Altcoins Survival Series part 3 / Factom - Distributed Ledger Technology

Introduction

In this third part of "Altcoins Survival," we will look at an interesting altcoin. Let us see if this altcoin can survive the wild landscape of the Blockchain. In this part, we gonna look at an altcoin that started with a simple but ambitious idea:

'create software that makes it impossible to change the past, and point that software at places where it can solve valuable business problems'.

This idea grew out to one of a few existing businesses using blockchain solutions for solving real-world problems in the government, finance and health sector. Let us see what is the right of existence for Factom.

When it's your first time reading one of this series, here you can read, about my vision of blockchain technology and my experiences and expectations of cryptocurrencies.

By helping readers to take their own decisions based on only good information I want to remember what we learned about making conclusions based on our own investigations. While investing, a good decision never stop. By performing one you create the next to be made. Be prepared at all scenario's at all time and know what your next step will be, no matter what. When you gathered enough information you are able to make these decisions with full persuasion. In the next part, I tell you what decisions you have to make before you start an investment. First, we gonna learn more about Factom.

I will not give you any advice but would love to share my knowledge with you. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Enjoy!

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Factom

Distributed ledger technology on a cryptographic blockchain.

What is Factom?

Within the cryptocurrency community, the name Factom is a name you must know. But what is Factom exactly? We are about to find out.

Factom is the first usable blockchain technology able to solve real-world problems by providing an immutable data-system. By creating a data-layer built on top of the Bitcoin Blockchain, Factoms distributed ledger technology secures millions of data-records in real-time in the blockchain. Millions of records can be stored in a single hash using cryptographic isolation. In fact, where the Bitcoin Blockchain records transactions, Factom is designed to store any type of data.

Because storing data with Factom is secured there are many possibilities and use cases where highly confidential information can be stored and protected with Factom. One of the biggest advantages for governments and organizations is the fact that information stored by Factom cannot be deleted, modified or backdated. Factoms technology ensures that with this decentralized record keeping of data, the integrity remains intact. With complete transparency and only the user can access the data so the privacy is being guaranteed.

Another advantage is the decentralized protocol makes the information less vulnerable. As nobody controls it, the software people all over the world run make this protocol work. The databases are stored into a blockchain and are distributed across the internet, makes it almost impossible to shutdown. That makes Factom a much better system to store sensitive, private, and trustworthy information. And the design of this system allows storing any type of data. This makes Factom an ideal solution for a wide range of applications, including governments, supply-chain management, voting systems, insurance companies, property titles, lawyers, notary's and other financial institutions that also have to act by common laws on storing confidential information like driver's license, acts- of marriage, mortgages etc.

As consumers we also can benifit from these developments. If our important documents are stored by Factom we should:

• pay less or no fees for a new id-card or drivers license.

• all documents are being cheaper because after being signed and scanned a paper copy is not needed anymore

• pay less costs for a mortgage because all expensive advisors and storage options are not neccessary.

• if documents needed somewhere they can be viewed directly by authorized persons.

• nobody can use your identity without being noticed by the blockchain.

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Also, the health-industry can take huge benefits with patiënt-files made accessible anytime and worldwide. In cases of emergency, it does not matter where the patiënt is because the patiënt-files are accessible by all hospitals. As solution Factom lets old current systems integrate with their technology so in fact the doctor's are verified end users that have access to these files and also can add new information to files of patiënts. They are only no longer able to make changes or remove things. All history will stay visible.

By using factom as data-layer all doctors worldwide can access our medical files if needed and all medical history can be seen but nobody can change it. Only adding information if needed. This is as I think one of the biggest improvements this altcoin can offer to improve the way of living of all people. This creates an value that in my opinion is the biggest till we seen so far. This is what blockchain is capable off and as you see the more positive impact a product have the higher the change of survival is.

Merkle Proof

The data being recorded on different layers and possible on different blockchains. This is called A Merkle Proof and is a guaranteed extra security layer to give Factoms technology the best security available. I will explain this in detail using the following example:

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Merkle Tree is a data structure used by several Blockchains. Every block stores all the transaction data in the form of a Merkle tree. In this data structure, hashes of child nodes are combined together into the parent nodes header. This technique of combining the child nodes headers and adding these to the header of the parent node continues iteratively till we reach the final node, right at the top, the root node. Thus, the root node will contain information about all of the nodes present in the tree.

It is theoretically possible to make a Blockchain without Merkle trees. You could simply create giant block headers that directly contain every transaction. But doing so would pose huge scalability challenges.

Let us see how this tree is generated.

Suppose there are 4 transactions H1, H2, H3 and H4 in one block.

First, all the transactions of the block are individually hashed. For example, (H1) is hashed to hash (H(H(1). Then the combination of hash (H(H(1) and hash (H(2) is hashed and stored into a parent node (A). The same procedure is repeated for other nodes. And lastly, a combination of hash (H(A) and hash (H(B) is hashed and stored in its parent node (C) and this is the final node of this Merkle tree. It is called the root node or simply the Merkle root. This Merkle root along with previous block header hash, a time-stamp, and a nonce is used to generate the block header.

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To summarise, a hash of all the transactions in a block is stored in the Merkle tree. So when a node wants to verify if any transaction is changed, the node will only have to build the Merkle tree using all the transactions of the block. This makes it very simple to validate or invalidate a transaction. Thus, Merkle tree helps maintain security in Blockchain.

Products

At Factom they build core technology that enables people to interact smoothly with data. Existing systems can be plugged-in to quickly implement Factom technology. Factom has developed the following systems.

Dloc(tm) System By Linxens

A breakthrough document authentication solution that lets you secure physical documents on the blockchain. One of the big cliënts Factom already serves is The Department of Homeland Security (DHS). here you can see the presentation of DHS and here is the powerpoint presentation used in this presentation. Being said is that three very large financial institutions are already in the process of siging contracts with Factom, but no word has been said. But look at the fourth slide of the powerpoint presentation. We won't see names but some clues that give the rumors more strength.

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Also, big (potential) customers for this product are financial institutions and governments worldwide. Even fingerprints can be stored and Factom has a solution for the biggest scalable projects "Factom Hera".

Harmony

Convert your document management solution into a blockchain based document platform that eliminates lost documents, reduces audit time and prevents costly disputes. Harmony is at the moment the most ambitious project of Factom. It allows keeping track of the whole lifecycle of a mortgage. From its origination till its complete repayment. This will be a good alternative for a current system made of physical signed paper and drag and dropped copies of these documents on centralized data centers.

Solutions

With the Factom data layer, the solutions can sustainably scale and be customized to the needs of all sized businesses at a low costs.

Team

Having a good product is one thing. Sell a good idea is another. The Team of Factom is ful of experts in the right field. One of the biggest projects is the mortgage industry. Laurie Pyle and Jason Nadeau are both people with proven succesfull experience on the IT side of mortgages, by selling products to handle the flow of data to the big financials. They must have built good connections that be useful to promote Harmony as the best solution.

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Factoids

The underlying token of Factom

What Are Factoids?

Factoids allow you and me to hash information into the Factom network. To be able to perform an action with Factom you have to purchase entry credits with your Factoids. This purchase is built-in as anti-spam technique. The purchase of entry credits is completed in a simple transaction. The protocol does the conversion so you purchase credits from the protocol. You assign those credits to a public key and are then not transferable. I will show you a step-by-step guide to show you how to convert your tokens into credits.

How To Convert Factoids Into Credits?

• STEP 1 Download and open your Enterprise Wallet here.

• STEP 2 Make a paper wallet with this guide.

• STEP 3 Buy Factoids at the best tradable exchange.

• STEP 4 Convert FCT into Entry Credits here.

Value Of Factom

Today's global average of FCT/USD $ 27.03

Today's average volume $ 1.545.320

Market Cap $ 236.346.001 / 27.03 = Circulated Supply

Circulating Supply based on these numbers = 8.743.840 Factoids

Chart 90 days history of marketvalue

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Exchanges

• BIT-Z
• BCEX
• POLONIEX
• BITTREX
• CRYPTOPIA
• QRYPTOS
• UPBIT

Conclusion

By using the Factom network organizations be able to ban corruption and fraud within their data-systems. It is meant to secure trusted systems at a 'one source of truth' base. Think about important documents, licenses, and certificates. Once recorded in Factom it is not possible to change a record without being discovered by the whole network. Users of the applications get a historical overview of their data with al changes being recorded. Everything from the first input is recorded and can't being manipulated.

I learned you how a Merkle proof is being constructed and how this method can help increasing scalability and security of data. With maximum security, Factom now has some great products that already are adopted by HSD and some of the biggest financials are interested and negotiating with Factom. We will hear more of this soon. We went through the most important facts about this altcoin and gathered more knowledge.

I hope you enjoyed this part of 'Altcoins Survival'

Next time part 4 of this series. Thank you for reading and until the next part!

Links

• Factom Website

• Enterprise Wallet Software

• coinmarketcap Factom

• Convert Factom To Entry Credits

Series

• Sether a social marketing token / Altcoins Survival Part 1
• Ripple XRP /Altcoins Survival Part 2

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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