I am taking Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Distributed Ledger Technology being offered for the first time at University of Pennsylvania co-taught by David Crosbie from the Computer Science Department and Kevin Werbach from Wharton.  Throughout this class I have gained a balanced view and lot of hands-on in-depth experience with cryptocurrencies and blockchain.  I have purchased cryptocurrency, tumbled cryptocurrency, wrote smart contracts in Solidity, and consulted with a Consensys startup in the process of conducting an ICO. 

As a part of this class I am publishing a brief summary of why zero knowledge proofs are useful and highlighting some interesting venture backed startups that use zero knowledge proofs.   

Zero-knowledge proofs are a way for somebody to prove a (mathematical) statement without revealing any other information that leads to that statement being true.[1] A zero knowledge proof application must always return true if the input is true, not be possible to trick the proof to return an inaccurate answer, and the input should always remain a secret.  This simply means that something can be verified cryptographically by share the zero-knowledge proof without revealing what that something is.  

Every transaction of the blockchain is public and can be viewed by anyone.  People or enterprises may be wary of competitors or friends being able to see lots of data about the them based on public transactions on the blockchain. The public could see their suppliers, how much they are paying employees, and a host of other data that could be used against them.  People want the benefit of blockchain, securely verifying multi-party transactions that you may not trust, without the drawback of revealing their private data.  Zero-knowledge proofs make it possible to transfer information on a blockchain network with complete privacy.   

Some examples where zero knowledge proof could be useful are the follows:

Verify required bank balance for an auction attendee Alice. If the bank sends a letter with a digital signature to the auction with the Alice’s bank balance the bank has reduced her privacy to the auction and Alice’s bank now knows exactly what she is trying to do.  With zero knowledge proof Alice could receive a signed statement of bank balance which can be kept secret.  The attendee can build custom zero knowledge proofs as needed to verify a minimum balance and maintain privacy of her balance and her commercial intentions from her bank. 

Supply chain management is another example where individual parties may not want the exact amount paid, to whom, and when to be publicly available. This could be extrapolated to figure out when new products will launch, new materials being used, and a whole host of other information that a competitor would like to use for their own gain.  A store for example may want to verify that a manufacturer has enough raw materials to handle their order.  However, the manufacture will not want to share exactly how much raw material they have as it will impact pricing.  Zero knowledge proof will allow this verification to occur by proving cryptographically at least a certain amount of raw materials privately. 

The concept of Zero Knowledge was first proposed in 1985 by Shafi Goldwasser et all in the paper, “ The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems”.[2]     The zk-SNARK protocol  (zero-knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) allows for the sender/receiver and amount of transactions to be hidden from the shared public ledger while still being able to prove mathematically that the transactions are accurate. This protocol also introduces innovations that reduced the size of the proofs and the computational effort needed to verify them. These advancements allowed zero-knowledge proofs to be used on a blockchain.   

A known challenge with zk-snarks is the trusted setup process.  “The setup is a process where the CRS (Common Reference String) is generated, or more publicly known as the pair of proving and verification keys.”[3] If the trusted setup is compromised and the pair of proving and verification keys are known one could create as many correct proofs as desired. This is an active research area where solutions or ways to manage the setup process have and are still being developed.    

Zcash is one of the first widespread application of zk-snarks.[4] Zcash is a cryptocurrency that shields addresses and their associated balances on the blockchain.  Z cash is the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency as of writing has a market cap of $418,469,638.  [5]

Below I will highlight a few interesting startups that are at the bleeding edge leveraging zero-knowledge proofs.

QEDIt –  is an Israeli startup that created an SDK for zero-knowledge proofs so that enterprises can easily deploy zero-knowledge proof blockchains. The companies claims that the SDK is adaptable to every blockchain stack.   In March 2018 QED it raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital. The team has Professor Zohar who is a leader in cryptography and cryptocurrency and two serial entrpreneurs one of which created the first Bitcoin exchange in Israel Bitgold.   A use case of QEDIt is instead of auditors overseeing due diligence for a financial transactions companies could transact directly and share proof of data accuracy being requested utilizing zero-knowledge proofs without revealing the underlying data. 
To address the trusted setup process QEDIt uses  a multi-party computation process where to ensure proofs aren’t forged. More detail on this here. 

Starkware– is an Israeli startup founded by the team that created Zcash. Starkware and just raised $30M dollars from a group of prominent venture capitalists including Sequoia and Atomico to name a couple.   Starkware is commercializing the zk-STARK and it claims to be addressing scalability, privacy, and will not require a trusted setup.  The company website states plans to “software and hardware to support fast and reliable generation and verification of computational integrity proofs for general computations.”

AZTEC –  a London based startup received $2.1M in seed financing on Thursday November 29th with the round led by Consensys labs.  The startup is working to leverage zk-snarks to make Ethereum transactions private and 2 times faster so that financial institutions and other enterprises can more comfortably use Ethereum.  Consensys says AZTEC is close to production and is one of the most efficient in terms of gas costs.

Zero-knowledge proofs hold a lot of promise for a lot of applications. It allows control of one’s data while still being able to provide trust to parties interact with while maintaining privacy.  There is a lot of innovation happening in this space and I am excited to see how this space evolves. 


[1] Narayanan et al, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technology,186.
[2] Shafi Goldwasser et al, “The Knowledge Complexity of  Interactive Proof Systems”, http://people.csail.mit.edu/silvio/Selected%20Scientific%20Papers/Proof%20Systems/The_Knowledge_Complexity_Of_Interactive_Proof_Systems.pdf (accessed December 2, 2018).
[3] Gurkin Kobi, “Creating fakezkSnark proofs”,https://medium.com/qed-it/how-toxic-is-the-waste-in-a-zksnark-trusted-setup-9b250d59bdb4 (accessed December 2, 2018).
[4] “What are zk-snarks?” http://z.cash/technology/zksnarks (accessed December 2, 2018)
[5] https://coinmarketcap.com/

Have you been at a party and seen someone ask Alexa or Siri to play happy birthday?  Have you wondered how voice and intelligent assistants will evolve?  There are plenty of projections on the future of voice. For example, Comscore states that 50% of searches will be voice by 2020 or that that 55% of US households will own a smart speaker by 2022 according to OC&C Consultants.  The 2018 Voice Summit was held at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark New Jersey.  I attended the summit to cut through the hype and find out how enterprises are using voice technology currently. 

The voice ecosystem is maturing and there is around 95% speech recognition accuracy due to improvements in machine learning techniques, computer performance, and better methods for training Deep Neural Networks.  Voice enabled hardware like Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, and Google Home are readily available.  The software building blocks and platforms for easy app development are there for developers to create killer applications.  Voice enabled devices are expanding to include cars and wearables in addition to mobile devices and smart speakers.
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A Leaders in Voice Panel with Heidi Culbertson CEO of Ask Marvee, Cathy Pearl Head of Conversation at Google, Chiori Hori Principal Research Scientist at Mitsubishi, Brooke Hawkins Content Designer at Nuance, and Justina Nguyen Developer Evangelist at Dashbot was moderated by Bradley Metrock executive producer of the Alexa conference provided a lot of insight around this space. 

Key areas for voice in the enterprise are productivity and concentration monitoring of enterprise workers.  Workers that can use both hands on their task and can use voice to control certain tasks have seen increased productivity.  Some use cases are booking meetings via calendar app, starting a conference call, entering data into multiple systems without going to multiple windows, and checking inventory to name a few.  New custom Google Actions and Alexa skills are being developed everyday as enterprises are realizing the power of voice control beyond speech to text for typing.  
Nevertheless, there are many concerns that need to be addressed as voice control becomes more commonplace in organizations.  Speech recognition accuracy reduces significantly for non-native English speakers, accents, and speech impediments. Accuracy also goes down in noisy environments.  Another concern is the slow adoption of additional languages support.  Training speech recognition algorithms on data that represents all potential speakers in non-ideal conditions in a variety of languages can help improve this. 

Some organizations haven’t utilized intelligent assistants because of security or privacy concerns around conversations being captured and stored for targeted ads, building profiles, and other unknown reasons.  A talk by Joshua Montgomery CEO of Mycroft an open source voice enabled speaker, presents a great option for organizations with these concerns that don’t want to miss on the voice user interface.  The Mycroft smart speaker doesn’t store any of your data, is customizable, and plans to do all voice processing on device and could be used to create an end to end encrypted on premise voice solution.   Another private by design voice assistant and platform to mention is Snips. 

Voice is here.  This user interface won’t replace all other technologies. Rather like human conversation users will choose the best interface for each situation.  Healthcare is a vertical with a lot of voice enabled innovations as patients that can’t move or have pain with movement is a use case where voice control is a must have.  We are excited to see many more use cases and businesses that leverage voice as a user interface in the enterprise. 
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 T​he media glorifies the win and an overnight success story.  When an entrepreneur has a big exit or lands a big customer or deal it is all over the blogs and your social media feeds.    According to Lisa Amos, “ entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence.”   
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Lets dive into persistence.  Entrepreneurs put their time, heart, soul, and money into their ventures.  So, when the response to your product or service is grim it can be devastating.  Every successful entrepreneur has experienced this.  Some are able to continue to learn and grow until they land on something that works.  That thing could be your same product with a different market or it could be a completely different venture all together. 
  
Here are a couple of stories of founders that persisted until success.    
After graduating from college, Max Levchin moved to Silicon Valley to start yet another company.  He had an idea for security software for the much hyped Palm Pilot.  He soon discovered there was no demand for this idea.  While, living on his friend’s floor he iterated his idea many times until he came to a way to securely transfer cash between Palm Pilots.  He built a web demo to demonstrate the capabilities for a Palm pilot and the web demo got
​ more traction than the actual product.  We know the rest of story resulting in the uber successful Paypal which was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. 

Another entrepreneur that persisted to success is Raymond Rouf of GraphScience.  Raymond started his first two companies right after college, both of which grew to modest sizes before imploding.    During the process of starting his third company GraphScience, Rouf went more than two years without income, the plumbing in his house wasn’t working and he was showering at the gym.  GraphScience became one of the top Facebook analytics companies in the world and was acquired by Centro in 2015 for an undisclosed amount. 

The reality is that for most entrepreneur’s the journey to success is not a straight line from Point A to B. There is no exact formula of how to keep going as each person and situation is different.  Here are four things I’ve learned through my own entrepreneurial experiences and watching phenomenal entrepreneurs around me push through to success. 
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1. Find community with people that you feel comfortable sharing with and that can relate. Talking to people that understand and can provide advice and introductions is key to soldiering on.  
2. Learn from each setback. Don’t keep repeating the same thing expecting different results.  With each iteration think strategically about what to change or try differently next time.    
3. Give it time.  Things usually take longer than you think to happen. 
4. Stay positive.  Find balance and encouragement to keep going from exercise, dancing, camping, or whatever helps you reset.   ​

Keep going.  Persist.  Iterate, learn, and grow.  Great success is in front of you!  

As technology evolves we are amazed at what is possible.  With technological advances comes an increase in the amount and type of personal information or data being stored on servers that can be subpoenaed, sold to third parties, or leaked to the media at any time.  Most people are not willing to forgo the conveniences afforded by new technology.  What can be done to protect your data and privacy while still enjoying the capabilities of new technology?  Here is a list of best practices for improving your data privacy. 
1. Don’t wait for a catastrophe to think about privacy
Most individuals or businesses think about privacy after something really bad happens. After the Snowden leak in 2014 many privacy enhancing technologies got a huge surge in the number of users.    Determine the best practices to follow and every week or month go through your checklist to ensure that your data is being kept private.    

2. Use services that are designed to protect user data
Tired of your every move being used to serve you relevant ads.  There are many services that are designed from the ground up to protect user data.   Here are a few examples of services that are designed to increase your privacy.  Stay up to date with technologies that provide functionality while enhancing your privacy
Secure Texting - Signal App is an open source app which fully encrypts messages end to end and doesn’t store any metadata, contact lists, or message content.  Both sender and receiver must have the signal app downloaded to realize the full privacy benefits. 
Secure phone - Blackphone is a smartphone that is designed from the ground up with privacy in mind.  A few key privacy features to mention is Internet access is provided through a virtual private network and the phone runs a secure operating system called SilentOS
Secure email - Photon mail has end to end encryption where even the company cannot decrypt and read your email.  The company is incorporated in Switzerland and all servers are in Switzerland and protected by Swiss privacy laws.  No personal information is required to create the email account.

3. Back up your data
The idea of always have a backup of your data available if you lose your phone or computer is wonderful.   Many of you have lost or broken a device and have recovered a project or book and realizes the benefit of this capability.  A personal backup is an improvement in privacy as no one else has access to your data except you.  However, this only works if you actually back up your data.  So, set a schedule and religiously back up your data.  SyncThing and BitTorrent Sync and examples of two apps that can be used to back up data from your phone to a computer.

4.  Secure Search
Often users have embraced the concept that whenever you search on the internet that ads relevant to your search will pop up in your social media feed and on your search engine.   You can use a secure search engine like DuckDuckgo which doesn’t track you and hence has no personal information to use or sell.  You can also add extensions on your web browser to block trackers and ads.  Ghostery and Privacy Badger are examples of two extensions that can be added to your browser to increase your privacy. 

Members of DAF Technologies regularly partner with businesses to utilize emerging technology to exceed their goals.  We identify opportunities for innovation, research and identify recommended emerging technologies, and pilot and integrate new technologies into business processes. Let us help you leverage artificial intelligence, internet of things, and other emerging technologies to innovate and endure. If you have questions, please contact Director, Innovation & Technology Faith Davis at 301.541.8569 or [email protected]

The movie Hidden Figures depicts the story of three African American women mathematicians and human computers that were key to John Glenn’s first orbit around the Earth.   This story is extremely interesting to me because my first job as an engineer was working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.   There weren’t any computers that took up the size of a room, women wearing a string of pearls and a calf length skirt making launch and landing calculations, or segregated work units or bathrooms. 

Katherine Jackson (Taraji Henson) calculated the precise reentry requirements to ensure John Glenn didn’t burn up on reentry, and landed in the right spot to be rescued upon landing safely.   She was only brought on to the project as a last resort and endured many challenges from her coworkers as she tried to do her job.  Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) was a supervisor of the West Area Computers an all black female computing group.  When NASA brought in the first IBM computer she had the insight and skill to learn how to operate it and taught herself and the entire group Fortran programming. This computer was used to verify the calculations that sent John Glenn into orbit.

These are two examples of phenomenal minds that people at NASA worked very hard to try and hide.  An organization that was racing to do the impossible that didn’t have the best minds with the best conditions working to solve the problems.   How much faster could we have gotten to space if the team of scientists and engineers collaborated openly with Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) instead of trying to block them? Would NASA have beat the Russians into space if ALL of the best and brightest minds were being used from the beginning?  
I am constantly thinking of how organizations can be more innovative.  Starting with the best team you can attract seems like a simple first step. However, companies today are still blocking talent.  I believe people that try to progress by pushing others down do so from a place of fear.  Fear that there is not enough recognition, opportunity, or because they are oppressed by another person/group and now cherish the opportunity to be on top.  When we make it hard for people of a certain race, sex, or age to use their brain to solve problems for our company and we are preventing innovation. 
Hidden Figures was a different story about different heroines and resulted in the #1 movie in the box office over the weekend raking in $22.8 dollars. Willow breast pump, a quiet hands free breast pump that can be worn under the bra,  received best wearable and best health and fitness gadget at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas last week.  A different product for a different audience that was a winner.  Let’s help our companies innovate and endure by attracting and utilizing the best talent for your company.  The world needs the new products for different problems and your company needs the breakout successes.    

This is the time of year when we pause to give thanks.  Advances in technology have made life easier.   Many of the luxuries that were reserved for the few are now available to the masses as a result of technology.  In the past, only a few people were able to afford a personal assistant.  Advances in artificial intelligence has made it affordable and easy.  There are assistants like Amy Ingram at a.xi or Clara of Clara Labs that handle all the details of scheduling meetings utilizing an artificial intelligence bot. 

There are also voice controlled personal assistants like Alexa and Google Home that allow you to control your home.  While your hands are busy preparing dinner you can still be the perfect host for your guests.  You can use your voice to play music, cast videos to your TV, or order a pizza while they wait.    

These same conveniences are available on the go as mobile devices today have sensors, GPS, and computing power that surpasses capabilities of computer from years ago.  So, this holiday, be thankful, you can tell your assistant to order, pay, and deliver your groceries instead of standing in those long lines at the grocery store. 

Homes now include lots of internet enabled sensors and the ability to control and monitor your home remotely.  No need to worry what you left the thermostat on or whether the front door is locked once you get to your parents’ house.  You can easily control all those things from your mobile device and focus on watching the football game and enjoying all the festivities. 

Once you’ve eaten one plate too many during Thanksgiving your wearable device will make it easy for you to know  how many steps you need to walk to be sure you can  fit into your outfit for the office holiday party next week.  Let’s continue to utilize the new capabilities that are available to make our lives and businesses run as efficiently and effectively as possible.   Happy Thanksgiving! 

Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzzword that is heard frequently in the media. There are various projections for the number of connected devices and the size of the IoT market in the future.  One thing that is unanimous is that it will be gigantic.  The vision is a world where everything will be connected aggregating sensor data and taking action anytime anywhere. 

What does this mean for my company?   Many wonder is this all hype.   Currently, many business are improving their capabilities with automation and predictive maintenance which helps the business operate more efficiently.  For example, Cantaloupe Systems automates vending machine operations, from optimizing service schedules, restocking levels, merchandising, and repairs. This company has outfitted 100,000 vending machines with wirelessly connected sensors which allows their customers to easily manage, monitor, and optimize vending operations from anywhere on any device.

Innovative companies are rethinking their core business with internet of things technologies in mind.  This is leading to new intelligent digital products and services.  An example is Michelin, which historically sold standard tires.  The company added internet enabled sensors to their tires which collect data on fuel consumption, tire pressure, temperature, speed and location.  Now, Michelin is able to provide new intelligent digital products and services like fuel consumption reduction service and tires as a service.  The fuel consumption reduction service uses data from tire sensors along with analytics to coach truck drivers on how to save fuel.  Michelin is also using a new business model to sell tires based on the actual mileage driven.  This allows drivers or fleet managers to pay per mile rates based on what they’ve actually driven and reduce costs and unpredictable tire expenses.    

How could Internet of Things make your business more efficient and produce savings?  What new intelligent digital products or services could your company provide with Internet of Things technologies?
 
Members of DAF Technologies regularly partner with organizations to accelerate their innovation initiatives.   We identify opportunities for innovation, research and identify recommended emerging technologies, and pilot and integrate new technologies into business processes. Let us help you leverage internet of things and other emerging technologies to innovate and endure. If you have questions, please contact Director, Innovation & Technology Faith Davis at 301.541.8569 or [email protected]

The Olympics are an exhilarating time marked by competition with the best athletes in the world.  Years of training culminate in an event where the hosting country desires to provide an unforgettable experience and each athlete hopes to bring home a medal for their country.  Emerging technologies are leveraged in order to provide a world class experience surrounding the games and to be sure athletes have every legal advantage possible. 

Let’s take a look at some of the innovation in the Summer 2016 Olympics:
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3D Printed Shoes
Nike engineers worked with Allison Felix and her trainers and coaches to design a custom 3D printed sprinting shoe for her individual specifications. The spiked sole of the shoe was printed using Selective Laser Sintering 3D printer. Additionally, Adidas is providing all of their sponsored athletes that win a medal ready-to-wear shoes with a 3D printed midsole and heel counter.  

Wearable technology
Wearables have gotten to a point where they can be used in real time without interfering with the athletes sport.  This allows athletes and coaches to quantify performance in real time,  gain better understanding, and make adjustments to yield optimal results.  
The US Women’s volleyball team has been wearing a VERT jump monitor around players’ waists during training to calculate their jump heights and counts.  This information is used to limit the number of player jumps and help prevent injury.
Solos Augmented Reality Glasses was developed alongside USA Cycling.  It provides real time data about performance, navigation, and the ability to make calls and more.    

​Mobile and Wearable Payments
Visa is the official payments partner of the Olympics and is providing their sponsored athletes with a Visa Payment ring.  The athletes can simply wave their ring near the NFC card reader to make purchases.  Everyone else will be able to, “swipe, tap, dip or click to pay in Rio” using mobile phone and payments wearables like wristbands. 
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Broadcasting Innovation
Innovation in broadcast technologies has been a part of Olympic history since the first live televised Olympics in 1936.  In Rio there will be virtual reality footage available, use of drone cameras to cover the rowing competition, and Super High Vision (8K) video.   Japan's NHK will broadcast 8K video at public broadcasting centers as regular televisions aren’t able to display 8K video yet.   

Members of DAF Technologies regularly partner with organizations to accelerate their innovation initiatives.   We identify opportunities for innovation, research and identify recommended emerging technologies, and pilot and integrate new technologies into business processes. Let us help you leverage emerging technologies to innovate and endure. If you have questions, please contact Director, Innovation & Technology Faith Davis at 301.541.8569 or [email protected]

​Internet of Things and Blockchain are two buzzwords that are heard frequently.  They come with the hope of revolutionizing the world.  The vision for the internet of things is to create a world where everything is connected aggregating sensor data and taking action anytime anywhere. There are still some challenges left to be figured out including scalability, interoperability, privacy, and security. 
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Blockchain is an immutable distributed ledger to store records of value.  This enables transparent, peer-to-peer, real-time transactions without the need for intermediaries.   The crypto currency Bitcoin is the first application of Blockchain technology.  It is just one example.  Blockchain has many use cases in addition to currency including smart contracts, insurance, and smart escrows to name a few.  

Applying Blockchain to the Internet of Things stack creates an autonomous and decentralized network, which could addresses key IoT challenges of security and privacy.   
Security Decentralized architectures improve the security of IoT deployments, since there are no accounts to be hacked and no single point of failure at which a denial of service attack can be launched.
Privacy Blockchain users are pseudonymous and can perform transactions instantly without the need for any personal authentication, which provides additional privacy.   
 
Great amounts of insight and learning come from prototypes.  Take a look at these examples of implementations of IOT and Blockchain.
ElectriCChain Solar Case Study:The ElectriCChain is an open science project dedicated to the intersection of solar energy, IoT and Blockchain technology. One of the ElectriCChain’s goals is to connect the world’s 7 million solar facilities, watching the skies 24/7 and posting live data to one Blockchain for scientists, researchers and human progress.
IBM Adept:  IBM and Samsung joined forces to create ADEPT, the Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry project. This is one of the first demonstrations, at the Consumer Electronics Show, of the vision of an Internet of Things leveraging Blockchain (Ethereum), secure messaging(Telehash), and secure file sharing (BitTorrent). 
Filament   provides the software and hardware for a secure, private, autonomous, fully decentralized communication network with free exchange of value.

Here are some Twitter accounts to follow to stay up to date on the latest with IoT & Blockchain.​
Vitalek Buterin Co-Founder Ethereum
Nick Szabo Blockchain Pioneer
Eric Jennings Filament CEO
 
Members of DAF Technologies regularly partner with organizations to accelerate their innovation initiatives.   We identify opportunities for innovation, research and identify recommended emerging technologies, and pilot and integrate new technologies into business processes. Let us help you leverage emerging technologies to innovate and endure. If you have questions, please contact Director, Innovation & Technology Faith Davis at 301.541.8569 or [email protected]
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