Bitcoin Magazine’s Week in Review: Challenging the Way It’s Always Been Done

This past week, we talked to three security experts about how to design smarter and more secure smart contracts. Google is dipping its toe in the blockchain waters by introducing integrations for applications built with Ethereum and Hyperledger. The financial sector got some more love with the Digital Chamber of Commerce’s white paper to help cryptocurrency and ICO markets grow responsibly. Finally, 17 tons of almonds moved from Australia to Germany with real-time tracking and verification on the blockchain.

Featured stories by Jimmy Aki, Colin Harper, Marianne Lehnis and Nick Marinoff

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Audits and Quality Assurance: Patching the Holes in Smart Contract Security

In the most infamous smart contract hack in the industry to date, The DAO, a decentralized venture fund, lost 3.6 million ether in June of 2016, and the fallout of the attack saw Ethereum hard fork to recoup losses.

Bitcoin Magazine talks with security experts Hartej Sawhney, co-founder of Hosho, Dmytro Budorin, CEO of Hacken, and  believes that security can slip by the eye of software engineers because they “don’t have a quality assurance (QA) mindset.” Dmytro Budorin, CEO of cybersecurity community Hacken, and Amy Wan, CEO and co-founder of Sagewise, about how comapnies can ensure the security and quality of their smart contracts, as well as the role of the community in holding those companies accountable.

Behlendorf: Google Can Benefit From “High-Velocity Development on Fabric”

Google is following a similar path taken by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and cloud-hosting services offered by Oracle, Huawei and IBM to offer ready-made templates for their ‘blockchain as a service’ offerings.the latest tech giant to offer blockchain technology to its customers.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Hyperledger’s executive director Brian Behlendorf spoke about Google’s decision and how Hyperledger’s Fabric open-source nature, maturity and flexibility fits in with Google’s strategies.

“Eating Their Lunch:” Blockchain Upstarts Challenge Investment Banks

Blockchains carry the promise of making international money transfers cheaper and faster for all parties involved. Once the technology has proven its speed and scaling abilities, investment banks and international settlements will undoubtedly become increasingly comfortable as transaction partners.

Thomas Levene, founder of Best Blockchain Solutions Consultancy, discusses how major investment banks could make $10 billion in efficiency savings by utilizing blockchain technology and how new, upstart blockchain companies are challenging the status quo.

Chamber of Digital Commerce Sets Out ICO and Token Guidelines

The Chamber of Digital Commerce’s Token Alliance is producing a new group of guidelines built to help the cryptocurrency and initial coin offering (ICO) markets grow responsibly. Founder Perianne Boring tells Bitcoin Magazine how regulations could introduce legitimacy and protections into a landscape still obscured in popular opinion by skepticism and doubts that are made murkier still by persistent manipulation and fraud.

Released as a whitepaper, the report is entitled “Understanding Digital Tokens: Market Overviews & Guidelines for Policymakers & Practitioners.” The paper specifically pertain to “utility tokens,” which provide users with future access to products or services. In these instances, ICOs will raise money for new blockchain products by offering investors future use of the items being developed (usually at a discounted rate).

An Australian Blockchain Experiment: Tracking Global Almond Shipments

Following a successful 2016 trial of blockchain technology in an interbank open account transaction, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has partnered with five international and Australian companies to ship 17 tonnes of almonds from Melbourne, Australia, to Hamburg, Germany, using a new distributed ledger platform built on the Ethereum blockchain.

The shipment made its way to Western Europe in a pioneering experiment that combined a private blockchain, smart contracts and a geotracking Internet of Things (IoT) framework to facilitate end-to-end movement of the almonds. Using the joint solution, the entire process was seamlessly tracked and verified remotely from the point of origin to delivery in real time.