Official Statement from Universa Blockchain CEO Alexander Borodich

In light of the heated media discussions and information being taken out of context we would like to make the following clarifications:

1. On the 7th November Universa Hub Africa have launched uDinar, backed by Tunisian Dinar, as a Proof-of-Concept.
2. The PoC app is using decentralized ledger technology based on local blockchain hosted by Tunisian Agency of Internet. The Agency is our partner in terms of Universa Solutions in Tunisia.
3. Universa Hub Africa was invited as a tech partner to showcase its project at the the Forex Club Tunisie congress.
4. No question of CBDC émission related to uDinar was discussed at the Forex Club Tunisie Сongress.
5. CBT is considering a variety of alternatives for future currency digitalisation and has no contractual aspect on CBDC with Universa Hub Africa.
6. The misinterpretation in the articles that followed was not based on claims of Universa’s or CBT official representatives.
7. Universa is hoping for the further development of the mutually beneficial cooperation between Universa Hub Africa and CBT.

Source

The Forex Club of Tunisia is a non-profit association whose objective is to promote and improve its legislative and technical framework as well as its ethics.

The Forex Club of Tunisia

The Congress brought together prominent guests and pillars of the Tunisian and international financial and digital world. In fact, two panels were on the agenda. The main panel discussed the topic of the ” Conduct of monetary policy and the exchange rate in a transitional phase “.

As for the second panel, it was devoted to the “Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and opportunities for financial integration in Maghreb “ and brought together international and national experts from the digital world. Namely, Hervé Tourpe, Chief Digital Advisor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Néji Ghandri, Member of the Executive Board of Amen Bank, Elyès Berrayana, Omar Bouattay, Head of Universal Hub AFRICA and Antonios Koumbarakis, PwC, Legal FS Regulatory and Compliance Services.

Standard Money vs Digital Money

The difference between standard money, which has cash and a virtual form (if money is on a bank card), and digital money, including cryptocurrencies, is in the transparency of transactions. When we pay for some goods using a bank card and terminal, physically the money does not transfer to the seller immediately.

A transaction can take about a week. In addition, paper money, the virtual version of which was used to pay for the goods, can be located in another place, at another seller or counterparty, at an ATM, at a third-party bank and at a third-party individual. All this makes the process of tracing transactions by the Central Bank difficult and creates the ground for illegal trade, tax evasion or corruption.

Cryptocurrencies work on blockchain platforms. Each such digital bill cannot be tampered with, and each transaction is traceable. The effectiveness of blockchain technology is not satisfactory among participants in the foreign exchange market and regulators.

The launch of U-Dinar

Another issue is the ownership of this money. Most national governments insist, that any money should be managed from a single state center. Therefore, Tunisia’s work on issuing state E-dinars is a proactive work. Such money, like cryptocurrency, is traceable and protected, but, unlike crypto money, it is state-owned and backed up with real, paper money.

“Electronic banknotes cannot be counterfeited – each such banknote, like the paper version, is protected by cryptography, it, like the paper counterpart, has its own digital watermarks. And the production of such a banknote is 100 times cheaper than wasting ink, paper, electricity for the printing press, “says CEO of Universa.

No additional paper money will be printed to issue electronic money. Instead, part of the country’s paper money Dinar will go into the pledge of electronic money. With the launch of the program, individuals can also switch to the U-dinar.

Other Maghreb countries – Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania – also participated in the presentation of electronic currency in the capital of Tunisia. While these countries are watching the testing of electronic currency in the future they can join the project, unite under one system and conduct international payments with electronic money at an agreed rate.

Tunisia is ranked 78 in the Doing Business ranking and does not have a leading position on the African continent. The primacy in creating such a system is a chance for the country to renew trade relations and regulate the domestic, largely “gray” economy, Borodich is convinced.

CBDC or Central Bank Digital Currencies

CBDCs, or national digital currencies, are digital assets issued and controlled by the government regulator, usually the Central Bank. They are exactly opposite to decentralized cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in that they represent fiat money in digital form. Each CBDC digital note is a digital equivalent of an actual paper note with its face value and serial number, which exists in digital form and is protected from forgery by Universa Blockchain technologies.

CBDC take the best of both worlds, combining the convenience and security of digital money with the proven functionality of national currencies regulated and backed by the country’s reserves.

According to Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report for 2019, as many as 70% of Central Banks worldwide started preparation to CBDC migration.

First Test Transaction

With the participation of the head of the Central Bank of Tunisia Marouane El Abassi and a representative of the International Monetary Fund, the participants in the presentation carried out a symbolic operation to transfer one U-Dinar from one account to another, thus starting the system. In a test form, it will work for several months, after which it will receive new functions and the plan is for it to be launched in a large numbers of stores, cafes and restaurants. 

Future plans include for two thousand kiosks to be placed in Tunisia, where citizens can replenish their digital wallet. At the initial stage, they will pay via the browser on the smartphone, and later a mobile application will be available. They will be able to send digital money or make a purchase by scanning a QR code.

Universa Expansion Plans

According to Universa, Tunisia is the first country to launch the U-Dinar, but could be quickly followed by other countries, including countries of Southeast Asia (Malaysia and the Philippines), Latin America (Argentina and Brazil) and China. With the latter, the Russian company is unlikely to be able to conclude a contract – the Celestial Empire will prefer to create its own blockchain platform by copying technology, Borodich believes. But he looks forward to working with Latin American and Maghreb countries.

According to CEO of Universa, electronic money will greatly change the principles of private banks. Physically, all the money will remain in the Central Bank, and banks will become a kind of operators, providing only services and competing for the quality of services. And, since banks cease to fulfill the function of storing money, their possible bankruptcy also ceases to be dangerous for customers.

The post Digital Dinar: Universa launches U-Dinar in Tunisia appeared first on ChipIn.

• Preliminary applications for uGold already exceed two tonnes of gold
• In 2019, Universa plans to launch a digital currency backed by oil to service the Gulf region
• The Universa blockchain also allows any company or financial institution to issue their own digital currency and counts with transaction speeds a thousand times faster and a hundred times cheaper than Bitcoin

The blockchain platform Universa has launched two digital currencies, uGold and uCHF, both physically backed with gold and Swiss francs deposited in vaults in Zurich and Liechtenstein’s Landesbank.

“Owners of Stable Coins such as uGold and uCHF can transfer their digital money around the world instantly at virtually no costs, while being protected from the volatility of digital currencies,” said Alexander Borodich, the Founder and CEO of Universa.

The transfer of uGold and uCHF will have a fixed transaction fee of $0.01, regardless of the amount transferred. At the moment, uGold’s volume of preliminary applications exceed two tonnes of gold. In its first year, the combined trading of uGold and uCHF is expected to exceed $100 million.

In 2019, Universa plans to create a further digital currency backed by oil, for which there is currently demand from various Gulf countries. Further new tools for mutual settlements and trade financing will also be offered to financial institutions.

“The ability to trade digital currencies backed by metal, as well as other tokenized commodities, create brand new opportunities in the realm of interstate commerce. With these, participants don’t need to store reserves of foreign currencies. Instead they can now hold reserves in the form of tokenized oil, gold or even nickel, for example,” added Borodich.

Beyond uGold and uCHF, any company or financial institution is able to issue its own secured digital currency based on Universa’s blockchain. Its international platform allows digital assets to be exchanged equally quickly and cheaply, while providing an extremely high level of security for the transaction and complete protection against counterfeiting.

“By transferring traditional economics to the digital realm, we can accelerate the implementation of supranational mutual settlement systems, making international trade processes not only more efficient, but less dependent on economic and political risks,” Borodich said.

At the moment, Universa’s main competitor in this area is the VAKT blockchain platform, which specialises in oil trading, including the transfer of paper documentation to smart contracts. VAKT was created by a consortium of BP, Shell, Gunvor Group, Equinor, Mercuria Energy Group and Koch Supply and Trading, as well as the banks ABN Amro and ING.

“The advantage of Universa lies in its reliability and independence. In addition, today we are the fastest blockchain in the world, capable of performing up to 25,000 operations per second,” noted Borodich.

ABOUT UNIVERSA

Universa is a blockchain platform providing the technology and interface for creating smart contracts and applications based on the Universa blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Universa does not rely on mining, which makes it much faster, cheaper and scalable. An important focus for Universa is to facilitate the application of its technology to provide a range of solutions for the real economy. Universa is led by Founder and CEO Alexander Borodich, a serial entrepreneur and well-known angel investor.

The post Universa Blockchain launches Digital Currencies backed by Gold and the Swiss Franc appeared first on ChipIn.

While many focus on the trading aspect of cryptocurrencies, the technology underlying it is a massive game-changer in terms of what it can contribute to society.

For instance, blockchain technologies are currently being tested in many countries around the world to help improve processes and as things stand, these technologies are mere steps away from being implemented and utilized officially.

The potential of the blockchain to revolutionize industries and processes in the world today is unparalleled and unfortunately, not too well-known to the public as many tend to focus on making a profit from cryptocurrencies instead of the actual use of it.

With that being said, some companies are making the effort to push blockchain technologies to the world as a means to solve real-world problems—not just as an alternative investment opportunity—that businesses and communities are facing today.

One of the most proactive and promising companies in this aspect is Universa, a next-gen blockchain technology designed to complement real businesses and provide elegant solutions to problems in the modern world.

Like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Universa is a blockchain technology but to categorize it together with these two cryptocurrencies (or any other coins for that matter) would be a serious understatement of Universa’s advantages.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Universa was built for business adoption as Universa focuses more on tokenization and smart contracts as a way to help businesses utilize blockchain technologies in their processes efficiently.

What makes Universa different is that its tokens can be used for literally any use case instead of strictly being a digital currency. For instance, loyalty program systems, in-game currencies, gift cards, and even public transport fares can be supported by Universa which shows the technology’s flexibility in how its implemented.

Another great feature that makes Universa perfect for businesses is the use of trusted nodes for the blockchain. Most cryptocurrencies are not suitable for business use as they rely on untrusted miners which is a risk as businesses are essentially relying on random actors to help verify transactions on the blockchain.

Universa approaches it differently; all nodes in the blockchain must be licensed and authorized by the organization before going through several processes to ensure that these nodes provide the best service possible to the Universa blockchain.

All of these features culminate into a blockchain ready for even the most demanding of businesses hence making Universa a good option for businesses who want to benefit from the blockchain but still maintain high levels of efficiency and security.

The rest of Universa’s features can be read in an article that we covered previously or in the official whitepaper which lists and explains every single feature in detail.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are still two of the most popular cryptocurrencies right now in terms of market cap and usage but this situation exposes an evident weakness in the blockchain.

As more and more transactions are processed in the chain, there will be a point where there are more transactions coming in compared to the time taken to verify a transaction.

Clearly, this will clog up the blockchain which means transactions take longer to verify and because of how the blockchain is designed, an increasing number of transactions would also cause a proportional rise in the cost of each transaction.

This is not ideal for users at all as they pay more fees for slower transactions—a combination that is economically inefficient and not good enough for real-world businesses.

Universa overcomes this problem in its blockchain design but the team has taken this one step further by introducing the UltraBTC(UltraETH) token, an impressive feature that allows BTC and ETH transactions to happen instantly at significantly lower costs.

Universa’s UltraBTC (UltraETH) token uses the Universa public network to avoid the usual delays and expensive fees in BTC and ETH transactions.

This method works as it acts as an escrow agent which then allows the exchange of any digital asset to another although only UltraBTC and UltraETH are available as of the time of writing. The team will develop the system further to allow any tokens to be exchanged in the future hence strengthening Universa’s position in the cryptocurrency industry.

Universa has recently made waves with some great partnerships and appearances in notable events. At the recent ChildTech forum, Universa founder, Alexander Borodich, signed an agreement with the Russian Public Chamber and RACIB to introduce blockchain technologies in schools, charities, adoption and medical examination procedures.

Russia’s openness in implementing the blockchain in public service sectors as well as the country’s cooperation with Universa cements the technology as one of the leaders in promoting the adoption of the blockchain in real world situations.

Borodich also attended the 2018 Global Challenges Summit—an event which featured notable names like Steve Wozniak and Ban Ki-Moon—where the Universa CEO presented his thoughts and opinions on the future of money and cryptocurrencies.

Capping off the team’s recent highlights was Universa’s appearance at the St. Peterburg International Economic Forum, an anticipated event attended by the most important decision makers and individuals from various companies and industries all over the world.

Borodich was part of an interesting presentation and debate on blockchain technologies which led to a meeting agreement between Universa and the Russian Central Bank.

The meeting will see Borodich and his team hold discussions with the Central Bank on how Universa’s technology can help the bank with their needs and demands; this could be massive for Universa and the blockchain industry as a whole should the Central Bank reach an agreement over the use of the blockchain in their processes.

Last but not least, Livecoin, a popular digital currency exchange platform, has listed Universa Tokens (UTNP) on its platform which bodes well for the token’s value and liquidity. Of course, the team will be working on adding UTNP to more exchanges in the future so that investors can trade UTNP more conveniently.

Universa’s Website

Universa’s Whitepaper

The post What Makes Universa Different? | Universa Updates In The Media & Events appeared first on ChipIn.

The Universa Mainnet was launched on the 12th of April, capping off several successful weeks of rapid progress for Universa.

With this release, the Universa blockchain is now publicly accessible to developers interested in creating tokens and utilize the functions of the Universa blockchain which has the incredible ability to process more than 20,000 transactions per second.

The Universa team is currently developing the remaining fundamental smart contracts of the network with an expected delivery time of two to three months.

Nevertheless, the team has already begun to establish partnerships and networks with countries around the globe to implement the Universa blockchain in areas such as fintech, supply chain management, and government registry digitization among a list of other sectors that can be improved by the Universa platform.

Universa has begun working with several countries to implement the use of Universa in sectors that could be improved by the use of the blockchain.

One of the countries involved is Kazakhstan; the team discussed the possibility of using the blockchain to improve the capabilities of financial transactions monitoring with Alik Jatkambaevich Shpekbaev, Kazakhstan’s head honcho in combating corruption.

Other discussions involved using the blockchain to implement a Public Official ID to improve the tracking of an official’s work as well as discussing the potential of blockchain technologies in realizing Kazakhstan’s “Digital Kazakhstan” initiative. (a state program established by the Kazakhstan government to improve and develop the country’s digital ecosystem)

Universa was also one of the two technology blockchains invited to Turkey’s first ever National Blockchain Forum which shows the country’s acceptance towards the Universa project.

The presentation by Universa CEO, Alexander Borodich, was focused on Smart.Money, a technology that enables blockchain transaction between countries that could create national cryptocurrencies and even beyond national boundaries.

The icing on the cake of Universa’s progress is in Russia, where a special economic zone named Cryptopark will be established in Stupino to develop and maintain upcoming crypto and blockchain projects. Cryptopark will use Universa for asset tokenization as well as being the official digital platform.

These developments were encouraged by the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB) which chose Universa as the preferred blockchain technology solution at the recent BlockchainRF-2018 Congress.

In tandem with the release of the Universa Mainnet, Borodich hosted an AMA (ask me anything) session on Telegram to answer questions from the public and investors.

Below is a summary of the session:

Q: To run a node in Universa, the node owner has to have 1 million UTN(P), pass the KYC requirements and have the proper hardware needed. A license is also required to run a node.

There have been multiple conversations about this with(in) the community. Both purchasing a license and staking, locking etc. mechanisms have also been discussed. Could you enlighten us on how Universa is planning to approach this? How will people obtain their licenses to run a node?

A: We would like to perceive Node Owners as our Partners and the goal is to make this job profitable enough to make it prestigious and important for the society. So, in general, what is good for the node owner is good for the Network.

A license is needed:

1) To make this process of balancing the number of nodes (profit level) align with the current status of a growing network

2) To prevent different types of attacks e.g if a node does not keep the service level agreement, it will be shut down by the node’s smart contract.

The staking or fee is required to obtain a license. If you check the previous answer – we would like you to operate the node and not to lose your tokens. So, the 1 million tokens paid to obtain a license will be held in the Node Smart Contract securely.

Q: Is there a minimum amount of time for a person has to run his/her node? After this period would it be possible at all times to waive/give up a license and regain the 1 million tokens?

A: The minimum period to host a node currently is 12 months. Later on, all of these parameters will be available in the Node’s Smart Contract and will be managed automatically.

Q: What would happen if, for example, 300 people would want to run a node but only 100-200 nodes are wanted for the first year. Will there be a mechanism that selects people and what is it based on?

A: We are still having internal discussions on this topic. We have a first-in, first-out list of nodes at the moment, but we are open to recommendations.

Q: How will rewards be paid to node holders? Will this be in UTN(P) or in other currencies?

A: UTN always, as it is the only fuel we have. All transactions will be paid in UTN, even if a business has a fiat contract on paper.

Q: Will rewards be paid daily, weekly, monthly? Since transactions are pegged to 0.01 USD, will it be in an UTN equivalent based on exchange rates?

A: Instant conversion is available for payments. Payments are also going to be released monthly or bi-weekly; we will have the community of Node Owners to decide the process.

Q: Let’s say that I run a node and have my tokens locked for 12 months. What happens after 12 months if:

1) I regain control of my tokens and I sell them on the market, or I take them out the smart contract? Do I “lose” my license to run a node?

2) I decide I no longer want to run a node?

A: As long as you operate the node, the tokens will be locked. However, you will be able to get it back and return the node license to the pool at any time.

Q: Would it be also possible to transfer my license to someone else? For example, another interested individual pay me 1 million tokens; would the license and locked tokens now belong to the new node owner/operator?

Alexander: We will create a special smart contract to sell the license to the new owner. The internal escrow will help you to transfer the license securely and to get your tokens back.

Q: Can US citizens run a node?

A: Yes.

Q: Does there have to be a new owner of the node before I can sell the license and receive the tokens back?

A: No, the network will automatically lose your node and you will get your tokens back even if there are no new owners at one time.

Q: How many people have currently expressed interest in running a node?

Alexander: More than 100 at the moment.

Q: Let’s say I own more than 5 million tokens and want to run 5 nodes. Is there any bias against one person (or group of people) running multiple nodes?

A: Being libertarian, I prefer to give 1 license and then put the next license request to the end of the line for fairness’ sake. However, we are going to automate this process to make it as equal as possible but also as spread out as possible. The number of nodes per region might be limited.

Again, we would like to have a high independence and high diversity, so the number of nodes per owner will be limited by contract.

Ideally, the smart contract should solve it in the near future—how to get the license, to sell and to get profits from it—all of this will be done by the smart contract.

Q: Will there be a list of cloud companies from where we can rent servers according to Universa’s hardware requirements? Can a server be virtual or only physical?

A: If your setup passes our hardware test, we don’t mind even if it’s virtual. We highly recommend node owners to have the physical hardware, though.

Q: How many nodes will be run by Universa itself?

A: Ideally, less than 10% of nodes per network.

Q: What will be the rate of adding new nodes? Could the market crash if all staked tokens come to a market and get dumped 12 months from now?

A: We cannot control it, the smart contract is responsible for the sale of nodes. The network in a year will be strong enough to survive a market dump, as I predict from current projects.

Q: Is there an estimate on when people who already filled in the node hosting request form to receive a response? Is there a timeline for that?

A: I would expect things to start next week.

Universa has also released its plan for the next 100 days in line with the company’s plan to deliver on its roadmap rapidly.

Previously, the team has already completed its Smart Token goal. Instead of doing that, the team moved on with a universal smart contract template that could create complex smart contracts in a seamless fashion. The platform’s Liquidity Ocean is currently being tested with a bank customer while Universa’s Blockchain Academy has been officially launched.

The main goal of the next 100 days for Universa is to develop a sales mechanism to enter new markets and expand the company’s presence in several regions and countries including South-
East Asia and Europe. The focus will be on verticals that can benefit immensely from using the Universa blockchain, with 5 main verticals being identified by Borodich:

• Banking
• Supply chains
• Government sectors
• Education
• Retail

UTN tokens will also be released while the team will also be focusing on working with Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to ultimately releasing smart contracts that can work seamlessly across different blockchains.

Finally, the team will also be improving their marketing and communication efforts in the next 100 days, starting with publishing reports every two weeks for the public to view.

If you’ve missed out on our previous coverage of Universa, click here to read it.

The post The Universa Mainnet is now live | Universa’s CEO Q&A summary on upcoming Masternodes appeared first on ChipIn.

Over the last couple of weeks, CEO Alexander Borodich and his colleagues have held high-level meetings all over the planet, stroke deals, gave lectures and opened new offices, but most importantly, they have demonstrated how we are moving forward in the push to bring the real economy to the blockchain.

The most exciting development of the Universa blockchain project over the last few weeks has certainly been the announcement of a memorandum of understanding with Novotrans. That’s right, during the Russian Investment Forum in Sochi, on February 15th, one of the largest railway rolling stock operators in Russia agreed on moving its fleet forward towards the reality of the internet of things, with the help of Universa. To be sure, Novotrans manages a fleet of 28 thousand railway cars and transports over 37 million tonnes of cargo per year.

The operator now wants to digitize its fleet, being able to track their loads, unloads and GPS data, as well as tracking maintenance needs and maintaining the cars’ digital history. This represents one of the first moves by a major railway transport operator towards integration with the blockchain and is a meaningful step forward towards the integration of blockchain technology with real-life services beyond financial transactions. Universa continues to impose itself as a solutions provider for all things blockchain, particularly in the transport sector. The team had already established a partnership with McFly.aero, a blockchain project focused on management of flying taxis, which will launch an ICO in April. Admittedly, blockchain system implementation in the railway system is likely to be quicker than within the flying taxi business.

Real life deployment

While the application of the Universa system into infrastructural and transport focused industries is a long-term play, the financial sector is another game altogether. Last week, the Universa team announced the deployment and successful testing of a testnet for AlfaBank, one of Russia’s biggest commercial banks with which Universa maintains a close cooperation. According to the team, the system performed perfectly while sustaining eighteen thousand transactions per second on intra-banking transactions. That is nine times the number of transactions supported by Visa’s system. Universa also deployed a multi-operating system supported app to track the testnet’s performance for AlfaBank. The success of this collaboration could quickly open doors to further real-world applications in the financial sector, further expanding Universa blockchain’s exposure to partners and clients.

Aiming for the millions

Over several visits to South East Asia in recent weeks, the team has been holding high-level meetings with ministers and business leaders, which are resulting in new projects and partnerships. ASN Networks and the Malaysian National Co-operative Movement Angkasa Coop are working with Universa on the deployment of a system to manage and monitor the distribution of welfare payments in Malaysia.

Once in place, the system will effectively block the misuse of such funds for non-intended and illegal purposes, such as the purchase of cigarettes or alcohol products. It will also open the door to as many as six million Malaysians to start using Universa’s token for transactions related to welfare services.

Government partnerships have been at the very core of Universa’s progression over the last couple of months, as they have maintained high-level negotiations with Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Korea, Germany, Russia and many other growing centers for blockchain technology.

Wide range approach

The team has defined its growth strategy around three pillars, which include services for governments, services for enterprises and support for developers.
The focus on governments is well mirrored in the partnerships the team has already established with nations around the world, particularly in Russia, China and Malaysia.

The partnership announced during the World Economic Forum in Davos with EY last month, is a clear example of the entreprise side of this strategy. The cooperation agreement with the global consultancy firm will focus on the the implementation of blockchain products for industries and services.

When it comes to developers, however, the focus is not so much on profitability and project deployment, but on Universa’s own sustainability. In the words of the Universa CEO himself, the team wants to “make sure both us and our partners have enough blockchain developers who understand how blockchain works”. This approach is tackling a potential problem with scaling the Universa system beyond the scope of the team’s current capabilities. The launch of Universa’s Blockchain Academy and other educational programs will go a long way in fulfilling the team’s goal of having over one thousand developers capable of writing software for Universa’s smart contracts by the end of the year. The launch of a blockchain education program and blockchain software development program in cooperation with the Shanghai Institute of Commercial Development, which opened to enrolments last month, is the first of these programs to move forward, but others have already been agreed upon for other nations. Universa’s Shanghai-based working group has also initiated operations.

Trading and hodling

After much expectation, the UTNP token, the placeholder token for Universa’s native UTN token, which will be available once the Universa blockchain is deployed, was distributed to all Universa investors that passed the Know Your Customer process. Almost simultaneously, the token started trading on exchanges. First listed in Cobinhood in mid-February, UTNP is now also trading on HitBTC in the USDT, BTC and ETH pairs. Trading volume remains relatively low at just above a million dollars per day, and the token is trading at around USD$0.04 cents.

Universa HODL hardware wallet

Finally, this week, during the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, Universa announced and presented its own hardware wallet. The Universa HODL wallet works with a wireless Bluetooth system and can hold Universa tokens, Bitcoin, Ethereum and ERC20 tokens. The team developed its own high-end safety software to develop a convenient way for users to hold and transfer their digital assets. It allows for single tap transactions when connected to a mobile device. The wallet is available for pre-order, costs ETH0.25 and taps into a market overwhelmingly dominated by Ledger, Trezor and KeepKey.

The post Universa is now Tradeable on Major Exchanges and is Pushing Ahead with Strong New Partnerships appeared first on ChipIn.

Current investors and potential future investors have been patiently reading the latest updates from the charismatic CEO Alexander Borodich, while he is jetting from one continent to the other to speak to governments and businesses, waiting for updates, when the UTN / UTNP tokens will be available on an exchange.

Last week Universa announced, that Cobinhood will be the first exchange to list the UTNP token on the 8th of February and today the news reached us, that UTNP might be soon available on Binance.

Alexander Borodich wrote: “The community asked us to take part in the Token of the Month vote on the Binance exchange. We respect our community, and we are always eager to hear your advice and requests, so we have completed the Binance questionnaire and provided all the information they requested. If all goes well, you will soon be able to vote for Universa on Binance.

We’ll update this article, as soon as we have more information on the Binance vote and if all goes well the Binance listing.

The post Universa Blockchain – UTN / UTNP Binance Listing appeared first on ChipIn.

According to the team’s CEO, Alexander Borodich, Universa closed its first deal last week with the acquisition of 50%, for an undisclosed amount, of Russian media platform криптовалюта.рф, which is Cyrillic for “cryptocurrency”. The website is a popular news source on topics related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the Russian Federation. The acquisition will give Universa a platform of its own to publish articles, blogs and engage with a much larger community of interested readers. Arthur Lipatov, a member of the Universa team, will stand as Community Director and lead the project’s new tool.

This deal happens just days before the project finally concluded the development and auditing of the smart contract overseeing the distribution of their UTNP tokens. As you may remember from last update, Universa is developing its own blockchain, where its UTN token will run, but, for the time being, that infrastructure is not up and running yet.

In order to allow for token exchanges, the team created a mirror ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, to act as a placeholder until the investors chose to convert them to UTN. They called these placeholders UTNP and 800 million of them just started being progressively sent to the ICO investors’ Ethereum wallets on the 25th of January. If you are a Universa investor, you should see your tokens wallet soon, given you passed the Know Your Customer procedures.
On the 8th of February, UTNP will be listed at the Cobinhood exchange.

In the meantime, it seems the Universa community is stretching longer and longer it’s arms. The team, which is based out of Moscow, is just opening a new office now in Belarus’ High Tech Park, known in the region as the country’s Special Economic Zone equivalent of California’s Silicon Valley.

In December, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko signed off a Decree “On Digital Economy Development” effectively becoming the first country in the world to legalize and regulate ICOs, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and any other aspects of the blockchain spectrum. The Universa team had been advising the Belarusian government on the subject.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the project’s team has also been present at the North American Crypto Conference in Miami last week while starting to prepare for the opening of an USA-based office. To be sure, in early January, Universa had already signed a partnership with Beijing Kuyshu Quantum Technologies Co to create a Universa office in the Chinese capital city. The team already has a working group based in Shanghai and, under a partnership with the Shanghai Institute of Commercial Development, they have opened enrolment for the first class of their blockchain education program.

In Malaysia, Universa is also establishing a division following negotiations with the Deputy Minister of Communications and Innovation. Until April, a blockchain academy will be organized by Universa in the city of Malaka. The team had previously signed a cooperation agreement with a fintech company to help develop the Universa exchange. The team will be evaluating the launch of a pilot version of Universa in Malaysia, which would constitute the first in the region.

The project is quickly reaching all corners of the globe.

In continuing with the attempts to solidify and grow the Universa community, the team is now preparing a large hackathon that will cover as many as 10 cities in Russia, from Saint Petersburg and Moscow in the West to Vladivostok in the Far East, as well as the Belarusian capital city, Minsk, and Almaty in Kazakhstan. The UniversaHack2018 will run from March 12th to March 18th and should contribute to greatly strengthen the Universa community in its region of origin.

Read our Interview with Universa CEO Alexander Borodich

In the wait for the hackathon, however, the Universa team is continuing with its multilateral negotiations with government officials and partners. This week, Mr. Borodich is rubbing shoulders with economic and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, accompanying the entourage of the Minister of Communications for the Russian Federation. He is speaking of blockchain technology implementation within the “real” economy and has just announced that the project has struck a partnership with global consultancy firm EY for cooperation in the implementation of blockchain products for industries and services.

While the expansion of the community and the establishment of partnerships with political leaders and private players represents fundamental groundwork (Universa already counts with over 700 thousand users), what everybody is truly waiting for is the actual deployment of their network.

That might take a while. In contrast to most blockchain projects which simply run a tokenized ecosystem on top of a pre-existing blockchain, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Universa is building its own blockchain architecture, with much larger financial and time costs. According to the team’s latest report, they have just finished the architecture design and prepared the interfaces that will allow for the platform to work with different currencies, including BTC and ETH, the Universa smart contracts and the Ethereum-compliant ERC20 smart contracts.

Alexander Borodich meeting John McAfee at a recent event

Universa’s system will support an original approach to smart contracts which the team has dubbed “thin contracts”. These contrast with the usual Ethereum Smart Contracts, which encapsulate extremely large and fairly inflexible documents that try to fulfill all the necessary conditions requested by the contract issuer at once. Universa breaks down this approach by proposing simpler more flexible contracts that can interact with each other, making them more accessible and reproducible.

This contract lightness interacts with the project’s lighter ledger entry proposal. Instead of confirming and inscribing in the ledger all the information of any transaction that ever took place within an account or a contract, the nodes in the network only confirm and inscribe in the distributed ledger the current state of the contracts. The remainder of the information is stored in a secondary ledger structure named Notary Cloud.

This permits much faster transactions at a fraction of the cost and could truly make blockchain applications a reality for many businesses that still struggle to see their needs answered by this technology. At twenty thousand transactions per second and at a cost of USD$0.1 cent per transaction, Universa’s may well be the fastest and cheapest blockchain yet, and one with the potential and ambition to achieve mass adoption through governmental and private sector partnership.

Stay tuned for the next update soon. We will be following their development closely.

The post Universa – The Project Striving to Connect Businesses and the Blockchain Starts Token Distribution appeared first on ChipIn.

But, with over 1300 cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap, and almost 700 deceased coins and abandoned projects, it can be an arduous and overwhelming process sorting through the good and the bad. We’ve gone through them and compiled a list of our favorite projects that have a strong backing team, support clear and transparent roadmaps, and strive to fill a needed gap in today’s socio-economic, and blockchain, climate.

Below is a list of 10 altcoins and tokens that are set to make waves in Q1 of 2018, and should definitely be on your radar.

1. ICON ($ICX)

What is ICON?

Often referred to as “Korea’s Ethereum,” ICON is so much more, striving to build one of the largest decentralized networks and hyperledgers in order to “hyperconnect the world.” Like Ethereum, ICON supports decentralized applications, including Blockchain ID and payment and exchange. However, where ICON differs is in their built in decentralized exchange (DEX), real-time transactions, and interoperability with other blockchains, providing a single platform for communities of different governance structures (financial, security, insurance, educational, healthcare) to connect and transact.

Why you should keep an eye on it

After a successfully deployed Testnet in 2017, ICON’s Mainnet launch (a live, working product) is fast approaching, and slated to launch January 24th, 2018. Their partnerships already include several top-tier Korean universities, Ripple Asia, the Korea Financial Investment Association, and several other government-backed agencies, and all of their Blockchain consortiums are already supporting live market-ready services and pilot programs, reducing Mainnet uncertainty and speculation.
For Koreans, ICON stands to be the first of its kind to connect their entire country, as Korea has been a driving force behind the crypto-boom since its inception, pushing an estimated 35-40% of Ethereum’s global trade. Up until now, Korea has been without a platform to call their own, and accompanied with fervent Korean nationalism, ICON has the potential to cause global waves with its Mainnet release at the end of the month.

2. Dragonchain ($DRGN)

What is Dragonchain?

Although developed in 2015 as Disney’s attempt at creating their own private blockchain platform, Disney abandoned the project not long after and released it as open source software, part of their Open Source Program. Dragonchain was taken over by the Non-Profit organization Dragonchain Foundation, who has since built and cultivated a scalable, server-less, platform for businesses to protect data, create and leverage a pre-built library smart contract ecosystem of general purpose languages (Java, Python, C#, Node.js), and provide project incubation for future tokenization ecosystems.

Why you should keep an eye on it

Dragonchain has already had a Cinderella run since its ICO close back in 2017, surging nearly 64x and passing the market cap billion mark. However, it’s not finished just yet. In Q1 of 2018, Dragonchain is set to roll out smart contract protocols and APIs, launch a third incubator project ICO pre-sale for companies, and a commercial serverless platform, all well-timed with an upsurge of cloud computing and blockchain solutions looking to move beyond the proof-of-concept stage.

3. OmiseGO ($OMG)

What is OmiseGO?

Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood supported, and sporting the slogan “unbank the banked,” OmiseGO is Thai-based Omise’s blockchain project and an Ethereum-rooted financial technology allowing “real-time, peer-to-peer value exchange and payment services.” Simply put, OmiseGO is set to disrupt traditional financial institutions by providing an all-in-one, agnostic, financial clearinghouse for peer-to-peer exchange across jurisdictions, organizations, fiat money, and decentralized currencies.

Why you should keep an eye on it

OmiseGO seeks to revolutionize our financial ecosystem as we know it, establishing a borderless, singular global currency, connecting the world at the drop of a dime. Their 2018 roadmap includes the continued growth of strategic partnerships (not already including McDonald’s, Bose, Allianz, and Thai Airways), wallet release, and an up and running proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism.

On December 30th, 2017 OmiseGO founder Jun Hasegawa tweeted, “My first milestone for Q1 2018 will be secure [sic] enough transactions for #OMG network validators (OMG token holders) for participate [sic] OMG PoS,” linking to their blog’s December, 6th article on network staking returns.

4. Kucoin Exchange/Kucoin Shares ($KCS)

What are Kucoin Shares?

Founded in 2011, it wasn’t until early 2017 that this Hong Kong-based digital exchange came into the crypto forefront, quickly becoming one of Asia’s highest trafficked exchanges. Distinguishing itself from the likes of Poloniex, Kraken, and Bittrex, Kucoin touts itself as “the people’s exchange,” implementing a daily incentive bonus for users holding Kucoin Shares $KCS), the exchange’s token, equal to 50% of the total daily trading fees.

Why you should keep an eye on it

While other exchanges are closing new registrations, Kucoin’s doors remain open, welcoming over 30,000 new users at the start of January, and boasting a trading volume of over $135 million USD.

With increasing volume and reputability amongst exchanges, Kucoin’s token, KCS, is an attractive option for investors looking to diversify their portfolio, due to daily payouts in the form of whichever coin or token was traded that day. As a liquidity attraction tool, KCS incentivizes increased volume and liquidity, resulting in increased payouts for KCS holders and a “sky is the limit” opportunity (depending on the exchange’s growth).

5. UFO Coin ($UFO)

What is UFO Coin?

Although the name seems silly, and an ode to our intergalactic friends, UFO is actually short for Uniform Fiscal Object, a “decentralized peer-to-peer protocol” authorizing the safe transfer of value on a global scale. UFO coin utilizes Neoscrypt, a next generation proof of work (PoW) algorithm enabling for stronger and more efficient encryption, by adding an extra layer of protection and security to the network. On top of heightened resistance to brute force attacks, Neoscrypt reduces computational resources and costs, creating a lightning fast network, with low transaction fees, ultimately leading to a seamless transfer of value.

Why you should keep an eye on it

2017 proved UFO to be much more than a gimmick or silly cryptocurrency, as it made significant strides towards catching up with present Bitcoin technology through their implementation of features such as dynamic transaction fees, faster synchronization, and improved signing security.

In 2018, UFO aims to unveil a new client every month until its on par with “the first decentralized digital currency,” and has two upcoming forks, most notably, their CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (CLTV) fork. CLTV eliminates transaction hash malleability and establishes a secure payment channel between merchants and customers, a key issue that plagued disgraced Japanese Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, further readying UFO for launch on other exchanges and significant growth in 2018.

6. NEO ($NEO)

What is NEO?

Formerly known as “AntShares,” NEO, like Ethereum, is China’s answer to utilizing blockchain technology to digitize assets, automate those assets, and establish a “smart” economy across a distributed network. Although both NEO and Ethereum are open source, fueled by crypto-assets (GAS for NEO, Ether for ETH), and designed to host smart contracts, DApps, and ICOS, where NEO separates itself from Ethereum is in its accommodation of governmental regulation and staying regulatory compliant.

Smart economies will leverage digitized physical assets (houses, gold, food, and anything you can think of) allowing individuals and companies to sell and trade them via smart contracts, and thus subject to government regulation. NEO accounts for all of this by providing a regulatory compliant platform for verifiable digital identities and digital asset certificates.

Why you should keep an eye on it

NEO is on the rise, and it has been for quite some time. If history has taught us anything, it’s that protectionism is deeply rooted in the Chinese economy, and…it’s working. Ali Baba has drastically closed the gap with Amazon, and WeChat has overwhelmingly cornered the Chinese social media market, highlighting an inclination to favor Chinese technology, networks, and goods, over outside forces.

When China, and its 1.4 billion strong population, decides to utilize blockchain technology, and it’s looking quite soon, NEO’s interconnected network, impressive partnerships, and vow of governmental compliance, could potentially catapult it into top spot as China’s smart economy. And, for investors looking for passive income, NEO pays out dividends in the form of GAS, an alternate token, and fee, paid to the Blockchain for consummation of resources, which can be exchanged for other tokens and coins.

7. EOS ($EOS)

What is EOS?

Hailed as the “Ethereum Killer,” EOS is a consensus blockchain operating system and architecture enabling the vertical and horizontal scaling of DApps, providing accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous applications, and the scheduling of applications, which fundamentally improves the efficiency of smart business development.

Unlike Ethereum, transactions on the EOS Blockchain don’t have to queue and are all processed simultaneously (not sequentially), empowering the rapid deployment of thousands of DApps, the elimination of user fees, and ability to execute millions of transactions per second. For reference, Ethereum’s highest number of transactions in a day was roughly 1.4 million on January 4th, 2018.

Why you should keep an eye on it

Although the EOS ICO began all the way back in July 2017, it hasn’t actually ended, with a set end date scheduled for July 2018. The EOS ICO is unique in the way that it spans 341 days, with hopes of encouraging users and investors to familiarize themselves with the project before hastily investing. To date, EOS has raised over $700 million USD, with over $1 billion as the end goal.

What’s worth noting about the EOS team is their CTO, Dan Larimer, is an established and accomplished visionary in the blockchain world, known for founding blockchain-based financial real-time platform, BitShares, and blockchain social media and blogging platform, Steemit. As a blockchain veteran, Larimer has identified core weaknesses in various blockchain platforms and helped solve them through EOS delegated PoS, effective scaling, and software interoperability, causing some to wonder if EOS could actually be the true “Ethereum Killer” in 2018.

8. Universa ($UTN)

What is Universa?

Universa is a blockchain cryptographic protocol using a distributed state ledger and contract execution machine aiming to improve on Bitcoin and Ethereum technologies, with an emphasis on token representation and contractual agreements. Where Universa differs from traditional blockchains, which predominantly transact in currencies, is in their tokenization of the real sector of the economy, allowing you to put real-world assets on the Blockchain; ranging from passports to gym memberships, to bus tickets and taxi fares.

Additionally, Universa sports high-speed transactions (up to 22,000 per second), coupled with “enormously low” costs (roughly ten times cheaper than Ethereum’s), making it a promising alternative to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Why you should keep an eye on it

With a successful, $28 million USD, ICO in early December, 2017, numerous awards and recent Chinese partnerships, superior transaction speeds with low (fixed) costs, and backing by a seasoned team and advisory board, including Lithuanian venture investor and CEO, Alexander Borodich, Universa has fortified an exciting 2018 ahead.

9. Espers ($ESP)

What is Espers?

One area still undeveloped in the blockchain ecosystem is the hosting of websites on the blockchain itself. Espers is the blockchain project and concerted effort of crypto enthusiasts and collective, Cryptocoderz, offering secured messaging and the hosting of websites on the Espers Blockchain. The Espers Blockchain seeks to act as a safe harbor for websites, revolutionizing current website safety and security standards, all while supporting expedited server times and the assurance your website will never be taken down or removed, for example, due to government censorship.

Why you should keep an eye on it

Espers have a big road ahead in 2018, still having yet to put out their white paper and a mobile client, but prioritized for Q1 of 2018. Most notably, Espers is a hybrid Proof-of-work (PoW) and Proof-of-stake (PoS) system, almost entirely eliminating the chance of a 51% network attack, and giving users the option of whether they want to mine Espers, or stake it. This hybrid system creates a harmonious balance by preventing potential PoW centralization, and unequal early adopter staking rewards. Moreover, users have reported up to 25% staking returns per year, making it a great coin for passive income.

Espers also support an extremely active and supportive community, and developers can be found answering questions on their Discord channel daily. As one of the only cryptocurrencies using a hybrid PoW and PoS, 30 million USD market cap, and growing daily volume, Espers has a promising 2018 ahead.

Note of caution: When buying Espers, steer clear of the exchange, YoBit.net, who is running the old Espers chain (ESP1), which is no longer associated with Espers.

10. DeepBrain Chain ($DBC)

What is DeepBrain Chain?

Based on the NEO Blockchain, DeepBrain Chain is the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) computing blockchain, distributing computational power, costs, and requirements for AI across the world. As a decentralized neural network, DeepBrain Chain leverages blockchain technology to provide low-cost, flexible, private, and secure AI computing to meet worldwide enterprise demand, all while acting as a secure data trading platform and establishing a clear separation of data usage and ownership rights.

Why you should keep an eye on it

There’s no question about the global push for AI, with a June 2017 report by McKinsey affirming such, noting, in 2016 companies invested between $26 billion USD to $39 billion USD and an estimated compound annual growth rate ranging from 20 percent to 63 percent over the next 3 years. Additionally, between 2012 and 2016 the global AI market saw an increase of over 5,000 AI startups. If you’re curious about AI market predictions, here’s a compiled list of forecasts from venture capitalists, technology execs, and market research firms, with some valuing AI as a trillion dollar industry by 2035.

As of January 11th, 2017, DeepBrain Chain’s market cap stands at $350 million USD, all with minimal marketing and exposure. They were awarded first prize (of 30 participants) in the enterprise sector of SMP2017 – a Chinese man-machine evaluation contest, boast such corporate clients as Microsoft, Siemens, and Samsung, and just recently went live on Chinese exchange Huobi, all pointing towards it being substantially undervalued at present and a sleeping giant of 2018.

Disclaimer: We are stating our vision and opinions, we are not giving you financial advice and if you invest in this project it is your full responsibility. You are investing at your own risk. Always invest only what you can afford to lose and try to diversify your investments. Finally, do your own homework and learn about the project use case, roadmap and team.

The post 10 Altcoins and Tokens To Keep an Eye on in January 2018 appeared first on ChipIn.

After much hype and interest around Universa’s innovative approach to smart contracts, not least because it counts famous tech businessman John Mcafee among its advisors, the team managed to run a slick coin offering that raised over USD$28,5 million, far outdoing its soft cap of USD$10 million. While it did not fulfill its ambitious hard cap of USD$99 million, the fantastic rise in the price of Ethereum over the last month should help to reinforce the team’s budget to move the project forward.

Universa is no small endeavor.

The team is developing its own blockchain with the intent of greatly improving the capabilities offered by the likes of the Bitcoin and Ethereum chains. For starters, the Universa ecosystem will allow for transactions over a thousand times faster than Bitcoin, at ten thousand transactions per second. That is five times faster than the traditional system used by Visa for bank transactions. According to the team, the network will require near-zero transaction costs as it does not operate with mining.

The project has rallied massive community support, now counting well over 700,000 users and growing, which gives it a great base to continue to develop its services.

The team led by founder and CEO Alexander Borodich has not sat idle over the holiday season. The self-proclaimed “workaholics” maintain weekly reports on their work and it seems like things are moving quickly.

Just a week after the ICO, Universa reportedly won the Blockchain Startup 2017 award in a ceremony in Russia. The following week, the project was awarded the 1st place at the IX Worldwide IR Case Competition. Almost simultaneously, Alpha Bank, Russia’s largest private commercial bank has agreed to integrate the Universa money transfer platform with its systems for a pilot program, in a similar way Ripple has been adopted by many banks in Asia. Also, Voskhod, Russia’s first legally approved cryptocurrency exchange has also negotiated the integration of UTN, Universa’s token, in its listings.

Universa’s Russian relationships don’t stop there either. Mr. Borodich has been in negotiations with the local leaders of the Samara region in Russia eyeing the use of the Universa blockchain in the region’s public services. Further, the team is collaborating with the Russian Association of Crypto Currency and Blockchain to develop the Cryptorouble, a state-backed cryptocurrency that could become of common use in Russia in the coming years.

Read our Interview with Universa CEO Alexander Borodich

The team’s Asian division has also been working hard on building partnerships over the last couple of weeks. After holding a number of roadshows through some of China’s biggest cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Huchzhou, a number of partnership agreements were signed, including the intent to create a Blockchain Association and a Blockchain Academy in China.

Most importantly, a partnership penned between Beijing Kuyshu Quantum Technologies Co and Universa opens the door for the Russian startup to establish offices in Beijing. This could significantly increase the project’s exposure and outreach to established businesses. The team is reportedly also holding negotiations in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Monaco, Belarus, the Isle of Man, and the United Arab Emirates.

Now with established offices in Moscow, Universa will open a Belarus branch by mid-January, in what can only be described as a very intense expansion strategy.

All this represents welcome news for Universa investors. The company’s expansion within Russia and in major consumer markets like China can greatly expand its user base and reinforce the hype behind the project. However, what really matters right now is the tech itself, and there have been some interesting developments there.

In Mid-December, the team started testing a new version of its blockchain on the testnet, allowing for troubleshooting and interaction with Universa’s unique approach to smart contract design (more on that below).

At the same time, the team released the first version of Unipayments, which will work as a bridge with other blockchains for currency transaction. It also released its own exchange structure, UniXchange, which will allow for the conversion of UTNP to UTN tokens. Now, this is important. Since Universa runs its own blockchain, it can operate its tokens, UTN, on its own. However, since the blockchain is not operational yet, they have designed a mirror coin which is an ERC20 token, that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. These tokens, named UTNP, will act as placeholders for the actual UTN tokens.

Two smart contracts were designed to mirror this particularity and process the burning of placeholder tokens when the investor decides to exchange one for the other. This is made possible by the Universa Reserve System, also launched last week, which serves to assure the correct distribution of tokens as well as the free conversion between UTN and UTNP. All this has become particularly relevant as Universa has just announced last week the beginning of the token distribution for investors. That is to say, Universa is evolving at neck-breaking speed.

All of these developments serve the purpose of putting together a blockchain structure that is cheaper and faster than the ones that exist today through an innovative iteration into the designing of smart contracts.

Universa is trying to accomplish this by limiting the information inscribed in the blockchain and confirmed by the nodes to the current state of the contracts and the current account balances, rather than all the transaction history in the network, as currently happens with Bitcoin, for example.

The rest of the information is stored in the Universa Secure Signed Document Service, which the team has dubbed Notary Cloud. This cloud can be called upon to verify all the transaction history and original contract. This means that the nodes in the network can perform a much quicker confirmation of the current state of transactions.

Perhaps the greatest cut the project envisions from the traditional blockchain architecture is the lack of need for mining. The Universa team has established a network of verified partners that are the de facto owners and operators of the nodes, rather than leaving it open to the public. These partners are then rewarded via transaction fees for their work, foregoing the need to mine as well as the massive electric power consumption that that practice demands.

The team’s strategy is based on the design of simple smart contracts that can interact with each other, rather than the compiling of massive contracts that try to do all at once. In that way, Universa provides a platform where users can create flexible smart contracts that can support digital assets that go beyond currencies, like car smart keys, digital passports or intellectual property documents. In this way, the platform has the potential to take blockchain technology applicability to the next level and, at the speed the team is working, that might happen sooner than expected. Stay tuned for our upcoming interview with Universa’s CEO!

The post Universa ICO Successfully Concluded as Team Moves Ahead at Fast Pace appeared first on ChipIn.

This will be done by improving smart contracts and the tokenization process. Blockchains today work in tandem with cryptocurrencies, but Universa wants to change that by making the blockchain more accessible and practical to the public as well as increasing the use of blockchains by businesses.

The platform will support the tokenization of anything such as passports, taxi fares, gym memberships, or even your house keys! Aside from making smart contracts work even quicker (and smarter) in Universa, the platform wants to get rid of mining which wastes a lot of energy to process transactions. Like Ethereum, the Universa platform works similarly in a sense that other cryptocurrencies can be built on the Universa blockchain without any problems.

We recently sat down with Alexander Borodich, the CEO of Universa to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

I am a technology investor, the founder and managing partner of VentureClub, investor in more than 90 startups, the former head of marketing at Mail.ru group, Russia’s largest IT company. Universa Blockchain Platform – is the reinvention of protocol to democratize the cost of the transactions and usefulness of blockchain.

While Bitcoin reinvented gold, we reinvented Money and create Smart Money. We have a working technology for New Generation of Blockchain for apps/enterprises(crypto protocol 1000x faster than Bitcoin/Ether, 100x cheaper, zero-knowledge cryptography inside) and an excellent team.

The blockchain industry is currently fairly basic, – it didn’t exist at all when we started working on the Universa project! This year, excitingly, blockchain has seen a real breakthrough. However, it hasn’t yet resulted in the formation of legal structures and regulations in this sphere – which severely slows down the blockchain platforms development. In fact, the creation of a blockchain institution is precisely what we are trying to accomplish.

With its incredibly low cost and high transaction speed, Universa will help the network economy make a huge leap from the Middle Ages, so to speak, to the industrial economy. You could say this is an Industrial Revolution for smart contact and e-payments, and that’s where Universa intends to become one of the leaders.

Yes, it`s pretty impressive but luckily also very straightforward. First of all, we don’t have mining. And Universa is using multiply blockchain connections and can work with any blockchain platform, storing only hashes from the important data – that’s why it is so cheap and fast.

You’re exactly right about mining! Firstly, we need to specify why exactly we need mining in the first place. The mining process serves two purposes: it confirms the fact that a particular node has performed the verification, and adds value to this answer, which altogether makes it unprofitable for the miner to perform the checking incorrectly. This results in the vast mining cost, much higher if compared to the cost of the actual checking process. These goals can be achieved in a less extravagant, expensive way, which is precisely what Universa offers.

Specifically, to know the result of the verification performed by a particular node of some document, it’s enough to refer to the node one more time; in our system, each node confirms its verification result during the document validity period on request.

In order to make it unprofitable for the node to falsify the checking, we economically deprive it of such option – fake checking will not bring any profit to the node, for it will not meet the obligatory consensus of 90%, and vice versa: a node systematically issuing incorrect answers, will be discovered by robots at other nodes and then disconnected from the network, losing its expensive license, along with the profits from turnover.
So, it’s more profitable for a node with high performance to buy several licenses and process a lot of transactions rather than trying to forge solutions. It is all like mining, but with no mining present! In technical terms, we have optimized the system and introduced a positive feedback between the node operation consistency and its profit. These types of systems guarantee the fastest growth.

Editors Pick: Universa ICO

Universa – The Fastest and Smartest Customizable Blockchain Protocol for Business

Posted: October 27, 2017

The blockchain is set to be the most important innovation of the 21st century. With Bitcoin and Ethereum, individuals can finally have digital currencies that are not only capable of replacing traditional money, but also utilize the benefits of the blockchain in many programs and applications. There are, however, several

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Luckily we have systems in place to deal with issues like this. The network architecture allows for the unlimited amplification of each node to process any transactions flow, only limited by the Internet traffic capacity. As the nodes load increases, the owner will connect more and more servers that will process transactions in parallel, but within the same node, using such familiar mechanisms as sharding and load balancing. Think of it as a well-organized web service: if you need to process a huge number of requests, you connect hundreds or even thousands of servers to the balancer and get any capacity level required.

The possibilities of applying Universa to the field of IoT are as diverse as the Internet of things itself. The main advantage of Universa is that the client can easily be located not only in the IoT master controller but also in many target devices.

For example, the door lock/pay gate/cabinet lock checks the user’s hotel or SPA center card (or mobile phone with NFC) of the hotel, SPA center, while checking the user’s current contract, which has been issued, paid in the system of and certified by Universa. Similarly, you could apply this to the ignition switch in a rental car.
Regarding management of shared/sold separate resources (for example, a laundry unit, sauna, etc.), said client could be placed in something as small as a switch or card reader. It will be slightly more costly, but completely autonomous.

I think that the happiest moment of the Universa project is yet to come. It feels like we’re only just getting started. It’s really exciting to be here at the forefront of the industry, and I can’t wait to be part of new developments. As for problems, the development of the blockchain industry as a whole is where the issues are! At the moment, the absence of legal frames doesn’t allow us to implement all our plans, which is one of the most frustrating aspects of the project.

It’s not as large as it seems! For example, Iota has 2,779,530,283 MIOTA tokens supply. Many others have the same target as us or higher. The goal was determined by the Universa blockchain platform potential itself and vision to create the best worldwide Blockchain Platform.

Advisor John McAfee

It’s actually not a very exciting story! The McAfee venture fund was looking for a blockchain platform for issuing its own cryptocurrency, and of all the solutions on the market, Universa turned out to be the most attractive one.

But we’re thrilled that John McAfee has become our advisor, it’s great to have such a prestigious and innovative figure working with us.

The biggest obstacle to any technological revolution is the attitude of society and governments, who are traditionally suspicious of innovations. We see this with our own work – the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies provokes more mistrust, stemming from ignorance about the technology. People tend to judge negatively what they fail to understand, and this is our biggest problem when it comes to using cryptocurrencies.

Our biggest aim is to become one of the few key protocols, which, on the one hand, state and industrial blockchain will be built on, and on the other hand, a decentralization system of P2P transactions, communication, and interaction in a new decentralized economy will exist on.

An average day consists of a bunch of business meetings. I’ve also been teaching for a while now, which I love. I speak at the field-specific meetings of the ordinary business level, and also at the meetings with the government representatives. So, to do everything I’ve planned, I need to schedule as many meeting during one day in one particular city as possible. It’s pretty hectic!

The blockchain is a technological revolution at its early stage of development, but soon it’s going to enter everyone’s daily life. This is an open field, ripe for innovation and the introduction of new systems that will form the basis of commerce, business, and management, implemented on a global scale. It will be shaping society and human culture for the next few years, decades and beyond. It’s fascinating to be part of something this big.

That concludes our Interview with Alexander Borodich

We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.

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The post Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with Universa CEO Alexander Borodich appeared first on ChipIn.