People who need the most the retirement funds to survive unfortunately live on underdeveloped countries were the willingness of the funds to be stolen are greater when compared to well developed countries. Failure to get the retirement funds on time implies on worse quality of life or maybe even anticipated death.
This means the probability of someone’s retirement funds to be stolen must be virtually zero to concretely save, extend, improve quality of lives of the beneficiaries and family.
Virtually zero probability in this regard is only possible today with the blockchain technology. Even if there is war, corruption, lawfare, persecution, fiat liquidity injection, funds would still be held safe.
Thinking in this problem, CCEG developed possibly the first Blockchain retirement fund ever created. It was launched yesterday and is now live on Seratio wallet.
Investors can decide how many tokens to invest, for how long the tokens will be locked in with precision of a second.
Tokens of the following nature can be locked in:
Classic ethers
Ethereum Classic ERC20 tokens
Forked ethers
Forked Ethereum ERC20 tokens
Obs.: Underlying blockchain ledger immutability is key to preserve retirement funds.
There are numerous examples of centralized exchanges that were hacked. One of the reasons is because power is centralized on the hands of few powerful individuals.
On the wake of Ethereum technology, Etherdelta was pioneer at applying Ethereum’s blockchain to run critical software pieces of an exchange in a decentralized, safe and transparent way. This feature was a breakthrough and provided, for the first time, an easy and transparent way to list new ERC20 tokens without compromising exchange security.
Still Etherdelta has being criticized for having a poor user interface, non-automatic order book filling, API problems and works with only Ethereum network and tokens. There are currently no decentralized exchanges that work for both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains.
Classic Delta fills this gap, it is an exchange that works with ERC20 tokens from both the classic and forked Ethereum networks and promotes positive social behavior by applying zero or reduced fees to selected social coins.
The Centre for Citizenship and Governance (CCEG) is a non-profit Think Tank focusing on the challenge of quantifying the value of non-financial transactions. In January 2017, CEEG launched the CCEG UN Lab, which has developed the Seratio Blockchain. After a successful Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in Q3 of 2017, CCEG has created a web-wallet.
The development of an exchange complements CCEG’s vision to have a robust and sustainable ecosystem in the movement of value.
1.2 Assumptions and Constraints
Etherdelta known API problems
Interface with the Ethereum network
Our own interface with Forked and Classic Ethereum networks
Marketing strategy
Legal requirements
1.2.1 Assumptions
Etherdelta known API problems
Interface with the Ethereum network
Our own interface with Ethereum network
Etherdelta known API problems
Because of Etherdelta alleged problems and due to the evidences that Forkdelta has solved similar problems, it is assumed that ForkDelta doesn’t currently present any API problems and for this reason the starting codebase to be utilized is going to be Forkdelta’s rather than Etherdelta.
Interface with Forked and Classic Ethereum networks
Both services Etherdelta and Forkdelta are interfacing the application with the Ethereum network by means of myetherapi.com. This is a very famous endpoint and might present bottlenecks in providing the interface to the Ethereum blockchain whenever too many calls are sent at the same time.
The effect of clogged calls to the endpoint reflects on user interaction due to increased delays for every operation that involves communication exchange with the Ethereum network. As we have developed Seratio’s own forked and classic Ethereum endpoints we can compare user interaction with both services.
Our own interface with Ethereum network
When we compared our own endpoint, which we built on top of Google Cloud service, with already well stablished Ethereum endpoint service provider Infura, the operational delays we had were substantially lower.
It may also be so that when comparing with myetherapi.com we have a faster private endpoint. Because of this assumption the utilization of our endpoint to speed up ClassicDelta’s user interaction is an alternative as long it doesn’t compromise our wallet service.
To make sure there will be no compromise to services that rely on our endpoint (including Seratio wallet), metrics of how the endpoint is behaving must be in place.
1.2.2 Constraints
Marketing strategy
Legal requirements
Marketing Strategy
To follow success of EtherDelta by imitating their strategy. The figure 1 illustrates EtherDelta success in numbers, retrieved on April 9th, 2018.
Figure 1: EtherDelta’s smart contract holding 1 billion plus USD in tokens plus 20M in ethers
Compared to other decentralized exchanges, Etherdelta has greatest market capitalization as can be seen on Figure 2.
Figure 2 – Etherdelta market cap
To attract a wider audience to our exchange, other than Seratio’s coins are going to be traded within the platform. But the coins that are going to be naturally more promoted in a non-explicit way are the ones with Seratio’s stamp on it.
Are possible means of promoting:
order in list of tokens
fees practiced
Propaganda
To promote Seratio’s eco-system growth in a healthy way, a fee policy will be set in place to make sure the operation is at the same time profitable, and discretely positions Seratio social coins at premium levels. It is to be considered a variable fee proportional to the amount of SER coins a trader holds.
Legal Requirements
As a decentralized exchange that works with cryptocurrencies only, the task of running KYC and AML checks is not necessary because that is supposed to have already happened when converting from fiat to cryptocurrencies and vice versa. And not from crypto to crypto as our exchange is being strategically positioned.
A legal understanding of all implications related to this decision is needed to make sure there won’t be any future pitfalls.
2 Technical Overview
A deeper look at ForkDelta source code shows that it is a DApp[1]. DApp is an abbreviated form for decentralized application. As both ForkDelta and EtherDelta are utilizing Ethereum blockchain to perform its server operational side, this means they are basically relying on a combination of two technologies:
Web page front end.
Ethereum smart contracts back end.
[1] A DApp has its backend code running on a decentralized peer-to-peer network. Contrast this with an app where the backend code is running on centralized servers. If an app=frontend+server, since Ethereum contracts are code that runs on the global Ethereum decentralized peer-to-peer network, then DApp = frontend + contracts.
ClassicDelta is a free, open-source, client-side interfaced exchange.
It allows users to interact directly with ClassicDelta’s smart contracts while users remain full control of their keys & funds.
User and only the user is responsible for its security.
ClassicDelta cannot recover user’s funds or freeze user’s account if it visits a phishing site or lose its private key.
3.2 ClassicDelta is not a Bank
When user opens an account with a bank or exchange, they create an account for it in their system.
The bank keeps track of user’s personal information, account passwords, balances, transactions and ultimately its money.
The bank charge fees to manage user’s account and provide services, like refunding transactions when user’s card gets stolen.
The bank allows the user to write a check or charge its debit card to send money, go online to check its balance, reset its password, and get a new debit card if it loses it.
User has an account with the bank or exchange and they decide how much money it can send, where it can send it, and how long to hold on a suspicious deposit. All for a fee.
3.3 ClassicDelta is an Interface
The user must already have an account created on Ethereum blockchain with access to a cryptographic set of numbers: its private key and its public key (address).
The handling of user’s keys happens entirely on user’s computer, inside its browser.
ClassicDelta never transmits, receives or stores user’s private key, password, or other account information.
ClassicDelta charges a transaction fee in accordance to publicly provided fee policy.
Users are simply using ClassicDelta’s interface to interact directly with ClassicDelta’s smart contracts deployed to both Ethereum blockchains.
If user sends its public key (address) to someone, they can send user ETH, ETC to that address. 👍
If user sends its private key to someone, they now have full control of user’s account. 👎
3.4 ClassicDelta needs each user to understand that it cannot…
Access user’s account or send user’s funds for it.
Recover or change user’s private key.
Recover or reset user’s password.
Reverse, cancel, or refund transactions.
Freeze accounts.
3.5 The user and only the user is responsible for its security.
The user must be diligent to keep its private key and password safe. User’s private key is sometimes called its mnemonic phrase, keystore file, UTC file, JSON file, wallet file.
If user loses its private key or password, no one can recover it. If user enters its private key to a phishing website, it will have all its funds taken.
3.6 If ClassicDelta can’t do those things, what’s the point?
Because that is the point of decentralization and the blockchain. The user doesn’t have to rely on its bank, government, or anyone else when it wants to move its funds. The user doesn’t have to rely on the security of an exchange or bank to keep its funds safe. And that is exactly why the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are valuable.
3.7 Movement of financial and non financial value
Money is a model of value. CCEG is confident that also non financial value can be modeled and traded likewise. To buy land with love, for example:
As can be seen on Figure 3, the user interacts with ClassicDelta DApp willing to perform either one of the two use cases:
Collect market information, where the user utilizes the website as source of information to accessorize its decisions regarding its assets.
Exchange ERC20 tokens where concretely the tokens are converted from one to another nature and which depends on previous item.
Figure 3 – Classic Delta use case diagram
The Exchange ERC20 tokens use case comprises the following two other user cases:
ERC20 tokens trade, where new buy or sell orders can be placed.
ERC20 tokens Input/Output, where tokens or ethers are deposited, transferred or withdrawn.
ClassicDelta must provide infrastructure to support all the use cases comprised by ClassicDelta DApp component which is drawn on Figure 3 as the major surrounding rectangular box.
To provide an exchange that works for both forked Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, the components and connections shown on Figure 4 are needed.
Figure 4 – Generic Context Diagram
Where the FrontEnd component is the web application that holds the user interface in place and organizes accesses to the back end (comprised by both Ethereum networks smart contracts) to ultimately fulfill user’s expectations.
In the development of the Seratio wallet, the following components were already developed and can be used by Classic Delta exchange too:
Forked Ethereum Endpoint
Ethereum Classic Endpoint
These components are already working properly and interact directly with Forked Ethereum and Ethereum Classic Blockchains through already built-in Interface Web3 JavaScript API.
4.1 User Requirements
ClassicDelta Dapp needs to provide the functionality to support two types of users already represented as actors on Figure 3.
Regular user
ClassicDelta’s Admin
Because ClassicDelta is a decentralized exchange, there is a reduced set of exclusive activities for ClassicDelta’s admin to perform. Still, in a normal scenario, the admin must manage each ERC20 token lifecycle by listing or delisting tokens and to make sure information provided within each token project is legit and not misleading.
A regular user needs to upload locally its already generated public and private key to unlock the exchange functionality. The safety of this process is of user’s responsibility since ClassicDelta only acts as an interface to the blockchain and does not store personal sensitive information in its servers.
ClassicDelta’s admin has more responsibilities in the sense it is a regular user but also a key actor for the working and maintenance of the platform. ClassicDelta’s admin will be responsible to orient community and drive requests accordingly to technical team. Tasks are split on two fronts, the backend mostly blockchain development and the frontend, mostly user interface and pursue of user expectations.
4.2 Data Flow Diagrams
Figure 5 – Data flow diagram
Figure 3: Sequence diagram of general data flow.
As can be seen in the sequence diagram of Figure 3, the basic data flow starts with the user request to the web server requesting the webpage or general information. Consequently, to render the information accordingly, the frontend needs fresh data from the connected blockchain endpoints, in this case Ethereum Classic and forked Ethereum.
There are more specific diagrams that are subject to be detailed in the development process comprising the following scenarios:
Creation of new account
Account import, account forget
Ledger Nano S integration
Set gas price
Place buy, sell order
Cancelling an order
Deposit, withdrawals, transfers.
4.3 Logical Data Model/Data Dictionary
The blockchain can be considered a decentralized database where a lot of historical information can be retrieved just by browsing it. However, the speed of access to blockchain data depends on a variety of factors and has associated costs. Since the blockchain is constantly writing history to the distributed ledger and once a block is written there is virtually no way to change it, there are specific use cases where a regular database can be handy to post attach information to previously written blocks. A good example of when this is needed is in the addition of metadata identifying and linking a dropped by a replaced transaction.
But more complex queries throughout a huge amount of data (more than 50 GB) can be used upon a regular database to extract valuable information. One example is extracting technical analysis indicators with artificial intelligence techniques to better orient in which tokens the user should rather invest on a given Friday.
4.4 Functional Requirements
To provide the user with updated information about the order book status in real time (with a delay no greater than 5 seconds).
Execute deposits, withdrawals, transfers, buy and sell orders placement smoothly and without human intervention. Humans prohibited here!
Whenever there is a relevant blockchain event, keep information shown in the website coherent to blockchain’s state.
To protect privacy and user data with state of the art technology.
To have the most critique parts if not the entirety of the exchange code open source with bug bounty programs to increase safety and reduce risk surface. This follows Parity’s state of the art safety procedure[1].
Periodic auditing by selected companies.
[1] http://paritytech.io/the-multi-sig-hack-a-postmortem/. On Wednesday 19th July, 2017 a bug found in the multi-signature wallet (“multi-sig”) code used as part of Parity Wallet software was exploited by parties unknown. As of the time of writing, three wallet accounts holding large balances of ETH have been compromised and the balances moved into accounts held by the attacker. The self-titled “White Hat Group” used the same exploit to secure the other compromised wallets within Ethereum, with the stated intention of returning control to the original owners.
The milestones were raised accordingly to the foreseeable future based on research already made and are present on Table 1.
Table 1: Milestones for the operation of Classic Delta exchange
Milestone
Due Date
mm/dd/yyy
Completed / Delayed / On time
ClassicDelta Smart Contracts Development
03/05/2018
Completed
Functional Requirement Preliminary Document
03/12/2018
Completed
ClassicDelta Smart Contract Deployment
03/19/2018
Completed
Website launch and integration
03/26/2018
Completed
Exchange API launch
10/26/2018
On time
Incremental upgrades
12/26/2018
On time
The code of the smart contracts, the most important software piece here, was already created based on EtherDelta smart contracts.
The ClassicDelta organization was created at GitHub to fork ForkDelta. The starting web server is GitHub to speed-up development process. But as soon the project scales a more professional service is planed to take place with Cloudflare DDoS protection around October 2018. The exchange is already beta launched and can be tested here for forked Ethereum network.
Figure 1 World’s first quiet treehouse provides safe magical haven in a noisy world. Image source: Inhabitat
Abstract
The main pillar of the decentralized society of the future is decentralized governance. In this paper the concept of blockchain organizations is developed to strengthen community participation on the decision-making process in a first move opening room for subsequent incremental improvements.
Introduction
Power and Governance
For millenniums power has been strongly associated with governance roles. The roman army brought a great revolution for its time with a novel governance model, it was highly hierarchized and followed a 10 to one fashion. With this technological breakthrough romans could become the greatest ever empire on earth. Still today organizations concentrate power following a similar scheme.
Ten to one means:
A commander is a commando and has besides his, the power of its 10 underlying commandoes
A commando can also be a commander with another underlying set of 10 commandoes.
Figure 2 Roman army structure considering two to one for analysis sake.
To better understand the roman power model, a two to one scheme is presented on Figure 2. In this example, the cohesiveness of the organization depends on the strength of the six instance-links. The main problem about this governance model is that it was conceived to make war, not peace. A “enter war” order from Cesar won’t ever be contested by its peaceful commandos just willing to live a happy life because no other commando has overall greater power.
The reduced autonomy each commando has leads to an increased unhappiness of the organization.
And with the concentration of power, abuses are more likely to happen. In this scenario there is strong evidence that decentralizing the power increases motivation and drives growth at a faster rate.
Automation revolution
The more automated the processes are the less human interaction is needed and hence a higher productivity level is usually achieved. With automation productivity naturally rises consequently but there is still an important bottleneck. The decision-making process is traditionally heavily dependent on human interaction.
To increase organization’s overall productivity level, the automation of the decision-making process is also key. That is one of the main reasons why The DAO[1] grabbed a lot of attention, see Quote 1.
Quote 1 Auryn Macmillan – From Consider.it website
The DAO technology stack
Merging the following two key technologies allowed the birth of the alleged first decentralized autonomous organization:
Ideas were submitted to be curated by the community. Once the idea was properly curated it became a proposal and moved to the technical analysis of required resources to be implemented. Once operational costs, resources, etc. were agreed upon by the community, the proposal was accepted and smart contracts started being implemented by technical team. It was an iterative process that pursued the maximization of positive outcome to the community.
Blockchain Organizations proposal
Power decentralization is the process in which individuals naturally gain power, happiness, freedom, health and productivity. With individuals feeling divine, collective productivity and well-being is maximized. At the core of power are there organizations.
With the advent of the blockchain, unprecedent levels of privacy and transparency when needed are possible within organizations. It allows the automatic enforcement of smart contract clauses to secure the correct behavior of operations.
The DAO was a social experiment considered to have failed. But it had great merit which can’t be just forgotten in the past. There is the need for a robust organizational framework that utilizes state of the art technology to organize people and projects around worthwhile causes.
In this paper we take the lessons from The DAO and develop the broader concept of Blockchain Organizations.
Blockchain Organizations
Modern institutions are transparently purposive and that we are in the midst an evolutionary progression towards more efficient forms
Quote 2 Modernization theorist Frank Dubbin
DAO
Organizations if they have a website are internet organizations (IO). But people just don’t call them “internet organizations” though because almost all organizations are IOs. The Internet represents decentralized communications and is a fundamental pillar of the decentralized society of the future.
The same analogy applies for decentralized governance. Almost all near future organizations will most likely be blockchain governed organizations. A whole country government can take advantage of this technology.
Are pillars of the decentralized society of the future:
These type of blockchain governed organizations are going to be called from now on as simply Blockchain Organizations.
Social Organizational theory – Less is more
Organization foundation
A member attempts to join an organization when it feels it becomes stronger packing together with other members who ideally share common goals. And the organization accepts that member when it also feels that it will make the organization stronger. This means there is a virtual social contract celebrated by the organization and the member and if violated would potentially result in membership cancellation. This contract basically determines how the member and organization make each other stronger.
A member of an organization could be an individual or another organization. For example, nobody knows the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto if it was an individual or an organization, naturally or artificially intelligent, alien or terrestrian. It does not matter here; what matters is that this member strengthens the blockchain organization and vice versa. This is why, in the diagram, I will leave the idea as most generic possible to avoid limiting organizational possibilities.
Figure 3 Member organization use case diagram
As can be seen on Figure 3, this opens an interesting recursive possibility where an organization could be a member of itself. To better understand the social contract, it is necessary to understand what each member brings to the table, basically resources and goals as can be seen on Figure 4.
Figure 4 Resources and goals brought by a member to the table
An organization can have members and child organizations too. In the other hand a child organization can have multiple parents. Members can also pack themselves to form a cluster with common goals. These associations can be seen on Figure 5.
Figure 5 Members clustering, organization membership, organization parenthood.
Organization operation
Members up to this point are well organized and aligned behind common goals, plenty of resources. But the organization is not yet operational. To make it operational it needs to have active directives as can be seen on Figure 6.
Figure 6 Directive Organization associations
The questions that arise are:
Which directive proposals should be activated?
From where directive proposals come from?
How directives are controlled?
These are important governance questions to be answered by the organization. Things change perspective when it is realized that the governance itself is also a directive. This means organizations need to have at least one Governance directive to be able to evolve themselves by selecting most fit directives.
A directive has goals and budgets. It can also have a controller to make sure variables are controlled within desired range. This structure can be seen on Figure 6.
Figure 7 Directive and shared aggregates
Figure 7 Directive and shared aggregates
Because resources are limited, the main role of governance is to get the most fit directives from a given set of directives population. Ideally the directives population should comprise both active directives and directive proposals, so that active directives can be deactivated and directive proposals can be activated to maximize positive outcome.
Canonical organization class diagram
Combining all structures discussed up to this point the minimum organizational class diagram is completed as can be seen on Figure 8.
Figure 8 Canonical organization class diagram.
Consider the structure above to be implemented as a set of smart contracts on Ethereum chain. It then becomes possible to instantiate a plurality of organizations with radically different personalities. Because the Controller contract is responsible to keep important variables from the outer world within desirable range it needs to get external information through oracles. Here I added Oraclize.it framework as an example of this interface.
Because every organizational class could have issues, Issueable abstract class was created. Every major class inherits from Issueable class. So that they can be associated with open and closed issues as can be seen on Figure 9. UrledComponent abstract class which has a name and url properties was created so that every major component can be displayed by a given webpage with reactive and updated information in real-time based on blockchain retrieved information.
Figure 9 Urled and Issuable class diagram.
Instantiation of an organization on the blockchain
Assume a hypothetical revolutionary organization that wants to be the first totally managed on the blockchain. And it has already made an ICO in the past, it has its cryptocurrency value swinging relatively high due to unknown market forces. But it has a proven record of 12% sustainable organizational growth per month. Now this hypothetical company has millions of dollars in crypto currency in its accounts but wants to utilize a part of that budget as monetary cushion for dampening quotation swings and to reflect close to real 12% monthly increase to its underlying crypto currency.
This can be managed transparently on the blockchain with a monetary policy directive coupled with a controller that monitors the quotation of the crypto currency through Oracles. Depending on quotation the controller places buy and sell orders automatically keeping quotation within desired range.
The diagram of such blockchain organization is shown on Figure 10.
Figure 10 Instantiated organization on the blockchain
Conclusion
In this article, a canonical, flexible and simple organizational model was developed. It can be directly implemented as a set of smart contracts on selected capable blockchains. This technology can potentially allow organizations to transparently evolve by creating or sharing directives with each other in such a way they become more productive, transparent and confidential whenever needed.
It naturally provides a novel way to monitor organizational lifecycle in real-time making it easier to stablish cause and effect relationship due to organizational decisions and to fight against corruption.
Not only legacy governance schemes can be used such as democracy, plutocracy but this model can be used to support the development of new ones in the pursue of circular economy growth maximization.
Acknowledgements
This work is a fundamental part of the great vision of the Centre for Citizenship Enterprise and Governance (CCEG) and is totally aligned with the Blockchain Alliance For Good in which key technologies like the internet, the blockchain, new decentralized governance systems among others, free people from a plurality of unhappy lives. CCEG has a clear understanding of the underlying revolution and invites you to be part of this new universe creation.
Regardless of old politics and countries supporting The United Nations, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are one of the purest initiatives humanity has come up with to date. We at CCEG recognize the beauty of the SDG goals not only protecting these values wholeheartedly. But catalyzing them by means of concrete technological shifts.
[2] The Ethereum blockchain is the pioneer on its space and currently the most widely adopted platform to build smart contracts with blockchain technology. It is possible to build an entire country constitution on the blockchain with a set of smart contracts.
[3] Consider.it was invented at the University of Washington as part of the National Science Foundation funded doctoral research of Consider.it founder Travis Kriplean. Its research objective was to create a method by which large groups of people could civily deliberate together online and find common ground, even on contentious topics. The research was conducted in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science, Political Communication, Statistics, and Human-centered Design.
