A.I. has arrived, and CEOs are asking what to do. The answer might surprise them: Do what you know best.

Its a safe bet that various forms of artificial intelligence, from algorithmic decision-support systems to machine learning applications, have already made their way into the front and back offices of most companies. Remarkably, generative A.I. is now demonstrating value in creative and imagination-driven tasks.

Weve seen this movie before. The Internet. Mobile. Social media. And now artificial intelligence. With each development, business has been confronted with a new technology that holds both great promise and considerable uncertainty, adopted seemingly overnight by consumers, students, professionals, and businesses.

CEOs recognize the challenge. If they take a wait-and-see approach or simply clamp down on A.I. use, they risk missing a historic opportunity to supercharge their products, services, and operations. On the other hand, allowing the new technology to proliferate within their companies in uncoordinated, even haphazard, ways can lead not only to duplication and fragmentation, but to something much more serious: irresponsible uses of A.I., including the perpetuation of biases, amplification of misinformation, and inadvertent release of proprietary data.

What to do? A.I. is evolving so rapidly that there is no definitive playbook. But most of todays CEOs have learned valuable lessons from prior technology inflection points. We believe they are well-equipped to apply three basic lessons:

Governance may sound to some like heavy-handed, top-down oversight. But this is not about choosing either centralization or decentralization. Its about developing company-wide approaches and standards for critical enablers, from the technology architecture needed to support and scale A.I. workloads to the ways you ensure compliance with both regulation and your companys core values. Without enterprise consistency, you wont have a clear line of sight into your A.I. applications, and you cant enable integration and scaling.

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You dont have to start from scratch. Most companies have established data governance to ensure compliance with data privacy regulations, such as the EUs GDPR. Now, data governance must become data and A.I. governance.

A.I. applications and models throughout the company should be inventoried, mapped, and continuously monitored. Most urgently, enterprise standards for data quality should be defined and implemented, including data lineage and data provenance. This involves where, when, and how the data was collected or synthesized and who has the right to use it. Some A.I. systems may be black boxes, but the data sets selected to train and feed them are knowable and manageablein particular for business applications.

History teaches us that when a technology becomes ubiquitous, virtually everyones job changes. Heres an example: The first project of the Data & Trust Alliancea consortium we co-chair that develops data and A.I. practicestargeted what some might consider unlikely parts of our companies, human resources and procurement.

The Alliance developed algorithmic safety toolssafeguards to detect, mitigate and monitor bias in the algorithmic systems supplied by vendors for employment decisions.

When the tools were introduced to HR and procurement professionals, they asked for education, not in how to be a data scientist, but how to be A.I.-literate HR and procurement professionals. We shared modules on how to evaluate the data used to train models, what types of bias testing to look for, how to assess model performance, and more.

The lesson? Yes, we need data scientists and machine learning experts. But its time to enhance the data and A.I. literacy of our entire workforce.

Many companies have adopted ethical A.I. principles, but we know that trust is earned by what we do, more than by what we say. We need to be transparent with consumers and employees about when they are interacting with an A.I. system. We need to ensure that our A.I. systemsespecially for high-consequence applicationsare explainable, remain under human control, and can withstand the highest levels of scrutiny, including the auditing required by new and proposed regulations. In short, we need to evolve our corporate cultures for the era of A.I.

Another project by the Alliance was to create new diligence criteria to assess the value and risk inherent in targeting dataand A.I.-centric companies for investment or acquisition. The Alliance created Data Diligence and AI Diligence, but the greatest need was for Responsible Culture Diligenceensuring that values, team composition, incentives, feedback loops, and decision rights support the new and unique requirements of A.I.-driven business.

CEOs have been here before. For some companies, it took decades and a pandemic to fully realize that digital transformation implicated every part of the company and its relationships with all stakeholders. And what were the results of misreading the Internet, mobile, and social? Disrupted business models and loss of competitiveness, as well as unintended consequences for society.

What will be the result of getting this one wrong? We could miss a once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve radical breakthroughs, solve intractable problems, delight customers, empower employees, reduce waste and errors, and serve society. Far worse, we risk doing harm to our stakeholders and to future generations.

A.I. is not solelyindeed, not most importantlya technology challenge. It is the next driver of enterprise transformation. Its up to the CEO, board, and the entire C-suite to lead that. And the time to do so is now.

Kenneth I. Chenault and Samuel J. Palmisano are founders and co-chairs of the Data & Trust Alliance, a not-for-profit organization whose 25 cross-industry members develop and adopt responsible data and AI practices. Members include CVS Health, General Catalyst, GM, Humana, Mastercard, Meta, Nike, Pfizer, the Smithsonian Institution, UPS, and Walmart. Chenault is the chairman and managing director of General Catalyst and the former chairman and CEO of American Express. Palmisano is the former chairman and CEO of IBM.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs ofFortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Podgorica, Montenegro, June 9th, 2023, Chainwire

At EDCON 2023 in Montenegro, the Ethereum Reserve Dollar (ERD) team introduced their innovative decentralized lending platform and USDE stablecoin to the industry. ERD is a lending platform that allows users to borrow USDE, a USD-pegged stablecoin native to the platform, using liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) and blue-chip DeFi tokens as collateral. The protocol maintains a minimum collateralization ratio of 110%, striking a balance between decentralization, capital efficiency, and price stability.

In the fast-paced world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the demand for fully decentralized stablecoins is growing. The challenge has been to simultaneously achieve capital efficiency, price stability, and decentralization, a combination that has proven difficult to achieve.

Numerous attempts have been made to create stablecoins that are both decentralized and capital efficient. However, these efforts often led to significant price fluctuations, causing depegging and collapse. The industry has thus been left with a choice between capital efficiency and decentralization, with price stability being a crucial requirement for any stablecoin's survival and expansion.

Ethereum Reserve Dollar is designed to address these challenges. ERD is fully decentralized, providing a safer solution to the dominant centralized and semi-centralized stablecoins in the market. It employs a fully decentralized lending protocol and a robust liquidation mechanism, enabling users to borrow USDE using LSDs and blue-chip DeFi tokens as collateral. The platform secures loans with a Stability Pool containing USDE, which allows for immediate liquidation and bypasses the need for liquidators to prepare USDE or engage in a complex auction process. Furthermore, the protocol's design allows users to borrow at only a 110% collateralization ratio, achieving an ideal combination of decentralization, capital efficiency, and price stability.

Notably, ERD also aims to provide greater value as a governance token and introduce widely distributed decentralized assets on the ETH network, addressing limitations observed in similar protocols, such as those of the Liquity Protocol.

Looking back at the collapses of so many failed stablecoins, and the depegging of USDT in 2022 and USDC in 2023, the industry is still searching for a truly decentralized, capital-efficient, and robust solution, said Steve Hopkins, ERDs CMO. ERD is this and so much more; it's a solution designed to become a truly decentralized reserve asset on the Ethereum network. We believe ERD offers a significant step forward in blockchain and DeFi technology. Were thrilled to share it with the world.

The ERD team will launch their testnet event on June 12, 2023. This event will offer the opportunity to experience the platform's unique features and benefits firsthand, while also entitling early adopters to share in the upside of the projects growth.

The ERD Protocol is set to redefine the stablecoin landscape. With its unique features and benefits, it offers a promising solution for efficient and decentralized lending. The team encourages everyone to participate in the upcoming testnet event and experience the future of DeFi.

For more information about the ERD Protocol and its upcoming testnet event, please visit the official website at https://erd.xyz/ and follow the project on Twitter at @Ethereum_ERD.

About ERD

ERD is a decentralized lending protocol that enables users to borrow in USDE, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, using LSDs and blue-chip DeFi tokens as collateral. It aims to address the dominance of centralized stablecoins and offer a truly decentralized, capital-efficient alternative. The protocol offers a minimum collateralization ratio of 110% and secures loans with a stable pool containing USDE and other Ethereum-based assets. The benefits of ERD include low-interest rates, high capital efficiency, direct redemptions, and decentralization. Its goal is to become a truly decentralized reserve asset on the Ethereum network.

Long live Ethereum Reserve Dollar. On Ethereum, By Ethereum, For Ethereum.

For more information and to stay updated please visit:

Official website | Twitter | Discord | Whitepaper | GitHub

CMOSteve HopkinsEthereum Reserve Dollar[emailprotected]

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New York, NY, June 15, 2023 --(PR.com)--Digital Asset Research (DAR), a specialized provider of "clean" crypto data and research, today recommends asset vetting diligence as a result of increased U.S. cryptocurrency regulatory activity and the growing number of digital assets classified as a security. As institutional market participants explore digital assets, a rigorous vetting process is essential to assess asset strength and legitimacy. By carefully evaluating an asset, institutional participants can make informed decisions and mitigate risks when interacting with this emerging asset class.

For institutional investors, diligence on digital assets is essential because the space is still very new, largely unregulated, and complex, said Kristen Mierzwa, Head of Digital Assets, Index Investments Group, FTSE Russell. DARs asset vetting evaluations give FTSE Russell a complete asset picture, from cryptography to codebase, to inform opinions on which assets are best for our indices.

Digital assets have emerged to become one of the most interesting asset classes with a current value in the $1 trillion range. With an ambiguous regulatory environment, institutional investors gain advantages by undergoing a rigorous asset vetting process to manage and mitigate risk. Digital assets pose unique risks due to their open-source nature, the uncertain regulatory environment, and the ever growing number of new digital assets.

In 2022 through its comprehensive vetting process, DAR identified red flags associated with Terras LUNA token such as its algorithmic design, a lack of transparency surrounding its governance, and potential liquidity challenges. LUNA experienced a catastrophic setback when its related UST stablecoin destabilized and lost its peg, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for many investors.

In another example, the SEC filed a complaint against Ripple, the company behind the XRP token, in December 2020, alleging that it had conducted a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering. While the case remains ongoing, it highlights the need to examine any tokens issuance mechanism as part of understanding if it could be considered a security by regulators.

The regulatory landscape is complicated and constantly evolving, said Pat Clancy, Head of Digital Asset Strategy, PolySign. We use DARs asset vetting to help satisfy internal compliance and external regulators, which in turn informs which assets we want to support for institutional custody.

DAR developed six key digital asset vetting factors institutional investors should assess to understand a digital assets risks and potential value.

Token Use Cases, Economics, and Supply-Demand Dynamics Reviews a digital assets functionality and tokenomics to understand its use case and issuance model. Technology and Cryptographic Standards Identifies underlying technology and cryptographic standards to evaluate security, scalability, and performance. Codebase Assessment Assesses code and/or smart contracts against a series of digital asset industry best practices. Validation and Consensus Mechanism Evaluates the assets consensus mechanism (such as Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake) and related tradeoffs between security, decentralization, scalability, and energy efficiency. Regulatory Compliance Reviews the assets regulatory landscape to see if it is known to operate outside acceptable boundaries. Network Health and Decentralization Finds out if the asset has a healthy and decentralized network including validators, which is vital for long-term sustainability and growth potential.

DAR follows a transparent Asset Vetting Methodology to evaluate digital assets to determine if they meet institutional investor standards for codebase construction and maintenance, community, security, liquidity, and regulatory compliance.

To learn more, request an Asset Vetting Report sample for risk or investment.

About DAR:Digital Asset Research (DAR) is a specialized provider of "clean" digital asset data, insights, and research for institutional clients. Since 2017, DAR leads by rigorously vetting out noisy inputs for flagship clients such as Bloomberg, Chainlink, FTSE Russell, and PolySign. Each day, DAR processes 200+ million trades to calculate 10,000+ institutional-quality digital asset prices and deliver a range of product solutions to navigate the cryptoverse.

With expertise in traditional finance and the digital asset space, DARs success is driven by a commitment to deliver honest data emphasizing accuracy, quality, and transparency.

Follow DAR:Twitter: @DAR_cryptoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-asset-researchMedium: https://medium.com/digitalassetresearch

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A delegation of Indigenous leaders from Brazil is in Peru this week to join forces with their counterparts there who are fighting to stop proposed legislation many critics call the genocide bill due to fears its passage could result in uncontacted tribes being wiped out by fossil fuel companies and other rapacious resource extractors.

Members of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA), a coalition of tribes from the Amazon region, joined the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) and the Regional Organization of Eastern Indigenous Peoples (ORPIO) on Tuesday during a joint session of Perus Congress ahead of a Wednesday meeting of a congressional decentralization committee debating 3518/2022-CR, a bill that would modify a law protecting uncontatced tribes.

For the Indigenous, there are no borders. This is an invention of the states, UNIVAJA coordinator Bushe Matissaidat the Peruvian Congress on Tuesday. If the project were approved, it is very dangerous, as happened with my people, the Matss, who were contacted in 1976 and caught the flu, which killed many people.

Speaking at the same press conference, AIDESEP president Jorge Prezsaidthat just as there are beneficial laws, there are also laws that can harm. In our opinion, this bill is negative.

The proposed legislation was introduced by Peruvian Congressman Jorge Morante Figari, a member of the far-right Popular Force party run by Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori. Right-wing lawmakers are trying to push the bill through amid thedeadly political chaosthat followed the December 2022 ouster of former leftist leader Pedro Castillo and what opponents call a political coup byunelected U.S.-backed President Dina Boluarte.

Critics say that the 25 uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous peoples in Peru who have been officially recognized could lose that recognition if the bill is passed, that reserves established for these people could be revoked with no prospect for the allocation of new reserves, and that Indigenous lands will be subject to further exploitation by fossil fuel, logging, and mining companies.

Perus Ministry of Culturesays3518/2022-CR represents a danger to the protection of the life and territory of the Indigenous peoples.

The proposal has sparked worldwide alarm, with the British, Canadian, and German ambassadors to Perusigning a joint letterurging the decentralization committee to shelve the legislation. More than 10,000 people have alsosigned a petitionagainst the bill.

Teresa Mayo of the London-based Indigenous rights group Survival Internationalwhichcalls3518/2022-CR a naked land grab by the oil and gas industrysaidTuesday that the genocide bill is the most serious attack on Perus uncontacted tribes in decades.

All the rights and protections that Perus Indigenous people and their allies have fought so hard for, over many years, are now at risk of being extinguished with a stroke of the pen, Mayo continued.

These rights are under attack in Brazil too, which is why Indigenous people have joined hands across the Peru-Brazil border to fight these genocidal plans, she added. Its a moment of desperate dangerthe very survival of dozens of uncontacted tribes is now at risk.

While Luiz Incio Lula de Silva, Brazils leftist president, hascentered Indigenous rightsduring his five-month administration, the Brazilian Congresswhich is controlled by right-wing lawmakerslast monthvoted to limitthe power of a pair of ministries tasked with protecting Indigenous peoples and the environment.

Survival Internationalreportedearlier this year that 3518/2022-CR was drafted by Peruvian legislators with ties to fossil fuel corporations, including Perenco, an Anglo-French oil company operating inside uncontacted tribes lands. Perenco and other companies, as well as right-wing Peruvian lawmakers, aretrying to blockfinalization of the Napo-Tigre Indigenous Reserve, which would protect five isolated communities from intrusion and exploitation of lands and resources by extractive interests.

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Social media plays a crucial role in the cultural, political, social, and economic aspects of our digitally-connected lives. Controversies like the FacebookCambridge Analytica data scandal where personal data was used for political advertising and censorship tactics used on popular sites like Twitter have forced users to look for better alternatives.

To bridge this gap, several decentralized social media platforms have emerged. These aim to empower users by granting them control over their data, removing advertisements, and banning social media addiction-inducing algorithms. Out of the lot, a protocol called Nostr has stood out, amassing thousands of users.

Is Nostr the answer to social network concerns? What about other alternative decentralized social media platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon?

In this article, we try to answer these questions.

Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff, Transmitted by Relays) is an open protocol on top of which developers can create censorship-resistant social media applications. The Nostr Manifesto was first published in November 2019 by its pseudonymous creator Fiatjaf.

Remember that Nostr is not a social media platform like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It provides the infrastructure needed to create a decentralized social media network.

Iris, Damus, Nos, Amethyst, and Gossip are among the many social media applications built on Nostr. These are also called clients.

Relays are the critical components in the Nostr protocol. They are backend servers that allow various social media platforms to send messages to one another. Relays can store user posts and messages, enabling seamless interaction across platforms.

Users can connect to multiple relays to save their account details, posts, and social interactions. Connecting to several relays ensures that a user always has access to their data in case a relay goes offline or gets censored. Nostr also allows users to run their own private relay to remove doubts about becoming censorable. At the time of writing, 218 Nostr relays were online.

Each user account on Nostr has a public-private key pair. You can think about public keys as usernames with which you can search for your friends Nostr profile. Your private key is your password.

Users can jump between various decentralized social applications built on Nostr using their public-private keys. If you get kicked out of platform ABC, then you can move all your posts, messages, and followers to another platform XYZ and carry out business as usual.

Although there are a lot of similarities between the Nostr protocol and blockchain protocols, Nostr is not a blockchain. It is simply a set of rules. Nostr, however, does draw inspiration from blockchain protocols like Bitcoin in championing decentralization and interoperability.

Just like the Bitcoin network, Nostr is not owned by any corporation. Changes to the protocol are pitched, discussed, and approved by the community in the form of Nostr Implementation Possibilities (NIPs) on GitHub.

According to Greg Heartsfield, Nostr tries to solve the problem of publishing short notes (and other stuff) on the Internet.

Twitter solved this problem neatly, then complicated it through API and client restrictions, advertising, and a clumsy interface. Finally, they fully unsolved it by inserting themselves as the arbiters of what speech is allowed.

The loss of trust in centralized platforms like Twitter and the increasing degree of censorship practised on social media platforms has prompted developers like Fiatjaf to create decentralized social media protocols. In the Nostr Manifesto, Fiatjaf noted several problems with Twitter, namely ads, algorithms, banning and shadow-banning users, and spamming.

Nostr has seen an influx of new users since 2022. This came during a turbulent time for Twitter which saw Elon Musk buy the microblogging platform for $44 billion. During Musks Twitter reign, the company has made a slew of changes that sparked the ire of some users. It implemented anti-free speech moves like censoring links to external websites, discontinuing free access to the Twitter Application Programming Interface (API), and suspending the Twitter accounts of prominent journalists.

As the masses flocked to decentralized social platforms on Nostr, the total number of users on the protocol measured by profiles with bio and contact list skyrocketed from about 800 on 7 December 2022 to over 315,000 by the first week of June 2023.

Endorsements from Twitter co-founder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey have also helped increase Nostrs reach and visibility. Dorsey not only tweets about Nostr on a frequent basis, but he has also donated 14 BTC worth over $381,000 at the time of writing to Nostr creator Fiatjaf.

Other famous names like Edward Snowden have also voiced their support for Nostr. The crypto community, in particular, has shown an affinity for Nostr, given similar principles of decentralization that the two communities uphold.

Furthermore, recent improvements on Nostr, allowing users to send BTC to each other via the Lightning Network, have attracted Bitcoiners to the protocol.

Social platforms based on Nostr are not the only decentralized options available out there.

Decentralized social media apps are fairly new, and most of them are still a work in progress. User experience on Nostr socials is not at the same level as mature centralized platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

Lens Protocol only allows access to members based on their eligibility criteria.

Nostr users have to keep their private keys secure to ensure that their accounts are not hacked. Saving private keys on internet-connected devices opens up the risk of hacking, while private keys written on paper can be misplaced.

The same stands for crypto wallet owners who have to manage their private keys. Blockchain-based Lens Protocol requires crypto wallets for log-in.

Any project needs a steady income to keep the lights on. In the case of Nostr, there are no ad revenues for developers to bank on. Instead, its developers are currently dependent on philanthropic aid from supporters. Although, the protocol has seen upcoming server-hosting services that charge BTC fees.

According to Forbes, Nostr could have centralization risks. The article noted that creator Fiatjaf has given only seven people the power to add features to the Nostr Github repository.

While the idea of a decentralized social network is appealing, given the promises of account portability, zero ads, and zero algorithms, it is important to remember that we are still some time away from mainstream adoption.

Most of the decentralized socials available today are not feature-packed and user-friendly enough to provoke the migration of millions of Twitter and Instagram users for the sake of decentralization.

However, enthusiasm among developers and early adopters is encouraging.

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Embracing Decentralization: Is Nostr the Answer to Social Network ... - Techopedia