In this blog post, we will provide a glimpse into the future by showcasing the top technologies and methodologies that Cleverti has been focusing on to help our potential clients make informed decisions.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

At Cleverti, we recognize the immense potential of AI and ML to reshape industries and improve efficiency. We have been working diligently to develop cutting-edge solutions in natural language processing, computer vision, predictive analytics, and automation, ensuring our clients receive the most innovative and tailored user experiences.

• Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology has proven its potential beyond cryptocurrencies, and we have embraced it to provide secure and transparent solutions for our clients. Cleverti has been leveraging blockchain technology to revolutionize supply chain management, identity verification, and secure data sharing across various industries.

• Quantum Computing

As quantum computing becomes more accessible, Cleverti has been closely monitoring advancements in this field to explore innovative applications and prepare for the potential disruption of traditional computing paradigms. Our team is dedicated to staying informed and ready for the exciting possibilities that quantum computing brings.

• Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

Cleverti has been actively involved in creating unique AR and VR experiences for various industries, such as gaming, healthcare, and education. Our immersive technologies bring users closer to the digital world and offer transformative experiences, setting our solutions apart from the competition.

• Edge Computing

Recognizing the importance of edge computing in IoT infrastructure, Cleverti has been leveraging this technology to build more responsive, secure, and scalable IoT applications. By processing data closer to the source, we ensure reduced latency, improved efficiency, and better reliability for our clients.

• 5G and Network

Cleverti stays ahead of the latest advancements in network technology by closely monitoring the global rollout of 5G networks and anticipating future developments, such as 6G. Our commitment to staying informed enables us to provide seamless, high-performance solutions for our clients.

• Cybersecurity

Understanding the complexities of the ever-evolving threat landscape, Cleverti prioritizes the integration of robust security protocols into our solutions. Our focus on cybersecurity ensures the protection of client data and the safety of our systems.

• Front-End Development: JavaScript, React, Angular, and Vue.js

Cleverti understands the importance of tried-and-true solutions for front-end development, such as JavaScript, React, Angular, and the increasingly popular Vue.js. Our team has extensive experience in developing robust web applications using these popular front-end technologies, ensuring our mid-size enterprise clients receive modern, efficient, and reliable solutions tailored to their needs.

• Back-End Development: .NET, Java, Node.js, and Python

Our expertise in back-end development is backed by our proficiency in a range of popular technologies, such as .NET, Java, Node.js, and Python. Cleverti’s team leverages these time-tested platforms to build scalable, high-performance applications for our mid-size enterprise clients, ensuring seamless integration with both new and existing systems.

• Hybrid Mobile App Development: Flutter and React Native

As mobile applications become increasingly important for businesses, Cleverti recognizes the value of hybrid mobile app development using platforms like Flutter and React Native. By utilizing these frameworks, we can efficiently develop cross-platform mobile applications that provide a native-like experience on both iOS and Android devices, catering to the needs of our mid-size enterprise clients.

Cleverti’s dedication to working with both the most trendy and exciting technologies and the popular, well-established solutions allows us to stay ahead of the curve and deliver exceptional products and services to our mid-size enterprise clients. By continuously exploring new technological advancements and incorporating them alongside proven methodologies, we ensure that our potential clients can make informed decisions and receive the best possible solutions for their unique needs.

In 2023 and beyond, Cleverti remains committed to maintaining our reputation for excellence and fostering strong relationships with our valued clients.

The post Cleverti’s Expertise in Trendy Technologies and Popular Solutions for Mid-Size Enterprises in 2023: A Glimpse into the Future appeared first on Cleverti.

Even people who have never understood how it works are talking about it these days and for sure you have already heard about Bitcoin and Blockchain.

So, what is Bitcoin after all?

The algorithm was developed in 2008 by a person or persons under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in a white-paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System“. The idea was to define an electronic payment system without using a trusted third-party entity to solve the double-spend problem for digital currency using a distributed database combining computer science, cryptography, and game theory. Although this will not be the focus of this article, according to Don Tapscott and his book “Blockchain Revolution”, there are seven design principles in this paper:

• Networked Integrity
• Distributed Power
• Value as Incentive
• Security
• Privacy
• Rights Preserved
• Inclusion

Bitcoin was the first digital currency in the world exchanging without any kind of trusty nor centralized management, using the blockchain technology which only works via the Internet and nobody controls it. There is no central database to hack or shut down and the emission of the currency is executed through the work of millions of computers around the world.

Although Bitcoin has attracted more and more attention over the last years, as it was the first killer blockchain app and may become a value similar to Gold, the blockchain technology is where the big potential transformation will occur, being considered the next internet wave.

During 2014 the market moved its attention also to the technology behind Bitcoin – the blockchain. Although Bitcoin and blockchain are often mixed, Bitcoin is built on a version of a blockchain and blockchain technology has potential applications far beyond bitcoin and cryptocurrency. As Sally Davies from FT Technology wrote, “Blockchain is to Bitcoin, what the internet is to email. A big electronic system, on top of which you can build applications. Currency is just one.”

But what is a blockchain?

In short, blockchain technology offers a way to reach an agreement between untrusted parties. It’s a list of records (blocks) linked together (chain), maintained as a distributed and decentralized database allowing a group of connected computers to maintain a single updated and secure ledger. This ledger can record immutable transactions between parties using the open network as the central authority. The advantages of this decentralized ledger are their certification (all the info is time-stamped), transparency (the information is available and anyone can verify the transactions), and decentralization (all the records exists on several computers).

A blockchain is simply a shared and distributed ledger. The most well-known for now are the Bitcoin blockchain, which was the first blockchain implemented, and the Ethereum blockchain that brings the advantage of smart contracts and many other private and public blockchains. Since the Bitcoin was launched in 2008, thousands of other different cryptocurrencies (known as alternative coins or altcoins) have been launched using different rules and business models.

From a business perspective, the blockchain concept allows to transfer assets across the Internet without the need for a centralized third party and could result in a radically different competitive future for several services as the next-generation of business software.

What are the major blockchain components?

All blockchains have some fundamental aspects that define how the network will work:

• Redundancy – The blockchain is continuously updated and replicated across the network and there are no failure points.
• Immutability – All the data is connected on successive blocks encrypted together.
• Encryption – The information is authenticated based on private and public keys to identify which users own what and from where to the transactions are sent.

Some of the most important components to ensure these aspects are:

• The network as the kind of access and how it will be used and maintained by the users.
• The consensus protocol to define how we reach an agreement between the members of the network and the transactions are registered and verified to the blockchain, usually solving complex problems based on an incentive mechanism using competition between the nodes.
• Smart contracts are pieces of code developed on the blockchain that allow developers to build and deploy decentralized applications.
• Addresses are used to receive and send transactions on the network.

The network is an important aspect of in the privacy and management of the blockchain. We can have private, public, centralized, Consortium, permissioned, or other access models. The most common networks are probably:

• Public — Completely decentralized and uncontrolled where no limit or access is required.
• Consortium — The process to add new transactions blocks is verified and controlled by a specific node or nodes.
• Private — The rights to access, read or modify the records is restricted to specific users or nodes.

Another important aspect is the consensus protocol. Blockchain operates on the basis of how consensus is reached for each transaction added to the ledger. The most common mechanisms that are used in Blockchain are proof of work (Bitcoin), proof of stake (Ethereum) and closed consensus:

• Proof of Work — Miners have financial incentives to process as many transactions as possible using computational power to solve a cryptographic “puzzle”. The miner that solves the puzzle, and therefore “mines” the new block to add to the chain, is rewarded by the network. A predefined amount of new coins is created and given to him, together with the transaction costs of all transactions contained in the block. When this puzzle is solved, the block can be added to the chain – on average, every ten minutes. This is the consensus protocol used by Bitcoin.
• Proof of Stake — Transaction validators receive rewards in proportion to the amount of their “stake” in the network. This improves network security by discouraging duplicitous attacks. PoS is more oriented to organizations with constrained computing power. The PoS consensus it the protocol that Ethereum will use.
• Closed Consensus – In a closed consensus mechanism some certain nodes are required to put up a security deposit in order to participate in updating the Blockchain.

Smart Contracts are an important component for the future development of blockchain.

Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum is a blockchain-based system using the same concepts but brings the new idea of Smart-Contract. Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year-old Russian Canadian in 2013 to be the next generation Blockchain technology. As it is programmable, it allows users to develop and deploy their own applications with just a basic level of programming skills – These applications are called “Smart Contracts”. To “power” its operation uses its own currency called Ether and uses “Ethereum virtual machine” to run the system, and its own programming language called “Solidity”.

The Smart Contracts are pieces of code with their own mechanisms that define the conditions between parties’ which will be self-executed when the required conditions are met. The code and the agreements are irreversible, traceable and transparent being stored in the blockchain (on each participant database) allowing trusted transactions between parties without the need for an external authority. A smart contract consists essentially on:

• The code and how this is interpreted
• The immutability of the blockchain

Regarding the address, the key information is the private key – similar to a password where only those who own access to the balance are associated and can sign a transaction. The public key is then created from the private key using an elliptic curve based on some calculations. This public key is all the information needed to send and receive payments.

How does it work?

Using the example of Bitcoin Blockchain and presenting it in a simplistic way, we can verify that it is all based on some relatively simple concepts:

• You have your private key (similar to a password – private and only known by you) and your public key (similar to your username or identity – public, that all other users may know).
• To access your “wallet” and send x Bitcoins to another user you have to know the public key of the receiver.
• The transaction is sent to the network to be “registered”.
• The “nodes” of the network will register in the public and distributed ledger your transaction, “sending” your x Bitcoins to the receiver and keeping updated who owns what.
• Every ~10 minutes, all the transactions that were made around the world are put into a block of transactions bulked with the previous block.
• The “miners” who registered the block of transactions will compete against each other’s to solve this complex math problem to “discover” the correct result – hash.
• The “miner” who registered this block of transactions is rewarded with y Bitcoins (currently 12,5).
• The valid block of transactions will then be added to the chain linked to the previous blocks, creating a chain of blocks with all transactions made. Subsequently, all miners will start mining the next block.
• The chain is continuously updated across this distributed ledger and it is always possible to know who owns what at any time, as this distributed ledger has synchronized replicated databases visible to all the network. 

The blockchain disruption

Blockchain can have a wide use that goes far beyond digital currencies or transfers. The potential of this disruptive technology is not only to change the way we use the Internet, but also the global economy and the world as we know it.

We have however some challenges that may arise:

•  The question of Privacy as the transactions can be sent and received anonymously. Although preserving the users’ privacy can be a support for illegal operations.
• The Volatility of prices, as the current currencies are presenting a strong volatility.
• The maturity of technology as new tools are born, bringing new services and features.

Currently, we are on the internet of information era, where we use and exchange different pieces of data, but we’ll shift to the internet of value, that will be based on assets. Being distributed, this new economy based on the internet of value doesn’t need intermediates nor big operators to run as it is based on consensus and transparency and immutability.

Blockchain has conditions to disrupt several industries that are based on intermediaries, as it is the case of the financial sector, public sector, legal, healthcare and many others. Blockchain can improve our life in areas like:

• Property assets management
• Healthcare management (as patient health records management or vaccine distribution)
• Identity management
• Electronic voting and voter fraud
• Ownership of digital content
• Improving Government Efficiency
• Welfare distribution
• Supply Chain Management
• Peer-to-Peer Transactions
• Non-digital assets management

This is just the beginning. Many other applications will be invented and other features will come.

No matter what the future brings, Cleverti will be here to help you – just let us know!

Written by Carlos Coutinho Silva | CEO at Cleverti

The post Blockchain: what’s out there and what’s next? appeared first on Cleverti.

The main advantage that Blockchain offers when compared to a legacy storage of data is that on Blockchain pre-existing data (stored in blocks) can’t be tampered with or manipulated without breaking all the future blocks, and consequently crashing the whole system.

This happens because in Blockchain’s essence every block has a dependency on the previous one, meaning that if even a tiny bit is changed, the digital signature would be different and the whole future chain would break.

On a standard system, anyone with administrative access is able to change/manipulate the data stored. Although some may argue that he/she could be busted doing it or later audit checks may detect it, the fact is that on an early stage, no one would notice it and the system would, at least for a given timeframe, run with manipulated data.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you in practice some of the basic concepts of Blockchain, by creating a simple JavaScript application.

Installing required packages

First of all, we’ll need to install crypto-js, the only package we’ll need for this tutorial. You can install it via NPM:

npm install crypto-js

When the installation is completed, let’s create our Blockchain file blockchain.js and add the dependency we have just installed at the beginning.

const SHA256 = require("crypto-js/sha256");

Creating our Block Class

Transactions can be anything, from a value transfer (bitcoin blockchain), a right, or a contract (Ethereum). The important concept to retain/understand is that a block is a group of transactions, and transactions can be… anything!

Let’s define what a block really is by creating our block class. Our sample block is composed by:

1) Index of block (id)
2) Hash of the previous block
3) Current Timestamp
4) Data – Transactions to include in the block
5) Hash of current block

class Block {

  constructor(index, timestamp, data, previousHash = '') {

    this.index = index;

    this.previousHash = previousHash;

    this.timestamp = timestamp;

    this.data = data;

    this.hash = this.calculateHash();

  }



  calculateHash() {

      return SHA256(this.index + this.previousHash + this.timestamp + JSON.stringify(this.data)).toString();

  }

}

Creating our Blockchain class

On our Blockchain, our chain will be a simple array of blocks.

Since one of the inputs of blocks is the hash of the previous block, we’ll need to hardcode our first block, adding to our array our first and only genesis block, before getting things rolling. The genesis block is the first block added to a Blockchain, which is added manually because there is no precedent:

class Blockchain{

    constructor() {

        this.chain = [this.createGenesisBlock()];

    }



    createGenesisBlock() {

        return new Block(0, "20/11/2017", "Genesis block by Cleverti", "0");

    }

}

Now after the genesis block is created, we are finally able to add blocks to our Blockchain, we do it by pushing new blocks to our array.

addBlock(newBlock) {

    newBlock.previousHash = this.getLatestBlock().hash;

    console.log(this.getLatestBlock().hash)

    newBlock.hash = newBlock.calculateHash();

    this.chain.push(newBlock);

}



getLatestBlock() {

    return this.chain[this.chain.length - 1];

}

Testing our Blockchain

We’ll now create 2 blocks, after our genesis block. This is how we can do it:

let clevertiblockchain = new Blockchain();

clevertiblockchain.addBlock(new Block(1, "20/07/2017", { sender: ‘cleverti’, receiver: ‘javascript community’, amount: 4 }));

clevertiblockchain.addBlock(new Block(2, "20/07/2017", { sender: ‘javascript community’, receiver: ‘cleverti’, amount: 8 }));

To check how our Blockchain looks like we can add the following lines inside the Blockchain class:

listblockchain() {

  return this.chain;

}

And then call it, to get the output that represents our Blockchain:

//listblockchain()

[ Block {

    index: 0,

    previousHash: '0',

    timestamp: '01/01/2017',

    data: 'Genesis block',

    hash: '4373c7fb1437035365d9228c77eca2cfd240523e274163e78c1eba11effd8b38' },

  Block {

    index: 1,

    previousHash: '4373c7fb1437035365d9228c77eca2cfd240523e274163e78c1eba11effd8b38',

    timestamp: '20/07/2017',

    data: 

     { sender: 'cleverti',

       receiver: 'javascript community',

       amount: 4 },

    hash: '30738c6079394b4b5ed9e838e8be4eab7e2384df871345fa0291d9e0d51387f2' },

  Block {

    index: 2,

    previousHash: '30738c6079394b4b5ed9e838e8be4eab7e2384df871345fa0291d9e0d51387f2',

    timestamp: '20/07/2017',

    data: 

     { sender: 'javascript community',

       receiver: 'cleverti',

       amount: 8 },

    hash: '70e06c3ac50b5e8ca64b738fdb0559501c1e9ccb07862bb904e85848d096e111'

}]

Verifying our Blockchain

Now that we have 3 blocks in our chain, we’ll create a script to help us verify that things are in order. Our verification algorithm will check if:

1) Hash of current block is equal to the hash of the previous block
2) Loop the array of blocks, and recalculate hash to check if the value is different

isChainValid() {

    for (let i = 1; i < this.chain.length; i++){

        const currentBlock = this.chain[i];

        const previousBlock = this.chain[i - 1];



        if (currentBlock.hash !== currentBlock.calculateHash()) {

            return false;

        }



        if (currentBlock.previousHash !== previousBlock.hash) {

            return false;

        }

    }



    return true;

}

If none of the conditions above occurs, it means that our Blockchain was not tampered with and data is authentic:

console.log('Blockchain valid? ' + clevertiblockchain.isChainValid());
//Blockchain valid? True

Manipulating data on Blockchain

If we manipulate any of the blocks previously added to our Blockchain, none of the following blocks will be valid because the hashes would be different.

Let’s change the block 2 altering the value of the transaction from amount 4 to 3:

clevertiblockchain.chain[1].data = { sender: 'cleverti', receiver: 'javascript community',  amount: 3 }

clevertiblockchain.chain[1].hash = savjeeCoin.chain[1].calculateHash();

After this tiny change, the hash of the block would be totally different, which would make all the succeeding blocks invalid – the chain would be broken because the value previous block of the next block wouldn’t match the new hash of the block.

console.log('Blockchain valid? ' + clevertiblockchain.isChainValid());
//Blockchain valid? False

And that’s it! I hope you found this tutorial useful to understand some basics on Blockchain. If predictions come true, you will probably need it in a near future.

Written by João Silva |  Business Development Manager at Cleverti

The post How to set up a simple Blockchain with JavaScript appeared first on Cleverti.