I just published the plan for Lyra proof of concept, with the current status and description of the next steps. Feel free to send your questions and suggestions to lyra@graft.network. More posts with further details are coming soon!

#Lyra #GRAFT #crypto #payments #blockchain 

It is very well known fact that no one trust that miners will follow protocols - we simply know that they have to to follow protocol, because otherwise they they will create a fork and fall out of the network!   

This is untrue! 1) Regarding financial institutions - just think about the financial crisis of 2008 that caused great recession - banks and other financial institutions failed, and there were no laws and regulations that could protect us. 2) Regarding merchants - let's look at the rich history of security breaches where millions of credit card accounts were stolen from merchants - no laws or regulation prevented those breaches. I also wrote a book, but it's not about trust, rather the opposite - how bad technologies and regulations failed to protect merchants and consumers from credit card fraud. 3) Regarding individuals - since when the reputation concerns prevent theft and fraud? 

I doubt this is a good example, with millions and millions of dollars stolen from merchants and consumer. The whole businesses (such as PayPal) were created just to patch the fundamental problems with credit card system. Blockchain is our only chance to get rid of credit card system and replace it with more secure and private equivalent.
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This is matter of personal choice. If you trust governments and corporations that continue promoting 50 years old failing technologies which are perfectly suitable for violating our privacy and breaching our security - continue to trust institutions and use banks and plastic cards. 
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Bitcoin is not the only crypto, and the wasteful proof-of-work is not the only consensus algorithm.
Credit card fees are still higher than most crypto fees in most cases, but they are invisible for buyers because, unlike crypto, merchants pay the credit cards' fees. There are even cryptos with zero fees, although my personal opinion is the fee-based model is the most sustainable one, if the fees are charged to merchants. 
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This is correct, but unlike banks, credit card brands, and other financial institutions - the crypto governance can be democratic, and every stakeholder can vote and promote any changes. 
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This is untrue. There are a lot of exchanges, and they are dispersed geographically and by jurisdiction, so if any single government or even several governments decide to crack down on crypto, they won't be able to kill the entire ecosystem. And the number and quality of decentralized exchanges is growing. 
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This is very limited view as there are more important aspects of cryptocurrencies. Only crypto can ensure real, full privacy of our finances. Only crypto can ensure that absolutely everyone has permissionless, unconditional access to basic financial services: payments, trading, investment, savings, credit. ​

Introduction
Technology makes progress all the time.  When the technology is young, the rate of progress is the fastest, with different approaches for applying the technology being tested, learning from what works and what doesn’t, and evolving along various use cases.
 
Proof of Work based blockchains were a great first implementation of the permission-less paradigm, and are still and will likely remain a good vehicle for “storing value” given their emission properties; similar to gold.

What they are not good at however is handling high-volume, time-critical transactions (transactions on these PoW blockchains are very slow, expensive, and not user friendly).  

There are two main ways that exist right now that can enable these high-volume, time-critical transactions that can stand the test of real point-of-sale environments:

1. Develop a second layer Proof-of-stake side chains - that’s what the original GRAFT was all about.  While much better at handling real-time transactions and high TPS, they are still subject to some of the underlying limitations of PoW.
2. By developing a separate Proof-of-stake blockchain that is disconnected from the PoW layer.

We know that second approach will win out in the end, so while we’re starting with the first one, we have to make sure we don’t get left behind by missing the opportunity to “skate where the puck is going”.  With that we’d like to lift up the curtain a little bit around our thinking regarding the next generation of GRAFT.

Primary Objectives of the LYRA

• Create a payment system that would keep and extend the main GRAFT project principals, proposals, and achievements such as privacy, real time authorizations, buyer-friendly fee structure, multi-currency support, special merchant transaction flows, custom merchant tokens, participating economy, and more (see original GRAFT white paper for more details)
• Eliminate Proof of Work altogether
• Provide virtually unlimited scalability to enable TPS (transactions per second) rates competitive with traditional payment processing networks
• Eliminate a prolonged locking of funds in user wallets (both payer and payee) caused by waiting for multiple “block confirmations”
• Reduce to the network latency that affects transaction authorization times
• Eliminate dependence on one large and continuously growing blockchain database
• Add open banking features that would provide financial benefits to all stakeholders
• Decouple the payment platform from any specific cryptocurrency

 Read Full White Paper

Amazon recently opened its first "no checkout" store in Seattle, now followed by Sainsbury's opened similar "till-free" store in the UK. Such environment, where there is no cashier or even point of sale per se, is ideal for cryptocurrency payments. Till-free/no checkout stores are obviously unsuited for cash payments (or vice versa?), so the only option (besides crypto) is plastic card, or the card linked to your mobile phone app (i.e. Apple Pay). But what if you need some privacy and don't want to use plastic card? Maybe privacy is not that important for some people in grocery stores, but there will be other kinds of till-free stores... Or you simply don't have a bank account and plastic card, or your card is not accepted by Apple Pay? Here crypto goes on stage, because it combines the best features of two words: cash (it's anonymous and secure) and plastic cards (it's virtual and can be used on mobile phone). 

Here is more details about Bakkt - a Microsoft/ICE/Starbucks plan to centralize Bitcoin (and I guess other cryptocurrencies in the future) trading. 

The topic of my presentation:
CRYPTO IS UNDER SIEGE. POINT-OF-SALE MIGHT BE THE ANSWER, BUT ONLY IF DONE RIGHT

Despite the fact everyone is discussing cryptocurrency, its potential and its progression, it still remains niche and cluttered: crypto in real estate, crypto in gaming or crypto in transportation. 

What about the average crypto owner? In the end, it will be these people that will be responsible for the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency. The everyday crypto owner isn’t going to buy a house with Bitcoin, for example, but would relish the opportunity to pay for a dinner with crypto. Yet as long as crypto remains niche and inaccessible, cryptocurrencies will not proliferate like once imagined. 

That’s why our mission at GRAFT is to create a self-spreading network, where crypto is welcome in SME retail and easy for merchants and consumers. Only then will we be able to call cryptocurrencies “mainstream”.

Goldman Sachs told the New York Times it will start offering Bitcoin trade contracts for its clients.
Plus, NYSE is planning to open its own cryptocurrency exchange.
​Good news for crypto!

​Argentina raises interest rates to 40%. The rises are aimed at supporting the peso, which has lost a quarter of its value over the past year. 
It's time for Argentina to move to cryptocurrencies!
​http://www.bbc.com/news/business-44001450