The Case:
Inefficient and Fragmented Global Supply Chains

Waterloo, ON, Canada, January 2022: Blockchain pioneer Geeq Corporation has formed a strategic partnership with market-leading management consultancy Alchemmy. The partnership enables Alchemmy to offer its clients the best technical solutions for their specific business needs, while giving Geeq access to a new client base.

As one of the UK’s leading management consultancies specializing in digital transformation, Alchemmy recognized the game-changing potential of Geeq, particularly for micropayments and notary service applications. Geeq enables micropayments to be transacted for costs as low as a fraction of a cent, while its notary service provides a modular, non-invasive data consistency layer for enterprises.

While decentralized technology has long been heralded as the next frontier for digital transformation, Alchemmy’s clients have been frustrated by limitations of the underlying consensus protocols, such as high transaction costs, limited capacity and reliability, environmental concerns, and security vulnerabilities. In contrast, Geeq’s multiple independent blockchains, combined with the Proof of Honesty mechanism, offer unlimited scalability while bypassing the security and congestion concerns of current platforms, along with very low transaction costs and low environmental impact.

Geeq’s Proof of Honesty protocol offers real, secure scalability without a high carbon footprint, which makes it the right option to offer our clients. We are delighted to join forces with a project, platform and team that align with our passion for doing the right thing — for the planet as well as for our clients.

Alchemmy Co-founder Dipak Patel

In Alchemmy Founders Dipak and Nik, we see deep subject matter experts with an exemplary pedigree in crypto who can help us expand adoption of the Geeq platform. We are only starting to scratch the surface of what blockchain can do; Proof of Honesty and micropayments will be key to expanding these opportunities, and Dipak, Nik and Alchemmy are perfectly positioned strategic partners for Geeq as we push the boundaries of possibility.

Geeq CEO Ric Asselstine

For all inquiries please contact press@geeq.io.

About the Geeq Project

Geeq is a multi-blockchain platform secured by an entirely new consensus mechanism called Proof of Honesty (PoH), which radically reduces the cost of securely transacting value at scale. It is safe enough for highly valuable data, fast and cheap enough for IoT, and flexible enough for any use.

Geeq was founded by a team of expert economists and technologists. The founders see unprecedented opportunity in decentralized technology that to date has not been realized, as existing blockchains are caught in a trade-off between scalability and security. Geeq resolves the dilemma with an accessible, dependable, low-cost solution that does not sacrifice either trust or capacity, unlocking blockchain’s real potential for the real world.

About Alchemmy

Alchemmy is a transformation specialist that delivers sustainable change for clients through data and design. With deep expertise in retail & consumer products, transportation, and the public sector, its consultants help clients to address their biggest challenges in growth, operational improvement, digitalization and change. For the past three years, the Financial Times has named Alchemmy one of the UK’s Leading Management Consultancies in the category of digital transformation.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this press release, including statements relating to Geeq’s and Alchemmy’s future plans and objectives or expected results, may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in technology development and commercialization. As a result, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

Company: Geeq
Contact: Bridie Mitchell
Email: bridie.mitchell@geeq.io
Website: geeq.io
Address: 554 Parkside Drive
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 5Z4

Company: Alchemmy
Website: alchemmy.com
Address: High Holborn House (4th floor)
52-54 High Holborn
London WC1V 6RL
United Kingdom

Last week, Geeq’s very own German Ramirez, our Global VP of Marketing, gave a presentation on enterprise adoption at the digital conference entitled “Blockchain in Business 2021 – Structuring the new business environment”.

German was asked to help businesses better understand and unlock the full potential of Geeq’s technology.

For example, the increased complexity of supply chains in a globalized world pose operational challenges to each participant. Cases abound that require coordination that Geeq’s blockchain-driven, information-oriented solutions have been designed to simplify. Achieving the desired level of trust and immediacy has been costly, perhaps prohibitively so, until now.

By incorporating the benefits of automation such as feedback from easily retrieved data generated by IoT, both the data and how it is used must provide information that is helpful and unobtrusive.

The new generation of blockchain must reduce friction in the process rather than add to it.

To address this example, German outlined the requirements for these new blockchain solutions. First, the next generation of blockchains must be able to secure supply chain data as well as be prepared to facilitate machine-to-machine payments.

Blockchain solutions should, at minimum, surpass the bar of being cost-effective and, even better, be less expensive compared to current solutions for enterprise problems.

The new generation of blockchains must be reliable, secure, and interoperable. Most of all, they should be ready to scale.

It is common knowledge the previous generation of blockchains were not built to scale. While they iterate on scaling solutions, there remains uncertainty on many fronts: the scaling methods themselves, their security, their resource requirements, and many other issues.

These debates about older generation blockchains have been long running. As they have taken place, early adopters in enterprise have experimented with private blockchains. Do these harness the power of decentralized networks? Not fully, so the scope of problems that have been addressed has been limited.

Moving Enterprises Toward Yes

One of the distinguishing characteristics of being a Geeq is having a grounded, practical approach to adoption. Or, as German likes to say: working to bring the power of blockchain to Planet Earth, rather than leaving it to the niche enthusiasts on Planet Crypto.

The disconnect occurs when Planet Crypto touts a world of future gains while skipping lightly over the disruption of implementation. The results of these sales pitches speak for themselves. Across all industries, the majority of enterprises are somewhere in the exploration and evaluation phase, and getting caught up in difficult questions – which blockchain should they use, for what pilot, and how will those translate to their businesses, when, and where?

As in all technical decisions, enterprises are interested in solutions that deliver cost savings almost immediately, rather than some unspecified time in the future. Will the new generation of blockchains meet that need?

Geeq is prepared to address these concerns with its honest answers and easy to use blockchain-based solutions. The range of solutions Geeq offers are appropriate for enterprises that need blockchain to improve their internal activities, as well as enterprises gearing up to expand their customer base by offering public applications.

Geeq is also able to customize “mixed” blockchain-based applications for situations where tools are needed to satisfy stakeholders with different priorities over the same data.

Geeq is a leader in new generation blockchains

Geeq addresses a problem organizations face right now — particularly those that have grown through mergers and acquisitions and/or must re-evaluate their overall cyber-security readiness. We are developing services that were impossible to achieve before.

Geeq Data simplifies the process of enterprise data integration (EDI). Data in large organizations tends to be silo-ed in different data systems across various departments, subsidiaries and divisions, making it difficult to obtain an overview. German detailed how Geeq is able to create a data consistency layer that provides visibility across an entire organisation. Importantly, this approach enables organizations to retain the processes that work for them and is able to build on employees’ comfort with their existing data systems.

On a slightly more cautionary note, the talk touched on how edge security will become paramount in a global economy that includes trillions of connected devices. Here too, Geeq’s solutions provide the additional security of blockchain. Drawing from first hand experiences with technology products over decades, the Geeq team anticipated exponential growth and architected an infrastructure to support scalability from the start.

Beyond globalization, the climate crisis is another key vector of change. To meet increasingly stringent environmental targets, we know the end game will require changes in the way we travel, particularly in cities. A significant percentage of the CO2 emissions of vehicles stems from their production, and an average car spends the majority of its lifetime parked.

To address these and other urgent, thoroughly modern priorities, the Geeq team is ready to work with those who prioritize the adoption of technologies that are beneficial for enterprise and society. Examples that motivate German are how blockchain-based micropayments can be used to underpin a smart mobility approach to urban transport and remittances.

Geeq Pay micropayments also create new pay-as-you-go revenue streams. Business models in the news, music and gaming industries were mentioned. But these are all extensions that highlight the capability of the new generation of blockchains – at Geeq.

The full presentation from the conference is here.

Conclusion

German was glad to have the opportunity to showcase the potential applications of Geeq for enterprise clients to a wide-ranging, business focused audience.

Geeq’s technology is built to satisfy the challenges enterprises face now, and in a future-proof, scalable way. Geeq’s team is made up of experts who, like German, have long experience in evaluating technologies from both sides of adoption: building products from the ground up and delivering new ways to provide value to customers.

To stay up to date with the latest updates and events concerning Geeq, don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter. We welcome all enterprise decision makers to contact us about partnering with us. Let’s talk about your use case!

The early empty promises of blockchain

The first idea, that John dispatched with speed, was the mythology around early blockchain as some sort of brand new technology with mysterious healing properties. Although all the investors on the panel knew better, business leaders at home have seen blockchain hyped for years: sometimes as one of the key engines of the fourth industrial revolution; the technology that would propel unified world currencies such as Bitcoin and its successors to dominance; or the force that would reorganize entire industries and government processes nearly overnight.

This enthusiasm reached into the business world at the highest levels. At Davos in 2015, blockchain was noted as one of the technologies that would bring on a world tipping point, where a World Economic Forum survey suggested 10% of global GDP would be stored on blockchain by 2027.

In an excellent McKinsey Digital Report (2018) by Brant Carson, Giulio Romanelli, Patricia Walsh, and Askhat Zhumaev, the optimistic predictions from Davos 2015 were revisited. The authors concluded blockchain technology, while having potential, was still immature.

Indeed, blockchain’s practical value (here at Geeq, in 2020) is exciting. However, it is not because blockchain is a new invention out of whole cloth, like the transistor radio or the computer chip. It is because blockchain combines existing components to fashion a new, versatile, cheaper and decentralized data service in ways that suit some purposes better than traditional, centralized databases. However, these valuable properties of blockchain are only realized if, as John pointed out, “it is done well”.

The essence of blockchain: its security model

John explained it is only possible to unlock the new and valuable properties of adopting blockchain as a decentralized data backbone after re-evaluating the traditional approaches to cyber-security. Only then would blockchain be able to prove its worth as a reliable, cost-saving, and efficient new kind of data service.

While the blockchain and crypto fields are filled with brilliant and innovative futurists who have pushed the frontiers of cryptography, finance, and development, some of their attitudes toward securing the blockchain databases were old-fashioned. Broadly speaking, the two approaches used were either (a) to make attacks increasingly expensive or (b) to build up more elaborate methods to try to keep cyber-attackers out.

The fatal flaw? In the new digital era, the only rational expectation is that cyberattacks will become more sophisticated and powerful. New data structures, such as blockchain-based services, cannot be adequately protected with cybersecurity arms races. As John explained,

Building walls is ultimately a self-defeating technology, because someone could always get a bigger gun. It’s a race of cannon versus fortress.

Geeq Chief Economist and Proof of Honesty protocol creator, John Conley

Furthermore, if a security strategy is based on adding cost or complexity, it increases the total cost of using blockchain. Why would anyone be persuaded to adopt a database that might fall behind in a security race? After all, robbers choose to attack the least well-defended houses; muggers choose the weakest targets.

Geeq’s Unique Approach to Security

Geeq is a company dedicated to providing blockchain data services that are clearly superior to conventional, centralized databases when the situation is right. The key to Geeq’s technology is its innovative and proprietary security model. Proof of Honesty does not rely on firewalls or permissioning. It is designed to provide security even if, as John says, one assumes that barbarians are already behind the gate.

In addition to added security, reliability, decentralization, and lower costs, Geeq’s Proof of Honesty is an enabling technology that scales without limit to billions of commits. As Ric was quick to remind their listeners, the combination of innovative technology, added value, and need provides the basis for a very solid business model indeed.

Conclusion

Those who are just beginning to learn about blockchain technology will find this video an interesting introduction to the debates behind the scenes. Even blockchain experts may enjoy John’s use of fake news as a metaphor for Proof of Honesty’s 99% Byzantine Fault Tolerance.

Geeq’s technology is certainly suited for these times and beyond.

Geeq thanks our friend, Sonny Mohanty at LATOKEN for organizing yet another, smoothly-run, globe-spanning, live stream session on the Laws of Investments During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Blockchain technology is moving beyond hype into serious territory. With multiple online services looking for the “next big thing”, blockchain is a natural fit for many companies who are ready to disrupt and innovate.

While existing blockchain platforms contain limiting factors which slow enterprise adoption, Geeq’s blockchain architecture supports a limitless, scalable, and secure digital platform. In fact, our entire business model is there to enable enterprises to outsource their own blockchain services’ validation process, using Geeq’s secure validation mechanism, Proof of Honesty (PoH).

In short, we have designed our ecosystem to tick all the boxes necessary for big businesses to make that shift toward blockchain.

Exactly how Geeq’s Proof of Honesty produces a reliable record of information in the blockchain has been explained extensively throughout explainers and technical articles, all geared toward an audience already familiar with blockchain.

To help you visualise the difference, here’s a handy table that breaks out ways “security” must be considered in a discussion about adopting blockchain (the list in the first column). As you can see in the green column, Geeq’s technology is the only one that addresses all of them. Every other approach is far more vulnerable, which means it will be harder for your business and your customers to trust.

Geeq’s unique platform offers a huge improvement on the existing market. In fact, Geeq blockchains have all the properties that blockchains had been working toward.

What does this mean for you and the enterprise you represent?

This article is written specifically for those tasked with investigating how blockchain fits with enterprise services. Especially those who must keep their enterprise information technology and cybersecurity groups’ needs aligned. It assumes interest in providing blockchain services and that decision makers wish to provide the highest level of security and reliability of information at the lowest cost. Geeq is built to become the industry leader in helping enterprises adopt blockchain.

Here, we provide an overview for why enterprises should use Geeq’s tools and data service as their blockchain platform of choice.

Why ‘Geeq Blockchains for Enterprise’ At All?

The Increasing Need to Add Fully Decentralised Technology

Cybersecurity attacks on centralized databases have become more sophisticated than ever before. So it’s no reason why decentralized alternatives are top of mind as potential solutions to this threat.

How can decentralized databases increase security? To put it simply, fully decentralized blockchain networks can counter the threat of cyber attacks because they bypass central points of failure and store data in multiple places.

Building a fully decentralized blockchain platform that can counter the worst cyber security threats has always been top priority for Geeq. Unlike many other blockchain platforms, Geeq’s Proof of Honesty protocol has a fully decentralized system from the beginning. Alternative blockchains have experimented or proposed systems that begin with some degree of centralization (for example, the structure that was proposed for Facebook’s Libra coin), with a plan to move to a more or fully decentralized system in the future.

The Geeq Team is highly skeptical of a strategy for decentralization that relies on gradually phased in decentralization. The reason is simple, enduring, and not easily solved.

Once some central authorities have power, how does the system convince them to give that power up, without forming other powerful authorities?

If there exists any degree of centralization in the processes of approving, writing, and serving the blocks in your blockchain, the full benefits of security via decentralization cannot be realized, by definition. Enterprise adopters should be skeptical of the benefits of non-decentralized blockchain compared to business as usual. As one example, when a blockchain provider gives you a choice of blockchain platforms, many of those platforms’ engines are vulnerable to changes that powerful communities may vote on or implement.  This is akin to centralized software providers, such as Microsoft, who push updates without your knowledge to your data systems. When faced with an unexpected software surprise or a break in communications to the central server of your data, even the best run enterprises will face costs measured in time, energy, expense, and reputational harm.

Geeq’s team understands these concerns and headaches all too well.  That’s why Geeq’s innovative, patent-pending technology and platform design unlocks the full benefits of decentralized blockchain, guaranteeing a stable protocol with extremely low costs for its data service.  It is probably fair to say that Geeq offers security that would take many generations of “updates” for other platforms to develop, assuming they could make a transition to true decentralization.

Additional Data Services without Additional Cybersecurity Concerns

At the same time, enterprise cybersecurity teams are right to be cautious about adopting technology that may introduce unintended or unexpected attack vectors to their existing systems. Anyone who is a Geeq understands this as well. Therefore, Geeq’s blockchain platform is a back end data service that stands alone.

Using Geeq’s blockchain platform does not require an enterprise to integrate Geeq’s technology with its own technology, in order to create and store useful blockchain data for the enterprise.

Cybersecurity concerns of adopting Geeq blockchains are reduced, then, to permissioning or granting access at the application layer. These are not new problems for the cybersecurity experts in any enterprise.

It’s Time for the IT Group to Ride this Wave

Enterprises who have delayed adoption of blockchain may have done the wise thing compared to those who tried to develop their own blockchain platforms in-house.  Geeq has done the research for you, now you are able to benefit while Geeq charges you mere pennies (or less) for your usage.

Benefits of Geeq’s Multi-Chain Platform: It’s Modular

Enterprise decision makers are very aware of how technology choices can have ripple effects across their organizations. That’s hard. Why do that when you don’t have to?

Geeq’s platform is unusual because it restricts application-specific smart contracts and DApps to a DApp-agnostic, multi-chain layer. Any enterprise may choose to use its own DApp chain(s). Thus, you are able to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Geeq as a blockchain data service is designed as an add-on.

This structure reduces infrastructure cost, adoption, and commitment to blockchain to an à la carte, help yourself basis.

Finally, what is your enterprise’s best use of blockchain? In Geeq’s view, aside from trading cryptocurrencies (which has been blockchain’s primary use until now), blockchains that could not provide security guarantees to enterprises actually aren’t much use at all. That’s why every aspect of security received so much attention in our protocol development.

Geeq’s Proof of Honesty ushers in the next phase of blockchain technology for enterprise, enabling the use of any blockchain service that has been imagined.

As well, Geeq’s platform supports smart cities, micropayments, and volumes of other financial transactions without limit. Because Geeq has reconstructed blockchain technology to solve the security-scalability-cost issues, enterprise adopters finally can be confident that the data they access and ingest from Geeq blockchains will have the data properties that early blockchain proponents promised, with the full scope of decentralized blockchain uses before them.

Solving these persistent problems is the reason Geeq exists and occupies a unique niche in the blockchain space. By utilizing our team’s multiple skill sets, Geeq has called upon its collective wisdom to craft an enterprise blockchain platform that is versatile, efficient and built to extend services seamlessly into the future.

Conclusion

Geeq will enable the Enterprise Solutions to enter the second wave of blockchain adoption and take it to the next level.

The major arguments for using Geeq as a blockchain data service are that Geeq’s technology enables blockchains to have the properties that were promised. For enterprises, Geeq’s blockchain platform as a service offers:

• Security for all users in an enterprise without introducing new attack vectors for their cybersecurity departments
• Flexibility, low costs, and an add-on approach for the enterprise so blockchain services may be adopted at the pace desired
• The ability to give their customers assurances that the enterprises themselves are using a blockchain-based service that has no intermediaries, which provides commitments to transparency, accountability, and quality assurance
• The assurance enterprises are adopting a full-fledged decentralized blockchain platform for business solutions
• Services from a company that intends its technology to stay well ahead of the curve

Let’s build our businesses together! Separately – but together. Respectfully. That’s the way of going Geeq.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

Geeq Corporation is pleased to announce its participation in HUAWEI CLOUD x Morpheus Labs signature Launchpad Service, which is dedicated to offering corporate customers key guidance in evaluating enterprise blockchain using cloud services, particularly in Singapore’s growing financial sector. Morpheus Labs is an innovator in Blockchain Platform as a Service (BpaaS), based in Singapore.

HUAWEI CLOUD and Morpheus Labs will be hosting its “HUAWEI CLOUD Day: Digitize Finance with Blockchain”. The symposium will begin with a welcome speech by Mr Rex Lei, managing director of HUAWEI CLOUD Singapore, to be followed by keynote from Anson Shen, Chief Strategy officer of HUAWEI CLOUD APAC. It will also feature Mr. Bruce Lu , Chief Technology officer of Morpheus Labs to share on “Rapid Development Sandbox (FSIs)”.

Speakers and panelists include some of the best known thought leaders in the FinTech space including Mr. Chia Hock Lai, Co-Chairman, Blockchain Association Singapore & Founding President, Singapore Fintech Association, the Chief Risk officer of AMTD Digital, Associate Director of Temasek and solution director from HUAWEI CLOUD.

HUAWEI CLOUD is a leading cloud service provider, which brings Huawei’s 30-plus years of expertise together in ICT infrastructure products and solutions. We are committed to providing reliable, secure, and cost-effective cloud services to empower applications, harness the power of data, and help organizations of all sizes grow in today’s intelligent world. HUAWEI CLOUD is also committed to bringing affordable, effective, and reliable cloud and AI services through technological innovation.

Morpheus Labs and Geeq have been long-time allies in their vision to enable mass adoption of real blockchain solutions for enterprise customers. We are enthusiastic about Geeq’s new activities for the HUAWEI CLOUD x Morpheus Labs Launchpad.

Geeq Corporation CEO Ric Asselstine:

“We are absolutely delighted to team up with one of the world’s leading tech companies with thanks to Morpheus Labs. By showcasing the real-world advantages, ease of use and usefulness of our Proof-of-Honesty consensus mechanism in Huawei’s vast data storage network, we will achieve our shared goal of promoting and educating the larger global audience about blockchain technology and further paving the way for mass adoption.”

Pei-Han, CEO of Morpheus Labs:

“Morpheus Labs is proud to bridge the gap between blockchain and enterprises. This strategic partnership with Geeq, powered by HUAWEI CLOUD exemplifies this collaboration where all parties can harness each other’s strengths. We are proud to welcome Geeq onboard as part of the launchpad ecosystem powered by HUAWEI CLOUD that helps blockchain projects strategies and formulate solutions that will facilitate useful real world blockchain adoption.”

We are looking forward to presenting our solutions at the Huawei Cloud Day on the 28^th of October to many of HUAWEI CLOUD’s enterprise clients and Singapore’s blockchain leaders in the public and private sectors. We invite our Geeq community to sign up to participate in the webinar as well.

These are exciting times. Please spread the word and thank you for being a Geeq.

— The Geeq Team

To learn more about Morpheus Labs:

Website – https://www.morpheuslabs.io/

Newsroom – https://www.morpheuslabs.io/news-blog/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/morpheuslabs_io

Telegram – https://t.me/morpheuslabs

Singapore, home to Morpheus Labs, has and will continue to be a world leader in digital transformation. In an interview with Bloomberg, the Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore Ravi Menon, recognized the potential for new decentralized technologies to lower costs, increase efficiency, and increase market participation. “If 2030 is going to be a tokenized world, we want to make sure we are well positioned”, he said.

While Singapore’s financial sector is growing, there is still quite a bit of uncertainty about how financial intermediaries can and should build bridges to a digital economy. Will there be relatively safe ways for these more conservative institutions to engage with such a rapidly changing and highly technological counter-movement? Will there be room for both? If so, how should financial intermediaries factor blockchain technology into their plans?

HUAWEI CLOUD DAY’s attendees were gathered to find answers to these questions. Geeq’s Founder and Chief Economist, John Conley, was among the experts invited from the Huawei Cloud x Morpheus Labs Signature Launchpad Service. Speaking to an audience of corporate, financial, and government leaders, John outlined a path forward – one that began by telling them that Geeq’s on-chain micropayments technology is well into development.

Purely digital micropayments rails will arrive sooner than many think. Positioning companies advantageously for the future should include thinking about how their services will support clients’ participation in a new economy with micro-value chains.

To read about one use case where Geeq’s micropayments will enable new micro-value chains, please read here or visit gomicro.geeq.io to discover others. Gomicro.geeq.io is enabled for desktops and laptops in your Chrome browser.

John gave concrete advice about the future of fintech in his 15 minute talk below. The slides to his talk are here.

We hope John’s talk spurred you to understand the tremendous gains of trade to be had once the micro-value economy is unlocked. More importantly, we hope you think of steps you can take right now to prepare for it. Please spread the word, share the links, and Be A Geeq!

Waterloo, ON, Canada, October 29, 2021

Geeq Corporation has announced the filing of an international patent application PCT to protect its intellectual property in relation to secure hash-locked accounts without smart contracts.

The new PCT international patent application relates chiefly to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be recorded to the chain using secure hash locked accounts as defined in Geeq’s blockchain protocol. A secure hash locked account, and any NFT associated with it, is secured for unwanted transfer by a pair of hash locks – two secrets known only to the entity who first originates the account, such as an entity who mints the NFT.

According to the protocol, a secure hash locked NFT account may be transferred only by following a set of transactions which atomically swaps one secure hash locked account for another, where each swapped account is freshly locked with respective pairs of secrets known only to the respective receiving parties in the swap.

Under the protocol, a secure hash locked NFT account may be swapped for another secure hash locked NFT account or a secure hash locked account that is not associated with an NFT, e.g. only with coin. A secure hash locked account may be swapped for another secure hash locked account under the protocol as well, broadening the uses for this technology.

As the secure hash locked accounts and transfer mechanisms are governed by Geeq’s protocol, no smart contracts are necessary.

Fee Support:

The protocol also provides for chain-related transaction fees regarding minting and transacting in NFTs, including a mechanism to optionally make subsequent fixed fee payments to a party who first minted the NFT, whenever that NFT is later transferred.

Off-Chain Application Support:

For each secure hash locked NFT account, the protocol provides that a static NFT record is associated with a secure hash locked coin account record. Each of the NFT record and secure hash locked coin account record have fields for off-chain application related data; for example, to link to one or more off-chain databases storing information regarding the asset defining the NFT. While the NFT record is static once it is first written, the coin account record is writable (e.g. at the time of a transfer) to permit updates to application-related data.

Other Features:

Other features were developed and included in the PCT application that extend flexibility for the bearer token and micropayments technology that was previously submitted and announced to our community here.

About the Geeq Project

Geeq is a multi-blockchain platform secured by a new consensus mechanism called Proof of Honesty (PoH). It is safe enough for highly valuable data, cheap enough for IoT, and flexible enough for any use.

For all inquiries please contact press@geeq.io.

Everyone knows – or has some idea – that understanding insurance is a task and a half. If you are one of our readers who feel they have gotten the short end of the stick, either because you have spent too much time trying to understand insurance for yourself, or a family member, or a business, we certainly can relate to you as we have also.

Even worse is when you’ve needed coverage from an insurance policy and it hasn’t worked for you, or it has run out, or you weren’t able to get it in the first place. That situation has happened all too often in many peoples’ lives: as an individual, a small business owner, a traveler – you name it. Insurance policies always seem expensive and you’re never 100% sure you have the right coverage you need.

Insurance, Risk, and Uncertainty – Three Words that always appear Together

One of the issues that makes insurance policies extremely confusing and inefficient, is that it involves risk. Risk involves uncertainties, and markets do not like uncertainty. Insurance companies have to do risk pooling, which means guessing that people or businesses with lower risk are put in the same group with people with higher risk. At the end, almost everyone is unhappy, with the possible exception of insurance companies.

And then there are Problems with Information

Insurance markets also grapple with information problems (asymmetric information, to be precise). Asymmetric information is not simply private information.  All sides can and do have private information.  However, you can make private information public, in a way that everyone can understand. Asymmetric information is when one side has private information that is impossible to convey credibly through a marketplace, even if one wanted to.

The problem of asymmetric information was first written about in a very famous paper by Akerlof, The Market for Lemons (1970). Akerlof’s insight was rejected at first and then recognized as so important, he received a Nobel Prize in 2001.  Akerlof’s story is one of the best come-from-behind stories in all of academic economics.

Geeq’s Blockchain makes a Fundamental Contribution

As a technology company with a uniquely decentralized and secure data service, services on Geeq make it possible to credibly rectify some asymmetric information problems – which provides previously unthinkable ways to refine grossly inefficient insurance markets.

The Geeq Advantage

As many of our readers and supporters know, Geeq is a different blockchain technology because it enables these features:

a) Individual companies, developers, or specific kinds of IoT devices can log transactions on a ledger called a blockchain so that their business records and information can be completely separated from each other (thanks to Geeq’s unique multi-chain blockchain platform);

b) The validation of each blockchain is outsourced to Geeq’s anonymous, decentralized network, which dramatically reduces the adoption and ongoing costs of blockchain-as-a-service – in particular, no business blockchain has to share overhead with another; and

c) Each blockchain’s records are protected by Geeq’s proprietary Proof of Honesty which is more secure from hacks and manipulation than any other blockchain protocol we know of (private or public), thus providing a continuously available auditable record, that is efficient enough to record large streams of data from IoT devices.

Value Proposition: Insurance Contracts based on Verifiable Information

What does that add up to, in an insurance context? Verifiability of information, by both parties involved in an insurance event, to an extent that simply was not possible before. In other words, Geeq blockchain as a service can be used to provide inexpensive, auditable records that, in certain use cases, could be considered independent of bias and therefore acceptable to all concerned.

As Geeq Chief Economist John Conley describes here, the easiest cases to imagine are those that depend on IoT data being backed up on the Geeq blockchain. If a company agrees to connect its IoT devices and has the data recorded on Geeq’s public blockchain ahead of time, both the company and the insurer might write contracts based on knowing that information will always be available to both of them. The IoT device’s blockchain record will show that an event did or did not happen. As long as the risk was correctly built into the contract, there will be no need for costly disputes, litigation, or audits – which will improve efficiency and remove the time taken up by each side blaming each other and delaying payments.

Conclusion

At Geeq, exciting things are being made possible by Geeq’s innovative blockchain technology. One of them is a way to provide verifiable records, that can help to eliminate information asymmetry, reduce uncertainty, lower costs, and improve information in insurance markets in ways that have never been possible before.

Billions of dollars are wasted each year in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Geeq’s technology provides a low-cost way to track and document supply chain data in ways that preserve privacy, yet can be shared readily should their accuracy need to be proven to other parties.

When you drop into your local pharmacy for your medication — whether it is a box of vitamins or a drug prescribed by a physician — you probably do not question the product’s quality or worry whether it will be in stock. But the fact that your medicine is waiting for you on the shelf is an organisational miracle and each box has a long journey behind it.

In most cases, this “invisible story” culminates in a happy ending: a patient who receives the right treatment. However, the journey from the manufacturing facility is long and perilous. According to the Corporate Finance Institute, a supply chain is the system used to produce and deliver a product, from sourcing the raw materials right up to to the final delivery to the end customer.

The supply chain of medicine is especially complex, however. Drugs are not only very delicate products that require special care, but delivery involves multiple stages, stakeholders, and border-crossings in a series of carefully orchestrated and regulated steps with precise timing. In such a complex endeavor, many things can go wrong and when they do, it is crucial to have a transparent record of events in order to learn from mistakes and continuously improve supply chain processes.

The journey begins

To illustrate some of the most daunting challenges, let’s return to the journey of our hypothetical medicine from factory to pharmacy. Logistics, which concerns the physical delivery of medicines, is only a part of the entire pharmaceutical supply chain. Nevertheless, a Novartis source asserts that it can amount to nearly 40% of total operating expenses. According to the same source, a medicine usually passes through at least “ten hands” before a doctor or patient receives it.

The first two of these touchpoints are the manufacturer and warehouse operator. After the manufacturer produces our medication, it is shipped to a storage facility and stacked in a large transport box. Theft is a heightened risk at any time when goods are changing hands. BSI, the national standards body in the UK, claims that pharmaceutical cargo theft causes an annual loss of 1$ billion every year.

From the warehouse, forwarders bring our medical supply to the airport for overseas delivery. During the journey, special cargo trucks ensure that environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity are maintained within defined parameters for the medicines in question. Even though some companies already use sensors for real-time monitoring, temperature data is often only controlled retrospectively. As a result, drugs frequently suffer damage from mishandling.

According to Biopharmaceutical Reporter, a news outlet specialised in the biopharmaceutical industry, up to 10% of vaccines are lost in transit due to breakage or problems with cold chain infrastructure.

Once they have entered the system, faulty or damaged items are difficult to track down. Such substandard products are not only potentially dangerous to the health of patients, but also cause tremendous waste: the pharmaceutical industry discards at least $15 billion of product each year due to temperature deviations and this sum reaches $35 billion if we take into account additional costs like product replacement.

The risk appears to be disproportionately distributed: for instance, most pharmaceutical manufacturers carry the risk of loss from the point at which they receive raw materials until the finished vaccine is delivered to the distributor. Settling such claims is typically a bureaucratic process, while payouts are far from immediate. Generally, international payments throughout the supply chain are also ridden with hidden costs.

Pain in the chain

After our package arrives at the airport, it is time for customs control. Unfortunately, as a Harvard Business Review analysis highlighted, documentation is often manual and paper-based. As a result, paperwork piles up at each handoff and border crossing. Fragmentation of data across documents and siloed IT systems causes not only delays, but can lead to further errors. Regulations for transportation also differ from country to country, further aggravating the administrative burden, not to mention the looming risk of a fine.

When our medicine finally arrives at the wholesaler or pharmacy, one hurdle remains before it can be placed on store shelves. How can a distributor reliably check if the box of medicines they received is authentic? The question of provenance might seem trivial, but it is a significant challenge. According to Tegan Keele, US blockchain program lead at KPMG, drugs can be traced if they are packed in a box with a barcode or QR code printed on it.

However, visibility decreases as soon as someone opens and unloads that box, because individual units are not yet traceable. This is a major problem: according to a Deloitte report, the pharmaceutical industry loses a massive $200 billion a year due to counterfeiting. However, the gravest cost of counterfeit drugs is their toll in human lives: according to the same report, fake drugs are accountable for about one million deaths per year, a tragedy that particularly affects developing countries.

Blockchain: always on the verge?

As you can see above, the pharmaceutical supply chain is ridden with fragmentation of processes and information asymmetries that make compliance with regulations and the monitoring of sensitive cargo a complex and expensive task. In short, it is an industry with multiple stakeholders with potentially diverging interests, where trust is paramount.

If you are familiar with blockchain technology, this probably sounds like an ideal use case. After all, one of the apparent core purposes of blockchain is to create a trustworthy, secure and inalterable ledger of records accessible to multiple stakeholders. Proponents contend that if this were combined with smart contracts and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to measure things like temperature, geolocation humidity and shocks, the entire supply chain could be made more transparent. In turn, this would lead to greater accountability and ultimately, less waste. You might even envisage a scenario where paper-based agreements like insurance policies and vendor contracts, and even payments are fully automated.

While this vision sounds alluring, however, unfortunately the current reality is far more modest. In the real world, adoption of blockchain for supply chain management has been rather slow and mainly limited to pilot projects. So why does blockchain seem to be always on the verge but never breaking through to adoption?

One of the core issues is scalability. Managing a global supply chain potentially involves thousands of interactions between individuals and machines. Existing blockchains that rely on proof-of-work (PoW) mining can generally only process about 7 transactions per second on average. Indeed, scalability and excessive energy consumption are frequently cited by researchers as significant barriers to blockchain adoption in supply chain networks, both of which stem directly from PoW mining.

An even greater concern, however, is the technical complexity of blockchain and the degree to which it is interoperable with existing systems. Enterprises tend to want to combine blockchain with their existing back-end systems rather than starting from scratch, but this can often be an onerous undertaking involving high research and development costs. These issues are likely to be particularly prevalent in the pharmaceutical sector, due to the comparative complexity of its supply networks.

Perhaps the most interesting finding across recent studies is that blockchain may be regarded as a potential hindrance rather than a useful tool for solving pharmaceutical supply chain problems. This may be partially attributed to the fact that stakeholders are not comfortable sharing potentially sensitive information with other parties. There is certainly a debate to be had about which information should be kept on and off chain as this is important not only for privacy reasons, but also to ensure that the network does not suffer from excessive bloat.

Geeq: reengineering blockchain

When we were designing Geeq, we knew that if blockchain is to be a viable option for supply chain businesses, it needs to be flexible, upgradable, environmentally sustainable and cost effective.

For this reason, we conceived a new type of consensus mechanism called Proof of Honesty, that does not require costly mining. Unlike other public blockchains, there are no “block proposers” that win the right to validate the next block of transactions. Unlike other enterprise blockchains, Geeq does not delegate the validation of transactions to special, trusted nodes. Instead, all nodes are treated equally, follow the same rules and compete in terms of the accuracy of their ledgers.

By making ledger accuracy, rather than mining power, the fulcrum of competition, we can create blockchains that support far higher transaction throughput, even with modest numbers of nodes. This degree of scalability will be an essential prerequisite for widespread deployment of blockchain in the supply chain sector.

In addition, Geeq has been built from the ground up to be highly flexible, employing a multi-chain architecture that enables developers to design bespoke blockchains for specific business needs. Another facet of this flexibility is that IoT support has been built-in to its core architecture. Data from IoT sensors can be fed directly into a Geeq blockchain network for validation without the need for smart contracts, reducing the complexity of the system and the number of potential attack surfaces for intruders. Indeed, security is where Geeq truly excels, exhibiting both 99% Byzantine fault tolerance and strategically provable security. These safeguards are crucial to create decentralized networks that will be fit for purpose in the coming age of quantum computing.

Conclusion

The pharmaceutical industry could clearly benefit from blockchain-based networks that would enable information and resources to flow through the supply chain with less friction and waste. While blockchain holds the potential to ameliorate these issues, the theory remains far removed from practical reality. At Geeq, we are developing a technology to close this gap. We have designed a new type of blockchain network that can truly enable stakeholders to reduce information asymmetries and coordination problems, while increasing transparency.

A version of this article was published in Asia Crypto Today on March 25, 2021.

Traditionally, blockchain protocols make security assumptions that are, at best, unverifiable, such as assuming less than 1/3 of the network will be malicious. These security assumptions introduce tremendous uncertainty about the future. At worst, the many assumptions required for the security of a blockchain platform are unrealistic. In order to mitigate those risks and improve function, most subsequent work has inadvertently introduced new attack surfaces by adding complexity, rather than addressing the root problems inherent in the way they define consensus.

Geeq’s mission is simple: we put the well-being of end users first. Achieving such an idealistic goal required preparing for the worst case. Here is the breakthrough: Geeq’s technology works even when we have no idea who is in a network and what they may or may not choose to do. We know we can’t control others’ choices in a decentralized world – nor would we want to. The bottom line is this: the only thing that matters about blockchain is whether it is able to provide us a better way to organize economic activity compared to using a centralized database.

By re-examining the data that honest users will need to make decisions, rather than what network participants may want them to believe, we found a way to solve the information game by re-engineering the idea of consensus.

Simply put, Geeq’s protocol requires each node to work independently. Honest nodes are able to deliver Proof of Honesty only if they’ve arrived at the singularly honest conclusion. As a result, all honest nodes arrive at the same, provably honest blockchain on their own, and the information coordination problem is solved when users interact only with honest nodes.

Consensus, at Geeq, is the product of honesty.

Blockchains based on Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, or Proof of Authority work on the assumption that power – in terms of hash rate, financial muscle, or institutional standing – produces truth. At Geeq, we believe that only those who are truthful should be powerful.

Bitcoin and Ethereum (among others) famously use mining in their Proof of Work (PoW) protocols, why doesn’t Geeq?

The short answer is: mining creates problematic incentives from the point of view of the user of a blockchain-based application.

Who Benefits from Mining? Miners.

Mining can be profitable for miners, who are in charge of the construction and maintenance of Proof of Work-based blockchains. That is why they do it.

An interesting feature of the mining market is that profits can be uncertain. The rewards change and sources of income are also fairly dynamic. In fact, the “block rewards” portion of their earnings are explicitly based on a mechanism that is a bit like playing a lottery. In a competitive market for mining, miners are incentivized to adopt strategies that give them an advantage.

We have already seen miners’ strategies adapt over time to maximize their profits. One response to the bitcoin blockchain, in particular, has been to set up mining “farms” comprised of many high powered computers. As the owner of many computers, a mining farm increases the odds it will make profits. This should not be surprising: it is like someone who buys many tickets to a lottery in order to increase their chances of winning.

For the user of PoW-based blockchains, these two features of the mining market introduce risks to the users that are out of their own control: a) miners have incentives that diverge from the users’ and b) mining sets up an uneven playing field. A more concentrated market for mining also concentrates power over the construction and maintenance of the Proof of Work-based blockchain. This means a PoW-based blockchain database is vulnerable to attack.

The most well-known vulnerability is the 51% attack, which has happened several times. There are other threats that are more complicated and also relatively unknown, so we will not include them here. Suffice to say that every potential threat introduces risk of disruptions in service and controversy, especially when attacks within protocol yield unexpected results. Some of the outcomes may result in transactions that are rolled back or censored, which is exactly what blockchain-based DApps are supposed to disallow.

Geeq is focused on providing value to the end user of any Geeq-enabled service.

As you use the Geeq platform, you have the security of knowing Geeq’s blockchain-based payment system is at the leading edge of blockchain technology. All Distributed Applications (DApps) built on the Geeq platform are based on underlying blockchain databases that have the integrity and dependability blockchains are supposed to have. As a result, DApp providers and consumers are able to focus on the quality of services DApps provide, with an emphasis on making them useful and easy to use.

Conclusion

Geeq’s Proof of Honesty^TM (PoH) is a next generation, proprietary blockchain technology that enables a new hybrid platform. The platform itself is truly decentralized.

Geeq was built with the end goals of a blockchain-based, decentralized economy in mind. In order to arrive at that destination, we had to re-think all the layers of the blockchain “stack”, from the market for nodes and validators up through the final markets for new DApp-based goods and services.

Simply put, Geeq doesn’t have miners because their incentives are not aligned with our vision of a decentralized economy. In Geeq’s ecosystem, all incentives are aligned with those of the honest user, including the nodes and validators who construct and maintain the blockchains. At Geeq, market power doesn’t matter. Honesty does.

Geeq’s technology addresses an old problem: lack of trust due to asymmetric information. How can parties feel comfortable negotiating or transacting if one feels the other has an advantage in manipulating information?

Thus, Geeq is a new information and communications technology.

The primary economic value of services powered by Geeq is that they provide access to dependable, neutral, and correctly validated data sets.

In so doing, these data can be acceptable to all parties who wish to coordinate on some, but not all, dimensions with each other and do not wish to trust a third party.

How do we identify potential pain points?

There are five key criteria that make it likely that Geeq has a better approach to addressing a problem than conventional data systems or centralized cloud-based software as-a-service (SaaS) solutions:

1. The problem requires secure transfer of value, possibly in very small increments; for example, micropayments for content or web services and machine to machine markets, and person to person payments such as small charitable contributions or sharing the cost of a meal among a group of friends.
   
2. The problem involves agents who do not know or do not trust each other; for example, peer to peer markets for goods and services, escrows, and providing proof that all parties are what they say and behaved honestly.
   
3. The problem involves many different actors from different organizations whose interests do not align; for example, logistics or chain of custody applications that transfer responsibilities from party to party.
   
4. The problem requires objective provability of facts or data; for example, audit trails and telemetry collected from connected industrial, medical, and infrastructure devices.
   
5. The problem involves agents who might wish to censor, alter, or hide data; for example, securities, land title, and financial transactions where theft and fraud are real possibilities.

For blockchain to offer a viable solution to these problems it must be secure, inexpensive and scalable. For Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) to become a realistic alternative to private databases, it needs to be flexible, upgradable, environmentally sustainable, and protect users from unreasonable volatility in token value.

A blockchain is an electronic data structure made up of blocks (containing groups of transactions or data) which are appended sequentially.

The primary economic value of a blockchain is to provide a dependable data set that is acceptable to all parties who wish to coordinate on some, but not all, dimensions with each other and do not wish to trust a third party.

Interested in learning more? Check out Geeq’s Glossary entry for Blockchain.