Zero Point Cryogenics, Qubic Technology, and Team Win $3 Million Award for Quantum Sensing – Quantum Computing Report
Posted: March 9, 2024 at 2:40 am
Zero Point Cryogenics (ZPC) has secured funding from the Government of Canada through the Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program, in collaboration with the University of Waterloo. This initiative, aimed at advancing quantum technology research for defence and security applications, highlights Canadas commitment to technological innovation. ZPCs involvement in the Microwave Quantum Radar project, alongside partners like Qubic Technologies and Carleton University, underscores the companys dedication to pioneering quantum solutions. The project will be supported by a $3 million contribution agreement from the IDEaS program. Zero Point Cryogenics is an Edmonton, Canada based company that supplies dilution refrigerators. Qubic Technology located in Sherbrooke, Canada is developing a new quantum technology of microwave transmitters and receivers for telecommunications and remote sensing applications. For further details, refer to the original press release provided by Zero Point Cryogenics here.
March 7, 2024
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$5 Million XPrize Competition Announced to Develop Real World Applications Quantum Applications – Quantum Computing Report
Posted: at 2:40 am
Google Quantum AI along with additional support from the Geneva Science Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) Foundation is sponsoring a 3 year, $5 million prize competition to encourage development of novel algorithms, new applications, or ways of implementing enhanced performance of quantum solutions that can help solve real-world challenges. The contest will be administered by the XPRIZE Foundation, a non-profit set up in 1994 to host public competitions intended to encourage technical breakthroughs. As stated in the contest guidelines:
To win the prize, teams must develop a new (or meaningfully improved) application of quantum computers that addresses a computationally complex problem and demonstrate the viability of the proposed quantum algorithm for this task, establishing a clear practical quantum advantage over classical methods with a compelling case for positive societal impact.
Key criteria the judges will use for awarding the prizes are the following:
The contest is open to any individual or entity, unless prohibited by U.S. law and will occur in two phases over a three year period. Phase I which will last for 24 months from March 2024 to February 2026 will be for teams to submit a paper describing the beneficial application they intend to solve and what is the quantum advantage and novelty of their approach. At the end of this phase, the judges will select up to 20 teams that will split a $1 million prize purse and advance to Phase 2.
Phase II will occur in the third year of the contest from March 2026 to January 2027. This phase will require the teams to compile their solutions against realistic estimates of quantum hardware capabilities and perform resource estimates of what is needed to provide meaningful quantum advantage. They will also need to benchmark their quantum solutions with the best known classical solutions to show how their quantum solution is superior. The teams solutions will be judged according to the criteria listed above and a Grand Prize of $3 million will be awarded to a single or perhaps multiple Grand Prize winners. If there are multiple Grand Prize winners, the $3 million will be split amongst them. A final $1 million award will be split amongst a few runners-up. The number of runners-up will be determined by the judges.
Registration to participate in Phase I has already started and will last through June 2024. Additional details about this contest can be viewed on a web page posted on the XPRIZE site here, a preliminary competition guidelines document here, and a list of FAQs here.
March 5, 2024
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Q.ANT and Fraunhofer IPA Establish Competence Centre for Prosthetics With Quantum Technology – The Quantum Insider
Posted: at 2:40 am
Insider Brief
PRESS RELEASE The high-tech company Q.ANT and Fraunhofer IPA signed an agreement to establish the Competence Centre Human-Machine-Interface. The aim of the cooperation is to detect the finest nerve signals from muscle activity and interpret the resulting information in order to control machines and devices. This could make it possible to intuitively control hand prostheses in the future.
Q.ANT plays a leading role in the field of magnetic field sensors based on quantum technology. The sensor from Q.ANT enables the fine sensitivities that we need for reading biosignals, says Urs Schneider, Head of Biomechatronics Research at Fraunhofer IPA. The competence centre is based in Stuttgart and brings together around 15 experts from research and industry.
We want to control prosthetic hands, just like healthy limbs, using neural impulses. Fraunhofer IPA brings proven expertise in this field of biomechatronics to our strategic partnership. This can be used to develop completely new applications in medical technology. We are therefore among the pioneers in this promising field of application for quantum sensor technology and are redefining the human-machine-interface, says Michael Frtsch, CEO of Q.ANT, which specialises in photonic quantum technologies for sensing and computing.
Both cooperation partners bring many years of experience to the collaboration: Q.ANT has been developing a magnetic field sensor based on quantum technology for five years. It is characterised by its combination of sensitivity, size, and operation at room temperature. Fraunhofer IPA can draw on more than 15 years of expertise in biomechatronics and biosignal processing. The IPA specialists will characterise biosignals in order to program the corresponding algorithms that convert the sensor data into control commands for the prosthesis. The Fraunhofer Institute will also carry out the corresponding series of tests with patients, the results of which will be incorporated into the development of the prosthesis prototypes.
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Two-thirds of EVM smart contract deployments in 2024 are from Optimism: Report – Blockworks
Posted: at 2:39 am
A Flipside Crypto report shows that over 637 million Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts have been deployed across seven layer-2 blockchains since January 2022.
EVM-compatible smart contracts refer to software that the computing state of the Ethereum blockchain can understand.
With scaling solutions becoming more efficient and accessible, fewer EVM contracts are directly deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. With the Dencun update around the corner which will introduce blob transactions and other infrastructure upgrades this trend is likely to accelerate.
With layer-2s able to only publish critical data to ETH layer-1, the costs for interacting with layer-2s should significantly decrease. This enables much more creativity in protocol development, a much easier experience for users to have complex transactions abstracted away from them and ultimately lowers the costs for layer-2s to interoperate with each other, Carlos Mercado, a data scientist at Flipside Crypto told Blockworks.
Read more: Ethereum devs debate future of account abstraction
Leading this movement today is Optimism, an Ethereum optimistic rollup layer-2, which currently stands out as the most popular blockchain for deployments, accounting for over two-thirds (~70%) of the total EVM smart contract deployments so far this year. According to Flipside Crypto, the chain has seen over 28.8 million EVM deployments since Jan.1.
However, for non-EVM smart contracts, Polygon and BNB smart chains (BSC) remain the most popular deployment chains. On Sept. 6 of last year, BSC saw 5.3 million contracts deployed, the most deployments seen on a chain ever, though this number quickly trailed off around Sept. 13.
DeFi smart contracts have been the most popular for developers across all chains this year, accounting for roughly 34.7% of all deployments that can be categorized. This number is roughly 11.2% higher than in 2022 and 2023.
By contracts, NFT smart contracts, which drove the bull market between 2021 and 2022, have become less popular over time. Deployments decreased from 18.6% to 8.2% in the same period.
Read more: Stellar sparks smart contract upgrade and its not an EVM
Mercado notes that this can be interpreted as both positive and negative.
The positive argument is that the space is finding product market fit, theres more tokens than ever and new primitives that enable lending, borrowing, options, perpetuals, oracles for more assets than ever, Mercado said.
He adds, the somewhat negative argument is that given more money [is] flowing to more blockspace, fragmentation of liquidity is forcing more (arguably unproductive) activity: bridging and swapping for arbitrage as opposed to individuals specific desire to be on a chain or have a token.
Mercado acknowledges both sides of the argument but notes his bias towards the space evolving faster than it is fragmenting.
Read more: zkLinks Nexus wants to solve liquidity fragmentation between ZK ecosystems
Uncategorized smart contracts, or those classified as other by Flipside Crypto, are by far the most commonly deployed smart contracts. They make up 93.8% of all smart contracts deployed across the observed chains.
This number is significantly higher than it was in 2022, where these smart contracts made up an estimated 37% of deployed contracts. Its also a little higher than in 2023, where these smart contracts made up around 86% of all deployments.
While it is difficult to draw clear conclusions from this wide-ranging category, this figure, coupled with the growing proportion of dapps across all chains, suggests more experimentation and diversification at the protocol level, Flipside Crypto wrote.
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Two-thirds of EVM smart contract deployments in 2024 are from Optimism: Report - Blockworks
Firewall raises $3.7M to take smart contracts mainstream with programmable finality – Cointelegraph
Posted: at 2:39 am
Firewall secures funding from North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Hack VC to bulletproof smart contract networks.
San Francisco, USA / California, 7 March, Chainwire Firewall, a blockchain infrastructure startup, announced its $3.7M pre-seed round, co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Hack VC. Firewall transforms the usability of smart contract technology through an innovative finality consensus mechanism that eliminates smart contract exploits.
The founders of Firewall, previously the first and sixth employees at Staked a staking company acquired by Kraken in a landmark crypto deal have helped breathe life into the eras of proof-of-stake and decentralized finance over the last six years. In that time, the founders served institutional clients with infrastructure that handled billions of dollars, and now building on their experience, are addressing what most perceive as the final major hurdle to a full embrace of digital assets by the traditional financial system.
Firewall is building the safety rails that enable the everyday person to use the next era of the Internet, stated Devan Purhar, Co-Founder of Firewall. Today, billions of dollars are stolen from users, through irreversible transactions that are classifiable as theft. Theres a parallel between the current state of crypto-networks and the early internet, with a similar lack of essential security infrastructure. Our focus is not on marginal improvements; rather, we bring a required paradigm shift in the usability of blockchains. We designed a solution from first principles, and created programmable finality. Fundamentally, we make exploits a concept of the past.
Akin to a digital version of a traditional networks firewall, Firewalls technology introduces "programmable finality. It extends rollups to use programmable transaction finalization rules, which act as automated checkpoints that block harmful transactions, inserted before later stages when the data is finalized by a DA layer such as EigenDA or Celestia. The founders envision Firewall as a part of every smart contract network, acting as an embedded security system that intelligently guards against threats.
"Firewall uses real-time algorithms to pre-filter exploits from being included in blocks," shared Sam Mitchell, Firewall Co-Founder. "Then, by using programmable finality we automatically recover from any exploits that bypass the pre-filter checks. Detection at this stage can involve AI models or social consensus, which may take longer. Mitchell emphasized that institutions, managing trillions in assets, are interested in the benefits of smart contracts but require a secure environment to deploy capital. Creating comfort for institutional clients to use smart contracts will be the pivotal point for the widespread adoption of digital assets.
Past the founders, the core team is credited with successfully pioneering AI use in crypto threat detection at OpenZeppelin and Forta, and is set to revolutionize the field with Firewall's all-encompassing security approach. The startups initial focus is on the rollup ecosystem, and prides itself on alignment with building non-custodial and trustless solutions. The funding will help expand the team and create the community to firewall the EVM. Longer-term plans include developing coordination mechanisms to integrate the social layer directly into the Firewall.
Travis Scher, Managing Partner at North Island Ventures, said:
We believe the primary impediment to cryptos mainstream adoption is the current security paradigm, in which a single bug can lead to a total loss of user funds. Firewall's solution can prevent such losses, and we are thrilled to support such an important company from the outset.
The funding round was co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Hack VC, with participation from Finality Capital, and angels including Tim Ogilvie of Staked, Kain Warwick and Jordan Momtazi of Synthetix, Nathan McCauley of Anchorage, and Yaoqi Jia of AltLayer.
Firewall is making blockchains safer for users, developers, and institutions, said Ted Breyer of Breyer Capital. We see this catalyzing a new era of smart contract utility, and were delighted to support the team.
With the growing global adoption of crypto and regulatory spotlight, catalyzed by the BTC ETF and anticipated ETH ETF, the time for crypto-networks to become bulletproof is now. Trillions of dollars remain on the sidelines, scared to use smart contracts. Firewall's programmable finality which effectively neutralizes exploits, offers the security assurance needed to unlock these assets, paving the way for crypto to revolutionize the global financial system.
Firewall is dedicated to making smart contract technology safe to use in everyday life, by eliminating smart contract exploits. Their solution is akin to a robust network firewall, applied to the modular blockchain ecosystem.
Co-Founder
Devan Purhar
Firewall
This publication is provided by the client. Cointelegraph does not endorse and is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products, or other materials on this page. Readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Cointelegraph is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods, or services mentioned in the press release.
Originally posted here:
Firewall raises $3.7M to take smart contracts mainstream with programmable finality - Cointelegraph
Dencun upgrade to further reduce Ethereum’s dominance and accelerate layer-2 solutions, Flipside says – crypto.news
Posted: at 2:39 am
With most smart contracts no longer deployed on Ethereum, analysts expect the Dencun upgrade to further boost this trend as layer-2 solutions improve.
Ethereum is quickly losing its status as the top hub for deploying smart contracts amid growing competition among layer-2 networks (l2), analysts at Flipside revealed in a recent research report. According to their data, nearly 640 million smart contracts have been deployed since January 2022, with Polygon and BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) leading in contract deployments.
Moreover, Flipside says Optimism, a layer-2 solution which operates on top of Ethereums architecture, has accounted for two thirds of total EVM smart contract deployments so far in 2024.
As the majority of EVM contracts are no longer deployed directly on Ethereum, we expect the forthcoming Dencun upgrade to further accelerate this trend as L2 solutions become more accessible and efficient.
Flipside
Analysts noted that contract deployers have also surged, making up 34.7% of categorizable deployers across observed chains since Jan 1, marking a significant increase from 11.2% in both 2022 and 2023. However, Flipside pointed out that it isnt just developers that can deploy contracts, adding that smart contracts can also deploy contracts.
For instance, Factories like UniswapV2Factory allow anyone to create liquidity pools for their tokens permissionlessly. This tends to lead to deployments consolidating around deployers like these.
Flipside
In the meantime, deployers related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) saw a decline from 18.6% to 8.2% over the same period, analysts said, suggesting that the next bull run might prioritize decentralized finance over NFTs, which dominated the previous cycle.
In January, Michael Novogratzs crypto bank Galaxy Digital said in a research report that 2024 will be a crucial year for Ethereum, as other layer-1 blockchains such asSolana will likely raise the stakes.
Galaxy Digital analysts note that Ethereums modular architecture, particularly various rollup types, will introduce new challenges and technological risks due to their early stage of development. Singling out Solana as the most distinctive general-purpose blockchain embracing a monolithic architecture, they position it as the primary competitor against Ethereum.
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Ethereum Aims For $10000, Driven By 2 Key Factors, According To Experts – TradingView
Posted: at 2:39 am
Ethereum is emerging as the vanguard for a revolutionary financial system. Advocates of the second most valuable blockchain extol the virtues of smart contracts, envisioning a future marked by market transparency, tokenized funds, and expeditious settlement times.
At the time of writing, Ether was trading at $3,780, up 2% and 8% in the daily and weekly timeframes, data from Coingecko shows.
Ethereums Untapped Institutional Potential
Experts argue that Ethereum is yet to undergo its institutionalized hype cycle, lagging behind the fervor witnessed by Bitcoin.
Robby Greenfield, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Umoja Labs, foresees a significant uptick in institutional interest in Ethereum, particularly fueled by the impending Bitcoin halving and the cascading inflows from Bitcoin ETFs.
Greenfields bold prediction places Ethereum on a trajectory to narrow the gap with Bitcoins gains, asserting that the cryptocurrency could surpass the $10,000 milestone this year.
Institutional investors, he believes, will play a pivotal role in propelling Ethereum to new heights, bringing about a surge in buying pressure.
Regulatory Crossroads: The SECs Stance On Ethereum ETFs
While optimism runs high, the path to Ethereums ascendancy is not without regulatory hurdles.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Chair Gary Gensler, may adopt a cautious approach toward approving an Ethereum ETF, unlike the relatively smoother approval process witnessed with Bitcoin ETFs.
Genslers hesitance stems from a history where the SEC reluctantly gave the nod to Bitcoin ETFs after a legal battle with Grayscale.
The SEC is set to scrutinize Ethereum ETF applications, including those from financial giants BlackRock and Fidelity, in May.
Despite industry expectations, the approval odds vary, with Polymarket estimating a 43% likelihood and JPMorgan offering a more optimistic 50% chance.Ethereums Catalyst: The Dencun Upgrade
JPMorgan highlights a potential catalyst for Ethereums growththe Dencun upgrade. Crafted to enhance scalability by reducing costs for various rollup solutions, this upgrade facilitates the batching of crypto transactions into smaller data chunks settled on the Ethereum network.
Unlike Bitcoins programmed scarcity with a capped token supply of 21 million, Ethereums supply remains infinite, presenting a unique dynamic in the crypto landscape.
Eugene Cheung, Bybits head of institutions, underscores the positive implications of the Dencun upgrade for Ethereum supporters.
With layer 2 solutions built on top of Ethereum, the blockchain is evolving into a settlement layer for a novel digital infrastructure spanning gaming, trading, and investing.
In the eyes of some, the looming decision on Ethereum ETFs is just the opening act.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas dismisses an Ethereum ETF as small potatoes, characterizing it as an underwhelming prelude to more substantial developments within the crypto sphere.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView
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Ethereum Aims For $10000, Driven By 2 Key Factors, According To Experts - TradingView
Smart contracts in esports: revolutionising the game – Dentons
Posted: at 2:39 am
Beijing Dacheng Law Offices, LLP ("") is an independent law firm, and not a member or affiliate of Dentons. is a partnership law firm organized under the laws of the Peoples Republic of China, and is Dentons' Preferred Law Firm in China, with offices in more than 40 locations throughout China. Dentons Group (a Swiss Verein) ("Dentons") is a separate international law firm with members and affiliates in more than 160 locations around the world, including Hong Kong SAR, China. For more information, please see dacheng.com/legal-notices or dentons.com/legal-notices.
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Smart contracts in esports: revolutionising the game - Dentons
Firewall Raises $3.7 Million To Take Smart Contracts Mainstream With Programmable Finality – The Daily Hodl
Posted: at 2:39 am
March 7, 2024 San Francisco, California
Firewall, blockchain infrastructure startup, announced its $3.7 million pre-seed round, co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital and Hack VC.
Firewall transforms the usability of smart contract technology through an innovative finality consensus mechanism that eliminates smart contract exploits.
The founders of Firewall, previously the first and sixth employees at Staked a staking company acquired by Kraken in a landmark crypto deal have helped breathe life into the eras of PoS (proof-of-stake) and DeFi (decentralized finance) over the last six years.
In that time, the founders served institutional clients with infrastructure that handled billions of dollars, and now building on their experience, are addressing what most perceive as the final major hurdle to a full embrace of digital assets by the traditional financial system.
Devan Purhar, co-founder of Firewall, said,
Firewall is building the safety rails that enable the everyday person to use the next era of the internet. Today, billions of dollars are stolen from users, through irreversible transactions that are classifiable as theft.
Theres a parallel between the current state of crypto networks and the early internet, with a similar lack of essential security infrastructure.
Our focus is not on marginal improvements rather, we bring a required paradigm shift in the usability of blockchains. We designed a solution from first principles and created programmable finality. Fundamentally, we make exploits a concept of the past.
Akin to a digital version of a traditional networks firewall, Firewalls technology introduces programmable finality.
It extends rollups to use programmable transaction finalization rules which act as automated checkpoints that block harmful transactions inserted before later stages when the data is finalized by a DA layer such as EigenDA or Celestia.
The founders envision Firewall as a part of every smart contract network, acting as an embedded security system that intelligently guards against threats.
Sam Mitchell, co-founder of Firewall, said,
Firewall uses real-time algorithms to pre-filter exploits from being included in blocks. Then, by using programmable finality we automatically recover from any exploits that bypass the pre-filter checks. Detection at this stage can involve AI models or social consensus, which may take longer.
Mitchell emphasized that institutions managing trillions in assets are interested in the benefits of smart contracts but require a secure environment to deploy capital.
Mitchell added,
Creating comfort for institutional clients to use smart contracts will be the pivotal point for the widespread adoption of digital assets.
Past the founders, the core team is credited with successfully pioneering AI use in crypto threat detection at OpenZeppelin and Forta and is set to revolutionize the field with Firewalls all-encompassing security approach.
The startups initial focus is on the rollup ecosystem and prides itself on alignment with building non-custodial and trustless solutions.
The funding will help expand the team and create the community to firewall the EVM.
Longer-term plans include developing coordination mechanisms to integrate the social layer directly into the Firewall.
Travis Scher, managing partner at North Island Ventures, said,
We believe the primary impediment to cryptos mainstream adoption is the current security paradigm in which a single bug can lead to a total loss of user funds. Firewalls solution can prevent such losses, and we are thrilled to support such an important company from the outset.
The funding round was co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital and Hack VC, with participation from Finality Capital and angels including Tim Ogilvie of Staked, Kain Warwick and Jordan Momtazi of Synthetix, Nathan McCauley of Anchorage and Yaoqi Jia of AltLayer.
Ted Breyer of Breyer Capital said,
Firewall is making blockchains safer for users, developers and institutions. We see this catalyzing a new era of smart contract utility, and were delighted to support the team.
With the growing global adoption of crypto and regulatory spotlight, catalyzed by the BTC ETF and anticipated ETH ETF, the time for crypto networks to become bulletproof is now.
Trillions of dollars remain on the sidelines, scared to use smart contracts.
Firewalls programmable finality, which effectively neutralizes exploits, offers the security assurance needed to unlock these assets, paving the way for crypto to revolutionize the global financial system.
Firewall is dedicated to making smart contract technology safe to use in everyday life by eliminating smart contract exploits.
Their solution is akin to a robust network firewall, applied to the modular blockchain ecosystem.
Devan Purhar, co-founder of Firewall
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Tezos to Hold AMA on X on March 12th – TradingView
Posted: at 2:39 am
Coindar
Tezos will host an AMA on X on March 12th at 5:00 PM UTC. The discussion will focus on the topic of adaptive issuance.
Refer to the official tweet by XTZ:
XTZ Info
Tezos is a distinctive blockchain platform architected to facilitate and govern decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Its foundation is built on a decentralized governance system that enables blockchain modifications through a community-led decision-making process.
Operating on a unique iteration of Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism known as Liquid Proof of Stake (LPoS), Tezos allows participants owning more than 6,000 Tez (XTZ) to become delegates, or bakers. These bakers are responsible for creating, signing, and publishing new blocks on the Tezos blockchain, and endorsing blocks produced by other bakers. Furthermore, the network utilizes the Michelson programming language for the creation of smart contracts, which engage with the networks cryptocurrency, Tez, for transaction execution and gas payment.
The native token of Tezos, XTZ, or Tez, plays a multifaceted role within the ecosystem. It serves as a reward for participation in the creation and endorsement of new blocks, either directly or through delegation. It functions as a voting mechanism within the decentralized governance system. Additionally, it is a means of value transfer and is used to pay for gas, the unit of computational effort in Tezos, necessary for executing transactions and interacting with smart contracts.
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