Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Is a Blockchain Thingy
I had no idea—until I read this incredibly jargon-filled article:
Squid is a cross-chain liquidity and messaging router that swaps across multiple chains and their native DEXs via axlUSDC.
So there.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
vas pup • February 10, 2023 5:29 PM
Israeli blockchain firm develops ‘fire prevention’ tech to thwart FTX-style fraud
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-blockchain-firm-develops-fire-prevention-tech-to-thwart-ftx-style-fraud/
“With the collapse of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX still sending shivers through the industry and fueling consumer mistrust, an Israeli multi-billion-dollar startup is making its “uncheatable” blockchain transaction technology available for mass adoption in hopes of preventing the next fraud scandal.
Netanya-based StarkWare, which is valued at $8 billion, is the developer of a technology that compresses and speeds up blockchain transactions. Israeli computer scientist Prof. Eli Ben-Sasson is the mathematical brain behind the Stark technology, which is a proof system based on cryptography and modern algebra powering its two networks, StarkEx and the “blockchain internet” called StarkNet, used for blockchain applications and processing transactions.
The blockchain startup this week gathered a crowd of about 700 crypto developers and coders from around the world in Tel Aviv, where Ben-Sasson, co-founder and president of StarkWare, announced that !!!!!!!the core software powering the networks will be open-sourced, meaning that it will be made a public good. It can be used as an infrastructure for all the things that can be deployed today on blockchain, such as payments, exchanges, gaming, NFTs or non-fungible tokens, voting, and governance. Visa Inc., the credit card firm is trying out the tech for making automatic crypto payments.
StarkWare says that its technology, geared to make blockchain scalable for mass adoption, handles more transactions than Bitcoin.
“We’re seeing this Stark technology, which most people haven’t heard of but which will soon underpin the apps we all use, becoming public property,” said Itamar Lesuisse, co-founder and CEO at Argent, a company that built a smart wallet using StarkNet. “This is huge. It’s driving the growth of a big community of people from all over the world who are excited to build on this infrastructure.”
[NB!]”“We’re collectively saying: Let’s shift the paradigm in crypto from ‘please don’t be evil’ to ‘the tech means you just can’t be evil,” said Lesuisse, who was one of the speakers at the blockchain event.
Blockchain is the database technology underlying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies allowing for the use of peer-to-peer payment systems. It runs by recording transactions as “blocks” that are updated in real time on a digitized ledger without a central record keeper. Many entrepreneurs and computer scientists see enormous potential of using blockchain for real-world applications as money and other assets can be transferred from person to person without going through a central authority.
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that can be exchanged between people without the involvement of intermediaries, like banks or governments. Blockchain is the distributed public ledger that allows these cryptocurrencies to change hands without someone making digital copies of the currency or otherwise tampering with the record of data or ownership.
“We live in a period in which more and more of our financial interactions are mediated by a very small number of very big companies or banks, and there is a growing understanding that it’s not good that all of our money flows are run through Google Pay, or Visa, or banks and that all of our social connections are run through Facebook or Twitter, or Instagram,” said Ben-Sasson. !!!“What blockchain does is really allow us to return to the peer-to-peer nature of social and economic interactions, but do so over the internet.” [Big Brother hates such idea a lot under pretext of National Security – VP].
According to Ben-Sasson, what happened at FTX and with other similar catastrophic failures is that people handed over control of funds to the exchange and were promised that they wouldn’t be misappropriated.
“Now, our technology uses the blockchain to enforce self-custodial trading, meaning that the customers working over our technology always are in control of their funds so it is impossible to misappropriate funds over our technology,” he explained.”