Fox Launches “Verify” to Fight Against AI 🤖

🐺 Hi pack-mates,

This is Howling Markets, the consensus mechanism that validates all the interesting financial news for you!

Today we will be covering:

1. Education: Consensus Mechanisms 🎓

2. What Is Happening to Boeing? ✈️

3. Fox Launches “Verify” to Fight Against AI 🤖

4. Equity and Debt Markets Daily Update ⚖️

5.  And more!

Market Watch 👀

Education: Consensus Mechanisms

When it comes to blockchains, the main function they perform is encrypting data into new blocks and then adding the blocks to the blockchain, basically creating a permanent database. But have you ever wondered how the new blocks are formed?

Blockchain blocks are created according to a set of rules called consensus mechanism which defines how to validate data and add it to the existing chain. Originally, the only existing consensus mechanism was called Proof-of-Work (PoW), and it was introduced by Bitcoin.

A Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism works by letting cryptocurrency miners compete in solving complex mathematical problems. The first miner to solve the algorithm achieves the right to add a new block to the blockchain and it is compensated by receiving block rewards.

However, due to the extremely bad environmental impact caused by the energy consumption needed to solve the mathematical problems, many blockchains have started developing an alternative mechanism, called Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

Instead of mining, the PoS consensus mechanism works based on an activity called forging, which requires the miners to “stake” a portion (or all) of their digital currencies to forge and validate a new block. Staking simply consists of holding digital currencies at idle in the cryptocurrency wallet.

As a matter of fact, PoS mechanisms work based on a algorithm that randomly picks staked currencies to use to validate the new block, and because there is no energy wasted on solving mathematical programs, it is much cheaper in terms of energy.

However, also in this case the miners who are chosen by the forging algorithm are compensated with digital currencies.

What Is Happening to Boeing?

On the 5^th of January, last Friday, an Alaska Airline flight was en route to land in the United States when an emergency door blew open at 16,000 feet. Fortunately, everyone in the Boeing 373 Max 9 was safe and exited the airplane once an emergency landing at the closest airport was performed.

However, what initially seemed like a freak accident was later analyzed by the FAA and it was determined to be caused by some underlying issues with the installation process.

Right after the incident, Alaska and United airlines were asked to ground all their Boeing 373 Max 9s to perform an inspection and ensure their safety. After the inspections, the airlines commented that they had found many problems with the emergency doors, such as loose bolts and poor installation.

As a result, Boeing share price (Ticker: BA) plummeted 10% since last Friday, before slightly recovering at around $227. Likewise, also the share price of Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Boeing’s supplier for the emergency door and other key components, fell by almost 13%.

Do you think that this situation will be quickly resolved, or do you believe that there will be serious repercussions among airlines?

Today’s Howling Question

And now, it is time for our howling question!

We have talked about consensus mechanisms and said that Bitcoin uses Poof-of-Work, do you know which mechanism is adopted by Ethereum?

a)  Proof-of-Work

b)  Proof-of-Stake

c)  A mix of the two

Try to answer the question by yourself, and then check the correct answer after the last interesting news!

Fox Launches “Verify” to Fight Against AI

During 2023, AI and other computer assisted tools became extremely popular, especially in the field of online entertainment, blogs and social media. Many of the functions originally performed by professionals have been delegated to a computer, definitely speeding up the process, but also incurring a significant loss of quality and authenticity.

Because of this, Fox Corporation has recently partnered with Polygon, a Proof-of-Stake blockchain, to build Verify, a tool able to tell apart original registered content to deepfakes, imitations and copies.

Verify has been released on Tuesday as an open-source protocol and, despite only being a beta version of the finished product, it can already be tested.

However, the idea behind this innovative tool is not just building an advanced plagiarism and AI scanner, it is to build a virtual library of verified and registered original content. The protocol will be used by Fox News to encrypt on the blockchain their articles to prove their originality and to allow the readers to tell apart where an information comes from and if the source is trustworthy.

Such innovation is set to revolutionize our world where, nowadays, there are more and more confusing news and deepfakes. Do you think that such a tool is necessary?

Equity and Debt Markets Update ⚖️

And now, our daily markets update!

As expected, the stock market closed slightly lower today at -0.15% compared to the previous’ day close. However, it is interesting to notice how the price has gapped down at market open, starting the day -0.5%, but then it continued to move higher throughout the day, ending slightly below yesterday’s closing price.

The debt market instead took a “rest day”, after multiple sessions characterized by higher volatility, today was relatively static and the price has only closed marginally lower by -0.42%, while continuing to test the same support level.

Answer

The correct answer is b) Proof-of-Stake

This was a relatively tough question as Ethereum originated as a PoW blockchain and only later, during 2019, decided to start upgrading to a Proof-of-Stake mechanism.

This upgrade, called Ethereum 2.0 or Shapella Upgrade, is not yet fully completed, but we are expected to be on the last leg of the process. Either way, the PoS mechanism has already been adopted to increase the volume and reduce the transaction fees, making Ethereum more competitive against the newer native PoS blockchains, such as Solana and Polygon.

Howl-Worthy Memes 😂

🐺 See you next time!

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