What You Should Know About the New Blockchain Phone
As the world slowly begins to realize that blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are here to stay, there are companies like Sirin Labs who are positioning themselves to be on the forefront.
They’re designing a cell phone that runs an open source operating system and is connected to the world of cryptocurrencies.
They’re calling it the Finney.
The name Finney comes from a man who helped facilitate the development of Bitcoin, Hal Finney. If you don’t know who this is, might I suggest checking out my past video which goes over his life, accomplishments and contributions to this world of cryptocurrency.
SirinLabs held an ICO or their token called SRN. The proceeds from this ICO are now being used to develop this new kind of cryptocurrency-centric cellphone. Actually, they raised enough money through that ICO to also develop a Finney PC.
VIEW VIDEO HERE^^^^^
I’ve always upheld the precautions of keeping anything about cryptocurrencies off of my own cell phone.
I’ve never used a mobile wallet, or even any kind of portfolio tracker.
Reason being that we all know now iPhones have backdoors installed. Even though the government justifies this with their age old defense that it helps them get the “bad guys”, these backdoors can be accessed by anyone with the appropriate knowledge and motivation to get your information.
Because of this, I’m looking at this new Finney phone with a bit of skepticism.
Here are some of my own questions that I think are worth considering by anyone who is interested in using this new phone:
What is the history behind Sirin labs?
What kind of security measures will be implemented for this phone?
What is the reputation of the company which will be manufacturing these phones?
If you’re interested in the answers to these questions (as you should be) I have provided links down in the description where you can find some explanations and answers.
You might think I’m being paranoid, but when it comes to anyone manufacturing products that are designed to involve people’s personal use of cryptocurrencies, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Ok, moving on to what this phone will actually offer.
- The Finney will be running an open source operating system called Shield OS.
Which is pretty cool, this means as a user you would be able to take a look at the system and possibly make changes if that’s what you’re interested in doing. - This operating system will support decentralized applications, or dApps.
- Shield OS will also facilitate a cold storage wallet.
This cold storage wallet option will also be something worth looking into in regards to its actual security protocols. - You’ll also have fully encrypted messaging and secured access to exchanges.
- The phone itself will have 8 GB of RAM and a whopping 256 GB of storage.
- The security measures for unlocking and using this phone will include options like an iris scanner, fingerprint reader, or the regular, old fashioned password.
- According to an article on Chipin.com, The Finney network will be run on IOTA’s Tangle.
So if you’re not 100% on IOTA, this is something to take note of.
The Finney is also being said to give you the ability to “rent out” your own local hotspot as a way to earn some cryptocurrency.
If you want to purchase the Finney, you’ll need to do so using the SRN token. That also goes for in-app purchases, upgrades and repairs also.
If for whatever reason things don’t pan out for the Finney, there are others who want to be the first to supply the public with a “blockchain” phone. Also keep an eye out for other options like BitVault and Zippie.
Additional Reading/Sources:
Skeptical article on Finney phone
Finney Update
SirinLabs Website for Finney
Manufactured by Foxconn announcement
Coindesk Article
Chipin Article Explaining Finney’s Specs
Bloomberg Article
The key to safety in using a smart phone with crypto's is to make sure that the private keys never touch the device. I use a Trezor with my Android and haven't had any problems.
Andreas Antonopoulos uses several different wallets and each have a different purpose. It's important to keep large sums off these devices. But small sums (in hot wallets) will typically not be worth the hackers effort to steal.
Thank you for supplementing. That's a good point about the small amounts on hot wallets.
You're welcome. I'm fairly new to crypto (Feb 2017), but have been studying non stop since and leveraging my programming skills of the past couple decades from a different field.
Based on past experience this is not a good place to ask, but I ask anyway:
Why is blockchain not garbage?
Data garbage.
Why the need to store entire histories of transactions?
Verification is by consensus anyway.
Only current states matter.
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It's a matter of security. Keeping previous history on the blockchain makes it much more difficult to fork and overwrite blocks to create a double spend. Think of each block as a layer of sediment on the ocean floor. The deeper the sediment, the more likely it is to be undisturbed history and therefore accurate. Six blocks is considered irreversible on the bitcoin blockchain.
However, the early implementation of bitcoin wasn't focused so much on privacy. It would be possible to use Merkle proofs to shorthand history and use the hashes of these instead to ensure tamper proof history. Some blockchains are being planned that will have fully encrypted privacy features (ZK-Snarks, Schnorr sigs, etc).
How do previous histories add security if there has to be a big enough majority about current states in particular?
How does it make double spend more difficult?
If a big enough majority is corrupt, it can be corrupt enough to forge entire histories if it deems necessary.
If a big enough majority can fake 4 bytes, why can not it fake 1024 bytes?
I am not convinced myself on which is more important: privacy or transparency.
I am convinced that efficiency is more important than both, and it should be the deciding factor.
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The hash power to do this would cost more than the payouts would be worth. This means that the only potential motivation to do this is to crash the network. A state actor with quantum computing capability might attempt this in the future if possible, but keep in mind that quantum resistant algorithms can be put in place very quickly by changing the number of zeros in front of the nonce.
In order for a fork to succeed and double spend, it has to rehash all the way back to the point it wants to overwrite and maintain that fork against all the other nodes in the system. If one simply submits invalid transactions to the network and does it consistently, the other nodes will censor that cheating node and be blacklisted.
There's a series of rules for submitting transactions to the mempool, any one of which if returning false indicates an invalid transaction. Long histories help prevent this because if a hash changes in any of the Merkle trees whatsoever, we know tampering has happened and it will invalidate everything after that point in the chain. Other nodes detecting such tampering would simply upload their own copies of the chain to the network to correct it.
That said, Satoshi was blockchain 1.0. There's ways to improve privacy.
I have to learn to get to your level of comprehension of POW, but you also assume that POW is how currencies should be managed, and as you know there are rivaling strategies.
I consider Bitcoin inferior and obsolete.
I do not deny its evident value, but I hope it will crash, and not in order for me to buy it at a lower price, but because of its waste of energy and initial distribution.
My bigger problem is why even Byteball, a far more advanced currency, repeat this same waste.
My main concern if efficiency.
Privacy contradicts with transparency, and I try to avoid thinking about which is more important and if and how they can be combined.
I don't recall saying that anywhere. EOS has solved the scaling issue better than bitcoin and ethereum, but does sacrifice some security and decentralization to do so. Each blockchain has its different uses.
I did not try to ask about the whole scaling issue.
I only asked about storage of entire histories.
And it may not be only a POW issue, because Byteball has it too.
It might have a good reason that still evades me.
I ask because I want to know if it exists and if it does, then what is it?
Study how the hashes of each block link the blocks together in a chain. This is in Andreas Antonopoulos's book "Mastering Bitcoin" on github. It's not impossible to change these things, but a hard fork would be necessary and that's potentially dangerous to the ecosystem.
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Hi Heidi!
Thanks a lot as always for the videos.
Very interesting what SirinLabs is developing now with their SirinOS nd the first Blcokcahin smartphone. But I am also not so sure how this phone will be doing in the future. Lets wait and see.
I think the phone will go a long way in the crypto word but I doubt if it will still use it regular old fashion password
The phone would be awesome
Thanks for the info @heiditravels
First time am hearing about it
Interesting use-case. The phone market is tough to crack. Wish them luck.
The company really try and the new phone is okay as you explained but I think what would still be OK is the blockchain application
It seems that Huawei it's interested in their work, which makes me think that they might do a good job with it. Take a look here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/huawei-said-to-be-in-talks-to-build-blockchain-ready-smartphone
Let's see how it will work! Interesting!
Upvoted!
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I am wondering what camera, micro and video-edit-program Heidi is using?
I like this sort of introduction plus ending scenario and in the middle scrolling through the significant websites and information.