verification

Feb 18 2021

Blockchain Platform Qtum Teams Up with Blockpass to Provide On-Chain KYC Services

Blockchain platforms Qtum and Blockpass have teamed up in order to deliver on-chain (or blockchain-based) Know-Your-Customer (KYC) services.

As part of the agreement, Qtum will be providing subsidies to “specific” members looking to achieve regulatory compliance through Blockpass’s On-chain KYC solutions.

Adam Vaziri, CEO at Blockpass, stated:

“We’ve known and been fans of the Qtum team and network for a long time, and it’s great to have the opportunity to work closely with them. The Qtum network is innovative, and we’re excited to be able to bring the benefits and possibilities of On-chain KYC to developers and users alike. Facilitating fast, simple and efficient regulatory compliance on Qtum creates more opportunities for everyone, and spreads the phenomenon of On-chain KYC to an even wider audience.”

Qtum Co-founder Jordan Earls noted that on-chain KYC will become a vital component for many different protocols on the decentralized web or Web 3.0. He added that instead of hindering or inhibiting innovators who are focused on complying with regulations while enabling new technologies, the Qtum Foundation would “like to support those builders by backing Blockpass’ expansion to the Qtum blockchain.”

Earls added:

“Blockpass’ solution has exceeded our expectations when it comes to cost, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than traditional services, and its ability to only allow non-sensitive pieces of information to touch the blockchain.”

Qtum is an open-source, public (or permissionless) blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform that aims to leverage the security of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) along with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts.

Secured by a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, Qtum has introduced its own Decentralized Governance Protocol (DGP) that allows specific blockchain or DLT settings to be modified, “leading to the possibility of increasing Qtum’s block size without the need for a hard fork” or backwards incompatible upgrade.

Blockpass is a digital identity verification provider that aims to offer a “one-click” compliance gateway to financial services and other regulated sectors. Through the Blockpass platform, users are able to create, store, and manage a “data-secure” digital identity that may be used for a complete ecosystem of services, token purchases and to also gain access to “regulated industries.”

Blockpass is reportedly offering a 90% discount on its services in order to support clients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blockpass, which claims to be a pioneer of On-chain KYC, is a “fast, comprehensive” KYC and AML screening software-as-a-service for blockchains, crypto, DeFi and other regulated sectors. The platform offers various compliance benefits such as “pay-as-you-go,” no setup costs, no integration required, free-of-cost testing, and “immediate launch” services.

Source

Feb 01 2021

Blockchain tech makes sustainable development goals more achievable

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres estimates trillions of U.S. dollars per annum is needed to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The question is: “Where would it come from?” Official development aid, philanthropy and public finances cannot suffice, which means the needle is moving toward private capital to fund sustainable development projects.

But the gap between financing and the environmental impact does not exude the confidence of private investors to fund development projects. India, a center of sustainability risks and innovative interventions, offers an example of this gap. Between 2014–2015 and 2018–19, corporate social responsibility, or CSR, spent by the approximately 1,100 listed Indian corporates grew at a rate of 16%, while India’s score on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index grew by roughly 1% compound annual growth rate, or CAGR. Ironically, most CSR spending by Indian companies goes to education and health — the very sectors the HDI index focuses on.

It is time for blockchain tech

Can blockchain technology be a workable solution? It can because development projects conduct measuring, reporting and verification, or MRV, processes measure the outcome and impact of projects. Most readers are aware that distributed ledger technology stores data batches in blocks on the network, and the need for independent verification from the network’s users makes the records transparent, secure, verifiable, and immutable. These are the very attributes by which blockchain can improve the MRV processes, thus improving data auditability and reducing misreporting/fraud of data. This can incentivize private capital to consider investing in this space.

Moreover, if we must identify the precise activity of a typical development project where blockchain technology can be leveraged, then it would collect and time-stamp project-level data for monitoring purposes. The challenge is many resource-crunched development projects, especially in developing countries, still collect field data by hand, which can lead to inaccuracies, mistakes and fraud. With a blockchain, such data can be collected and reported in a secure, transparent and verifiable manner.

What also adds adverse effects is the local institutions in the developing countries that implement such projects often lack the systems to ensure the data they report is verifiable. Weak regulations in such countries make it difficult to hold such local institutions to account. Add to this the distance between foreign investors and these local projects, and it becomes harder to stay on the same level.

Blockchain can reduce the data risks of local-level institutions, improve the validity of the data they report for impact, and instill confidence in foreign private donors/investors to fund such development projects.

Blockchain and MRV processes

What this implies is more financing flow can be committed to the local level. Back in 2017, the International Institute for Environment and Development estimated that only 10% of the $60 billion in public and private climate finance is directly committed to the local level, which is partly due to such perceived data risks. Using blockchain to improve MRV can facilitate greater access to capital for local-level institutions.

With blockchain enabling local projects to report verifiable performance as part of their MRV processes, local development institutions can gain a greater supply of capital. The Amazon in Brazil is an example. The Rainforest project uses blockchain and the Internet of Things to record and transfer data from electrical meters, robotic appliances and emission monitors on the environmental impact. Remote sensing satellites independently verify the status of patches, upon which blockchain smart contracts directly reward the farmers who preserve their rainforest patches. The outcome data is verifiable, and the exclusion of intermediaries while transferring incentives minimizes administrative costs and the siphoning of funds.

Blockchain-enabled MRV processes help disintermediate the intermediaries in a social or sustainability bond issuance, thus reducing issuance costs and making it possible for small enterprises to access the bond market or aggregate smaller assets into bonds. Already, leading Spanish bank BBVA uses blockchain to structure green bonds and loans.

As long as limitations such as internet capacity and technology literacy can be overcome, blockchain’s revolutionary role in improving the MRV processes around data can mobilize more private capital investments for development projects executed by local-level institutions in developing countries.

This article was co-authored by Sourajit Aiyer and Jae-Hoon Kwak.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Sourajit Aiyer is a consultant at South Asia Fast Track Sustainability Communications. Previously, he worked with traditional and sustainable finance organizations. He has written three books, over 160 articles for 60 publications, given over 30 guest-talks at various universities and conferences, and curated 20 webinars with over 50 international domain-experts.

Jae-Hoon Kwak is the CEO at Pan-Impact Korea, a company focusing on social impact via innovative technologies.

Blockchain tech makes sustainable development goals more achievable

Source

Jan 20 2021

Elaborate Scam App Impersonates Leading Asian Bank; Victims Duped into ‘Investing’

Zimperium, in collaboration with a leading Asian bank, have uncovered the early stages of a coordinated effort by scammers to defraud existing and new bank customers. In this blog, we will:

Alert the general public about the scam before it gains traction;
Outline the entire scam around the fake bank app; and
Show how it is also targeting other financial services, including another bank.

The campaign coincided with the bank’s announcement about its development of a digital exchange, enabling institutional investors and accredited investors to tap into a fully integrated tokenization, trading, and custody ecosystem for digital assets.

Thus far, dozens have downloaded the app and have lost an average of $1,500 each. The app – first seen on VirusTotal on December 22, 2020 – has still not been identified as malware or scamware by any anti-virus companies.

The campaign remains active and is, in fact, growing:

It appears to be downloadable via third party sites and/or phishing links;
The command and control servers are still operational;
The elaborate scam itself features, among other aspects, active customer support; and
We’ve learned of a similar campaign targeting a second bank. We are reaching out to that bank directly, before revealing the name.

Downloading the app

Once the app is downloaded from a third party store or phishing link and is opened, the victim is presented with the following login page:

Figures 1, 2: Fake login and registration page along with the “password retrieval” option

As part of the registration process, users are asked to provide an email address, account number, “rganization code” (note the typo appears in the app itself) and other details.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, registration generates an automated email containing a verification code trying to impersonate a legitimate email from the bank (including using the bank’s name in the email address). We received verification codes when we registered with legitimate and fake information.

Figure 3: Fake email for registration with verification code. (Note: “If not my operation”)

The entire communication takes place with a server that does not belong to the impersonated institution. Instead, the user has unknowingly shared personal and financial information with the attackers.

Figure 4: The communication with C&C when trying to login with credentials

App experience

Once logged in, the application presents the victim with a seemingly legit cryptocurrency trading platform using the brand value of the impersonated organization as a lure. It looks more convincing with the dynamically changing prices.

Figures 5, 6: The Home and Trade pages that make use of information from Figure 8

Figure 7: The continuous pings to get the updated prices as seen in Figure 7

Customer support

Moreover, the presence of a customer support option provides the victim with additional confidence of being able to contact the financial institution (the scammers) with any questions or issues.

When we attempted this, we received the following:

Figures 8, 9: The customer support chat box presents the offer image and convincing text

Figure 10: Scam poster encouraging victims to “invest”

Customer support would be the first choice for the victim to complain about discrepancies, but the scammers cleverly set it up in such a way that it convinces the victim to “Recharge” and invest to reap (non-existent) benefits.

Making use of legitimate platforms that offer services to communicate with customers through customer support, the scammers offer “Customer Service Solutions” as seen below with this command and control’s response:

Figure 11: The URL for customer support as received from the C&C server

If the upward trend makes the victim interested in investing, the scammers have set up a “Funds Management” page allowing for the continued exploitation of the victim as seen below:

Figures 12, 13: The option to recharge and add funds to the account

The Recharge option mentioned above is the first go-to for a new victim to begin investing through the platform.

The two investment options offered are “Online Pay” and “USDT,” where the victims were asked to chat with the customer support and pay online or transfer the funds to a provided BTC or ETH wallet and attach proof of the transaction.

Figures 14, 15, 16: The recharge options- Online Pay, BTC, ETH with “Important Notice”

Figures 17, 18: The BTC and ETH wallet’s transactions

What can you do?

It’s clear this campaign is just beginning and – as we mentioned – targeting a different bank already. Here’s what you can do:

From a consumer perspective, never download apps from third-party sites; rely solely on the App Store and Google Play. Be leery of apps that may have grammatical or other errors – like “rganization code” which appeared in the app itself.

From an enterprise perspective, Zimperium is the global leader in mobile device and app security, offering the only real-time, on-device, machine learning-based protection against Android, iOS and Chromebooks threats. We detect this attack and others like it.

Please contact us to learn more.

Elaborate Scam App Impersonates Leading Asian Bank; Victims Duped into ‘Investing’

Source

Jan 08 2021

DeFi integration and layer-2 tech back Matic Network’s (MATIC) 92% rally

The exponential growth of the decentralized finance sector increased activity on the Ethereum blockchain, and this has resulted in slow transaction times and incredibly high fees.

In the last month, Ether (ETH) price has also rallied more than 100%, and gas fees are on the rise again as demand for ETH and a resurgence in the DeFi sector accelerates.

Matic Network intends to solve the DeFi and decentralized applications scalability problem by using layer-two technology for off-chain computing.

Multiple sidechains can be used simultaneously, and each is secured by a group of validators via its proof-of-stake system. The results are then pushed to the Ethereum network, creating checkpoints.

The project aims to become blockchain agnostic, which would allow for interoperable assets in the future. Currently, the Matic Network is ERC-20-based and its MATIC token has a $156 million market capitalization.

Backed by Coinbase Ventures and Binance Launchpad, the project raised $5.6 billion during its initial exchange offering in April 2019. A number of notable projects have already integrated Matic Network’s infrastructure, including Decentraland and Maker.

Since Jan. 1, MATIC has rallied 92%, but the token is still 23% below its Dec. 2019 all-time-high at $0.44.

*MATIC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView*

Matic Network initiated deposits and withdrawals on its mainnet on June 20, 2020, and a few days later, it began offering staking capabilities. Tokenholders were then able to delegate their staking to validators and share revenue.

On Sep. 10, 2020, Matic released its proof-of-stake token bridge, allowing faster transfers between the Ethereum and Matic networks.

Since August 2020, Matic’s BEPSwap decentralized exchange has been running on a beta version, and its liquidity has dropped about 25% from it’s $40 million peak.

In September 2020, Matic Network launched its final staking phase by adding community-run validator nodes while increasing slots to 100. The team intends to gradually shut down all Matic Foundation nodes, allowing the community to choose from public validators.

DeFi and altcoin season appears to be pushing MATIC higher

Over the last few weeks, a handful of projects have chosen to launch on Matic Network, including the game SkyWeaver, Aavegotchi Crypto Collectibles, the collectible game Drakon IOI and Fire Protocol OS.

Furthermore, on Jan. 6, the MATIC token listed on Huobi Global and offered an $80 premium to new users who onboarded with full Know Your Customer verification.

*Matic Twitter user activity vs. price (USD). Source:* *The Tie*

Data from The Tie shows that the recent price spike has been accompanied by a considerable increase in social network activity, but it’s difficult to determine whether the uptick in Twitter users is the primary driver behind MATIC’s price action.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

DeFi integration and layer-2 tech back Matic Network’s (MATIC) 92% rally

Source

Dec 11 2020

Vouched Announces $3M Funding Round to Accelerate AI-Based Identity Verification Platform

Vouched, a developer of proprietary artificial intelligence and computer vision for end-to-end identity verification and real-time fraud detection, announced on Thursday it has raised $3 million through its latest funding round, which was led by Flying Fish Partners.

Founded in 2018, Vouched describes itself as a proprietary AI/CV/ML that powers real-time visual ID verification to onboard customers and drive revenue for customers across town or around the world. The company noted it accelerates revenue growth and provides a “seamless” user experience by rapidly and securely verifying and onboarding end users through a sophisticated, end-to-end visual ID verification and fraud detection solution.

“Vouched serves disruptive startups, fast-growing unicorns, and the Fortune 1000 enterprise. Focused on regulated and security sensitive industries, more than 50 companies in banking and financial services; healthcare and telemedicine; and gig and sharing economy companies rely on Vouched for identity verification.”

While sharing more details about the company, Vouched Co-founder and CEO, John Baird, stated:

“The ability to see a person and verify their identity online is required for complex regulated activities such as Know Your Customer (KYC) in banking and the rise of Know Your Patient (KYP) in healthcare and telemedicine. Increasingly, security-sensitive transactions such as peer-to-peer sharing of expensive goods like motorcycles, cars and RVs also depend on identity verification. We are helping to meet those growing needs.”

Vouched went on to add that it’ll use the investment round’s funds will further accelerate the growth of its identity proofing platform across the banking, fintech, and healthcare verticals.

Source