Hackathons offer a platform to showcase your ideas to a panel of experienced judges, with the possibility of securing funding and gaining exposure for your project. However, winning a hackathon requires careful preparation and strategic execution. Let’s delve into the valuable insights and tips shared by tech entrepreneur Yip Thy-Diep Ta, a seasoned hackathon judge and co-founder of DLT Talents. Here is a look at factors to consider before and during a hackathon to increase your chances of success.

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Build your hackathon team: project lead, designer, and builder

To assemble your team, study the hackathon website. Understand the participating companies, the challenges, and the required skills. This knowledge will help identify the ideal team members.

“The biggest challenge I’ve noticed when I look at different teams is submission. It’s not about winning, but getting to the end and submitting an entire solution is already a big step,” shares Yip. This would require someone on the team who could act as a project manager and is also good at storytelling. This person would help build the product and communicate what your team is building when you present.

Yip also advises having at least one previous hackathon participant on your team and having someone who can build the product from the conception level. She stresses the need for a diversity of skills. Another essential member of your team would be a designer. “Sometimes it’s not quality, but more about the bigger vision you represent and how well you show it to the audience.”

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Structuring your time: 20,40,20 and another 20

Proper time management is crucial throughout the hackathon process. Allocate the initial 20% of your time to scoping and discussing your idea with your team. Gather feedback and ensure everyone is aligned with the vision. As Yip recommends, the subsequent 40% should be dedicated to building the product, while another 20% should be set aside for testing and presentation. To allow room for iteration and improvement, seek external feedback from mentors or other teams. Additionally, prioritize team well-being and foster a positive learning journey together.

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Onboarding a team without funding: tokenize your project

Securing skilled coders for your project before obtaining funding can be challenging. To overcome this, consider tokenizing your project from day one. By implementing an equal shares agreement and distributing tokens, you can attract freelancers and compensate them while building your product.

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Finding mentors at hackathons: build networks

If your target at a hackathon is to build a good network and expose yourself to potential partners and investors, then a team member, likely the project manager, must spend time on-site or online building relationships with prospective mentors.

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“One of the reasons it makes a lot of sense to go to big hackathons with good mentors is because it is the most efficient way of networking. On the technical side, it also helps to have good connections and ask these mentors for feedback because you can save a lot of time.”

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This is particularly true for blockchain projects because technical stack documentation for blockchain products could be better, and there may be solutions you are trying that have been tested and failed in the past. So instead of fooling around too much, your time would be better spent asking people who have built similar projects “because they are likely there as a mentor for you.” How to stand out from others around you at a hackathon?

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Standing out from the crowd: just submit!

Yip Thy-Diep Ta emphasizes the importance of submitting your work.

“I think that’s the most important thing. It sounds so stupid, but you have to submit it. Many teams don’t get to submission because they don’t agree on what the scope is and don’t get to finish whatever they want to build. So better done than perfect.”

Clearly define your goals for the hackathon to maximize your time investment. Whether you aim to meet potential co-founders, hire a tech team, secure investment, or form strategic partnerships, strategize accordingly. Lastly, enjoy the hackathon experience and embrace the opportunity to work closely with others in a time-compressed environment.

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How hackathons change lives: career growth and connections

Yip Thy-Diep Ta expresses her amazement at how hackathons have transformed many lives, particularly for women. Hackathons provide a gateway to career transitions and industry growth. Participants become part of a thriving ecosystem where connections are made, and individuals can progress together. Building a sustainable business becomes easier when you are well-connected, have industry peers, and are just a phone call away from the resources you need.

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Perfecting your final pitch: final 20 percent of your time

Devote at least 20% of your participation time to honing your pitch. Seek feedback from other teams and mentors to refine your presentation. Pitching your idea multiple times while building the product will provide invaluable insights. Not only can this attract ambassadors for your product, but it may also catch the attention of potential investors who are keen to understand what is being developed.

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Conclusion

Armed with Yip Thy-Diep Ta’s expert advice, you are now well-equipped to excel in hackathons. Remember to study the hackathon details, recruit a diverse and skilled team, manage your time effectively, embrace the network-building opportunities, and focus on completing and submitting your work. Hackathons have the power to change lives, and by leveraging these valuable insights, you can enhance your chances of success in these dynamic events. Are you ready to build a team and present your ideas at the upcoming Soonami Hackathon? It’s time to make your mark!

Register here 👉 soonami.io/hackathon

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“Our email goes directly to junk.”

“If an entrepreneur is not introduced to me, I don’t talk to them.”

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These are some of the reactions I got from my peers when I first became an investor. After being an entrepreneur for over 20 years, I decided to join the other side for reasons you will understand through this article. When I look back at my days as an early-stage founder, I heard different things:

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“You need to talk to at least 100 investors to get a real market opinion.”

“Don’t take a refusal personally. You are great, but your idea isn’t.”

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So how does this work? It is not easy to get meaningful introductions with investors, especially as many will tend to safeguard their contacts from too much noise. As I am building soonami, I receive about 15 recommendations by people to investors. How is someone without a huge network supposed to get to 100?

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At soonami, we believe that most high-potential founders are prevented from getting the funding they need and deserve by the current system.

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What if you’re an aspiring builder, but you are not located in one of the major cities like London, New York, Berlin, or San Francisco? What if your network is still just being built up? If your product idea is good, shouldn’t it be enough for funding?

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The current VC landscape would typically favor those with a wide network–someone like a VP of Google or a senior developer of Facebook has a higher chance of getting millions in funding by presenting nothing more than a pitch deck.

However, we believe that 99% of the talent today is outside the currently favored hotspots.

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In 2021, Crunchbase analyzed venture funding per country and per capita. While there are over 190 countries, the study only covers 24 countries with noteworthy venture funding. This only represents about 50% of the world’s population. What about the other half?

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What makes soonami.io different? We work borderless.

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We don’t care where you come from, where you went to university, or even where you work out of. All we look at is your performance.

We want to give every founder a chance to prove their dedication and ability.

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How?

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Through our first hackathon, a remote 4-day event supported by our ecosystem, founders who participate can show their ability to execute. We will directly tokenize your project and give you enough capital to pay for freelancers and advisors on our platform Foundance.

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Can you build an MVP? Can you present your idea with conviction to a jury in the English ? Does your team have good dynamics? These are the questions we care about.

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If you work in one of the underrepresented countries like Pakistan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, or anywhere else in the world, we want you to come and present your idea to us. At soonami, we care about including the countries whose entrepreneurs often miss out on funding opportunities because of a lack of access and opportunity.

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The top projects which present their idea stand a chance to become a part of soonami’s accelerator program. The world of venture building is tough, but we would like to make it a little bit easier for those who work for it. If you are really smart, have high dedication, and have the business and technical talent on your team to pull it off, it could be you.

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Join soonami.io in our first AI hackathon. The four-day remote hackathon will commence on July 14, 2023, until July 18. If you win, you will be a part of Cohort 0 of our accelerator and qualify for bounties worth $15k. You may even secure funding of up to $500k.

👉 soonami.io/hackathon

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Sign up here for our upcoming cofounders’ meetup to find out more.

👉 soonami.io/hackathon-schedule

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But while NFTs have gained significant attention and popularity, many challenges still need to be addressed. That’s where mQuark comes in. mQuark is a revolutionary platform that aims to solve many of the challenges facing the NFT market today. By providing support for interoperability, upgradability, and customization, mQuark is setting a new standard for NFTs that will change the game for everyone.

At the core of mQuark is the concept of templates, which are essentially blueprints that define the essential and basic characteristics of an NFT, including its metadata. Templates help to standardize NFTs and make them more interoperable across various platforms.

This is a huge step forward for the NFT space, as it has been hampered by issues related to fragmentation and the need for interoperability.

By offering a standard template system, mQuark is helping to ensure that NFTs are more accessible and usable for creators and collectors. For instance, in the past days, there were dinosaurs on earth. Some of them were herbivorous, some of them carnivorous, some of them were huge, and some of them were tiny. How on earth do we know all of these since any person has never seen them? We all know the answer; The bones!

Bones tell many things about the species, it is the skeleton that defines the species. But scientists can’t be sure what they look like, for example, the exact colors of dinosaurs. This is the same for NFTs, the template defines the NFT, but its look can be unknown to the reader since the creator of the NFT can customize it; however, the information will be accessible to them, of course. For example, when a platform is aware of a Template, if your NFT is generated from the same Template, your NFT is “something” for that platform!

But mQuark goes further than just templates. The platform also includes the concept of collections, which are groups of NFTs that share a standard template. This is incredibly useful for creators, as it allows them to organize their NFTs and makes them easier to find and discover. Collections are customizable and can be either free or paid, allowing creators to monetize their work in a way that works for them. This is an excellent feature for creators and collectors, making it easier to find and buy NFTs that fit specific themes or styles. With mQuark, NFTs become more than just standalone assets — they become part of a larger ecosystem of interconnected tokens.

One of the main challenges facing NFTs is that they are often static and cannot be updated once they are created. What sets mQuark apart is its support for URI slots. URI slots enable creators to store multiple URIs for their NFTs, which can be updated and changed over time.

The logic is very similar to the subscription system in current platforms. For example, you can subscribe to Netflix, Disney+, or a famous Twitch streamer. After you have a subscription, you have access to their futures. Since mQuark offers people the to create platforms(projects) in the ecosystem, people can subscribe to them and have a URI slot for the project. Only the project will have access to its slot on the NFT, other slots will

be read-only. This means owners can add new content to their NFTs or upgrade the content in their NFTs. And with mQuark’s support for verifying URIs using project signatures, owners can be sure that their NFTs will remain secure and valid, even as they evolve over time.

Overall, mQuark is a game-changing platform poised to revolutionize the world of NFTs. By providing support for interoperability, upgradability, and customization, mQuark sets a new standard for NFTs that will benefit creators, collectors, and investors alike. With mQuark, NFTs become more than just standalone assets — they become part of a larger ecosystem of interconnected tokens that can be constantly updated and customized to reflect their creators’ unique vision and creativity. As the world becomes increasingly digital, mQuark is the platform to watch for anyone interested in the exciting world of NFTs.

Check out our media to stay updated!

unbounded.vision

soonami.io

Author: Yasir Kara, Smart Contract Developer at soonami.io

Revolutionizing NFTs: The Innovative Features of mQuark was originally published in soonami on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As we discussed in our last article, Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) demonstrates the possession of specific knowledge or information without revealing it. It allows one party (the prover) to prove to another party (the verifier) that they know a particular piece of information without revealing any information about that piece of information itself.

An excellent use case for ZKP is when someone applies for a loan. Whatever the load is, you have to provide asset documentation. Usually, these documents consist of personal identification, like a driver’s license, social security card or passport, proof of income, employment details, and residence details, such as an address or lease agreement.

Some lenders also run a credit check to see if you can return the debt or how far you are behind on a bill. Is it reasonable to give such extensive personal details to a lender which may or may not approve your request? How will the lender process or use this data? What if a malicious actor targets the company and your data fall into the wrong hands?

This is where ZKP comes in; Enterprises and loan creditors can verify your assets without knowing any specific details.

Moreover, zero knowledge has been at the vanguard of advancing privacy and security solutions for blockchains and Web3, allowing individuals to access a world of personalized web services without giving up control of their private data. A fantastic idea emerges, but how feasible is it in practice?

ZKP can be used daily by enabling secure authentication and identity verification. For example, a user could prove that they are over a certain age without revealing their exact age or prove that they own a specific bank account without revealing the account balance. This could be useful when someone needs to verify their identity but wants to keep personal information private. However, scalability is always a challenging issue.

Specifying more resources for research and development of the ZKP department and accelerating the compilers that are implementing ZKP would ease their practicality in real-life scenarios for non-developer users who are willing to keep control over their data but not willing to lose time with generating long and inefficient proofs.

Encryption in messaging applications is of utmost importance so that no one can read your messages except the client receiving them. Both clients have to establish trust with the server without revealing their identities. ZKP can handle such processes efficiently, and no one would be able to hack into messaging apps.

In today’s transactions, sharing data across the internet without any third-party eye is extremely important. No matter what network or platform you choose to share your data, there are always some risks; This is another excellent use case for ZKPs.

ZKP also provides excellent protection for data storage. Protocols used in ZKP enable it to encrypt data and storage units. In such cases, even access channels can be heavily guarded. Nevertheless, how probable is it for a non-developer user to manually generate proofs by entering the data?

Automation is another solution for bringing zero-knowledge proofs to our daily lives. Developing protocols that use zero-knowledge proofs as a black box running inside the apps installed in the phones without any extra burden for the users makes them more practical. The more automation is implemented in ZKP-based protocols, the more user-friendly they become.

Lack of educational resources in the industry for people with no maths and programming knowledge can be a fundamental reason behind the non-practicality of the zero-knowledge proofs. The published tutorials by protocols and companies for anyone to educate themselves are usually long, confusing, and require a professional mathematical background to understand fully. So, practical zero-knowledge use cases can eliminate this education barrier and demonstrate how zero-knowledge applications can be used in our daily lives.

In Soonami, we offer a zero-knowledge proof-based protocol as a powerful tool for demonstrating the possession of defined criteria in a secure and privacy-preserving manner. Our solutions are fully automated and efficient to be applied in a wide range of settings to improve security and privacy in both personal and professional contexts.

Authored by: Mina Namazi, Applied Cryptographer at soonami.io

unbounded.vision/#zkFaith

Are Zero-Knowledge Proofs Practical in Real-Life Scenarios? was originally published in soonami on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At AuditOne talented auditors are empowered to verify and secure Web3 projects. A team of experienced security professionals and blockchain experts at soonami.io founded AuditOne to address the growing need for reliable and transparent security audits.

The idea of AuditOne originated at the venture launcher soonami.io, where the current Operations Manager & Co-founder David Velek joined the project to help develop the concept into a functioning business model. Daniel Francis got involved a while later to focus on product development. While the Soonami team supported David and his colleague Daniel with developers, advisors, and designers, they needed help finding the right partners to join the project. A change came after the merger with CoinRisk, a startup that Adrien and Raja developed; that’s when AuditOne took off. Under the strategic guidance of Adrien Resch (CEO), the technical know-how of Raja Thota (CTO), David’s operational management and Daniel’s products development, the project has grown exponentially. Currently, AuditOne has more than 100 auditors signed in to their platform and multiple audits with each 10+ severe findings identified, while more audits are in process.

A successful startup is built on three main components: the idea, the team, and the execution. While having a great idea is important, the team makes the execution possible. Soonami was instrumental in connecting the right people to build a strong team. Initially, Adrien was searching for funding for his and Raja’s venture CoinRisk, focusing on the development of audit tools e.g., tools to identify vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Soonami saw the potential in the founders and proposed a merger with AuditOne, along with additional financing. While both startups could have operated independently, the merger allowed them to combine their ideas and create an advanced security service with a strong team.

After the merger, Soonami assisted AuditOne and its founders in establishing a limited liability company, developing internal infrastructure, and providing financial support. The expert team at Soonami continues to support AuditOne in key decisions and provide valuable resources. While AuditOne now has its marketing and design teams in the early stages, Soonami supported the team with its HR, designers, and developers. Therefore, the launchpad is here to provide financial and strategic support for the project to accelerate growth.

In summary, Soonami has played a crucial role in helping AuditOne succeed. By facilitating the merger with CoinRisk and providing valuable resources, Soonami has helped the company grow and improve the security of smart contracts on Web3.

The role of Soonami in the success of AuditOne: An all-in-one auditing platform was originally published in soonami on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A curious deeper look into the existing ecosystem wouldn’t be without wild futurist views. So far, apart from digital art, NFT usage has seen adoption in a variety of applications from fashion to decentralised finance, metaverse to gaming, and even property holding to legal records. Honestly, that’s why it’s becoming such a hyped and popular category in the crypto world!

In this article, I will briefly explain the concept of NFTs, where it’s coming from, and possibly where it is going to go. So, let’s dive into this rabbit hole together and explore this journey.

What is an NFT?

NFT by concept

Imagine playing a game of cards with friends. In any standard playing card game, you know that each card has unique attributes. You shuffle the cards and hand them out to all players. In one of the rounds, you get lucky with an ace of diamonds (♦) & a queen of hearts (♥). Does any other player have the same card as you? That’s right! Another player might have an ace or a queen in their hand, but that card is not the same as yours. Maybe they have the same value cards, but they would surely be from a different suite, like spades (♠) or clubs (♣). In this example, regardless of what game you play, everyone can agree that you own a UNIQUE set of cards in your hand, which also applies to your friends. No one has a card that is exactly the same as another.

Your game also has some rules. That is 4 suites of 13 cards, which means there are 52 playable cards, plus 2 joker cards. For this example’s sake, let’s say each joker can assume any value you like in the game. In addition, as part of the game rules, you may trade cards of the same colour, or even buy cards from other players by giving away some of your scores. Having these rules, do you understand that in some rounds, specific cards become more valuable? Maybe because players are in dire need of them for winning, or maybe they are desperate to get those cards to not lose the moment of remaining in the game.

Now back to your hand in the game, you continue to spread cards on the table. Everyone plays their turn and all you need to become the final winner is to get a King from a red suite (♦ or ♥)! In your turn, you ask players to sell you the card, but your friends want their Kings, and not give them away. One player is willing to sell you a Joker card in exchange for some scores, plus an unrelated card you have that he needs. If you remember the game rules, the joker could become any card, so if you have it you will be the final winner! There are only 2 Jokers in the game. It’s a RARE card, but for some reason, you are lucky and you can buy the winning card. Are you going to buy the Joker card? You will win.

In the above example, we can say each card can be an NFT. Just like when you handed out the cards and everyone accepted the ace of diamonds (♦) & queen of hearts (♥) belong to you, in the crypto world, a blockchain consensus accepts you own an NFT when you get one. Also just like each playing card belongs to a deck, an NFT can be part of a group known as Collection. Simple, right? Knowing the similarities to our example, we can better understand and define what an NFT is in technical terms.

NFTs by definition

NFTs, also known as non-fungible tokens, are UNIQUE, digital items whose ownership is managed by blockchain. These unique tokens can have different quantities (rarities) and be in the shape of collectibles, digital art, domain names, event tickets, game items, and even legal records for physical assets.

You can also think of it as the opposite of a fungible asset for example a currency. When dealing with currency, a five-dollar bill will always be replaceable by another five-dollar bill (or even five $1s). In contrast to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or fiat money, NFTs are Non-Fungible because every token is unique and has its own traits & attributes. In a more low-level view, NFTs are non-interchangeable units of data stored on a blockchain, making them resistant to alteration, destruction, or replication. Therefore, NFTs can be verified by smart contracts on a blockchain, which provides them with extrinsic value.

A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) can seem complex, you can think of them as a vehicle to share virtually any form of item using the blockchain.

The Early Days and A Decade of NFTs

Just like most conventions, NFTs received incredible favours from the Ethereum blockchain and community for their adoption throughout the years. But, the root concept behind the non-fungible tokens can be found, prior to the Ethereum existence, in a 2012 paper by Meni Rosenfield which introduced “Colored Coins” for the Bitcoin blockchain.

The idea of Colored Coins was to establish a class of methods for representing and managing real-world assets on the Bitcoin 2.0 blockchain to prove ownership of those assets. Unlike the fungible Bitcoin tokens, colored coin design added a ‘token’ element that determined the usage, making each coin segregated and unique. Bitcoin’s scripting language was never meant to enable such types of behaviour within its network. Such limitations meant that the Colored Coins concept could never be fully realised in a bitcoin transaction, however, it did lay the foundation to further experiments leading to the invention of NFTs.

On May 2nd, 2014, digital artist Kevin McCoy minted the first-known NFT ‘Quantum’ on the Namecoin blockchain. ‘Quantum’ is a digital image of a pixelated octagon that hypnotically changes colour and pulsates in a manner reminiscent of an octopus. Quantum NFT was later sold for about $1.4 Million in 2021.

https://twitter.com/sillytuna/status/1403011184899629069?s=20&t=R0Tx1ANCzg8MKYuq3QTL6Q

The outcome of this was significant efforts, experimentation, and development that followed on other blockchains. 2016 beckoned on the era of the meme and saw the release of a host of Rare Pepes NFTs on the Counterparty platform (Bitcoin 2.0). Important to note, however, is that the Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to be used as a database for tokens representing the ownership of assets, and thus began the big shift for NFTs to the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum blockchain also began adopting its initial NFTs as digital game assets with Dapper Labs developing “CryptoKitties” which was the first widely-recognized implementation of NFTs, launching on the new ERC-721 standard for Ethereum.

Since 2017, we’ve seen the rise of many successful NFT projects and they began to become mainstream e.g. Beeple’s $69 million NFT auction piece or the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. So far, the NFT space has become more lively and continues to expand Web 3.0. It’s interesting how NFTs are gaining more momentum in a variety of crypto aspects, and today creating an NFT continues to become simpler with many dApps simplifying the process through easy-to-use interfaces.

Following the huge success of CryptoKitties, NFT gaming really began to gain momentum and move forward with NFTs gathering increasingly more public attention.

NFT gaming and metaverse projects were shining in the spotlight and the first to break ground in this space was Decentraland (MANA), a decentralised VR platform on the Ethereum blockchain. Decentraland is an open-world gaming platform that allows players to explore, play games, build, collect items, and more, and everything that you find, earn and build there, you own on the blockchain, mainly in the form of NFTs. By 2022, There were also more successful NFT collections, and metaverses like Sandbox, in addition to dozens of other projects in development.

Our mQuark dApp can also simplify the creation of new NFT projects with interoperability in mind, a concept that’s unique to mQuark protocol, helping NFT enthusiasts focus on their artistic visions, rather than handling technical drudgeries of writing code.

Are NFT adopters getting scammed?

In fact, a large sum of adopters who FOMO into NFTs are likely to be scammed. Some people usually complain that NFTs have no store of value. Are they right? The answer is, “it depends”.

How to uncover NFT scams?

NFTs are vehicles to identify unique ownership of assets, as a key-driven factor to support the valuations. They can be relied upon until their hosted blockchain exists. The arts behind NFTs are just a small factor in this vehicle. Marketing such NFTs and building a good community is another significant factor of successful NFTs. In the case of foul NFT projects, a common pattern is to sell inflated and unworthy or unreliable files for massive prices, sometimes even promises without any technology-backed solutions, which could lead to scams. Artists opposed NFTs because they mainly focus on the art itself and the monetary component which deviates the art purpose from the art community. However, the project builds on top of the community can be a factor to push NFT valuation further.

As is often the case with new innovative crypto technologies, you need to keep awareness of fake and bogus NFTs and don’t judge a book by its cover. If you understand smart contracts, read them to learn if the community promises are fulfilled in the code, or get advice from vetted reviewers. Look for signs if the project is living up to expectations and promises, or if there is any form of guarantee that you are making a fair deal, for example, the art is truly represented by the artist you like and support. There is no easy way to do this of course, but you can always reduce risks by collecting enough information about the NFT project not to make an unwise transaction decision.

Brightside of valid NFT projects

Contrary to the aforementioned, if you come vis-a-vis an honest artist or project, you may also find great deals in acquiring their NFTs. But remember, in the crypto world, It’s not just art that creates success for projects. The community that supports the artist or the NFT projects is heavyweight, so keep an eye on how your community is growing and you can also be part of the voice to expand it, i.e. when you truly believe in it.

How the NFT era is changing the current web

Web 1.0 to web 2.0 was a journey from email communications to social media, but what the current web lacks is true data ownership, a concept that is merely implemented in centralised servers which hold your data belongings. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. make user data fragile to authority censorship and bans on their platforms. NFT implementations of web 3.0 standards make the use cases inherit the decentralisation of blockchain. Thus opening room for NFTs to attribute ownership and prove the media’s timelines in a censorship-resistant way.

Censorship-resistant how?

Well, it’s not exactly internet crackdowns that NFTs can help with! But censorship is the way that hosting platforms can not take away your right of owning and using your data from you, like banning you from a platform like Instagram or Twitter. and very recently, with web3 social media protocols like Lens, there is more opportunity to look at a future that is democratised and open to freedom of speech.

A web2 comparison

The following table shows a comparison summary side by side:

Future and NFT speculation of 2032

As the NFT industry continues to set sail into its 2nd decade aiming to disrupt notable industries like gaming, music, art, and ownership, we’ll certainly be seeing more unique implementations and use cases that can extend beyond the current phenomenon. To that goal, the NFT community will need a collective understanding of the direction of this standard as an ecosystem, mainly to facilitate risk-free adoption, for example in terms of NFT regulation, prices, and valuations.

The More Evolved Digital Culture

What drives today’s digital culture is a sense of belonging to matters tangible outside the physical world. The NFT community is much like eSports gaming that interacts and plays together to thrive only with the focus on the NFTs to improve members’ sense of being part of the community. The growth of this community to 2032 will also need you to look at the age gap and next-generation users, those we recognize as Generation Z today.

Web 2.0 Brands in Mass Migration

Just like the digital culture, NFT ownership has vast demography in GenZs, which makes it an attractive bridge for brands that love to connote youth and livelihood. Therefore, it wouldn’t be a wonder to observe NFTs also evolve into branding bridges between traditional companies and web3. A strategic jump that is quite clear in the pivotal direction of leading web 2.0 companies such as Facebook, who recently rebranded to Meta after they publicly announced interest in creating a metaverse with the aid of their Oculus VR (Don’t underestimate Zuckerberg. That man’s data-driven decisions are based on 2.8 billion user data!). Meta is also pushing NFTs into Instagram, the second-largest social media with a massive GenZ user base. NFTs can push such branding to the next level with open interaction with users and receiving their support. Aside from Meta, a collective of metaverses can be speculated for the next decade, even becoming more tangible with the advancements of performant hardware and game consoles.

The vision of interconnectivity

In such an age for ultimate web3 communication, we also need to keep the paste with the inevitable advancements of the future. By 2032, there is a missing piece for the interoperability of NFTs. That’s why we created mQuark protocol, the smallest extendable NFT schema, that would solve the interoperability of NFTs for web2 and web3 projects, even acting as a migration bridge between metaverses. A quark NFT embodies the same vision of interconnectivity in web3. Through the provision of smart contracts and digital identities, the metaverse connects standalone stores of value to form an internet of value, and the current state of interoperable metaverses means they will not be able to break the fourth wall, instead, they keep the user’s belongings representing solely within their own entity, not knowing how they can interpret pieces of NFTs from other web3 entities. mQuark solution to NFT interoperability encompasses value inheritable, extension, and interpretation through schema, and that’s how we see a vision of interconnected web3.

Authored by: Davood Hakimi Mood, Technical Lead at soonami.io

NFTs are the real deal, here’s why! was originally published in soonami on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The question of “can we really become the true owner of our data and fully get control over it” has always been there. The journey has started in the 1990, when three MIT researchers Shafi Goldwasser, Charles Rackoff and Silvio Micali, came up with the idea of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) described in the Knowledge Complexity of Interactive Proof Systems paper and the idea that companies do not require to store clients credential information to allow them to benefit from their services became widespread. Individuals, the actual data owners, started demanding to decide what could be done with their data.

ZKPs are cryptographic algorithms deployed to prove the possession of a piece of information without being required to reveal the content of that information. In mathematics, ZKP algorithms create a series of puzzles that, when solved correctly by the receiving party, prove their honesty. The ZKPs became a robust tool for many applications, such as e-voting protocols, anonymous credentials and most notably blockchain. However, they should be scalable to apply proof systems in real-world scenarios. The verification process needs to be quick, no matter how expensive the computations are. It also should hide some information about the transmitted data and its recipients, and here comes the essential need for the zero-knowledge part. Utilising the small verification process, ZKPs can become handy even in replacing protocols such as Merkle Trees widely used today in most of the blockchains.

ZKPs have been massively researched to achieve privacy and scalability in the last decades. The breakthrough happened with the invention of zk-SNARK, explained in Short Pairing-Based Non-interactive Zero-Knowledge Arguments and improved later in On the Size of Pairing-Based Non-interactive Arguments by Groth et al. in 2016. The zk-SNARK is popular now because of its short proof length and efficient verification mechanism. It is the core zero-knowledge-proof system of many blockchain-based protocols. It is paving the way for becoming an accessible tool to use in people’s everyday lives. As Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum said, “to keep the Ethereum ecosystem open and to welcome people without a mathematics degree, making zero-knowledge proofs understandable and accessible is necessary.” and this is the mission we align with at soonami. However the paragraph above not necessarily could be easy to process, then let’s think of some examples — as part of our daily life we are forced to reveal our data in a lot of situations, if we won’t, some products and services won’t be available to us. We must prove to the bank that we have a certain income to convince them to get a loan. We show our passports to an officer at the airport to enter another country. If we have a club membership card at the entrance, we should also show our ID card to prove we are legitimate owners of that membership card.

Now we can not only imagine but build a world where our personal data or credentials are not stored to verify our legitimacy. Where accessing various services does not require revealing the complete information of our IDs. In a traditional internet world, often described as a web 1.0, we could only deliver information through static web pages. Web 2.0 allowed social media sites to take the lead, where central authorities were responsible for storing and moderating data transactions. Today while shifting to the web 3.0 and emerging blockchain technology, data storage and management can be modernised. Central setup is no longer required in a decentralised world by switching to peer-to-peer data transactions.

Web 3.0 and its benefits, such as transparency, immutability, and decentralisation, lead to more invisible data flow in instances of blockchain. Therefore, the chance of preventing personal information compromises decreases. However, data integrity in this setting still needs to be solved. Here again, comes the importance of zero-knowledge proofs to tackle the problem.

ZKPs became a great tool to the blockchain, providing flexibility and control over their (sensitive) information, a critical part of web 3.0. What if you are no longer required to type your passport number, which endangers your age, name, date of birth, etc., to reserve a flight ticket? The agencies can validate your identity by leveraging ZKP protocols without asking for your passport number. The safety of the prover sounds like a straightforward process; it brings trustworthiness to web3 and guarantees protection for user information. ZKP for web3 offers data privacy and preserves data integrity. Thanks to ZKP for blockchain, genuine data owners have total control of their data in a growing world full of malicious activities and personal data compromises.

Authored by: Mina Namazi, Applied Cryptographer at soonami.io

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Importance of Zero Knowledge in the modern world was originally published in soonami on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.