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Red and Rover by Brian Basset

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Basset

basset

The Cosmos (ATOM) SWOT Analysis—Q4, 2023 a SWOT analysis is an evaluation of the fundamental, operational, technical, social, economic, and even to some degree administrative elements of a project. This is not a model to be used for trading purposes. (NFA, DYOR) Note: Composed of four elements, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, a SWOT analysis framework provides excellent insight for establishing a high-level understanding of the state of a project's well-being through the lens of a birds-eye view. It can help formulate decisions around which areas require more attention, set performance goals, and organize a foundational understanding of where a project is headed. Rarely (if ever) used in crypto, it is time to apply this timeless method of evaluation to the digital asset space. Today, the interoperability OG and father of the IBC, will get a SWOT. Cosmos (ATOM), 💪 Strengths (Internal) (Helpful) 1. AEZ The Atomic Economic Zone is at the heart of Cosmos's upcoming techno-economic overhaul. The purpose of the Economic Zone is to tighten the alignment of the ecosystem with the ATOM token. A multitude of networks, including Kujira, Agoric, Osmosis, Stride, Neutron, et al., have already integrated and pledged their diligence. At its most basic, the AEZ's main focus is to have ATOM play a foundational role in the inter-chain activities and unifiy chains with universally applicable governance frameworks. 2. World Class Governance Communityx Either legendary community-building skills, deviously clever teams, or a combination of both, Cosmos has achieved incredible levels of engagement both through its social and governance platforms. The core community is always active and involved in the proceedings, helping steer the project and uphold its interesting commitment to decentralization. 3. Adoption by Chains Comos has seen an influx of projects into its ecosystem. Hosting over 46 networks so far, of which many are considered to be noteworthy (Osmosis, KUJI, Cronos, ThorChain, Injective, Secret, KAVA, Akash, etc.) and a pipeline of new leading projects, namely Celestia and dYdX, the positioning of Cosmos within the context of the greater industry could be tipping into the "Too-Big-Too-Fail" territory. 4. Contribution to Web3 Technology From its consensus mechanism (CometBFT) to the inter-chain communications protocol (IBC) to its appchain thesis and beyond, so many solutions have tapped into the tech pioneered by Cosmos and made available through their SDK. Value in the form of new technological primitives can be found laden throughout their excellent documentation. If a project could truly be valued on its merits, Cosmos would dwarf 99% of other base layers. 5. Shift of Security Model Cosmos has been undergoing tectonic transformations in its architecture. Previously acting as a relay point, the Cosmos Hub will now act as a point of unified security provision. Effectively, the shift signifies an emphasis on shared security (whereby multiple different networks leverage the same validator set). While there has been some valid rebuttal against using economic primitives (price) for security due to the implied relationship between price and security, the conversation has primarily been based in theory and cannot be proven until something happens. The new model just might be enough to help Cosmos stand out from the increasing pool of infrastructure providers in Web3. 6. Stake Rate over 67% Stake rate is a direct expression of an ecosystem's community's willingness to support a project. With over 2/3's of all ATOM staked, Cosmos happens to have one of the highest rates among other networks of the same caliber. Taking into consideration that ATOM was among the worst performers (purely from a price perspective) this last year, the fact that long-term stakeholders did not abandon their positions (in fact, actually grew them from 62% same time last year) shows deep commitment. The higher the stake rate, the more constrained the circulating supply and the sharper the reflexivity between demand and price. If this trend continues, it would be unlikely that ATOM does not reflect it. 😞 Weaknesses (Internal) (Harmful) While a SWOT analysis does not usually account for price action, it is impossible to ignore the fact that ATOM is one of the worst performers among tier-1 crypto projects. Regardless of the parabolic growth taking place across independent Cosmos chains and the market at large, it seems that market participants are simply not interested in ATOM. The expression of interest is similar to liquidity, a self-feeding mechanism where interest begets more interest. 1. Economic Underperformance 2. Tokenomics A contentious point that has long been discussed around Cosmos is the design of its core system; while the technology has been amazing and certainly seen adoption, the ATOM token's economics have been lackluster in their ability to capture value. With its relatively high double-digit perpetual inflation, absence as a requirement for Cosmos chain's fees, and inability to address these issues earlier, has resulted in a prolonged period of sub-optimal performance attributable to the inefficient initial implementation forces the project to ensure invisible costs in the form of early community members. The problem can be (and is currently being) fixed but it does not guarantee that the new model will not be flawed in its own right. 3. IBC's Lack of Asset Interoperability A lesser talked about nuance with the technical design of the Inter-blockchain-Communication protocol is the accounting system that takes place under the hood during the movement of assets between chains. Every transfer instantiates its own trail. ETH on Osmis is (osm)ETH) moving it from Osmosis to Kujira turns it into (osm-kuji)ETH). If moved to Cronos, the asset becomes (osm-kuji-cro)ETH). Therefore, it loses its composability because other ETH will have different trails depending on how it has been transferred. Imagine party A has 10 ETH in a liquidity pool on KAVA, and party B wants to provide liquidity in that same pool. Moving their 10 (osm-kuji-cro)ETH) to KAVA, party B's asset becomes (osm-kuji-cro-kava)ETH) which is different than Party A's (kava)ETH) in the pool; therefore, party B is unable to join the KAVA liquidity pools; unless there have been sophisticated customizations built in to accommodate that or they retrace their ETH's footprint. 4. IBC's Performance Waning The Interblockchain Communications Protocol was once heralded as one of the industry's most promising innovations in the interoperability space and contributed to the blossoming of Cosmos's hosting of over >45 independent chains. However, it seems that over the last year demands for IBC have been dwindling. Total transfers are down over -38%, Unique senders are down -48%, and Unique Receivers down -48%. If this trend continues, it could be a matter of time before we see the once-glorified technology disappear into an oblivion of obsolescence. 🧐 Opportunities (External) (Helpful) 1. ATOM 2.0 Initiatives have been put forth by the Foundation to transform ATOM tokenomics. A multitude of parameter adjustments to address centralization concerns, value accrual, and inflation. Already slowly being rolled out through governance proposal 848, the staking rate has been cut from ~14% to 10%, lowering the real yield from 19.3% to 13.4%. With lower inflation, there is a higher proclivity from users to hold on to their assets and find DEFI applications for it. Value accrual will be imposed through the alignment of independent environments with the use of ATOM tokens to facilitate cross-chain settlements. As it pertains to centralization, Cosmos currently scores 8 on the Nakamoto coefficient, meaning that it only takes 8 of the 177 validators to subvert the network. Under the new regime, there will be disincentives put in place for delegators that over-concentrate their allocation; a tax that increases alongside validator balances and, in turn, economically incentivizes end users to increase their delegations to smaller validators. 2. Widespread adoption of IBC This one is a bit of a wildcard, shot-in-the-dark, roll-of-the-dice potentiality, but one with gargantuan positive implications. In the event that the new ATOM token model delivers on its promise to adequately capture the value, and IBC delivers on its promise to provide seamless interoperability functionality, there is a good chance that Cosmos becomes further engrained into the industry through an acceleration of adoption. 3. Fork Proposal Jae Kwon, founder of Tendermint and co-creator of Cosmos, is known for his activism and radical attitude. He has recently come out and said that given the circumstance of Cosmos currently suffering from inadequate governance, it would be best to fork the network. By and large, forks a notoriously malicious event that can negatively impact the integrity of the original chain and result in communities being split. However, this appears to have an inverse potential for Cosmos as it would put an end to the continual disputes within the network and enrich the holders with new tokens. Be it purely speculative airdrop hunting or some genius economic resolution, talk of a possible fork has actually been accepted relatively well by the crypto markets. This can have very strong short-to-medium-term impacts on price as people try to front-run each other and qualify for the hard fork. 😳 Threats (External) (Harmful) 1. Terra Luna Debacle Built with the Cosmos SDK, Terra was an IBC-compatible network that handled tens of Billions of dollars in UST transactions. After a spectacular blowout that literally wiped hundreds of billions from the Crypto market's capitalization within days, the crippling whiplash crept across the entire industry, with Cosmos suffering a loss of over -75% 2 months post-mortem. Frankly, no direct value correlation between Cosmos and Terra Luna existed; however, based on the fact that their SDK was used, the image of Comsos has been tainted by possibly the most notable failures of any crypto protocol. 2. Declining Activity and Revenue In spite of an extremely positive market sentiment, Cosmos has seen declines across the board in terms of its utilization. The amount of daily active addresses has shrunk from >17,000 to ~16,000, the amount of daily transactions fell by nearly 33% from ~63,000 to ~40,000, and average revenue fell by nearly 50%, from a laughable $4,000 to an even more laughable $2,000. Luckily, the project does not seem to rely on the revenue it generates to sustain itself, otherwise it might have already been dead. 3. Rise of Advanced Alternative Competition Scalability and interoperability have been, are, and likely will continue to be the most aggressively researched sectors of the Web3 economy. With each new generation of blockchain-based technology, new superior solutions come to market with the capacity to outperform and displace predecessors. Rollups, Subnets, Parachains, Payment Channels, Nested side-chains; the growing amount of similar tech that enables similar capabilities currently available will likely continue to dominate mindshare and further squeeze OG's like Comsos out of public consciousness. Takeaway: Jokingly referred to as the "Dogecoin for Intellectuals", Cosmos is floating on the fringes between techno-economic paradise and irrelevance. The architectural pivot towards becoming providers of a validator set for other networks is not something entirely new; other projects, such as Eigen Layer, are ahead in this regard. However, if Cosmos's approach finds better market adoption, it holds a lot of promise for the ATOM token. There remains an elephant in the room; valid rebuttals about a logical gap in Cosmos's economic modeling. If the security provision by validators is based on their stake, then the security itself hinges upon speculative elements; if the price goes down, then so does security. Conclusion: It seems that despite the internal techno-political headwinds, Cosmos continues to be a domineering force on the layer 0/1 scene. Outside of what was mentioned earlier, is the fact that Cosmos has the support and material endorsement from many of the industry's Giga-brains (such as Chris Burniske from Placeholder Ventures) that make the case as to why Cosmos is a better option than its two leading competitors Polkadot and Avalanche. Cosmos is living proof that even with an incredibly talented team, good intentions, innovative technology, and a flourishing community, nothing is ever guaranteed in crypto. A cool piece of information about Cosmos that is hardly ever mentioned is the brilliance in the intentions behind the Cosmos Hub's design. The Hub itself is just an account-based model based on an environment that does not support smart contracts. This minimalism is distinctly reminiscent of Bitcoin, where the product is hyper-focused and purpose-built to mitigate the attack vector surface area and prevent fees from running out of control. Thank you so much for reading,
I hope this serves you well on your journey. Live long and prosper 🥂 Also published here.

The Cosmos (ATOM) SWOT Analysis 

ON THE ELEVATION OF THE WESTERN COAST OF SOUTH AMERICA

ST. HELENA

FTX + SBF Chapter 11 (Bankruptcy) Court Filing by John J. Ray III, Nov 17, 2022 is part of . You can jump to any part in this filing . This is part 8/20 HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series here Feature Image: Stable Diffusion AI, Prompt “Let the adults in” III. ACTION TAKEN SINCE MR. BANKMAN-FRIED’S DEPARTURE A. New Governance Structure 46. Many of the companies in the FTX Group, especially those organized in Antigua and the Bahamas, did not have appropriate corporate governance. I understand that many entities, for example, never had board meetings. 47. The following new independent directors (the “Directors”) have been appointed as directors of the primary companies in the FTX Group: (a) : Mitchell Sonkin is currently a Senior Advisor to MBIA Insurance Corporation in connection with the restructuring of the Firm’s insured portfolio exposure of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s $72 billion of outstanding debt. He is also currently Chairman of the Board of the ResCap Liquidating Trust, successor to ResCap and GMAC Mortgage Corporations. Before joining MBIA, Mr. Sonkin was a senior partner at the international law firm, King & Spalding, where he was co-chair of King & Spalding’s Financial Restructuring Group and a member of the firm’s Policy Committee. He has over 40 years of experience in U.S. and international bond issuances, corporate reorganizations, bankruptcies and other debt restructurings and has served as a bankruptcy-court-appointed examiner. In particular, he has played a significant role in numerous municipal, utility, insurance, airline, healthcare debt and international debt restructurings including the Anglo/French Euro Tunnel debt reorganization. WRS Silo: Mitchell I. Sonkin (b) : Mr. Rosenberg is a Partner at Lincoln Park Advisors, a financial advisory firm that he founded in 2014. He has more than 25 years of restructuring, corporate finance, principal investing, operating and board experience. Prior to founding Lincoln Park Advisors, he was a partner at the restructuring and investment banking firm Chilmark Partners, a partner in two private equity funds, the Zell/Chilmark Fund and Chilmark Fund II, the Chief Restructuring Officer of The Wellbridge Company and a member of multiple corporate boards. His restructuring advisory experience includes such companies as OSG, Supermedia, Nortel, Trinity Coal, USG Corporation, JHT Holdings, Inc., Covanta Energy, Sirva, Lodgian, Inc., ContiGroup Companies, Inc., Fruit of the Loom, Ltd. and Recycled Paper Greetings. Alameda Silo: Matthew R. Rosenberg (c) : Mr. Jain is a Managing Director and CoHead of the Western Region of Accordion, a financial and technology consulting firm focused on the private equity industry. He has more than 25 years of experience supporting management teams and leading finance and operations initiatives in both stressed and distressed environments. Prior to joining Accordion, Mr. Jain was part of Alvarez & Marsal’s corporate restructuring and turnaround practice for over 10 years and served in a variety of senior financial operating roles. His most notable assignments have included helping lead the restructuring, liquidation and wind down of Washington Mutual and its predecessor entity, WMI Liquidating Trust. He also navigated the restructuring of Global Geophysical Services in its chapter 11 and eventually the liquidation and wind down in its second chapter 11 filing. Ventures Silo: Rishi Jain : Mr. Farnan served as a United States District Judge for the District of Delaware from 1985 to 2010. He served as Chief Judge from 1997-2001. During his tenure, Mr. Farnan presided over numerous bench and jury trials involving complex commercial disputes. Prior to his appointment to the federal bench, Mr. Farnan was appointed to several positions in local, state and the federal government returning to private practice in 2010 with the formation of Farnan LLP, a law firm focused on complex commercial matters, including chapter 11 proceedings, securities litigation, antitrust litigation and patent litigation. Additionally, Mr. Farnan serves as an arbitrator, mediator, independent director and trustee of businesses contemplating or filing chapter 11 bankruptcy. (d) Dotcom Silo: The Honorable Joseph J. Farnan (Lead Independent Director) : Mr. Doheny is President of North Country Capital LLC, an advisory and investment firm focused on challenging advisory assignments and investing private investment portfolios in special situation opportunities. He has held this position since January 2011. Mr. Doheny has served on the board of directors or as Chief Restructuring Officer of numerous stressed and distressed companies, including Yellow Corp., MatlinPatterson, GMAC Rescap and Eastman Kodak. He was also Managing Director and Head of Special Situations Investing at HSBC Securities Inc. from 2015 to 2017. Previously, Mr. Doheny served as Portfolio Manager in Special Situations at Fintech Advisory Inc. from 2008 to 2010 and as Managing Director of the Distressed Products Group at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. from 2000 to 2008. (e) Dotcom Silo: Matthew A. Doheny 48. The appointment of the Directors will provide the FTX Group with appropriate corporate governance for the first time. 49. The Directors intend to hold joint board meetings of the Debtors on matters of common interest, including (a) the implementation of controls, (b) asset protection and recovery, (c) the investigation into claims against the founders and third parties, (d) cooperation with insolvency proceedings of subsidiary companies in other jurisdictions and (e) the maximization of value for all stakeholders through the eventual reorganization or sale of the Debtors’ complex array of businesses, investments and property around the world. The Directors will implement appropriate procedures for the resolution of any conflicts of interest among the Silos and, if necessary, within the Silos as the case progresses, including the potential engagement of independent counsel to represent various Debtors in the resolution of intercompany claims against other Debtors. I expect there to be a multitude of intercompany claims that will benefit from fair resolution under the rules and conventions of U.S. chapter 11 practice in the District of Delaware for complex, multi-Debtor cases. For the time being, my belief is that all stakeholders are best served by a coordinated and centralized administration. Continue reading here

FTX 'did not have appropriate corporate governance', 'never had board meetings', says John Ray

FTX 'no tenía un gobierno corporativo apropiado', 'nunca tuvo reuniones de directorio', dice John Ray

FTX "n'avait pas de gouvernance d'entreprise appropriée", "n'a jamais eu de réunions du conseil d'administration", déclare John Ray

जॉन रे कहते हैं, एफटीएक्स के पास 'उचित कॉर्पोरेट प्रशासन नहीं था', 'कभी बोर्ड मीटिंग नहीं हुई'

FTXは「適切なコーポレートガバナンスを持っていなかった」、「取締役会を開催したことがない」とジョン・レイは言う

FTX 'não tinha governança corporativa adequada', 'nunca teve reuniões do conselho', diz John Ray

John Ray nói FTX 'không có quản trị công ty phù hợp', 'không bao giờ có cuộc họp hội đồng quản trị'

FTX“没有适当的公司治理”，“从未召开过董事会会议”，John Ray 说

FOMO is a one-time event, whereas product adoption is a long-lasting commitment. Before we officially start, let's take a step back and think about one question: what do DeFi farmers want? When evaluating the marketing strategy, we can simply look at the big picture and then discover the wants of users. Therefore, we build up the user journey map by eliminating users’ concerns before moving to the next step. Actual net earnings -APY/APR on your actual position -Rewards in stables or natives token -Enough of a buffer to avoid liquidation -Time and efforts consumed -Gas fees and swapping fees Ease of use & UI/UX -Straightforward navigation -Smooth onboarding flow (wallet, swap, bridge, porfolio tracking) Risk -Contract security -Rug-pull -Bank run risk Trustworthiness -Protocol narratives -Market and potential -Team background -Open source code Backers/investors -Reputation of VC -Ecosystem resources Market traction -Visibility of project -Partnership and accessibility Tokenomics -Token distribution & emission -Token utility -Token liquidity Phase 1 Main task: Building content assets and social assets from day 0 Finding the product-market fit is always the key to building a new product. If you’re looking for true protocol/product users, content marketing and community building will be the best leverage when doing effective marketing under an affordable budget. You can imagine all the docs, files, and even instant communication in your community are selling your product to the public, then how would you prefer to do the introduction? Content Marketing Crypto is a typical content-driven space. Identify how users get value from your product, which is yield in DeFi space. Adding a hook to explain how your protocol maximizes users’ yields by taking a bold claim response to likely skepticism. Once value props are set, it’s important to elaborate the mechanics behind the scenes and know your users understand where the yields are coming from. All in all, Twitter and Medium are the major platforms you can leverage your writing skills to impact the DeFi community effectively. Acquisition channels: Twitter, Gitbook, Medium, Youtube Community Building Community assets can help drive awareness, adoption, and retention. Building a clear, systematic, and rewarding community guild is key in the early stages. Manage the seed/early members and lead them to produce organic UGC content. Besides, Founder is the best community manager; talks to the users, answer their questions, figures out the user demand, executes, and improves. Acquisition channel: Discord, Telegram Security Protection Security is the paramount factor when it relates to DeFi. Getting a third-party secuirty company to audit the code is a basic move. Multi-sig of the smart contracts also leads to decentralized and lowers the concern of rug-pulled. Launching a bug bounty program helps involve the border DeFi community in security efforts, particularly in cases involving white hats. Security Company: Trait of Bits, OpenZepperlin, Quanstamp, Certik, etc Community audit platform: Core4rena, Sherlock Bug bounty platform: Github, ImmuniFi Once laid the solid foundation of content and social assets, it’s time to move to the next stage: get the word out. Phase 2 Main task: Executing the Acquisition strategy Partnership Synergize Fostering key relationships with many prominent projects throughout the space can help you gain a lot of advantages, including but not least new users, visibility, and credibility. It usually comes with protocol/product level features (collateral support, LP tokens usage) so that you may drag users directly from the existing user pool that has been tested out by your partners. Frankly speaking, that’s the priority acquisition channel in crypto. Some projects choose to conduct the public sales with CEX/DEX launchpad before launching so that the token can be partially distributed and generate buzz, however, this may be linked to CEX/DEX listing and MM on the secondary market for overall ideal effects. When it comes to projects that are about to debut without a token, leveraging the partnership/integration would be an effective weapon. Reference: Benqi on Avalanche Viral campaign/UGC Management Finding the gem(alpha) in crypto is the universal meme and good marketers should make good use of this. Expectations can be manipulated. Early adopters campaign, OG NFT, testnet users, and initial LP are on the top of the reward list when building a brand-new community. There’re many ways (e.g. meme contests, content challenges, trading competitions, ambassador programs) to incentivize the community to follow your social, interacted with protocol, and even referral their friends to join the game. NFT Platforms: POAP, Project Galaxy Community Platform: Gitcoin, Layer3 Influencer Marketing Strategy Compared to web2, web3 and crypto are way too niche at the current moment. Instead of the TV and billboards, users rely heavily on the content creators on Twitter and Youtube. Working with legit influencers in the sectors (NFT, DeFi, GameFi, CEX) your project specialized would accelerate your awareness, create valuable content for targeting audiences from the third-party dependencies, then enhance brand assets overall. Geographically, English-speaking countries/regions would undoubtedly gain ground, while regional countries such as China, Russia, Japan, and Vietnam are among the most active cryptocurrency users. Implementing the KOL strategy can be hugely effective - add so much value to the TVL at the very beginning. SEO Optimization Google search consists of a significant part of where those users are coming from. It’s typical crypto users’ behavior that they would do their own research over Google. It’s important what kind of Brand image you would to provide with them and how compelling the message is conveyed through Google indexed. Solution: keywords optimization, reputable media coverage, own-media operation Until now you should have a clear launching strategy ready for the show. Phase 3 Main task: Trigger the positive usage cycle Attractive APY for product adoption and arbitrage opportunity APR/APY is variable, however for DeFi users, it's a significant signal. Many projects launch aggressive liquidity mining programs to kickoff and inject three-digit APY for assets pair to bootstrap initial liquidity. However, it’s worth considering the balance between emissions and rewards to avoid a death spiral once the liquidity mining ends. Reference: Benqi on Avalanche, Aave on Polygon The protocol leverages bAsset rewards to catalyze a positive usage cycle: subsidies incentivize new stablecoin deposits, lowering the borrowing rate, which incentivizes more bAsset-collateralized loans, and enables more bAsset rewards to be collected. Building TVL foundation TVL is the no.1 metric in DeFi and having a steadily growing TVL chart suits long-term projects because you know exactly where your users are coming from and gradually raise the numbers. Building TVL (say $10m for a new project) can bring greater opportunity and trust from the broader audience, thus leading to a healthy circle. There’s also some useful tracking websites, DeFi yield charting, and wallet management to foster growth during the new users’ onboarding journey. Integrations: DeFillama, Coindix, Debank, Zapper. Keep Shipping Launching is just the beginning and it’s important to deliver a roadmap following up to enhance the hype, ranging from product features, token ignition, and partnerships to community grants. Integrating the launching strategy with good metrics into a good narrative to earn more collaboration opportunities. Rather than simply hearing about the launch, the community is hoping for a successful story. At this point, a large amount of traffic and users usually flood in. Promotions: flash news, content creator release, mention/featured in the media Closing Thoughts Web3 is a profit-focus space and DeFi has always competed for APY, but how to offer competitive, safe, and sustainable yield farming products in the market decides how much liquidity you can bootstrap.  FOMO is a one-time event, whereas product adoption is a long-lasting commitment. Cheers!

Web3.0 Marketing Playbook #1 | Bootstrap the Initial Liquidity for a New DeFi Startup

How to fool a 27M-parameter model with a bit of Python Do you think it is impossible to fool the vision system of a self-driving Tesla car? Or that machine learning models used in malware detection software are too good to be evaded by hackers? Or that face recognition systems in airports are bulletproof? Like any of us machine learning enthusiasts, you might fall into the trap of thinking that deep models used out there are perfect. Well, you are WRONG. There are easy ways to build that can fool any deep learning model and create security issues. In this post, we will cover the following: adversarial examples What are adversarial examples? How do you generate adversarial examples? Hands-on example: let’s break Inception 3 How to defend your models against adversarial examples All the source code shown in this article is in ** **👇🏽 this Github repo Let’s start! 1. What are adversarial examples? 😈 In the last 10 years, deep learning models have left the academic kindergarten, become big boys, and transformed many industries. This is especially true for computer vision models. When hit the charts in 2012, the deep learning era officially started. AlexNet Nowadays, computer vision models are as good or better than human vision. You can find them in myriad places, including… self-driving cars face recognition medical diagnosis surveillance systems malware detection Until recently, researchers trained and tested machine learning models in a environment, such as in machine learning competitions and academic papers. Nowadays, when deployed in real-world scenarios, security vulnerabilities coming from model errors have become a real concern. laboratory Imagine for a moment that the state-of-the-art-super-fancy-deep learning vision system of your self-driving car was not able to recognize as a stop sign. this stop sign Well, . This stop sign image is an . Think of it as an optical illusion for the model. this is exactly what happened adversarial example Let us look at another example. Below you have two images of a dog that are indistinguishable for us humans. The image on the left is an original picture of a puppy taken by . The one on the right is a slight modification of the first, that I created by adding the noise vector in the central image. Dominika Roseclay Inception v3 correctly classifies the original image as a dog breed (a redbone). However, this same model thinks, with very high confidence, that the modified image I created is a paper towel. In other words, I created an adversarial example. And you will too, as this is the example we will work on later in section 3. An for a computer vision model is an input image with small perturbations, imperceptible to the human eye, that causes a wrong model prediction. adversarial example Do not think these 2 examples are rare edge-case examples found after spending tons of time and computing resources. There are easy ways to generate adversarial examples, and this opens the door to serious vulnerabilities of machine learning systems in production. Let’s see how you can generate an adversarial example and fool a state-of-the-art image classification model. 2. How to generate adversarial examples? Adversarial examples 😈  are generated by taking a clean image 👼 that the model correctly classifies, and finding a small perturbation that causes the new image to be misclassified by the ML model. White-box scenario Let’s suppose you have complete information about the model you want to fool. In this case, you can compute the loss function of the model where is the input image X is the output class, y and is the vector of the network parameters. θ This loss function is typically the negative log-likelihood for classification methods. Your goal is to find a new image that is close to the original and that produces a big change in the value of the loss function. X’ X Imagine you are inside the space of all possible input images, sitting on top of the original image . This space has dimensions , so I will excuse you if you cannot visualize it well 😜. X width x height x channels To find an adversarial example, you need to walk a little bit in some direction in this space until you find another image with a remarkably different loss. You want to choose the direction that maximizes the change in the loss function for a fixed small step . X’ J epsilon Now, if you refresh a bit your Maths Calculus course, the direction in the space where the loss function changes the most is precisely the gradient of with respect to the . X J X The gradient of a function with respect to one of its variables is precisely the direction of maximal change. And by the way, this is the reason people train Neural Networks using Stochastic Gradient Descend and not Stochastic Random-Direction Descend. Fast gradient sign method An easy way to formalize this intuition is as follows: We take only the sign of the gradient and scale it using a small parameter epsilon, to guarantee that the distortion between and is small enough to be imperceptible to the human eye. This method is called the . X X fast gradient sign method Black-box attack In most scenarios, it is very likely you will not have complete information about the model. Hence, the previous method is not useful as you cannot compute the gradient. However, there exists a remarkable property called of adversarial examples that malicious agents can exploit to break a model even if they do not know its internal architecture and parameters. transferability Researchers have repeatedly observed that quite well between models, meaning that they can be designed for a target model A, but end up being effective against any other model trained on a similar dataset. adversarial examples transfer Adversarial examples can be generated as follows: Query the targeted model with inputs X_i for i = 1 … n and store the outputs y_i. Use the training data (X_i, y_i) to build another model, called the substitute model. Use a white-box algorithm like the fast gradient sign to generate adversarial examples for the substitute model. Many of them are going to transfer successfully and become adversarial examples for the target model as well. A successful application of this strategy against a commercial Machine learning model is presented in . this Computer Vision Foundation paper 3. Hands-on example: let’s break Inception 3 Let’s get our hands dirty and implement a few attacks using Python and the great library PyTorch. It always comes in handy to know how the attacker thinks. You can find the complete code in . this Github repo Our target model is going to be Inception V3, a powerful image classification model developed by Google, which has around 27M parameters and was trained on around 14M images belonging to 20k categories. # Load pretrained model from the PyTorch hub
# https://pytorch.org/hub/pytorch_vision_inception_v3/
from torchvision.models import inception_v3
model = inception_v3(pretrained=True)
model.eval()

# Count model parameters: 27,161,264
n_params = sum(p.numel() for p in model.parameters())
print(f'{n_params:,} parameters') We download the list of classes the model was trained on, and build an auxiliary dictionary that maps class ids to labels. # Download the txt file with the list of ImageNet classes the model was trained with
#     "!" magic to run shell commands from a Jupyter notebook
!wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pytorch/hub/master/imagenet_classes.txt

# id2label maps classes ids to their human-readable names: e.g. id2label[1] = 'goldfish'
with open("imagenet_classes.txt", "r") as f:
    categories = [s.strip() for s in f.readlines()]
    
id2label = {}
for idx, category in enumerate(categories):
    id2label[idx] = category Let us take the image of an innocent redbone dog as the starting image we will carefully modify to build adversarial examples: import requests
import io
from PIL import Image

url = 'https://previews.123rf.com/images/meinzahn/meinzahn1211/meinzahn121100339/16350068-cute-tiger-cat-isolated-on-white.jpg'

response = requests.get(url)
img = Image.open(io.BytesIO(response.content))
img Inception V3 expects images with dimensions 299 x 299 and normalized pixel ranges between -1 and 1. Let us preprocess our beautiful dog image: import torch
from torch import Tensor
from torchvision import transforms

def preprocess(img) -> Tensor:
    """
    Inception V3 model from pytorch expects input images with pixel values between -1 and 1
    and dimensions 299 x 299
    """
    mean = [0.485, 0.456, 0.406]
    std = [0.229, 0.224, 0.225]

    preprocess_fn = transforms.Compose([
        transforms.Resize((299,299)),  
        transforms.ToTensor(),
        transforms.Normalize(mean, std)
    ])
    image_tensor = preprocess_fn(img)

    # add batch dimension: C x H x W ==> B x C x H x W
    image_tensor = image_tensor.unsqueeze(0)
    
    return image_tensor
        
x = preprocess(img) and check that the model correctly classifies this image. from easydict import EasyDict
import torch.nn.functional as F

def get_predictions(img: Tensor) -> EasyDict:

    output = model.forward(img)

    class_idx = torch.max(output.data, 1)[1][0].item()

    label = id2label[class_idx]

    output_probs = F.softmax(output, dim=1)
    confidence =  round(torch.max(output_probs.data, 1)[0][0].item(), 4)
    
    return EasyDict(
        id=class_idx,
        label=label,
        confidence=confidence,
    )

get_predictions(x) # {'id': 168, 'label': 'redbone', 'confidence': 0.8861} Good. The model works as expected and the dog is classified as a dog :-). redbone redbone Let’s move to the fun part and generate adversarial examples using the Fast Gradient Sign method. from typing import Tuple
from torch.autograd import Variable

def fast_gradient_sign(x: Tensor, eps: float) -> Tuple[Tensor, Tensor]:
    """"""
    # convert tensor into a variable, because we will need to compute gradients
    # of the loss function with respect to the image pixels
    img_variable = Variable(x, requires_grad=True)
    
    # forward pass on the original image
    output = model.forward(img_variable)
    
    # get predicted class
    y_true = torch.max(output.data, 1)[1][0].item()   
    target = Variable(torch.LongTensor([y_true]), requires_grad=False)
    
    # backward pass to compute gradients
    loss_fn = torch.nn.CrossEntropyLoss()
    loss = loss_fn(output, target)
    
    # this will calculate gradient of each variable (with requires_grad=True)
    # that you can later access with "var.grad.data"
    # PyTorch does the heavy lifting, computing the gradient of the cross-entropy
    # with respect to the input image pixels.
    loss.backward(retain_graph=True)
    
    # sign of gradient of the loss func (with respect to input X)
    x_grad = torch.sign(img_variable.grad.data)
    
    # fast gradient sign formula
    x_adversarial = img_variable.data + eps * x_grad
        
    return x_adversarial, x_grad

# keep epsilon small to generate slight changes to the original image
epsilon = 0.02
x_adv, grad = fast_gradient_sign(x, epsilon) I have created an auxiliary function to both the original and the adversarial image. You can see the full implementation in this . visualize GitHub repository Well. It is interesting how the model prediction changed for the new image, which is almost indistinguishable from the original one. The new prediction is a , which is another dog breed with very similar skin color and big ears. As the puppy in question could be a mixed breed, the model mistake seems to be small, so we want to work further to really break this model. bloodhound One possibility is to play with different values of and try to find one that clearly gives a wrong prediction. Let’s try this. epsilon epsilons = [0.02, 0.2, 0.9]
for epsilon in epsilons:
    x_adv, grad = fast_gradient_sign(x, epsilon)
    print('epsilon: ', epsilon)
    visualize(x, x_adv, grad, epsilon) As epsilon increases the change in the image becomes visible. However, the model predictions are still other dog breeds: and . We need to be smarter than this to break the model. bloodhound basset Remember the intuition behind the Fast gradient sign method, i.e. imagine yourself inside the space of all possible images (with dimension 299 x 299 x 3), right where the original image X is. The gradient of the loss function tells you the direction you need to step to increase its value and make the model less certain about the right prediction. The size of the step is epsilon. You step and you check if you are now sitting on an adversarial example. An extension of this would be to take many smaller steps, instead of a single one. After each step, you re-evaluate the gradient and decide the new direction you are going to walk towards This method is called the Iterative Fast Gradient method. What an original name! More formally: Where , and denotes clipping of the input in the range of [X−ϵ, X+ϵ]. X0 = X Clip X,ϵ An implementation in PyTorch is the following: def iterative_fast_gradient_sign(x_: Tensor, epsilon: float, n_steps: int, alpha: float):
    """"""
    # copy to avoid modifying the original tensor
    x = x_.clone().detach()
    
    for step in range(n_steps):
         
        # one step using basic FGSM
        x_adv, grad = fast_gradient_sign(x, alpha)
        
        # total perturbation
        total_grad = x_adv - x_
        
        # force total perturbation to be lower than epsilon in
        # absolute value
        total_grad = torch.clamp(total_grad, -epsilon, epsilon)

        # add total perturbation to the original image
        x_adv = x_ + total_grad
               
        x = x_adv
        
    return x_adv, total_grad Now, let us try again to generate a good adversarial example starting with our innocent puppy. : bloodhound again Step 1 : beagle again Step 2 : mousetrap? Interesting. However, the model confidence on this prediction is only 16%. Step 3 Let’s go further. : One more dog breed, boring… Step 4 : beagle again.. Step 5 : Step 6 : redbone again. Step 7 Keep calm and continue walking in the image space. : Step 8 : BINGO! 🔥🔥🔥 Step 9 What an exotic paper towel. And the model is pretty confident about its prediction, almost 99%. If you compare the initial and the final image we found in step 9 you see they are essentially the same, a , but for the Inception V3 model they are two very different things. puppy I was very surprised the first time I saw such a thing. How small modifications to an image can cause such model misbehavior. This example is funny, but if you think about the implications for a self-driving car vision you might start to worry a bit. Deep learning models deployed in critical tasks need to properly handle adversarial examples, but how? 4. How to defend your models against adversarial examples? As of November 2021, there is no universal defense strategy you can follow to protect against adversarial examples. In other words, attacking a model with adversarial examples is easier than protecting it. The best universal strategy, that can protect against any known attack, is to use adversarial examples when training the model. If the model adversarial examples during training, its performance at prediction time will be better for adversarial examples generated in the same way. This technique is called . sees adversarial training You generate them on the fly, as you train the model, and adjust the loss function to look both at clean and adversarial inputs. For example, we could eliminate the adversarial examples we found in the previous section if we added the 10+ examples to the training set and labelled all of them as . redbone This defense is very effective against attacks that use the Fast Gradient Sign method. However, there exist more powerful attacks, that we did not cover in this post, that can bypass this defense. If you wanna know more I encourage you to read by Nicholas Carlini and David Wagner. this amazing paper This is the reason why adversarial defense is an open problem in Machine Learning and cybersecurity. Conclusion Adversarial examples are a fascinating topic at the intersection of cybersecurity and machine learning. However, it is still an open problem waiting to be solved. In this post, I gave a practical introduction to the topic with code examples. If you would like to work further I suggest , a Python library for adversarial machine learning developed by the great Ian Goodfellow and Nicolas Papernot, and currently maintained by the . cleverhans University of Toronto All the source code I shown in this article is in . this Github repo Wanna become a PRO in Machine Learning? I offer hands-on content on real-world Machine Learning, that helps you get a top job in the Data world. 👉🏽  Subscribe to the . datamachines newsletter 👉🏽  Follow me on and . LinkedIn Twitter Have a great day 🧡 Pau

Adversarial Examples In Machine Learning Explained

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Rishon Le Zion Passparto Ness Ziona, Israel is the Startup of the Year! Soapy Ness Ziona Kuwait, Kuwait came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Brapper Shop Kuwait Manama, Bahrain couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! Doctori Manama Lod, Israel is the winner in ! Phinergy Lod Agudat Israel, Israel When it comes to is the Startup of the Year with [vote ] votes! Agudat Israel, Aqaurius Engines Beersheba, Israel In , the Startup of the Year is . Beersheba Visual Estate Ltd Giv'atayim, Israel In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Giv'atayim WSC Sports Modi'in, Israel The winner in is . Modi'in Loginno Nazareth, Israel In , is the winner! Nazareth AR Guide In Medical Ramat Gan, Israel The Startup of the Year in is . Ramat Gan Datos Health Baghdad When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Baghdad Mishwar Khobar In , the Startup of the Year is . Khobar Garage Misgav couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! Eden Shield Misgav Sharjah came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Bookends Sharjah Affula In , the Startup of the Year is . Affula eMotion Technologies Bene Beraq, Israel In , is the winner Bene Beraq Reflectiz Caesarea, Israel In , the Startup of the Year is . Caesarea CardiacSense Dubayy In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Dubayy North Ladder Muscat couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! iLab Marine Muscat Tirat Carmel In , the Startup of the Year is . Tirat Carmel PassCall Advanced Technologies Hod Hasharon, Israel The winner in is . Hod Hasharon Idomoo Holon, Israel came out ahead as the Startup of the Year! OptimalPlus Holon Jeddah, Saudi Arabia When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Jeddah Arabian Combustion Technologies Ramat Hasharon, Israel is the Startup of the Year! Lumen Ramat Hasharon Al Khobar came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Swyft Al Khobar Bet Shemesh In , is the winner! Bet Shemesh Degania Medical Binyamina When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Binyamina OncoHost Makkah In , the Startup of the Year is Makkah Scimagine Or Akiva Last but not least, couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in the city of ! WMT Or Akiva More Information: If you’re a winner, please answer ! If you’re a reader, participant, just a curious individual, consider answering one of our interviews . this interview here Read the FAQs about or . Startups here here To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. this site If you’re interested in partnering with us, we invite you to look through some of these or reach out to our business department. unique sponsorship options Perhaps creating your very own tickles your fancy or maybe you have a whole new idea for how we can partner! writing contest Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! The Startups Awards are sponsored by: , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network The post was written by Kushal Tamrakar and Valerie Ejegi, edited by Hang Ngo. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to report a discrepancy please email ellen@hackernoon.com.

Meet the Winners of Startups in Asia

Identifying patterns and extracting features on images using deep learning models SPCA takes in 7,000 to 9,000 animals each year in Singapore. Half of them are abandoned pets like cats, dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs. It takes time for the pet to be identified and hence prolongs the wait to be listed for adoption. NParks has a group of volunteers who meet regularly for bird watching activities. At the same time they help collect data on the avian population in Singapore, but not all of them can identify the birds species correctly. My project goal is to develop a tool for these 2 organisations: to identify animal breeds for SPCA; and to identify avian species for NParks. This goal can be translated into an image classification problem for deep learning models. So I explored a simple neural network, and then progressed to convolutional neural network and transfer learning. Simple Neural Network First I started with image classification using a simple neural network. The dataset is from , which has 3 classes: cat, dog, and panda. There are 3000 images in total, ie, 1000 for each class. pyimagesearch I set up a simple neural network model with only 1 dense layer in the middle and took about 4 minutes to train the model. The accuracy achieved was 61% and I was ready to test the model with new images. I input these images to the model, and the simple neural network model was able to make to classify them according to the highest probability. For example, the model was 58% sure that this is a panda. But it has legs, so there is a small chance it could be a cat or a dog as well. I started to be adventurous, however the simple neural network model was unable to make the correct classification. So I trained a model which was able to classify them correctly. convolutional neural network (CNN) I had to explore further with more challenging images, and the CNN model is well known to be good at image classification. Convolutional Neural Network What is a CNN model then? CNN stands for , where each image goes through a series of convolution and max pooling for features extraction. I explored using the dataset which has 60,000 images divided into 10 classes. Convolutional Neural Network CIFAR-10 With so many images, it took almost 4 hours to train the model, and achieved an accuracy of 75%. So I was ready to test the model, using unseen images from Google search. The CNN model was able make the correct prediction most of the time, for example the model was quite sure that this is an airplane, and this is a ship with 72% probability. And also this is a deer and this is a horse based on the highest predicted probability. Incidentally there is some chance that this horse could be a deer or a frog, because of certain features picked up by the model. To improve classification accuracy, I need more data. I need to train the model on a larger data set. Transfer Learning Next I explored a huge dataset of over a million images. However, this model would take a long time to train with my limited resources. So I did to avoid reinventing the wheel. I used the developed by , which has 1000 classes ranging from animals to things and food. Oxford has spent a lot of GPU processing power, time and resources to train this model. Transfer Learning VGG16 pre-trained model University of Oxford Let’s test the model by feeding these images which I have downloaded from Google search (so I know the answers). These are quite similar images, but the model was able to classify them according to their . Notice that the Hush Puppies dog (Basset) on the left has more distinct features, the model was also more certain in its classification. breed How about to identify these cats? Oxford has already trained the VGG16 model on many cat species, and the model has no problem classifying them. How about these birds? Birds seem to have very distinct features, and the model was able to identify their species with very high certainty. However, not all these birds are found in Singapore. My next step is to look for many images of common birds and animals found in Singapore to train the model, so as to append to the “knowledge database” of the model. This would help to improve the classification tool for these 2 organisations (SPCA and NParks). Conclusion Image classification can be done using neural network models. Identifying patterns and extracting features on images are what deep learning models can do, and they do it very well. “The model is as intelligent as you train it to be” codes for the above analysis are available on my , do feel free to refer to them here: Python GitHub https://github.com/JNYH/Project_Kojak Video presentation: Thank you for reading.

How to Classify Animal Images via a Convolutional Neural Network

founders are often “hailed as superhumans,” but the truth is they’re not. They’re everyday people like you and me. But the thing that makes them different is their fearlessness to take risks. Startup In saying that, there is a lot that can be learned from successful entrepreneurs that have made it. So, I decided to spend a good chunk of my weekend researching billion dollar tech companies to see if there were any unique patterns or key learnings that I could distill. Here are a few things that I discovered. Lemonade Insurance 2015 Founded: Fintech Industry: $2 billion Approximate valuation: Using artificial intelligence, a mobile app and other tech-centric methods, Lemonade founders Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger are turning the centuries-old business of property insurance into a . millennial-friendly consumer product Every homeowner and renter needs insurance, but many distrust insurance providers. The two concluded that insurance, with its market value of $4.6 trillion, was ripe for disruption. The differs from that of a typical insurance company – it keeps a flat 25% fee of a customer’s premium while setting aside the remaining 75% to pay claims and purchase insurance. Unpaid premiums go to a nonprofit of the users opted for the annual “give back” deal. This builds trust with millenials. Lemonade business model Unlike fintech competitors Hippo and Jetty, Lemonade doesn’t sell policies backed by established insurers. It took the risk to become a licensed carrier itself, retaining claim liability on its own balance sheet. This risk has paid off, allowing them to create a social-compact pitch that pays claims fast. Lemonade can’t profit from denying legit claims, and customers making bogus claims are cheating charity, not some greedy insurer. Lemonade puts users first, building its product with the in mind. One of the biggest pain points of traditional insurance companies is the fact that interactions can be intimidating and time-consuming, leaving consumers powerless. Not the case with Lemonade. They started by thinking about the users and built from there. user experience Entrepreneurs can sometimes make their lives harder than they need to be. Often falling victim to things like and paralysis by analysis. By focusing purely on the most essential things I.e. the problem you’re solving and your solution to that problem. shiny object syndrome Lemonade, as a name, is brilliant in its simplicity. Each step along the customer journey? Also simple. Their content? Simple to digest. Netflix 1997 Founded: Entertainment Industry: $141 billion Approximate valuation: For nearly twenty years Blockbuster sat at the top of the US video-rental industry. In the early 2000s a small disruptive company called Netflix offered to partner with them to help run their online brand in exchange for promoting Netflix in their stores. Reed Hastings (co-founder of Netflix) got laughed out of the room. Fast forward to 2020, Blockbuster is now merely a distant memory after filing for bankruptcy in 2010 while Netflix is currently worth $166B (Feb 2020). Netflix is one of the best examples of transforming your business to stay ahead of the curve. When Netflix first launched in 1997 it was purely a website-based movie rental service — this was groundbreaking at the time. It took them 10 years before they introduced their streaming services which changed the entertainment industry forever. Like many other innovative companies, Netflix is not driven by pressure to do things first, but by delivering for the customer. The opportunities to do this evolve with technology, making it a never-ending process of testing, implementation and testing again. good experiences Netflix also shows that it pays to take risks. It took a decade for broadband internet to catch up with the founder’s vision, and Netflix’s decision to switch to "original content" and divert budgets away from licensing film releases was another famously big bet. The political drama House of Cards, cost a reported to produce the first two seasons. This bet paid off, when the show went on to win multiple awards and attract millions of viewers every episode. $100 million Airbnb 2007 Founded: Travel Industry: $35 billion Approximate valuation: Long before persuaded strangers to sleep in one another's homes and became a $35 billion company, it was just an idea to earn a bit of extra money to make rent. After their first guests, the three founders realized they were onto something bigger. Airbnb They presented a final version in 2008 but investors weren’t convinced. Out of 15 angel investors, eight said no and seven ignored them completely. It was 2009 when they finally picked up $600,000 in seed funding and the rest is history. Airbnb shows how important it is to understand your users and update your product according to their requirements. The company realized early on that receiving payments was crucial for those who are giving out their space on rent, so they promptly added the advance payments feature. Marketplace models such as Airbnb have become common today, but back in 2007, this model was mostly unproven. To apply this to your own startup, you need to have an idea that not only challenges existing solutions but is also able to create value. lesson Airbnb used disruptive technology by creating a marketplace at a time when it was rare. It created ripples in the hotel industry by providing a that was different, endearing, and reasonably priced. Airbnb used innovative and new-user discounts to build loyalty for its product. service referral programs Their focus is on providing more and incremental value to their customers. If you can build a product that adds value while providing your users with an incentive to spread the word, you can create a win-win situation for your business as well as your users. Canva 2013 Founded: Internet software + services Industry: $4.7 billion Approximate valuation: For every second that you’re reading this article, Sydney-based startup Canva (fun fact: they were originally known as ) — have helped millions of people create beautiful designs and documents using its online graphic tools. Canvas Chef More than have been created since its 2013 launch, which makes you wonder why it took three years of rejections by more than 100 potential investors before it got started. These knockbacks worked in favor of the founders, allowing them to polish their offering before it hit the market. 100 million designs Canva’s purpose is to democratise graphic design – to create a tool that is imbued with such simplicity, it allows amateurs to do things that previously were only in the domain of experienced design professionals. “Simplicity” is at the core of Canva’s brand, and it’s an attribute that the company tries to weave through its entire customer experience, from an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, to its polished design templates – even its . privacy notice The strongest attribute Canva’s founders Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams have is . Canva’s success didn’t happen overnight, with their journey starting all the way back in 2007. persistence It takes time to build a unicorn — with it almost being guaranteed you’ll experience rejection, failure and frustration along the way. A great example of the founder’s persistence is the fact that it spent three years from meeting their first investor to actually landing the first investment. Focus is another strong attribute. One of the sole reasons Canva has been a big success is that the founders focused in the early days on finding one highly influential person in their space and getting them to help with their startup. Avoid trying to meet hundreds of people that aren’t really related to your business or what you need. Concentrate on the few names that can have the most impact instead. SEEK Limited 1997 Founded: Employment Industry: $7 billion Approximate valuation: SEEK Limited (stylised as SEEK) and its subsidiary companies, known as the SEEK Group, is one of the largest . SEEK focuses on facilitating the matching between jobseekers and employment opportunities and helping hirers find candidates for advertised roles. job sites in Australia SEEK was founded by brothers Paul and Andrew Bassat and Matthew Rockman, essentially as an online version of print employment classifieds. Today SEEK makes a positive impact on a global scale, with exposure to , more than 51 million students and learners and a presence in 18 countries. 2.9 billion people While a recruitment giant and disruptive force, Seek went through “a scary period” when it found itself on the other side of the fence, with new disruptors coming in and threatening its place in the market. they were not “pushing or challenging ourselves”. Andrew Basset admits Seek started to re-focus, considering what makes a person choose one platform over another, given the way technology has evolved. Bassat and SEEK’s leadership team realized that if they didn’t innovate they would be in “a lot of trouble.” “The reality is, today, everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted,” he said. “We always need to be vigilant. There’s always someone coming to take our business from us.” Key takeaways It’s important to remember that although some of the ideas and technology leveraged by these companies had never been seen before and completely changed the game. The principles and values used by the founders have been around for a very long time. Here are 3 of the main takeaways: Canva and Netflix are great examples of two companies that took nearly a decade to really hit their stride. That’s over 120 months of riding the emotional rollercoaster that comes with building a company. Consistency: All of the companies I’ve covered in this article have benefitted from simplifying processes, tasks and experiences that were traditionally painful for their customers. Simplicity: It can be easy for founders to become distracted by vanity metrics and superficial product features. By focusing on your customers' problems and how you can solve them — your company is more likely to create real value for your customers. Be obsessed with your customers: These ideas might not be as exciting as the latest trends or tactics. But they are almost guaranteed to continue to be  essential building blocks for the billion dollar companies of the future. Summing up Establishing a unicorn startup is no easy task and it’s not meant to be. You need to become comfortable with the feeling of failure and remind yourself the journey of an entrepreneur is a marathon not a sprint. Once upon a time, unicorn startups were a rare breed. Today, not so much. Lastly, if you are looking to take the dive into startup land then: be curious, be problem focused, but above all, take action.

3 Lessons From Unicorns: Consistency, Simplicity, and Customer Obsession 

The approval date of a crypto-backed ETF is among the virtual currency world’s greatest cliffhangers by Anne Szustek Talbot, director of content, BX3 Capital When it comes to cryptocurrency news, there are a few topics that are guaranteed to light up social media and become fodder for conference panels. Throw the terms “ICO,” “SEC enforcement” and the latest JV-squad celebrity endorser du jour into your headline and you can be assured of a few clicks. Is there a new coin of choice? How about the latest take on tokenization? Of the buzzy topics about virtual currency floating around, there is at least one that has the potential to position cryptocurrency as a legitimate vehicle for investment and bring . A crypto-backed exchange-traded fund (ETF) would be a sign that regulatory clarity is coming and institutional money has arrived. For months on end, rumors of SEC approval for a crypto ETF have peppered conversations across the money management and cryptocurrency spheres alike. greater accessibility to the general public Photo by from energepic.com Pexels Will 2019 be the year that quells the crypto ETF rumor for good? “Right now the crypto market is lacking direction,” says Kyle Asman, partner and co-founder of , a business advisory firm serving firms in digital sectors such as blockchain and cryptocurrency. “In my opinion, the denial of an ETF is priced into the market. I don’t think anyone expects a crypto ETF to be approved in the next six months.” BX3 Capital , including those that track cryptocurrencies’ underlying value, already do exist. An ETF that invests in crypto itself, rather than the underlying technology, though, would be a sign of approval from the asset management community on cryptocurrency’s long-term stability. Blockchain-based ETFs Granted, amid the travails cryptocurrency has experienced over the past several months, even the most zealous crypto bugs out there are more likely than not going to offer a conservative forecast on the rollout of a crypto ETF. All things considered though, the regulatory environment and appear that signoff for a crypto ETF may be coming sooner than later. momentum from the institutional investment community Institutional money would downplay the volatility of cryptocurrency, and while not making it a unit of currency for buying milk and bread, would at least give the general public a sense of familiarity after looking at their 401(k) prospectus. ETFs: Electrify your piggy bank. Credit: / Wikimedia Commons BHAVESH K MUTHA What is an ETF? For the uninitiated, ETFs offer a handy way to invest by the old adage “ .” An ETF is a security traded on a stock exchange that in turn itself tracks a group of securities such as stocks, commodities, bonds — and if crypto investors have their druthers — cryptocurrency. don’t put all of your eggs in one basket Some track ready-made indexes such as the S&P 500 or MSCI Emerging Markets Index of large- and mid-cap firms across 24 developing economies. Others track a pool of stocks selected by the fund managers, such as State Street’s , which invests in companies deemed to have significant gender diversity representation on their boards. (Wall Street’s “ .) SHE ETF Fearless Girl” statue actually was part of a publicity campaign for the ETF Supply and creation of ETF shares is regulated by the fund’s authorized participants, who employ mechanisms to ensure the . ETFs often make up a sizable portion of retirement investment accounts, especially for those managed by so-called . fund stays near its net asset value robo-advisors Not to put too fine a point on it, but an ETF that tracks investments in crypto would open up crypto investment to the most prevalent type of individual investor: the one who prefers to let someone else — whether a human financial advisor or an algorithm — handle the portfolios. Fearless Girl: Staring down Wall Street while promoting her signature ETF. / Wikimedia Commons Charlot B Asset management sector edges toward cryptocurrency ETF money is usually managed by institutional investors. This past week Bloomberg reported that Fidelity Investments, which with $2.5 trillion in assets under management as of 2018 is among the largest asset management firms in the US, is gearing up to next month, with a program for Ether to come next. Asset management custodians manage securities on behalf of other investment firms for risk of theft or loss. Such a cryptocurrency service would entail digital key management and compliance issues to avoid running afoul of the SEC. A dedicated crypto custodian would help assuage large firms’ concerns about entering crypto as an asset class. launch a Bitcoin custody service Also this past week, , an institutional investment platform, announced details of its pending . Backed by stock exchange giant , the group behind 12 major regulated financial exchanges and marketplaces, Bakkt needs a green light from the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC), and systems should be a go. (Incidentally, Bakkt has been privy to its own will-they-or-won’t-they gossip; the platform was originally set to go live December 12.) Bakkt Bitcoin-to-US dollars daily futures contracts Intercontinental Exchange Given that their original role is to act as , institutional investors shouldn’t be blamed for being a bit skittish about an asset class with such a nascent regulatory structure as crypto. stewards of others’ pooled wealth Photo by from kendall hoopes Pexels In yet another signal that the US is poised to more fully embrace crypto, The might clear up some existing regulatory uncertainty. First released just before the holiday break in December, the bipartisan bill will be presented before Congress again on Valentine’s Day. (Note: BX3 Capital has been serving as an adviser to Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson on crypto matters, especially on .) What’s exactly in the second round of the bill is not yet public. We can expect, however, to see more guidance on the treatment of cryptocurrencies as a security and the role of the CFTC in their trade and investment — ETFs included. Token Taxonomy Act matters related to taxation “I do think that after a US regulatory bill is passed, we stand to see a much higher chance of seeing an ETF approved,” says Asman. Once that comes to pass, expect to see a rush of liquidity into crypto ETFs. “We would see the market cap in crypto grow about five to ten times, similar to what we saw when the first was introduced,” he continues. Once the flood valves get loosened, the subsequent liquidity would allow for the market infrastructure to make crypto a solid asset class once and for all. gold-backed ETF The past several months have been a period of reckoning for the cryptocurrency industry, whether because of SEC enforcements, price volatility, or otherwise. Bad actors have been weeded out and projects built on big ideas rather than on solid fundamentals have been wrung out. A cryptocurrency-backed ETF, if not the end game of , could at least be part of the playbook. Institutional money would downplay the volatility of cryptocurrency, and while not making it a unit of currency for buying milk and bread, would at least give the general public a sense of familiarity after looking at their 401(k) prospectus. cleaning up crypto Perhaps a better question about crypto ETFs is not “will they,” but “when they.” That “when” seems to be a chicken-egg question of regulation and liquidity.

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