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2 years ago Z1: Two-sided blockchain-based platforms for city distribution (Customer: TNO)
The objective is to create a blockchain based infrastructure supporting city distribution, without any intermediate party (a so-called two-sided platforms) roaming payment by consumers and their suppliers in the delivery of goods. These goods can be anything, ranging from eCommerce shipments to meals and groceries. A blockchain infrastructure should be created to support the following roles: • Consumers ordering goods • Suppliers offering and providing these goods • Service providers offering delivery services The main issue of such a platform is to create trust: • A consumer pays the goods to be delivered • A service provider gets paid for its services • A supplier is sure that goods are delivered in their proper state (temperature, undamaged, etc.) to the proper consumer that ordered the goods • A consumer having trust in receiving the goods after payment Certification mechanisms combined with past behavior can also be mechanisms to implement trust. These and other mechanisms implemented by intermediates (e.g. Deliveroo and Uber(Eats)) currently implement a type of trust. However, these different providers decrease safety in cities: there are just too many not always adhering to traffic rules. Sustainability is also an important aspect that is not always properly implemented by these platforms. Another aspect is that these platforms only provide services where the market is the largest, thus large cities. Smaller cities and regions are not covered. Many other mechanisms are specified in logistics that formulate conditions and liability of a service provider, like the CMR Convention (road transport) and Rotterdam Rules (sea transport of containers). These types of issues need to be addressed, which might require the inclusion of insurance of a service provider against loss, damage, theft, etc. The expected solution can be used by different service providers using various modalities (bike, electric vehicles) and maybe combining person and goods transport (e.g. forensics carrying goods between cities as a service). There are solutions that cover these aspects, namely: • Bistroo – based on a cryptocurrency, trust is said to be created. The cryptocurrency is to replace payment infrastructures like Ideal used by private banks • Coopcycle – a platform with a cooperative structure, where members contribute to the development of the platform. The challenge is to develop protocols that can be implemented without any intermediate party, provide trust, utilizing blockchain technology, and don’t utilize a cryptocurrency but utilize existing payment infrastructures. Protocols are the set of agreements between the stakeholder roles identified; they can be implemented by smart contracts. As said, these protocols can include certificates issued by an external (trusted) body.
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Official place for "class projects" of the Feb 2022 edition of CS4160 by Delft University of Technology. Prior year examples: 2021 edition, the 2020 edition projects, and 2018 projects.
Abstract: BrainDAO - unification of all human intellect and artificial intelligence.
During this class you will attempt to start building the societal infrastructure for intelligence. Fully blockchain-based using "BrainCoins". We now have isolated infrastructure for facts(Wikipedia), science(ArXiv), money(Bitcoin), code(GitHub), data(Bittorrent), and what the world thinks(Twitter). You will build on decades of work by others: class of 2021 and our first code from April 2005.
Consists of 9 tasks, each task is for a team of 5 students (smaller teams sadly not possible). 45 students working for 10 weeks on BrainDAO. Example tasks (full details below)
The Details: what is a DAO, class schedule, etc.
Online Lecture URLOn campus lectures: first lecture in in EWI, Ampere hall.
on-campus education - class schedule (slides will be updated) :
Project: BrainDAO (5 teams, maximum 25 students)
Advisor: J.A. Pouwelse, TUDelft blockchain lab founder (weekly meetings on Wednesdays)
Students from Delft have created a blockchain-based infrastructure with AI. This AI is still rudimentary and not yet used for real-world applications.
The five students teams will work together on a cutting-edge scientific problem: how to create a software system which can be expanded in real-time and increasingly become more 'intelligent'. Build upon the open source app by TUDelft on the Android Play store using blockchain technology. See: Github Superapp and play store.
DAO - organisations in software
To make a "self-evolving" app we use the DAO concept. What is a DAO? Within the coming decades the future of jobs, employment and the nature of the firm will change profoundly. Automation, AI, and robots will replace many of today's jobs. A new type of company is a company without any employees, without any machines or physical infrastructure. A Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, DAO, only exists in software. It goes beyond smart contracts, it is a complete company inside software. DAO development is still in the experimental stage. Background reading. Very optimistic view on DAO, official US review of DAO by Securities and Exchange Commission.
Within this master course you can create your very own autonomous organisation, the AI-DAO. Learn to engineer a decentralised autonomous organisation, use the existing tools, and understand the security risks. The aim is to alter the nature of the firm in the Internet age, see the Nobel prize winning theory. Production cost become essentially cost-free. An organisation which exists purely in cyberspace. The AI-DAO is designed to be the first sustainable DAO. How can we empower leaderless organizations? How can it earn money from manipulating bits?
Scientific challenge: Self-evolving
A key step in an autonomous system is that it can evolve independently. This enables growth and evolution independently of any central organisation, sponsoring government, or tribe of volunteers.
You will collectively solve the problem of paying somebody to make new features in open systems which are fully decentralised. This goes further then paying somebody Bitcoins to create a new version. Decentralised technology is very robust to failures, manipulation, faults, and courtcases. For instance, The Internet itself is almost impossible to shutdown so is the "Tor darknet". With other teams you will address a key drawback of decentralised technology: difficult to update, nearly impossible to evolve, and lacks incentives to develop new features.
dApp ecosystem
"Distributed Applications" are a distributed way of running code. You will help develop an ecosystem of "global code". Code is running atop a blockchain and peer-to-peer (P2P) network that acts as a kind of operating system. This provides security, resilience, privacy, and novel features. This is related to smart contracts, but has no slow single virtual machine (all discussed in the online classes material). Background material, read FBASE trustworthy code execution
PNG: difference between cloud and decentralised Apps
Big Tech focused application
The application side of the BrainDAO is very familiar. Its offering an alternative to the services of Big Tech without any cloud, server, or monopoly company. We picked music, as that is easiest. Finding good music is a difficult AI problem. You will help transform essential parts of the music industry and replace them with open source software.
Demo .APK to install for understanding the Superapp quickly (100MB)
Current code:
GIF: Browsing and streaming music with Bittorrent
GIF: Sending money to artists using Bitcoin
Running code of prior years
We have running code! Class of 2021 is adding the following to the Superapp:
Detailed BrainDAO task descriptions
Deliverables for each team: 1) demo in week 10 for final grading 2) a small readme.md; briefly describing the product, challenges, and design decisions; examples, 3) an open PR to the superapp (73 examples)