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Base, a Layer 2 network in development by Coinbase, reported that more than one million wallets initiated smart contracts on its test network during the Builder Quest period.

This initiative was designed to identify potential issues in the network, which is still a testnet, under high stress conditions. With this surge in activity, the team was able to identify critical stress points in both the platforms design and infrastructure, which it is now actively addressing. Yet it found these issues difficult to solve while keeping the whole system working as intended.

During this testing phase, the network faced a significant spike in activity and a flood of data-intensive transactions. In response, developers increased the Base block gas limit allowing for more transactions per block and aiming to mitigate the sharp rise in base fees.

However, following this modification, the team encountered challenges in securely delivering batches of cryptographic proofs of its network blocks back to Ethereums Goerli testnet, which serves as the Layer 1 (L1) chain in this context. A Layer 2 network runs on top of a Layer 1 network and batches transactions to it.

The team noted, After the implementation of this [doubling gas limit] adjustment, we faced issues due to larger L2 blocks when trying to batch blocks back to the Goerli L1. After this, the team continued with fine tuning parameters regarding how it batches transactions.

We fine-tuned parameters and made adjustments, hoping to reach equilibrium," Base said. Despite these changes, the system struggled to reach equilibrium and publish the unsafe blocks to the L1. It wasnt until the quests slowed down that we could close the gap emphasizing the need for a more robust, long-term solution, the team acknowledged.

Built on Optimisms development software stack, known as the OP Stack, Base is designed to serve as a rollup network, similar to Optimism. It aims to execute off-chain computations on a secondary layer to facilitate faster, cheaper transactions all while maintaining the security benefits of the Ethereum mainnet. Furthermore, this solution could potentially become the default Layer 2 network for Coinbases on-chain products.

Bases core team has made two optimizations in an attempt to stabilize the system after seeing a major spike in activity. First, the core team said, it enhanced the data compression, aiming to better use the "L1 transaction call data." Second, the team modified their system to allow the submission of multiple batches of transactions for each L1 block, rather than a single batch at a time. These changes, the team stated, could address the technical issues previously observed.

As we look towards mainnet, these changes not only pave the way for possible increases in block gas limit but also ensure that base fees remain low and accessible for users," the team said. "They [changes] also increase the reliability of writing L2 data to the L1, crucial for maintaining speedy withdrawals and transactions.

The Base team previously reported its testnet has drawn interest from a range of developers and projects, including Blackbird, Thirdweb, OAK, and Parallel. Additionally, notable DeFi platforms like Uniswap and Aave are considering deploying on Base once it goes live.

2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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1 million wallets use Coinbase-backed Base's smart contracts in testing - The Block - Crypto News

In the age of digital information, data privacy has become a critical issue for individuals and organisations alike. With the rise of cyber attacks, data breaches, and unauthorised access to personal information, it is essential to have effective measures in place to protect sensitive data. Blockchain technology offers a promising solution to enhance data privacy by providing a secure and decentralised way of storing, sharing, and managing data.

Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger that uses cryptographic algorithms to secure and validate transactions. A network of computers maintains the ledger, and each transaction is recorded in a block linked to the previous one, forming a chain of blocks or a blockchain.

Decentralised control: Blockchain is a revolutionary technology allowing decentralised and distributed data storage. Unlike traditional centralised and decentralised databases controlled by a single entity, blockchain technology provides a network of users with a copy of the same ledger. This eliminates the need for intermediaries and ensures that a single entity does not control data, reducing the risk of data breaches and unauthorised access.

For example, consider a supply chain management system that uses blockchain technology. All parties involved in the supply chain, such as manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, can access the same ledger and view the entire history of the product from its origin to its final destination. This provides transparency and accountability and reduces the risk of fraud or tampering with the product. Additionally, the network records and verifies any changes or updates to the ledger, ensuring that the data is tamper-proof and secure.

Immutable record-keeping: Once a transaction is recorded in a block, it cannot be altered or deleted. This ensures the integrity of the data and makes it almost impossible for unauthorised parties to access, modify, or delete data.

For instance, let's consider a real-life example of how blockchain's immutable record-keeping feature could be applied in healthcare. Suppose a patient's medical records are stored on a blockchain. Each time a new record is added, it is encrypted and added to the blockchain as a new block. This ensures that the patient's medical history is secure and unalterable, preventing unauthorised access or modification of the data. It can also facilitate better sharing of medical records between different healthcare providers, reducing the risk of errors and improving the quality of care.

Smart contracts: Blockchain technology allows for the creation of smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. These contracts can automate processes and ensure that data is only shared or accessed under specific conditions.

For example, a smart contract can automate claims processing in the insurance industry. The insurance policy terms can be written into the code, and when a claim is filed, the smart contract will automatically execute the claims process based on the predefined terms. This can eliminate the need for intermediaries and reduce the time and cost of traditional claims processing.

Permissioned access: In some blockchain networks, access to data is restricted to authorised parties only. This means that participants in the network must be granted permission before they can access or modify the data. This ensures that data is only accessible to those authorised to view it.

For instance, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in a blockchain-based supply chain network may have permissioned access to certain data, such as product origin and delivery details. The network may grant access to these entities based on their role in the supply chain, ensuring that the sensitive data is only available to authorised parties and enhancing data privacy and security.

Overall, blockchain technology provides a powerful tool for enhancing data privacy. By leveraging its decentralised, secure, and consensus-based architecture, blockchain can help protect sensitive data in various sectors, including healthcare, finance, and government. As blockchain technology continues to mature and gain wider adoption, it will likely become an essential tool for safeguarding data privacy in the digital age.

(The author is the CTO and co-founder of Mudrex, a global crypto investing platform)

Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, and views of ABP Network Pvt. Ltd. Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions. Cryptocurrency is not a legal tender and is subject to market risks. Readers are advised to seek expert advice and read offer document(s) along with related important literature on the subject carefully before making any kind of investment whatsoever. Cryptocurrency market predictions are speculative and any investment made shall be at the sole cost and risk of the readers.

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From Smart Contracts To Limited Access: How Blockchain Technology Can Help Support Data Privacy - ABP Live

SHANGHAI, June 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei launched its innovative data center data infrastructure architecture F2F2X (Flash-to-Flash-to-Anything) at the Financial Data Storage Session, a part of the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2023.

This architecture forms a reliable data foundation to help financial institutions handle the challenges brought by new data, new apps, and new resilience.

For banks, intelligence is driving the creation of new business scenarios and business models. A number of new services are emerging, including customization, smart contracts, digital assets, and metaverse banking, posing three challenges to banks' existing data infrastructure.

Data processing for massive amounts of new data: IDC estimates that by 2025, the amount of data generated by banks worldwide will reach 48.6 zettabytes, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.2%. Banks will need to address capacity, performance, and energy efficiency challenges brought by huge amounts of unstructured data.

New Containerization Applications for Banks Create New Data Management Challenges: 89% of enterprises are transitioning to multi-cloud business strategies. In the multi-cloud era, efficient data flow between different apps and medium will become a new challenge for bank data management.

New higher data resilience to rampant ransomware attacks: A successful enterprise ransomware attack causes on average US$7.8 million in losses.

Huawei's F2F2X architecture provides all-flash primary and backup storage and diversified archive storage. This architecture is designed to efficiently unleash the potential of data and activate the potential of "4+" (Data acceleration+, Data resilience+, Data mobility+, Data management+) data centers.

Data acceleration+: Core technologies such as decoupled storage and compute and multi-controller and multi-active architecture accelerate data processing in financial new digital core and financial data warehouse scenarios, realize all-flash primary storage and backup, and have 30% higher performance than the industry's next best.

Data resilience+: The Huawei-proprietary machine learning (ML) algorithm has the industry's highest detection rate (99.9%) and forms the last line of defense for data protection with a 4-layer storage ransomware protection solution.

Data mobility+: Six intelligent data tiering capabilities and the DME global data scheduling engine ensure the lowest TCO throughout the data lifecycle.

Data management+: Focusing on service scenarios such as financial data analysis and AI, Huawei's data lifecycle intelligent management platform DME enables second-level search of 10 billion files, multi-dimensional intelligent insight into global files, quickly identifies hot and cold data distribution, and intelligently tiers or deletes data, improving management efficiency.

Spark Wang, Director of Cybersecurity and Privacy, PwCChina, said, "for ransomware attacks, we need to enhance network-side protection to reduce the risks of attacks. Furthermore, data resilience also needs to improve. In the event of network-side protection failure, we need to take quick measures to prevent data from being encrypted, and provide prompt attack warnings. In the event that production data is encrypted or the entire data center is 'contaminated', we need to retain a complete and clean data copy for rapid recovery of the service system."

Michael Fan, Vice President of Global Data Center Marketing & Solution Sales Dept, Huawei Enterprise BG, said, " Huawei's data infrastructure products and solutions have been used by over 1,300 financial institutions worldwide. Customers' desire for "4+" data centers motivates us to always innovate. With the F2F2X architecture as the blueprint, we will continue increasing R&D investment and building a "more reliable, efficient, and greener" data foundation for financial industry to deal with business challenges in the intelligent era."

For more information, please visit: https://e.huawei.com/en/products/storage

Contact[emailprotected]

SOURCE Huawei

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Huawei Releases the "F2F2X" Data Infrastructure Architecture to ... - PR Newswire

Nine years after the launch of the second generation of blockchain, the technology has found a new life as a home for digital contracts. Artists and the art market have started to see delivery of the promise that blockchainon which digital transactions are permanently recordedcan serve as a permanent record of a physical works authenticity, while also setting the terms for a secondary sale to benefit the works creator beyond the primary sale.

That promise derives from blockchain-powered ventures in other industries that are also trading high-value items, notably Everledger, founded in 2015, which secures records of authenticity and ethical sourcing for diamonds by tracking their provenanceincluding a digital twin of each gemfrom mine to jewellers shop, through unalterable files held on a blockchain.

The art market, which enjoyed a rollercoaster first engagement with the blockchain as a home to non-fungible tokens (NFTs)digital tokens that sold at eye-popping speculative levels in 2021has been offered a new engagement with the technology in the past year, with the emergence of platforms devoted to using blockchain tohost a digitised version of the established interaction between artists, dealers and collectors, in buying and selling new physical works of art.

The benefits on offer are a permanent record of authenticity and transparency of a transaction, to buyers and sellers alike, and allowing artists to set contractual terms, held on the blockchain, for the secondary sale of their work. (Makers of physical art will be looking to learn from the recent experience of those NFT artists who have sold their digital art on one blockchain but have then missed out on the terms of the resale royalties when the buyer has sold the piece on another blockchain.)

Two of the leading players in the field are Fairchaina US-based start-up, founded by artists and Stanford University graduates, which since 2021 has offered blockchain-stored certificates of authenticity and royalties on resaleand Arcual. The latter, a blockchain-powered platform, backed by the LUMA Foundation, MCH Group (owners of Art Basel) and BCG X (the tech venture arm of Boston Consulting Group) bases its process on a double-signed agreement, the certificate of authenticity, between dealer and artist. These certificates always include multiple signatures, Arcuals chief product officer, Rodrigo Esmela, and its chief technical officer, Michael Schuller, tell The Art Newspaper. This means, they say, that parties cannot unilaterally define terms or conditions, allowing galleries and artists to define the accurate representation of the artwork on the blockchain and the terms and conditions of any sale or resale.

Works by Phoebe Cummings will be used by Arcual to demonstrate its digital dossiers at Art Basel Sylvain Deleu

Seven months after its launch, Arcual has introduced digital dossierswhich it will demonstrate at Art Basel with the work of the ceramic artist Phoebe Cummingsthat enable artists to add text, images and PDF files to create a rich provenance, recording anything from the works creation to the artists intentions for its display. The information is as unalterable on the blockchain as its certificate of authenticity, and part of a smart contract between artists, dealers and collectors. (Arcual can handle transactions of up to $1m at a time and takes up to 1.5% in commission on each sale.)

Bernadine Brcker-Wieder, Arcuals chief executive, worked closely with Everledger in her previous role as founding chief executive of Vastari, the worlds largest private collection and temporary exhibition database, which took an investment in 2016 from Everledger. She says that, in conversations with artists, dealers and collectors, the word blockchain now hardly arises; the tech has almost become a given. And while blockchain-stored contracts designed for other industriesfashion, luxury, shipping containersmight depend on additional layers of tech to link contract and object, such as the creation of a digital twin or the adding of an NFT chip to high-value fashion items, in Arcuals digital dossier an artist can record uniquely personal marks of authenticity. These might be a hard-to-detect symbol or a surface abrasion that forms part of a pieces unique physical make-up, added by the artist for an extra level of authenticity. The Arcual dossier is like a users manual of the work, Brcker-Wieder says.

Bernadine Brcker-Wieder (above), chief executive of blockchain-powered platform ArcualPhoto by Jolly Thompson

Arcuals digital dossiers are necessarily private to artist, dealer and collector, but the potential shape of such richly detailed provenances can be seen in platforms for other industries, including findmyinstrument.org, a website where the detailed history and physical characteristics of historic violins, violas and cellos, are published, using X-rays, infrared, endoscope imagery, photographs, video and written descriptions. Of course, storing large volumes of detailed information raises questions about data laws, especially in relation to the GDPR that prevails in Europe and the UK. Questioned about this by The Art Newspaper, Esmela and Schuller said that Arcuals digital dossiers and other information held on the blockchain is compatible with GDPR. We only store the minimum required information. No personal identifiable information (PII) about buyers is stored in the digital dossier, and only information relevant to the artwork is stored in the digital dossier.

Artclear, another new blockchain platform for recording a permanent provenance for art, offers a technical model closer to the Everledger digital twin approach, by providing microscopic-level scanning of works using industry-standard tech under licence from the hardware giant Hewlett-Packard (HP). The scan, and a digital code derived from it, is saved on the blockchain as part of an Artclear Fingerprint.

Ceramic works by Athene Galiciadis were consigned by Arcual earlier this yearCourtesy of von Bartha Gallery Copenhagen

These new blockchain-based businesses have caught the attention of the market. At Art Basel in Hong Kong in March 2023, eight galleries consigned work through Arcuals Salesroom platform, including Sabrina Amrani gallery with Carlos Aires and his sculpture Bon Apptit IV (2022), an assemblage of glassed porcelain plates, and Commonwealth and Council gallery with Kenneth Tam for his video Silent Spikes (2021). For Stefan von Bartha, the owner of Von Bartha gallery, which used Arcual to consign a Copenhagen exhibition of Athene Galiciadiss painted clay vessels, Measuring the World, earlier this year, using the platform is part of striving for a more transparent and fairer art world.

As with all manner of new tech platforms over the past 15 years, whether in the art market, publishing, or gaming industries, potential customers of Fairchain, Arcual and other entrants to the field, are to different degrees enthused by the tech and wary of how it will reach critical mass. The London gallerist Oliver Miro, founder of Vortic, a VR and AR platform for the art world, recognises the potential of the technology but wonders whether this approach will work unless the whole art world shifts to one model and one blockchain, and enforces it rigorously.

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Blockchain platforms promise resale royalties and provenance ... - Art Newspaper