SmartCityStates.io

Blockchainers,

To stop the British government adopting harsh EU laws on crypto regulation we must act together now. The FCA has a Consultation Period open until 05.04.19 for blockchainers to respond to their Guidance on Cryptoassets (23.01.19). We can have an effect if we speak with one voice. By comparison to both the SEC in the US and EU legislation which are both hostile to crypto, Britain has the potential to be a friendly jurisdiction for the blockchain industry. Only we can keep it that way.

Brexit is an opportunity for Britain to make its own path separately from the EU. Currently Britain must transpose the EU 5AMLD into English law in 2019. But with Brexit we have a choice. That choice, if made correctly, can be the first step towards securing Britain as a friendly jurisdiction for the blockchain. Hence the hashtag #Techxit — a tech-focussed Brexit.

5AMLD as the EU applies it to crypto will crush blockchain innovation under a weight of regulation built for banks, which will price many blockchainers out of the British market and stifle the industry when it needs to grow. All we need is for the FCA and the Treasury to build tech solutions with us rather than impose EU legislation. The first step towards #Techxit is to secure an exemption from 5AMLD for what the FCA calls “cryptoassets”.

CALL TO ACTION: Please write to the FCA: fcacrypto@fca.org.uk and share this call to action with interested parties and on social media.

If you do not have time to write your own letter I have attached here a one page form letter for you to customise with your details and send:

FORM LETTER

If you follow the fcacrypto@fca.org.uk link in the document it will generate an email to that address with the subject “#Techxit: blockchain industry opposes transposition of EU 5AMLD into English law – exemption for cryptoassets” to which you can attach the document.

Here is a government petition.
Here is a change.org petition.
Please sign the change.org petition so we have our own record of contributors in case the government do not keep accurate records.
Here is a link on our blog.

Please come meet us in person to debate #Techxit at the launch of The Assembly, our blockchain tech accelerator.

Here is a link on facebook.

Next Thursday, 28.03.19 from 18:00 at:

The Assembly
Overlock Arts
18A Belsham Street
Hackney Central
London
E9 6NG

Thanks.

Laurenzo W. Mefsut
Founder & Trustee
The New Athens & Associates
SmartCityStates.io
+447795530065
laurenzo@mefsut.org

The New Athens Limited. © 2018 All Rights Reserved.
Strictly Private and Confidential.
Subject to Non-Disclosure.
Not for Circulation. This email and any attachments are to be read only by the recipient.

A 51% attack on Ethereum Classic brought to our attention by a reader.

Friends, New Athenians, Blockchainers,

This is a v. apt case study for blockchain citizenship – taking responsibility for your financial life. Risk and reward are two sides of the same bitcoin, and it is our responsibility to manage that balance ourselves democratically, not relying on intermediaries like banks to coerce decisions out of our hands

A message from our CTO, Emre Korkmaz:  

On the blockchain, you should always take your risk factors into account while trying to maximise your reward factors. Your risk and reward is ultimately your responsibility in crypto as in the real world. The hashing power of a coin’s mining base represents the security of transactions on the network against a 51% attack. The value of your transaction can be compared to the value of an attack. For security, you should try to keep the value of the transaction below the value of a potential attack.   For coins like Ethereum Classic with less hashing power and higher risk you require more block confirmations to secure a transaction. Larger the transactions done on these chains come at a price, and you invest that risk by deciding beforehand which network to post your transaction on. With bitcoin’s stronger more distributed network there is more cost involved in performing a 51% attack – it has a duration and a cost over time.   The cost of an attack is the price to the bad faith actor of maintaining the hashing power long enough to write fraudulent blocks and dupe good faith actors into confirming their fraudulent transactions. Estimates suggest that bitcoin would cost $280k/hour to attack and Proof of Work Ethereum would have cost $82k/hour (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@the4thmusketeer/bitcoin-is-still-very-expensive-to-attack-51-attack).

You can do a 51% attack with much less than 51% mining power. As an example, you can do a 51% attack in one block with 10% of the mining power at 20% success probability (https://people.xiph.org/~greg/attack_success.html). The more hash power you have, the more chances you have of finding two or more blocks in a row and reversing your transactions to take double the money. So with 30% power you get 63% success at one confirmation, 45% at two confirmations, and so on.  

The lesson here is to wait for enough confirmed blocks to lower your risk of attack. This number will be based on the value of your transaction. There are no risks for users holding their coins in their wallets as long as users maintain copies of the blockchain to decide which forks to keep, apart from what potential attacks do to the underlying price volatility of the coin.  

As this attack came to our attention, and in response, at The New Athens we are launching an Ethereum Classic Explorer which will allow you to see a more detailed view of the blockchain including the distribution of the mined blocks based on unknown vs. known mining pools or individual miners as with blockchain.info or etherscan showing bitcoin and ethereum mining power distribution respectively.  

Known mining power means mining pools where the owners of the mining pools have to pay the miners and have a public reputation to uphold so you can see whether the blocks they have mined have been reversed – if the block disappears other copies of the blockchain will show the address the block reward was distributed to and from that you can find the malicious actor. Most mining power as the difficulty of mining increases lies with mining pools, and we can use that reputation to increase blockchain accountability in public.    

Unknown mining power is not bad. The bitcoin blockchain has 23% unknown mining power (https://www.blockchain.com/pools), but for example if the network has a large percentage of unknown hash power you might choose to wait for, say, 100 confirmations or lower transaction values with lower strength blockchains.

We will post a more detailed followup to this post alongside our announcement of progress with the Ethereum Classic Explorer.

Thanks.

Emre Korkmaz — CTO, The New Athens & Associates.

etherxdev@gmail.com

see also: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@thenewathens/ethereum-classic-explorer-announced-in-response-to-51-attack

Friends, New Athenians, Blockchainers,

Glad to present to you a copy of an article originally published in The London Journalist, detailing the announcement of the Tsinandali Festival 2019, Georgia in Verbier, Switzerland at the Verbier Festival 2018: 

The New Athens & Associates, Tsinandali Festival, 05.08.18

Georgia is emerging as an exciting venue for blockchain infrastructure development while preserving a strong eucivic sense of its place on the Silk Road and its role in history as a confluence between Western and Eastern Civilisation for thousands of years.

Please feel free to comment below, we would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks.

Laurenzo W. Mefsut
Founder & Trustee
The New Athens & Associates
+447795530065
laurenzo@mefsut.org

SmartCityStates.io

The New Athens Limited. © 2018 All Rights Reserved.

Friends, New Athenians, Blockchainers,

Glad to present to you a transcript of our inaugural speech announcing the formation of The New Athens & Associates, delivered by founder Laurenzo W. Mefsut at the summit of the Gherkin, 30 St. Mary Axe, London, Sunday 29.10.17:

The New Athens & Associates – Inaugural speech, Gherkin, 29.10.17

It was first conceived as a memorial to the ambitions and principles of my late father and grandfather, Ed & Lorenzo Mefsut, the first New Athenians.

Please feel free to comment below, we would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks.

Laurenzo W. Mefsut
Founder & Trustee
The New Athens & Associates
+447795530065
laurenzo@mefsut.org

SmartCityStates.io

The New Athens Limited. © 2018 All Rights Reserved.

Friends, New Athenians, Blockchainers,

Welcome to the online home of The New Athens & Associates, presenting our new venture, SmartCityStates.io. Glad to present to you in the first instance a draft paper on our ambitions for the blockchain:

The New Athens – The Blockchain as DNA for Civilisation v. 2.0 – 07.01.19

It was first published for submission to Dr. Jordan Peterson in person during his visit to London on Tuesday 16.07.18 at the Millennium Dome.

Please feel free to comment below, we would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks.

Laurenzo W. Mefsut
Founder & Trustee
The New Athens & Associates
+447795530065
laurenzo@mefsut.org

SmartCityStates.io

The New Athens Limited. © 2018 All Rights Reserved.