In this opinion article the objective is to give away a large amount of information that was surely invisible to many until now. So I will put my finger on the World Economic Fund and its impact on blockchain. Enjoy it.
El World Economic Forum, Also called Davos Forum, is a non-profit foundation, at least that is what its legal form indicates, with headquarters in Geneva, which annually brings together world leaders at Davos Hill, including a segment of blockchain spies, and which is best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Well, this Forum has added six blockchain companies to the list of «Technological pioneers 2020», a selection of startups believed to be able to help solve humanity's global problems. Could this really be true? Will the Davos Capitalist Forum have that humanitarian concern? Well, this year, Elliptic, Chainlink, Lightning Labs, MakerDAO, Ripio and Veridium Labs were included.
Before continuing, let me tell you:
The forum is attended by prominent politicians, senior officials, scientists, businessmen, senior executives of large corporations, journalists and spies. Together, they discuss the most pressing global problems, make connections, negotiate, sign contracts and throw themselves into a big party not without ladies and caviar provided by a well-known Russian spy, who is in charge of setting up the party-event.
2000 from the WEF has been compiling the list of «Pioneers of Technology», a selection of 100 companies that develop innovative technological solutions. Many companies that are going to be mentioned are well known by a wide clientele and countless participants: Airbnb, Alibaba, Google, Infosys, Facebook, Huawei, Hyperloop, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Palantir Technologies, Salesforce, Spotify, TransferWise, Twitter and Wikimedia, among others. It almost looks like the Humanitarian Charity Club. And I apologize if there are those who are offended by these lines, but I don't even believe one fifth of these illusions.
The list has eight thematic sections, as the best amusement park: energy and ecology, health, food safety and agriculture, digital technology and entertainment, cybersecurity and digital identification, transportation, industrial production, financial systems. Although they are left to the spy sector, there are some. The companies that entered «Technological pioneers 2020» This year they are dedicated to solving environmental and health problems, recycling, energy efficiency, new areas of pharmaceutical products, the development of artificial intelligence and augmented reality to the maximum extent to improve the urban environment, etc. There are also many companies contributing to the fight against COVID-19. I would say all of them.
Listing Technology Pioneers, in English, is not just recognition, it is a positioning within a capitalist interest group, with a socialist bias, with intra-company aid. Companies that join it join the two-year promotion program: they are invited to seminars and other events with the participation of the WEF at the highest level, and can communicate with leading politicians and businessmen. Let's say they purchase a VIP business card.
We should not be surprised that they include blockchain companies since they have been included in the "Technology Pioneers" before, let me clarify the past to put you in the present:
In 2015, Ripple was included in the WEF. In 2016, it was an analytics company and wallet provider MTC Blockchain.com. In 2019, the mining company Bitfury. In short, it seems that a good circus has been put together with the best influential actors in the humanitarian entertainment tent.
Without further pause and always In my opinion, I will briefly analyze the contribution to the development of the cryptocurrency market of the six companies that were included in the group of «Technological pioneers 2020» this year.
chainlink is a decentralized oracle service built on the basis of the Ethereum blockchain. Since blockchains do not have access to data outside the boundaries of their network, they use special programs: oracles, which collect information from smart sources for smart contracts. Chainlink technology helps connect smart contracts via API to external resources: payments (including traditional ones) and corporate systems. Oracles are used by blockchain companies, the DeFi sector, data providers and several large companies are their main users.
The project has aroused interest from the moment of launch, but last year was an important milestone: the startup partnered to integrate the framework with dozens of companies from various fields of activity, including cloud service Google Cloud, the software maker Oracle infrastructures and the payment system SWIFT. It seems like they want to play in the big league, of course. Now the company's solutions are used by BFX, Aave, Celsius Network, Synthetix, Loopring, Ampleforth, Polkadot DeFi platforms, and Chainlink has become an important part of the decentralized finance sector. In my opinion they know very well where the objective is and how to achieve it, that is why they have my respect to this day.
The project's currency, LINK, is one of the most profitable digital assets in the last year and a half. Last year, it increased by 600%, showing one of the best annual rates. Since the beginning of the year, the coin has grown by 100% and maintains an upward trend, surpassing other digital assets in terms of growth rate.
,,
En my opinion The Chainlink project has occupied a unique niche: it is a coveted product for the rapidly growing market of DeFi which is very fashionable in recent years and desperately needs to increase the level of security to maintain investor and external capital, and has practically no competitors among large projects.
Let's go to Elliptic, a service to monitor transactions bitcoin. It was founded in 2013 in the United Kingdom and attracted large investments such as Paladin Capital, Santander and Octopus Ventures. Very curious the capital of Santander in this item, since it is rumored that IBAN accounts will soon be offered along with a crypto wallet. In 2014, the company became the first company to offer not only "cold storage", but also insurance against loss and theft of bitcoins stored. And this is eating a virgin segment with a lot of intelligence. At the beginning of 2015, Elliptic became the first blockchain company in receive the KPMG accreditation, which is included in the big four consulting firms.
Today, Elliptic is a global leader in the field of cryptoasset risk management solutions, the identification of criminal activities and the protection of companies against financial crimes in the field of cryptocurrencies. The company track the 97% of digital assets by trading volume and you leave that three to have fun later, on hot summer afternoons. The service also detects fraudulent accounts of clients of banks, crypto brokers and other financial companies, and of course, gets into the darknet and wallets of compromised wallets. This allows financial companies to ensure that they do not interact with criminals and “fraudulent cryptocurrencies or cryptocurrencies of dubious origin”. Now the company works with more than 200 exchanges, helping them comply with the law and not violate KYC/AML requirements. Elliptic It also collaborates with law enforcement agencies in several countries. and I say Who gives more? Without a doubt a winning horse that maintains the respect of investment capital and of the partner and for the boy, as my national friend would say Giovanny Montealegre
Let's go now with Lightning Labs which is a leading developer of software solutions and infrastructure for the Lightning Network. The company was established in 2016, its headquarters is located in California. The CEO and co-founder of the project is Elizabeth Stark. Yes, a woman and very, very smart and influential.
For those that sound Chinese, Lightning Network (LN) is a second-level payment protocol that is "implemented" on top of the main blockchain. It carries out transactions between any users connected to the network directly, without writing information about them to the blockchain. Funds are locked in special payment channels, and users only exchange data about this without sending coins to each other. As a result, only the result of the transaction enters the blockchain. Lightning Network should solve the problem of scalability and slow network speed Bitcoin. The developers hope that the solution will allow the use of the first cryptocurrency in small everyday transactions, which will contribute to the greater popularity of bitcoin and the increase in its usability. But if you want to continue learning about this and many other things related to this topic, just access Bit2Me Academy, the Spanish-speaking portal with the most information about blockchain.
Lightning Labs main products are:
Lightning Loop is a technology that keeps Lightning Network payment channels open for an unlimited time. This allows you to transfer funds between the main blockchain and the Lightning Network without restrictions, simplify receiving bitcoins on the second-tier Lightning Network, withdrawing them to wallets, and exchanging them for fiat funds. He doesn't go anymore.
Lightning Network Daemon (LND) is a Lightning node management software client that provides reliable and secure transactions as well as support for dApps solution. The client allows you to make large transactions (up to 0.167 BTC – amounts are further limited by channel capacity) and partially sign them, receive incoming payments, replenish Lightning channels directly from hardware wallets .
Neutrino is a thin client developed for macOS, Windows, Linux and mobile applications that allows Lightning wallets to confirm transactions without synchronization with the main blockchain, something special. Neutrino also provides the reliability and usability of the Lightning Network on weak devices and in unstable environments. All this is brutal.
In March of this year, the broker's research department BitMEX, by the way, I don't like anything at all, included Lightning Labs in the list of companies making the largest practical and financial contribution to the development of Bitcoin and Lightning technologies. It is true that the technology is still in the experimental stage, difficult even for the sophisticated and novel user, prone to errors and can lead to loss of funds, but let us be patient, I say, God created his toy in 7 days. Therefore, it transfers money through the Lightning Network, while the user is forced to act at his own risk. But if successful, this decision may lead to broader adoption of Bitcoin and its use as a means of payment. If the Bitcoin network reaches the level of MasterCard or Visa in speed and volume of transactions, Lightning Labs will play one of the main roles in this matter and we will have the mess together. In my opinion, the stock market value of MasterCard or Visa would undoubtedly be deeply damaged.
Swe continue with MakerDAO which is a Danish platform, yes the Danes know about this too, for a decentralized smart contract issuance system for p2p lending and the expansion of economic opportunities on Ethereum. Using the protocol, any user with an Ethereum wallet can borrow money against other users in the form of a stablecoin. DAI, a token ERC20. The security can be ETN, BAT, USDC, tBTC and WBTC. Essentially, a DAI token is a debt pledged to MakerDAO. The platform uses two tokens. The second, the utility token creator (MKR), is an analogue of “gas” in Ethereum, and acts as a payment for transactions and performs management functions, is used in voting. Puff, what a mess right??? But the idea is not minor.
MakerDAO It was launched in 2017 and has shown rapid development since then. The project's tokens are traded on the largest brokers, the capitalization exceeds $120 million, and the lending volume in DAI reached $1,27 billion. Now MakerDAO is the largest ecosystem in the DeFi sector, representing the 38% of all funds raised in DeFi (previously this figure reached 52%) and that is big, but very big. In March of this year, MakerDAO even managed to survive its own “Black Thursday”, which cost me too as it was out of the market, paying off the $8 million debt resulting from the protocol's vulnerability. In the same month, the Maker Foundation, an organization that supports MakerDAO, transferred all MKR stewardship tokens to the community. Now the further development of the project depends on its community and I like this. I love that the community is taking shape in the project.
Now we have Gravel what is the company cryptocurrencies, largest in Argentina and one of the most promising financial technology brands in Latin America, although the criticisms of his clients do not make him have a big smile and all this due to a slow service and in some ways terrible customer service, according to the feedback that my friend Google has been collecting. It has more than 400,000 users in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Colombia. Ripio raised $37 million during a ICO in 2016, selling RCN tokens, and later received investments from Tim Draper, Medici Ventures, Digital Finance Group, and Digital Currency Group. They set it up well to create a project from the ground up.
Now the Ripio platform apparently has been suffering pressure from the Argentine government for alleged uses for money laundering, capital leaks and other dark positions. In my opinion unfounded by the Republican Central Bank of Argentina itself and its friend the Argentine State.
And to finish we are going to Veridium which is a Hong Kong-based startup dedicated to tokenization and monitoring carbon quotas on the Stellar blockchain. Isn't that something surprising?
GHG trading is a market-based tool to reduce carbon footprints in the atmosphere. The state previously determines the maximum level of emissions, and companies can negotiate their quotas among themselves. By purchasing a quota, a company obtains the right to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide or an equivalent mass of another greenhouse gas. Such markets operate in the EU, China, New Zealand, South Korea, several US states and Canadian provinces. Isn't this a malicious discrimination of the balance sheet power of these companies? I don't like it at all.
Veridium was founded in 2017, but since 2018, the company has been cooperating with the technology giant IBM. Quota trading is an opaque market that is difficult to account for and that is why I say that I don't like it at all. Blockchain helps make it more open and liquid and allows tracking that the money received from the sale of quotas was spent specifically on environmental restoration. Proceeds from the sale of Project Verde solutions and tokens go toward reforestation and preservation of a 250-square-mile reserve on the island of Borneo. Verde tokens are supported by InfiniteEarth, a partner of Veridium Labs. In my opinion they maintain a facade of very, very good people committed to the environment. Is the marketing of ecological responsibility legal? In my opinion, the answer is NO..
