A WEB 3.0 BLOG

Stellar has a built-in inflation system, where lumens are created and distributed at a rate of 1% each year. Although transaction fees on the Stellar Network are extremely cheap, thousands of them per second do eventually add up. These Lumens from transaction fees are thrown together into an inflation pool. Why have an inflation system? The inflation system is meant to distribute all the transaction fees back to Stellar Lumens holders. It was also put into place to account for lost Lumens (hard drive crashes, theft, etc) How it works Every account has an “inflation destination” feature. All this says is, when new lumens are created through inflation, which account should they go to? You get to be part of this vote! But you cannot vote for yourself unless you have 0.05% of the lumens. Thus, if you join a pool (group of people putting their lumens together) that has .05%, the funds made from inflation can trickle down to you weekly. There are a few pools we will list i...

Right on the heels of Ripple’s news of our  Series B funding  and ever-expanding  network of global banks , I’m very pleased to say that we have even more progress to report. Today, Ripple is proud to announce the creation of the first interbank group for global payments based on distributed financial technology .  Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Santander, UniCredit, Standard Chartered, Westpac Banking Corporation, and Royal Bank of Canada are the founding members of the network, known as the Global Payments Steering Group (GPSG). CIBC will also join the GPSG as a new member. .@BofAML, Santander, Unicredit, @StanChart, @Westpac, @RBC join Ripple Global #Payments Steering Group. TWEET THIS   Although Ripple already has an extensive network of banks, the GPSG will serve a specific purpose. The group will oversee the creation and maintenance of Ripple payment transaction rules, formalized standards for activity using Ripple, and other actions...

1973 ▼ FTP (file transfer protocol)  Introduced by computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider in 1973, the US Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) is often credited with providing a vision of how computers could be networked together. Bassous notes that in the early days of the ACH network, “Customers would drive over with a floppy disk or a tape with the ACH information.” The internet, of course, has rendered that an archaic approach. Bassous says the rise of cloud computing and APIs (application programming interfaces), both results of ARPANET’s work, means real-time payment (RTP) processing is now within community bankers’ grasp. 1976 ▼ Jack Henry’s “green screen” core processor Founded in 1976, Jack Henry is retiring its iconic green screen terminals on Dec. 31, 2019, to be replaced by a modern user interface called SilverLake Xperience. “Banking is moving into the 21st century with graphical user interfaces,” says Stacey Zengel, president o...

Almost all advances in retail banking within the past century or two owe their existence to a leap forward in technology. Think about the ATM, which amazed the world when it appeared in a London suburb in the 1960s. Or mobile point-of-sale devices, which allow micro-vendors to turn hobbies into going concerns. ■ “Technology is everything,” says George Bassous, CEO and CTO for Affirmative Technologies, a payments technology provider based in Palm Harbor, Fla. He identifies real-time payments as the latest technological innovation poised to shake up retail banking—and the whole commercial sector. And yet a paradigm shift of this magnitude relies on a chain of smaller advances, ranging from improved core processing to tokenization and ever-more-reliable network security. ■ Staying abreast of the latest technologies is a “huge challenge,” because, “for most bankers, technology isn’t their primary job,” says Mike Brent, vice president, marketing at FiNet, a payment processing solutions pr...

Before Bitcoin, there was cryptocurrency. Indeed, it has a long and deep history. If only for the lessons learned, it is worth studying, and indeed, in my ABC of Bitcoin investing, I consider not knowing anything before Satoshi’s paper as a red flag. Hence, a very fast history of what came before. Early Days The first known (to me) attempt at cryptocurrencies occurred in the Netherlands, in the late 1980s, which makes it around 25 years ago or 20BBTC. In the middle of the night, the petrol stations in the remoter areas were being raided for cash, and the operators were unhappy putting guards at risk there. But the petrol stations had to stay open overnight so that the trucks could refuel.Someone had the bright idea of putting money onto the new-fangled smartcards that were then being trialed, and so electronic cash was born. Drivers of trucks were given these cards instead of cash, and the stations were now safer from robbery.At the same time the dominant retailer, Albert Heijn, ...

A new report has emerged according to Cointelegraph stating Ripple has entered into partnership with three exchanges in three different countries ; US, Mexico and the Philippines in their first wave of taking xrp liquidity a step further.  The report mentioned Bittrex, Bitso and the Coins.Ph in the respective countries as the three exchanges that were included in the ripple cross border payment and remittance product range.  Ripple through these partnerships aims to build a healthy eco system of digital assets exchange as this will allow ripple xrp payment solution to move between the US dollar, Mexican pesos and the Philippine pesos currencies respectively in real time. According to Ripple the operational principle; “A financial institution (FI) that has an account with Bittrex would initiate a payment in U.S. dollars via xRapid, which instantly converts into XRP on Bittrex. The payment amount in XRP is settled over the XRP Ledger, then Bitso, through its Mexican...

Earlier reports coming from different sources and online communities such as cryptolinenews.com etc reported a supposed partnership deal between facebook and stellar lumen. How ever, facebook has come out to officially debunk the story as reported by some online sources. This news according to cointelegraph stated the facebook spokes person confirmed to cheddar that no partnership has been entered into with stellar lumen and no such considerations were being made. He further stated that facebook is not considering building an application or block chain based solution on the stellar technology. This brings to rest the FUD that had seen the stellar price sky rocket to about 9.8% earlier in the day; 10th August. The price has since gone down to -3% since facebook publicly denied any form of partnership with stellar lumen.

After many debates and EIPs, on August 3rd, Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin announced the   transition to Proof-of-Stake algorithm for the Ethereum blockchain . The announcement states that during the transitioning period (August 3 - August 15), the Ethereum platform   will run on a hybrid PoW/PoS algorithm , allowing   both miners and stakers   to validate transactions and thus   earn Ether . After August 15th,   PoW   will no longer be sustained and   all blocks will be generated by the PoS consensus mechanism . As the PoS mechanism is   still in transition mode ,   staking is reserved for registered addresses , until further development and the release of GUI wallets later on. In cooperation with   MyEtherWallet   - the open source web wallet for the Ethereum blockchain, we are able to allow   Ether holders to stake their ETH and earn dividends   on a weekly basis. At this stage,   Ether can be s...

A member of  Ukraine’s  Electoral Commission  revealed  in an Aug. 7 Facebook post that they are working with  NEM  on a  blockchain  voting pilot. Oleksandr Stelmakh, head of the State Register at the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, appeared pleased with the ongoing tests, writing in the post that they are “continu[ing] a series of experiments applying blockchain technology within electoral voting.” Stelmakh noted that they  created  a  test vote  using 28 nodes with the NEM blockchain “several weeks ago,” adding that “voting is still open and anyone can take part it in.” The trial, which came about as a result of a partnership with the local NEM Ukraine, exclusively involves a testnet with test NEM tokens “kindly given by a representative of the NEM Foundation in Ukraine,” Anton Bosenko. On the basis of current rates, Stelmakh calculated the cost of installing blockchain voting in each police stat...