Topic: [ANN] Keystone Assets - Smart Property Solutions (Read 14200 times)

Any update?

will support this Project..

It has been a while since our last update and we figured, we should make a noise to show we are still alive and kicking.

We are working on a lot of things simultaneously right now, but most of them do not make for good news.
We will give out an update anyway.

We mentioned last time, that our engineer and the math guy had a little dispute about assembler. For those who do not know what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language
In principal, it does not get much closer to zeros and ones when it comes to programming. The upside of this is extreme efficiency. Programs wrote in assembler allow for ultimate control of MPU functions. The downside is, put bluntly, that it is a pain in the ass to use assembler. Please excuse this profanity, but there are not that many words to describe how utterly uncomfortable and hard it is to get something complex working with assembler. Even more so, when it requires floating point operations.
Our math guy figured, that an elliptic curve DSA is possible to code with assembler. This is not very surprising, as there is basically nothing you can not do with assembler. There are just many things that you do not want to do with assembler. The bad news about it is, that there does not seem to be any obvious way to get around the use of floating point operations when calculating discrete logarithms.

Now, if we want to have one of our locks in a smartphone, the full size lock described in the whitepaper is not really an option. First, it would cause size problems, which is unfortunate, but not crippling. The bigger problem is an economical one. A lot of the components needed to run the lock are already present within a smartphone. Radio transmitters, batteries, RAM, flash memory. It is all in there. To have a product which will be able to compete in the medium term, the lock needs to be as small as possible. Offering locks with largely redundant components is not really an economical competitive option.
We could generally outsource the lock development to companies who wish to participate, but this would increase the initial investment for those companies and subsequently lower the chances for them to come aboard. To get the whole system going, offering a solution which can be integrated without large entry hurdles is almost mandatory. Also, the amount of money involved in offering a general solution in this regard is very tempting, to say the least.

So we are back at assembler. A competitive chip able to use ECDSA will use code written in assembler. The engineer says he does not want to, he really does not. The math guy says he has to. He also says, that it is going to especially tedious.

But we put too much work in the project by now to go for a suboptimal solution.

News which are slightly embarrassing revolve around the website. Our designer guy is working on that and while there are results in general, he was still not able to solve some minor issues by now. Considering what we are creating here, the failure to create a simple website without problems is not very flattering.
In our defence I have to say, the website and the design skills are just icing on the team cake and involve no core skills. Our designer made some nice concepts for the key devices, but we will keep that to a seperate news report.

Last part is the IPO which is still coming, but modified from the original plan. The original planned amount will be further reduced and the amount of invest-able BTC will be significantly below 100. After some discussion we figured that no amount of money we will be able to raise here can cover the development. Thus, we currently try to figure how much money we need to get to the next step, which is getting a working prototype and attracting venture capital.
We know that this seed investment will be at a considerable premium compared to any later funding round. So, while the risk is of course high, the reward in case of success should reflect that risk.

As soon as there is more news around, we will update this thread again. Hopefully finally with a website next time.

any development news?

So, we are back with some news.
We mentioned the problem of scalability last time and there has been progress on two fronts.

Front one is our sidechain system, which is now a sidechains system. While originally designed to feature only a single sidechain for non transaction related data. A single one would have worked fine for a limited (think limited in the sense of a seven digit number) amount of connected devices, but would have broken down in case of major adoption.
To mitigate this, we will use the 40 byte of arbitrary data, which can be added to bitcoin transactions, for identifying purposes. Making use of this available data, our protocol will be able to handle a practical unlimited amount of sidechains. Actually, in theory it is not unlimited, but the number exceeds a decillion possible sidechains, which is unlimited for every practical scenario. Most likely this number will shrink during development as we may come up with additional information stored in the 40 bytes. So, the problem on front one is solved.

Front two is the amount of transactions in the main blockchain. This would also lead to problems if major adoption is achieved. The bad news is, this is out of our control. The good news is, Gavin Andresen sees this as a problem as well.

Bitcoin in general cannot achieve major adoption in ist current state. The amount of possible transactions does currently not exceed 80000 per day. A possible solution to this is stated by him here

http://www.coindesk.com/gavin-andresen-bitcoin-hard-fork/

In any case, it is an issue which has to be adressed sooner than later. We are confident, that it will be adressed. This means, that front two is being worked on as well, just not by us.

Now it is time to work on the second version of the protocol whitepaper and rewrite some information for the website.

We will be back with some additional news on the IPO and what our math guy and the engineer have to say about assembler in the coming days.

great,  keep watching...

Any news? When does ICO begin?

I think this project is very promising,
 IBM will use the block chain technology into the Internet of Things.

http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-executive-block-chain-internet-of-things/

So, it has been a while and it is time for an update on what is going on.

It seems we have missed the forest for the trees.
But let us begin where it started. We made some projections on the technology we are developing and stumbled upon a problem in scalability.
While in general, the concept is sound and works, it will most likely suffice if it is scaled to the extreme. It can definitely handle several million devices, even up to the 100 millions, but that is sadly not enough. The number of electronic devices which are potential candidates for Keystones, go into the billions.

While settling for a market niche sounds like the easy way to go, we decided to move into another direction instead and develop the project into something which is able to handle virtually any amount of devices.

It was originally planned to use what we call a sidechain or overhead blockchain to store and distribute data required to run the locks. The deployed proof associated with the concept allows for quick pruning of the overhead chain and thus keep that chain small, while allowing anyone who wanted to participate as a node to simply hook up to the network. Nevertheless, it does not scale up to serving billions of devices at the same time. Even with a small chain, every node on the globe needs the full chain to participate, which is very wasteful. The solution to this problem are several overhead chains, which the system is luckily able to deploy. This on the other hand, opens up a multitude of new possibilities, but also a set of new problems. Several sidechains means, that the amount of additional data which can be processed, is only limited by the amount of computing power willing to participate in the network. Which is good. On the bad side this creates a new problem with fee distribution. Having one mainchain and one sidechain made the fee distribution easy. Having several completly busts the original solution to this problem.

So, while the problem of scalability on the data side has been solved, there also came up the question of who is going to pay for the service.
While this could be handled on a personal level, we highly doubt that the "average joe", that is often mentioned around here, is going to appreciate having to take care of his devices security on a regular basis. Also, the payment has to be distributed to several sidechains at once, which is a problem in itself.

To solve this, there needs to be something the devices can provide in return. And luckily, there is something. Which brings us back to the beginning, missing the forest for the trees.
The lock devices will generally be built into something, which processes information in some sort of way. Mobile phones have sensors and collect data from their surroundings. And information is something valuable.
As the technology we are developing is based on the idea of transmitting information, there is nothing that prevents those information flows to go in both directions.

So, the answer to the question „Who is going to pay“ is a little different than initially expected, as the locked devices have something to offer as well. How this is going to be utilized is a point of discussion right now.

There is already a name for that. It is called „The Internet Of Things“

This change in the general direction of the project has some implications, which we will discuss the next time. But for now, the IPO will be postponed until further notice.
Also, the website is there, but the information that we intially wanted to provide there is now slightly outdated. So, more work to do. Sadly, documentation is far less entertaining than building shiny new stuff.

Oh, and as stated last time, here is our current candidate for the proof of concept lock
http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATUC256L4U.aspx

Looking great, i'm watching..

We are making good progress with the website and it should be ready by sunday. Most likely there will be some additional polish needed, but the important part, offering information in a nicer form than currently, will be offered.

The second whitepaper is making progress as well, but sadly not as fast as we like. The first version will be released on Sunday. It will be pretty messy though, as the whole concept is not exactly easy to grasp and put down in an easy and comprehensive form. So, be ready for some knots in your brain. We rather work on a second version after releasing the first instead of postponing the release.

By now we also decided how to approach the testnet. We will clone a not further specified "Proof Of Stake" coin and let it run on a couple of Odroids to simulate a nice and cozy little environment for initial testing. You might also want to take a look at those if you are heavy into NXT or some other purely POS coin.
http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php
They can save you a lot of electricity and are perfectly fine for running a node if you are not into "Proof Of Work"

We also have our first candidate for the lock prototype, but more of that the next time.

Stay tuned!

We will have an IPO starting in a couple of weeks. There is still some work to be done prior to that though.
The website will present all this information in a more manageable way.

have a ipo?

You're welcome.
Providing some information on what we're doing seems like a good idea.

On a completly unrelated note:
Can someone provide some hints where all the scam screamers have gone? There hasn't been a single post in giant red letters accusing us of being out to grab as much money as we can and make a run for it. Is a self moderated thread that this daunting? I had hoped to be able to delete at least one of those

Thanks for the update.

We're currently setting up a website to present all this information in a more coherent way. If everything happens as planned, it will be ready by the end of the week.

Meanwhile our design guy is having some fun sketching the key. A little bit too much as it seems, as the first design was... let's say impractical. Very cool, but nothing you want for mass production. We're talking about adding a special edition casing for the keys for initial investors. Something printable which we can do on a small scale.

Besides all the info and designing, we're looking into setting up a tiny copy of the bitcoin network. It might be better than starting to test life on the big blockchain. Pro: Nice controlled environment / Con: Nice controlled environment. There will be news about this when we come to a conclusion.

And lastly, the currency whitepaper is making great progress. We hope being able to release it on our own homepage.

This seems exciting.  Can't wait to see more.

good project.
can't wait.

No thread activity does not mean there is no work done.
There is not all that much to talk about right now. Hopefully due to the exhaustive nature of the information provided already. Once the second whitepaper is released, that should change though.

seems not active in this thread.