Universa is two years old!
I am glad I can celebrate this anniversary with all our users — today Universa Blockchain turns two years old. Exactly two years ago we announced that we would launch MainNetwork of our Universa Blockchain in less than nine months, by 12 April 2018.
It’s certainly been a lifetime; at least I can’t remember a period in my life that was as intense as these 700 days. :)
It is Sunday, so this post is more of an emotional post, with official press releases to follow, but I think it will give a good idea of how Universa Blockchain development strategy will unfold for the next couple years.
Today we have several important pieces of news to cover.
· New Universa offices in Eurasia and Africa
· DApps, or rather uBots based on Universa (uBots, decentralized cloud for node owners)
· UniChat and smart contracts for ordinary users
· UniPayments and smart contracts for small and medium businesses
· Daocracy.io and proper accounting of costs/entitlements/shares within any project
· HODL and wallets
· Tokenization of anything (gold, metal, oil, timber)
So, let’s begin :)
But first a brief summary for those who can’t care about long reads.
The main conclusion is that Universa universe is growing. It is hard to deal with all the complex government and corporate contracts, but we finally got through and started creating services for ordinary users, for people like you and me :)
The first big news is that Universa is launching UniChat, a global messenger that will hopefully start pushing away Telegram / Slack / WhatsApp in the corporate segment and create a convenient payment service within chats and Messenger as a Service in the countries where Universa Blockchain is being deployed (see below for more detail on UniChat).
https://unichat.mainnetwork.io — public chat demo
News number two — Universa is launching the first version of UniPayments, a POS payment system that enables any iPhone/Android owner to invoice a purchaser in UTN, any UTN-based tokens (such as uGold, uCHF) and any user-created tokens.
News number three — Universa is making its first step towards decentralized enterprise management by launching pre-alpha version of Daocracy.io service for running fully digital accounting within companies, from share registers to tracking budget spending and automating dividend payments, with plans to combine the three services into a convenient one-stop-shop arrangement (corporate management + corporate chat + payment platform).
News number four — uHODL cold wallet has transformed, becoming more secure and more elegant, with sapphire glass and a fingerprint sensor. Expect the release this year.
News number five — to continue our global development, Universa Blockchain is publishing a digital asset tokenization platform; the first live assets are three tons of gold in Switzerland and real estate in Spain, where Universa will be responsible for tokenization of 250,000 square meters of residential development at a new golf resort opposite the Gibraltar. The two projects together are worth just over one billion Euros, which is a good start for global tokenization of real-world assets, such as real estate, sugar, oil, gas, coal and metals in all areas of Universa Blockchain operation.
Good news for node owners — we have finally gotten around to some serious work on a decentralized self-executable cloud of software robots. Each node will be able to install uBots that can be considered as a decentralized hosting with configurable consensus (hybrid blockchain). Some uBot examples that can be created and launched on the nodes are described below. We hope node owners will be able to earn more money with this innovation than today’s hosting operators do.
Now in more detail
New Universa offices in Moscow and Tunisia
Our developers will find themselves in even more comfort at the new office in Moscow — you may remember the photos we posted earlier. A great two-storied office with a view of the Moskva River, a small chillout zone, kitchen and a coffee machine is the perfect combination of ingredients for developing software. If you know any good JS, SCALA, C++ programmers — please let them know we have cookies and an interesting job for them. :)
Universa mobile force is teaching Universa HUB Africa to write smart contracts for Tunisia’s National Blockchain.
Universa HUB Africa office is small but proud, with Universa Blockchain’s toughest coders and the one-of-a-kind leader of Universa HUB Africa — Omar.
Universa Global supplies Middle East and Africa with smart money and solutions based on MyDocuments — for notarial services, licensing and electronic digital signatures, where each document has its digital fingerprint in Universa blockchain.
Tunisia is our outpost in Africa, expected to grow into full-scale digitization for the African region — smart money, verification of diplomas, licenses, documents, notarial services and many other things to be implemented by Universa HUB Africa. We are currently negotiating with Libya, Rwanda, Senegal and Tanzania, while simultaneously continuing works on the Tunisia National Blockchain; first contracts to follow this autumn.
DApps (or rather uBots) on Universa (a decentralized cloud for node owners)
You can learn more about uBots architecture here: https://kb.universablockchain.com/ubots_overview/207, while we give you several useful solutions that can be easily implemented in decentralized logic with configurable consensus.
Trader Bot
A multi-component bot regularly compares rates at any exchanges available online and creates buy and sell orders verified by a network of bots. Network-approved trade orders allow the bot to use the funds available to buy and sell anything, from Universa token contracts to automatic interaction with other networks via gateways (transfer funds to third-party wallets).
Treasurer Bot
A smart wallet that can receive any types of tokens and make payments by orders (e.g., by interacting with traders and service providers), by schedule (regular payments), in response to a certain event, with the possibility of connecting third-party systems in the future.
Online store // Point of Sale
An online store can also be created using a uBot. In this case, all preparatory work (shop window, shopping basket, order status) can be executed quickly by just a single bot, while actual purchase requires network consensus (slower but secure). The order can be executed either as a Universa value contract (e.g., concert ticket in the form of a contract) or as an internal contract/order for shipment of goods through external trading services. That contract, in turn, can be processed by another uBot, executing the purchase via an HTTP API to a third-party retail network.
Ticket/pass/code check upon entrance
This bot operates via a network-connected reader (barcode reader, NFC, or smart contract reader in the form of a Bluetooth dongle, USB flash stick, etc.) verifying and redeeming the contract (ticket, pass, etc.).
Prize draws
Network consensus enables choosing a winner and awarding the prize. The prize draw can also be executed via uBots; the current implementation, however, only allows implementing simple step-by-step games.
Lotteries
Quick ticket sale (any bot can sell one unique ticket, parallel execution is possible, prize draws are slow, with the winner chosen by universal network consensus). Each node contributes to random selection, then verifies that its contribution was taken into account.
Web wallet
A web interface for your wallet can also be built using uBots, with contracts stored in encrypted form on the uBot network (as the next step in the development of crypto cloud idea).
Generating reliable random numbers
Many attacks nowadays rely on vulnerabilities in random number generators. A random number can be created by a network of uBots, each contributing to the total entropy and making sure its contribution was taken into account. The outcome would be much more reliable against prediction and ensure higher confidence in systems using this method.
Booking and reservations
A distributed system for booking and reservations, including purchase/sale of resources, goes along well with the concept of uBots and smart contracts. For example, initial generation of contracts for each seat in an airplane and selecting them via uBots would instantly get rid of overbooking issue: once a ticket is sold, it cannot be sold again. These tickets can be linked to a specific seat from the start, as there is no need for check-in procedure, given parallel sales.
Voting
uBots can be used for simple voting, when the vote is determined by a contract, and complex voting, e.g., using lists of participants and KYC.
Appointing management by shareholder vote, personnel selection by the management, generating smart contracts with results.
Smart Home/Smart City
Collecting information from metering devices, issuing invoices, payment for services, quality assurance, consumption planning/forecasting, purchasing and ordering resources in automatic mode.
Access control // Parallel computations
For example, we want a quick check whether a certain company employee’s face is present on a security camera picture. If your company has tens of thousands of employees (such as a factory, for example), this wouldn’t be easy. Simplifying the algorithm a little, uBots are loaded with all employees’ photos, then each uBot is instructed to compare its set of photos to the CCTV footage. One hundred to five hundred uBots launched in parallel can deal with the problem in real time. Next it takes a consensus-based confirmation to verify that this employee entered and left the premises at a certain time.
Scientific computations
Everything that is now being calculated using volunteer networks (SETI@home, protein and genome decoding) or on supercomputers can be done with uBots, once the network grows big enough. The service would be paid for with UTN, which will be distributed among the nodes supporting a certain uBot. A new class of “background calculations”, which are only performed when the network itself is inactive, for a very low fee. Alternatively, it is possible to introduce different execution priority classes — urgent, normal, or idle.
UniChat as a way to increase the number of transactions in Universa
One way to quickly increase the number of transactions in the Universa network is our corporate messenger, UniChat, that we are going to announce today (http://unichat.mainnetwork.io/). From signing a contract to payment, from a to-do list to automatic notification of a deadline and/or budget exceeded — all this becomes possible, and actually quite comfortable, with UniChat. Shared video chats, briefings and quick planning offer a chance to push aside WhatsApp and Telegram in the segment of corporate and government messengers. Eventually it will be integrated with distributed enterprise management systems, wallets and banks on the Universa network.
UniPayments
Everyone’s been asking us to give them an opportunity to invoice customers and receive payments in UTN, uCHF and other digital assets with Universa network, so today we are happy to announce the release of a mobile POS terminal that works with UTN, uCHF, SGT, ETH. The POS terminal runs under Android and international organizations and will be posted on https://unipayments.com. Now sending and receiving payments and money transfers in UTN and uCHF has just become much easier and much more convenient.
Daocracy.io — a decentralized company
We have been contemplating a distributed enterprise management system for quite some time, whether it’s share distribution or digital processes, or decision-making, or budgeting management. Now our lab is releasing a pre-alpha version of that service, which we are planning to use inside our organization — http://daocracy.io/. Within the next few months, we will add such functions as registering a physical company, issuing and paying invoices via UniPayments, and UniChat corporate messenger. We are doing this for ourselves, so the service is going to be simple and concise.
There will be a separate post about HODL, and for now it’s just the highlights. Tokenization of all metals, gold, oil, real estate and organizing circulation of these tokens.
Tokenize everything
The opportunity to digitize actual gold — more than a ton of it — is a serious achievement, and we are starting our tokenization program with three tons of pure gold. Three tons of gold bullions kept in secure storage in Switzerland enable us to issue 3,000,000 uGold tokens worth one gram each and offer them for purchase and sale in increments of one gram. As soon as this smart contract is released, UniPayments and UniChat will be able to operate in digital gold. We need this case to demonstrate the feasibility of digitizing metals and proceed to creation of digital steel, nickel, silver and palladium.
The second mega-important task we are dealing with is tokenizing a square meter of real estate while taking into account all the adjustments for the view from the windows, story, balcony availability, etc. The first project we are tokenizing is a new golf resort in Spain, right opposite Gibraltar. 250,000 square meters of elite residences are worth just under one billion Euro, taking into account the current cost per square meter in the area.
In both cases, Universa not just provides the platform for Smart.Money tokenization, but doubles as an operator helping the asset owner to organize circulation of tokenized assets.
The rights in assets tokenized in this way will be transferred via Universa Blockchain, which will cause an explosive growth of the number of transactions, UTN fee revenue and the growth in the number of uBots operating these digital assets.
But more on that later.
Good night, and a happy new year to me and Universa Blockchain!
Thank you for believing in us.
Уour Paranoid CEO, Alexander Borodich
