High-Performance Blockchain tackles the concept of scalability from a completely different angle. Rather than just looking at the software side of things, the project also tackles the hardware aspect. To realize the optimal performance of blockchain applications, things will need to change in the near future. As such, this team is building an architecture which uses thousands of CPU and FPGA resources to create a more versatile and scalable ecosystem. There are a few aspects of the High-Performance Blockchain project to take into account. First of all, there is the chip-level acceleration engine which provides accelerated hardware chips to power this entire ecosystem. Secondly, the software side of the High-Performance Blockchain is integrated with the new dedicated hardware accelerated engine and focuses on depth and scaling customization. Third, the project claims it can produce a throughput in the millions of transactions without any major problems. While all of this sounds amazing, it is difficult to come by any real information regarding the technical aspects of either the hardware or the software side of High-Performance Blockchain. While the team mainly focuses on blockchain integration for real-world business cases, it remains to be seen how their chips will operate and how their algorithms are created. It seems the High-Performance Blockchain project is closely connected to the NEO infrastructure, which could introduce some interesting developments down the line. Building the High-Performance Blockchain infrastructure will take a lot of time and money. As such, the roadmap is filled with milestones which the team aims to achieve in the coming years. A testnet version of this project will be launched at some point in 2018, which will undergo further improvements for several months. The actual manner will launch in Q2 of 2018 if things go according to plan. However, the official version will not go live until mid-2019 at the earliest.
Blue Whale Foundation, The Decentralized Ecosystem for the Self-Employed Blue Whale is set to rock the gig economy’s boat by building a decentralized ecosystem to allow freelancers and the self-employed to reap rewards and employment benefits from their contributions Against the backdrop of technological disruption and offshoring, the “gig/sharing economy” is burgeoning globally. Freelancers will make up a whopping 58% of the US workforce by 2027. Consequently, peer-to-peer booking platforms like AirBnB and Uber have seen a meteoric rise in demand accompanying these shifts in the job market. As the definition of work changes and evolves, the difficulties encountered by freelancers and part-time workers such as the lack of protection, and the insecurity of self-employment will only worsen. This not only affects the growing mass of freelancers, but also ruptures the social contract between workers and governments. Consumer protections have also weakened because of the murky legal relationship between freelancers and their host platforms. This simmering dissatisfaction has created popular backlash, as concerned governments in several countries such as France have begun to crack down on platforms like Uber and AirBnB. Despite these worrying trends, no workable remedy has been proposed - until now. The Blue Whale Foundation’s ICO is set to rock the boat of the gig/sharing economy by leveraging on blockchain as a service to provide freelancers with employment benefits such as paid-time-off, and retirement pensions traditionally available only to salaried employees.