Month: November 2018

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DubaiCoin

What is DubaiCoin?

DubaiCoin has since rebranded to ArabianChain Technology.

This is a community-based blockchain project. It was designed as a peer-to-peer, consensus-driven platform for distributed applications.

The concept behind DubaiCoin is to come up with a full-featured application supported by blockchain technology.

This is a UAE based venture whose aim is to unlock the true potential of the economy of tomorrow, by empowering users and businesses to use the blockchain today. It is a decentralized, public and consensus-backed blockchain platform, a pioneer in the MENA region.

This is one of many projects that are aimed at revolutionizing the interactions between individuals, businesses, and governments, by taking advantage of the benefits of blockchain technology.

This project has received a lot of support, especially given that the UAE has plans in place to become a leader in blockchain technology by the year 2020.

As a result of this initiative, there are systems in place to support and enrich the blockchain ecosystem in the UAE by encouraging the development of innovative projects.

Through partnerships with Consensys and IBM, DubaiCoin is part of a city-wide campaign to turn Dubai into the smartest and happiest city in the world. This is also in a bid to make UAE government the first in the world that will be fully powered by blockchain technology. The aim is to transform at least 50% of government transactions into blockchain transactions.

What is the problem that DubaiCoin Solves?

One of the challenges that are evident in the blockchain realm, especially with Bitcoin, is that users are offered a platform with predefined instructions on what they can or cannot do. This limits the innovative spirit. Instead of following suit, DubaiCoin does things differently.

Users on DubaiCoin are free to create any instructions as they wish, which they can use on the DubaiCoin platform. These instructions can have whichever level of complexity that the users wish.

This, therefore, opens up the development space for different decentralized applications including cryptocurrency and anything else that the users would wish to create. DubaiCoin does not just limit users to working with cryptocurrency alone.

DubaiCoin allows for the creation and implementation of self-executing smart contracts. These are accessible globally, thereby not limiting the creative space for users.

Users can also create decentralized apps on DubaiCoin. Cryptocurrency that is built on DubaiCoin can be tracked, transacted and protected over thousands of distributed computers all over the world.

One of the biggest challenges that people usually experience when investing in the UAE is the high cost of operation. The Islamic capital market is not as easy to understand as the normal ones.

There are a lot of complexities involved, which also come with high costs of operation and third-party charges. In line with this, it becomes difficult for most investors to raise funds, especially in the capital markets when it is needed on an urgent basis.

How does DubaiCoin Solve the problem? 

What DubaiCoin has done is to involve all the parties who are integral to the Islamic capital markets in the project.

These are the people or entities who feel the pinch in terms of the complexities involved in trading. From investment banks, fundraisers, lawyers, accredited investors, and rating agencies, all these are parties whose interests are represented in DubaiCoin.

Given that there has not been much investment in innovation in the Islamic capital market for so many years, the entry of DubaiCoin and other blockchain projects in a bid to revolutionize this market should make an interesting spectacle.

What makes DubaiCoin better than the competitors?    

DubaiCoin is a pioneer in the blockchain sector in the UAE. As such, there are not many competitors worth challenging.

However, given that the blockchain realm is about opening up access to the world as a whole, there are several benefits that DubaiCoin enjoys that some of the projects that might be performing the same tasks do not.

Talented Team

DubaiCoin boasts a diverse team of experts in different fields. For a blockchain project that is at the forefront in bringing the UAE government services on the blockchain, this diversity is of utmost importance.

The professionals who work behind DubaiCoin have been at the helm of some of the top industries in the world.

DubaiCoin is about a revolution in the way individuals, businesses and governments conduct business and interact with the economy. Digital transformation, e-services, and entrepreneurial thought are mandatory for this dream to be realized.

The team that keeps DubaiCoin alive is composed of skilled individuals who have served in notable positions at firms like Oracle, Dell, and Microsoft.

Other than that, the combined talent pool at DubaiCoin draws from different fields that are key to innovation in the future, like healthcare, telecommunications, public sector, and banking.

This makes it easier for them to work together and bring the change needed in the MENA region economy.

Banking

DubaiCoin has put plans in motion to work with a number of banks in the GCC that will enable users to exchange their tokens for fiat currency.

There are compliance and regulatory concerns that are being addressed, to make sure that by the time this is rolled out, users do not have to worry about accounts being suspended for breach of contract or any other reason, as the transactions will be fully within the law, and acceptable by the banking standards.

Diversification

One thing that sets DubaiCoin apart from most of the other projects around is the way they have diversified into different aspects of the internet of things. While DubaiCoin can be easily associated with Islamic capital markets, they have also ventured into gaming, especially by partnering with FlamingoSkies.

FlamingoSkies is a design studio that develops creative and compelling experiences for gamers. They also create digital and physical collectibles. FlamingoSkies is also venturing in 3D printing, an emerging industry, and blockchain gaming through the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Ethereum fork

When DubaiCoin started out, it was no more than an Ethereum fork. However, there are differences especially in the current supply, emission rate, yearly cap, and difficulty calculations. In light of this, DubaiCoin has a different roadmap for the future. One of the reasons why DubaiCoin has been a success is the lack of awareness that people have about other blockchain environments.

Most people are only aware of Bitcoin and Ethereum and do not consider anything else outside of these two. Therefore, by venturing in and getting the kind of traction that DubaiCoin has managed down the line, this has made it easier to create awareness and endear themselves to the masses.

DubaiCoin has identified and filled a gap, making sure that everyone is as close as possible to the reality of blockchain technology and to usher in a new future.

DubaiCoin has also created a platform where people are free to experiment and exploit different things that they can do with blockchain technology, other than the obvious financial aspects.

Local partnerships and support

DubaiCoin is ahead of the pack given the local support and partnerships that they have brought on board. They are the key advisors for many businesses in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, encouraging them to build their tokens and contracts on the blockchain. This is to help position themselves for the shift to a blockchain way of doing business.

The team at DubaiCoin has also invested in several educational sessions and workshops where they improve and enhance the skills of the teams they interact with, build capabilities and increase the level of competency in blockchain technology in different organizations.

How can DubaiCoin be categorized?

DubaiCoin is an open source community project built with the aim of decentralizing interactions between businesses, individuals and governments.

What’s DubaiCoin’s vision on Security?

DubaiCoin runs on a Proof of Work algorithm. As such, it is vulnerable to 51% attack, which is a theoretical risk for all projects that run on Proof of Work. This type of attack happens when a hacker gains access and controls the majority of the hash rate, with the sole aim of forking the network or double spending.

Unfortunately, DubaiCoin has been a victim of this kind of attack before. The hack lasted 46 blocks. This happened when an attacker managed to gain access to 51% of the hash rate and made illegal transactions in one of the exchanges where DubaiCoin is traded.

Following the attacks, however, the team at DubaiCoin have since offered assurances to users that their funds are safe, and cannot be accessed by attackers. This is because they do not have access to the user’s private keys, nor can they access the tokens if they are safely stored in the local wallets.

In order to prevent this from happening in the future, the development team has since forked the network. Other than that, DubaiCoin upgraded their network to project Lykos, an upgrade that offers enhanced protection against this type of attack.

Examples of DubaiCoin use cases/applications

There are several projects that are currently supported by or under development by DubaiCoin. This is in line with the mission to make the UAE government run its services on the blockchain. Most of these are services that are integral to the business community, in areas like banking. The following are some of the use cases where DubaiCoin has come in handy:

Wethaq

Wethaq is a pioneer in its field, an Islamic capital blockchain platform. The Wethaq platform is built on the blockchain to improve Islamic capital markets and help take advantage of the benefits of blockchain technology into the financial markets.

Wethaq uses smart contracts and legal automation. One of the products that can be traded on this platform is Sukuk. Sukuk is an Islamic financial certificate. It has the same features of a fiscal bond but in line with Sharia law.

Wethaq is supposed to bring together fundraisers, investors, and all other stakeholders in the financial sector. It opens up space for buying and selling of Sukuk products, and management where necessary.

PALMEX

This is a digital asset exchange that was designed to be the foundation of tomorrow’s economy. It is a platform that is user-friendly, easy to understand even for basic users. There are several tools that are built into it to make it easier for users to use this service.

PALMEX is home to different trading pairs, including Bitcoin and DubaiCoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency in the UAE region. It supports businesses and individuals by meeting their flexible needs, while at the same time offering protection through enhanced security protocols.

Curiositas

This is one of the active partners that DubaiCoin has brought on board. Curiositas is an innovative firm that creates new technology to revolutionize the world of finance. Together with DubaiCoin, Curiositas fuses their legal automation and financing skill with the distributed ledger technology protocol and smart contracts to provide the much-needed revolution in the financial markets.

The goal of their partnership with DubaiCoin is to standardize and automate the Islamic capital markets. This should also help in separating structuring services which are made available by different financial institutions, from some of the supporting services that are offered by third parties, like payments and custodianship.

DBIX

This is the first ever digital currency in the region that is minable and also acts as the token fuel in the DubaiCoin ecosystem.

Galaxy DBIX Wallet

This is the safest and easiest way to run transactions and manage tokens on the DubaiCoin ecosystem.

DBIX Scan

DBIX Scan is an explorer that offers users the benefit of accessing all transactions. Any transaction that has been performed on the DubaiCoin platform can be viewed and verified on DBIX Scan.

Studio

Smart contracts are key in the DubaiCoin environment. These are enforceable lines of code that are written to perform specific actions upon the completion of pre-defined rules. Studio is an environment within DubaiCoin where users can create smart contracts for whichever transaction they need to perform.

FlamingoSkies

This is a partnership that allows the use of DubaiCoin as a mode of payment on the FlamingoSkies platform. DubaiCoin users and the entire community gets to benefit from exclusive early access to the products available, and innovative support therein.

Project Lykos

This is an upgrade for DBIX. Project Lykos is aimed at becoming a network that is ready for enterprise services, built with the capacity to handle lots of data sets.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/DubaiCoin

http://www.arabianchain.org/

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Swarm City

What is Swarm City?

Swarm City is a decentralized commerce project that is built on the Ethereum blockchain. It is a project that is designed to leverage the benefits of blockchain technology in the way people transact value, communicate and create a contextual reputation from their interactions.

The idea behind Swarm City is to bring forth a global marketplace that is open for service providers and services, all taking advantage of the benefits of the Ethereum project, currency tokens, encrypted communication tools, the Kovan testnet, and any other tools that might be available on the blockchain.

This project realizes that change is imminent in the way things are done online, and we are yet to see the ultimate changes. Therefore, it is built as a responsive project in that any new solutions that might be available down the line will be adaptable into Swarm City.

It is to make sure that buyers and sellers all over the world have direct access to one another, without the bottlenecks that are currently present in e-commerce.

Through Swarm City, users are able to access a network of P2P consumers and service providers.

Swarm City aims to make work easier for anyone who would like to create a unique branded marketplace (Storefront) and people who would like to make use of contributors who share a common goal with them (Hives).

In order to achieve this, Swarm City brings together open-source development, platform cooperation, blockchain technology, and a decentralized swarm organizational model, and makes it available to everyone.

Essentially, Swarm City is a decentralized swarm of people whose desire to change the world is so strong, and believe that this is possible through P2P interaction. Value on the Swarm City project is expressed in terms of SWT, an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.

What is the problem that Swarm City Solves?

Swarm City is about freedom. The reason why Swarm City was built is to make sure that people would no longer have to worry about the interference of third parties in their interactions, whether for business or pure communication.

What has been able to achieve, is to get rid of all third parties from any transaction that is carried out in the project. This is a guarantee that the process will go on smoothly without obstruction.

By getting rid of third parties, Swarm City is able to reduce the cost of transactions.

Besides, there is no longer need for third parties in the system, whose function in a conventional system would have been to protect the personal data for users. On the Swarm City project, all data that is shared is protected.

Freedom has always been a challenge in the conventional world of doing business. This is because all data is stored on a centralized platform.

Therefore, someone somewhere always has access to all your data. Even data that is stored in an encrypted format is never safe as long as it is stored in a central place. Through Swarm City, however, this is different.

By creating decentralized apps on the Ethereum blockchain, these apps have the capacity to disrupt a lot of global industries and markets. Some of the markets that are already ripe for the taking include cybersecurity, banking, and payments, forecasting, the Internet of Things, networking and supply chain management.

Other industries that will benefit from the new revolution by blockchain projects like Swarm City include online music distribution, healthcare, legislative voting, charity, cloud storage, private transportation, insurance, real estate, retail, crowdfunding and so forth.

Basically, Swarm City will be useful for any industry or market that involves the use of transactions or data of some sort.

How does Swarm City Solve the problem?           

In realization of the things that Swarm City needs to achieve, it would have been possible to build it on the Blockchain project or any other project, but Swarm City chose Ethereum, and for a good reason.

There are technical and philosophical components that were built for Swarm City, which form the conceptual framework upon which the project thrives.

Simply put, Swarm City is designed to make it easier for people to use marketplaces that are context specific, to engage in, or in cases where it is impossible to do so, allow them to create their own marketplaces unique for their context.

In Swarm City marketplaces are referred to as hashtags. Users are also able to create decentralized communities on Swarm City, which will help them in terms of economies of scale. At the same time, this will also help them create a good reputation for one another through marketplace transactions. The communities are referred to as hives.

What makes Swarm City better than the competitors?  

There are several reasons why Swarm City is currently performing better than any other project that is designed in the same realm. The following are the key reasons:

Hashtags as Marketplaces

In the normal world goods and services are exchanged in a physical marketplace. This can either be in a shop or a local store. Things are different in Swarm City. Here, you will find goods and services inside the hashtags.

A hashtag is a marketplace that is specific for the particular context in question. Take for example the hashtag #needaride. This is a marketplace for ridesharing. In this context, drivers are able to get in touch with riders, getting them from one place to another.

The hashtag #contractor is specifically for homeowners, whereby they can get in touch with home improvement professionals like electricians, plumbers and so forth, to come and solve some of their concerns at home. What happens, in the long run, is that at the end of these transactions, users will earn a reputation by engaging in a transaction through a hashtag. This makes a significant difference in the long run.

Apart from that, users on Swarm City are free to create and operate marketplaces that suit their needs. This is as simple as creating a hashtag.

Like any other proprietorship, for example, running a shop, the person who creates a hashtag is held accountable for making sure that the marketplace in question is a conducive place for doing business.

This means that they need to ensure that everyone who comes aboard their hashtag, whether they are sellers or buyers, will be in a good position to have the experience of a lifetime. Should there arise any dispute in a given hashtag, it is up to the creator to solve it in an amicable manner.

Hives as Communities

Hives share a strong correlation with beehives. They are about people coming together, people who share resources and values.

Every single person in a given hive brings to the fold certain metrics in terms of their experience and genetical makeup. Since people have unique skills, a hive will, at any given point in time have a lot of professionals, and people from different walks of life, making it a good place to engage communities.

For this reason, therefore, the concept of a hive is useful for the members, as it allows them to come together and form a unique community that has all kinds of individuals in it.

By coming together, members of a hive are able to pool resources in terms of their ideas and skills. They learn from one another, and this helps them create a strong community that abides by certain set guidelines.

The idea of a hive is to bring together people who share resources and values and work together for the provision of services that they share in common. Using the example of rideshares, the drivers can create a hive. Once they create a hive of their own, this hive can be used to offer rides to riders inside a hashtag.

Every single driver in the hive earns a hive reputation whenever they provide rides to the hive members. Apart from that, the drivers contribute a very small percentage of their earnings to the shared resource pool of the hive.

For the drivers, this form of organization works well in their favor because as they earn hive reputations, they become authority figures in that community. Therefore, this also gives them more influence on the resource pool, and how it should be spent. Resource pools can be committed towards anything, from marketing to insurance, as long as the hive agrees on what they feel it is best suited for.

Value Proposition through Reputation

Transparency in an in-person commerce situation happens because both of the parties that are involved are able to physically see the form of payment and the goods, or can somehow tell the type of services that they are going to receive. Therefore, it is easier to interact.

However, there are also instances where people must interact and do business without ever knowing or seeing one another.

This can happen both online and in person. In such a situation, it is highly important to find a way of creating a level of trust, so that the participants are fully aware of the fact that the people they are dealing with are credible, and the transaction is also credible.

Users on Swarm City can create a contextual reputation by simply completing the transactions that they create within the hashtag. For example, on the #needaride hashtag, both the driver and the rider will earn a #needaride reputation when they complete the transaction.

For the user, you earn a reputation whenever you complete a transaction. The good thing about reputations is that they are forever embedded on your profile. The reputation is written on the blockchain, which makes it absolute and permanent.

Your profile will always show all the reputations you have earned in different hives and hashtags. As a result of this, anyone who is engaging you for the first time will have a rough idea of the type of things that you hold dear and the areas where you are competent.

How can Swarm City be categorized?

Swarm City is a decentralized e-commerce platform that allows people the ability to interact freely with one another, communicate and do business by taking advantage of blockchain technology. It is built in such a way that not even Swarm City can interfere with the interactions since they are on a voluntary basis.

What’s Swarm City’s vision on Security?

Swarm City is built on the Ethereum platform. Therefore, it enjoys the same security benefits that Ethereum projects do.

It is built with censorship resilience and resistance, so users never have to worry about interference by third parties like governments or other institutions.

Being an Ethereum project, Swarm City uses smart contracts. These are programs that are written to facilitate an exchange on an Ethereum blockchain. The contracts are written specifically to address certain terms and conditions of a contract. If these conditions are met, the contract will be automatically executed.

Another benefit of running smart contracts is that they are operated on a blockchain platform, which means that they are designed to run without any interference, fraud or censorship.

Examples of Swarm City use cases/applications

Users on Swarm City are able to do a lot of things. Entry into the Swarm City ecosystem is through the Swarm City Terminal. The following are some of the things that you can do once you are in Swarm City:

  • Create a digital wallet
  • Create your profile
  • Send and receive SWT
  • View your ETH and SWT balance
  • View the USD equivalent of your balances in SWT
  • Engage in a private conversation with someone
  • Engage in and complete a transaction
  • Receive Swarm City Reputation tokens (SWR) when you complete a transaction

With time, there is room for development and users can look forward to more intuitive features. At the click of a button, for example, they should be able to create a hashtag of their own. A hashtag, in this case, is simply a smart contract that creates a market with unique parameters.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/Swarm-City

https://swarm.city/

https://medium.com/swarm-city-times https://support.swarm.city/knowledge_base/categories/frequently-asked-questions-76 https://github.com/swarmcity/sc-token/blob/master/token-exchange-miniwhitepaper.md#token-exchange-whitepaper%20https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9RSMdR2vWssV2JJX0t6dmN6SUk/view