pollen decentralized wireless

Pollen Mobile gets a seed round from various VCs and angels to  accelerate the development of the world’s first privacy-focused, user owned and operated mobile wireless carrier.

Tough industry.   Pagarba tried to do a disaster emergency broadband like device using Lora , Blockchain, p2p communication protocols, encryption and other security features,  but it's hard to compete against the Verizons and At&Ts.  

And now first responders networks exist with far monetary backing plus Elon Musk has his satellite internet .

I do wonder how pollen is different vs helium and other internet communication startups and platforms though.  

 Pollen empowers  its user community to build, own, and operate a decentralized network infrastructure utilizing blockchain, the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, and other open source technologies. 

The project has already deployed infrastructure in San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles, and last week completed its first nationwide hardware drop. 

Sounds like helium in a way.  Hopebox had some similar ideas and implementations but geared more towards emergency and disaster communication and saving lives.  

NFTs , deathtech & to much chaos

I was reading this article today about a cool new deathtech web3 metaverse NFT like startup called Remember Metaverse.   

Cool concept and possibilities to improve end of life and bereavement proceses and memories and the digitizing of loved ones who passed away.  

However you read things like this, 

" The pre-sale of the Remember Memorial Stone NFTs will go live at 2:00 am UTC on February 23. But get in quick—there are only 50 Whitelist spots to mint the NFTs for 0.1 ETH. After this, the price will rise to 0.125 ETH for the phase 1 sale set for 2:00 am UTC on February 24."

It's sounds more like  another rip off 

scam than a legit empathetic business statup model.     

This is one of their pitches, 

" Remember Metaverse is a project like no other in the web3 space. For the first time ever, thanks to Remember’s Memorial Stone NFTs, you can commemorate your loved ones in the metaverse "

That sounds like a great concept and maybe supporting local artists or a loved ones favorite charity would be an awesome memorial and gesture.  

But In an end-of-life funeral based  industry that's been filled with many issues and stories of price gouging and  shady used car sales person vibes ,  remember metaverse and their website and pitch and blog press releases come off as another quick money grab by a bunch of silicon valley folks trying to capitalize on deathtech and NFTs and the metaverse.   

Interesting and well thought out concept but "buy now limited time offer before price goes up" is sketchy at best and plain evil at worse.   

Web3 should be more 'do the right thing' and 'dont be evil' as much as they can, not come off as another scam ripping off grieving folks.  

Disappointing and the metaverse aspect designs look good. 

computer tech security and public policy

Digital computer security and connected IoT smart  everything have become public policy priorities in an increasingly digital and data-dependent always on and connected economy and society.

blockchain smart contracts lawyer and data feeds

Cool stuff going on in blockchain and side chains and smart contracts. 

" OpenLaw, the smart contract pioneer from New York, has partnered with Thomson Reuters to conduct a proof of concept (POC) that tests how Contract Express and the OpenLaw system can work together to log hashed data points from contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. That in turn has made it possible to begin with a Contract Express document and turn it into a smart contract with digital currency transaction and self-execution elements. 

The POC included executing smart contracts ‘on-chain’ from data inputted through Contract Express. "

https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2019/10/17/thomson-reuters-links-with-openlaw-for-smart-contract-express-project/

Blockchain for counterfeit

https://www.crypto-news.net/blockchains-use-in-fighting-counterfeiting-is-growing-rapidly/

Blockchain for counterfeit goods is a ioT and a blockchain use case. 

Will EOS be a target of SEC ?

https://blockmanity.com/news/cardanos-founder-says-that-the-sec-will-target-eos

Most of these were securities or flat out scams.   And EOS was interesting till it was just a joke of a "company".  But can the SEC target Companies that didn't actually offer tokens or do an ICO in the US or to US citizens? 

Blockchain to change the world ...

From the report,

"
blockchain has the potential to significantly cut trade costs by increasing transparency and facilitating processes automation, including financial intermediation, exchange rate costs, coordination, and other aspects. “The removal of barriers due to blockchain could result in more than $ 1 trillion of new trade in the next decade
"

https://cointelegraph.com/news/report-blockchain-deployment-could-add-3-trillion-in-international-trade-by-2030

Why a better system and blockchain are required now !

This is where some new system, maybe blockchain, far more transparent, far more beneficial needs to be Implemented now. Not later.

  Who knows what kind of shady backwards stuff went on or not.  You can't ever have someone like Kemp again.  Control the elections, step down after , and have people believe there isn't some backwoods racist politics and fraud going on ? 

However the election turned out has nothing to do with who won or what people voted for in this instance. Kemp should have been forced to step down or leave the governor's race.

Could blockchain and digital voting help ?   Maybe.   A more decentralized less biased and fraudulent system is definitely needed.  This Kemp government is a prime example of corrupt politicians and government and processes. 

https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/09/how-brian-kemp-hacked-georgias-election/

Walmart blockchain .. hyperledger really

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-24/walmart-sam-s-club-start-mandating-suppliers-use-ibm-blockchain

  So Walmart is forcing their suppliers to use hyperledger fabric blockchain.  It's heavily IBM influenced, probably some kickbacks with them, but being hyperledger is open-source, there could be some valuable ways to integrate and use. 

Proof of stake ... A better way ?

Has pos, and not just theoretical, been figured out ?

https://www.coindesk.com/the-creator-of-proof-of-stake-thinks-he-finally-figured-it-out/

One of those hope tomorrow is a better day

One of those days where not a lot of real news , but a lot of losses.   Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.   But I'm not sure most altcoins or even Ethereum will last.  

    Most won't go to zero, but as everybody loves to Proclaim "remember the early internet in 1995" memes almost all of those internet companies didn't last.   Microsoft and Apple were not internet. Apple was practically bankrupt back then too and irrelevant. And kind of missed out early on and Microsoft was soon broken up.
 
Google came later and stole the thunder from the Yahoo's and altavista's and so on.   Netscape and Prodigy and CompuServe disappeared.   AOL and their free 3.5 inch disks became irrelevant.   Even Amazon wasn't really internet.  They were an online book store that sold cheap books. 

   So taken with a grain of salt things like Ethereum and Litecoin and others are great early adopters to push things forward and the Vitalik's and Lee' and many others may go on to form various startups, but most of the early companies disappear. I think a lot of the hodlrs who dream of 100 bucks becoming a million  will be depressed in a few years.  

And blockchain and decentralized have many advantages, but most tokens are pointless.   And two thousand tokens are definitely a mostly pointless endever.    But maybe a cardano will eventually have a "real" platform. Or not.   Or a fixed Iota for autonomous cars.    Or a Square token payment system. Or QTUM or something we don't even know about yet. Or real quantum computing will change everything. 

Time will tell, but an interesting space to be in.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-markets-see-sharp-decline-as-total-market-cap-drops-12-billion-in-one-hour

Evo con .... seriously

I get the need for startups to hire interns and pay lower wages.  I even get the need for them to delay payments. But blockchain has created some serious scams and brought out the con artists galore.  Or worse these people are just plain terrible to even think of working for ....

I mean what incentives would someone with real contacts and experience have here ?  They basically are doing what the founders should be doing.  Evochain scam. Seriously. 

Here is the post ....

------++++++;;;;;;;;;

Professional Fundraiser

EvoChain

Silicon Valley, CA

$90,000 - $160,000 a year

Commission

We are a private blockchain startup . We are looking to raise seed capital for our startup. We are in need of experienced fundraisers. The position starts out as commissions only, and works it self into a position of salary after you've proven your ability to secure investments. We are a rising company and are looking to hire immediately. Your job will be to fund raise a significant amount for our Company.

**Experience/education and investor contacts are a must.**

Contact us today and please provide your resume with cover letter.

This position REQUIRES a FINRA Series 7 securities license and US citizenship or authorization to work in the United States. This is a remote position that requires you to secure private placement investment into EvoChain Inc., for which you will be compensated a commission.

Job Type: Commission

Salary: $90,000.00 to $160,000.00 /year

Experience:

fundraising: 5 years (Preferred)

License:

FINRA Series 7 (Required)

Work authorization:

United States (Required)

---------

QTUM hackathon

https://hackathon.qtum.org/en

Pagarba will be participating in the QTUM  hackathon challenge building  payments, smart Contracts, DAPP , etc. 

Proof of ...what ?

Good breakdown between proof of work and proof of stake consensus.

https://medium.com/@jaybny/on-proof-of-skill-6af149f45ce8

Lightning Network explained ...

https://youtu.be/c4slzFdykpc

Good long video that goes into some details about the lightning Network.

Polyswarm threat intelligence video explainer

Polyswarm network for threat intelligence on a decentralized blockchain explained...

https://youtu.be/kNewwMbPKOE

More clickbait blockchain nonsense articles

I read an article today on wine, alcohol and supply chain and rolled my eyes. 
Things like "…that solution is blockchain…Big companies like Walmart and large grocery stores are already using blockchain to manage supply chain management especially when it comes to food. "

No, no they really aren't. Most of these big companies are actually full of it. They were full of it in the early big data and hadoop days.  They are full of it with the AI and machine learning and data science marketing pitches.  And they are definitely full of it when it comes to blockchain. Many do test.  Many don't have the time, resources or care.  And many don't even like new potentially disruptive Technologies.  Ever. 

Decentralized blockchain?  Yeah Wal-Mart and Amazon and the big banks are all for that.  Not.  They are more for testing private permissioned centralized blockchains. And really there is some need for a system that doesn't give all the transaction information to the world. Transportation and logistics and suppliers have tons of deals and contracts. 

Maybe in due time things will change, but Wal-Mart isn't showing the world how cheap or how difficult it is to negotiate with them.  Or worse , for the vendors, partners and Distributors, killing their price points and value.  

So when people on medium or other social media platforms start writing how it's all changing, maybe they should dig a little deep and provide actually facts and evidence of this. 

In theory these things are great, in reality the Wal-Mart's of the world aren't going to productionize a public decentralized etherium based blockchain system.  In fact Wal-Mart partnered with IBM and made two patents for some kind of "blockchain". 

We know Wal-Mart tried to build their own payment system before and it sucked.  They tried to build their own Netflix at one point too.   Now it seems they want another logistics like payment system and a blockchain that will act like a database.

  It doesn't solve any problem though. If Wal-Mart controls the Walmart blockchain system, that defeats the entire purpose of a decentralized immutable ledger. And why would any one trust Wal-Mart or IBM? 

All we see are many of these big firms jumping on the bandwagon and trying to create another version of a centralized controlled system. And patent it no less, so it's not even open source.  But the clickbait articles jump on this nonsense.

https://medium.com/@jpvehovic/craft-beer-blockchain-32f52feaa31c

What is Hashgraph video explained...

https://youtu.be/RDLdGsDX41s

Help or more dystopian government control ?

Austin , Texas is piloting a program for putting the homeless population on the blockchain. Sounds great and great for society in general. There are some others around the globe attempting something similar.  There is a huge need for poor people and affordable housing as well as homelessness in many many cities and rural areas.  

  But will this be a program to help the homeless or a pseudo subtle attempt to control and know everything about everything and everyone by government agencies and corporations ?  

I used to think a blockchain ID system was the perfect use case for many verticals and industries.  Now it's starting to look like another attempt at control by your typical governments and mega corporations.

  Will it help the homeless or just be another tool to control more people? 

Problem with blockchain and cryptocurrency

The underlying Technology behind blockchain and cryptocurrencies has phenomenal possibilities.  Even using  things like tangles and DAG graph theory (Hashgraph and IOTA in a sense) can change logistics and IOT.   The problem is it's a bunch of fake news. Hype nonsense.  Faux advisors who are snake oil salesmen and sales women with a fancy suit and nice story, not much else. 

Decentralized and disruption?  Not really, it's worse than the dot com and COBOL 1999 ending the world nonsense.  It's clickbait and paid shills on all the media websites. It's great  peer reviews but no real world use case. Or private investors like Goldman Sachs under some other name pumping money into a 'decentralized' company. 

The problem with Ethereum is it's not even decentralized. Most of these blockchains and cryptocurrencies and platforms are not.  Add the ICO and crowd funding and crowd building and crowd marketing nature and it's a lot of wanna be Steve Jobs and Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs.

  At least Bitcoin has a person or person(s) that disappeared years ago and isn't pimping it out at every  conference and Meetup and on social media.  Yes it has core developers that have opinions and ideas and eventual forks, but that's no different than most Apache open source projects.  Then again that's not exactly decentralized or autonomous either. 

And then you have the IBM nonsense. A company with a CEO that should have been fired years ago and an organization that's been irrelevant for twenty years.  Great they built a machine to win on Jeopardy.  Now they pimp that out like it's some advanced AI system.  And they jump on the blockchain bandwagon selling more nonsense and marketing bull.

IBM is a joke and in a year or two they will abandon hyperledger and jump to something new or different.  It's what they do. Any company tying themselves to some IBM backed  hyperledger stellar blockchain is asking to redo it all by 2020.  That's what IBM does.  They did it with Hadoop and big data. They are a terribly run organization.   Why anyone would pay them to use their Technology is confusing to me.  The old saying was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" should now be "anybody should be fired for buying IBM." Run from them. 

   The problem with blockchain really is it's become just like most of the internet.  It's all based on lies and fake stories.  "Oh build the future" and have nothing more than a white paper.  And sometimes not even that. Oh let's name it Kodak coin or ice tea on the blockchain or whatever. 

The blockchain really needs to be decentralized. And used for what it's good at , not based on some fantasy from people who have no idea how most of the technology actually works. But hey raise 100 million because people are idiots and listen to someone selling them the moon.

There are tons of possibilities and opportunities, but until the nonsense fades and the moon, hodl, and lambo shills fade, it'll be all hype. Until then the people actually building the infrastructure and scale and real world use cases will build in silence, in a sense.