of time), are of the highest concern. Most
people investing in cryptocurrencies are seeing the long-term potential in terms of utility, however, without scalability, there’s no real chance for them to achieve their true value.
Secondly, privacy, which represents freedom at a basic level is fundamental to a cryptocurrency. Users need to have a level of privacy in order allocate their resources with a feeling of being uninhibited by any constraints. The advent of quantum computing, no matter how far away it could be, should be kept in mind as something on the horizon. With this in mind, any type of quantum resistance in a Blockchain is purely theoretical — we do not have the means to test the functionality of a defense mechanism in the real world. With that said, it is wise to start now, while there is still time. It is interesting to consider who the populations in the world are, who will benefit from quantum resistance. Those who live in parts if the world with more fractured relationships with the nation state — as they are the most motivated and well-resourced actors in this, are to consider quantum computer resistant technology. And so, this will be something that he would prescribe a premium to — as cryptocurrencies provide an un-censorable, un-seizeable asset to the world.
It is clear that private Blockchains pose a threat from an investment perspective for publicly traded tokens. Really, the overlying issue is the conflict between an intranet and an internet. Mostly, an open, public environment will drive faster utility, provide more of a service to the market and will contain less bias. However, private (enterprise) chains are important in the short-term as we transfer into this new cryptocurrency era. So far, to truly comply with current laws, such as data storage laws and geographic information storage laws, private chains can be implemented in order to ensure trusted nodes within a specific country are being used. Ultimately, the real value will come from interoperability between public and private chains, keeping value on the main chain and transactional capacity on the private chain. This can help scale and increase adoption of Blockchain technology, at least until the public main chain architecture can handle more transactional throughput on its own.
A big thing to look out for, when selecting investments in the Blockchain market, is whether or not the project will have an incentive structure that will keep the project running in a truly decentralised fashion. This is because often, a centralised system can be faster and require less computational performance. So, there needs to be a valid reason as to why the project should run on the Blockchain (i.e. if the project acts as a method of censorship resistance, or a way of storing sensitive data that needs to be encrypted). Essentially, there is a trade-off. Companies need to show what true value they provide from implementing a decentralised system.
Another positive example of a system that benefits from implementing a decentralised Blockchain is an identity platform — storing your identity in a way that is unchangeable could be revolutionary for citizens in countries suffering from civil unrest. This protects them against sovereign nations taking control of their identity. Its processes like these that are so foundational that the trade-off makes sense. Ultimately, the main factor that drives a coin’s value up is its utility. The more useful and practical a coin is, the more demand it will have, and if the supply of that coin is fixed, then its price will increase. From there, if its price keeps increasing and remains at a higher level, the coin acts as a storage of wealth. Overall though, functionality is king in this market. From what we know today, even though Bitcoin is a behemoth, the biggest Blockchain network might not even exist yet.
Mike then spoke about the security aspects and options of a Blockchain from his experience.Currently, cryptography is the basis of most of our security systems, with a lot of the security breaches we’ve seen being a result of a lack of encryption. The level of cryptography built into a Blockchain-based, decentralised system, gives it a natural advantage in terms of security. It is most important when approached from a business perspective, as there is data in smart contracts, which companies do not want published on the chain, so when there is a capability of having zero-knowledge proofs running on smart contracts, it adds a whole layer of enabling the adoption of Blockchains and these types of technologies, which would not otherwise exist.
Ultimately, the problem right now, with current technology being implemented in the Ethereum Blockchain, is that it takes too much computational power to run, resulting in heightened fees, making it unfeasible to run. There are alternatives, which may offer less computationally demanding solutions, perhaps offering a more feasible solution current methods. With the exponential growth of Ethereum’s ledger, scalability is a massive problem, with the potential of the system collapsing on itself.
A cryptocurrency such as Hcash solves both issues, proposing a scalable and secure solution. The federal government has an interest in technology being developed and introduced into companies. There was a government contract awarded to Factom, to help with IoT security for customs border protection, being concerned about spoofing of sensors and cameras at the border. Factom came up with a solution on their Blockchain, to ensure traffic was indeed coming from legitimate devices.
The federal government is also heavily interested in identity management, having awarded several millions of dollars of contracts companies doing different aspects of Blockchain based identity management. There is a callout for more secure voting systems, to which a Blockchain-based voting system is a perfect solution. The applications of Blockchain will eventually be seen as common place in airports, in order to be more efficient and effective. The possibilities from this type of technology are endless, for both government and corporate applications. There’s a real chance Blockchain technology will re-architect both the web, and the way information is stored and distributed.
A big problem for the industry now is that Blockchain users need to be relatively technically proficient to understand and use its technology, so refining these systems for the layman is essential for providing a foundation for wide-spread adoption. This is when the real value will occur. A big part in refining these technologies is the introduction of connectivity. Having to hold multiple currencies for multiple projects will create an issue of inefficiency and ineffectiveness in communities. Considering most ICOs are relatively new and still in development, this isn’t a huge issue yet, but when investors finally utilise their coins, they will realise how painful, slow and confusing it is to hold ten different coins to access ten different services. To overcome this, an exchange mechanism or a universal currency needs to be adopted. Essentially, interoperability or the recently discussed atomic swaps will allow the masses to adopt these things and will in turn make Blockchain ubiquitous.
Nipun recently wrote a piece in Deloitte’s tech trends 2018 report. In a section called “exponential tech trends” — they discussed quantum cryptography. Even though the rise of the technology is 5–10 years away, what can be expected from the rise of quantum computing, is the irrelevance of current encryption protocols. The current, most common protocols, are extremely difficult to calculate with today’s computational power. However, with quantum computers, these algorithms will cease to protect information. There needs to be work done in the space to ensure that systems are ready for this and will not be vulnerable to such computational power. Hcash is addressing this currently through research and implementation. The Shanghai Jiao Tong team recently developed the BLISS cryptographic scheme into the Decred Blockchain. The reason BLISS seems to be the best option, is because it has been around for quite a while, giving developers a chance to test and improve it, the method becoming more robust over time.
In regard to the adoption of Blockchain systems, when comparing public Blockchain networks to their enterprise counterparts, the results show an almost insignificant level of adoption occurring at the enterprise level. However, this is changing as many large companies are slowly making their debut into the industry. A recent example of this can be seen through IBMs new Hyperledger system. It also appears that in the future, more and more large businesses looking to implement a Blockchain network will end up going the private route.
This is because creating a publicly available system is far to risky for these companies. There are some companies, however, that are contributing to public Blockchains, like Google, who recently implemented the New Hope quantum resistant protocol into their browser to slowly move against the rise of quantum computing. Overall, tech companies will most likely take the lead on developing public Blockchain systems, while banks will focus on private and permissioned Blockchain systems, with not much of an overlap — it is doubtful that these two will merge anytime soon.
Mo then proceeded to wrap up the panel discussion by providing an overview of Hcash and its purpose. Hcash is improving on Blockchain technology by aiming to be an interoperable network, and its foundation is looking to collaborate with many projects such as Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies for mutual and industry benefit. Describing itself as an information carrier between Blockchains, Hcash will enable the exchange and value between differing Blockchin systems.
The project is contributing to the community, by building on top of Blockchains DAG technology. Hcash aim to heavily advance this forward, especially with research that this new Nucleus team will be working on over the coming year (specifically its privacy, security, quantum resistance and throughput mechanisms). With an ICO launch in July of 2017, this Australian Blockchain project is the first to use technology provided by the Hyperchain company. Hcash aims to achieve its ambitious goals through the implementation of what it calls its 7H’s (Hidden, Hierarchy, Hive, Hard, Haven, Hybrid and Handy). Already with numerous real-world applications, Hcash is proud to say that it is currently working with several governments, corporations, start-ups and other types of public and private businesses all across the world.
Currently its main focus is on quantum computing (hard). With the advent of quantum computers, the security of traditional public-key cryptosystems, which is one of the underlying security support technologies for the Blockchain, will be severely impaired. This will greatly damage the security of existing blockchain systems. Thus, Hcash has enlisted the help of multiple institutions, developers and enthusiasts to help prevent this from occurring. Some of these well known institutions include Macquarie University (Australia), the University of Technology Sydney (Australia), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore.
Additionally, Hcash, with the help of Collinstar Capital, have created a research laboratory with Monash University (Australia) and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Headed up by Dr Joseph Liu, who’s PhD thesis has been implemented in the core technology behind Monero’s security, the lab will provide the basis for building practical Blockchain-based solutions with rigorous security.
Hcash has been listed in over 20 exchanges worldwide, has a several hundred million dollar market cap, consistently trades over $10 million in daily volume, has recently released a mobile and desktop PoS staking wallet and has partnered with several Blockchain projects that run off its network. These partners include: ENT Cash (A Global Entertainment Platform) and Halal Chain (a product safety monitoring system).
In the future, Hcash hopes to be at the leading edge of innovation, while building its network out by partnering with more exchanges, Blockchain projects and research partners.
Hcash aims not only to be the best now, but to future proof its technology so that it can remain at the forefront of the industry.
