Blockcloud – is a service-oriented IoT blockchain network system, connecting IoT service providers & consumers, and motivating everybody with service capabilities to contribute to it. It's also building an ecosystem of shared resources, increased workforce, and distribution on demand.
Token metrics
Token distribution is conducted in 3 tiers:
$2 millions of tokens sold at $0,005 to advisors, early investors, etc. (4-year lock-up period)$12 millions of tokens sold at $0,008 during private-sale (20% of tokens available immediately and 10% a month vesting after 2 months for the period of 8 months)$1 million of tokens sold at $0,01 during a public sale (no lock-up period)
Social metrics
Website stats: 2000 of unique visitors daily, 4,5 visits a day (it's quite significant for an ICO project).
Telegram: there are almost 50 000 visitors, the channel was created in mid-May, no airdrop is ongoing, the conversation's nature is organic.
Twitter: there are almost 9000 followers, the account was created in May, the team is actively posting own content and there are also organic reposts and comments.
Facebook: there are 470 subscribers, the page mirrors the team's twitter account.
The technology and the idea
Prologue
First, we need to understand what SCN is, as we will need it later.
In order to describe SCN (service-centric networking), we have to be familiar with Content-centric networking (CCN). CCN is a new internet paradigm which is not based on basic components like Routing & Forwarding (IP-based & host-oriented internet architecture), instead, the network ensures full content identification (content is being cached, 'searched' and becomes protected on its own, rather than relying on communication channel's security). All of this is not just a blockchain prelude, but a specific research 'published in 2011 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC)'.
Now let's dive deep into what constitutes the classic Routing & Forwarding.
Routing (the process of figuring out the entire path between two objects, similar to route planning from Moscow to St. Petersburg, which determines the starting and final points for a package) & forwarding (local search and route adjustment, e.g. intersections between Moscow and St. Petersburg – IO interface from the input line to that of the output's line).
SCN is the extended version of CNN, where the internet is concentrated not only around the content and searching for it, but also around content generation and all services related to it (storage and indexing files, audio & video streaming, online purchases, geolocation services, etc.). More information is available via https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228849592_Service-Centric_Networking.
The essence of the project
Why would we need such a detailed SCN description? Blockcloud speaks in favor of SCN, but they also point out weaker security and low level of incentivising for supporting such a network. At the same time, blockchain services are offering the solutions with low scalability and absence of reliable and affordable blockchain solution for mobile devices. That is where Blockcloud comes in to combine blockchain and SCN advantages into a unified solution for IoT and other purposes, which will stand out for being scalable and mobile friendly. The team has developed blockchain and consensus mechanism, which will ensure the security and incentives for the chain. They have also built a pricing and distribution mechanism, which will protect the computing power providers and consumers.
A quick overview of what has been done and is being done for the MVP release:
Means of integrating SCN (service-centric networking);
Additionally, a communication mechanism was created, since SCN implies the interaction of services and not IP addresses from hostings;
Proof of Service consensus for verification;
Compacted Directed Acyclic Graph (CoDAG) for transactions recording;
Truthful continuous double auction (TCDA) for resources distribution.
Executive summary.
BlockCloud is a terrific infrastructure project with high-quality Whitepaper, describing very reasonable and detailed issues and solutions. It offers new and interesting infrastructure: Compacted DAG. Everything is technically correct. The only outstanding question is: when this solution will come into demand and whether IT giants will be able to present better solutions. Also, we couldn't find any information about the interaction of the project in the real world.
A deep-dive
Currently, there are a plethora of sensors running on a centralized platform and transmitting data, which is being aggregated on a hosting. In such case, there's no access to any particular sensor. In the event of disconnecting from the network (e.g. an earthquake) the access is permanently lost. The idea of BlockCloud is to transform each sensor into a 'citizen of IoT infrastructure', where it will have its own local access as a service.
Architecture Overview
There will be a total of 4 layers. Two within the control plane: #1 Transaction chain layer (based on DAG), #2 Servicechain layer. And two within service plane: #3 Routing layer & #4 Service layer.
Transaction chain is the first chain in the structure, a compacted DAG. First, let's define a DAG: unlike classic blockchains, this type of chains packs blocks not linearly, but in a parallel and simultaneous way. A number of projects are using DAG, however the authors highlight several issues: IOTA (inconsistency in transactions confirmations and huge amount of dubious traffic), Byteball (based on witnesses, responsible for the order of the blocks formation, which makes decentralisation and security dependant on trust towards witnesses), PHANTOM (it's better, but has low confirmation speed, though it has full linear ordering over all blocks), SPECTRE (has fast consensus, but no full linear ordering over all blocks). The interesting thing about Blockcloud is that they offer a structure consisted of 3 levels: miners, gateway and devices. The second one (gateway) is a layer of smart things, which support protocol (from machines to 5G stations and phones). It's an off-chain layer that is responsible for downloading and accelerating the algorithm. Then the structure is followed by regular (having no IoT support) devices.
This layer arises questions about the team's availability to arrange enough resources/marketing/technology in order to maintain enough gateway worldwide. For example, if there is a gateway in the USA, but the devices function within Russia, how can such a setup be effective?
The miners will have 2 modes: slow (using DAG blockchain, where they will pick candidates for fast mode) & fast (Byzantine agreement consensus, where participants are being chosen in a decentralised manner).
However, since it can slow down in the event of an attack or higher load, the BlockCloud CoDAG (Compacted Directed Acyclic Graph) has been developed. DAG has 2 opposite states: too 'narrow' (small amount of nodes on the chain's level, which create few blocks, e.g. Bitcoin’s linear blockchain structure if the width equals to 1) that leads to slow blockchain; and too 'wide', leading to longer confirmation time. CoDAG improves the traditional DAG structure through better connectivity and adaptive width (explained in detail in the Whitepaper). Servicechain Layer defines new operations without requiring changes to the underlying blockchain. Only Blockcloud nodes are aware of this layer. All of Blockcloud's operations are defined in the servicechain layer and are encoded in valid blockchain transactions as additional metadata. Blockchain nodes do see the raw transactions, but the logic to process Blockcloud operations only exists at this level.Routing Layer. Blockcloud separates the task of routing requests (i.e., how to discover service) from the actual providing of service. This layer is responsible for connections. The servicechain binds names to respective hash (service file) and stores these bindings in the control plane, whereas the service files themselves are stored in the routing layer.Service Layer. The services themselves - the top of the chain.
Conclusion.
Blockcloud acts as a marketplace for IoT Services. Anybody can publish a service in Blockcloud, or subscribe to a service on Blockcloud. There's no centralization to restrict users from doing this. Service providers will be incentivised by token rewards for contributing to the network development in order to arrange a positive, self-developing platform, which will continue to evolve autonomously.
Whitepaper describes processes of registration and management for the services, which we will omit here.
The required resources (storage, computation, bandwidth, routing, and data) are being touched upon, however, the description given is rather vague and short, e.g. storage will be implemented on disks and computation will occur using groups of devices with sufficient computing power. This part is not exactly clear.
The whole interaction process between buyers and sellers of services via their platform-algorithm "Truthful Continuous Double Auction" is outlined in detail. Everything (working mechanism, the auction process, clearing, matching) is thoroughly and logically explained.
Whitepaper summary:
From the technical standpoint, the Whitepaper is of high quality. It's interesting and does not contain any noise. The lack of real-life usage shall be judged individually, it might be that the team strives to address this aspect in their well-prepared weekly reports (please read them) and media outlets. It's difficult to evaluate this massive cluster of technology without its integration, which includes marketing, first clients, building the gateway, minimum node requirement for start, markets and devices available at the start. In regard to the technology and the project's importance as new infrastructure, it will be great if the code/MPV will be released.
Key Players
The team:
Zhongxing Ming - CEO, 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. He is a visiting research collaborator at Princeton University with Ph.D. at Tsinghua University. Zhongxing is also a member of Blockchain Special Committee of China Computer Federation, and Shenzhen high-Level overseas expert with 40 million accumulative project financing and 13 publications on top conferences and journals. He acted as a team lead for a group of engineers at Intel. Zhongxing is an experienced CEO with recent 4 years of managing Shenzhen Oudmon Technology Co., Ltd (5 millions of users, 100 partners, 50 patents).Shu Yang - Chairman/SCN Lab Principal, 125 contacts in LinkedIn. He is a former visiting scholar at Case Western Reserve University and Post Doctoral at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, with Doctor of Philosophy degree at Tsinghua University. Along with Zhongxing, Shu is a member of Blockchain Special Committee of China Computer Federation with 40 million accumulative project financing and 10 publications on top conferences and journalsDai Pan - СОО, 75 contacts in LinkedIn. He got his Master of Information Security degree at Peking University. Dai is urban intelligence expert and Shenzhen high-level expert.Dong Huo - Strategic Scientist, 179 contacts in LinkedIn. Ph.D. at the University of Tokio. He is a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Sustainability Goal (SDG) network expert. Also, dong is PI of a National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) project.Qi Li - Expert of Network Security and Cryptography, 102 contacts in LinkedIn. He is associate professor of Computer Science atTsinghua University, a network security expert and editor of IEEE/TDSC.Wei Xiao - data scientist, 33 contacts in LinkedIn. He got his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Tsinghua University. Wei is AI expert with multiple major inventions.Claire Xiong - Director of Business and Communications, 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. She graduated from UC Berkeley at the age of 19, with a dual degree in Economics and communications. Claire acted as a Director of Innovation Department at Plug and Play in China. Peter Ran - Director of Business Development in North American, 130 contacts in LinkedIn. He has experience with Morgan Stanley and Olympus Capital. Peter graduated from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has 12 years of experience in financial investments.Lucy Liu - Director of Marketing in North American with no LinkedIn page. She has working experience as senior PWC (USA) auditor, New York State Department of labor third party management company accountant. Lucy got her Bachelor of Information Management at George Washington University.Kun Liu - Head of Marketing with no LinkedIn page. His working experience includes Alibaba and Baidu. Kun got his Bachelor of Marketing at Renmin University and so far has 8 years of experience in marketing.Kun Hu - Head of Development, 9 contacts in LinkedIn. He acted as Senior Architect in Huawei, got his Bachelor of Computer Science at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Currently Kun has 7 years of project development experience and 3 years of project management experience.Zhenzhou Wu - Cloud Platform Director with no LinkedIn page. He is proficient in Lisp language. Zhenzhou acted as Chief Architect of an online game with hundreds of millions of users.
The team is very talented, with all members having high levels of education and various skills in their respective fields. Additionally, many of the team members worked in IEEE, PWC, Morgan Stanley, Alibaba, and Baidu.
Technical Advisors
Fred Baker
He is an American engineer, specialising in Internet network protocols development. Participated in Internet Engineering Task Force work group since 1989, which is a global community of engineers and researchers focused on internet protocols and architecture development. Fred acted as Cisco representative on broadband internet connection from 1994 to 2016. He acted as IETF chairman from 1996 to 2001. Fred is an author and editor for around 50 business proposals for internet architecture improvement: OSPF, RIPv2, Lawful Interception, QoS. He also was a chairman and a board of trustees member in the Internet Society, an organisation working on internet development. Since 2005 until 2009, he acted as a technical consultant at Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. He also was a leader of the IPv6 working group under IETF through the period between 2005 and 2013.
Shai Mohaban
He is an Israeli engineer. Shai worked at Cisco from 1998 until 2000, when he founded Kagoor Networks, which was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2005 for $65.7 million (more than 20 patents in network protocols). After that, he joined Juniper Networks himself, where he worked until 2009 on senior positions. He founded IT-startup Neebula in 2009, which was later bought by ServiceNow for $100 million. Shai also acts as an advisor at 2key.
He invested in Doc.ai, Fogcoin, tZero, Telegram.
Jiangchuan Liu
286 followers.
He is IEEE fellow, and tenure of School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (Canada), before that he was giving lectures at a famous Chinese Tsinghua University. Jiangchuan got his first Microsoft Fellowship in Hong Kong, so far he has 252 international academic papers, 2 international patents, 7 software products. He won Hong Kong Young Scientist Award and Steacie Fellowship was granted to him by NSERC (unconfirmed data).
F. Richard Yu
He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). From 2002 to 2006, he was with Ericsson (telecom equipment producer). He joined Carleton University in 2007, where he currently acts as a professor. He received multiple awards from the IEEE and has a number of publishings on network protocols.
Ke Xu
He is a professor, doctoral supervisor and deputy director of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, engaged in research on future internet system structure, P2P, blockchain technology and participating in several projects sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China. So far, Ke is involved in 973 projects and 863 projects as project leader and person-in-charge, he published more than 60 papers on international and domestic academic journals and international academic conferences, more than 20 invention patents. Among his awards there is second prize of National Science and Technology Progress. Ke is also a member of Blockchain Special Committee of China Computer Federation.
Dan Wang
According to the website he is Tenure of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, expert of national rail engineering center, chief designer of Guangzhou TV tower sensor system with dozens of international top papers such as SIGCOMM, INFOCOM.
Qian Wang
According to the website he is an expert of recruitment program of young overseas high-level talents, a professor and doctoral supervisor of Wuhan University with Ph.D. from Illinois Institute of Technology. Qian is a distinguished expert of Hubei Province, who published more than 100 journal articles and conference papers, while winning many awards including IEEE and WAIM.
Linghe Kong
307 followers in LinkedIn.
He is a professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and postdoctoral of Columbia University in the City of New York with Ph.D. in computer engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Linghe is in charge of 6 national, provincial and ministerial research projects, honoured as Microsoft Fellow. He is a member of IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Program, Youth Talent Development Program of China Computer Federation and Microsoft Star-Making Program. He is engaged in research on wireless communications, Internet of Things, big data and mobile computing.
Sheng Zhong - cryptographic specialist
365 followers.
Sheng Zhong received BS (1996), MS (1999) from Nanjing University, and Ph.D. (2004) from Yale University, all in computer science. He used to be on the faculty of SUNY Buffalo, receiving NSF CAREER Award and early tenure promotion there. He is a full professor at Nanjing University. He is also an associate director of the University's Talent Affairs Office, and a member of the University's Committee on Science and Technology. Currently, he serves as the chair of IEEE Computer Society Nanjing Chapter. He is also a member of the Jiangsu Province Council of WRSA. He is a recipient of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Investigator, a 1000-Talent Plan (junior class) grantee, a Jiangsu Province Double Innovation Talent Program grantee, and a recipient of CVIC SE Talent Award. His research has been covered in the National Demonstration of Science, Technology, and Innovation of China's twelfth five-year plan. He serves as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, an editorial board member of Science China Information Science, an editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, an associate editor of Information Sciences, and an editorial board member of Journal of Nanjing University of Information Sciences and Engineering. His current research interests include cryptography, game theory, and their applications.
Qianhong Wu - cryptographic specialist
According to the website, he is a professor of School of Electronics and Information Engineering at Beihang University with Ph.D. in Cryptology from Xidian University. Qianhong is in charge of 7 national research projects of China, Spain and Australia, one of the major researchers of more than 10 international and domestic projects including the 7th EU Planning. He has 7 invention patents, with nearly 100 research papers. Qianhong is also a member of more than 10 international conference procedure committees including ACISP, review expert of more than 20 international conferences and journals including Crypto, IEEE TKDE, member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and International Association for Cryptologic Research, expert engaged in early research on digital currency.
Kun Yang
According to the website, he is Distinguished professor of Recruitment Program of Global Experts; professor of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China with Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from University College London. He is IET fellow, who published more than 200 papers on high-level journals and conference papers. Kun also acts as an editor of several international core-tech journals. He's present of Technical Program Committee (TPC) of several IEEE international academic conferences, and aside from this he is distinguished project evaluation expert of several national fund committees.
Liehuang Zhu
According to the website, he is Assistant Dean of School of Computer Science & Technology at BIT, professor in professional charge of network and information security, professor in professional charge of undergraduate program of Internet of Things Engineering with Ph.D. of School of Computer Science & Technology at BIT. Liehuang is an executive member of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, a chairman of Intelligent Information Network Professional Committee, a member of YOCSEF AC Committee of China Computer Federation, a member of Internet committee, a member of Internet of Things committee, committee of computer application, a member of Information Theory Branch of Chinese Institute of Electronics. He is also FCS young editor (AE) of SCI journals. Liehuang is mainly engaged in research on cryptographic algorithms and protocols, air-ground security control, cloud computing security, internet of things security, blockchain technology and application, mobile internet security, etc. He is in charge of more than national, provincial and ministerial research projects, winner of third prize of National Defense Science and Technology Progress, and a participant of New Century Excellent Talent Program of the Ministry of Education.
Mingwe Xu
According to the website, he is National Distinguished Young Scholar of China, professor and doctoral supervisor of Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, who is engaged in research on computer networking and obtaining outstanding achievements in high-performance networks, internet routing and next generation of system structure. Mingwe won 3 second prizes of National Science and Technology Progress, 1 third prize of National Science and Technology Progress and 1 first prize of Science and Technology of China Institute of Communications.
Ahmed Alsayadi
871 followers
He got his Bachelor degree at University of Science and Technology of China, and Masters degree at the University of California, Berkeley. After finishing education he returned to China and improved his expertise at Tsinghua University.
Ahmed is among first global blockchain architects, he is a co-founder of ProChain, a key member of the Baidu Arab search engine. He also founded two AI companies.
Ahmed is proficient in Java, Android, and C++.
Guang Cheng
According to the website, he is Dean of School of Cyberspace Security at Southeast Univesity, and director of Computer Network and Information Integration Ministry of Education (Southeast University) Key Lab. Guang is also known as secretary of the Party Committee of School of Computer Science and Engineering and College of Software Engineering at Southeast University with Ph.D. of School of Computer Science and Engineering from Southeast University. He is in charge of more than 10 national, provincial and ministerial research projects in recent 5 years, publishing more than 100 academic papers and 5 monographs, applying for 23 Chinese patents of which 16 patents have been authorised and obtaining 7 registered software copyrights.
Haibin Kan - cryptographic specialist
Dr. Kan is the full professor of Fudan University, his research topics include Coding and Information Theory, Cryptography, and the Complexity of Computation. He has systematically studied Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes, the construction of Boolean Functions with cryptographic properties, trellis representation for codes. He has published more than 50 SCI journal papers in international journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEICE Transactions, Science in China.
Incubator Advisors
Blockckoud functions within Genesis Group incubator (China). The group has 3 business departments:
Crypto fund Genesis Capital: Quarkchain, Endor, Arcblock, Apex, Seele, Tron, Egretia, Hydro, Tripio, and Ankr.
Genesis Labs incubator: Blockcloud is their first project.
Investment banking.
Their partners act as projects advisors.
Here are some interesting facts about the partners' experience:
Chi Feng was an advisor at 36Kr, IT-startup that managed to attract about $100 millions of investments. Carrie Yang starter her career at 36KR as a marketing specialist, and then switched to working at Matrix China Partners.
Business advisors
Hoan Soo Lee, +500 contacts in LinkedIn. He obtained his Bachelor's degree at Berkley and master degree at Harvard University and worked in the White House from 2010 to 2011. Hoan was Economist of Council of Economic Adviser (CEA) during the first term of the Obama government; partner of CMB International; co-founder and COO of Give2gether in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. He also acted as a consultant of Dorinku in London, U.K., and microcredit consultant of Harvard College Branch in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. Hoan has been Assistant Professor of Finance at Tsinghua University since 2013 and Assistant Dean there since 2015. During the period from 2013 to 2017, he acted as managing director in TusPark Ventures, based on a university with more than $150 billions in assets.
Jeff Ignacio, 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. He is a technology professional with 14 years of experience in the high technology and software industry.
Jeff holds a Bachelor of Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles and the MBA from the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.
He previously worked at Accenture, Intel, and Google in consulting and finance/operations capacities. Jeff focuses on scaling and growth as Head of Sales Operations at Visier (7509 subscribers, 396 employees), leading innovator in cloud computing and Applied Big Data, Visier offers workforce intelligence solutions, which enable a fast-growing number of worldwide brands to maximise their business performance through their staff.
Jeff is Magic Quadrant winner in the HR analytics industry.
He also has a vast number of skills, such as Python, Automation, Apps Script, Python, Bokeh, SQL, VBA, BigQuery, MySQL, Tableau, Google Apps integration (BigQuery to Gmail to Google Sheets), BI, finance, decision analysis, SaaS, digital media, consumer electronics, asset acquisition, negotiations).
Sandra Wu, 187 contacts in LinkedIn. She is a corporate lawyer with more than 12 years of experience working on Wall Street, Hong Kong and Sydney, currently Sandra acts as managing director at X Capital, which is focused on building a team of analysts, traders, and developers for incubation and investment in digital assets projects. The team is spread across the offices in Europe, USA, and Asia in order to provide 24/7 access to the markets.
Sandra graduated from James Ruse Agricultural High School and got her Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and Bachelor of Commerce (accounting and finance) at the University of Sydney.
According to the information from the website, she is employed in Mercer (Investment Consulting & Asset Management Company - listed as MMC Group mentioned on NYSE) as Principal, Head of Legal & Chief Compliance Officer, and also as an associate at Weil Gotshal, Kirkland & Ellis, and Skadden Arps. Currently, Sandra acts as Vice President of the Hong Kong Digital Asset Investment Association and Blockchain Steering Committee of the Association of Corporate Counsels.
Yunsoo (Andre) Kim, 201 contacts in LinkedIn. He is СЕО of BLOCKCHAIN i(6 followers, 2 employees), a crypto fund, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain companies along with providing consulting services for ICO projects.
Yunsoo is also the founder of the first generation of cryptocurrency mining in South Korea.
According to the website, he's currently accelerating INSUREUM (by Zikto voted as Top 20 Start-up company from Forbes Magazine and Temco (First Korean Supply Chain Blockchain Project).
Yunsoo graduated from Korea University, founded in 1905 and widely recognized as one of the country's oldest and largest universities.
Alex Likhtenstein, 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. He's a founder of first Bitcoin bar in New York. Alex acts as a partner in Digittality from January 2017, which is focused on digital marketing in hospitality, and as CMO at yinc.com (dApp with verified reviews on blockchain) since June 2018.
Roger Lim, 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. is a founding partner at NEO Global Capital. Roger act as advisor in a number of projects, among which are Merculet, Bluzelle, Qlink, CoinFi, Thekey, Tomocoin, 0Chain, Switcheo, Open Platform, nOS, etc.
The project has top-level advisors with multiple awards and prizes, who also affiliated with top-tier companies and organisations! Our main concern is that they have no mentioned connections to the project in LinkedIn.