Blockchain and Monetization of Content 699

The Promise of Ethereum

Ethereum, the leading blockchain platform, and catalyst for a growing number of decentralized applications and blockchain-based platforms has proven over the past 12 months that it is far from a fad. This immutable, unhackable, distributed database of digital assets is everything the Internet always wanted to be: a fair and public way to store and transfer information. This is a platform for truth and it’s a platform for trust.

In the music industry, the protection of rights and distribution of earnings within the music industry is a key consideration. Removing the ability for piracy and allowing listeners to download music stored on the blockchain, paying for the music with cryptocurrency would be one of the paradigm shifts. It would also mean that the right people get paid.

This challenge of monetizing content is also prevalent in the broadcast content industry. Ethereum Blockchain with smart contracts makes for a perfect solution.

Pain Points for Content Creators

The industry has not changed in over 80 years. Today, it continues to be a largely offline and extensive process, involving multiple dis-jointed parties – the creators, the owners, the distributors, the increasing array of formats (eg. mobile, free-to-air TV, cable, OTT, cinemas, etc) and then there is a global consumer base with differing interests and language preferences.

The whole ecosystem today is highly fragmented and content creators are challenged to optimally monetize their content. Compounding the monetization challenge is the fact that content creators also face extremely high costs of distribution. Because the value chain is a cumbersome process for content to reach end viewers; typically 30% to 40% of the value of the content is being lost to cost of distribution via third-party commissions and fees. Hosting a conference booth and meeting events with champagne in the South of France at the Cannes Film Festival is no cheap affair.

To give some context on the potential value of a piece of content, let’s take well-known franchises like “Game of Thrones” or the “F1 Series”.   These projects can be sold in 193+ countries via free-to-air, cable, satellite and streaming mobile platforms, that is, it can potentially be sold 600 different ways once you factor language and territorial configurations.

An “A” list project can potentially earn millions of dollars via such a syndication, however, a lesser known title is lucky to be sold in 10 countries and monetized in 10 ways. Hence the potential to optimize the value of this content is at least 50 times more for the content creator if they can easily monetize their content across the various permutations.

The chief pain points of content sellers are:

  • Rights are tied up for the long-term (average 2-5 years) in distributor exclusivity contracts
  • Distributor fees are significant; averaging 35% of the value of the content
  • Rights are typically sold in bulk with other content which limits differentiation for content creators
  • The multiplicity of currencies and the vagaries of the fluctuating exchange rates
  • Content ages very fast and becomes less attractive to distributors to market

Such problems, which appear daunting are actually very easy to address, provided you have a global platform and a globally trusted ledger. Enter Ethereum Blockchain.   

Pain Points for Content Buyers

Content buyers purchase rights to play the content on their own networks and channels, such as Netflix and cable TV channels like Sony. The buyers also face a host of problems:

  • The content discovery process is fragmented and manual
  • Delayed verifiability of the rights
  • Limited by distributor’s rights options
  • Bundled rights instead of customized selection

As we can see, these problems can also be solved by implementing a global platform and a globally trusted ledger. Thus, Blockchain is not an add-on, but a natural solution to the problems faced by the content rights industry.

Existing Solutions

There are companies operating traditional marketplaces for trading content rights today; like RightsTrade (2011), TRX (2015) and AllRites (2015). With the advent of the blockchain, we are starting to observe the emergence of companies like Hubii Network, LiveTree, and AllRites exploring the use of blockchain to democratize content.

In the case of AllRites, the company was established by media professionals with decades of experience in the industry. Being intimate with the distribution challenges, they are proponents of blockchain and are moving their existing marketplace onto the Ethereum Blockchain.

But they are not stopping there, the AllRites vision is to create an integrated B2B and B2C ecosystem to holistically support the overall industry. Built on Blockchain technology, the AllRites ecosystem will drive trade efficiencies between content producers and buyers globally, facilitate funding of creative ideas and offer direct streaming to end-customers. Two associated B2C platforms will complement their existing marketplace – RiteFund and RiteStream. For consumers, these platforms allow individuals to directly support and benefit from creative concepts that they believe in.

With RiteFund, the platform facilitates content creators to list their projects and allows prospective contributors to help get a project of their choice off the ground, like Kickstarter, but with infinitely more transparency in rights management and benefits sharing thanks to smart contracts.

RiteStream is for content owners with unsold rights to optimally monetize their content via direct streaming to a global viewership base. The smart contracts seamlessly manage viewers, rights availability and revenue sharing in the backend. For example, an OTT player, like iFlix, may purchase rights to showcase a piece of content in only 30 countries, with RiteStream that same piece of content can potentially be monetized in the remaining 163 countries by direct streaming, if viewers are interested in that content. View RiteStream like the “Spotify” of TV, Movies and Sports content.

For esoteric sports like, Extreme Sailing – they have ardent fans globally but such a sport is very niche and unlikely to garner support from mainstream broadcasters. With RiteFund, fans of Extreme Sailing can directly support creative talent who are also passionate about their sport and who are creating great content about it. These same creative talents can now monetize their content by streaming it directly to the Extreme Sailing fans globally via RiteStream.

Blockchain Technology Deployed

The team at AllRites believe that if the content itself can be reliably audited, the management of its rights becomes a much simpler exercise. Thanks to the Ethereum Blockchain, each ID can be a smart contract that manages the identity and purchase history of the rights belonging to one piece of content at an individual level. Thus, the rights can be sliced and diced in multiple ways and the buyers can buy only those rights which they need. The smart contract tied to each content piece records the transaction history of that content piece individually in a transparent and immutable manner.

While the content rights can be viewed by all prospective buyers, the sellers can be assured of optimal monetization due to the plethora of ways in which the rights have been divided into.

The ID tied to the content can be managed by creating a non-fungible token. It could be similar to the EIP721 protocol that was famously used by CryptoKitties. Thus, the sale and purchase of content rights can be recorded on individual non fungible tokens without affecting the entire ecosystem.

A global fungible token that adheres to the ERC20 standards can take care of the sale and purchase aspects of the deal. To ensure trust, AllRites will be storing the content as decentralized encrypted files which can be unlocked only by a private key.

On successful completion of a sale, the seller sends the private key to the buyer while the buyer transfers the payment tokens to the seller. As an added layer of security, the key and the tokens corresponding to the bid made on the content rights can be placed in an escrow. Once the sale is finalized, a smart contract takes over and governs the transfer of the private key and the tokens to the new owners in an automated manner.

Regarding the case of content creators with unsold content, the RiteStream platform caters to them. Here, the platform becomes the universal global distributor of the rights that went unsold and streams it directly to the viewers in exchange for tokens. In this case, content creators get a platform like YouTube, but with an infinitely better monetization potential.

It has also been seen that content creators, despite having amazing ideas, often struggle to get their plans off the ground due to lack of funding. Consumers are robbed of potential gems. In the music world, its analogues with the likes of Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen being discovered via YouTube.

With Ethereum, smart contracts can be implemented which facilitate the transfer of funds from fans and supporters directly to the content creators in an easy and trackable manner. Once the content is created, it is uploaded onto the AllRites Marketplace where content rights can be transacted. After subtracting for platform fees, all proceeds can be seamlessly transferred back to the fans/supporters corresponding to the ratio in which they were contributed.

Conclusion

Using blockchain and smart contracts makes the business of content rights deal making and distribution a lot less complicated and instantaneously verifiable. Blockchain takes care of the globally trusted ledger needs, the smart contracts take care of transactions by automating them.

This translates to tremendous efficiency gains for both content buyers and sellers. And, for owners of content, the age-old challenge of optimally monetizing their content is solved.

The added bonus is that in this new decentralized and immutable ecosystem driven by blockchain, consumers can finally have a direct say in what content they want to support and watch.

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Cloud Storage Security Announces the Official Launch of DataDefender, a Novel DSPM Platform Focused on Data Stored in the Cloud 1355

Prevent unintended exposure of sensitive data stored in the cloud, from innocent misconfigurations and internal saboteurs, to thwarting the most sophisticated malicious attacks.

Cloud Storage Security, an innovative start-up focused on securing data in the cloud, announces the immediate availability of its new DSPM platform, DataDefender. DataDefender delivers highly accurate classification of data stored in the cloud to identify and locate the most sensitive data, and provides continuous, real-time monitoring of all activities associated with data access to prevent unintended data exposure.

Common attack vectors to access sensitive data are the compromise of resources set with public access, deliberate acts of sabotage by inside personnel who have broad systems access, and of course external breaches by bad actors, like ransomware attacks. As cloud storage continues to scale, security teams struggle to answer basic questions about their data without digging through logs. Knowledge about what data exists, who has accessed it, and whether sensitive data has been exposed are often unavailable until something goes wrong.

Cloud Storage Security has developed a unique, AI-assisted approach to data classification that prioritizes actions to secure the riskiest data assets. This superior method of tagging sensitive data minimizes the possibility of false-negatives which would leave truly sensitive data unidentified, as well as false-positives resulting in misleading security alerts. Data classification schemes include industry standards like PII, HIPAA and GDPR; custom templates aligned to industries like finance and healthcare; and proprietary customer configurations. DataDefender also supports compliance tracking and audit requirements for common frameworks like SOC2 and PCI DSS.

“DataDefender accurately identifies and classifies data stored in the cloud, and alerts cloud engineers and security professionals where that data exists, including in cloud storage assets configured with public access,” stated Aaron Newman, CEO of Cloud Storage Security. “Data leaks generally occur either because sensitive data unknowingly resides in publicly accessible storage resources, or because of innocent misconfigurations and security holes related to access control. Serious data breaches may also result from malicious and intentional behavior by bad actors. All of these risks are monitored and significantly mitigated with DataDefender” Newman added.

DataDefender is a tool of choice to detect and thwart both data infiltration and exfiltration for cloud storage. It uses proprietary threat signatures – AI-based multi-stage attack detection – to find misconfigurations, and raise visibility to more than 10,000 potential paths for data compromise. DataDefender adds breadth to the covered data storage estate by addressing live cloud data stores as well as storage repositories that are archived.

Cloud Storage Security’s research division, Casmer Labs, focuses on threat intelligence and research concerning cloud computing, especially the storage layer in the cloud, and drives product innovation for DataDefender.

“Data exfiltration and unauthorized access due to the lack of basic security hygiene across multiple data stores, in combination, lead to drastically lowered security postures. DataDefender incorporates AI-assisted data classification combined with observed attacks to provide actionable security insights that also enable the detection of more complex, multi-stage attack chains.” stated Anirban Chowdhuri, Cloud Storage Security CTO.

DataDefender initially supports the AWS environment with plans to expand to Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and popular code repositories like GitHub. DataDefender’s evolution will make it a leading solution with a sharp focus on securing access to data with context, residing in multiple cloud platforms and hybrid enterprise environments.

DataDefender is immediately available for deployment.

About Cloud Storage Security:

Cloud Storage Security (CSS) was founded to help organizations secure the data they store in the cloud. In 2020, as many businesses accelerated their move to the cloud, our team introduced Antivirus for Amazon S3, an in-tenant, multi-engine malware scanning solution designed to answer a common question: “How do I protect my data in cloud storage?” The goal was simple: provide an effective, easy-to-use way to reduce risk without disrupting existing workflows.

As customers’ environments grew and their data needs became more complex, they looked for broader visibility and control across their cloud storage systems. We are now formally introducing DataDefender, a DSPM that offers inventory, classification, activity monitoring, threat detection, and configuration checks. Together, our products give organizations practical, reliable tools to strengthen data security in the cloud while keeping deployment and management straightforward.

About Casmer Labs:

Casmer Labs is a division of Cloud Storage Security focused on threat intelligence and research concerning cloud computing, especially the storage layer in the cloud.

Casmer Labs provides threat intelligence, security education, trend reports, and other information important to modern organizations. We provide this information free of charge and aim to educate the public and reduce the frequency of cyberattacks across all industries. The Casmer Labs team is composed of engineering, product, support, and dedicated threat research personnel.

PipBack Launches Futures Prop Firm Hub With Live Discounts and Trader Tools 1589

PipBack is an all-in-one futures prop firm hub built for traders who want better data, lower evaluation costs, and less guesswork. The platform combines live prop firm discounts, a recommendation tool, an evaluation calculator, a platform status monitor, and a full trading dashboard to help users choose the right firm, plan evaluations, track performance, and stay ahead of rule changes.

Prop firm trading has a cost problem. Not just the evaluation fees themselves, which add up fast, but the invisible costs: the wrong firm for your trading strategy, a rule change you didn’t hear about, a failed evaluation you could have planned better for on paper first. PipBack was built to close every one of those gaps.

Among the highest discounts for all futures prop firms, PipBack offers traders all tools a futures trader needs to get funded:

Complete Prop Firm Dashboard
An all-in-one control panel that tracks the full prop firm journey from evaluations to payouts. It follows all accounts, performance metrics like ROI, pass rate, payouts, and trading activity in one place, so traders can manage multiple evaluations and see real P&L without relying on spreadsheets.

Prop Firm Recommendation Tool
A filtering engine that helps traders choose the right prop firm based on platform, country, TrustPilot score, and firm history, narrowing the list to firms that actually fit their trading strategy.

Evaluation Calculator
A probability-based calculator that estimates pass probability, expected attempts, time to funding, and total cost before money is spent, using inputs such as win rate, RR, trade frequency, drawdown, and profit target.

Platform Status Monitor
A real-time monitoring system for platform outages and issues across major trading platforms, often alerting traders before firms officially confirm something is wrong.

Informed Trading Community
A Discord community that delivers real-time updates on rule changes, discounts, platform issues, and firm developments, acting as an early-warning system and shared information hub.

Highest Discounts In The Futures Prop Firm Industry

PipBack is partnered with the biggest futures prop firms in the industry. Our discounts are all easily accessible through a single code: PIP. This includes discounts with the following prop firms:

  • Apex Trader Funding: 80% off
  • AquaFutures: 50% off
  • BlueGuardian Futures: 50% off
  • DayTraders: 50% off
  • Elite Trader Funding: 50% off
  • Lucid Trading: 35% off
  • TakeProfitTrader: 40% off
  • Tradeify: 30% off
  • TradeDay: 20% off
  • FundedNext Futures: 5% off
  • MyFundedFutures: Discounts vary with every new campaign
  • Goat Funded Futures: 30% off

Instead of searching through X posts, Reddit threads, Discord servers, or expired affiliate pages, traders can find everything in one place on the offers page: https://pipback.com/offers/.

Your Entire Prop Firm Journey In One Place

PipBack recently launched its Futures Control Panel, a trading dashboard built to track every stage of prop firm activity. It is organized into three tabs: Journey, Insights, and Routine.

Journey: Keeping Track Of All Your Evaluations

The Journey tab organizes every evaluation by status: Planned, In Progress, Funded, and Failed. Each evaluation appears as a card that moves through these stages, giving an immediate overview of the firm, account size, purchase date, total evaluation cost, and payouts summary.

For traders who prefer a more traditional layout, the dashboard can switch between Kanban and List view. Adding a new evaluation takes one click, and from there the panel maintains a live record from purchase through payout. For anyone running multiple accounts across multiple firms, this removes a huge amount of manual tracking and makes the full evaluation history easy to follow.

Insights: Your Performance Across the Entire Evaluation Journey

The Insights tab pulls all evaluation data into one performance view, filterable by firm and time period.

At the KPI level, it tracks seven core metrics:

  • Average Time To Outcome
  • Total Invested
  • Total Payouts
  • ROI
  • Net Profit
  • Active Evaluations
  • Pass Rate, with strict and broad breakdowns

Together, these metrics show the real P&L of the trader’s full prop firm journey, something many traders otherwise only have in a spreadsheet.

Below that, the dashboard visualizes performance over time with charts for:

  • Attempts Over Time
  • Pass vs Fail Over Time
  • Invested vs Payouts Over Time

These become especially useful once a trader has several months of data. If capital invested keeps rising while payouts and pass rate do not improve, the problem becomes obvious quickly instead of being buried across separate accounts and firms.

The lower section adds deeper outcome analysis across six more charts:

  • Fail Reasons
  • Outcomes by Firm
  • Outcomes by Account Size
  • Cumulative Net Profit/Loss
  • Monthly Net Amounts
  • Quarterly Net Profitability

There is also a Financial Calendar, which maps expenses and payouts onto a weekly or monthly calendar. Evaluation purchases, activations, and resets appear as expenses, while payouts appear as earnings. Each day is color-coded by net position, and summarized totals for expenses, earnings, and net P&L are shown for the selected period.

Routine: Making A Pre-Session Plan

The Routine tab focuses on trading process and is organized into Pre-session, Journal, and Calendar.

In Pre-session Planning, traders build a structured plan around “Today’s Plan.” They select which evaluation accounts they will trade that day, then assign assets to each account. This makes it easier to separate different account objectives, for example treating one account conservatively while taking a more aggressive approach on another.

Two features sit alongside this daily planning workflow:

Stop Trading Time lets the trader set a cutoff time with a browser push notification. When the stop time is reached, PipBack sends an alert to end the session. The notification can be snoozed for 10 minutes or marked as done. These events are logged in the Journal, making it easier to identify whether discipline issues and overtrading correlate with poor performance.

Today’s Key Events provides a live economic calendar filtered by impact level such as High, Medium, or Low, with optional 10-minute pre-event alerts so major data releases or Fed announcements do not catch traders off guard.

After the session, traders can write a recap that feeds directly into the Journal tab, creating a consistent post-session record of what happened, whether the plan was followed, and what should carry into the next day. Since consistency is often an explicit evaluation rule, this kind of record matters more than most traders realize.

The Calendar then brings planned trading days, journal entries, and P&L into one view, adding structure to the routine instead of leaving it as a flat list of notes.

The Tools: Turning Guesswork Into Math

Prop Firm Recommendation Tool

Choosing the wrong prop firm is one of the easiest ways to waste money on evaluations that do not actually fit your trading. PipBack’s recommendation tool solves that with a short questionnaire based on platform compatibility, country of residence, minimum TrustPilot score, and years of operation.

Supported platforms include TradingView, NinjaTrader, Tradovate, Sierra Chart, Quantower, ProjectX, and more. Country filtering is built in as well, which matters in a market where eligibility restrictions can vary heavily by region.

The end result is simple: a filtered list of firms that actually match the trader’s goals and constraints.

Evaluation Calculator

The Evaluation Calculator helps traders assess an evaluation before paying for it. Inputs include strategy variables such as win rate, average risk-to-reward, trades per month, and risk per trade, along with evaluation structure details like one-phase, two-phase, or instant funding, profit targets, drawdown type, drawdown percentage, and whether the fee is refunded on first payout.

From there, the calculator produces probability-weighted projections, including:

  • Pass Probability
  • Expected Attempts
  • 90% Attempts
  • Expected Trades to Funded
  • Expected Cost (Gross)
  • 90% Budget
  • Break-Even on Funded
  • Expected Months to Funded

This turns evaluation planning from guesswork into math. A trader looking at a $150 evaluation with a 55% win rate and 1:1.5 R can see whether the setup is likely to pass in one attempt or whether the real budget should account for several tries.

Platform Status Monitor

Prop firms do not always acknowledge platform problems immediately, and during an evaluation that delay matters. PipBack’s Platform Status Monitor tracks real-time operational status across the platforms commonly used in futures prop trading.

Coverage includes:

  • Critical Infrastructure: CQG, ProjectX, R Trader Pro, R|Trader, Rithmic, Tradovate
  • Major Retail Platforms: BookMap, MotiveWave, NinjaTrader, Quantower, TradingView
  • Specialized / Orderflow: ATAS, Deepcharts, DeepMap, Jigsaw Trading, volbook, volsys, Volumetrica

Traders can view recent outage reports for each platform, open dedicated detail pages, and report issues themselves to warn others. In a space where downtime can directly affect an active evaluation, having faster visibility is critical.

The Intelligence Center: PipBack’s Discord Community

PipBack’s Discord serves as a real-time information channel for futures prop trading. Its tracking system monitors the prop firm landscape for developments that firms do not always communicate clearly or quickly, including:

  • Rule changes such as evaluation requirements, trailing drawdown adjustments, and consistency rules
  • Payout structure changes such as withdrawal timing, payout caps, or profit split changes
  • Discount windows including flash sales and limited-time campaigns
  • Country restrictions and eligibility changes
  • Broader prop firm news

One example was a backend adjustment at Lucid Trading that was picked up before it became widely recognized: they reduced the number of payout requests required on LucidFlex before a funded account moves to live capital.

That kind of change matters because it directly affects trader planning. Sometimes traders want to delay live capital for as long as possible, and sometimes they need to adjust quickly to new terms. The value is not just in the information itself, but in getting it while action can still be taken.

Beyond updates, the Discord also adds a community layer through strategy discussions, shared experiences, and general futures trading conversation.

How Everything Fits Together

Most platforms in this space solve only one problem. Affiliate sites push discount codes. Comparison blogs review firms. Traders then piece together the rest with spreadsheets, Discord servers, and scattered notes.

PipBack brings the full process together in one place: helping traders choose the right firm, lower evaluation costs, estimate pass probability, track results, monitor platform issues, stay ahead of rule changes, and maintain a consistent trading routine.

For traders using multiple evaluations, that creates something most never fully build on their own: a complete record of prop trading activity, money spent, payouts received, and the analytics needed to understand what the data is actually saying.

For anyone who treats futures prop trading as a repeatable process rather than a one-shot bet, PipBack turns what would otherwise require several tools, constant monitoring, and a spreadsheet that eventually gets abandoned into one all-in-one futures prop firm hub.

PipBack is free to use. Sign up at pipback.com.

About PipBack

PipBack is an all-in-one intelligence hub for futures prop firm traders. Built by ex-prop firm owners, PipBack helps traders compare futures prop firms, track live discount codes, understand evaluation rules, and use tools such as a recommendation flow, evaluation calculator, and trader dashboard. The platform is designed to help traders reduce evaluation costs, choose the right firm faster, and manage their prop firm journey in one place.

BestEx Research Launches Curator, a Dark Algorithm Designed to Move Beyond Aggregation and Systematically Address the Cost Gaps of Dark Execution 1515

Curator applies a layered, venue-specific framework to protect execution quality against drivers of cost, both measurable and invisible, in an increasingly complex dark landscape

BestEx Research Group LLC, an independent provider of high-performance algorithmic execution and measurement solutions for institutions trading equities and futures, today announced the launch of Curator, a dark execution algorithm designed to improve execution quality by applying a research-backed, systematic approach to filtering toxic interactions in alternative trading systems (ATSs).

As off-exchange trading volumes have surged, so has the complexity and toxicity of the ATS landscape. While most execution algorithms are engineered to access the broadest set of dark venues, it is critical to optimize the terms on which they engage them as well. The order types, segmentation options, and default settings that govern each ATS interaction vary significantly across venues and, without rigorous, venue-specific analysis, this can expose traders to information leakage and adverse selection that erode execution quality. For some common behaviors, the cost of that exposure is measurable, but for others it is entirely unknown to the trader.

Curator was developed to address these challenges directly, curating liquidity based on market structure expertise and model-based intelligence. The algorithm applies settings derived from deep study of ATS-N filings, employs data-driven segmentation selection to determine where counterparty filtering is beneficial, balances and optimizes taking and providing behavior based on each tactic’s structural exposure to adverse selection, and can deploy real-time signals to identify optimal conditions for engagement. For conditional orders, Curator applies proprietary order placement methodology to limit information leaked by each interaction—whether executed and faded—while maximizing hit rate simultaneously. Each of these capabilities is calibrated to client urgency and applied on a venue-by-venue basis, reflecting BestEx Research’s finding that no single approach is effective across all venues and conditions.

“Most algorithms can reach most ATSs, but few are built to optimize how exactly they use them. Curator is an expression of what we believe algorithmic execution should be—grounded in rigorous research to uncover and correct what is actually costing our clients in their execution,” said Hitesh Mittal, Founder and CEO of BestEx Research. “Our ambition is to bring this level of rigor to every dimension of execution, and Curator represents that commitment applied to one of the most complex and consequential areas of market structure.”

Clients can access BestEx Research’s complete research-backed dark liquidity playbook, detailing the market structure analysis and quantitative framework detailed above that underlies Curator’s design.

For more information about BestEx Research’s high-performance, multi-asset execution algorithms, visit bestexresearch.com.

About BestEx Research

BestEx Research Group LLC is a provider of sophisticated execution algorithms for equities and global futures aimed at reducing trading costs for buy-side managers. The firm’s cloud-based Algorithm Management System (AMS) combines its execution algorithms with a user-friendly dashboard, transaction cost analysis, customization, and automation in the industry’s first multi-asset, independent algorithmic execution platform. BestEx Research also offers sell-side firms a seamless, customizable trading solution for their clients with no coding required. For more information on BestEx Research’s mission and products, or to request a product demo, visit www.bestexresearch.com.

Niobium Introduces The Fog, a New Encrypted Cloud Platform for Private AI and Data Processing 1804

The first cloud infrastructure built from the ground up for complete data privacy; early access now open with public launch targeted for late Q2 2026

Niobium, a leader in hardware acceleration for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), today introduced The Fog, a private cloud infrastructure platform that enables organizations to run applications and AI workloads on data that remains encrypted at all times, even during computation. Like fog, nothing inside can be seen from the outside. Decryption keys remain exclusively with the data owner, and Niobium has no access to customer data at any stage of computation. The platform is now available in private beta, with a public launch targeted for late Q2 2026.

The Fog redefines what organizations can do with their most sensitive and valuable data. Backed by FHE, which is mathematically proven to keep data private, The Fog enables organizations to use sensitive data without exposing it, addressing a longstanding challenge in cloud computing. This architecture enables full use of regulated data sets, secure collaboration across partners, and private AI and ML applications.

“For too long, organizations have had to accept data exposure as the cost of doing business in the cloud,” said Kevin Yoder, CEO of Niobium. “The Fog eliminates that tradeoff. We’re building a cloud platform where data can be used without ever being revealed. Our goal is to make encrypted computing practical, scalable, and accessible to the teams that need it most.”

The Fog is a self-service encrypted cloud platform that allows developers and enterprises to provision servers and custom hardware, deploy FHE applications, and run production workloads without sharing decryption keys with any third party, including Niobium. Users manage every aspect through a unified cloud portal, simplifying access to encrypted compute infrastructure.

To lead the cloud infrastructure buildout, Niobium has appointed Rob Sherrard as Head of Cloud.

“Encrypted compute is the next platform shift, and we’re building the infrastructure that makes it not just possible, but inevitable,” said Sherrard. “Inside The Fog, computation happens entirely under encryption. Owners hold the keys, the fog never lifts, and the work still gets done.”

FPGA Performance Today, ASIC Acceleration Ahead

The Fog is designed to address the two primary barriers that have historically limited FHE adoption: performance and usability.

The Fog launches on the mistic Core FPGA accelerator, delivering up to 2x faster FHE performance than any GPU or accelerator currently on the market.

Niobium is also developing a purpose-built ASIC in partnership with SEMIFIVE and Samsung Foundry. The ASIC will deliver significantly higher performance while remaining fully software-compatible with applications built on The Fog today, allowing early users to transition seamlessly as new hardware becomes available.

First FHE Applications

The Fog will also launch with a library of pre-built FHE applications designed to demonstrate real-world encrypted compute use cases and to lower barriers to adoption. Initial applications include:

  • Encrypted Semantic Search (Secure RAG): Query sensitive data by meaning rather than exact match, protecting both the query and the underlying dataset throughout.
  • Federated Learning: Train models across distributed, encrypted datasets without centralizing or exposing the underlying data.
  • Machine Learning Classification (e.g. Network Intrusion Detection): Analyze encrypted data to identify patterns and threats without exposing underlying information.

Additional template applications are in development.

Developer Access and Ecosystem

The Fog is backed by a complete software ecosystem designed to make FHE accessible to developers without a background in cryptography. The stack includes a compiler, SDK, template applications, documentation, and a single pane of glass for managing hardware, applications, and workloads. Together, they turn FHE into a practical engineering tool.

Private beta access to The Fog is available now. Early access participants receive:

  • Early access to the mistic Core FPGA accelerator hardware
  • First access to new platform features, applications, and performance updates ahead of public launch
  • Direct engagement with the Niobium engineering and cryptography team

Developers and organizations interested in early access can sign up and get more information at niobium.co. The Fog is targeting a Q2 2026 public launch.

About Niobium

Niobium is building the first dedicated hardware platform designed to advance fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) into commercial applications. FHE keeps data encrypted even during computation, mathematically guaranteeing privacy. Niobium’s accelerator hardware and The Fog encrypted cloud platform give developers and enterprises the tools to compute on sensitive data without ever exposing it. Niobium is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California. More information is available at niobium.co.

Dual Launches to Open Enterprise-Proven Web3 Infrastructure Powering the Programmable Economy 1722

Today at ETHCC[9] in Cannes, Dual launches as the new identity for a platform that has already powered large-scale tokenized applications for global enterprises.

Built on nearly a decade of production deployments, Dual opens previously enterprise-focused infrastructure to a broader ecosystem of developers, teams, and partners, enabling the creation and operation of programmable assets across real-world and digital environments.

Reeve Collins, co-founder of Dual and co-founder and former CEO of Tether, said: “We built Tether to tokenize the dollar. It became a $185 billion asset. Dual is built to make everything else programmable. Hundreds of trillions in assets that can now carry their own rules, identity, and logic. That’s the programmable economy.”

From Proven Enterprise Infrastructure to Open Access

Since introducing programmable “smart” tokens in 2017, the platform behind Dual has supported more than 50 million deployed tokens and facilitated one of the largest onboardings of users into Web3, with over 11.5 million unique wallets created.

Through enterprise partnership with Smart Media Technologies, Dual technology powers tokenized programs for global brands including Visa, PepsiCo, Unilever, and the Olympic Games.

Lukas Fluri, co-founder and CEO of Dual, said: “The next wave of the internet will be driven by programmable assets and autonomous systems. Dual takes what has already been proven at enterprise scale and makes it accessible to anyone building the next generation of applications.”

Infrastructure for the Programmable Economy

Dual provides a unified platform for issuing, verifying, and orchestrating programmable assets across real-world ecosystems.

Rather than requiring teams to build complex blockchain infrastructure from scratch, Dual offers a streamlined development environment with prebuilt modules and standardized components. This allows developers to focus on application logic while relying on proven systems for security, execution, and scalability.

The result is a faster and more reliable path from concept to production, particularly for complex tokenization use cases that require high performance and reliability at scale.

These include:

  • Real-world asset tokenization
  • Loyalty and rewards systems
  • Digital product passports
  • Certifications and compliance
  • Emerging agent-driven applications

By simplifying how tokenized systems are built and deployed, Dual expands access to a category that has historically required deep technical expertise.

Built for Developers and AI Agents

A key aspect of Dual is its support for AI-driven development.

Because applications are composed using secure, production-tested modules, AI agents can interact directly with the protocol to create and manage programmable assets without writing raw smart contract code. This approach reduces risk while enabling a more reliable way to build tokenized systems.

While AI-assisted development is becoming more common, building secure tokenized applications has remained complex and error-prone. Dual addresses this by providing a controlled framework where both developers and AI agents can operate safely.

This expands access beyond highly specialized teams and enables a broader ecosystem of builders to develop programmable applications.

The DUAL Token

The DUAL token serves as the economic layer of the network, powering protocol usage, network fees, staking, and governance.

As activity increases across the platform, the token becomes directly tied to how the network operates, aligning usage with participation.

The DUAL token launches on Kraken on March 31 and is also available on decentralized exchanges, providing access across both centralized and on-chain markets.

About Dual

Dual is a protocol for issuing, verifying, and orchestrating tokenized programmable assets across real-world ecosystems. It provides enterprise-grade infrastructure for building scalable tokenized applications, now open to developers, teams, and partners globally.

Learn more at https://dual.org.

Nium Launches Dual-Network Stablecoin Card Issuance Platform Enabling Businesses to Spend Digital Dollars at Hundreds of Millions of Merchant Locations Worldwide 1635

Nium delivers the first enterprise platform spanning both Visa and Mastercard, backed by 40+ regulatory licenses across 190+ countries – requiring no new infrastructure to build.

Nium, the global infrastructure leader for real-time cross-border payments and card issuance, today launched its stablecoin card issuance platform. The solution enables companies holding stablecoins to issue spending cards on both the Visa and Mastercard networks through a single API integration, allowing stablecoins to be used at hundreds of millions of merchant locations globally.

Stablecoins have crossed the threshold from experiment to infrastructure. With regulatory frameworks advancing in the US, EU, and across Asia Pacific, and an estimated $200 billion in stablecoins now in circulation, enterprises are no longer asking whether to hold digital dollars – they are asking how to put them to work. Designed to be complementary to existing systems, Nium’s platform extends the utility of stablecoins by connecting them to established payments network infrastructure – bringing the acceptance, reliability, and safeguards that businesses and consumers already trust. Businesses will be able to convert stablecoin balances into real spending power through seamless crypto to fiat conversion at the point of sale at hundreds of millions merchant locations worldwide, without building new infrastructure or navigating a fragmented web of network agreements, banking sponsors, and compliance filings.

“Stablecoins have proven they can move money. We are now proving they can power commerce at enterprise scale. Every business we speak to that holds stablecoins wants the same thing: a simple, compliant way to deploy those balances without building the infrastructure themselves. Today, Nium delivers exactly that – on both major payments networks, in every major market, through one integration,” said Prajit Nanu, CEO and Founder of Nium.

One platform. Established networks. Trusted, global reach.

Businesses connect to Nium via a single API and can immediately:

  • Issue stablecoin-funded cards globally. Enable card-based spending via the Visa and Mastercard networks, leveraging their established global acceptance, security, and consumer protections.
  • Enable stablecoin settlement options where supported. Reduce multi-step fiat conversion chains and operational friction while maintaining compliance with applicable regulatory, network and market requirements.
  • Spend and disburse through one partner. Card issuance paired with Nium’s 190+ country payout network, enabling companies to deploy stablecoin balances via cards and payouts without managing separate provider relationships.

Nium has reduced time-to-market for stablecoin card programs from months of custom infrastructure work to days. The platform handles chain-of-conversion complexity, cross-border settlement constraints, and card network compliance in a single managed layer, replacing what would otherwise require multiple vendor relationships and fragmented integrations.

“We are building at the intersection of stablecoins, AI, and programmable money because we believe the next generation of payments will be faster, smarter, and built on digital currencies. Today’s launch is the opening move. We want to ensure our customers are positioned for what comes next,” added Prajit Nanu.

Built on the infrastructure that already moves the world’s money

Nium’s stablecoin card platform is a native extension of infrastructure that already issues 38 million card tokens annually for banks, fintechs, and enterprises worldwide – with the network relationships, regulatory coverage, and settlement rails that would take years to build independently.

Unmatched network foundation. With principal memberships across Visa and Mastercard, Nium’s customers are positioned to benefit from future stablecoin opportunities as the category matures.
Compliant issuance at scale. Nium’s own regulatory licenses in 40+ countries remove the dependency on third-party banking intermediaries that add cost and slow time-to-market.

About Nium

Nium provides global infrastructure for real-time cross-border payments, founded on the mission to deliver the global money movement infrastructure of tomorrow, today. Its platform enables banks, fintechs, and enterprises to collect, convert, and disburse funds instantly across borders. Its payout network supports 100 currencies and spans 190+ countries, over 100 of which are in real-time. Funds can be disbursed to accounts, wallets, and cards, and collected locally in 40 markets.

As a principal card issuer on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and UATP, Nium issues over 38 million card tokens every year. It holds regulatory licenses and authorizations in more than 40 countries, enabling seamless onboarding, rapid integration, and compliance – independent of geography. Nium is backed by leading investors including Visa, Riverwood Capital, Tribe Capital, and NewView Capital. The company is co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore. For more information, visit www.nium.com.