Digital Asset Holdings has announced it intends to open-source DAML, the smart contracting language it acquired from startup Elevence earlier this year.
Though no date has been set for the transition, the Blythe Masters-led blockchain startup credited its bid to “advance industry adoption” of the tech as the impetus for the move.
Source: Digital Asset to Open Source Smart Contract Language – CoinDesk
Smart contracts, which automate parts of payment agreements, are the key to using blockchain technology in complex financial transactions. However, there are still open questions and concerns about how smart contracts operate in the real world and whether they can be trusted.
Because smart contracts reduce complexity there are fewer reconciliation issues, which increases efficiency and reduces costs. But how do you see and understand the finer details of a smart contract when the terms of the contract are expressed in code?
Source: Blockchain s Automated Contracts Are Dangerously Hard to Verify | PaymentsSource
TAO Network, the smart contract DAO platform for creating and operating decentralised applications is currently offering an opportunity for the cryptocurrency community to invest in the ongoing crowdsale.
The TAO Network is built on a solid foundation with a range of enhancements that make its blockchain more versatile and robust. By using IntelliTx technology, TAO Network offers a content agnostic way of creating smart contracts on the platform, irrespective of the protocol. The user-friendly, privacy-centric platform already has one of the many use cases built in the form of ‘the TAO of Music’.
Source: TAO Network Announces the Crowdsale of its Cryptocurrency and the TAO of Music Project
While bitcoin has yet to be embraced by the public, investors and entrepreneurs are increasingly enthusiastic about the potential for blockchain technology. For the reasons given above, proponents say that blockchain, or distributed ledgers technology, should be used to record and store a wide variety of different transactions and decisions. Information such as mortgage certificates, health records, welfare benefits and even voting registration could be managed via a blockchain. The creation of accessible, secure data networks that run in near real time really does sound like a holy grail in the digital age.
Richard Mabey is the co-founder and CEO of Juro, which uses blockchain technology to underpin the creation and signing of legal contracts. The business provides a freemium (free for the basic features, with a charge for premium features) model for SMEs and a subscription for larger companies and has signed up over 500 clients since launching last year. “We are seeing real traction from businesses and it’s clear that this technology has moved from academia into the world of business,” Mabey says.
In the wake of The DAO’s demise, new efforts are beginning to emerge that seek to address the challenges developers have so far faced working with smart contracts, the key building blocks that underlined the project and whose exploitation led to its failure.
One such startup is Legalese. Co-founded by Virgil Griffith and Wong Meng Weng, Legalese is an open-source project writing a new programming language specifically for smart contracts. Called L4, the language is designed to help coders properly vet contracts before they go live.
Source: Blockchain Coders Win Grant to Fix Smart Contracts With ‘Legalese’ – CoinDesk
Technology lawyers say the growth of Ethereum, a public blockchain platform upstaging Bitcoin, could change how lawyers operate and force them to widen the breadth of their skills. But blockchain’s distributed ledger system also offers infinite opportunities for growth in an industry seeking stimulus.
Ethereum’s key attraction is its ability to go beyond virtual currency to facilitate transactions and binding financial agreements or smart contracts purely using applications and without the need for human intermediaries.
SingularDTV (S-DTV), a first-of-its-kind Blockchain entertainment studio, is partnering with venture production studio ConsenSys to build a smart contract-based rights management platform for film and television on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Based on ConsenSys’ rights management prototype, Ujo Music, ConsenSys will support the S-DTV service, enabling it to attach usage policies and real-time revenue flow to its video and media content.
Source: ConsenSys And SingularDTV Partner to Build Film & TV Rights Management Platform – Blockchain News
Under its digital single market plans, the European Commission has so far proposed a crowd-pleasing new law to allow people to use digital content subscriptions like Netflix when they travel to other EU countries. The executive also came out with proposals to reform online contracts and open the 700 MHz spectrum band for mobile internet and outlined non-legislative measures to make industrial manufacturing more digital.
Paul Meller, spokesman for tech industry association DigitalEurope, said the digital single market plans are “far more ambitious than any previous Commission efforts in this area”.
But there could be dramatic twists ahead: the executive’s announcements, still planned for later this year, are some of the most controversial ones in the strategy.
Source: Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead – EurActiv.com
The Emer platform claims to offer Digital proof-of-ownership to merchants who are looking for both scalably and to transparently store records of both digital and physical assets on the blockchain.
From a resolution of land title disputes between law offices to licensing associated with anything from streaming video services to anti-virus software subscription, the Emer platform claims the ability to manage these processes. In addition, the verification of these records is much simpler to access and complete using the Emer platform as all records are kept securely and accurately on the blockchain. This can lower costs and the time spent both from a customer perspective and from a lawyer’s perspective, removing the need to deal with physical documents to complete routine transactions.
Source: How To Integrate Blockchain Into Existing Businesses
Concurrent Media Strategies, LLC, publisher of the Concurrent Media blog, and Digital Media Wire, Inc., producers of Digital Entertainment World and the New York Media Festival, among other conferences, today announced the official launch of RightsTech, a new forum — blog, newsletter, conferences — for cross-industry global collaboration focused on furthering technology innovation around rights management and licensing across multiple media verticals.
The inaugural RightsTech Summit will be held July 26 at the the Japan Society in New York City. The newsletter, which you can subscribe to here, will keep you up to date on all the news and conversation around the emerging RightsTech ecosystem. This blog will be an evolving platform for discussion and debate among the various stakeholders.