Silença Tech

How #AML screening helped to seize child porn site US law enforcement agencies have analyzed Bitcoin transactions to locate and shut down a global child pornography site. Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, criminal Investigators were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea*.... Thus, despite the reputation of decentralized technology, crypto brings authorities closer to catching criminals. *According to the press release published on October 16th by US Department of Justice: https://bit.ly/2BjKhF1. #cryptoaml #identify #amlscreening

The accounting treatment of cryptocurrencies under IFRS Standards is unclear. They may not qualify as financial assets, as they neither represent a right to receive cash or other financial instruments, nor a contract to exchange assets. They may qualify as intangible assets, but they are not legally protected and have no useful life. Some jurisdictions have reported diversity in the accounting for virtual currencies under IFRS Standards. In my humble opinion, Japan represen...ted by ASBJ [Accounting Standards Board of Japan] has the best approach today to address the virtual currencies accounting issue. The ASBJ`s Act recognizes virtual currencies as a means of payment and defines them as proprietary value that can be transferred using electronic data processing system and can either be: (a) used against unspecified parties as a means of payment and can be traded with unspecified parties; or (b) can be exchanged with other virtual currencies as defined by the ASBJ’s Act . The ASBJ concluded that virtual currencies were assets for accounting purposes, because they may contribute to cash inflows to the entity through sales or conversion to cash. #cryptocurrency #ifrs #ASBJ #accounting

Big Bro is stepping in the game

Quite surprisingly, there are relatively few legal obstacles to the use of smart contracts in commercial transactions. The main challenges to their use seem to be technical more than legal. Surprise surprise, e.g. to establish that the payment condition has been fulfilled, smart contracts must communicate with the physical world. The resulting problems are particularly noticeable in blockchain-based smart contracts. The original blockchain was designed as an insulated environ...ment, which cannot accept input from the real world". To solve the connection with the "real world" issue people come up with so-called oracles. Oracles do not feed such information into the blockchain directly (as this would compromise its trustlessness) but only sign the script unlocking the tokens with their private key when an off-chain event is established as true. Needless to say, this approach leaves no room for a nuanced evaluation of contractual performance, as the oracle can only sign or not sign the script. Despite its apparent simplicity, this model is plagued by a cascade of technical interdependencies Once smart contracts involve the performance of obligations in the real world, their operation involves multiple dependencies on external, centralized and (possibly) insecure entities. As smart contracts can only be as trustless as the oracle and the data source that provide them with information about off-chain events, the fact that the blockchain itself is trustless and secure, becomes largely irrelevant. In other words, once smart contracts involve more complex transactions, i.e. exchanges that go beyond the movement of tokens in response to the presentation of one or more private keys, the benefits of putting them on the blockchain seem easily lost. First, it is necessary to find a trustworthy and reliable oracle. Oracles exist outside of the blockchain and are neither trustless nor decentralized. Despite the naming convention, they do not constitute infallible sources of truth and cannot guarantee that an off-chain event actually occurred. Moreover, oracles do not create or compute the required information about off-chain events themselves but obtain if from external data sources, such as websites, commercial providers (e.g. Bloomberg), prediction markets (e.g. Augur), answer engines (e.g. WolframAlpha) or other blockchains. Smart contracts may eliminate human bias and the risk of non-performance, but they introduce the risks of programming errors, security breaches and discrepancies between original intent and actual implementation. Given that the aforesaid events may give raise to complex disputes, it is unlikely that smart contracts will reduce the need for lawyers and courts or otherwise diminish the significance of the legal profession. For the time being, the opposite may be expected. Source: bit.ly/2GDLRFt

At Silença Tech we often get asked by startups what blockchain platform is optimal to design their distributed software. I want to share with you what logic we follow and driven by to give the best response to our customers. Of course, tech specs should be taken into consideration, and also it always depends on the specificity of software etc. However, I’d like to elaborate on the most common use cases. First and foremost, what needs to be determined is the level of access g...ranted to participants. In other words, whether a network is going to be public or private. Even though about 90% of networks are public, private network is the best choice for a certain type of applications. If your venture needs public blockchain, that means that user trust is essential, and 100% of transactions will be transparent, and most probably you need utility token(s). Among public blockchains, I would outline EOS, Tron, and Ethereum. They allow smart-contracts, what makes it a good fit to build sophisticated DApps. EOS has an exceptional infrastructure, advanced functionality, and much higher bandwidth than Ethereum. Besides, EOS is hyped up and that makes it a popular choice, giving certain high-tech startups to utilize cutting edge technologies. Meanwhile, Tron has low transaction cost, its internal language is commonly known Java, and many other advantages over Ethereum. And yet, to the most startups, we recommend Public Ethereum. The reasons are rather pragmatic. MVP can be developed easily and deployed pretty fast. Currently, there are plenty of Solidity developers on the market, much more in comparison with any other blockchain (Solidity is an internal Ethereum language). There is a huge community actively present online, that means answers to solve your issues can be found quicker. Basically, Google has more articles to address numerous problems every MVP inevitably goes through at some point). That is why DApp rating looks like on post`s image. #dapps #blockchain #eos #ethereum

Ukrainian team shares the first place among EOS`s block producers. They compete with teams from China and Japan. Way to go, big time! EOS market cap: $3,191M The target of the EOS project is to become the strongest infrastructure for decentralized applications, aiming at millions of transactions per second (TPS), no fees. The highest TPS on current EOS network is 3996, and the highest TPS of ETH is currently only a few dozen.... #ukraine #blockchain #eos See more

We recommend businesses to check incoming and outgoing transactions in and out of the platforms that are related to Bitcoin, USDT or Ethereum. And here is why: #bitcoin #usdt #ethereum #aml #antimoneylaundering

Forbes Video doorbell firm Ring was acquired by Amazon for $1 billion in February of this year, while Looksery, an Odessa-founded augmented reality start-up has also been bought by Snapchat for $150 million. Other well-known firms originating from Ukraine include Grammarly, BitFury and Petcube. Incidentally, Grammarly secured $110 million of funding in May, with BitFury and Petcube receiving $30 million and $10 million respectively. Even the co-founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, ...hails from Kyiv. Start-ups from Ukraine, or founded by Ukrainians, raised $265 million in 2017, according to AVentures Capital, a Kyiv-based venture capital fund. While the amount raised in 2017 trails far behind many Western European nations firms in the United Kingdom raised almost $4 billion, for example it demonstrated that Ukraine has become a start-up hub compared to other countries in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the amount raised in Ukraine by the 44 investment deals that took place in 2017 was a remarkable 231% increase on 2016. #ukrainian #venturecapital #startups #fintech

Why Atomic Swap is so cool? Imagine what it would be like if the trading cryptocurrencies had no trading fees and there were no exchange hacks! Surreal? Well, no. No trading fees and no exchange hacks are soon to happen in the real crypto world!... I would also like to tell you that in this cryptosphere, the stories of exchanges being hacked are not new. Such incidents mainly happen because there are centralized exchanges that provide trading services. These centralized exchanges also want to earn and increase their profits by having their cut of trading fees and decentralized exchanges are not here yet. But if there are no trading fees, I guess there would be NO incentivization of centralized exchanges and hence there would be neither exchanges nor hacks related to them. So True! To make all of this possible, a new technology called atomic swaps has come in which will make this cryptosphere safe and more mature. Atomic swap is a cryptographically powered smart contract technology that enables two parties to exchange different cryptocurrencies/tokens without the risk of one party defaulting on the trade. The real beauty is, this exchange/trade between involved parties can happen in a trustless manner without depending on a third party or an escrow manager plus there is no default risk on either side. Simplistically, in this type of exchange, no party can run off with the other party’s money before the trade is complete and this is ensured by the cryptographically powered smart contracts of atomic swaps. In computer science, it is called atomic because the trade happening is whole/indivisible, unlike the one we have on centralized exchanges or escrow manged exchanges like Local Bitcoins. Atomic swaps open up a whole new way of looking at crypto trading. This technology can be used when two parties have to make a very large or a very small OTC trade. Imagine you need to exchange 1000 BTC with 50,000 LTC. I am sure you would neither use a centralized exchange that is prone to hacks nor will you trust an escrow manager. In this case, by simply using the atomic swap technology, you can exchange your 1000 BTC into 50,000 LTC without trusting an exchange or escrow service. Also, you can be 100% sure that even if the trade doesn’t take place successfully, you will not lose your 1000 BTC because of the atomic swap tech. Lack of scalability and interoperability are two of the biggest problems that the crypto world is facing as of right now. With atomic swaps, we have a solution which can kill two birds with one stone. This is a piece of technology which has the serious potential of taking us to the next evolution of crypto trading. Let’s hope that more research work and adoption takes place in the near future.

How a city of conflict became a tech hotspot Four years ago, Kiev was known more for bloodshed and protest than start-ups. But that’s changing the city has a booming tech sector where IT workers earn 10 times the average wage. Read the full article

Workshop with a customer Matt Winters before MVP launching

Centralized crypto exchanges are kind of an oxymoron, aren`t they? Decentralized exchanges can be perfect alternative and here is why.

5 books every developer should read 1. The Pragmatic Programmer The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users.... 2. The Clean Coder In The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. 3. Prefactoring Prefactoring approaches software development of new systems using lessons learned from many developers over the years. It is a compendium of ideas gained from retrospectives on what went right and what went wrong in development. Some of these ideas came from experience in refactoring. Refactoring is improving the design of existing code to make it simpler and easier to maintain 4. Soft Skills: The software developer’s life manual This book is a unique guide, offering techniques and practices for a more satisfying life as a professional software developer. In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez addresses a wide range of important "soft" topics, from career and productivity to personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships, all from a developer-centric viewpoint. 5. Programming Pearls Unlike most other books on programming, this one focuses on fundamental and generic problems, not the easy things, toy problems or technical things. The book teaches through a thorough discussion of solutions of several problems coming from several domains (algorithms, data structures, probability theory...).