Your Crypto News on Steemit November 9, 2017

• Parity Wallet: Bug freezes Ethers worth Millions!
• Allianz tests Blockchain Application for Global Insurance Program!
• Blockcerts: Blockchain Solution in the Health Sector!
• Deloitte Report: 26000 Blockchain Projects in 2016!
• After SegWit2x Cancellation: How does the Crypto Market react?
• Bitcoin Course Challenge Week 5

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A bug in Parity's multisig contract cost Ethereum users $ 30 million in July. Now the story repeats: The cryptocurrency Ethereum has been hit by a major bug since November 6 half a million Ethers are stuck in a multi-signature wallet and can no longer be moved. The amount currently corresponds to a value of 126 million euros. According to a report from Parity Technologies, the company is working on a fix, but can not say when users will recoup their money.

As so often with Ethereum, it is not easy to understand what just happened. Parity announces a critical bug on the blog. A weakness was found in the Standard Multi-Sig Contracts Parity Wallet Library Contract. All users who had assets in a multisig wallet generated with Parity on July 20 are affected.

The more detailed explanation sounds adventurous: it was possible to turn the Library Contract into a common multi-sis wallet and appoint itself as its owner. A user did this accidentally and then activated the suicide function. This completely erases the code in the library, rendering all multisig contracts created using this library unusable.

In other words, everything stored in these contracts can not be moved. How much this is is not quite clear yet. A list on github.com says around 500,000 Ethers, on social media is one million. According to Parity, the currently circulating numbers are not yet confirmed. Also the credits collected by Parity for Polkadot are under the losses.

How, what, why did this happen? The explanation is relatively bold.

With Solidity you can create contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain. One of these contracts is a multisig contract that allows multiple parties to sign a transaction for it to be sent. The flexibility of Ethereum gives you much more leeway in designing these contracts than in Bitcoin. For example, Geth's standard contract allows you to set a daily payout threshold, and only when that is exceeded, a transaction must be signed by a second party.

So far so good. Wallet Parity has now created a library contract for its Multisig Contract standard. Like other software libraries, it's shorthand for applications so you do not have to go through each step of the code yourself. In itself a meaningful thing. Only Parity has made this library itself a contract on the Ethereum Blockchain. Like all contracts, this one has a state.

The problem now was that the contract had a bug. This, in itself, allowed any user to become the owner of the contract with a particular function and, as such, to be authorized to change the state of the contract. This was done by the user devops199, allegedly accidentally. That was the first part of the disaster.

The second is based on Ethereum Contracts having a "suicide" function: you can delete yourself. This is useful if a contract has a bug or just becomes unnecessary, and you want to clean the blockchain. However, it can also have devastating consequences. Devops199 used the Suicide feature on the Parity Multisig Library Contract, purportedly for fun or curiosity. He wiped away the entire state of the contract.

The result was: The library was deleted. It took a while for the users to understand what that meant: the multisig contract in Parity still has an unchanged state. The credits are still there. However, it can no longer perform any function just as a normal program can no longer perform a function if the library in question is deleted. All credits stored on this contract, both ethers and tokens, are frozen.

The only way to save the credits would be a salvage Hardfork. Whether this will be possible without taking a serious reputational damage to Ethereum is hard to say. Some in the community argue for it, others against it.

Noteworthy: The bug, which now led to self-deletion, should have been fixed by a patch in July. This was done after it became known that 150,000 Ethers had been stolen by manipulating the multi-signature feature.

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Now the insurance giant has discovered the blockchain technology for themselves. As officially announced, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) has successfully tested a blockchain application for a global insurance program including cross-country financial transactions.

The company has implemented a blockchain solution in an existing insurance program. The software refers to payment processes, real-time information transfer and an intuitive user interface. The company's Allianz Risk Transfer Line has teamed up with Ernst & Young and the Ginetta agency.

They tested a prototype for international financial transactions and the synchronization of insurance policies for companies. As the insurance company proudly announces, the results show that the blockchain technology can improve its own insurance programs on an international scale.

Hartmut Mai, AGCS Board Member said:

Group's own insurance programs are considered the most complicated areas of commercial insurance. They are supported by multinational organizations that insure themselves instead of buying insurance. Thus, they create their own insurance programs, which are also called captives. Such captives can span over 100 countries and hundreds of millions of dollars of insured assets.

Allianz hopes for faster distribution of information

With the help of blockchain technology, it should now be possible to include all involved parties in the captive insurance programs. The information about the different types of insurance can thus be stored locally. Any updates will then be distributed in real-time between all participants, making them faster available to all. As a result, it is hoped that everything will become faster, more transparent, safer and more efficient in terms of distributing information.

According to Allianz, the interface should be intuitive and user-friendly. It visualizes the processes and synchronizes the most important information in real time.

Allianz is not the only company to discover the benefits of Blockchain in insurance matters. For example, AXA uses the Ethereum blockchain for flight insurance while Maersk tested overseas transport insurance in September.

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The US-based Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) is the first medical organization to administer official documents using blockchain technology. To do this, they use the Blockcerts software, which makes it possible to control data decentrally and to verify it without third parties, as WDRB reports.

The FSMB is a non-profit organization representing the 70 medical associations of the United States. She is mainly responsible for the licensing of physicians, but also for complaints and disciplinary disputes. They also take care of evaluations and authentication of medical professionals, using blockchain solutions.

Michael Dugan, head of FSMB IT says:

Traditionally, the verification of medical education has relied on organizations such as FSMB reviewing and validating physician profiles. These profiles are then frequently reviewed by third parties. Such are, for example, hospitals or state committees.

Due to the time and personnel involved, it can happen that the processing of applications is often inadequate. Anchoring official documents such as grades, transcripts and verification forms in the blockchain would allow physicians and other participants to maintain their own private profiles. This would make it easier for people to manage their fraud-protected data more easily.

Less effort and more security with Blockcerts

Blockcerts is part of Learning Machine, a digital data management platform. The software initially consists of open source libraries, tools and mobile apps. These form a decentralized and user-oriented ecosystem that enables validation processes without third parties. The idea of ​​a self-managed identity should allow users to regain more power over their data.

Blockcerts was designed to help people manage their digital profiles, "said Natalie Smolenski, vice president of business development for Learning Machine. "That's the big promise of blockchain technology: Now individuals can manage their digital property themselves without having to rely on middlemen. Learning Machine is a social infrastructure that outlasts any business or institution. "

What is stored on the blockchain is not the information itself, just the associated hashes; the actual files are stored elsewhere. Blockcerts is therefore primarily there to validate certificates. The benefits of blockchain technology make it tamper-proof, dramatically reducing administrative overhead.

Wallet for your own data

Blockcerts users get their own wallets, similar to cryptocurrencies. The wallets then contain the information about your certificates. The wallets are in this sense a kind of digital portfolio, over which the users have the power of attorney. All participating parties, both institutions and individuals, can create such wallets using the open source software. Finally, the software is also available on iOS and Android.

Two sides of the coin

Blockchain technology and its applications are increasingly becoming a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the Vatican is investigating the role of Bitcoin and its underlying technology in human trafficking. On the other hand, the UK Department of Justice just last week unveiled a Blockchain-based solution to manage video recordings in the fight against crime. The use of technology for the distribution of utility and intoxicants is also currently being discussed.

Nonetheless, Blockchain seems to be an important push to manage data, especially in terms of privacy. In times when the term "glassy citizen" is omnipresent, it is certainly desirable to regain power over one's own data.

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According to a Deloitte report, more than 26,000 new blockchain projects were launched last year with the help of the GitHub central store.

The report, entitled "Evolution of Blockchain Technology: Insights into the GitHub Platform," which was released yesterday, describes how the platform is evolving. Over 86,000 blockchain initiatives (including Bitcoin) will be handled through the platform.

Among other things, the report addresses the development of technology at various stages, such as the launch of Bitcoin 2009.

The report shows that most blockchain projects (users and businesses) started in 2016. In 2015, fewer than 15,000 projects were submitted. For 2017, only the data from the first six months has so far been used for the analysis. Over 25,000 projects have already been launched this year.

Unsurprisingly, most projects deal with Bitcoin. 627 contributors and 12,000 followers have the cryptocurrency on the platform. Go-Ethereum (or Geth), the client software used by the nonprofit Ethereum Foundation, has 149 contributors and 5,603 followers.

The report also indicates that the majority of blockchain projects are not actively being processed on the GitHub platform.

Deloitte explained:

You also have to differentiate between organizations and users. Because "while 7% of projects developed by users are active, 15% of the projects developed by organizations are active."

The report also includes information about geographic developments of the blockchain. With 1279 users and 101 organizations, San Francisco is home to most GitHub users. London is in second place with 919 projects, followed by New York with 774.

"Also the big activity in China, especially in Shanghai and Beijing should not be ignored. In both cities, most of the projects related to cryptocurrencies and crypto currency exchanges, "the report said.

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Yesterday, the mid-November upcoming Hard Fork SegWit2x was rejected. Mike Belshe of BitGo announced that he and other great proponents of SegWit2x will distance themselves for now. A message that, it seems, produces practically only winners.

The discomfort over SegWit2x scaling has been growing in recent weeks, and the voices of critics have grown louder and louder. Accordingly, the emergency brake has now been pulled, as a failure of SegWit2x has become increasingly likely.

With the SegWit2x cancellation also much uncertainty has disappeared from the market - to the delight of many investors and SegWit2x opponents. The Bitcoin ecosystem has thus become poorer by a load factor and can now concentrate more on itself and its mainstream adaptation through increased planning security.

But especially the altcoins can benefit from the SegWit2x cancellation. These had recently lost ground to Bitcoin, as many speculators had pulled their capital out of them and put them in Bitcoin. Background of this capital move to Bitcoin was the hope that Hard Fork would post free money to the Bitcoin Wallet account, in the form of a newly created cryptocurrency. Since this "free money" will not exist anymore, Bitcoin has lost its appeal for short-term speculation.

It would be wrong, however, to see this "loss" as something negative and of course Bitcoin continues to be suitable for speculative trading maneuvers - just without the hope of a credit of a Bitcoin descendant. The Bitcoin profits much more from the SegWit2x rejection in the medium to long term. Finally, he has been able to prove that splitting off "his chain" has little chance of success.

In analogy to politics, one could say that the vote of no confidence (planned hard fork) has failed against Bitcoin. The challengers (SegWit2x) could not muster enough votes to sell Bitcoin as the dominant cryptocurrency. This failure further strengthened and confirmed Bitcoin's position. Furthermore, in the current rejection, there is a strong signal that will make future hard forks less likely to fail due to the fear of failure.

Although the bitcoin dominance of over 62% from the beginning of the week has fallen to 59%. Overall, however, this is not worrying for the reasons mentioned above, especially since strengthening of the altcoins can be seen as quite positive for the crypto-ecosystem. In any case, the crypto market is reacting with a new all-time high of more than 208 billion US dollars. Bitcoin itself had to feather something: from 129 billion US dollars (stood yesterday before the announcement) on now 123 billion US dollar (conditions 9.11, 9 o'clock MEZ). The consolidation was more than necessary after the breathtaking rally in recent days. It's good that SegWit2x's speculative momentum has broken down to give Bitcoin a breather for the next climb.

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