Author: hperretta
Guest Blog from SEM Nexus Digital Marketing – How To Bypass The Media Block
How To Bypass The Media Block
By Michael Kordvani: SEM Nexus
Why Blockchain And Why Organic SEO Services
– SEO Emerges Supreme With Blockchain Technology
The rise of blockchain gets a great deal of attention in the financial markets.
The focus on cryptocurrencies and blockchain have to do with censorship. There are concerns for the online consumer whether it’s with the ICO concept or with simple blockchain integration into the world. This concern is for safety. The end result is a ban on many platforms that every blockchain business has to take into consideration.
The major consideration is in verifying where you can reach online consumers and where you can expand your message. Those optimal options for online retailers is with search technology. Search engines operate by an algorithm that creates a boundary between you and the billions of readers surfing the Web. We can break those boundaries.
Search engine optimization is how you connect with people but without being penalized.
These Group Of Supporters You Must Reach In No Time
There’s no blockchain technology that’s excelled without the help of a large group.
Every concept introduced to the market is being done by the help of a large group of people who all look to blockchain as an investment, as a practical tool or as a way of starting a fulfilling career. There’s no end to how people will use this technology, but you must always make a basic equation in your strategy and plan for growth.
The millions of online and paper wallets are clear representations of the supporters you have access to. These people are wowed by the advancing technology, and you now have a chance to get them involved. The first step is to bypass the many gatekeepers, and the most optimal options are through SEO.
Give us a chance to show you how it’s really done.
Bringing Blockchain Innovation To Organic SEO Services
It’s no secret. The driving force behind blockchain technology are the people using it.
Corporations and even Google are involved in the work of blockchain.
You’re on track if you’ve been considering greater innovation. The next stages of blockchain will be a major, world integration. This integration will be fueled by the convenience, safety and experience we gain as public ledger technology is improved.
The improvement begins with what you have to offer.
What do you have to bring to this market? The next step you take is with an agency that knows about your technology and the SEO industry it must be marketed within. The SEC released some important statements in March 2018, and it pushed top firms to censor a lot of the popular access points you had for reaching consumers through.
You have to come with a better angle now.
The Growing Crypto And Blockchain Economy
Here’s an opportunity of a lifetime. The entire world is watching as blockchain and cryptocurrencies are brought together by the force of technology. Investors are all secure in this process of innovation. The world is expanding; it’s in need of something that will integrate society but with a tremendous level of safety.
That safety is built within your blockchain technology and what you can bring to it.
Let us do the SEO part for you and make it as simple as possible.
Blocktonite Guest Blog from Fueled.com
Blockchain is Going to Affect Many Aspects of Our Lives
By Michael Kordvani of Fueled.com
So everyone’s talking about blockchain and Bitcoin. You’ve heard half a story, you don’t really know what it is, but you don’t think it’s anything to do with you. You’re just an ordinary person, you’re not the least bit interested in the latest technologies, you’re no businessman or entrepreneur looking to cash in on the latest online developments. So why would you care about blockchain?
Well you should, because I can promise you, blockchain technologies are going to enhance our lives. It’s going to make a difference in so many ways, probably in ways we haven’t yet even imagined. Right now, blockchain app developers are beavering away to come up with new and innovative ways to use these new technologies.
What are the benefits of blockchain for everyday people?
What a lot of people don’t realise, is that advances in blockchain technologies are going to trickle down to everyone who uses the Internet. These days, just about everyone is online, it’s pretty hard to get by without being connected in some way. It’s getting harder and harder to pay a bill, buy something or keep in touch with anyone without being online. So we’re all going to be impacted by the advances of blockchain technologies. But don’t worry, it’s going to be a good thing!
Much higher levels of security
One of the biggest assets of blockchain is the high level of security. The whole point of blockchain is that all data is encrypted and decentralised. This is a huge step forward with regards to security. The more we move our lives online, the more need there is to be kept safe. Whenever something new comes out, be it an online banking app or a new connected household appliance, you can be sure that there are criminals out there looking to exploit it. By using blockchain technology, security levels rise dramatically.
Speedier financial transactions
This high level of security obviously is good for all sorts of purposes, but it’s going to be especially important for highly confidential material such as medical records and financial transactions. If you ever make payments globally, you will certainly benefit, not just from an increased level of security, but also from an increase in speed. Blockchain transactions are fast because they are direct. This could be amazing news for businesses large and small.
Protection of your identity
Identity theft is big business. Fall foul of it, and you can end up in a huge mess. Blockchain can help to protect your identity with encryption. With the encryption of personal ID and personal records such as marriage certificates, the whole system of proving the legitimacy of an individual becomes easier and more reliable.
It’s early days but the future looks interesting
Blockchain technology is the new kid on the block at the moment, but for anyone who looks a little deeper into it, you’ll soon start to realise that this is one of the biggest online developments ever and it’s set to transform the world. It’s well worth keeping an eye on blockchain app development over the coming months and years – there’s set to be a revolution!
Fork it up!
A Straight Line
Today’s topic really touches on the way blockchain participants come to consensus on when a set of transactions (a “block”) becomes “truth” and gets essentially cast in concrete as an immutable record on that blockchain.
Think of a blockchain as just that – a more or less straight set of links in a chain, where each link is a “block” of transactions in a given blockchain network (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum) and where a consensus of participants in that network (or “nodes” for our purposes here) have come to agreement that: “yeah, that block is valid according to the validation rules of that particular blockchain, so go ahead and forge that link on the chain.”
When you Come to a fork in the Road, Take it
However, there are conditions where a blockchain can diverge into two chains going forward. Broadly speaking there are three types of such forks.
Business As Usual
Sidebar: “miner nodes” on a blockchain are incented to identify valid blocks of transactions submitted on their blockchain network and get consensus from a majority of all nodes that “their block” should be the next link on the chain.
Now, the first type of “fork” is perfectly normal – and occurs because two or more mining nodes have solved a puzzle (or performed some other “work”) to get their “block” on the blockchain at virtually the same time, creating 2 or more possible paths that the particular blockchain can take.
Over time (and we’re talking seconds here), one of those “paths” will increase in length as other miners choose one of the “fork paths” and build upon it with subsequent candidate “blocks”. The shortest fork will eventually be orphaned and forgotten, and processing will proceed on the longest fork. This is why some folks (like merchants accepting Bitcoins) say that if you post a transaction on a blockchain, and the block containing your transaction has 6 blocks or more built on top of it – you are GOOD – there’s an EXTREMELY low chance that you are on an “orphaned fork”.
Hard Choice
The other two types of forks are known as “hard” and “soft” forks. In a hard fork, the blockchain software on computers in that blockchain network (“nodes”) is upgraded by at least some of the nodes, such that “old nodes” will judge blocks from the “new nodes” to be invalid. If the “old nodes” are stubborn and will not upgrade, voila – a fork. The most famous example of this was the hard fork in the Ethereum blockchain – leading to the new Ethereum fork and “Ethereum Classic” (like Coke and Coke Classic in the ’80s).
Soft Touch
In a “soft fork”, again you have a situation where some nodes have upgraded their blockchain software. In THIS case, however, one or more of the rules for that particular blockchain have been constricted by the new software (we say that a “soft fork” is backwardly compatible with previous transactions in that blockchain).
Say that the “new nodes” now will validate transactions that are only up to 1 MB in length – whereas under the “old rules” transactions could be 2 MB in length. The “old nodes” will validate any of the blocks from the “new nodes” – but if those “old nodes” try to MINE their own blocks – they could be rejected. The issue in all of this: if the “new nodes” who mine blocks are a minority in that blockchain network, then eventually their “new fork” will be orphaned – BECAUSE those “new nodes” are a minority compared to the majority of “old node” miners.
The Good, Bad, and Ugly
So basically blockchain forks are a natural byproduct of the consensus method used, and are also a way to “upgrade” a particular blockchain’s rule. Both good and bad things can happen – the most notorious “bad thing” was the Ethereum episode mentioned above. On the flip side, a well managed fork can allow a blockchain to evolve and improve without compromising the validity of past transactions.
Private vs. Public and Permissioned vs. Permission-less
There are two related concepts regarding the most general types of blockchains:
- The idea of a blockchain that is “public” vs. one that is “private” (the “open door” and “passport bearer” photos above),
- The notion of a blockchain that is “permissioned” vs. a “non-permissioned” (or “permission-less“) blockchain.
We have seen people conflate items 1 and 2 (e.g. saying a public blockchain is a permission-less blockchain), and we have seen people maintain a subtle distinction between 1 & 2 above.
On this latter point, for people who maintain a distinction between 1 & 2: the concept is that the public/private distinction has to do with user authentication (WHO are you) and the permissioned/permission-less distinction has to do with user authorization (WHAT can you do). Although there doesn’t seem to be (ahem) 100% consensus on exactly what these terms mean, Blocktonite offers the following explanations of these subtle distinctions:
Public vs. Private
These terms are generally used to describe whether a blockchain is open to literally anyone with an internet connection, symbolized by the open door graphic above, or if access (read, write, or read/write) to a blockchain is controlled by one or more parties. A very real example of a private blockchain are those set/up by consortia of parties with a shared interest in a particular community or marketplace. R3, the consortium of major banking institutions, is a prime example. In the case of “consortia based” blockchains – there are rules for consensus that stray away from the “proof of work” or “proof of state” mechanisms of public blockchains like Bitcoin (e.g. 10 out of 15 consortium members must agree before a transaction is posted to the blockchain).
You could have a private blockchain under the authority & control of one organization, but, frankly – why would you do that? That situation begins to sound like a secured, high performance, database!
Permissioned vs. Non-Permissioned
Generally speaking, we believe it is useful to think of public blockchains as “non-permissioned” (the Bitcoin blockchain would be “exhibit A” in this way) and private blockchains a “permissioned”.
However, we also believe a useful way to think about whether a blockchain is “permissioned” or not – is if there is the presence of some entity/entities who control what kind of transactions a blockchain participant can perform. Example: perhaps I’m a bank who is “permissioned” to participate in R3, but I’m not allowed to see or initiate certain interbank transfers on the R3 network. The fact that I need to be cleared to participate in R3 makes it a private blockchain, and the fact that I’m allowed to perform only certain transactions makes R3 a permissioned blockchain.
In the end, this discussion is a matter of semantics – the more important point is to understand blockchain deployment types and design points.
“Blockchain Friendly” Britain
The United Kingdom stands out (along with Dubai, the US, India, Australia and China) as a country aggressively piloting blockchain applications. However, perhaps more than other countries, the British government itself is more engaged in blockchain uses in public sector settings.
You can Bank on the British
Since 2015, the Bank of England (similar to the US Federal Reserve in mission) has been testing blockchain applications to lower costs in inter-bank transfers internal and external to the country. The UK Department for Work & Pensions has been piloting the use of blockchain to pay benefits to recipients who do not have bank accounts. The UK Royal Mint is testing blockchain to issue “Royal Mint Gold” a digital representation of real gold (think of a digital token that can be redeemed for gold).
English Gardens for Innovation
In 2016, UK’s Crown Commercial Service agency (akin to the US General Services Administration) awarded a “blockchain-as-a-service” contract to Credits (a start-up out of Isle of Wight) so that agencies and organizations within UK’s public sector can use blockchain for their own purposes and applications. The UK government has also funded a “Digital Catapult Centre” in London to incubate start-ups in newer technologies, including blockchain.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (similar to the US’ Securities & Exchange Commission) has included blockchain start-ups in its Regulatory Sandbox (kind of a ‘safe harbor’ that allows companies to test applications in a live environment).
In academe, the University of Surrey is ramping up its research efforts in “Digital Economy & Blockchain”.
British Blockchains Emerging
Activities like those above are helping to cultivate private enterprise in the UK. London itself is a hotbed of Financial Technology (“fintech”) start-ups and other industry companies developing blockchain applications.
Postscript 7.9.17: The UK is also looking into blockchain technology for it’s judicial system.
What is Blockchain?
If you google the phrase “what is blockchain” you will get (as of 6/3/17) 17 MILLION hits. We at Blocktonite don’t pretend that we can offer you as good an answer to that question as any of those folks. In fact, we’d be lying if we said WE totally get it. However, we plan on building over the next few weeks a special section of our library dedicated to the best explanations we’ve found.
Having said that – here’s the way we think about blockchain in terms of “what is it for?”: it’s a way to allow a “community” who have some kind of shared interest (exchanging money, who has what property, where did a physical, virtual, or intellectual asset come from, and on and on) to agree on the state of that specific world (energy consumption, land ownership, money, etc.). This sounds dull – but it’s yuge. Take it from us. The best way to “get it” is to see how industries and countries and governments are thinking of ways to use blockchain (hence our attempt to highlight what’s going on in the areas of music, energy, state regulations, document management, internet of things, etc.).
From an “information technology” perspective, blockchain is an evolving foundational technological standard (meaning ‘raw’ technological plumbing) that can run on the internet. The internet today has literally hundreds of such foundational ‘services’ – most of which you experience but don’t directly interact with. Examples: “SMTP” is what your e-mail provider uses, “http” powers all the websites you access, “FTP” is what you are using when you upload/download files from somewhere, etc. You rarely deal with these services directly – but your PC, Tablet, and mobile phone is using them on your behalf. Blockchain is rapidly evolving as one of those core “foundational” services.
“Blockchain Players” identified as of 5/27/17
The number of “blockchain players” (meaning either established companies or start-ups) that Blocktonite has identified in the past two months has increased from 391 to 528. In other words: an increase of 35% during only 15% of a year.
When to use blockchain – and when not to
The Bank of Canada (BOC) recently announced that, after a year long experiment, it would not deploy blockchain to settle inter bank transfers. BOC and a number of financial and “fintech” partners had launched Project Jasper in 2013. BOC found that the benefits of blockchain could not outweigh the advantages of the existing centralized approach. BOC clears about $130 Billion US$ a day through Canada’s inter bank transfer system. BOC and it’s Jasper collaborators found that, although they could address issues related to transaction privacy, they could only do so at the expense of system throughput and scalability and not without leaving the entire system open to a single point of failure (which, ironically, is exactly one of the reasons you might deploy blockchain in the first place). BOC notes, however, that a) in 3-5 years blockchain will have evolved to the point that the “Jasper issues” are addressed and b) that there are other applications for blockchain that BOC will work on in the immediate future.
But the general, and evolving, issue is this: when do you face a situation where a blockchain approach may be advantageous? IBM suggests you consider these questions:
- Do you have a community of business organizations external to your own – with a shared interest in process and data?
- Is there a need for that community to come to consensus on individual business transactions?
- Do you need a way to trace data (or an asset tied to the data) back to its creation? (so-called “data provenance”).
- Do historical transaction records need to be unchangeable? (aka “immutable”).
- Is “finality” important? (is there a need to have a “single source of truth” about the state of the data on the blockchain?
The Bank of Canada “inter bank project” (Jasper), met all of the five requirements above. This is why Blocktonite would add a SIXTH criterion to the above:
Can blockchain technology as it exists today (or in the intermediate future) deliver the performance and security you will require for your application?
Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IOT)
It’s pretty much a done deal that there will be an incredible number of ‘smart’ (aka “internet of things” or IOT) devices connected through the internet in short order. For example, Cisco predicts there will be 50 BILLION such interconnected devices by 2020. However, there are serious questions of security, privacy, data integrity, and scalability associated with this growth.
Enter blockchain, which offers several attractive characteristics that could securely enable the parabolic growth in IOT devices. The Bitcoin blockchain doesn’t quite fit the bill here – but blockchain technologies such as Ethereum and Hyperledger, with their built-in support for “smart contracts” (distributed code that executes when defined conditions are met), seem quite promising.
The potential applications of IOT and blockchain seem limitless. Appliances that sense they need repair and contact maintenance -and even schedule a repairman visit, pharmaceuticals equipped with NFC (Near Field Communications – the kind you see used for Apple Pay) tracked throughout the supply chain from ingredients to consumer, the aggregation of individual pollution monitoring IOT devices for accurate detection of air quality. The IOT/Blockchain combination could power the “prosumer” movement (for example: I’m not using my car for a few days – maybe someone out there wants to rent it). An MIT research paper discusses how smart drones could use the blockchain to decide what to do as a group, and IBM is developing Watson (AI) IOT platforms (both shades of SkyNet)!
A lot of collaborative work remains to be done – but there are already several consortiums plowing ahead.
Here is additional information on new technologies being used for health improvements.