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Tech and non-tech descriptions

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"When you have IPFS, you can start looking at everything else in one specific way and you realize that you can replace it all" -  Juan Benet

A Less Technical Approach to IPFS

from John Lilic

This section will attempt to provide a high level insight as a prelude to my colleague, Dr. Christian Lundkvist's, deep dive technical summary below.

IPFS began as an effort by Juan Benet to build a system that is very fast at moving around versioned scientific data. Versioning gives you the ability to track how states of software change over time ( think Git). IPFS has since become thought of as the The Distributed, Permanent Web ; " IPFS is a distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. In some ways, this is similar to the original aims of the Web, but IPFS is actually more similar to a single bittorrent swarm exchanging git objects. IPFS could become a new major subsystem of the internet. If built right, it could complement or replace HTTP. It could complement or replace even more. It sounds crazy. It is crazy."[ 1]

At its core, IPFS is a versioned file system that can take files and manage them and also store them somewhere and then tracks versions over time. IPFS also accounts for how those files move across the network so it is also a distributed file system.

IPFS has rules as to how data and content move around on the network that are similar in nature to bittorrent. This file system layer offers very interesting properties such as:

- websites that are completely distributed

- websites that have no origin server

- websites that can run entirely on client side browsers

- websites that do not have any servers to talk to
Content Addressing
Instead of referring to objects (pics, articles, videos) by which server they are stored on, IPFS refers to everything by the hash on the file. The idea is that if in your browser you want to access a particular page then IPFS will ask the entire network "does anyone have this file that corresponds to this hash?" and a node on IPFS that does can return the file allowing you to access it.

IPFS uses content addressing at the HTTP layer. This is the practice of saying instead of creating an identifier that addresses things by location, we're going to address it by some representation of the content itself. This means that the content is going to determine the address. The mechanism is to take a file, hash it cryptographically so you end up with a very small and secure representation of the file which ensures that someone can not just come up with another file that has the same hash and use that as the address. The address of a file in IPFS usually starts with a hash that identifies some root object and then a path walking down. Instead of a server, you are talking to a specific object and then you are looking at a path within that object.
HTTP vs. IPFS to find and retrieve a file
HTTP has a nice property where in the identifier is the location so it is easy to find the computers hosting the file and talk to them. This is useful and generally works very well but not in the offline case or in large distributed scenarios where you want to minimize load across the network.

In IPFS you separate the steps into two parts;

1. Identify the file with content addressing

2. Go and find it - when you have the hash then you ask the network you're connected to 'who has this content? (hash)' and you connect to the corresponding nodes and download it.

The result is a peer to peer overlay that gives you very fast routing.

To learn more, watch the Alpha Video.

IPFS by Example

from Dr. Christian Lundkvist

A technical Examination and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a synthesis of well-tested internet technologies such as DHTs, the Git versioning system and Bittorrent. It creates a P2P swarm that allows the exchange of IPFS objects. The totality of IPFS objects forms a cryptographically authenticated data structure known as a Merkle DAG and this data structure can be used to model many other data structures. We will in this post introduce IPFS objects and the Merkle DAG and give examples of structures that can be modelled using IPFS.
IPFS Objects
IPFS is essentially a P2P system for retrieving and sharing IPFS objects. An IPFS object is a data structure with two fields:

Data - a blob of unstructured binary data of size < 256 kB.

Links - an array of Link structures. These are links to other IPFS objects.

A Link structure has three data fields:

Name - the name of the Link.

Hash - the hash of the linked IPFS object.

Size - the cumulative size of the linked IPFS object, including following its links.

The Size field is mainly used for optimizing the P2P networking and we're going to mostly ignore it here, since conceptually it's not needed for the logical structure.

IPFS objects are normally referred to by their Base58 encoded hash. For instance, let's take a look at the IPFS object with hash QmarHSr9aSNaPSR6G9KFPbuLV9aEqJfTk1y9B8pdwqK4Rq using the IPFS command-line tool (please try this at home!):

> ipfs object get QmarHSr9aSNaPSR6G9KFPbuLV9aEqJfTk1y9B8pdwqK4Rq

{"Links": [{

"Name": "AnotherName",

"Hash": "QmVtYjNij3KeyGmcgg7yVXWskLaBtov3UYL9pgcGK3MCWu",

"Size": 18},

{"Name": "SomeName",

"Hash": "QmbUSy8HCn8J4TMDRRdxCbK2uCCtkQyZtY6XYv3y7kLgDC",

"Size": 58}],

"Data": "Hello World!"}

The reader may notice that all hashes begin with "Qm". This is because the hash is in actuality a multihash, meaning that the hash itself specifies the hash function and length of the hash in the first two bytes of the multihash. In the examples above the first two bytes in hex is 1220, where 12 denotes that this is the SHA256 hash function and 20 is the length of the hash in bytes - 32 bytes.

The data and named links gives the collection of IPFS objects the structure of a Merkle DAG -  DAG meaning Directed Acyclic Graph, and Merkle to signify that this is a cryptographically authenticated data structure that uses cryptographic hashes to address content. It is left as an excercise to the reader to think about why it's impossible to have cycles in this graph.

To visualize the graph structure we will visualize an IPFS object by a graph with Data in the node and the Links being directed graph edges to other IPFS objects, where the Name of the Link is a label on the graph edge. The example above is visualized as follows:

We will now give examples of various data structures that can be represented by IPFS objects.

File systems

IPFS can easily represent a file system consisting of files and directories
Small Files
A small file (< 256 kB) is represented by an IPFS object with data being the file contents (plus a small header and footer) and no links, i.e. the links array is empty. Note that the file name is not part of the IPFS object, so two files with different names and the same content will have the same IPFS object representation and hence the same hash.

We can add a small file to IPFS using the command ipfs add:

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ipfs add test_dir/hello.txt

added QmfM2r8seH2GiRaC4esTjeraXEachRt8ZsSeGaWTPLyMoG test_dir/hello.txt

We can view the file contents of the above IPFS object using ipfs cat:

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ipfs cat QmfM2r8seH2GiRaC4esTjeraXEachRt8ZsSeGaWTPLyMoG
Hello World!

Viewing the underlying structure with ipfs object get yields:

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ipfs object get QmfM2r8seH2GiRaC4esTjeraXEachRt8ZsSeGaWTPLyMoG

{"Links": [],

"Data": "\u0008\u0002\u0012\rHello World!\n\u0018\r"}

We visualize this file as follows:
Large Files
A large file (> 256 kB) is represented by a list of links to file chunks that are < 256 kB, and only minimal Data specifying that this object represents a large file. The links to the file chunks have empty strings as names.

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ipfs add test_dir/bigfile.js

added QmR45FmbVVrixReBwJkhEKde2qwHYaQzGxu4ZoDeswuF9w test_dir/bigfile.js

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ipfs object get QmR45FmbVVrixReBwJkhEKde2qwHYaQzGxu4ZoDeswuF9w

{"Links": [{

"Name": "",

"Hash": "QmYSK2JyM3RyDyB52caZCTKFR3HKniEcMnNJYdk8DQ6KKB",

"Size": 262158},
{"Name": "",

"Hash": "QmQeUqdjFmaxuJewStqCLUoKrR9khqb4Edw9TfRQQdfWz3",

"Size": 262158},

{"Name": "",

"Hash": "Qma98bk1hjiRZDTmYmfiUXDj8hXXt7uGA5roU5mfUb3sVG",

"Size": 178947}],

"Data": "\u0008\u0002\u0018* \u0010 \u0010 \n"}
Directory Structures
A directory is represented by a list of links to IPFS objects representing files or other directories. The names of the links are the names of the files and directories. For instance, consider the following directory structure of the directory test_dir:

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ls -R test_dir
test_dir:
bigfile.js hello.txt my_dir
test_dir/my_dir:
my_file.txt testing.txt

The files hello.txt and my_file.txt both contain the string Hello World!\n. The file testing.txt contains the string Testing 123\n.

When representing this directory structure as an IPFS object it looks like this:

Note the automatic deduplication of the file containing Hello World!\n, the data in this file is only stored in one logical place in IPFS (addressed by its hash).

The IPFS command-line tool can seamlessly follow the directory link names to traverse the file system:

chris@chris-VBox:~/tmp$ ipfs cat Qma3qbWDGJc6he3syLUTaRkJD3vAq1k5569tNMbUtjAZjf/my_dir/my_file.txt
Hello World!
Versioned File Systems
IPFS can represent the data structures used by Git to allow for versioned file systems. The Git commit objects are described in the Git Book. The structure of IPFS Commit object is not fully specified at the time of this writing, the discussion is ongoing.

The main properties of the Commit object is that it has one or more links with names parent0, parent1 etc pointing to previous commits, and one link with name object (this is called tree in Git) that points to the file system structure referenced by that commit.

We give as an example our previous file system directory structure, along with two commits: The first commit is the original structure, and in the second commit we've updated the file my_file.txt to say Another World! instead of the original Hello World!.

Note also here that we have automatic deduplication, so that the new objects in the second commit is just the main directory, the new directory my_dir, and the updated file my_file.txt.
Blockchains
This is one of the most exciting use cases for IPFS. A blockchain has a natural DAG structure in that past blocks are always linked by their hash from later ones. More advanced blockchains like the Ethereum blockchain also has an associated state database which has a Merkle-Patricia tree structure that also can be emulated using IPFS objects.

We assume a simplistic model of a blockchain where each block contains the following data:

A list of transaction objects

A link to the previous block

The hash of a state tree/database

This blockchain can then be modeled in IPFS as follows:

We see the deduplication we gain when putting the state database on IPFS - between two blocks only the state entries that have been changed need to be explicitly stored.

An interesting point here is the distinction between storing data on the blockchain and storing hashes of data on the blockchain. On the Ethereum platform you pay a rather large fee for storing data in the associated state database, in order to minimize bloat of the state database ("blockchain bloat"). Thus it's a common design pattern for larger pieces of data to store not the data itself but an IPFS hash of the data in the state database.

If the blockchain with its associated state database is already represented in IPFS then the distinction between storing a hash on the blockchain and storing the data on the blockchain becomes somewhat blurred, since everything is stored in IPFS anyway, and the hash of the block only needs the hash of the state database. In this case if someone has stored an IPFS link in the blockchain we can seamlessly follow this link to access the data as if the data was stored in the blockchain itself.

We can still make a distinction between on-chain and off-chain data storage however. We do this by looking at what miners need to process when creating a new block. In the current Ethereum network the miners need to process transactions that will update the state database. To do this they need access to the full state database in order to be able to update it wherever it is changed.

Thus in the blockchain state database represented in IPFS we would still need to tag data as being "on-chain" or "off-chain". The "on-chain" data would be necessary for miners to retain locally in order to mine, and this data would be directly affected by transactions. The "off-chain" data would have to be updated by users and would not need to be touched by miners.

by Dr. Christian Lundkvist, Director of Engineering, and John Lilic, ConsenSys Enterprise

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An Introduction to IPFS - ConsenSys - Medium

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"When you have IPFS, you can start looking at everything else in one specific way and you realize that you can replace it all" -  Juan Benet A Less Technical Approach to IPFS from John Lilic This section will attempt to provide a high level insight as a prelude to my colleague, Dr. Christian Lundkvist's, deep dive technical summary below.

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Hearing good things about Infura.

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Ethereum API and IPFS API for building Ethereum blockchain applications on a scalable cloud infrastructure with reliable transaction processing. Supports the original JSON-RPC API including the web3 and eth methods. The Ferryman service provides reverse proxy that filters, caches and re-routes requests, with throttling and logging.

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Based in Nyon, CH. Consulting for the United Nations UNDP.

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ecosys est un bureau d'étude actif dans les domaines de l'analyse économique de l'environnement et des finances publiques.

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Since the World Wide Web hit the mainstream in 1994, we've seen the network expand to encompass almost every aspect of human life. The underlying infrastructure of the Internet and the services built on top of it are interdependent, one informing the other as new use cases and technologies arise. There have been two clear generations in the services and structure of the web thus far, but today we are moving into a third.

In this article we will look at what characterized Web 1.0 & 2.0 and what may characterise Web 3.0. We will then look at the storage technologies that are likely to form its backbone: the decentralized storage network IPFS and it's incentive platform Filecoin and Swarm, an emerging Ethereum oriented storage platform that uses IPFS.

Web 1 & 2

Web 1.0 was the birth of a new idea. If we can connect all of the computers in the world through a global network, the Internet, then we should be able to make the collective content pool universally accessible. For this mass of data to be usable it needed to be indexed and browsable. This necessity was behind the innovation that led to the first generation of the World Wide Web.

Web 2.0 took this new global resource, a universally accessible pool of content, and began plugging things into it. Programs could connect and use the Web as a way to store information and communicate with each other. Central intermediaries, today's Googles and Facebooks, assumed the roles of data silos and switchboards, offering scalable resources and routing traffic. While these new corporations have changed the way we live and provide amazing services, they also leverage their centralized position for profit and power.

In their orange paper, "Swap, Swear and Swindle: Incentive System for Swarm", Viktor Trón, Aron Fischer, Dániel a. Nagy, Zsolt Felföldi, Nick Johnson write that:
Context-sensitive targeted advertizing offered a Faustian bargain to content producers. As in 'We give you scalable hosting that would cope with any traffic your audience throws at it, but you give us substantial control over your content; we are going to track each member of your audience and learn - and own - as much of their personal data as we can, we are going to pick who can and who cannot see it, we are going to proactively censor it and we may even report on you, for the same reason.' Thus, millions of small content producers created immense value for very few corporations, getting only peanuts (typically, free hosting) in exchange.
As the Web grew, we reached scaling limits. Central nodes required ever more bandwidth to cope with ever increasing data flows. Over time, as things were shuffled around, links broke and content was lost, vanishing unsearchably into the mass of information.

To compound these problems, security never achieved a level appropriate for the new communication and commerce services provided through the Web. The client-server model relies on a system of digital certificates, which are issued by third parties to secure connections. The problem is that if the third party is compromised, so, potentially, are all the connections made using its certificates.

According to Juniper Research, "the rapid digitisation of consumers' lives and enterprise records will increase the cost of data breaches to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019, increasing to almost four times the estimated cost of breaches in 2015." Thus, the scene is set for a paradigm shift and a cluster of new technologies are emerging. They promise to solve the problems plaguing the existing system and create a new way of using the web.

Web 3.0

Following the trend set by earlier iterations, the idea of Web 3.0 posits a change in the way content and programs interact. If central intermediaries like Facebook and Google are cut out of the picture, many of the problems we have today will go with them. Instead, content addressing and related techniques will allow content and programs to link to one another directly and in a more robust fashion. Blockchain technologies like the digital currency Bitcoin and the smart contract platform Ethereum use unbreakable public key cryptography to secure the connection between programs and protect data.

This is an alternative to the centrally issued SSL Certificates used today. Because there is no central intermediary routing traffic, connections can dynamically find the most efficient pathway through the internet and route around congestion or damage.

These systems were designed for financial transactions though. They are not suited to storing and relaying the volume of information required to replace a central server. BitTorrent is a popular solution that has excellent storage and scaling characteristics. However, navigating the Distributed Hash Table used to index content on the network can take seconds. This kind of latency is fine for large file transfers but no good for datacenter use cases.

IPFS

Described by Viktor Tron as "the lego kit for the third web," IPFS is a new system for storing data on a large number of computers. It is transport layer agnostic, meaning that it can communicate through TCP, uTP, UDT, QUIC, TOR, and even Bluetooth.

Instead of a central server, a peer to peer network is used to establish connections. Public key cryptography is built into the node addressing system and content addressing is used to index content. Both node and content addresses are stored in a decentralized naming system called IPNS.
Node addressing and connection security

Nodes in the peer to peer network each hold private keys and release public keys, just like in Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Node addresses are derived through their public keys. Allowing connection verification through message signing.

Their public keys can be used to encrypt data before it is transferred, preventing interception and theft.

Solutions to the security issues of today's web are built into this addressing system. There is no need for a trusted central certificate issuer to provide connection verification tools and all connections can easily be encrypted by default. No more SSL.
Content addressing:

A content address is derived by hashing a piece of content.

That content address is then hashed again to derive a key name.

The key name is associated with a human readable name in IPNS (IPFS' address registry).

In today's web, if a file is moved, all links to that file need to be updated if they are to resolve. Because IPFS addresses are derived from the content they refer to, if the content still exists anywhere on the network, links will always resolve. This removes any need for duplication of content, except for the purposes of greater persistence security or for scaling up serving capabilities.

However, for a decentralized storage system to grow to replace the current model, it needs a way to incentivise the storage and serving of content.

Filecoin is one prospective solution being developed by Protocol Labs, Swarm is another being developed by the Ethereum foundation. Both projects make use of IPFS technology but have different philosophies on how to incentivize participation.

Filecoin

Filecoin is being developed by Protocol Labs, the same entity that is developing IPFS. While the specification is still evolving on a whiteboard somewhere in Palo Alto, it will likely take design cues from Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies.

Filecoin will use an established consensus process already in use securing a financial network. Most likely, the Ethereum public network. By requiring nodes to solve puzzles based on randomly selected data chunks, a Proof of Work algorithm can be built, which will reward the nodes that store more data chunks and have better connectivity. Tools for adding redundancy and the ability to select nodes based on reputation, whether that be tracked within the protocol or outside it, will address the problem of persistent storage. This is an indication of the direction Filecoin is moving in, but the protocol is still in development.

Swarm

Swarm was conceived of as a storage protocol tailored for interoperation with the Ethereum smart contract ecosystem. Like Filecoin, it will piggyback on Ethereum's consensus process in order to provide a decentralized alternative to our existing client/server infrastructure. Incentivising persistent storage is a challenge, however. The downside of a node deleting data and losing some income is potentially much less significant than a user losing his or her valuable data.

Swarm takes the approach of rewarding nodes for serving content. Because more often requested content is more profitable to store than rarely requested content, rewarding nodes only for recall would incentivise the trashing of rarely accessed data. Failure to store every last piece of a large data set can result in the entire set being rendered useless, so in these cases a solution must exist to balance this downside asymmetry.

Using content recall as the base reward mechanism and distributing content randomly among nodes, weighted for location, puts Swarm in a good place to start solving the persistence problem:

Nodes offering "promissory" storage, or storage with a promise of persistence, must first post a security deposit covering the time for which they are offering storage.

If data is lost during this period, the bond is forfeited.

The smart contract infrastructure of Ethereum automates this whole process, making the "upload and forget" experience seamless.

Conclusion

This has been a brief introduction to one part of the Web 3.0 vision. Distributed networking and storage is coming fast and promises solutions that could save the global economy trillions annually. The Web today needs a new security model and an architecture designed around contemporary use cases. Swarm and IPFS represent the most ambitious solutions to this problem. However, there are some others worth noting: Sia and Storj are two decentralized storage options that are approaching maturity and it would be a disservice not to mention them here.

As the global infrastructure adapts to the new demands we are putting on it, unforeseen opportunities will open before us. New tools will change not only the way we work, play and live our lives, but also the way we organize ourselves in groups. The real questions we must ask are: How will the world of Web 3.0 differ from the world of 2.0, and how will this technology penetrate beyond the cultures which created it?

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Decentralized Storage: The Backbone of the Third Web

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Since the World Wide Web hit the mainstream in 1994, we've seen the network expand to encompass almost every aspect of human life. The underlying infrastructure of the Internet and the services built on top of it are interdependent, one informing the other as new use cases and technologies arise.

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Nice round up of the available options.

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The Blockchain has become much more than a simple piece of technology. It has become a symbol for freedom, transparency and fairness. With this being said, it's no wonder we see projects leveraging Blockchain tech as a "one-size-fits-all" tool to solve all sorts of problems, many of which could not be further from the original purpose of the Blockchain.

Nowadays, the words "Blockchain technology" are thrown around alot and sometimes the use of the technology itself is unnecessary. Tim Swanson, Director of Market Research at R3CEV has even coined the term " chain washing" to describe companies/startups that are using or trying to use Blockchain technology in certain areas when in fact, they could be using more advanced technology for the purpose at hand.

This becomes especially evident when it comes to file and data storage. Although the Bitcoin Blockchain is basically a decentralized database for transactions, accounts and balances, keeping that information on a decentralized ledger is already proving to be a challenge due to capacity issues. Nevertheless, several projects and companies insist on looking at Blockchain-based solutions for storage and, while there are clear cases of misguided enthusiasm when it comes to the use of Blockchain technology, there are some projects out there that are worth taking a look at.

Blockchain Technology as an Incentive Layer

When it comes to a mutualistic relation between Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) and data storage, the most common use case for the Blockchain is as an incentive layer. This means that data isn't stored on the Blockchain itself, but the network at hand is able to leverage the Blockchain as a ledger for automatic payments and/or for value exchange, enabling users to pay for storage or access to files.

In this case, the advantages for using the Blockchain over any other technology are clear. These include faster settling times, lower transaction fees (which enable microtransactions), higher privacy and the ability for transparent and immutable record keeping. While the Blockchain isn't being used for data storage, it is providing the foundation on which the decentralized network is built, allowing it to run with no central authority whatsoever.

There are several projects leveraging the Blockchain in such a way. Storj, one of the first and most successful decentralized storage networks on the cryptosphere, comes to mind. The project started out using a Bitcoin-based asset but later moved to an ERC20 token on the Ethereum Blockchain. This token, the Storj Coin (SCJX), is used by clients to pay for storage and acts as an incentive for nodes that keep part of the client's files. These files have been previously shredded, encrypted, and distributed to multiple nodes in order to ensure their safety and availability.

Another popular example is Filecoin, a project developed by Protocol Labs, the creators of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). In case you aren't familiar with IPFS, it is an alternative p2p hypermedia protocol that allows files to be stored in a permanent and decentralized fashion. This provides historic versioning for files, removes duplicates and even allows users to save on bandwidth since files are downloaded from multiple computers and not from a single server.

While IPFS provides a basis for the storage of files, Protocol Labs took this one step further with the development of Filecoin which, according to the whitepaper, "works as an incentive layer on top of IPFS." The system is different from the one used by Storj on many levels.

In Filecoin, miners are paid to store and retrieve files, while also receiving mining rewards from their "useful Proof of Work." There is also no set price for file storage. Instead, users and miners place buy and sell orders in a decentralized storage exchange, making Filecoin a competitive marketplace in which prices can adapt to outside conditions.

While Filecoin and Storj focus on providing affordable cloud storage services, a project named Decent is currently working on a decentralized content sharing platform which allows users to upload and monetize/share their work (videos, music, ebooks, etc) without the need to rely on a centralized third party. Users can access content in a much more affordable way by skipping these intermediaries while the nodes that host the content are rewarded with fees. Much like Storj, the files stored by the nodes on the Decent network are shredded and encrypted.

Blockchain for storage? Is it possible?

Storing data on a Blockchain like Bitcoin would be doable, in theory. However, Bitcoin's current blocksize limit only allows for 1MB of data to be stored every 10 minutes. Even if you remove that limit, nodes will eventually stop being able to maintain a copy of the Blockchain due to its size, resulting in a centralized and easily-disruptable network. Of course, the scalability problem hasn't deterred developers from trying to use the Blockchain as a storage solution and a project called Archain may just have found a solution.

Archain is a cryptocurrency project that wants to address online censorship by creating a decentralized archive for the internet. To do so, Archain will leverage a new Blockchain-derivative data structure, the " blockweave" which according to the whitepaper, allows the network scale to an "arbitrary size."

Once a user submits a page for archiving on the Archain system, it is stored on the blockweave with the fees paid by the user being allocated to the miner that finds the block at hand. Since the Archain requires miners to store both the current block and a previous block that has been randomly picked from the blockweave, miners have an incentive to store as much as the data as they can without being forced to store the entire blockweave.

As such, Archain is able to ensure that content requested by users is always available without the need for it to be stored by every single node on the network. Archain is also able to address download speeds by incentivising users to propagate poorly-mirrored blocks.

Private Blockchains?

You cannot talk about chain washing for too long without talking about private Blockchains. The concept of a private Blockchain is, to a degree, paradoxical as there is really no use for a Blockchain if the network is closed. To put it simply: If a Blockchain network is not immutable, open or transparent, then a regular database will usually be far more efficient than a Blockchain.

Yet there is a little known project leveraging a private Blockchain in combination with the public Waves Blockchain to provide clients with the "best of two worlds." We are talking about Sigwo Technologies LLC, a company that focuses on providing dApps and consulting services for legacy businesses that want to integrate Blockchain technology for data storage and disaster recovery.

Although Sigwo Technologies LLC provides a wide range of services, its use of the Jupiter Blockchain, the Mercury token and the Waves Platform caught my attention. Jupiter is a private Blockchain built specifically for encrypted information storage. Different networks are created for different companies, allowing authorized nodes to join in and download the data on the chain. So far, Jupiter is not much different from any other private Blockchain. What makes it stand out is how Jupiter is able to ensure transparency and immutability despite being a private Blockchain.

Once data is stored on Jupiter, the block hashes from the private Blockchain are stored permanently on the Waves Blockchain. This is done by adding the block hash to a Waves transaction. Since Waves transaction can be paid for with a custom token, the Mercury token is used which makes the process affordable.

Since block hashes are stored on the Waves Blockchain, any change made to the private Blockchain will be publically detected. This happens because the hash from a certain block will always vary according to the information contained in the block. What we're left with is a Blockchain in which large amounts of data can be stored by specialized nodes (unlike public Blockchains) while remaining publicly verifiable.

Conclusion

As we have seen, there are no shortage of projects that are using Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to make decentralized storage possible. However, it is also worth noting that DLT is still in its early stages and it is possible that other, more advanced technologies can replace it with respect to specific use cases. In other words, Blockchain may not be the answer for everything.

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Is Blockchain Technology Really the Answer to Decentralized Storage?

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The Blockchain has become much more than a simple piece of technology. It has become a symbol for freedom, transparency and fairness. With this being said, it's no wonder we see projects leveraging Blockchain tech as a "one-size-fits-all" tool to solve all sorts of problems, many of which could not be further from the original purpose of the Blockchain.

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Deloitte's paper about the prototype they created with Irish Funds to put regulatory reporting on the blockchain. This can be a useful reference model for our project.

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RegChain Reaction - Revolutionary reg. reporting in the funds world | Deloitte Luxembourg | Performance Article

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Deloitte, in collaboration with Irish Funds and their members, advanced "Project Lighthouse" to assess blockchain technology's ability to service regulatory reporting requirements.

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Their Data file for Emissions reporting: http://files.newclimate.org/cat/decarb/v2.0.3/CAT-Decarbonisation-Indicators.AllData.xlsx -  we'll create this file as part of our POC.

They are leading multiple reporting efforts.

The '(I)NDCs', 'Data & Trends', and the 'Methodology' pages seem most relevant.

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Introduction - methodology - Climate Action Tracker

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The aim of the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) project is to provide interested readers with an up-to-date assessment of the individual reduction targets and with an overview of their combined effects. The intention is to make these pledges transparent and to encourage those governments that have not yet done so to make (or increase) their pledge.

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A useful tutorial for setting up IPFS: https://mlgblockchain.com/intro-ipfs.html

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After due diligence on the current state of many blockchain projects, after deep collaboration with Ethereum developers, and after understanding their respective roadmaps, we concluded that the current and near-term Blockchain architectures cannot meet these requirements.

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RegChain: Blockchain for Regulatory Reporting in Finance

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UNite Ideas is UN ICT's idea generation platform

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Leader in collaborative idea management and prediction markets.

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Chaîne | Blockchain for traking Climate Action | Rotterdam

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Chaîne | Blockchain for traking Climate Action | Rotterdam

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Chaîne is a project to unite the reporting of all the 195 nations supporting the Paris Climate Accord on a blockchain. On a global level Chaîne organizes the re

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What is Swarm and what is it used for? And what is Swarm's relationship with Whisper?

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A blockchain-based storage network and cryptocurrency

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Storj is the data layer for the Internet. Decentralized cloud storage is a new paradigm that removes intermediaries, enabling you to control your personal data. Storj is open source, distributed, encrypted, and blazing fast object storage. Check out how Storj can help you keep your data safe and access it anywhere, anytime.

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Decentralized energy marketplace

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Power Ledger -A New Decentralised Energy Marketplace

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Power Ledger allows for each unit of electricity to be tracked from the point of generation to the point of consumption within the building it is generated, or when sold to other consumers, using the local electricity distribution network. Blockchain technology couples a tracked energy transaction with a financial one, making the process of realising the value of renewable energy investments simple and secure. Power Ledger allows renewable energy asset owners to decide who they want to sell their surplus energy to and at what price. Energy traded across the distribution network is tracked providing a secure revenue stream for DNSPs.

Power Ledger provides the ability for energy consumers to participate in a new-energy marketplace, even those who cannot afford expensive upfront commitments in renewable energy generating capacity"

Dr. Gov van Ek

Gov works on the technical development. In 2015, he Co-founded Ledger Assets, a leading Australian blockchain company. He has a PhD from University of Manchester in Total Technology and before Ledger Assets, he was Managing Director of a number of private and listed companies. He is an investor and business founder and launched his first software company in 1991. Gov is experienced in concept development, systems architecture and design, commercial matters and has expertise in human/computing interface design and A.I.

John Bulich

John provides the strategic direction for conceptual, system and application design and development for Power Ledger. John leads the technical team in the development of the Power Ledger Platform. John is a Director and Co-founder of Ledger Assets, a Perth-based blockchain developer specializing in the creation and commercialization of technical and commercial blockchain systems. Ledger Assets has successfully developed and deployed world-first blockchain-based products proving the provenance of artefacts including evidence-grade photography, video, document management and medical records management.

Co-founder and Technical Director

The team has an unrivalled reputation in disruptive technologies, industry leadership and innovation. Individually, each has demonstrable successful experience in the development and deployment of major projects and developments both in IT and energy systems.

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Power Ledger -A New Decentralised Energy Marketplace - Power Ledger - Where Power meets Blockchain

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Power Ledger allows for each unit of electricity to be tracked from the point of generation to the point of consumption within the building it is generated, or when sold to other consumers, using the local electricity distribution network.

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Reporting: Paris Reality Check by pik.potsdam.de

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Reporting: Paris Reality Check by pik.potsdam.de

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Our systems could be one of the sources/inputs to this report. Their current sources are listed on the RHS above the graphic.

A detailed version of one of their sources can be found at: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000280458f37

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This page tracks entry into force and ratification status of the Paris Agreement. Adoption: 12 Dec 2015 Entry Into Force: 4 Nov 2016

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https://iota.org/

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A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol to make the web faster, safer, and more open.

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UNFCCC's Climate Tech wing

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TT:Clear - UNFCCC's home for climate technology

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TT:Clear is the UNFCCC home for climate technology and it is part of the Technology Mechanism. Click here to find out more of its work on policies and projects through the TEC, TNA and negotiation processes.

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One node for each country on the main blockchain that's implemented by the UN - a blockchain with 193 nodes. Each country owns its node and can run its own data collection and collation app, which can be a child chain, on that node. The facilitator of the main chain (UN presumably) will stipulate the format and content to be uploaded onto the main chain. So each node has two parts - the country's app and an adaptor that condenses and converts the data required by the main chain and feeds it in.

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Experts meeting at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn in May have said that a new technology called "Blockchain" could play a major role in tackling climate change.

A Blockchain is a distributed database that is continuously updated and verified by its users. Each added block of data is "chained" and becomes part of a growing list of records, under the surveillance of network members. This technology enables the transfer of assets and the recording of transactions through a secure database.

"As countries, regions, cities and businesses work to rapidly implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement, they need to make use of all innovative and cutting-edge technologies available. Blockchain could contribute to greater stakeholder involvement, transparency and engagement and help bring trust and further innovative solutions in the fight against climate change, leading to enhanced climate actions," said Alexandre Gellert Paris, Associate Programme Officer at the UNFCCC.
Blockchain technology can be used to develop peer-to-peer trade of clean energy, for certified and facilitated transactions among consumers.
For climate action, Blockchain technology could be used in the following specific ways:
Improved carbon emission trading:
Blockchain could be used to improve the system of carbon asset transactions. For example, IBM and Energy Blockchain Lab are currently working together to develop a Blockchain platform for trading carbon assets in China. Recording carbon assets on a public Blockchain would also guarantee transparency and ensure that transactions are valid and settled automatically.

Facilitated clean energy trading:

The technology could also allow for the development of platforms for peer-to-peer renewable energy trade. Consumers would be able to buy, sell or exchange renewable energy with each other, using tokens or tradable digital assets representing a certain quantity of energy production.
Enhanced climate finance flows:
Blockchain technology could help develop crowdfunding and peer-to-peer financial transactions in support of climate action, while ensuring that financing is allocated to projects in a transparent way.

Better tracking and reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and avoidance of double counting:

The technology could provide more transparency regarding GHG emissions and make it easier to track and report emission reductions, thereby addressing possible double counting issues. It could serve as a tool to monitor the progress made in implementing the Nationally Determined Contributions, or "NDCs" under the Paris Agreement, as well as in company targets.

Advantages of Blockchain Technology

The first major application of Blockchain technology was the Bitcoin digital currency, launched in 2009, allowing online payments to be transferred directly, without an intermediary. The currency is meanwhile used by millions of people for payments.

Blockchain, the underlying technology operating the Bitcoin should be separated from the currency. It has many other applications in inter-organizational cooperation, including as an efficient way to keep record of transactions and manage data.
Blockchain technology is based on a mutual distributed network, which allows for high-level trust among users and better monitoring over the stored data.
More Work Needed for Blockchain to Fully Support Climate Action

Because of its distributed nature, Blockchain could improve governance and sustainability in support of collective action aimed at tackling climate change. As opposed to centralized or decentralized networks, Blockchain prevents monopolistic control over the system. The technology also records transactions openly and permanently, thus fostering transparency and traceability.

Research on ways to integrate Blockchain into different sectors related to sustainable development is now expanding, and innovation at the intersection of Blockchain and climate change is expected to further develop in the coming years.

Blockchain was also the topic of key sessions during the Innovate4Climate 2017 conference in Barcelona this May, the most important gathering of the private sector on climate change organized by the World Bank Group and others.

The United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat recognizes the general potential of Blockchain technology. In particular, transparency, cost-effectiveness and efficiency advantages, which in turn may lead to greater stakeholder integration and enhanced creation of global public goods are currently viewed as the main potential benefits. The secretariat, therefore, specifically supports initiatives that lead to innovation at the intersection of Blockchain and climate. One of such initiatives is the "Blockchain for Climate" hackathon to be organized by the government of Liechtenstein, Cleantech21, INFRAS and ETH Zürich, in the margin of COP23.

Read more:

A Brief History of Blockchain, by Vinay Gupta for the Harvard Business Review

The environment needs cryptogovernance, by Guillaume Chapron for Nature

The Blockchain and Us, a film by Manuel Stagars

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Blockchain Technology Can Boost Climate ActionUNFCCC Recognizes Potential

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Experts meeting at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn in May have said that a new technology called "Blockchain" could play a major role in tackling climate change. A Blockchain is a distributed database that is continuously updated and verified by its users.

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Suggestions and round-up of what has been done so far

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Suggestions and round-up of what has been done so far

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Blockchain's Interpersonal Capabilities

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize almost any industry it is applied to: we can take comfort that it can be used to ensure food gets to Syrian refugees, will soon experience the mountain of data it will give us on driverless cars, and could have the ability to rebalance the exploitive music industry. One of its most exciting implications, though, is to help combat the climate change that humans have caused over recent centuries.

According to We Forum, blockchain's key property in fighting climate change is its decentralized nature, which enables interconnection between the human "swarm."

Climate change is a fundamentally international problem, and a major difficulty in tackling it is navigating the web of different languages and regulations between countries. Blockchain provides a solution by cutting out middlemen and bureaucracy, providing a way for individuals to have interpersonal relationships that can be the beginning of a bottom-up solution, rather than politicians dictating from the top-down after lengthy and often inefficient political communication.

An example is the recent and successful trial of a blockchain based microgrid that allowed individuals to share renewable energy with one another in New York.

Blockchain's Other Benefits

This application of blockchain to climate change is one of many potential uses of the technology - and the others that have been proposed are just as ingenious.

Perhaps most promisingly is that blockchain could also allow us to have much cleaner information. Currently, emissions data is frequently fiddled with, inadvertently laden with mistakes, or incorrectly taken in the first place.

Blockchain data cannot be changed when it is in the network, meaning that - coupled with the internet of things - we could receive totally secure information from machines, devices, or producers that could not be tampered with, intentionally or unintentionally. This is would allow for a much better diagnosis, which could lead to a more targeted prognosis - in which those responsible could be disciplined and those who are helping are rewarded.

In May 2017, at the UN Climate Change Conference, the idea of blockchain being used against climate change was discussed extensively. Ideas included improved trading of carbon emissions, facilitating clean energy trading between consumers, financing climate change research transparently, and tracking and reporting of emissions reduction. IBM and Energy Blockchain Labs, out of China, are developing a marketplace that uses blockchain to trade carbon assets. The Australian company Power Ledger allows people to buy, sell, and exchange surplus renewable energy without a middleman by using blockchain. Many companies are also working on blockchain-powered smart energy grids, which regulate the demand on the grid so that power outages don't happen.

The need to fight climate change is becoming ever more pressing, with apocalyptic predictions being made frequently by reputed individuals like Stephen Hawking. Therefore, we should use any means we can to make positive changes towards tackling emissions, whether it be blockchain, radical new ways of producing energy, or using new technology to clean our air.

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Blockchain Could Be the Answer to Stopping Climate Change

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Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize almost any industry it is applied to: we can take comfort that it can be used to ensure food gets to Syrian refugees, will soon experience the mountain of data it will give us on driverless cars, and could have the ability to rebalance the exploitive music industry.

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UN Framework Convention on

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united nations climate change secretariat

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Blockchain technology will enable us to decentralise the web and decentralise many, if not all, the services that are offered via the web. A decentralised internet was how the internet was originally envisioned, but somehow in the past 25 years, it ended up in the hands of a few very powerful companies. As Sir Tim Berners-Lee said during the Decentralised Web Summit in 2016:

"The web was designed to be decentralised so that everybody could participate by having their own domain and having their own webserver and this hasn't worked out. Instead, we've got the situation where individual personal data has been locked up in these silos."

Fortunately, Blockchain will allow us to bring back the power to the users and to create a decentralised society. Already, Blockchain challenges many industries, of which the financial industry will see the largest impact of Blockchain in the coming years. The question, however, is how Blockchain will have an impact on other global problems. In a new series of Blockchain posts, I will dive into different problems we face and see if and how the Blockchain could help solve these issues. I will discuss problems such as climate change, poverty, refugee crisis, voting fraud, censorship or even super artificial intelligence and see how Blockchain can be involved in a possible solution to these challenges. Please let me know in the comments, if you have more areas that should be looked at.

This first post will be about if Blockchain can help combat climate change and if so, how a decentralised solution for climate change would work. With Trump nominating more and more climate change sceptics in his government, there is little hope that the USA will continue to play the increasing important role they took under Obama. So we need a solution that does not rely on governments. Fortunately, the tech world is stepping up, with several billionaire tech founders, including Bill Gates, Jack Ma and Jeff Bezos creating a $1 billion clean energy venture fund for startups that focus on combating climate change.

Traditionally, energy production and distribution have been very centralised. Large corporations invest billions of dollars in energy creation from either fossil fuels or renewable energy sources. The distribution of that energy is done by centralised, often government owned, grid companies. These companies move energy around the globe and determine the pricing for it, which has an impact on the world economy; if the OPEC decides whether to reduce or increase oil production, it has an impact on everyone. However, energy production is moving away from a centralised approach to a decentralised approach, thanks to new startups and new technological breakthroughs, such as the solar energy roof tiles from Elon Musk or the advancement of smart grids.

Clean energy tech offers a lot of opportunity for dealing with climate change, and it appears that Blockchain could play an important role as well. There are multiple startups and research initiatives that try to understand how Blockchain could create new ways of dealing with carbon emissions and pricing, smart grid management or energy data analysis. Blockchain enables custom, decentralised value flows and that will benefit each of these energy related aspects.

Carbon Emission and Energy Trading

Carbon emissions are what cause climate change and the carbon footprint is defined as the total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an event, organisation or country. In order to limit these emissions, carbon pricing was invented, which is a certain amount of money that has to be paid for the right to emit one tonne of CO2 in the atmosphere. These rights can be traded if you are an organisation has many left of these rights or if an organisation is emitting more carbon dioxide than allowed. These rights and carbon assets are traded on marketplaces and as such, Blockchain can be used to improve this system.

Currently, IBM and Chinese Energy Blockchain Labs are working together to develop a blockchain marketplace for trading carbon assets. The objective is to make it more efficient to develop and manage carbon assets and as such reduce carbon emissions. In addition, recording carbon assets on a public blockchain will offer transparency and will ensure that transactions are valid and settled in minutes.

Next to carbon assets that can be traded on the blockchain, an Australian startup is developing a peer-to-peer renewable energy trading platform, using the blockchain. The company, Power Ledger, enables consumers to buy, self, or exchange excess renewable electricity, directly with each other. This works via tokens, for example a crypto coin, which are tradeable digital assets representing a certain energy production. These can be sold to others via the blockchain to prevent double spending and to ensure valid transactions. As such, Blockchain enables Power Ledger to offer a transparent, auditable and automated marketplace, that settles and clears transactions between consumers in minutes, without the need for a trusted third party. This will make it more interesting for consumers to also start creating and selling their own renewable energy.

Smart Grid Management

Smart grids are the future of energy and they offer tremendous advantages over traditional energy grids. In addition, smart grids are actually necessary, if the electric car revolution continues, which it will. If all car owners come home after work and plugin their electric car to the grid at the same time, it will cause the current electrical grid to crash, because of the peak in energy demand. Smart grids will regulate energy demand to ensure that the grid remains online.

Smart grids will not only be required for electic cars. They will consist of billions of endpoints such as solar systems, microgrids, smart appliances, houses, etc. that are constantly interacting with each other. Blockchain can help improve smart grids and the management of those smart grids and quite a few startups are working hard to develop a decentralised solution. UK startup Electron wants to use smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to develop a smart grid that will always deliver energy. Currently, they are in the testing phase and they use 53 million metering points and data of 60 energy suppliers to run experiments.

The company Grid Singularity aims to develop a decentralised energy data management and exchange platform. This platform will enable regulators, operators, investors, traders and consumers to collaborate efficiently on smart grids. The Austrian company targets developing countries to offer them a pay-as-you-go solar energy system and they use Blockchain to authenticate energy transactions.

Samsung and IBM are also working on Blockchain solutions for smart grids. They developed a platform called ADEPT, which uses smart contracts on Ethereum to manage micro transactions between smart appliances on a smart grid, as they autonomously react to changing grid conditions. This will improve the efficiency and operability of a smart grid, regulating the energy consumption and reducing it along the way.

Energy Data Analysis

The analyses of massive amounts of energy data can help organisations such as universities, meteorological organisations or financial institutions to gain insights from energy consumption. This information can help create new applications and reduce energy consumption.

The startup ElectriCChain is using Blockchain technology, in combination with SolarCoin, which is a crypto coin to incentivize solar electricity generation. The objective of ElectriCChain is to gather non-confidential energy data related to solar energy and they aim to build a network of millions of solar installations worldwide. They are moving towards a non-profit organisation and currently developing a dozen solar energy blockchain projects. Using the insights from the solar installations, they aim to deliver cheap and clean solar energy solutions for humanity.

A Future of Decentralised Energy

The energy sector has tremendous opportunities to be changed and improved using Blockchain technology. Clean energy tech startups are developing new solutions and applications that focus on renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions and developing smart grids that will optimise energy consumption. Blockchain can assist these startups in offering a decentralised energy solution that is reliable and effective. As such, Blockchain has a significant chance to help combat climate change as it enables the creation, usage and exchange of renewable decentralised energy in a trustworthy and reliable manner, which will make reneable energy a lot more attractive to consumers, organisations and societies.

For an overview of different startups in the Blockchain energy space, as well as an in depth article on the enormous potential of the blockchain for the energy industry, read this article. For those who have difficulty understanding what the Blockchain is, I recently wrote a series of five posts on what is the Blockchain:

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How Blockchain Can Help Combat Climate Change

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Blockchain technology will enable us to decentralise the web and decentralise many, if not all, the services that are offered via the web. A decentralised internet was how the internet was originally envisioned, but somehow in the past 25 years, it ended up in the hands of a few very powerful companies.

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Blockchain for solar installations in NYC: http://transactivegrid.net/

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Something odd is happening on President Street in Brooklyn. While solar panels on the roofs of terraced houses soak up sun, a pair of computers connected to the panels quietly crunch numbers. First, they count how many electrons are being generated. Then, they write that number to a blockchain. Welcome to the future of energy exchange.

This project, run by a startup called Transactive Grid, is the first version of a new kind of energy market, operated by consumers, which will change the way we generate and consume electricity.

Transactive Grid aims to enable people to buy and sell renewable energy to their neighbours. To deal in energy at the moment, you have to go through a central company like Duke Energy in the US or National Grid in the UK, or one of their resellers.

Transactive can skip this central authority because its energy market is built on a technology called blockchain. First used to underpin the bitcoin currency, a blockchain is a cryptographically secure list of transactions. The list is stored on every computer in the system, and is continuously updated as each transaction is completed. The list for President Street is built using blockchain software called Ethereum. It deals with buying and selling electrons generated by solar panels. No central authority is in control: the computers monitor each other to stop fraud.

Buy and sell

The first devices were installed on President Street a few weeks ago. On one side of the street are five homes that produce some of their own energy through solar power. On the other side are five consumers interested in buying excess energy from their neighbours.

Lawrence Orsini, co-founder of Transactive explains that the blockchain makes it easy for anyone to set up and enforce contracts, with the transaction following automatically.

"You don't have the billing components around it, you don't have the infrastructure losses or the accounting losses in the system," he says. Down the line, the company plans to build an app which lets residents set personal preferences for the distribution of the energy they produce. One homeowner might decide to sell all their excess energy for maximum profit, for example, while another could choose to donate a portion to a low-income area.

Community benefits

Either way, the energy and the money goes to benefit the community, says Orsini, not the large centralised power company. "When you buy energy from the community, the money goes back to the community."

"Every kilowatt you buy, you pay for network. If you can cut out the middle man and do the trade directly, you don't have to pay for the wires," says Philipp Grunewald of the University of Oxford.

But the might of utility companies makes the road to autonomy rocky. Grunewald says that at one point solar panel users in Spain were paying less than their fair share for grid access. When a charge was introduced to account for this difference, some were forced off the grid entirely, which is bad for the system as a whole.

Despite hiccups like this, Grunewald sees the potential in projects like President Street. "People are disgruntled with their utility companies, and like this idea of becoming autonomous," he says.

Disaster-proof your grid

Decentralised systems may also prove more resilient than a centralised grid in natural disasters such as hurricane Sandy, allowing people to rely on a local microgrid when the major infrastructure fails.

Other companies are hot on Transactive's heels. Grid Singularity, based in Vienna, Austria, wants to bring the same decentralised energy market to developing countries, to help distribute solar power. MIT start-up SolarCoin pays people with an alternative digital currency for generating solar energy, one coin for 1 megawatt-hour of solar electricity.

With blockchain, "it's like the early days of the internet," says Greentech Media CEO Scott Clavenna. When the internet was first introduced, it was hard to conceive of the drastic impact it would have on the world. " We've got all the parts to do some really interesting things," he says.

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Blockchain-based microgrid gives power to consumers in New York

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Something odd is happening on President Street in Brooklyn. While solar panels on the roofs of terraced houses soak up sun, a pair of computers connected to the panels quietly crunch numbers. First, they count how many electrons are being generated. Then, they write that number to a blockchain.

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The Paris Agreement falls under SDG #13 ("Climate Action")

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Reading between the lines of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Providing objective context & analytics on international climate change transparency.