Human Protocol is a blockchain infrastructure designed to decentralize human labor by supporting the growth of digital job marketplaces. After recently launching on the Ethereum mainnet, the protocol has now gained the capacity to fully automate the lifecycle of data labeling jobs, enabling the collaboration of humans and machines to create and complete a host of real-world, fungible assignments. Working with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, users can now be rewarded in Human’s native token, HMT, for the successful completion of anti-bot visual challenges, such as the identification of traffic lights in a grid image. This data is then …

Today’s consumers are willing to trade their data for personalization but have fast-growing concerns about data privacy. In a survey from a digital security and credential issuance company Entrust, only 21% of the respondents trust established global brands to keep their personal information secure. As data privacy pressure on Big Tech increases, these companies are starting to make significant investments in security solutions. Regulations around the world are evolving rapidly Last year, as more and more people spent time at home due to COVID-19 lockdowns, internet usage went up. And as usage has gone up, so too has consumer awareness …

In a business school lecture hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a senior executive for Safaricom gave a prediction of decentralized finance and the future of commerce to a room of keen but confused MBA students. “You will be able to buy your first home on WhatsApp! Smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain will take care of everything and you won’t need a broker,” he said with conviction, pointing to a slide. “How will the house’s title change hands? What about the funds? Can the blockchain do escrow? What role for lawyers? How could we possibly buy something …

Institutional interest in crypto is growing, confirmed by a Goldman Sachs survey, which found that 40% of the company’s high-net-worth clients were already exposed to cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins — which offer a more secure and steady option in the crypto space — have experienced hyper-growth, reaching a $119 billion market cap. The volatility of crypto has attracted more conservative investors to asset-backed stablecoins. Stablecoins are a form of private money. As Christina Segal-Knowles, executive director for financial markets infrastructure at the Bank of England, points out, modern money is a combination of public and private funds, up to 95% of which …

When blockchain made its debut in 2008, the technology was completely overshadowed by its application — Bitcoin. From an infrastructure technology perspective, there was a team that believed beyond the context of cryptocurrency, there’s a promising future where businesses and individuals will thrive in a more efficient, interactive and inclusive digital economy. ParallelChain claims to have identified the attributes that limit the use of blockchain in the real world, addressed them one by one, and built a new base layer blockchain from scratch. “Since its birth in 2018, ParallelChain has been a private network for traditional finance (TradFi). The purpose …

The rise of decentralized finance, or DeFi, could be paving the way toward a fully decentralized financial ecosystem. Yet, given the innovative nature of DeFi, the sector remains in constant development and is therefore prone to a number of vulnerabilities. Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest challenges currently facing the DeFi sector is security threats. This has become apparent as more DeFi hacks continue to wreak havoc across the crypto community. Most recently, the largest DeFi hack within the crypto industry took place. The Poly Network hack resulted in over $600 million dollars removed, and then returned, from Binance Chain, Ethereum …

Jay Graber, a former software engineer for Zcash and blockchain firm Skuchain, will be leading the anticipated decentralized social media initiative first announced by Twitter in 2019. In a Twitter announcement on Monday, Graber said that they would be in charge of the Bluesky project after working closely with “a group of thinkers and builders” from the decentralized social ecosystem. They plan on hiring for the Bluesky team and “partnering closely with Twitter and other companies” as part of the next steps towards fulfilling the decentralized social media plan. I’m excited to announce that I’ll be leading @bluesky, an initiative …

Shidan Gouran of Gulf Pearl: Shidan is a co-founder of Gulf Pearl, a Canadian merchant bank and advisory firm with a focus on emerging technologies. “With respect to blockchain technology, the ability to easily move wealth from one country to another and to prevent seizure of assets due to belonging to a particular religious, political, social or ethnic group is a very powerful feature that public blockchains can enable. All truly democratic countries should implement safeguard measures against the potential of a tyrannical government formation because no system is perfect. I believe digital bearer instruments enabled by blockchains are one …

James QU, currently the CTO at PlatON Network, comes from a traditional corporate background. Before joining PlatON, he worked as an executive director for Morgan Stanley and associate director for UBS Securities Tokyo. “I focused on electronic and algorithm trading for decades,” he shared. In 2015, following the Chinese market crash, QU left Morgan Stanley, where he had worked for over nine years, and started an algorithmic trading company, which remains one of the top companies in China till this day. QU was first introduced to blockchain technology in 2016 and admitted that he realized right away that it would …

If Facebook happened to be a human being, where would he/she/they currently be? Most likely in prison… for a very long time. The company’s transgressions are too numerous to list. But Facebook is not human; it’s a company, and a very profitable one, at that. In fact, it’s now one of the most profitable companies in the world. Facebook’s market capitalization has recently surpassed the $1 trillion mark. When we think of Facebook — more specifically, Facebook Inc. — we tend to think of a social media platform that is somewhat dated. However, it is important to remember that this …

Following a massive $600-million exploit of cross-chain protocol Poly Network, the Poly Network hacker has claimed his willingness to return the stolen cryptocurrency funds. At about 4:00 am UTC on Wednesday, the hacker sent an Ethereum transaction to themselves, stating that they were “ready to return the fund” in an embedded transaction message. In a subsequent message, the hacker asked for a multisig wallet address to return the funds to Poly Network. “Failed to contact the poly. I need a secured multisig wallet from you,” the hacker noted. Poly Network’s Twitter account posted an update on Wednesday, providing three separate …

A cryptocurrency enthusiast who exploited a bug in the ICON network that allowed him to mint a large amount of its native ICX token can pursue entitlement claims, according to a California federal judge. On Monday, United States District Judge William H. Orrick said that the case raises novel questions about digital property. He added that plaintiff Mark Shin had adequately alleged that the ICON Foundation was wrong to freeze his crypto asset accounts after he took advantage of its flawed code. According to Law360, the allegations were enough to allow the case to go forward, with Judge Orrick denying …