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We are happy to announce our newest partnership for our Driver Onboarding Process. It is YOTI- a new way to prove your identity.

DRIFE will utilize Yoti automated KYC application for making the driver ...onboarding smooth and paperless, We recognize that we have a responsibility for ensuring the integrity of our platform and safeguarding it from bad actors, so we take additional steps to ensure that the platform remains safe, trustworthy, and compliant.

https://www.drife.one/Show more >

As Genesis Week, the 7-day long boot camp under the initiative of AE Ventures comes to an end, we are so overwhelmed to announce that we have made it to the Top 7 list of STARFLEET — Vol 4. The accelerator prog...ram conducted by the prestigious AE Ventures joining hands with IBC Media is being held in Bangalore this year.

Strenuous, yet super exciting, the acceleration program facilitated an exhaustive learning experience for blockchain start-ups across the country. The program received an application from 170+ startups who have played a role in introducing blockchain technology to the Indian market and implementing them in a variety of industries.

The Selection Process
------------------------------

The projects submitted by our teams were scrutinized from all angles. Our value propositions, product development, and presentations were judged to get a hold of the company in detail. In the first stage, they were to choose from a pool of 170+ applications, the top 13 promising start-ups. The majority of the applicants were from fintech, healthcare and agritech backgrounds. Although ride-hailing start-ups on blockchain platforms were relatively rare, our team was able to substantiate how blockchain will disrupt the industry.

Keeping up with the fluctuating market trends in India, DRIFE leverages the full potential of the blockchain technology to set a new paradigm for the ride-hailing industry. Our competitors were budding enterprises with extremely talented teams of professionals, but we were positive that our team stood a huge chance at entering the top 13.

We aim to empower all parties involved in the ride-hailing process from drivers and riders to community developers. This value proposition went well with the judges, who cited this element while selecting us amongst the 13 startups that would participate in the boot camp.

...

https://medium.com/@drife_official/starfleet-4-drife-secures-spot-among-the-top-7-b20187b47279Show more >

May 8, 2:00PM to 6:30PM CEST

Virtual Conference & Demo Day of Seven Blockchain Startups Pitching LIVE for an investment
About this Event

AE Ventures, in cooperation with IBC Media, has... the pleasure to invite you to the culmination of the æternity Starfleet Acceleration Program
This edition of the Demo Day will be held as a virtual conference and in addition to the startup pitch decks, you will have the opportunity to watch keynote speeches, panel discussions, and interact with our speakers and ask them questions.
The silver lining of the conference is related to the opportunities born in the current situation of lockdown and COVID-19, exploring the concept of anti-fragile and how to thrive in chaos and disorder.

Join us on the 8th of May at 14:00 CEST from the comfort of your home and witness our 7 innovative startups showcasing their projects followed by the fantastic speaker lineup we have in store for you!

...

https://twitter.com/IBCMedia_/status/1256272140904460288

https://hopin.to/events/demo-day-starfleet-indiaShow more >

After the success of the last 3 volumes of æternity Starfleet, AE Venture brought Starfleet 4 to India.

From the 170+ early-stage startups that applied for the program, 13 startups were selected for a ...one-week-long, super-intense boot camp called Genesis Week.

Only 7 teams were shortlisted for phase two - a four-week mentoring session with the superstar mentor team of AE Ventures.

This aftermovie provides a glimpse of the atmosphere during the accelerator and the Demo day.

Special guest:

Shradha Sharma - Founder, and CEO of Your Story
Wei Zhou - Chief Financial Officer, Binance
Neeraj Khandelwal - Co-founder at CoinDCX
Prashanth Balasubramanian - CEO of Lastbit
Vivek Prakash - Leading Product at BrowserStack and Co-Founder of HackerEarth
Kartik Mandaville - CEO of Springworks
Jason Eisen - Founder & CEO at UTU Technologies
Sriram V Iyer - Vice President and App Engineering at Flipkart
Rama Devi Lanka - Director | Emerging Technologies, The Government of Telangana
Prashanth Swaminathan - Founder, Tandem
Rajesh Dhuddu - Business Head - Cybersecurity & Blockchain at Tech Mahindra


The Starfleet India Accelerator, part of the Aeternity Starfleet program, has picked up three Indian blockchain startups:

Drife
Pontis
Hypermine

and we are providing seed funding for these projects from AE Ventures, CV Labs, and Woodstock funds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3M-mm3UT7IShow more >

On August 15 2020, Drife conducted very first driver meetup with about 50 drivers. For it to be safe for everyone and close to a real event, we organized it as a Virtual meet-up. We have tackled critical points... such as what sets Drife apart from its competitors. Needless to say, the Drivers were very excited to be a part of a complete, transparent system that’s also among the Starfleet India winners!

Together with them, Drife will emerge to transform the ride-hailing industry. Our cofounder- Firdosh Sheikh (CEO) was present to personally thank everyone who contributed to make this happen. Our Driver Acquisition Team discussed major advantages of Drife platform that is both advanced, and compliant to industry standards. The Drife team also discussed the roadmap in detail.

....

https://medium.com/@drife_official/drifes-first-driver-meetup-afbf58c767e4Show more >

Drife is a decentralized ride-hailing platform which will connect drivers and riders through a mobile application. The platform deals with a whole new economic model that can incentivize all the value creators ...fairly and curb the existent intermediaries.

Ride-hailing platform works on a very broke business model of monetizing and prioritizing profit over its drivers, riders and people at large. Some major issues they face include sky-rocketing commissions that lead to unsustainable driver incomes, price manipulation and unjustified price surges, lack of loyalty and sustained incentivisation, and other centralization centric problems.

The nature of the problem we’re trying to solve requires the underlying blockchain infrastructure to be extremely scalable and fast. A ride-hailing platform is required to clock a high transaction throughput and bandwidth so as to ensure that the platform users are not faced with any latency while availing services. The platform also requires geo-location and geospatial distance data from the external world within the walled garden of a blockchain for the allocation of rides and computation of ride fare prices.

The Æternity blockchain is an Erlang-based scalable smart contract platform that has been redesigned at the protocol level to address some of the most fundamental challenges native to preceding blockchains.

The following are some major technical advantages provided by æternity that stand out for us at Drife as against the other blockchain protocols existing currently in the market.

- Oracles are fundamental to any fully functional decentralized platform that wants to fetch data from the external world. Æternity acknowledges this requirement and integrates oracle services as a part of æternity’s core blockchain protocol. Drife piggybacks on this oracle service integrated at layer 1 to save on efforts and cost of integrating a third-party oracle like Oraclize or ChainLink.

- Æternity runs on the super cool Bitcoin-NG Consensus Algorithm which is the evolved version of the Bitcoin protocol. It still uses Nakamoto consensus but separates leader election and block production by introducing two kinds of blocks called key and micro blocks. Splitting up leader election and block production allows a leader to produce micro blocks in rapid succession, increasing the transaction throughput significantly.

- Unlimited scaling is possible with lightweight and trustless off-chain state channels that are built into æternity’s first layer itself. The state-channels provide support for smart contracts and enable inexpensive private transactions through them.

....

https://medium.com/@drife_official/drife-on-%C3%A6ternity-aa26ed2aaf13Show more >

We launched a “Fireside Chat” series to share the journey of blockchain/crypto founders, & are back with another exciting session with Firdosh Sheikh, Co-Founder & CEO of Drife, a decentralized cab book...ing platform on 19th November.

https://www.facebook.com/blockchainedindia/Show more >

DRIFE CEO Firdosh Sheikh was part of a panel discussion along with Ken Rutkowski Gary West Helal Ismail Vilhelm Hedberg at the gitex technology week on Roadmap to Added Value: Integrating Technology across Plat...forms.

She shared her views on why there is a need to move from centralised model to decentralised model in the ride-hailing landscape.

https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/gitextechnologyweekShow more >

FiresideChat with Firdosh Sheikh, Co-Founder & CEO, Drife

Here is our discussion with Firdosh Sheikh, Co-Founder & CEO DRIFE, a decentralized cab booking platform, in our “Fireside Chat” series..., where she shares her journey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOKBQ5eYs5s

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=162104328963571&ref=watch_permalinkShow more >

Binance, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, has placed ads across London’s bus stops featuring Bitcoin. According to a tweet by Binance UK it has placed the ads at 17 spots around the capital’...s bus routes. The ads show images of older generations of coins in use, as well as the current British £2 coin, alongside Bitcoin, which is visualised as the biggest coin of them all.

The adverts say, “Money is evolving. It’s time to adapt.” This poster campaign comes ahead of Binance launching in the UK. It announced its expansion into the British market back in June with a proposed launch this autumn. The exchange will reportedly be registered by the country’s Financial Conduct Authority and offer up to 65 digital assets for trading.
In addition to advertising, it has also announced that Binance UK would be joining the self-regulating industry association, CryptoUK, as an executive member.

London is a crypto hotspot, and the city has become a hub for crypto firms looking for new investors. Others have also been using bus advertising, including the controversial HEX token ads. For example, “Ads boasting that the price of the controversial HEX token has risen 11,500% in four months appeared at English Premier League soccer games.” Richard Heart’s Hex token launched an advertising blitz in the U.K., plastering ads on London public transport and in newspapers, as well as at football matches. The ads stated that Hex was a “high interest blockchain time deposit.”

However, many in the crypto community are scathing about the Hex token, comparing the proffered high rates of return to Ponzi schemes and investment scams.

...

https://medium.com/@lendoplatformltd/binance-sends-crypto-message-across-london-48509558f329Show more >

After careful consideration, and a wish to protect all ELT owners, Lendo has decided to migrate its online platform from lendo.io to lendo.sg.

Singapore, as you may know, is one of the world’s safest f...inancial centers thanks to its strict financial regulatory rules. The graphics below, published in the Financial Occultist in August 2020, show that Singapore stands out as a financial safe haven, and this is just one of the things that influenced the Lendo team’s decision.

Singapore: the best country for crypto

Furthermore, while Singapore is also recognised as the world’s “smartest city” and the city with “best investment potential,” it is also the third biggest market in the world for ICO issuance, behind the United States and Switzerland.

Singapore’s appeal is a combination of its crypto-friendliness and its overall economic environment. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) does not fully regulate cryptocurrencies, but they have issued guidance on ICO-related activities since mid-2017. This is meant to protect investors against specific risks (for example, MAS imposes Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules for intermediaries that are offering crypto services). In other words, MAS is taking up the role of a guardian, allowing ICOs to be launched but also intervening if the activity of a certain ICO seems suspicious.

Increased protection for Lendo members

By moving to lendo.sg, Lendo members now have an increased level of security and protection. If you are an ELT owner, there is no action you need to take,
and you will be able to sign into the new domain using your existing username and password.

...

https://medium.com/@lendoplatformltd/lendo-moves-to-singapore-safe-haven-8c040ba5951bShow more >

According to new research from OKEx Insights and Catallact, when the Covid-19 pandemic started, retail and institutional investors adopted very different BTC buying strategies.

The study looked at on-c...hain BTC transaction data from January to the beginning of August 2020 and found that retail investors decided to hang back and take a ‘wait and see’ approach. By contrast, the larger investors, who are largely institutional, started accumulating BTC.

The report noted that retail transactions, which are mostly for less than one-tenth of a Bitcoin, made up the majority of transactions, and that these buyers track the price fluctuations closely. However, as the report says, “these investors tend to be more easily “‘shaken out’ of the market in times of high volatility and dramatic price declines.”
Cointelegraph says, “Based on the data, retail transactions “decreased and deviated away from the price’s trend — suggesting that retail investors took a wait-and-see approach as BTC a season-long, post-crash accumulation period” around May. “

Interestingly, medium-sized transactions, usually attributed to miners and larger retail investors were cautious at the beginning of the pandemic, but this behavior ended in June, and they started buying more aggressively again.

The big transactions of over 1,000 BTC tell an even more interesting story: “As BTC approach $10,000, the number of transactions between 1,000 and 5,000 BTC continued to go up since the end of June even as the price began to consolidate. “

The report commented on this saying: “This upward trend suggests the possibility that institutions and/or large players got busy accumulating BTC as economic stimulus measures from central banks spurred on the purchase of hard assets. However, because we cannot cleanly differentiate what actual activity took place from the number of transactions alone, this only remains a speculative possibility.”

Basically, the report shows that the first few months of the pandemic impacted how people moved within the market, particularly as retail investors pulled back to await prices going back to normal again. Large investors, on the other hand, “bought the dip” and began accumulating BTC.

...

https://medium.com/@lendoplatformltd/bitcoin-buying-strategies-during-covid-19-e2cc013e508eShow more >

Ripple (XRP) is the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency by market size, and it is showing some advantages over the crypto leader Bitcoin (BTC).

According to one crypto analyst going by the name Crypto ...Whale, there are four clear advantages:

XRP is x1000 faster than $BTC (3–4 seconds)
XRP is x1000 cheaper than $BTC (more than $0.01)
XRP is better for the environment (no mining)
XRP is more scalable.

At the time this report was written, XRP traded at $0.249510 with a daily trading volume of $1,859,495,081. Furthermore, the XRP price has gone up 2.4% in the last 24 hours.

Of course XRP is a curious thing: it has dual roles as a payment platform and a currency, plus it is an open-source platform that was created to allow quick and cheap transactions.

Banks using XRP

It has certainly gained some traction with banks. In 2018, Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, with assets of more than USD 2.8 trillion, announced that, in cooperation with Ripple, it would provide an international money transfer service on the payment corridor from Japan to Brazil. In Europe, HSBC Holdings Plc, with assets of about $2.5 trillion, disclosed in 2019 that it would use the XRP payment solution. Others having a relationship with Ripple include Banco Santander, Barclays PLC, Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

...

https://medium.com/@lendoplatformltd/why-xrp-may-be-a-better-buy-than-bitcoin-ba2b59aa3e0eShow more >

On 2nd October, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that it is seriously considering the idea of a digital Euro and that its study of the idea should start by mid-2021.

The ECB report looks at ho...w that might affect payments to retailers now and in the future, as well as look at the ways in which virtual currencies would fit into the whole Euro system. However, the report does not suggest what digital currency model the ECB might use.

The report also suggests that the ECB may start a virtual currency programme in the middle of 2021 “to ensure meaningful answers are obtained to the open questions raised.” It is likely to begin with an investigative phase where numerous experiments are conducted, and there will also need to be a stage in which the ECB consults with all the stakeholders in the Eurozone.

The ECB report also pointed to the idea that digital currencies promote better financial inclusivity, stating: “The possible advantages of a digital euro and the rapid changes in the retail payment landscape imply that the Eurosystem needs to be equipped to issue it in the future. A digital euro could support the Eurosystem’s objectives by providing citizens with access to a safe form of money in the fast-changing digital world. This would support Europe’s drive towards continued innovation. It would also contribute to its strategic autonomy by providing an alternative to foreign payment providers for fast and efficient payments in Europe and beyond.”

There will be several hurdles to jump before a digital euro is created. It must “keep pace with technology” and be available “through standard interoperable front-end solutions throughout the entire euro area and be interoperable with private payment solutions.” It must also match the features of cash in that it must be “easy for everyone to use, be free of charge, and protect privacy.”

The ECB said the digital euro must also be available outside the Eurozone, save costs and be environmentally friendly, signaling that it should be based on technology that minimizes ecological footprints.

...

https://medium.com/@lendoplatformltd/prepare-for-a-digital-euro-aa2e3b4e26f6Show more >