The world’s first blockchain lifestyle festival, Block Live Asia, debuts in Singapore on April 18th and 19th!

Singapore, 21 March 2019-The world’s first part-conference, part-experiential blockchain festival will be held in Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre Hall A on April 18 and 19, 2019. With renowned names such as DASH, TenX, bitcoin.com, Digifinex, and BlockON Group, on board as sponsors and partners, Block Live Asia is set to give attendees a whole new experience into the blockchain space.

Unlike typical blockchain conferences which are ticketed at high prices and catered towards blockchain professionals, this two-day festival is open to the public with free entry for those who register online before April 15, 2019. In doing so, Block Live Asia aims to remove existing high barriers of entry into space and promote interest from the masses on blockchain technology and its real-world usage.

The festival activities are crafted to tackle industry pain-points, reshape mass perspectives on blockchain and to make the technology applicable to the daily lives of people. Attendees can expect authentic, constructive and necessary discussions about real work that is being done in the blockchain space through a mix of conference and lifestyle activities, such as panel discussions, movie screening, keynote speeches, creative installations, experiential zones, and retail booths.

Ngeow Jiawen, CEO of Grounded, stated,

“Block Live Asia is the first ever free-to-attend festival that is a sincere delivery of blockchain technology. We are tired of blockchain conferences being increasingly profit-driven, and how the same topics get recycled over and over again. This is our attempt at doing space justice. Expect a myriad of activities going on around our highlight act, real and stripped down honest talks given by over 70 guest speakers.”

Attendees will get the chance to greet some of biggest change-makers of the blockchain industry, as well as key traditional players, including Roger Ver, CEO of bitcoin.com, Chia Hock Lai, President of Singapore Fintech Association, Garrett Jin, Co-founder of BitForex and more, who will be sharing their quality opinions on topics such as personal data security and e-commerce, future of work & employment, blockchain scalability and more.

Block Live Asia will also be showing Singapore’s premiere of Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain-a documentary following the proponents and opponents of the technology. Those who are not ready to learn about blockchain can take Instagram-worthy photos at several installation zones, play interactive games, attend free workshops by Singapore bitcoin Club, NewCampus and CoinMarketCap, or shop at the retail zone managed by Expat Fair Singapore and Hoolah.

Other highlights include:

Facing the F/Ups

Presented by BlockON Group, F/UPS invites finch and blockchain entrepreneurs to share personal stories of professional failures. The stories of the business that crashed and burned, the partnership deal that went sour, the product that had to be recalled, and what eventually succeeded; they tell all.

Crypto Experience Zone

Visitors get a personalized walkthrough and simulation of the entire crypto experience based on their knowledge level. From creating a wallet, buying their first token to trading on an exchange, the interactive zone brings blockchain amateurs on their very own crypto journey.

RAISE Pitching Competition

RAISE is a pitching competition where teams will each be given 5+5 minutes to pitch their technology to a panel of investors. The most viable projects stand to win prizes of up to S$50000 as well as incubation and mentorship chances with a Silicon Valley-based Incubator Founders which incubated Unicorns such as Instagram, Mashable, change.org and more.

Don Tsai, Project Director of First Wave Agency, said that

“Block Live Asia will be an unforgettable experience, creating a new model for what a blockchain conference ought to achieve. We wanted to discuss topics that really matter, constructive criticisms that can change the space for the better. Our incredibly accomplished speakers will do more than share, they will motivate and show us a new path forward in this bear market. And I’m thrilled to offer our attendees access to them all for free”.

About Block Live Asia

Part-conference, part-experiential festival, Block Live Asia is a one-of-a-kind industry event combining keynote speeches, creative installations, and photo-worthy galleries to attract the masses and promote mass education of blockchain. The event will be held on April 18 and 19, 2019 at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre Hall A, Singapore from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. The festival features over 100 exhibitors and speakers across the 45,000 square feet exhibition hall. www.blocklive.asia

For Media Enquiries Joey Lim

Team Co-Lead [email protected]

The post The world’s first blockchain lifestyle festival, Block Live Asia, debuts in Singapore on April 18th and 19th! appeared first on AMBCrypto.

Published at Sat, 13 Apr 2019 03:44:56 +0000

July 21, 2017

BIP 91 Has Activated. Here’s What That Means (and What It Does Not)

It looks as if bitcoin is getting Segregated Witness.

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 91 (BIP 91) just locked in. Up to 90 percent of all hash power signaled support for this soft fork, which implies miners intend, in turn, to trigger Segregated Witness (SegWit) activation. By extension, this should make BIP 148 obsolete and August 1 a non-event.

But SegWit is not certain. In fact, on a technical level, SegWit is not any closer to activation at all.

BIP 91

Segregated Witness, defined by BIP 141, locks in if at least 95 percent of miners (by hash power) signal support for the upgrade within a two-week difficulty period. To do so, miners need to embed a piece of data called “bit 1” in the blocks they mine.

Importantly, this is technically the only way for SegWit to activate right now. And this threshold has not yet been met.

But there are alternative strategies to try and reach this threshold “indirectly” — like BIP 91.

BIP 91 is a bitcoin Improvement Proposal proposed by Bitmain Warranty engineer James Hilliard. It is compatible with the New York Agreement and backed by a number of bitcoin companies and mining pools. It is also compatible with BIP 148, another strategy to meet the BIP 141 threshold indirectly.

Miners have been signaling support for BIP 91 over the past couple of days through another piece of data, “bit 4.” Once 269 blocks within a 336-block window include bit 4, this BIP 91 soft fork gets locked in. This threshold was just met.

This means that after another 336 blocks, a little over two days from now, all BIP 91–compatible nodes will reject any block that doesn’t include bit 1.

As long as a majority of hash power enforces BIP 91, this majority should eventually control the longest valid chain according to all bitcoin nodes. And as this chain consists of bit 1 SegWit-signaling blocks only, it would in turn activate SegWit on all SegWit-ready nodes.

In that case, BIP 141 should lock in by mid-August, and SegWit should be live on the bitcoin network after a two-week “grace period” by the end of that month.

If all goes well …

What Could Go Wrong?

Although well over 80 percent of hash power has signaled bit 4 for BIP 91 activation, this doesn’t actually guarantee anything. Most importantly, it doesn’t in itself mean that these miners will signal bit 1 for SegWit.

Indeed, so far, most miners don’t. Currently, the proportion of miners signaling bit 1 is still far lower than BIP 91 activation would suggest. It is even lower than 50 percent.

Moreover, BIP 91 is probably being enforced by hardly any economically relevant nodes; that is, nodes operated by users that accept bitcoins as payment. Almost no bitcoin users on the network recognize BIP 91 or its bit 4 signaling at all, and will therefore continue to accept blocks with or without bit 1.

BIP 91 is, instead, enforced by hash power alone. This in turn means that a majority of miners (by hash power) could back out of BIP 91 with little more than reputational damage. They could continue to mine blocks that do not signal bit 1, even after BIP 91 activates in a few days. As long as these miners are in a majority, they will still control the longest valid chain: valid according to most miners, and valid to most users.

Furthermore, any minority of miners and the few nodes that do enforce the BIP 91 soft fork would then be forked off the bitcoin network. In a few days from now, these miners would mine (on top of) blocks that almost only they themselves would consider valid, while most of the rest of the entire bitcoin network would completely ignore them. These miners would be wasting their own resources.

With this week’s bit 4 signaling, a majority of miners have effectively made a statement that they intend to start to activate the SegWit soft fork within a couple of days. But for now, that’s really all it is: a very public, blockchain-based statement of intent.

Actual SegWit activation should start next week, if miners stick to their stated intent.

The post BIP 91 Has Activated. Here’s What That Means (and What It Does Not) appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

The world’s first blockchain lifestyle festival, Block Live Asia, debuts in Singapore on April 18th and 19th!

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