Huobi Weekly Blockchain News-Review (Vol. 100) (3rd Feb — 9th Feb 2020)

3.1 Industrial Application

IBM Food Trust blockchain platform has onboarded one more French manufacturer seeking to enhance transparency of product provenance and supply chain.The Avril Group, a vegetable oil, eggs and protein manufacturer, and the owner of brands Matines and Lesieur, has begun using IBM Food Trust network to ensure traceability of its products, according to a Feb. 4 press release. By applying blockchain, the Avril Group expects to make improvements in its corporate social responsibility, especially when it comes to sectors such as quality livestock and the consideration of animal welfare.Matines is looking to advance customer experience, providing greater transparency through a QR code printed inside the egg box, which directs customers to an application containing a wide range of data related to the eggs they consume — from the way the hens are fed to the date of dispatch to the warehouses of the distributors.

Investment platform CurioInvest and Seychelles-based digital asset exchange MERJ Exchange Ltd. will jointly begin offering a token backed by collector luxury cars.The so-called Car Token (CT1) token is set to be pegged to the value of collectible cars giving more people a chance to have a fraction of an asset, BNN Bloomberg reported on Jan. 30. The company stipulated that the attractiveness of the token also lies in the fact that the value of such goods continues to appreciate. “When you look at fine art, collectible cars, they have been perceived historically as safe havens,” said Fernando Verboonen, founder and CEO of CurioInvest. Although the token is backed by the value of classic cars, CurioInvest told Cointelegraph that it does not consider it a stablecoin but rather a security token as it comes with and by the Financial Market Authority approved Prospectus and International Securities Identification Number.

The UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) together with the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Dubai Healthcare City and other relevant authorities has launched a blockchain-based health data storage platform.According to The Emirates News Agency on Feb. 2, the blockchain-based platform aims to improve the efficiency of MoHAP and other health authorities’ smart health services. It will help users streamline the search for health facilities and its licensed medical and technical personnel, as well as inquire about medicine supply chains.According to Dr. Lubna Al Shaali, the Director of the Public Health Policy Department, the new data storage blockchain platform will help secure an unchangeable, decentralized and encrypted database with high-security protection to verify data validity and reliability. Being decentralized, secure, transparent, and efficient in managing data, the healthcare sector can benefit tremendously from blockchain technology. Yet, there are several challenges ahead too, such as how it can adapt to real-world applications when it comes to regulation, privacy, business and provider and patient relationships which are unique to healthcare.

3.2 International Policies

The Australian government is going to launch its national blockchain strategy on Friday, Feb. 7, following a nearly year-long preparation.It has been almost a year since the country’s Ministry for Industry, Science and Technology and Ministry for Trade, Tourism and Investment announced the national blockchain strategy and roadmap last March.The new policy roadmap aims to make Australia’s nascent blockchain industry into a global leader, making the country’s wine industry, banking and finance the key priority sectors. Outlining the program’s development, Karen Andrews, Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, said that the five-year blockchain roadmap will underpin the work of regulators, startups and researchers on the matter, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Feb. 7. She also mentioned that the sector is set to be worth AU$259.4 billion ($175 billion).

Capital markets blockchain platform iSTOX has graduated from Singapore’s regulatory sandbox and been approved as a recognized market operator and capital markets services licensee.Singapore’s The Business Times confirmed on Feb. 3 that the platform, developed by blockchain infrastructure firm ICHX Tech, is now fully operational and licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city-state’s central bank. MAS, which also serves as Singapore’s financial regulator, launched its FinTech Regulatory Sandbox to encourage local projects to pursue innovative financial products and services within a secure, efficient and low-regulatory pressure environment .ICHX Tech’s iSTOX will offer issuance, settlement, custody and secondary trading for digitized securities — heralding a new, fully-regulated arrival on the blockchain scene in a major global financial center.Now that it has graduated from MAS’ sandbox, restrictions on iSTOX will be lifted, including limitations on the size of the issuances it can host and the number of investors that can draw in. The firm is reported to have confirmed its graduation during a press conference Monday.

A policy think tank of the Indian government, NITI Aayog, has released its national blockchain policy draft paper dubbed “Blockchain — The India Strategy” which explains different use cases of blockchain in India along with some conclusions from ongoing pilot projects. NITI Aayog was established with the aim to achieve sustainable development goals by fostering the involvement of state governments of India in the economic policy-making process. The strategy document targets stakeholders such as government, enterprise leaders and citizens with the aim of demystifying the concepts surrounding blockchain technology. It aims to create a concrete national plan of action towards blockchain technology. The policy paper is being released in two different parts. Part one deals with basic concepts, trust systems, the economic potential of smart contracts and blockchain, ease of doing business and different ongoing use cases. Part two will be released in the coming weeks which will mainly cover different recommendations for using blockchain technology in India.

3.3 Technological Breakthrough

A Feb. 3 paper authored by Nikolai Durov, a Telegram co-founder, lays out the details of Telegram Open Network’s consensus mechanism, named Catchain. The proposed solution is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm, similar to that used by NEO or Cosmos.BFT algorithms are attempted solutions to solve the Byzantine Generals problem, where actors of a particular network need to maintain its functionality even if some nodes are unreliable or malicious. Catchain will work for as long as one third of nodes are not malicious, which is equivalent to the theoretical limit outlined for BFT solutions. The system focuses on validating each block as it gets created, similar to Cosmos’ Tendermint or NEO’s dBFT. This in opposition to systems proposed by Ethereum and Cardano, where blocks are easy to produce, but must be then reconciled through fork resolution.Each new block is created via a block generation round, during which validators have a limited time to agree. Should they fail to do so, that block is skipped.Each validator has a clear role during a block voting procedure, with some creating the blocks, others proposing a block for voting, while the remaining nodes vote on the proposal. The roles are shifted with each new round, which should ensure the correctness of the procedure.Telegram is set to have no more than 100 validators for the master chain and from 10–30 for each “shard chain.” According to tests conducted in 2018, a block can be generated every five seconds, undergoing the full consensus procedure each time.For the most part, the system is reported by TON developers to be similar to Cosmos’ and Algorand’s. Differences lie in some of the specifics, such as how the nodes communicate with each other. Simply having each node communicate with every other is very inefficient, which means that each project tried to find its own way of making the process faster.

4.Weekly Investment Activities

2 investments activities took place in the blockchain industry this week, PayStand got B round investment from Leap Global Partners and BlueRun Ventures, Dai Ge got strategic investment from Zhongzhuang construction.