[ANN] Keystone Assets - Smart Property Solutions

[sussex]

I've just read your lock and key whitepaper and have some questions.......

A discrete MCU with both Bluetooth and cellular chipsets and antennas is going to be far too big for mobile phones, MP3 players and many laptops, so we are presumably talking about larger household electronics - TVs, HiFi etc in this context?

If there is a need to use the cellular network, won't it be necessary for each device to have a contract/pay as you go deal with a mobile phone operator? A sim card will also be necessary?

If I lose the key, the device shuts down?

If I have a laptop with the MCU embedded I also need to remember to take the key when mobile? In this scenario, a TV that I leave at home would need it's own separate key?

On the subject of the key, how long will a charge last? Battery capacity is directly related to it's physical size.

I understand  that in the context of mobile phones you will be able to utilise the radio chipsets already built into the handset, but you will still have to carry the key or specify a when the next check is made and hope you are in the vicinity of the key at that time?

[Keystoneassets]

I think your logo is pretty dope

Do you guys have an IRC channel?

Thank you! We also think that it is very nice.
We don't have an IRC channel by now, but I will look into the matter.

I've just read your lock and key whitepaper and have some questions.......

Good questions, so lets begin answering them.

A discrete MCU with both Bluetooth and cellular chipsets and antennas is going to be far too big for mobile phones, MP3 players and many laptops, so we are presumably talking about larger household electronics - TVs, HiFi etc in this context?

The technology and engineering involved in that is more flexible and miniturized than it might appear at first glance. First, there is no need to use seperate antennas for bluetooth and cellular communication. Both work on the basis of radio frequency and in bands far apart. It should even be possible to use both at the same time using the same antenna, even though that should not be necessary. Also, seperate chips for both bluetooth and cellular communication are convenient, but ultimately not necessary. The development gets more complicated this way, but the final goal is a chip which is specifically tailored for the task.
When it comes to size, you are right about the MP3 player. Most likely such a device is too small by itself to house one of our locks. On the other hand... MP3 players are not really a large market anymore, they are usually integrated in smartphones. Those on the other hand have the trend of getting slightly larger as time passes. As the lock will soonest be ready with the next generation of smartphones, size should not be a serious problem anymore.
If all of this does not convince you, take a look at this

http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/mobile-phones/bar/GT-E1200ZKABTU

This classic mobile contains everything needed for the lock. Take away display, housing, battery and keys and there is not much left. Also, the technology used there is slightly dated already. It was released in 2011. So in conclusion, we don't see any problems with the size of the lock in any case but MP3 players and smartwatches.

If there is a need to use the cellular network, won't it be necessary for each device to have a contract/pay as you go deal with a mobile phone operator? A sim card will also be necessary?

A sim card is not necessary to transmit data over the cellular network. It is only used for phone calls and text messages. Technically it is not even required there. The data requirements for the lock will need to be taken care of by the company selling the locks. Hopefully us of course. As data transmission costs about about 5 Dollar-cents per gigabyte, we also don't see a big problem if this handled on a company to company basis.
Nevertheless, we will look further into the matter to see if there is any convenient way to make the whole thing fire and forget for every party involved. The underlying cryptocurrency might offer solutions in that regard.

If I lose the key, the device shuts down?

After a grace period configurable by the user.
You will surely have more questions in that regard though. As a preemptive try to answer them:
Transactions will always be multi signature. A single private key of the multi signature transaction will be enough to unlock a device. More than one will be needed to create a new transaction. Loss of the key thus does not mean loss of ownership of all devices.
You will need to buy a new key though when you lose yours.

If I have a laptop with the MCU embedded I also need to remember to take the key when mobile? In this scenario, a TV that I leave at home would need it's own separate key?

Grace periods for all devices may be set. If you want to use a single key and maybe don't even have it with you all the time, set your devices to 24h plus grace periods. You want more security and immediate reactions in case of theft. 3 minute grace period is enough. Get it stolen and it stops working almost immediatly. Correct set grace periods will allow for usage of a single key. Multiple keys might be more convenient though.

On the subject of the key, how long will a charge last? Battery capacity is directly related to it's physical size.

Correct. A final design is not ready of course, but we target a battery lifetime of approximately 48 hours. Prefferably more. Of course, this will also depend on some of the user settings. The more frequent the security feature is used and with more range, the shorter the time until next recharge will be.

I understand  that in the context of mobile phones you will be able to utilise the radio chipsets already built into the handset, but you will still have to carry the key or specify a when the next check is made and hope you are in the vicinity of the key at that time?

Yet again, the grace period will take care of that. If a check is failed, the device will not necessarily shut down immediatly. If grace periods are set to a long time, carrying of the key will not be necessary. If you lock your door with our key you might want to take it with you though

I hope this answers your questions to your satisfaction.

[studio1one]

So the technology and concept looks interesting but there is no info on the people / company behind it. Personally I need to know who I am investing in as well as what I am investing in.

Will you be releasing information to confirm your ability to complete the project?

[Keystoneassets]

So the technology and concept looks interesting but there is no info on the people / company behind it. Personally I need to know who I am investing in as well as what I am investing in.

Will you be releasing information to confirm your ability to complete the project?

This is a good question and will be answered. Not at this point though, but before start of the seed investment, we're still discussing.

It should also be noted, that the plan has not been laid out completly yet.
At this point there is more important question than our identity though. We have shown, that the technology we describe is in principal possible, at least on the physical side. What is missing and the real innovation, is the crypto infrastructure. Without it, lock and key would need a centralized infrastructure, which would make them ultimately impractical, as the support cost of such infrastructure would drive the cost for the system to levels which are not sustainable for smaller devices.

As was stated earlier, lock and key solutions can in principal be build by any company. The more important aspect is the protocol on top of bitcoin, which will offer a public available infrastructure to support the lock devices. The whitepaper on the protocol will be published in about two weeks time from now.

To satisfy part of your question though, I can reveal experience we call our own.
We have access to

6+ years of mechatronical/microsystem engineering (cross section engineering discipline, most prominently utilized in the car industry)
8+ years of math/physics (not very practical on its own, but does wonders when connecting the dots, filling the gaps and when an engineer asks "can I actually do that?")
12+ years of coding in C++/Java (Pretty obvious what that is good for)

How long our design guy has been around I am not sure of, but you can tell from the picture in the thread start, that it is quiet a while. On the other hand, it is not that important.

edit:
It should be noted that the experience information provided above, is more than most other projects offer. Projects like syscoin and swarm have pretty smiling faces, but don't provide any relevant information on the qualification of the team members.
We might go that way though, as it creates a lot more trust and thus investment. It depends on the final assesment of the required seed ressources. We hope to convince investors through offered concepts and their implications though. That approach is more sincere than pretty pictures.

[Keystoneassets]

Update

Added distribution scheme
Added first set of bounties (see second post in thread)

[susu]

keystone based chain technology, very promising project, Chinese investors qq group: 151 224 502

[UrsaMajorisBeta]

Let me reserve the Spanish translation

[rigdeer]

seems not active in this thread.

[Keystoneassets]

seems not active in this thread.

No thread activity does not mean there is no work done.
There is not all that much to talk about right now. Hopefully due to the exhaustive nature of the information provided already. Once the second whitepaper is released, that should change though.

[digital7]

good project.
can't wait.

[Yuzu]

This seems exciting.  Can't wait to see more.

[Keystoneassets]

Update

added chinese translation
added german trasnaltion

We're currently setting up a website to present all this information in a more coherent way. If everything happens as planned, it will be ready by the end of the week.

Meanwhile our design guy is having some fun sketching the key. A little bit too much as it seems, as the first design was... let's say impractical. Very cool, but nothing you want for mass production. We're talking about adding a special edition casing for the keys for initial investors. Something printable which we can do on a small scale.

Besides all the info and designing, we're looking into setting up a tiny copy of the bitcoin network. It might be better than starting to test life on the big blockchain. Pro: Nice controlled environment / Con: Nice controlled environment. There will be news about this when we come to a conclusion.

And lastly, the currency whitepaper is making great progress. We hope being able to release it on our own homepage.

[Brokers]

Thanks for the update.

[Keystoneassets]

Thanks for the update.

You're welcome.
Providing some information on what we're doing seems like a good idea.

On a completly unrelated note:
Can someone provide some hints where all the scam screamers have gone? There hasn't been a single post in giant red letters accusing us of being out to grab as much money as we can and make a run for it. Is a self moderated thread that this daunting? I had hoped to be able to delete at least one of those

[Johnbtc]

have a ipo?

[Keystoneassets]

have a ipo?

We will have an IPO starting in a couple of weeks. There is still some work to be done prior to that though.
The website will present all this information in a more manageable way.

[Keystoneassets]

Update

Added IPO date

We are making good progress with the website and it should be ready by sunday. Most likely there will be some additional polish needed, but the important part, offering information in a nicer form than currently, will be offered.

The second whitepaper is making progress as well, but sadly not as fast as we like. The first version will be released on Sunday. It will be pretty messy though, as the whole concept is not exactly easy to grasp and put down in an easy and comprehensive form. So, be ready for some knots in your brain. We rather work on a second version after releasing the first instead of postponing the release.

By now we also decided how to approach the testnet. We will clone a not further specified "Proof Of Stake" coin and let it run on a couple of Odroids to simulate a nice and cozy little environment for initial testing. You might also want to take a look at those if you are heavy into NXT or some other purely POS coin.
http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php
They can save you a lot of electricity and are perfectly fine for running a node if you are not into "Proof Of Work"

We also have our first candidate for the lock prototype, but more of that the next time.

Stay tuned!

[RhodaGila]

Looking great, i'm watching..

[Keystoneassets]

Update

So, it has been a while and it is time for an update on what is going on.

It seems we have missed the forest for the trees.
But let us begin where it started. We made some projections on the technology we are developing and stumbled upon a problem in scalability.
While in general, the concept is sound and works, it will most likely suffice if it is scaled to the extreme. It can definitely handle several million devices, even up to the 100 millions, but that is sadly not enough. The number of electronic devices which are potential candidates for Keystones, go into the billions.

While settling for a market niche sounds like the easy way to go, we decided to move into another direction instead and develop the project into something which is able to handle virtually any amount of devices.

It was originally planned to use what we call a sidechain or overhead blockchain to store and distribute data required to run the locks. The deployed proof associated with the concept allows for quick pruning of the overhead chain and thus keep that chain small, while allowing anyone who wanted to participate as a node to simply hook up to the network. Nevertheless, it does not scale up to serving billions of devices at the same time. Even with a small chain, every node on the globe needs the full chain to participate, which is very wasteful. The solution to this problem are several overhead chains, which the system is luckily able to deploy. This on the other hand, opens up a multitude of new possibilities, but also a set of new problems. Several sidechains means, that the amount of additional data which can be processed, is only limited by the amount of computing power willing to participate in the network. Which is good. On the bad side this creates a new problem with fee distribution. Having one mainchain and one sidechain made the fee distribution easy. Having several completly busts the original solution to this problem.

So, while the problem of scalability on the data side has been solved, there also came up the question of who is going to pay for the service.
While this could be handled on a personal level, we highly doubt that the "average joe", that is often mentioned around here, is going to appreciate having to take care of his devices security on a regular basis. Also, the payment has to be distributed to several sidechains at once, which is a problem in itself.

To solve this, there needs to be something the devices can provide in return. And luckily, there is something. Which brings us back to the beginning, missing the forest for the trees.
The lock devices will generally be built into something, which processes information in some sort of way. Mobile phones have sensors and collect data from their surroundings. And information is something valuable.
As the technology we are developing is based on the idea of transmitting information, there is nothing that prevents those information flows to go in both directions.

So, the answer to the question „Who is going to pay“ is a little different than initially expected, as the locked devices have something to offer as well. How this is going to be utilized is a point of discussion right now.

There is already a name for that. It is called „The Internet Of Things“

This change in the general direction of the project has some implications, which we will discuss the next time. But for now, the IPO will be postponed until further notice.
Also, the website is there, but the information that we intially wanted to provide there is now slightly outdated. So, more work to do. Sadly, documentation is far less entertaining than building shiny new stuff.

Oh, and as stated last time, here is our current candidate for the proof of concept lock
http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATUC256L4U.aspx

[susu]

I think this project is very promising,
 IBM will use the block chain technology into the Internet of Things.

http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-executive-block-chain-internet-of-things/