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Institutional Digital Asset Security: The Backbone of Crypto?
What’s the real backbone of crypto, is it the institutional digital asset?
Digital Asset Custodians like Cobo are in the limelight after high-profile assaults on crypto institutions.
Institutions must take additional steps and pay attention to workflow and power delegation to protect their assets.
Institutions play a significant role in mass-market adoption by funding R&D and promoting crypto trust.
Digital asset protection has become increasingly important in the crypto field after cybercriminals stole $1.9 billion in crypto, according to Chainalysis’ “Mid-year Crypto Crime Update”. October saw $718 million in bitcoin stolen across 11 DeFi protocols, making it the year’s most important month for crypto vulnerabilities and breaches.
Indeed, security has always been a concern for anyone entering the market, particularly when SEC chief Gary Gensler dubbed it the “wild west” of banking. Lily King, COO of crypto custody business Cobo, discussed asset security with us.
She believes web3 institutions need a mechanism to store and use digital assets. Custodian platforms are generally their initial access to assets.
Cobo delivers semi-centralized and multi-chain cross-layer decentralized custodial chains for its customers. Cobo offers centralized custody solutions for conventional institutions in partnership with Metamask Institutional.
Despite custodial remedies, crypto dangers persist. Phishing has hacked countless wallets, a harmful technique that uses social engineering to steal private keys and passwords.
Lily says private key management is crucial for people. Few individual investors know this. More time and money should be spent educating users about this. This is important to broad acceptance.”
Private keys are every crypto wallet’s lifeblood. Private keys must be kept safe and safeguarded, either by secure asset custodians or MPC (Multi-Party Computation) software, in which the user’s private key is ‘fragmented’ into shards so that security is not violated even if one key shard is compromised.
Lily explains that even successful crypto enterprises have a brief business history. “You should examine the platform’s management, business, white paper, and security more closely. Instead of APY for DeFi methods, investigate the team and firm’s tokenomics.”
Many in the sector still focus on profitability and speedy money-making, which isn’t inherently a negative thing, but it has certainly skewed the optics away from security and sustainability. Not every new DeFi protocol or project will create revenue. It needs a steady hand to secure one’s own assets from external threats and to invest in the proper locations. Lily reminds us that even on the security side, organizations have increased difficulties assuring asset security.
Institutions must pay attention to role and power delegation on a team level, says Lily. The institution must know each team member’s protocol interaction role and assign member power.
Institutions’ corporate structures are more sophisticated than regular investors’, as Lily explains. Should a team member overstep bounds or engage with protocols incorrectly, the institution as a whole might be jeopardized by external assaults.
Lily says that institutions must be proactive in developing suitable procedures and delegating roles to ensure security.
Web2 institutions convey a signal to the public, opening the road for mainstream adoption. While more web2 organizations are entering the market, such as Starbucks’ newly-launched NFT rewards program, there is still work to be done. Lily said these corporations not only support R&D, but also boost public confidence.
She remarks, “Institutions have huge resources.” Their engagement in this domain is the key to broad acceptance since their contact with digital assets may convey an essential signal that will start web3’s mass adoption.
If institutions can provide more accessible, welcoming, and safe technologies to connect the public to web3, then broad adoption is certain. More institutional presence in the domain may also spur innovation. Smaller platforms may lack the resources to promote cutting-edge research, but having universities lay the groundwork and demonstrate usefulness can drive innovation.
Lily proposes learning from web2 institutions for smaller DeFi initiatives.
“Web2 institutions have more interactions with their clients, such as monitoring their behavioral patterns and enhancing user engagement,” explains Lily. Their data and expertise may assist web3 projects to create products.
More institutional adoption may not be helpful, I suggest. Anxieties about censorship and centralization are strong, particularly after Ethereum’s latest merging, which centralized 30% of staked ETH in three organizations. Vitalik Buterin said validators that limit material “should be permitted.” 51% of Ethereum blocks were compliant with OFAC as of October 14, raising concerns about censorship.
Lily instantly responds.
She agrees that centralization is an issue.
Institutional engagement isn’t always censorship. While blockchain’s permissionless nature must be safeguarded, blockchain applications might have various objectives.
Lily says there’s always a trade-off. Institutions seeking widespread adoption must pay for compliance.
Web3 institutions seeking widespread adoption need a coordinated framework, she argues. Institutions that desire to function on a DAO framework may have space to maneuver, but only if they can show they are really decentralized.
Lily is correct that decentralization and efficiency must be balanced. She reflects the views of other industry professionals, such as Yoshi from Klaytn, who “can’t envision an efficient and totally decentralized metaverse or web3 environment”
Ensure asset security if institutions want to increase crypto use. This will restore trust and confidence in the business and enable sustainable development for those currently inside.
Lily concludes the conversation by saying, “Crypto cannot live in silos.” For crypto to thrive, actual use cases and real-world engagement are needed.
It’s an editorial. This article’s author wrote it. Before investing in crypto, readers should exercise prudence. Coinlive is not responsible for the article’s content, accuracy, quality, or any harm or loss it causes.
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DAVOS 2023: At #WEF23, policymakers and business leaders were eager to distinguish between distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies. Not crypto, but blockchain.
From climate solutions to humanitarian aid to moving on from FTX’s stunning collapse, the second day of the World Economic Forum’s 2023 annual conference saw discussions focused on the promise of the technology underlying cryptocurrencies, rather than the often speculative financial assets themselves.
The day opened with a panel of traditional banking professionals seeking to draw a line under the FTX issue, noting that, while the cryptocurrency industry is in crisis, other products founded on distributed ledger technology are not.
“It’s critical not to mix cryptocurrencies with CBDCs, stablecoins, and DLT… they’re all quite distinct,” PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman stated. Despite the bitcoin crisis, “the underlying tech has operated well,” according to Schulman.
“The promise of a distributed ledger is that it may be faster and cheaper to settle transactions concurrently with no middlemen. That is really significant.”
Importantly, unlike past waves of “blockchain, not bitcoin,” which generally referred to permissioned blockchains, the talks on Tuesday were OK with public ledgers such as Ethereum and the Stellar network. Lynn Martin, President of the New York Stock Exchange, seems to adopt a similar stance, citing the potential benefits of blockchain in making share issuance more efficient or allowing financial exchanges to be settled quickly rather than days later.
“Some of the technologies have now been embraced and used to truly make processes considerably more efficient,” Martin added.
Former Indian central bank governor Raghuram Rajan later repeated that promise of broader blockchain uses.
However, TradFi’s commitment to the industry may eventually be tested: When questioned, Schulman, Martin, and State Street’s Ronald O’Hanley all claimed artificial intelligence, not blockchain, was the most exciting technology.
Carmen Hutt, treasurer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, detailed such an application – a recently launched blockchain payment solution for distributing humanitarian aid in Ukraine – just across the street from the forum’s main congress center, in a historic church transformed into a neon hub for hosting discussions about the future.
Hutt revealed during a panel discussion hosted by CoinDesk chief content officer Michael Casey that the pilot project, which was launched in December using the blockchain platform Stellar network, is significantly more sophisticated than one might assume.
Donations via the blockchain promise “transparency and visibility,” and the Commission has a platform ready to send relief immediately, according to Hutt. “What an incredible offer… We can deploy $500 million today if we acquire $500 million. So this isn’t going to take weeks or months,” Hutt explained. (Later that day, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister praised the contribution of virtual money to the military effort.)
Further along the legendary “promenade,” industry heavyweights ranging from Solana and Ripple to the Global Blockchain Business Council teamed together to develop a climate project that would use blockchain’s transparent record-keeping to assist in improving carbon emissions and credit tracking.
Although authorities have mostly focused on the potential of crypto contagion to financial stability, a string of bankruptcies last year that wiped out billions of dollars in retail investments, most notably Sam Bankman-FTX, Fried’s may have underlined the need for a shift in their focus.
For the lone banker on the conventional finance panel, the events of 2022 must shift regulators’ focus away from the risk of lenders bringing down the whole financial system and toward the risk of individual customers being duped by crypto frauds. “It’s not that regulators have disregarded [financial innovations], but if it’s not going to generate systemic danger, I’m not sure why we should focus on it.” For More Blockchain News, Click Here.
Blockchain has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with applications spanning from new cryptocurrencies to their potential uses in various sectors, making it important for business leaders, industries, and regulators to have a deeper understanding of the technology and its potential applications.
While blockchain has yet to achieve widespread acceptance, it has the potential to drive significant digital transformative changes and generate new possibilities throughout the corporate landscape, from banking and finance to infrastructure and healthcare.
Blockchain is defined as “a distributed ledger that records transactions chronologically and publicly,” according to one source. Its database is shared across a network rather than being held in a single location, which enables a high level of information control and transaction transparency.
However, there has been so much hype surrounding blockchain on all sides of the debate, that it has become increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.
A study by Vorhaus Advisors, a Los Angeles-based digital media consulting firm, found that only 25% of people in the United States understand what blockchain is.
According to the same poll, 62% of people believe blockchain is the same as cryptocurrency, and 48% believe it is the same as bitcoin.
This lack of understanding of blockchain has caused confusion, skepticism, and fear about its use, which spreads across all sectors of industry and government, influencing not only business but also policy.
The fact is that blockchain technology has the potential to fundamentally alter how organizations and individuals trade products and information, and part of that revolution is already underway.
Blockchain has the potential to improve any business in which transactions require a permanent record and the confidence of many parties. Furthermore, it has the potential to dramatically simplify paper-intensive enterprises that require an accounting ledger.
Here are three real-world blockchain use cases to illustrate how adaptive, widespread, and disruptive it can be:
- Banking and Finance: Finance and banking have received the most attention regarding blockchain and for good reason. It’s an entirely transactional industry. For example, blockchain can convert paper-based functions such as letters of guarantee (documents provided by a bank that assure suppliers be paid for the goods or services they supply in the event that the payor is unable to pay) into a totally paperless, digital, and transparent process, helping to eradicate fraud and forgeries.
- Rethinking Healthcare: The pandemic’s unexpected demand for remote healthcare and other medical-related activities has moved the emphasis on delivering clinical treatment in a virtual or data-driven manner. As a result, the various medical data silos across healthcare providers can be integrated into a single shared blockchain network for secure and efficient data sharing.
- Supply Chain: Blockchain can also be used to improve supply chain management. A blockchain network can provide a single source of truth for the entire supply chain, from the origin of raw materials to the final delivery of goods to the customer. This can help to improve transparency, traceability, and efficiency in the supply chain.
In conclusion, blockchain is a powerful technology that has the potential to transform many industries, but it is important to separate the hype from reality. It is essential for business leaders, industries, and regulators to have a deeper understanding of the technology and its potential applications to fully harness its potential.
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According to the findings of a recent survey that was carried out by CasperLabs, it is anticipated that business adoption of blockchain technology will increase over the course of the following year in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China.
This is the case even though there are knowledge gaps.
Despite the fact that the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries have undergone significant change over the course of the past year, people and companies continue to display an interest in the area.
The results of a recent poll that was conducted by CasperLabs and Zogby Analytics revealed that businesses had a particularly upbeat outlook on the potential applications of blockchain technology.
The questionnaire was sent to a total of 603 “decision makers” employed by a variety of commercial firms in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, in that order.
Almost all of the businesses that were asked about their usage of blockchain technology responded that they did so in some form, and almost all of those businesses (87%) also stated that they intend to make financial investments in blockchain technology during the next 12 months.
This phenomenon is especially widespread in China, where more than half of the respondents want to put money into blockchain technology by the year 2023.
According to Ralf Kubli, a member of the board of directors for the Casper Association, businesses are continuing to look to blockchain technology for solutions despite the recent turbulence:
“It is incredibly heartening to see businesses recognize that blockchain technology is not a threat but rather a solution,”
Companies who are now implementing the technology are reaping the benefits of two of its primary characteristics, namely security (42%) and copy protection (42%), both of which are proving to be highly useful for these organizations.
Those who work in IT-based operations are using blockchain technology for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to improving the efficiency of internal processes (for which 40% of users employ it), improving the efficiency of supply chain operations (34% of users employ it), and improving the efficiency of software development (30% of users employ it).
According to Kubli’s projections, the year 2023 will mark a pivotal turning point for the widespread use of blockchain technology, particularly in terms of offering practical answers to real-world challenges and producing long-term value.
In spite of this, a significant study shed light on the flaws that are commonly seen in CEOs of corporations. The vast majority of respondents (73%) feel confident in their comprehension of blockchain technology.
Despite this, 54% of those who replied continue to regard the words “blockchain” and “crypto” as being identical. In spite of the fact that the vast majority of respondents feel positive about their comprehension of blockchain technology, this is the result.
In a similar vein, it has been argued that the most significant obstacles to adoption are a lack of developer talent, a lack of tools, a lack of interoperability, and pessimism regarding the industry as a whole.
All of these factors contribute to a general sense of pessimism.
In spite of this, practically all of the people who took part in the survey stated that they would be more receptive to embracing blockchain technology if they had a better grasp of how their coworkers are utilizing it.
Education, in addition to accessibility, has been a challenge and a barrier for a significant amount of time for those people outside the space who seek to interact with the technology and engage with customers. This has been the case for many different causes throughout history.
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