Modern enterprises often have hundreds or thousands of dormant data sets. As new oracle technology for data consumption comes online, there are ways for that dormant, proprietary data to generate revenue in a way that costs nothing to the data provider while also maintaining privacy privileges associated with that data. To generate revenue, that data just has to be made available in a marketplace to other entities that would be interested in that data. 

That’s where BlockPortal comes in – one of Accumulate’s partners in the Inveniam ecosystem. 

This article discusses: 

• What Makes BlockPortal Unique? 
• BlockPortal and Accumulate Partnership 
• Use Cases Beyond Accumulate 
• How BlockPortal and Chainlink can Work Together 
• How BlockPortal Automates Smart Contract Processes 

What Makes BlockPortal unique?

BlockPortal is an infrastructure for private data sharing. While other protocols may focus on public data and decentralizing the sourcing of public data by using a number of providers, certain data sets only come from a single source, and there are very few processes to maintain the integrity of the source and distribute that data. Additionally, there are limited development initiatives that define how data can be used, so BlockPortal is hoping to create an infrastructure to enable the usage and monetization of that private data. BlockPortal can help private data owners monetize their data. 

Data that is captured, consumed, and created is forecasted to grow to 180 zettabytes between 2020 and 2025. To put a zettabyte into perspective, it has been calculated the requirements for storing all human speech that was ever spoken as roughly 42 zettabytes.

BlockPortal sources private data that is siloed in places that might have utility to the public, either in its raw state or in some sort of transformed state, with calculations that hide the raw data. Additionally, BlockPotal can aggregate data from many private data sources and make it consumable, like a web3 version of Statista. 

The potential impact of BlockPortal’s mission could be very significant. For example, this could have implications for academic institutions that want to share private data openly while maintaining the integrity within the privacy of that data. 

BlockPortal could aggregate proprietary data and, through its partnership with Accumulate, take proprietary data so that it can be further:

• Distributed 
• Verifiable 
• Immutable

BlockPortal and Accumulate Partnership 

Once anchored to Accumulate, the state of the data can be used in various ways, with the main application for this immutable data being used to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. However, generally speaking, BlockPortal enhances proprietary data to meet a robust number of needs with financial implications, including environmental, social, and government (ESG) requirements and regulatory and compliance requirements. 

BlockPortal and Accumulate’s relationship revolves around anchoring proprietary data through Accumulate due to Accumulate’s:  

• Consistently low and predictable costs 
• High transaction throughput
• Architecture 
• Auditability
• Proof of process

Data Use Cases

BlockPortal’s primary focus is on connecting providers and users of real asset data. For example, real asset owners could provide financial data that can be monetized via price indices or other novel financial products.

Beyond that, the BlockPortal team foresees other categories of data such as IoT. In 2021 alone, there were more than 10 billion active IoT devices, with forecasts expecting that number to hit 25.4 billion devices total by 2030.

Additionally, BlockPortal envisions that the data they make available can be used to manage carbon credit-related items, such as issuance of carbon credit, and follow up on the projects where the carbon credits originate to ensure consistent execution on promises. 

BlockPortal identifies situations where they can find data from multiple sources and then deliver insights that people would be interested in purchasing or consuming. Then, BlockPortal would use a blockchain feed to generate revenue back to data providers in an immutable, higher performing, and low-cost way. BlockPortal enables data providers to take advantage of data they otherwise wouldn’t know what to do with and create new streams of insight-driven revenue for those enterprises. 

BlockPortal Delivers Data On Chain

Proprietary data is often inactive outside of technology company databases. While data may be used internally for analytics and metrics, BlockPortal has seen demand for this data outside of tech companies themselves. If companies have the opportunity to ethically monetize that data, it’s worth consideration because monetization has little cost to the company. It’s data that may go unused and it’s already collected and what matters is passing on the reputation of the data provider. BlockPortal enables web3 data sharing to anyone that wants to make their data available to smart contracts. 

If a company wants to automate a particular process using smart contracts and doesn’t know how to do that, or if a company has an existing relationship with a third party that needs the data, BlockPortal can enable permissioned usage of that data for a robust variety of purposes. BlockPortal uses an oracle-as-a-service model instead of a pay-per-query marketplace approach. 

In Conclusion 

BlockPortal makes proprietary data from private companies more consumable, allowing data owners to generate income and become aggregated to be used in a wide variety of use cases. Accumulate’s partnership with Blockportal strengthens that data by making it immutable, consistently low-cost, further distributed, and verifiable. 

Accumulate’s compatibility with the EVM will offer unique opportunities for the protocol’s ecosystem. Accumulate’s development team has in-depth exposure in this area with lead developer Paul Snow having made contributions to the EVM’s initial development. 

This article discusses some basics on what the EVM is, how it functions, and how Accumulate’s compatibility will extend the protocol’s ecosystem.

Topics that are in this post include: 

• What is a Virtual Machine? 
• What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine? 
• What is the Purpose of the Ethereum Virtual Machine?
• EVM Compared to Other Existing Technology 
• Downsides of the Ethereum Virtual Machine
• Benefits of the Ethereum Virtual Machine
• How EVM-Compatibility via Accumulate Augments DeFi and NFT projects 

What is a Virtual Machine? 

Virtual machines (VMs) are created on top of operating systems such as iOS or Windows. VMs can run on different types of software so that all the software can be compatible and work together to complete tasks independently without relying on others to function. Virtual machines can determine the computing power of physical machines, and because VMs are so versatile, VMs are essential for a decentralized platform to function correctly.  

What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine was created so that any node (computer) can use its resources no matter where it is located without being dependent on other nodes. The EVM acts as the go-to universal processor that anyone on the Ethereum network can use to make smart contracts or decentralized applications (dApps) function independently. 

The Ethereum blockchain is decentralized, meaning that thousands of computers run its software worldwide. These computers all have different operating systems and are spread out physically. The Ethereum blockchain system runs on a voluntary network and incentivizes participants who run the chain. The EVM is necessary to assist these nodes in building and executing what they want while sharing computing power. 

What is the Purpose of the Ethereum Virtual Machine?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine is embedded in all the nodes on the Ethereum network and keeps the rules consistent throughout every node. It ensures that all the blocks are valid and allows them to continue to the next block and run on their own. 

What is Turing-Completeness? 

A Turing Machine, once called an A-Machine or an Automatic Machine, represents a machine that would only work off algorithms until it got the correct answer. The possibilities are endless with this type of machine and can only be limited by physical restraints, which means the machine can continue forever until an answer is resolved. A Turing Machine relies on ‘statefulness’ as it can only focus on the task at hand or one state at a time. 

Turing-Completeness occurs when a computer can automatically decide a ruleset based on its computer language, instruction set, or advanced automation. It was created by a computer scientist named Alan Turning from his concept where he postulated that because computers do not think or act like humans, they can only function by processing a set of data to solve problems. 

EVM Compared to Other Existing Technology 

EVM is not the only Virtual Machine that exists – there have been many others that function similarly to it. One is the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which, just like the EVM, is attached to an OS or other hardware to allow a variety of systems to work with each other. 

The main difference between the EVM and the JVM is that the EVM works for a decentralized network and is organized externally, so there is no scheduling capability. Also, the fact that the EVM lacks hardware support means that it runs completely virtual.  

Downsides of the Ethereum Virtual Machine

Many people believe the EVM system is expensive to run – paying for each operation can add up quickly. The environmental impact of Proof-of-Work decentralized systems are criticized quite often. There needs to be power for the EVM to continue blocks.

Benefits of the Ethereum Virtual Machine

The main benefit of the EVM is that it allows the Ethereum blockchain to run on any software. This encourages more nodes worldwide to join the ecosystem and makes it faster and more efficient. The EVM also encourages developers to run their dApps on Ethereum because they’ve created such a powerful system running for years (one of the longest in the crypto industry). Having this central processor lend its computing power is a massive advantage for the Ethereum network compared to other blockchains. 

Turing-complete Programming Languages

Turning-complete programming languages are able to perform any computation and work to process tasks written by developers. Javascript is an excellent example of a well-known programming language that is Turing-complete. JavaScript is a top-rated language that developers use to create websites and applications from scratch. A language like Javascript can be helpful in understanding the syntax of Solidity – Ethereum’s programming language for smart contracts. 

How is Ethereum Virtual Machine Deterministic? 

The Ethereum Virtual Machine was created to be deterministic, meaning its functions will always provide the same output as input. So no matter how many times the code is run, the EVM will always have the same outcome. This feature makes dApps on the Ethereum blockchain reliable because some of these dApps functions are for storing important information or transferring large amounts of money. The code must be flawless. 

What is Solidity?

Solidity is the name of the programming language developers use to create smart contracts or dApps on Ethereum. It is syntactically similar to JavaScript. When developers want to build an application on any computer, they must use a programming language. It looks something like this: 

All of the apps and websites you’ve used throughout your entire life have been created with programming languages. They act as a set of instructions to complete a task. Although Ethereum has a complex structure, its programming language, Solidity, is known to be a user-friendly programming language.

What are Smart Contracts?

A smart contract is an agreement between two parties that can be self-executed on computers anywhere. Smart contracts do not require any human supervision or authority for validation; they are a massive part of how the Ethereum network and EVM work.

Think about what a regular contract is, an agreement between two parties that outlines what each side is responsible for and determines what will happen when the tasks are fulfilled (or not). A smart contract does the same thing, except this type of contract isn’t written by a lawyer and monitored by a judge. A smart contract is written by a developer and monitored by computer code.

What are Opcodes?

Opcodes stand for ‘operational codes’ and are machine instructions that the EVM uses to execute tasks. Opcodes are lower-level codes than Solidity and allow the EVM to compute continuously. 

There are different types of opcodes, such as: 

• Memory-Manipulating Opcodes
• Environmental Opcodes
• Halting Opcodes. 

The website ethervm.io has a table of all the available opcodes the EVM uses, along with stack input, stack output, expression, and notes.

What are Bytecodes? 

If you want to effectively store an opcode you must first turn it into bytecode. Every bytecode is split up into bytes which is a number that contains two hexadecimal characters. Some bytes need to be attached to opcodes if they include push data.

For a task to be completed on a smart contract, a developer will create opcodes that are used for the instructions and then create the bytecodes that will take these instructions, and break them down numerically. This will allow them to function on their own based on the numerical code and the following bytes after it. 

What is the Gas Cost of Interacting with Smart Contracts?

Gas costs on Ethereum represent the amount of computing power smart contracts need to complete their tasks. A smart contract task can use thousands of nodes on the Ethereum blockchain. That’s a lot of computing power! Gas fees are implemented for developers to use this power wisely and to prevent attackers from slowing down the network with unnecessary tasks. 

Each opcode will have a base gas fee (standard fee), as well as a dynamic gas fee (the latter being calculated per word of code). The cost of these transactions varies depending on what the operation is. For example, the “Amount of gas to pay for a JUMPDEST operation” is 1, whereas the “Amount of gas to pay for a SELFDESTRUCT operation” is 5000. All the costs per instruction can be found on the Ethereum Yellowpaper under Appendix G & H.

How Does Gas Relate to the Performance of EVM? 

Gas relates to the performance of EVM because it incentivizes developers to write clean, efficient code that will not clog the network. Before launching smart contracts, the written code should be as efficient as possible to avoid unnecessary fees. This will allow for the performance of the smart contract to run to the best of its ability and not waste unnecessary computing power. 

Gas Cost vs. Gas Price 

Gast cost is a set amount, meaning it stays the same based on what is written in the Fee Schedule above. However, gas prices will change. The cost of gas is paid for in the cryptocurrency called Ether, whose price can fluctuate based on buyer and seller equilibrium. The current price of 1 Ether in April 2022 at the time of this writing is just under $3,000. However, gas is determined in Gwei, which is a denomination of ether; one Wei (singular for Gwei) is one quintillion of ether. 

Now that different aspects of the EVM have been defined, let’s discuss how the EVM integrates with Accumulate. 

How EVM-Compatibility via Accumulate Augments DeFi and NFTs 

Software engineering best practices dictate that software systems are written in layers with clear responsibilities. This best practice results in systems that are less complex and far easier to maintain. The resulting benefit is a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and fewer software defects and bugs. Within the DeFi space, the second benefit, lower defects, is significant, and recent security breaches in Qubit, MonoX, and Compound illustrate this point.

The Accumulate ecosystem cleanly divides data and application layers by running EVM and other smart contract solutions as layer two protocols running on top of Accumulate.  

Along with our ecosystem partners, Accumulate intends to offer several smart contract solutions, integrated with Accumulate and Accumulate’s unique managed chain approach. The use of managed chains allows for the creation of smart contracts that are highly scalable. In these scenarios, an organization has already made testing on an existing technology stack. 

An EVM-bridge integration connects Accumulate to the larger DeFi and NFT world. However, Accumulate’s ADIs and the corresponding security model can do things that would be impossible in most EVM environments. All of Accumulate Network’s operations are managed by ADIs, which are centered around identities. 

ADIs will or could have capabilities such as: 

• Sending and receiving tokens like a Bitcoin address.
• Issuing smart contracts like an Ethereum address.
• Facilitating a variety of new and complex operations such as on-chain consensus building and key management. 

Each ADI operates as its own independent chain under which all the states for a user’s identity including its keys, data, token accounts, and sub-identities can be managed on the network. In addition to the benefits that Accumulate can bring through an EVM-Ethereum Bridge, ADIs can have tremendous implications to enhance identity-based security issues across the world of DeFi and NFTs. 

Some of the expected outcomes of an Ethereum Bridge can include the ability to: 

• Transfer digital assets (ERC-20 or ERC-721) from Ethereum to Accumulate EVM and back.
• Transfer EVM-based digital assets from Accumulate EVM to Accumulate token accounts.
• Transfer digital assets (ERC-20 or ERC-721) from Ethereum to Accumulate EVM and back through a bridge.
• Transfer Accumulate-native tokens from Accumulate token accounts to Accumulate EVM.
• Porting EVM-based smart contracts to Accumulate. 

Blockchains and smart contracts have the potential to transform the infrastructure underlying traditional financial markets. This paradigm shift is already occurring, which can be seen in the meteoric rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) over the past year. While these advancements are promising, the blockchain ecosystem has historically been isolated from traditional markets. Inveniam and Accumulate aim to change that.

Using Chainlink’s time-tested oracle and oracle node infrastructure, Inveniam is making proprietary data for data-rich, low-frequency-traded private assets available to smart contracts on leading blockchains. Specifically, Inveniam offers validated private asset data powering valuation, pricing, credit, and more. Bringing this validated financial data on-chain unlocks a multitude of private market opportunities for DeFi, such as the ability to use low-liquidity assets as lending collateral, the creation of derivatives around future prices, and the execution of on-chain trading opportunities against reliable benchmarks. 

“Inveniam, Accumulate, and The Hub are using Chainlink in order to solve race conditions in a multi-chain environment so that there is interoperability and all transactions can be atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable. Collectively, Inveniam’s going to deliver private asset data that can be utilized on multiple blockchains using the functionality that exists on The Hub and Accumulate. We’re delivering data to Chainlink so that we’ll have verified private market data that can be pulled from a Chainlink node and utilized by smart contracts to avoid race conditions across chains.” — Patrick O’Meara, Chairman & CEO of Inveniam Capital Partners.

A Two-Part Approach to Cross-Chain Data: Accumulate and Chainlink

Bringing Inveniam’s private market data offerings to public blockchains in a way that’s up to Web3 standards requires a two-part solution. 

The first part is data delivery. Chainlink is purpose-built, ready-made blockchain middleware that offers us a future-proof solution for making our data offerings available on all leading blockchains. By launching a node on the Chainlink Network, we’re able to securely bridge data and the corresponding data proofs cross-chain to maintain robust data verifiability. Through Chainlink, Inveniam’s data can be made easily accessible to all leading blockchains through a single future-proof solution. 

When smart contracts request Inveniam data through Chainlink, they can use the data proof to cryptographically verify when the data was written to the original chain and by whom, and that the data has remained unchanged. However, this verification process hinges on whether or not Accumulate—a blockchain protocol that uses a delegated Proof-of-Stake model organized around identities—has cryptographic anchors on the host blockchain.

This is because Inveniam’s private market data utilizes Accumulate as a metachain or smart order routing system for data that must be verified on multiple chains. Chainlink enables  seamless delivery of Inveniam’s data and its proofs to a variety of leading blockchains, and then delivers an additional solution for smart contracts to verify the data proofs themselves and trace it back utilizing Accumulate and the Inveniam.io platform. This is the second part of the solution delivered through Accumulate anchors.

Accumulate anchors are a basic feature of the Accumulate Network that is implemented at the protocol level. Anchors exist on a host blockchain (i.e Ethereum) and allow smart contracts to cryptographically verify the data proofs by tracing them back to Accumulate. Beginning with Ethereum and Bitcoin, anchors will be continuously be added to more blockchains so that smart contracts can cryptographically verify the data proofs—and thus the data—provided through Chainlink. 

In this two-part solution, Chainlink acts as mission-critical infrastructure unlocking swift multi-chain expansion and secure data delivery. Chainlink is already integrated across the ecosystem’s most prominent blockchains and Layer 2s, making Inveniam’s data readily accessible as soon as anchors are available on any host blockchain. 

After considering a variety of oracle solutions, we decided to use Chainlink because it offers a superior set of features: 

• Data Integrity — Chainlink oracle nodes cryptographically sign all data supplied on-chain to verify its origins on Accumulate.
• Blockchain Agnostic — Chainlink nodes are compatible with any blockchain environment, serving as a single gateway to supply data to any current or future blockchain.
• Widely Adopted — Chainlink is the most widely used oracle network in the blockchain industry, providing access to a vast addressable market of potential data consumers.
• Provably Secure —  Chainlink is thoroughly audited open-source software that already secures billions of dollars in value, showcasing its ability to trigger the automation of high-value smart contacts live in production.

The Accumulate Network is growing, and Inveniam’s private market data has the potential to unlock a multitude of new opportunities for developers. In the quest for rapid expansion, Chainlink is a critical enabler that allows us to move fast while staying secure. 

Through this integration, smart contract developers across the multichain ecosystem can leverage Inveniam’s data using  cryptographically secure anchors with proven data origins. This opens up a plethora of opportunities for those looking to build on top of traditional markets while using decentralized infrastructure. We’re excited for the wave of new use cases unlocked by secure and easily accessible data provided by Inveniam. 

 “Digitizing private markets is not an easy task, and Inveniam is working to build the infrastructure necessary to enable more efficient and transparent processes. Chainlink makes it easy for any blockchain to access Accumulate’s and Inveniam’s validated data, helping us reach new consumers of this data in one single swoop.”—Michael Creadon, President of DeFi Devs, a community developer of Accumulate.

“The combination of Accumulate anchors and Chainlink oracles is helping bring Inveniam’s data to the larger Web3 ecosystem in a hyper-reliable, cryptographically secure way. By bringing private market data on-chain through Chainlink, Inveniam is accelerating blockchain innovation and helping to bridge traditional and decentralized markets.”— William Herkelrath, Managing Director at Chainlink Labs.

About Chainlink
Chainlink is the industry standard for building, accessing, and selling oracle services needed to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Chainlink oracle networks provide smart contracts with a way to reliably connect to any external API and leverage secure off-chain computations for enabling feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, and offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.

Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or reading the developer documentation at docs.chain.link. To discuss an integration, reach out to an expert. 

About Accumulate

Accumulate is an identity-based blockchain protocol with multi-chain support, human-readable addresses, and key hierarchies. Accumulate can scale any layer 1 blockchain bringing speed, scalability, security, and identity-based transactions. The protocol offers universal interconnectivity with the blockchain ecosystem and offers extensive features to power DeFi applicatives. 

Learn more about Accumulate at accumulatenetwork.io.

About Inveniam 

Inveniam is a Fintech company with offices in New York City and Northville, MI. Founded in 2017, Inveniam has built Inveniam.io, a powerful technology platform that utilizes Big Data, AI and blockchain technology to provide not only surety of data, but high-functioning use of that data in a distributed data ecosystem. When Verified by Inveniam™, users can obtain real-time pricing of private, infrequently traded assets, accelerate diligence, accurately price assets, and identify buyers for those assets. Inveniam’s operating system credentials data to commute trust allowing payments throughout the global financial system. This ability to commute trust in data artifacts is regardless of its place of rest, origin, or application. Inveniam holds numerous patents around the ingestion of data into smart contracts.

Learn more about Inveniam at Inveniam.io.

The Inveniam Metachain is designed to create a verifiable Proof of Value™ audit trail for Inveniam’s Valuation-as-a-Service platform. Verified data is the core component of the platform that allows Valuation-as-Service to work, and this platform is made possible by using blockchain technology to establish the provenance and authenticity of data. Thus, the platform delivers more transparency and accuracy to the valuation process. 

Inveniam has historically facilitated an environment that is conducive to genuine multi-chain functionality as opposed to the walled-garden approach that is rampant across Web2. While Accumulate will become the default Metachain option for Inveniam, it is not the only option. Historically, Amazon’s Quantum Ledger has been an attractive alternative to anchor data in the Inveniam ecosystem. As Inveniam adds Accumulate as an option, it will maintain a sense of à la carte utilization that can be integrated with an array options. This aligns with the true universal interconnectivity that is at the heart of Accumulate’s ethos. 

This article discusses: 

• What is the Inveniam Metachain?
• What’s Special About Inveniam’s Platform?
• Why Use Accumulate? 

What is the Inveniam Metachain?

The Inveniam Metachain is an auditable log of all operations about an asset onboarded on Inveniam. After an asset is onboarded, the metachain further ensures that documents, data, and workflows are: 

• Credentialed
• Hashed
• Synced to the public ledger 

 This allows data to be independently audited while keeping sensitive information private. 

What’s Special About Inveniam’s Platform?

Inveniam has implemented this Metachain component utilizing Factom’s blockchain to immutably anchor the Metachain documents and workflow processes. After the fork of Factom to Accumulate, the Metachain project will live on Accumulate. Inveniam’s platform is blockchain-agnostic. In other words, Inveniam’s blockchain agnosticism allows asset owners to choose from one or multiple blockchains on which to tokenize their asset, as well as credential and sync associated data further adding to its validity. Multiple blockchain systems allow the asset to have its data split between multiple, independent blockchain ledgers. 

This design creates a unique problem: there is no unified source of truth for an asset’s data on a single public ledger. The Inveniam Metachain solves this problem by not only automatically syncing the data itself (creating redundancy), but also the location of each file and its sync history on every public ledger. 

The Metachain leverages an immutable public ledger as its underlying database so that every operation is securely logged and impossible to modify. The platform’s security and immutability further ensure that source data cannot be tampered with without the action being recorded and the malfeasance detected.  

Why Use Accumulate?

Since the Metachain requires large amounts of data to be continuously synced to an immutable ledger, Inveniam is planning to use the Accumulate protocol as an option for this process. Accumulate’s protocol is highly organized, scalable, and uses URL addressing for indexing data. Accumulate will not be the only choice or option for anchoring data on Inveniam. Amazon Quantum Ledger has historically been the choice Metachain to anchor Inveniam’s data. Inveniam will continue to facilitate a multi-chain culture that allows many different blockchains systems to be utilized instead of creating a walled garden. 

“Accumulate’s innovative approach to interconnecting ledgers and using cryptographic anchors, allows Inveniam to provide a multi-chain solution while supporting the very high transaction rates required to address the millions of private asset documents we anticipate credentialing and all at an affordable and predictable cost point.” says Patrick O’Meara, Inveniam’s Chief Executive Officer.  

Fees for other protocols are incredibly variable and create potential bottlenecks during a spike in network congestion. Having fixed fees for blockchain data synchronization allows enterprises like governments and corporations to accurately estimate expenses. Additionally, the high performance and transaction throughput of Accumulate will allow the Metachain to scale up as needed to capture the full audit trail of every asset on the Inveniam platform. 

“Accumulate provides unique advantages for Inveniam and our clients.  By organizing the event streams of assets on our platform by the verifiable identity of the assets on our platform, and providing a scalable, cost effective distributed network, Accumulate is a great match for our clients”, says Jeff Guillot, Inveniam’s Chief Product Officer.  

How is this Beneficial? 

The implementation of the Metachain is beneficial to not only Inveniam and Accumulate, but also to Inveniam’s clients. 

Inveniam 

Inveniam is excited to announce the production implementation of the Inveniam Metachain component. Metachain delivers on Inveniam’s core goal of credentialing both the data and processes associated with private market assets. Inveniam has implemented our Metachain using the Accumulate/Factom blockchain taking advantage of the protocol’s consistent affordable cost model as well as its ability to scale to meet Inveniam’s projected future transaction growth.  

Accumulate

Accumulate welcomes Inveniam as a key integration partner for the Metachain project. Accumulate is the upcoming fork and upgrade of the Factom blockchain. More information about that process can be found in this blog post. Inveniam is leveraging the affordable fixed cost model as well as the ability to handle high transaction rates to launch the first phase of its Metachain component. The Inveniam Metachain provides a blockchain-based, detailed, proof-of-process by anchoring the individual service calls from the Inveniam platform via the blockchain.  

Inveniam’s platform creates liquidity in the private asset market through enriching and credentialing data using the Accumulate blockchain. Why? Due to the multi-trillion dollar size of private asset market, as well as the density of the data associated with those markets, Inveniam can make use of Accumulate’s dependable and affordable cost model. Additionally, Accumulate offers the ability to handle millions of transactions per month.  

For Inveniam’s Customers

By leveraging different aspects of its platform, Inveniam delivers highly-functional asset credentialing and monetization to its clients. Inveniam credentials documents and data behind private market assets thereby improving the liquidity of those assets. With the Metachain, Inveniam can credential the processes behind the data and documents, thus further enhancing the value Inveniam can deliver to its clients. Inveniam remains blockchain-agnostic and its multichain approach offers options to end users.

In Conclusion 

Inveniam’s Metachain offers a multitude of benefits for the Inveniam ecosystem and its clients. Accumulate can deliver on Inveniam’s requirement to continuously process a high volume of immutable data in real-time. Accumulate is beneficial in maintaining greater organization and scalability through the use of URLs as tools for indexing data. 

Sphereon Verifiable Data Exchange (VDX) provides a platform with advanced features for digital identities and the verifiable exchange of data between people and companies. Sphereon’s VDX enables organizations to quickly build and deploy advanced solutions to manage, share, and process data in a secure, verifiable, and privacy-protective manner.

There are four principles for a trustworthy exchange of data that are crucial in a digital, decentralized world:

• The authenticity of the data is independently verifiable
• The data is sovereign and independent of third parties
• The exchange of data is interoperable across systems and jurisdictions
• The data – and consent for sharing or not sharing – is under the control of the owner of the data

What is Sphereon? 

Sphereon is the leading Self-Sovereign Identity technology that keeps data control within reach of the user and makes privacy a top priority. The solutions for Sphereon include healthcare, Clinical Trials, Mobility, and many more, which will be discussed in the use case section of this blog post. 

One of the main focuses of Sphereon is the implementation of decentralized identities and verified credentials which is currently being referred to as the “Identity Ecosystem.” 

Sphereon focuses on developing solutions around decentralized identities and has done so with many different organizations, large and small, which include:

• A major Clinical Research Organization (CR2O), that use Sphereon to add Trust to clinical trials
• International group of casinos (more information on this topic will come, but it is confidential at this time) 
• Certificate of Origins in supply chains for the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 
• Identification solutions for the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security
• Land registration systems for nation states

Benefits of Sphereon

Data or documents are digitally signed at the source by the issuer, securely held and controlled by the owner in a secure, private data space, and when shared, automatically validated for their authenticity by the recipient.

Based on open W3C standards and specifications for Decentralized Identifiers (DID) and Verifiable Credentials (VC), Sphereon’s data exchange solutions are globally interoperable and can connect seamlessly with existing IAM and Business Applications – this ranges from existing OpenID Connect integrations to trustless, self-issued OpenID Connect, and OpenID Connect for Verifiable Presentations. 

Sphereon enhances the way data processors can handle private information. For the users, this isn’t so much of a problem. People agree with questions like “Do you want to share?” or “End-User Agreements, or Cookie Agreements.” However, it’s a more significant obstacle for the data processors that receive this personal information, and have to deal with GDPR/PII regulations, which is a big pain point this technology addresses.

Sphereon VDX can help with the onboarding process; if you check someone’s identity or credentials data issued by a trusted party like a government agency, you don’t have to keep all the information in your system. You just have to prove you did the KYC/AML data in your system. In other words, you don’t have to keep the actual data. This reduces processing information and obstacles associated with hosting all of the data. While this level of privacy-preserving technology is a little far out from being widely available to the general public, the potential for this technology is heading in the right direction. 

Elaborating on that point, Sphereon VDX doesn’t force you to upload your data across many different apps. Instead, your Decentralized Identifier would contain information about your identity, bank accounts, or other credentials necessary for onboarding processes. As a data processor, this means less of a headache to keep up with GDPR compliance because you’re not holding all of this data. 

The Sphereon Verifiable Data Exchange enables your enterprise to: 

• Quickly build and deploy solutions to manage and share data and documents
• Automatically verify the authenticity and trust the data and documents you receive
• Automatically integrate and process them into your backend systems
• Guarantee that any data and documents that you share are authentic
• Independent verification, no need to provide access to your systems
• eIDAS and GDPR-compliant 
• The data processors are holding less data because you’re not holding data; instead, identities and credentials are verified through the Decentralized Identifier (DID) 

Additionally, Sphereon empowers privacy preservation by allowing you to control whether or not you want to share personal data on a case-by-case basis. This type of sharing power has historically not remained with the data’s owner. Instead, it has been controlled by the exploitative Web2 companies that have sold-out billions of people’s private information to the highest bidder without any ethical consideration. 

Why Should You Trust Sphereon?  

They’ve been building technology and solutions as part of EU European Digital Identity programs alongside governments and companies, large and small. Given the smaller size of European countries, in terms of both resources and landmass, the continent is uniquely challenged to work together to figure out solutions that can benefit everyone. 

To read more about how Accumulate can drive the future of identity with GovTech, check out this blog post. 

Potential Solutions 

There are many different use cases for the Sphereon VDX. Below is a brief explanation of how each can potentially be implemented. There is a wide range of industries and verticals that Sphereon can improve with this user-first, regulation complaint paradigm for data. 

GovTech

For example, in GovTech, we’ve built a product with the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security for a digital ID card. Initially built for special investigators, VDX enables the holder to identify themselves and their mandate. Government agencies can selectively disclose personal or detailed information depending on who requests this information, e.g., the general public receives only limited information. In contrast, another judicial branch or government body is entitled to see the complete information.

Healthcare 

In Healthcare, they’re working with a large CRO to provide them with a digital patient passport to manage consent, but with guardianship and delegation of power built-in.

Enterprises 

We see that use cases are mainly focused on the individual holder. We’re releasing a solution for companies and enterprises that enable them to hold and share company data. The Company Wallet holds general credentials such as the Chamber of Commerce. It enables verifiable delegation of authority to other officers and employees to share specific data.

Mobility-as-a-Service 

Sphereon is working with the concept of Mobility-as-a-Service that reduces data processing for travelers going from Point A to Point B (taking a bus to a train to an electric bike). You would use several different mobility providers (Uber, Citi Bike, etc.) along this journey. If you want to book a bike, you have to use an app from the bike company, and for a train, you would use a train app, but the idea is to provide one app that you can use that books all of the mobility providers for you. However, a solution under development with Sphereon seeks to minimize all of these different aspects of your commute into one simplified application. Through the app, each of these mobility providers knows who you are and that you are the person who is responsible for using the bike. 

The Transition from Factom to Accumulate 

Currently, Sphereon VDX is built on Factom but will be ported over to Accumulate following the hard fork. However, this partnership is a long time in the making as one of the first engagements for Sphereon was through Factom in 2018. They both worked as part of a DHS grant in which Sphereon did the more technical implementation, and Factom did the technical engagement with DHS. Building on this foundation and deploying government solutions, Sphereon became more involved with European enterprises building decentralized identity solutions for governments and enterprises there. 

With the resources that Accumulate has to offer– from software developers to marketing– it is an excellent fit for the next phase of Spehreon’s growth. 

The next phase of PegNet has the potential to be the best phase of PegNet ever with plans for new resources through the help of Accumulate, which will enable PegNet to realize its potential.

Rooted in identity and key management, Accumulate is a universal, interconnected protocol that works interoperably across Web 2 and Web 3 addresses from layer 1 blockchains, to enterprise tech stacks, to websites. 

The future with PegNet using Accumulate resources is bright. Accumulate plans to come to the market with unique capabilities, capacity, and use cases, some of which will be explained in this blog post. Furthermore, Inveniam, the parent company of one of Accumulate’s many community development organizations, DeFi Devs, intends to use PegNet due to the high conversion volume. Conversions on PegNet are similar to transactions on other networks, but conversions are minted and burned without the involvement of a counterparty. There is no buyer and seller, only interaction with the protocol, which has unlimited liquidity. This is promising given the vast resources of Inveniam. 

Please note this development roadmap is tentative and subject to change and/or be fully revised. 

This article focuses on: 

• What is PegNet?
  • Main Benefits of PegNet
    • Stablecoins
    • Cheap Transactions and Gas
    • High Volume, Low Fees
• How Accumulate Will Help PegNet Reach Its Full Potential
• Other Updates Relevant to PegNet 
• Conclusion 

What is PegNet?

Built on Factom, PegNet is an oracle-based, decentralized trading network of stablecoins pegged to over 42 digital assets. This includes traditional digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also digital assets that are pegged to commodities such as gold. Fiat price stabilization on PegNet relies on miner-submitted data that is collected from APIs and oracles.

Main Benefits of PegNet: 

• Stablecoins: PegNet has more variety in stablecoins than any other system in the world that covers stablecoins, from the USD, to EURO, to the Pound. Oracle-based systems deliver a lot more variety than a traditional stable-coin based system. 
• High Volume, Low Gas Fees, Cheap Conversions: Not only are the fees tiny, but also there is no slippage from a traditional order book as the user is doing the conversions within their own wallet and referencing the oracle prices published by miners in the next block. Additionally, in a world of high gas fees, PegNet is just a tenth of a penny. It’s not dollars upon dollars for every conversion. 

How Accumulate Will Help PegNet Reach Its Full Potential

You may be wondering, “What is Happening Now?” Currently, PegNet is in the process of handing over access to key platform features to Accumulate such as the Explorer, pTrader, and the Bridge. 

Furthermore, our developers are looking to make Accumulate very easy to understand, so this pedagogical foundation will be extended to PegNet. The main goal of this relationship between DeFi Devs and PegNet is to avoid having PegNet use its own resources to build architecture, but rather get those resources from DeFi Devs. 

Accumulate makes everything simpler so that building the PegNet infrastructure no longer has to run on a valid PegNet daemon in order to validate transactions or to validate oracle data that is being used. More information on the PegNet daemon can be found here. The simplicity is due to Accumulate’s architecture. On Accumulate, everything is organized around Accumulate Digital Identifiers (ADIs) because identities make Accumulate scalable and efficient.

Updates 

Although this list and exact features are subject to change, several key aspects of how Accumulate will help PegNet Reach its full potential include: 

• Scratch Space 
• pWallet 
• pTrader 
• Addition of PegNet Validators 
• New Mining Token 
• Robust DEX

Scratch Space: Accumulate has created an intermediate data mechanism called Scratch Space, which records “discussions” to a transient blockchain and submits conclusions once a permanent consensus is reached. These Scratch Spaces collect data for consensus building across Accumulate allowing for multisig transactions. At this point, users typically don’t use multisig capabilities in day-to-day operations except exchanges. Accumulate aims to bring multisig capabilities to the mainstream. The Scratch Space enables on-chain communication between parties. This will allow faster block times, more security, and scalability for PegNet on the Accumulate blockchain. 

pWallet: Originally this was created as a test wallet for Apple iOS that didn’t get much development. There are currently no plans to continue developing this product. 

pTrader: A PegNet trading tool that has the potential to simplify trading through automation. pTrader can allow you to trade using helpful bots, stunning visualizations, and top-level security. pTrader includes advanced trading tools such as an integration with TradingView. This integration allowed the tens of millions of TradingView users to participate in low-fee transactions between stable assets, crypto assets, and precious metals for a fraction of a penny. 

Addition of PegNet Validators: One of the most interesting things is that Accumulate will manage multisig on-chain, meaning Accumulate can collect signatures on-chain, then promote the transaction to the main chain once the threshold is met. An idea for PegNet is to organize the network around validators who run the daemons. The validators will indicate what oracle records need to be promoted, or what conversion records need to be done. Then, those transactions will result in Accumulate-native ACME tokens. All the pAssets like pUSD, pETH, and pLTC will be usable and supported in Accumulate wallets, including PEG (and the extra token will be introduced for PegNet to work).

The data that we put onto the blockchain will be readable and understandable from the Accumulate Explorer. This makes it unnecessary to have a separate PegNet wallet, explorer, or infrastructure, and instead, it can use the Accumulate infrastructure. Dashboards and interfaces are still needed for conversions using the standard Accumulate wallets. Community developers of Accumulate are contemplating ways to accomplish this so PegNet conversions can occur using the standard Accumulate Wallets. 

New Mining Token: Another point of this is to create a new mining token that is a limited supply token and open up for/ to full conversions of the PEG token, and use PEG staking to earn the limited supply token so that there is a place to stash it and keep its value. People will be able to purchase this limited supply token as opposed to just having liquidity. There will be a reason to hold it beyond just liquidity, but the aim is to have full liquidity. 

Robust DEX: There are plans for a robust DEX that allows trading between Accumulate assets whether the assets are NFTs or tokens. The Accumulate architecture makes it simple to maintain order books because Scratch Chains prune out the blockchain while the Scratch Chains allow for a lower cost of orders between parties. Scratch Chains can maintain order books at low cost between parties and create the signatures that transfer the tokens which make for simpler posting and execution of trades. More information on this will come soon. 

Bridge: Users want to be able to move between Ethereum and PegNet. The existing contract on the Ethereum side will still work, however, Accumulate will have to rebuild the Factom side. 

Other Updates Relevant to PegNet 

As an open-source team that was ahead of its time, PegNet’s next chapter can sincerely benefit from the resources of Accumulate and its developers. It will bring scalability, bridges, and some other new features that need more resources.

Additional considerations that are relevant to PegNet’s Future include: 

• Software Developers 
• Conversion 
• Staking 
• Rollups 
• Block Settlement Time 
• Synthetic Asset or Stable Coin 

Software Developers: Accumulate’s developers can add software development resources that were missing from PegNet’s development. The main priority is to recruit top-level developers in addition to a strong core team that has been building this architecture since the Summer of 2021. PegNet plans to run as a more traditional application with Accumulate handling all of the digital identity capabilities. It’s going to be a huge improvement that we’re validating things and putting them on the chain and that will simplify the code quite a bit. It will be a ground-up rewrite done in the hands of top-level developers that are in the Accumulate community. 

Conversion: PegNet is running but it will stop running when we do the conversion because it won’t move over onto Accumulate without some TLC. There’s no reason to get into the sneaky mess of code to convert it to Accumulate when there are so many changes that need to be happening on PegNet. The intention is to make it a clean break from the past. 

Staking: Staking was pushed and implemented, and it works to an extent. Delegated staking did not get pushed. It was coded but there wasn’t a robust way to test it. It would be ideal to be pointing at confident stakers instead of having to have a massive set of highly sophisticated validators. 

Rollups: Accumulate has the data platform to complete rollups and it can run solidity smart contracts just like Ethereum 2.0. Accumulate can be Ethereum-Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible and do ETH rollups. Many developers still want to use their solidity contracts, because everybody wants something they can run existing code on and EVM compatibility is a path for Accumulate to do so. ETH 2.0 is moving to a data layer where smart contracts run on layer 2. However, they are taking a route where they are maintaining compatibility with the past. 

Accumulate has the only on-chain mechanism that acts like a DocuSign for voting, distributed decision making. We will begin to do integrations not just for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, but also stakeholders in those protocols to work together to make decisions who may otherwise go somewhere. Accumulate will integrate with these protocols but also between the protocols. This delivers a massive market advantage. 

Block Settlement Time: Accumulate’s block settlement time is 1 second. Then we refactor the block every 12 hours, so for the historical record there are about 600 blocks to have a year’s history, but in real-time, for 2 weeks there are 1 second block times. Since there’s coordination between other chains and Accumulate, the true settlement is estimated between 3 seconds and 6 seconds. More testing is needed to fully determine these numbers, and this is a massive improvement. Before this, PegNet was using the ten-minute block settlement time standard, and one day we dreamed of one-minute marks significantly improving the speed of the chain. A lot of PegNet’s existing code is based on the presumption of slower blocks, so whatever is time-based will need to be updated based on new, faster block times. 

Synthetic Asset or Stable Coin: PegNet neither has stablecoins or synthetic assets, it has something no one has considered before. PegNet is a liquidity platform that rewards people for providing liquidity on exchanges. The way they provide liquidity creates values that track targets in the real world. That’s not the way stablecoins or synthetic assets work. 

In Conclusion 

Soon after PegNet’s launch, the market made the demand clear for an oracle-based, open-source trading network. However, despite being ahead of its time, PegNet operated with very limited resources which slowed down the development and progress of the network. Now, with the resources of Accumulate’s community development team, PegNet plans to come to market with more firepower than ever before with expanded use cases and a wider range of capabilities. Please note this development roadmap is tentative and subject to change.  

Further Reading 

Ready Trader One by David A. Johnston 

100 Times The Hash Power = 100 Times The Security by David A Johnston 

PegNet is Bitcoin Among Stablecoins by Kristine Thomassen

The Accumulate Mobile Wallet was created to be an easy-to-use application to transact on Accumulate’s testnet. Some of the main features that you can now access as part of the Accumulate Mobile Wallet: 

• Create an Accumulate Digital Identifier (ADI) 
• Create an ADI Token Account 
• Advanced Key Management 
• Use the Token Faucet to Issue Test ACME 
• Transact on the Accumulate Testnet 

Create an Accumulate Digital Identifier (ADI) 

One of the core components of the Accumulate blockchain is a feature known as Accumulate Digital Identifiers (ADIs). ADIs can manage data, tokens, and sub-identities with customizable levels of security, and with a wide range of hierarchical signature options. For example, a high-priority master key can manage the settings of low priority keys on the network, reassign ownership, or create backups. These high priority key functions have a greater level of responsibility and control than a lower-level subordinate key. Imagine giving a consortium the ability to control a user’s identity and data, but with the user’s permission under a mutually-agreed upon set of parameters. 

Additionally, an ADI is a digital, distributed identity that can receive or send tokens similarly to a Bitcoin address, but there are several key improvements: 

• Flexibility of user management (person, organization, or IoT device)
• Enhanced multi-signature functionality 
• Granular control of user identity by one or multiple parties 

Lite Accounts are a mini version of ADIs that appeal to users who want to do things like send and receive tokens, or maintain a record of token accounts and transactions. Essentially, Lite Accounts are a simplified ADI that manages only one type of token. While multiple accounts can be used by a user to store multiple token types, Lite Accounts lack subchain and key hierarchy features. Lite Accounts are independent although two Lite Accounts can interact with one another by sending or receiving tokens similar to what you may be familiar with if you already have a blockchain wallet. 

Read more about the benefits of identity-based addresses in our previous article right here. 

Create an ADI Token Account 

You can send and receive tokens through an ADI token account, which is referenced by a URL and handled in its own sub-chain. The unique placement of an identity-based URL within a subchain allows transactions on the Accumulate blockchain to be granularly programmed and controlled, meaning the people using the network can make the rules rather than the network itself. To this point, network transactions are administered by individual token chains that are identified by a URL. Inside the token chain is a list of every transaction that has ever been created by a single user, whether that be an enterprise, an individual, or an IoT device. 

Each token account holds a particular type of token, and an identity can hold accounts for many token types. For example, you can have one account for everyday payments and then another account for long-term savings. 

Advanced Key Management 

Accumulate’s framework allows for the unique ability to manage key permissions over time. This feature unlocks a host of additional functionality that is appealing to enterprise-level clients like governments and financial institutions that require high levels of security. 

Some of the benefits of Accumulates Advanced Key Management include: 

• Multiple-signature wallets which increase security in high-value transactions that involve multiple parties 
• Backwards compatibility that delivers a level of ease for legacy keys which allows multiple parties to merge 
• Upgrades or downgrades for key security may occur in real-time as they are needed 
• New security protocols can take place without asking you to expose keys or move assets 

Use the Token Faucet to Issue Test ACME 

Similar to when water drips from a fountain, small increments of a specific token drop into your wallet from a “Token Faucet.” A Token Faucet is an application that sends increments of a specific token for a reward or for the purpose of testing. In the Accumulate Token Faucet, Test ACME tokens are issued so that you can test our platform. These test tokens can be used to send tokens to ADIs or Lite Accounts. 

Transact on the Accumulate Testnet 

Transactions are now available on the Mobile Wallet so that you can easily send and receive test tokens to your ADI or Lite Account. Test tokens are freely available through the Token Faucet. Send and receive tokens and view transaction history within the app.

Sign up for the Accumulate Mobile Wallet and try the testnet today!