Rojin Nair, Advisor
June 1st, 2021
At Incyub8 Inc, Rojin is focusing on nurturing and guiding various national and international start-[...]
Category Archives: Web3, Decentralization, DAOs
MoonDAO is Sending a YouTube Influencer to Space – Moon Party Anyone?
Coindesk | Eli Tan | Aug 6, 2022
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called MoonDAO sent someone to space on Thursday, one of the biggest successes yet for such a crypto-crowdfunded project.
The DAO didn’t send just anyone up – Coby Cotton, a member of the viral YouTube trick-shot group Dude Perfect, was chosen in a Discord vote by the DAO’s more than 5,000 members to be its astronaut representative. The DAO’s future ambition includes hosting parties on the Moon.
Crowdfunding DAOs, which are groups of crypto enthusiasts that come together and purchase a currency or non-fungible token (NFT) to raise funds towards a common goal, have been more prone to failure than success.
The genre was popularized in November 2021 by a group called ConstitutionDAO, which came together to raise $40 million to purchase an original copy of the U.S. Constitution.
See: Blockchain-based replacement for traditional crowdfunding: DAOs
Dude Perfect’s Cotton made the trip with five other first-time astronauts as part of the Jeff Bezos-backed space tourism program Blue Origin, which has thus far completed six of these missions, each time sending regular people into space for around 12 minutes.
MoonDAO was able to purchase Cotton’s ticket with funds from its crowdfunding campaign that has so far raised more than $8 million. The DAO’s mission is to “decentralize access to space,” with the ultimate goal of creating its own Moon colony, according to its website.
I'm just kind of in love with the idea of DAOs in general, I think that they have a lot of promise, like a tool set for people to collaborate and coordinate online. When you buy an NFT, you know, it's pretty abstract. The idea that you could be selected to go into space because of it, now that’s interesting.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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How will Web3 impact the future of work?
WEF | Jul 25, 2022
The global pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of work and the work experience. Stranded at home, millions of workers across the globe replaced daily commutes, office desks and watercooler chats with Zoom calls. Cue the next evolution in the virtualization of work, the metaverse; essentially an application of spatial computing that will see us using our avatars to work, meet, learn, socialize, play, trade and transact in fully immersive virtual environments. Media hype notwithstanding, the metaverse is already here.
Decentralized autonomous organizations in web3
DAOs exploit smart contract architectures and digital tokens verified on public blockchains, such as Ethereum, in order to give members of a DAO the possibility to directly participate in its governance. Decision making thus becomes collective and based on how many votes – expressed in the number of tokens – a certain proposal in the DAO gets. There are no barriers to entry, and owning tokens in a decentralized autonomous organization is permissionless. Since all rules are coded in smart contracts and all transactions are recorded on a blockchain, a DAO is fully transparent to its members. If the DAO is purposed with developing ideas, or software, then the IP is open-sourced, at least for now.
See: Sounds like a DAO, Looks like a DAO: Introducing the Modern Digital Organization
The combination of the metaverse and a decentralized web3 has the potential to radically transform operating models and the labour market:
- As Zarkadakis explains in Cyber Republic, as decentralized autonomous organizations are adopted more widely, new types of businesses will emerge that would look more like cooperatives and less than corporations, significantly reducing agency costs.
- Leadership will rely on soft power and empathy, using culture and shared values to align the interests of disparate stakeholders to a common mission and purpose.
- In a DAO there are no officers, or directors, or managers, and therefore leadership roles are more fluid and impermanent, giving more opportunities to members to rise up. DAOs may decide to prioritize social goods – such as job security – above operational efficiency.
- This shift from hierarchical structures to flat, widely distributed networks and ecosystems run by stakeholder communities instead of boards and executives, will have a profound impact on work too.
How Distributed Workers Get Compensated
See: Fintech Fridays EP55: Global Hiring Trends: How Gen Z Talent Thrives
Within the context of work being increasingly organized as decentralized autonomous organizations, the traditional hierarchical mix of roles within a corporate structure (leader, manager, employee, contractor and vendor) and functions will morph significantly into a flatter construct comprising:
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A core group of individuals responsible for coordination of work and delivering on the value proposition of the DAO.
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A broader contributor group that provides specific services to execute the mission of the DAO. This includes other DAOs that provide services like HR, finance and accounting and customer service on an ongoing basis and individual contributors (gig workers or contractors) that take on projects as needed.
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An even broader group of “members” who will promote brands, support continued crowdsourcing of ongoing product innovation or otherwise contribute to the advancement of the DAO’s mission.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Kirk Simpson, Peter Carrescia and Kirk Simpson Raise CAD$6.5 million abd Launch Qui Identity
Betakit | | Aug 4, 2022
Kirk Simpson is just one month removed from stepping down as CEO of Toronto-based Wave, and about to embark on his next venture. Simpson has teamed up with early Wave investor Peter Carrescia to launch a company focused on decentralized identities, called Qui Identity. Things are moving fast for the pair: Simpson and Carrescia have secured $6.5 million CAD ($5 million USD) from a notable group of Canadian investors for what is essentially an idea.
The duo explained that they are still in the early stages, and yet to build a product, but are focused on accelerating the adoption of decentralized identity. The goal is to work with both consumers and businesses to make it easier and give them more control over how they share their digital information.
See: The Evolving Digital Identity Landscape
The Qui founders were able to raise the money for their idea so quickly because of their deep history and track record in Canadian tech. Simpson led Wave to its $537 million CAD exit to H&R Block in 2019, while Carresscia is known for being an early Wave investor as a founding member of OMERS Ventures alongside John Ruffolo. After a stint as head of Next Canada, Carrescia joined the Wave team in 2016 as senior vice president of strategy and corporate development, before departing to become a venture partner at Toronto-based VC firm Information Venture Partners.
“They have a proven history as entrepreneurs with Wave, and their success is unmatched,” said Satraj Bambra, managing partner at Round13 Digital Asset Fund, which led Qui’s round.
The challenge there was that companies had to run these verified data registries and it was all just within their own company walls, and it was hard to scale globally, especially in the consumer space,” he said. “But now that’s possible because of things like the blockchain. There are lots of smart people thinking about this space, don’t get me wrong, but the go-to-market has not been figured out,” Simpson claimed, citing a lack of control and trust between consumers, businesses, and third parties that share data.
See: Digital Identity Sins
“[The industry has] been very focused on folks that are passionate about Web3, and what I think we can bring is a lot of experience around how to build products that, at Wave, would be onboarding tens of thousands of small businesses every month,” said Simpson. “And to do that you need to make things really simple … That is what we can bring to this space, a bridge between Web2 and Web3 that brings some of this stuff more to the masses.”
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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8000 Solana Wallets Drained in Latest Attack
TechCrunch | Rita Liao, Carly Page | Aug 3, 2022
An unknown actor drained funds from approximately 8,000 wallets on the Solana network, Solana’s Status Twitter account said. It’s estimated the loss so far is around $8 million.The attack — which has only affected only “hot” wallets or wallets that are always connected to the internet, allowing people to store and send tokens easily — does not appear to be limited to Solana. Justin Barlow, an investor at Solana Ventures, reported that his USDC balance was drained as well. Crypto analyst @0xfoobar confirmed that:
“the attacker is stealing both native tokens (SOL) and SPL tokens (USDC)… affecting wallets that have been inactive for less than 6 months.”
See: First Crypto Store of Its Kind: Solana Opens in New York City
The attack has compromised other wallets including Phantom, Slope and TrustWallet. Initial reports suggested Solflare users were also impacted, but the company tells TechCrunch it has not been affected by this exploit. Wallets drained should be treated as compromised and abandoned, Solana warned as it encouraged users to switch to hardware or “cold” wallets.
The cause of the attack remains unclear, but industry leaders including Emin Gün Sirer, founder of another popular blockchain Avalanche, pointed out that the transactions were properly signed, which means the vulnerability could be a “supply chain attack” that manages to steal users’ private keys. @0xfoobar added that “it’s likely something has caused widespread private key compromise”, and warned that revoking wallet approvals will probably not help.
See: Code is Law Case: A Hamilton teen ‘hacked’ US$16 million in crypto (while he may not be in the wrong)
The Solana attack comes just hours after malicious actors abused a “chaotic” security exploit to steal almost $200 million in digital assets from cross-chain messaging protocol Nomad. The “free-for-all” attack, which saw more than 41 addresses drain $152 million — 80% of the stolen funds — was made possible by a recent update to one of Nomad’s smart contracts that made it easy for users to spoof transactions.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Post-Merge, PoW Die-Hards Plan to Fork Their Own Ethereum Chains
The Defiant | Samuel Haig | Aug 3, 2022
The biggest upgrade in the history of Ethereum is rapidly approaching. The Merge will convert Ethereum into a Proof-of-Stake-based blockchain from a Proof-of-Work one. The shift will make the No. 1 blockchain for smart contracts and dApps faster and more affordable. Jazzed investors have sent Ether soaring 52% in the last 30 days.
But not everyone is happy. 'Maintain the Original'
- Some die-hard miners are facing the obsolescence of billions of dollars worth of mining hardware and a fall in revenue. And they are threatening to maintain the original, Proof-of-Work version of the Ethereum network to protect their investment.
- Colin Wu, a Chinese cryptocurrency journalist, recently estimated The Merge will displace $5B worth of GPU and ASIC-based mining hardware.
- On July 31, Wu reported that Chandler Guo, a Chinese miner and former advisor to Binance, predicted roughly half a dozen PoW forks will emerge after Ethereum moves to PoS.
See: Vitalik’s Announces Next 4 Phases of Ethereum’s Development Which is Only 40% Done
- In response, Llama Salami pondered whether an “NFT black market” could emerge on a PoW fork of Ethereum. But many onlookers are skeptical that post-merge PoW Ethereum forks will survive for long.
Perspectives
- Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, dismissed the threat of PoW forks. Drake said he expects there will be little economic activity on the PoW chain because there’s a very strong social buy-in for moving to PoS.
- Marc Zeller, head of developers relations at Aave, said stETH would be worthless on any PoW forks. In a post onTwitter he said stETH won’t be redeemable for Ether, creating a “$1.4B hole” in the books of a PoW fork of Aave.
- Bob Summerwill, the executive director of ETCCooperative, an organization providing grants and funding to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem, also told The Defiant that PoW Ethereum forks will ultimately fail due to the network effects of DeFi and stablecoins.
See: Blockchain-based replacement for traditional crowdfunding: DAOs
“All the dApp websites will stop working because they will reference ETH, not the fork,” he said. “Even if it’s possible for somebody to bring up clone websites, servers, etc, that needs doing for every dApp, and then somebody needs to maintain all those forks, too. Some likely not even possible, because you would need admin keys to be able to operate them, and those belong to the existing operators.” - Bob Summerwill
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Are DAO governance attacks avoidable?
a16z Crypto | Pranav Garimidi, Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden | Jul 28, 2022
Many web3 projects embrace permissionless voting using a fungible and tradable native token. Permissionless voting can offer many benefits, from lowering barriers to entry to increasing competition. Token holders can use their tokens to vote on a range of issues—from simple parameter adjustments to the overhaul of the governance process itself.
But permissionless voting is vulnerable to governance attacks, in which an attacker acquires voting power through legitimate means (e.g., buying tokens on the open market) but uses that voting power to manipulate the protocol for the attacker’s own benefit.
Governance attacks in practice
- In one prominent example, Steemit, a startup building a decentralized social network on their blockchain, Steem, had an on-chain governance system controlled by 20 witnesses. While Steemit and Steem were gaining traction, Justin Sun had developed plans to merge Steem into Tron, a blockchain protocol he had founded in 2018. To acquire the voting power to do so, Sun bought tokens equivalent to 30 percent of the total supplyand eventually victorious and effectively had free reign over the network.
See: Arca Report: DAOs – Institutional Guide to Decentralized Governance
- In another instance, Beanstalk, a stablecoin protocol, found itself susceptible to governance attack via flashloan. An attacker took out a loan to acquire enough of Beanstalk’s governance token to instantly pass a malicious proposal that allowed them to seize $182 million of Beanstalk’s reserves within the span of a single block, which meant it was over before anyone had time to react.
- Governance attacks can also be conducted surreptitiously over a long period of time. An attacker might create numerous anonymous accounts and slowly accumulate governance tokens, while behaving just like any other holder to avoid suspicion.
Assessing and addressing vulnerability
For a protocol to be considered secure against governance attacks, an attacker’s profit should be negative. To reduce the incentives to exploit the protocol, the equation implies three clear choices: decrease the value of attacks, increase the cost of acquiring voting power, and increase the cost of executing attacks.
- Designers can limit the value of attacks by limiting the scope of what governance can do.
- Early in its life, a project might have more expansive governance as it finds its footing. As the project matures and decentralizes control, it may make sense to introduce some degree of friction in governance – at minimum, requiring large quorums for the most significant decisions.
- A project can also take steps to make it harder to acquire the voting power needed for an attack. The more liquid the token, the easier it is to require that voting power – so almost paradoxically, projects might want to reduce liquidity for the sake of protecting governance.
See: Research: Ownership of Top 10 Web3 DAOs is Surprisingly Concentrated
- Some projects have time locks so that a coin can’t be used to vote for some period of time after it has been exchanged.
- Some projects use veto powers that allow a vote to be delayed for some period of time to alert inactive voters about a potentially dangerous proposal.
Projects must strike a balance to allow a certain level of openness to community changes (which may be unpopular at times), while not allowing malicious proposals slip through the cracks.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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First Crypto Store of Its Kind: Solana Opens in New York City
Crypto Briefing | Tom Carreras | Jul 28, 2022
A Solana physical web3 store opened in New York City today; it’s the first crypto store of its kind...in the real world
Solana Spaces announced today the grand opening of its first store, situated at 20 Hudson Yards in New York City. The store, a collaborative effort from the Solana Foundation and several ecosystem partners, will be open from 10:00 to 20:00 from Monday to Saturday and from 11:00 to 19:00 on Sunday.
Catering to blockchain beginners, the store claims to be “the world’s first retail [and] educational space dedicated to Web3.” Visitors will have access to tutorials, programming services and Solana-based on-chain experiences; they will also have the opportunity to receive “unique rewards” for participating in physical store activities.
See: Osom partners with Solana to launch OV1, a blockchain-focused smartphone
With a market capitalization north of $14.5 billion and more than $2.6 billion of value locked across its protocols, Solana is one of crypto’s most prominent blockchains. It distinguishes itself from other smart contract-enabled blockchains like Ethereum by its high throughput capacity and very low fees, though the blockchain has been criticized for halting on many occasions.
A seed phrase booth will allow customers to generate their own Solana Phantom wallets. Multiple NFTs and cryptocurrencies including USDC are unlockable for visitors that go through the offered educational courses on Solana projects.
The store will also feature interactive art installations, a display of Solana’s upcoming Saga phone, crypto “lifestyle” products such as hoodies and t-shirts, and several of the ecosystem’s NFT collections. The store also offers a 50% discount on purchases up to $200 if using the Solana Pay app, and plans to rotate the experiences available to visitors.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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