Last Month In Blockchain — December 2018
By: Patrick Schvartzman, Block Gemini
Tags: Technology, Blockchain News, Blockchain, Technology News

It is astonishing to see the progression that Blockchain continues to make. With devoted adherents developing, refining, learning and executing concepts to deployed applications, every day we come closer to interconnecting technology and services, one block at a time. As more power house giants and governments target new avenues, blockchain continues to flourish at an exponential rate similar to other technologies, as previously witnessed. Without a doubt 2019 will be a fascinating year for everyone involved in blockchain, and as a blockchain solutions company, we say that with confidence.

Here is a recap of the latest blockchain buzz last December.

1. Tunisian Internet Agency Signs Strategic Partnership With Blockchain Platform

The Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) has formed a strategic partnership with the Russian based platform, Universa, a new generation of blockchain technology that emphasizes on tokenization and contractual agreements. Such initiatives entail a 10 year renewable strategic partnership, where ATI will be providing hosting services to Universa to facilitate further development. What objectives can be expected? ATI will develop value added services in the blockchain field, digital economy, and digitization of paperwork. Likewise, Universa will aim it’s efforts to develop additional applications and services to integrate them into new tech platforms, create e- certification and the digital economy. Together both parties will also build projects with BaaS (blockchain as a service), an initiative that includes digital currency, digital identity, as well as e-governance and smart cities.

As blockchain captivates the interest of more government based entities, the push for solutions using blockchain based applications become fairly synonymous with identity management, digitization of documents, and overall governance to interconnect services and technology together.

Click here to read the full article

2. IBM Africa and Hello Tractor pilot AI/blockchain agtech platform

IBM Research and agtech startup Hello Tractor, a social enterprise that connects tractor owners and small holder farmers through a digital tractor sharing application, have developed an AI and blockchain based platform for Africa’s farmers. The pilot product is expected to deploy in 2019 with ongoing partnership co-financed by IBM and aims to support Hello Tractors’s business to connect small-scale farmers to equipment and data analytics for better crop production. The online platform will use a digital ledger and machine learning to measure, track and share data while “creating end-to-end trust and transparency across the agribusiness value chain”, according to an IBM release. Impressively enough, Digital Wallet will garner remote and IoT-based weather-sensing capabilities and AI to help farmers determine crops and inputs, choose when to plant and optimize and predict crop yields. IBM and Hello Tractor’s Digital Wallet will also retrieve data from fleet owners entailing tractor use, track and predict repairs, servicing and build credit profiles to open bank financing for farmers.

This Blockchain and AI-based solution is a step in the right direction towards tackling agricultural and the many complexities faced within its industry. Many different variables exist within the realm of processes and resources, which makes an application like Hello Tractor a great start to providing turnkey solutions, despite being a hairline aid within agribusiness.

Click here to read the full article

3. Amazon Plays Its Own Game With Enterprise Blockchain

Amazon Web Services has announced a new blockchain service during its re:lnvent event. Amazon Managed Blockchain is a service platform that allows it’s clients to build cloud-based blockchains, using Hyperledger fabric or Ethereum as templates. Clients can expect a fully managed service that makes it easy to facilitate and manage blockchain networks. Furthermore, “Amazon Managed Blockchain eliminates the overhead required to create the network, and automatically scales to meet the demands of thousands of applications running millions of transactions”, as quoted by Amazon Web Service. AMB (Amazon Managed Block) is currently in preview, and those already register with AWS can sign up. If approved, members will be able to create a blockchain network.

Although companies like ConsenSys and IBM have initiatives to provide services like BaaS (blockchain as a service) already, AMB (Amazon Managed Block) will surely provide an advantage by being a bit more agnostic with framework options. Amazon is one of the leading companies in cloud services, and being able to provide blockchain as a service will only expand their scope of services as blockchain is set to soon scale the industrial world.

Click here to read the full article

4. Chinese Internet Court Uses Blockchain To Combat Online Plagiarism

China has launched it’s first ever Internet Court in Eastern Chinese City Hangzhou and will leverage blockchain to fight plagiarism for online writers, a local Chinese news outlet reports (china.org.cn). The court will deal with internet related cases to save time and reduce overhead costs of getting justice out of the system. Blockchain will be utilized as a means to store evidence, and will legally be recognized as a viable documenting method by judicial courts. The decision to make blockchain a form of storing evidence stemmed from a case in which the plaintiff, a company based in Hangzhou, sued the defendant, a Shenzhen-based technology firm for making publications of the plaintiff’s copyrighted material on it’s official website. The Plaintiff screen captured the website and sourcing codes of the defendant and uploaded them to the bitcoin blockchain. After investigations were conducted by Hangzhou Internet Court and ruled in favor of the plaintiff, it was later ruled that this form of electronic data would henceforth serve as a form of evidence in copyright infringement cases.

The Hangzhou Internet Court is definitely taking the right approach in solidifying evidence in copyright infringement prevention using blockchain. This could very well set the tone for many entities and encourage those bodies to consider other methods of storing documents immutably, as well as the security of sensitive data.

Click here to read the full article

5. First Blockchain-Based Birth Certificate Issued in India

Earlier this year, the state of West Bengal had announced that they would soon begin to issue blockchain-based birth certificates. Following this initiative, one-month-old Divit Biyani has become the first baby born in India to receive a blockchain based birth certificate. This was made possible through the Bankura Municipal Corporation and Durgapur Municipal Corporation combining effort with a Netherlands-based startup, Lynked.World. The blockchain firm provided and developed an app which would allow both municipals to issue blockchain-based birth certificates, and successfully so.

Although India’s government is opposed to cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology on the contrary sparks quite the enthusiastic response from officials. With various blockchain initiatives taking place, we can expect degree issuance, authentication of pharmaceuticals and subsidies to farmers all to become a reality.

Click here to read the full article