This Medium account is no longer active since July 2019.

You can now find the Orbs blog on the official Orbs website at the following link:

https://www.orbs.com/blog/

We Have Moved! was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Facebook and blockchain… again.

Blockchain’s biggest tease, Facebook, are at it again. After previous reports about Facebook developing blockchain-based remittance for WhatsApp and its acquisition of Chainspace, Facebook is now trying to figure out how make blockchain-based logins work. The main idea of the decentralized login would be to remove tech giants like Facebook, Google and Apple as the intermediaries between users and developers. This actually sounds like a really good idea that would make developers less at the mercy of the tech monopolies.

Neer Varshney writes in TNW that Faebook’s decentralized logins wouldn’t help users in securing their identity, but it would help Facebook by removing some risk of a data breach and putting the onus on users to secure their own data. Orbs’ Nate Simantov provides three reasons that Facebook’s move is important:

1. It’s great for startups and developers
2. A concrete Facebook move into blockchain will give everyone, especially VCs, a boost of confidence in regards to blockchain technology
3. This will intensify competition to find a solution to our privacy needs

Enterprises making the most out of blockchain

It’s kind of funny how in blockchain, it’s large enterprises that are the early adopters and not smaller, less risk-averse startups. Movistar, the very large South American subsidiary of Spanish telecom, Telefonica, has announced it will be trialing Wibson’s blockchain-based data marketplace. The marketplace allows consumers to sell their verified data for a profit.

HSBC has some good news about it’s blockchain usage. The bank told Reuters that blockchain has helped it save 25% on foreign exchange trade settlements. HSBCs FX Everywhere platform is one of the few examples of production-level blockchain running at scale. The platform processes 3,500 to 5,000 trades per day and over $250 billion worth of trades since last year. FX Everywhere is used to coordinated trades between HSBC’s trading hubs in the Americas, Europe and Aisa Pacific.

Vakt, which is digitizing oil commodity deals with blockchain, has announced that is now services most North Sea groups after bringing on four new clients. Vakt is now in use by companies such as BP, Shell, Total, Gunvor and Mercuria. Vakt is a great example of making blockchain useful from day one and will hopefully continue to expand.

Buy your crypto phone … with fiat

Phone giant HTC has announced that its blockchain phone, the Exodus 1, with US dollars. The phone, which costs $750, can also be purchased with Bitcoin, Ether, Binance Coin and Litecoin.

-90% draw down is almost stable, right?

Bloomberg’s Matt Levine takes a look at Basis’ refund to its investors after the $133 million ICO realized its project cannot overcome regulations. Basis gave investors 90% of their money back, which doesn’t sound so bad as far as failed projects go. This was fine for those who invested dollars, but pretty bad for those who invested crypto, especially Ether. Not only did Basis keep 10% of the Ether, meaning investors got back 0.9 ETH for ever 1 ETH invested, but the value of the 0.9 ETH dropped 85% from the time invested until the refund, leaving investors with practically nothing.

Ether investors were even more annoyed that Basis was supposed to be a stablecoin.

Latest VC funding news

• Chainalysis, which helps law enforcement track criminals’ use of crypto, raised $30 million in a Series B Round led by Accel.
• CipherTrace, the crypto security company, raised $15 million from Galaxy Digital, among others, to help fund it’s analytics and forensics business which helps AML enforcement.
• Solidus, the trade surveillance platform combating market manipulation, raised $3 million in a Seed Round to further expand its platform which is in use by exchanges, brokers, hedge funds and market makers.
• Briq, a construction software startup, raised $3 million to expand its machine learning and blockchain data platform.
• Jointer.io, a real estate tokenization platform, raised $2.5 million in a Seed Round to fund its platform transition from alpha to beta and to increase its branding efforts.
• Beam, a privacy-focused startup, raised $5 million. Investors include Japanese giant, Recruit.
• Neutrino, a company that maps crypto transactions, was acquired by Coinbase for an undisclosed sum.

Originally published at orbs.com on February 26, 2019.

Business of Blockchain: February 26, 2019 was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here we go again…

The internet is dominated by FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and now, they’ve set their sights on blockchain.

Following big moves from Facebook and Amazon, Google has just released six new blockchain datasets for Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Dogecoin, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, and Zcash.

Speaking of FAANG, Facebook has acquired the smart-contract startup, Chainspace. Chainspace uses sharding to make blockchain transactions more scalable, something that should be very important to Facebook if they are really working on the blockchain-based remittance platform as widely reported.

Lessons learned from false starts

When KamaGames launched its KamaGames Token, it looked like a surefire success. The gaming company has over 100 million social casino game players and received customer requests to incorporate crypto. Ultimately, the project failed to live up to even KamaGames’ most pessimistic expectations. CEO Andrey Kuznetsov explains why tokenezation failed, blaming the poor user experience caused by Ethereum’s slow transaction speeds and the crypto bear market.

In another case of learning from blockchain-based false starts, potential Airbnb competitor, Bee Token, has pivoted to a B2B fee-based model from its original B2C token-appreciation model. The Uber alumni founded company realized that demand was weak and revenue was needed to keep things running. Bee Token is also planning to raise a seed round soon in addition to its 2018 $4.5 million ICO.

Developing world, developing blockchain

Some of the most promising adoption use cases for blockchain are happening in countries you rarely think about for innovation. Why?

1. They have less to lose than the US or Europe, so they’re less risk averse
2. Blockchain offers an opportunity to take big jumps forward

In the Philippines for instance, Unionbank, one of the country’s largest banks, recently announced plans to launch the country’s first crypto ATMs. This launch is part of a collaboration with the Philippine government and its central bank.

In Argentina, commuters in 37 cities can now re-fill their public transportation cards, the SUBE card, with bitcoin. It’s worth noting the surging popularity of cryptocurrencies in Argentina where the Argentine peso inflation rate is a whopping 47%, second only in Latin America to Venezuela’s 1.35 million percent 😱.

Promising first steps

BeefChain? The amazing-named startup teamed up with the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming Business Council and packaging giant Avery Dennison to trace the first US beef export all the way from Murraymere Farms in Wyoming to a restaurant in Taiwan. RFID tags and blockchain were used to trace the shipment throughout the supply chain and prove its provenance. It’s beginning to look like supply chain on blockchain will be a future industry standard.

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a pilot program featuring blockchain and other technologies to ensure counterfeit drugs don’t find their way into consumers’ hands and bodies. The FDA is accepting applications now to be part of this pilot program.

Blockchain insights!

Ever wondered what non-techies think about blockchain? What features are most attractive to them or how close are we to really getting mass market adoption?

We wonder about this all the time, so we decided to find out. Our recently published (free) Consumer Blockchain Index is the result of a survey of 1,200 American consumers across demographic groups about how they view blockchain. Included are extremely useful insights for anyone who wants to create consumer-focused blockchain-based apps. Check it out here.

Orbs co-founder, Uriel Peled, breaks down the VC activity in blockchain in 2018 as well as provides an outlook for 2019. Some tidbits from 2018: 60% of venture capital went into decentralized products, 20% into infrastructure, 10% exchanges and 10% stable coins.

Movers & shakers

• Facebook has acquired Chainspace.
• SendFriend, a Philippines-based remittance service that uses Ripple’s xRapid, raised $1.7 million from MIT Media Lab, Barclays, the Mastercard Foundation, Ripple, Techstars, Mahindra Finance, 2020 Ventures, and 8 Decimal Capital.
• Dharma Labs, which created a decentralized lending protocol, raised $7 million from Coinbase, Y Combinator and Ripple, among others.
• NXM Labs, which safegaurds the security and integrity of systems such as blockchain, raised $5.5 million in a pre-Series A.
• Lumedic, which created a blockchain-based revenue cycle platform for healthcare, was acquired by Providence St. Joseph Health. Providence operates 51 hospitals, 829 clinics and has over 2 million clients.

If you enjoyed this newsletter (or not) or want to send some news our way, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Can we email you more content like this?

Originally published at orbs.com on February 12, 2019.

Business of Blockchain: February 12, 2019 was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Local environment will enable developers to develop, deploy and test on Orbs layer

Tel Aviv, Israel — December 20, 2018 — Orbs, the hybrid blockchain, announced today the launch of Gamma, a local testing environment that enables developers to prepare for the launch of the Orbs production platform. In addition, Orbs will be launching a new command line interface “Gamma-cli” enabling developers to interact with their personal Orbs Blockchain and design partners to access the full testnet. Gamma will create a local blockchain on each machine to allow developers to write and test smart contracts using the Orbs Smart Contract SDK.

The launch of Gamma comes in the build up to the release of the full production layer in early 2019 enabling developers and businesses to begin testing the platform.

“We have seen a tremendous swell of excitement in Orbs that has only grown as we approach the production launch in 2019,” said Daniel Peled, Co-Founder of Orbs. “Our focus remains on creating the optimal platform for building large scale applications and to help improve this process, we wanted to give partners and developers the time they need to test and learn on our system. By leveraging the period ahead of the launch to work closely with partners and developers, we can help them gain the maximum benefit from being among the early adopters of Orbs.”

Earlier this month, Orbs released the company’s product roadmap which highlighted several major updates to the project’s readiness. With the release of Gamma and further testing updates, the company is gearing up to the full launch of a production ready platform in early 2019. The period will be utilized to work closely with partners and developers to help them optimize their onboarding process ahead of the launch.

If you would like to try out Gamma, check out the documentation on Github:

orbs-network/orbs-contract-sdk

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript
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Orbs Launches Gamma Local Testing Environment Ahead Of 2019 Production Launch was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Korean Conglomerate Kakao’s Investment Arm, Kakao Investment Makes First Blockchain Infrastructure Investment in Orbs

Investment comes alongside partnership with Kakao’s blockchain subsidiary Ground X to develop blockchain applications for the Kakao network

Tel Aviv, Israel — 13 December, 2018 — Orbs, the hybrid blockchain, announced today that Kakao Investment, the venture arm of the leading South Korean internet conglomerate, will be investing in the Orbs infrastructure. The investment builds on Orbs’ existing partnership with Kakao blockchain subsidiary Ground X, where the two companies agreed to partner on blockchain applications and research and development projects. The investment will focus on helping Orbs further the protocol’s development and growth.

“With Kakao’s consumer applications counting more than 50 million active users worldwide, the investment in Orbs represents a significant endorsement of the long-term potential of our technology,” said Daniel Peled, Orbs CEO and Co-Founder. “Kakao Investment’s relationship with Orbs reflects our regional strength and the potential we offer to make blockchain a powerful growth engine for its business units. Kakao was among the first major tech companies to recognize that blockchain is the future, and Orbs is excited to be a bigger part of that journey.”

Orbs announced earlier this year that its production ready environment will go live in early 2019, and the company is actively working with partners to help the onboarding process. Kakao Investment has been focused heavily on the blockchain sector and is among the leading venture arms in the sector.

“Kakao Investment is focused on identifying key trendsetters and innovators in the blockchain sector and Orbs is a great example,” said Kris Park, Executive Director of Kakao Investment. “The company has developed an innovative business model and possesses unique technological capabilities, enabling us to support the company and maximize its potential.”

Orbs was recognized in August as an emerging blockchain technology vendor by world-leading research firm Gartner. A public blockchain to complement base-layer protocols, Orbs serves as universal second layer for decentralized applications in need of more secure, scalable, and cost-efficient solutions, while leveraging the liquidity of a base layer. The company also recently expanded its operations into South Korea with a headquarters in Seoul and partnered with both Kakao’s blockchain subsidiary Ground X and stablecoin Terra to focus on research and development efforts.

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-go
• orbs-network/orbs-spec
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Join the Orbs community:

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Kakao Investment Dives In To Orbs! was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Following the launch of our full roadmap in early November, we saw significant progress in several different avenues. New partnerships closed, the technology continued to advance and an increasing number of potential customers have been in our offices to receive direct feedback on how best to build on Orbs.

New Partners

Orbs has signed an MOU with Coinbit, a Korean cryptocurrency exchange with 600,000 active users and over 167,000 BTC in daily trading volume, the highest in Korea. The relationship will help Coinbit see its exchange technologies upgraded through the help of the Orbs Group team, with a specific focus on supporting the company’s global expansion plans.

We also signed an MOU with leading Indian company Perlin. Perlin is a decentralized cloud-computing marketplace trying to commoditize computing power from mobile devices and other smart products to sell on-demand. Our agreement sets the foundations for a strong partnership between the blockchain infrastructure of Orbs, designed for scalable business use, and the growing demand for extra computing power that might be blockchain’s next major use case.

Global Events

Tel Aviv

Orbs’ own Ilan Sterk spoke at the CBOE Risk Management Conference where he discussed issues in the crypto markets. Sterk tackled questions from institutional investors relating to digital assets as well as concerns about infrastructure. Questions about custody and reporting also garnered some attention, plus the potential for bitcoin futures to bring some maturity and order to the overall market. Finally, he had the chance to cover the ongoing volatility in the crypto market.

New York

Between November 8 and 9, the World Blockchain Forum in New York City saw 2,000 people gather to talk over the future of the sector in 2019 and beyond. Our new Head of Global Business Development, Gili Ovadia, spoke on a panel covering the Latest Developments in Ethereum Technology with CEO Nariya Takemura of Crypto Derby, Lance Koonce of Davis Wright Tremaine, Doug Petkanics of Livepeer, and moderated by Alexander Skidanov of Near.

Seattle

During the same week, Orbs’ manager of strategic partnerships, Danny Brown Wolf, attended the Token Forum in Seattle on November 9. The one-day conference analyzed inefficiencies in current blockchain models, go-to-market strategy for token projects, and things as nuanced as blockchain strategy for family offices.

Shenzhen

Orbs President Daniel Peled took part in the China Israel Innovation Forum in Shenzhen, China, in a panel alongside Fan Hua, the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institutes’ Director of Technology, Associate Professor Noam Rinetzky of the School of Computer Science in Tel Aviv University, Co-Founder/CEO Jonathan Rouach of QED-it, and finally David Tse, the Thomas Kailath and Guanghan Xu Professor at Stanford University.

What’s Coming in December

The next month will include some big news on the business front, a new technology release and significant efforts to engage directly with the community in East Asia. Uriel Peled will be speaking at the World Blockchain Summit MARVELS Seoul 2018 and again at the Crypto Festival 3rd Meetup. Then the team will head to Japan for Dapp Summit in Tokyo.

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-go
• orbs-network/orbs-spec
• orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript
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Orbs Group December Update: Coinbit and Perlin Partnerships, More Meetups, More Progress was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article is by Daniel Buchuk

Transparency and security are two essential pillars for any business. Over the past decade, the digital advertising industry’s reputation has been tarnished with a seemingly endless string of scandals, rising fraud, and finally misleading or dishonest campaign metrics. As a result of this, customers are turning to ad blockers, and concerns around privacy and information tracking are growing. However, it is important to point out that digital marketing spending has overtaken television advertising and is expected to reach in excess of $600 billion in 2018.

With digital advertising share expected to approach 50 percent of all advertising by 2020, the industry is ripe for change. It is also desperate to find solutions that will create a healthier ecosystem for customers, advertisers, and publishers.

Is blockchain the right solution to tackle ad fraud?

AdAge estimates that ad fraud takes $1 for every $3 spent on digital ads. In 2016 alone, marketers lost $7.2 billion to ad fraud. With a challenge of this magnitude, it’s no surprise that a recent poll showed that 78 percent of marketers cite click fraud as their top concern.

While not everyone in the industry believes blockchain holds the key to combating fraud, many industry leaders are hopeful and recognize its potential.

Blockchain technology can be described in three important ways that can solve ad fraud: it is trustless, permissionless, and decentralized.

Ad fraud is pervasive due to the opaque and complex network of publishers, platforms, and agencies. The new layer of transparency and accountability in a blockchain-driven advertising ecosystem can empower buyers and sellers to verify the placement of their campaigns and measure ad impression with no bias from intermediaries. However, since blockchain requires participation from all parties, publishers and advertisers would have to join forces to set the rules of the game and agree on a standard.

Businesses at the heart of the ecosystem are already taking steps. The newly formed Adschain Consortium — which includes iProspect, Futurs.io, Mondadori MediaConnect, as well as adtech platforms Smart and S4M — plans to address the problem of an increasing number of intermediaries in the programmatic supply chain jumbled in between publishers and advertiser.

WPP, the world’s biggest advertising conglomerate, has a similar blockchain consortium called ‘Project Proton’ led by Mindshare. It consists of MediaMath, Integral Ad Science and the Rubicon Project.

These consortiums are leading change in the industry, planning to leverage blockchain technology to bring more security to the entire programmatic supply chain by making the intermediary actors for each impression transaction transparent.

Can Blockchain Make Advertising More Transparent and Customer-Centric?

The digital advertising industry is dominated by centralized enterprises. The advertising duopoly — Google and Facebook — account for a quarter of all advertising sales. Google knows customers’ intent, while Facebook knows the demographics. David Petterson, suggested in a recent Forbes article that the missing piece in the puzzle is the customer — which ends up being a casualty in an advertising model primarily designed to serve the ad networks.

Blockchain technology has the potential to remove ad networks from the equation. These companies sit between brands and publishers, matching them and taking a big cut in return. In theory, blockchain could remove and optimize the system so it runs only between companies, publishers, and visitors. This would make advertising much cheaper for companies, but it could also make it better thanks to the blockchain’s immutability, which offers a tamper-proof record of everything that has taken place on the network.

Since it would be no longer the ad networks brokering, holding or sharing performance insights, both companies and publishers would have full access to a customer’s data. This was include information about the customer’s journey, campaign performance, and every metric regarding impressions and clicks.

This shift will help advertisers really take the customer’s best interest into account and avoid ‘spamming’ irrelevant people for the sake of impressions or clicks; impressions or clicks that ultimately don’t generate a strong ROI. What’s more, blockchain can also bring consumers into the transaction and make them aware of what value their personal data has to publishers and advertisers.

Are Brands Ready to Embrace Change?

Some early pioneers are doing remarkable work in this space. For example, Japanese car manufacturer Toyota announced last month a partnership with blockchain advertising analytics firm Lucidity to cut down on fraud when buying digital ads.

The result of their initial pilot for the auto industry’s first-ever verified programmatic ad campaign on blockchain were impressive — showing a 21% lift in campaign performance.

Other companies, such as Asian airline Cathay Pacific, are exploring the ways in which blockchain can help them manage its reward program. Cathay teamed up with Accenture to launch the airline’s first application of blockchain technology by issuing air miles to customers over a single distributed ledger. Thus, they allowed customers, airline partners, and the airline itself to manage member rewards in real time.

We will begin seeing more and more brands embracing blockchain technologies to optimize their marketing spend and build better relationships with customers. The time is now for the marketing and advertising community to lead the change — thinking creatively about how to make the most of the blockchain. Looking at the range of opportunities and the thirst for innovation to tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges seems like it’s not a question of if, but when.

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-go
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Blockchain in Digital Advertising: Combating Ad Fraud & Cutting Middle Men was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post was written by Daniel Buchuk

The tourism industry is estimated to be worth US$ 8.7 trillion annually, with sales expected to hit $817 billion in 2018. This industry by itself accounts for almost 10 percent of global GDP and moves millions each year. Since the ecosystem relies upon multiple companies passing information between one another, the potential applications of blockchain technologies to improve are endless, making travel and tourism the next prime targets to benefit from blockchain-enabled solutions.

In a not-so-distant future, people might be able to bypass the process of booking through third-party websites or just go to an airport without the need to stand in endless queues. The introduction of blockchain in tourism has the potential to help both travelers and companies within the ecosystem. Hotels, airlines, car rental, tours, pricing, and many other operations have an opportunity to evolve. Through a more intelligent and secure orchestration of data across companies, as well as the ability for customers to set their own preferences and manage their choices in a transparent ecosystem, the industry can improve tremendously.

While the opportunities are endless, they can be grouped into three main areas: simpler transaction management, better security processes, and improved loyalty schemes.

1. Payments & Transactions

Financial transactions are a key component of the travel industry, and blockchain technology can help managing payments, making them simpler. The amount of transactions needed with multiple suppliers can be reduced and streamlined using blockchain that simultaneously help synchronize and secure payments.

This is especially important with overseas travel. Whether this is achieved by accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method or by providing a transparent ecosystem through a safe global ledger, where bank payments might be streamlined to reduce associated costs for hotels, flights or tours. What’s more, blockchain has the potential to improve the level of trust among all parties involved through secure payments.

Imagine if the industry had access to a distributive blockchain database built in collaboration with airlines, hotels and other industries relating to tourism. This would empower individuals to directly book airline tickets, hotels, and rentals via smart contracts. Intermediaries such as Trivago or Expedia would become redundant and users would ultimately reap the benefits.

Inventory tracking also would come in handy. Since flight and hotel pricing fluctuate constantly, blockchain can be applied to this complex supply chain to avoid overbooking and to make customers fully aware of price variations.

For example, last month, Canada’s flag carrier Air Canada announced an agreement with Swiss startup Winding Tree to participate in an open-source, blockchain-based travel platform. The initiative is expected to remove bottlenecks associated with the distribution and sale of air travel products. This will give customers better access to inventory listings, directly from the airline.

2. Identification & Security Processes

One of the more exciting potentials for blockchain for hospitality is connected to identification and security services. Passengers are required to provide ID at various stages of their journey, but industry-wide adoption of a distributed blockchain would contain quickly verifiable data on travelers, such as a fingerprint to for verification, reducing waiting times.

In terms of the importance to the travel industry, stability and security rank very highly. The decentralized nature of the blockchain means that information can never go ‘offline’ or be lost through accidental deletion or a malicious cyber attack, ensuring transactions are always traceable.

Blockchain can make accessing and storing important information easier and more reliable, because responsibility for storing it is shared across the whole network. For example, to avoid unnecessary delays at various stages of traveling, smart contracts codes can help scan passengers in real-time. Moreover, this would ensure security to the passengers and help preventing unnecessary queues in airports.

3. Loyalty Programs

Tourism and loyalty programs go hand in hand. The loyalty rewards programs is a US$360+ billion industry, made up of thousands of different programs each with its own systems for earning, redeeming, and exchanging their unique points. In fact, recent data from the IMI Corporation shows that 68 percent of customers are bound to be loyal to brands offering rewards.

Blockchain technology can revolutionize loyalty programs by simplifying the process, making it easier for customers to access their points and redeem them. Rewards can be distributed through digital tokens which can be used anywhere and any time, with an added layer of security to reduce loyalty scheme fraud. This can work beyond the travel industry, including in retail.

Key players in the industry have started taking big steps to embrace the opportunities that blockchain can bring to create better loyalty programs. This summer, Singapore Airlines launched its blockchain-based loyalty program for frequent customers. KrisPay, a digital wallet developed in partnership with KPMG and Microsoft, allows Singapore Airlines customers to turn travel miles into units of payment, which can be used with partner merchants in Singapore. Most notably, the newly dubbed KrisFlyer program utilizes a blockchain to underpin its clients’ loyalty wallets.

Another great example in this area came from The Cathay Pacific Group and its rewards programme, Asia Miles, which launched their first application of smart blockchain technology earlier this year in collaboration with Accenture. Through their new dining promotion in Hong Kong, Unlock More Miles, members will earn miles credited to their accounts within a single day, improving business efficiency by minimizing back-office administration.

Short Term and Long Term

Travel platform Travelport predicts that most of the industry’s blockchain developments in the short term will happen in closed supplier groups on private and permissioned chains. In the mid-to-long-term though, we will probably see it applied to payments, inventory and order management. Once more and more players within the industry join forces and embrace this new technology, blockchain enabled solutions will be able to assist in the long-term with whole trip management on blockchain.

The future is bright for the travel industry, as travelers will be able to trek across the world with the added benefits of an infrastructure designed to make the entire experience better, safer, cheaper, and faster.

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-go
• orbs-network/orbs-spec
• orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript
• orbs-network/lean-helix-go

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Will Blockchain Redefine Travel As We Know It? was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Roadmap!

Over the last few months, tremendous efforts have been placed in finalizing our roadmap and moving towards production readiness. We can now confidently state that Orbs will reach full production capabilities no later than April of 2019.

It’s important to note that we see this as a continuous, not a binary, event. Since we are building an IaaS for developers, our priorities are directly driven by the needs of and feedback from our clients and design partners. This is why we will run in test environments from December to ensure that Orbs runs as smoothly as possible.

What does this mean for the time until then?

To help shed some light on what we’ll be working on in the interim and the strategy behind this process, we can break down the next 5–6 months as follows:

November/December: Testing

Without giving too much away from a coming product launch, the end of 2018 will enable developers and partners to begin expanding the way they train and test on Orbs. This period will be crucial to helping support ultimate development on our platform by widening access. Simultaneously, the final components are being added to the product to make sure it has all the essentials for us to feel confident about declaring it production-ready.

January — March: Partner and Optimize

During this period, the focus from the technology side will be on optimizing the platform, and making sure we are as production-ready as possible. Testing and tweaking will be the name of the game during these few months, but it will also include a heavy component of working with designers and developers. Once they have had a chance to more heavily utilize testing tools, they will be able to engage the Orbs team to bring up feedback and improve their internal processes so that they can take full advantage of the production environment launch. This period is absolutely crucial and speaks to our focus on supporting the amazing teams that are seeking to build on Orbs.

If you’re interested in building on Orbs, this is a great time to reach out.

April: Production Readiness

Obviously, a launch is a not a binary process. It is the beginning of a long period of ongoing innovations, improvements, engagements and learnings. However, it is also a huge moment when we get to see the project debut to the world.

We’re unbelievably excited.

What does this mean for the token release?

Not much. Our plan regarding the token has not changed, and the exact date still hinges on a few business and technology considerations. There are a few considerations to balance, but the ultimate goal is to align our processes so that the launch of the project is as effective as possible. We can’t give away much more at this time, but the roadmap should give a strong indication of timing.

On to the rest of the updates:

Influence around the World

Orbs continued expanding its relationships around the world in October, laying the groundwork for a more sophisticated market in the next few months. Demand for blockchain is expected to grow, but we are moving beyond just talk and proofs-of-concept.

San Francisco Blockchain Week

Co-Founder Uriel Peled and Orbs Chief Architect Oded Noam were at San Francisco Blockchain Week where they gave two keynote addresses and led a technical panel. Oded spoke about blockchain virtualization, while Uriel tackled “PoS vs. DPoS” on a panel with Aparna Krishnan of Mechanism Labs, Luke Powell of Decred, and David Moss of TrueBlock.

Orbs also sponsored a Happy Hour get-together on the sidelines of the conference.

We had the chance to meet with several project leaders, CTOs, and VCs looking to learn more about the industry’s real needs.

Korea Meetups

On October 12, Orbs attended the Seoul meetup hosted by Bitgosu, Orbs’ marketing partner in South Korea and one of the leading organizations for blockchain promotion in the region. Over 600 people came out to hear Co-Founder Daniel Peled speak, with several hundred people stopping by the Orbs booth to learn more about our infrastructure.

The second meetup took place on October 30, also in Seoul, but this time organized entirely by Orbs. It was our second fully Orbs-centered meetup in Korea, and it showed the growth of the community at large. Co-Founder Uriel Peled and spoke to the crowd, which included dozens of new attendees.

B Dash Camp

Daniel spoke on a panel at B Dash Camp. 700 people. Mostly investors and entrepreneurs. The purpose of the two-day conference to gather all the major players together in one place. There was a special focus on blockchain with a special blockchain night and panel where Daniel sat with Benjamin Rameau of Binance Labs, Henry Lee of ICON, and Ken Kitahara of B Cryptos.

Devcon4 — Distributed Key Generation

Orbs attended Devcon4, the major Ethereum conference for Europe in Prague between October 30 and November 2. David Yakira, Ido Grayevsky, Avi Asayag and Ido Zilberberg presented the innovative implementation of distributed key generation (DKG) over Ethereum.

“Efficient and cryptoeconomically driven DKG with a smart contract” explained the basics, starting with DKG’s necessity in threshold cryptosystems. The Orbs smart contract is perfect example for a useful dApp. Orbs utilizes Ethereum as a decentralized trusted escrow. The entire process, which includes moderating complaints of malicious activities through precompiled smart contracts, uses a negligible amount of gas.

MIT Blockchain Systems Consortium Launch in partnership with Endor

We were in Boston, fresh off the city’s World Series win, to meetup with one of our strongest allies. Orbs partner Endor, co-founded by MIT’s Alex Pentland and Yaniv Altshuler, launched the Blockchain Systems Consortium in Boston on October 30. A gift from Orbs and Endor helped fund the organization, first announced back at Consensus 2018 in May.

CryptoSprings

Danny Brown Wolf started the month at CryptoSprings in Palm Springs, California. The intimate conference cutting though the ‘when lambo’ hype , was a diverse gathering of opinions reflecting on the different directions the industry has gone and might take going forward. “The high level of the conference was not only reflected in the blockchain superstar speaker line-up, but all throughout the topics discussed on and off stage. This was the real thought leadership of the space, focusing on governance, potential conflict of interests and how to mitigate them, and industry perspectives on investors and builders.”

Danny Brown Wolf on Twitter

My brain is ready to explode. Bring it on. @CryptoSprings @orbs_network @CoolCousinCo @ethereum @atomic

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-go
• orbs-network/orbs-spec
• orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript
• orbs-network/lean-helix-go

Join the Orbs community:

• GitHub: https://github.com/orbs-network
• Telegram: https://t.me/orbs_network
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/orbs_network
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ORBS_Network/
• Read the Orbs white papers: https://www.orbs.com/white-papers
• Sign up for the Orbs newsletter

Hitting the Ground Running with a New Roadmap: Orbs November Update was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Orbs is happy to announce that Gartner — the international research and business consulting company — has named Orbs one of the world’s four Cool Vendors for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in 2018. This is a major milestone for the company and its progress to bring the value of the technology to the business world.

The Gartner report recognizes “emerging blockchain technology vendors that enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders should evaluate for blockchain identity and decentralized application services.” The other three Cool Vendors are Brave, Civic, and Evernym.

“It is an honor to be recognized by Gartner as a blockchain vendor for their enterprise clients,” said Uriel Peled, co-founder of Orbs. “To appear among just four blockchain companies named globally, we feel is a mark of Orbs’ continued innovation and progress toward driving mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.”

The Orbs blockchain is built with the flexible design of standard software — rolling upgrades and updates — that other blockchains need forks to change.

“Our platform that is built for developers, by developers, to provide them with the flexibility, security, and a new scalability standard that is needed to maintain a decentralized application.”

We look forward to sharing more updates with the community as progress continues toward launch of the Orbs platform.

Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community:

• orbs-network/orbs-network-go
• orbs-network/orbs-spec
• orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript
• orbs-network/lean-helix-go

Join the Orbs community:

• GitHub: https://github.com/orbs-network
• Telegram: https://t.me/orbs_network
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/orbs_network
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ORBS_Network/
• Read the Orbs white papers: https://www.orbs.com/white-papers
• Sign up for the Orbs newsletter

Gartner: Orbs is one of the four ‘Cool Vendors’ in Blockchain Right Now was originally published in The Orbs Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.