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Ren Labs, creator of a protocol for cross-blockchain value exchange, today announced that Catalog, the first consumer application built on the Ren blockchain, has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round. Devised by Ren Labs, Catalog is a DeFi app powering cross and multi-chain exchange with zero gas fees.

Now with the waitlist open, Catalog aims to be the first ‘metaversal’ decentralized exchange (DEX) and automatic market maker (AMM) to swap fungible and non-fungible assets across any blockchain. Through connecting assets and existing liquidity securely across blockchains in a single, user-friendly app, Catalog provides trustless and permissionless interoperability between chains.

Catalog is a key component in Ren’s plan to build an ecosystem of third-party apps on the Ren layer-0 blockchain.

Catalog Features

With low, flat-rate processing fees of only 0.3% per transaction, Catalog users will never have to worry about the high, unpredictable, and confusing gas fees that have frustrated Ethereum users and hindered the mainstream adoption of DeFi. In addition to enabling token swaps across blockchains, users can also earn interest on the assets they hold in their Catalog accounts without having to take any additional steps such as staking or adding funds to liquidity pools.

Planned features of Catalog also include seamless on and off-ramp experiences, including the ability to link a bank account for easy deposits and withdrawals. The addition of bank account linking means Catalog users will not need to hold any existing crypto to join the platform. Further, an intuitive user experience will make it easy to send another user tokens just by typing their username, rather than a complicated and hard-to-remember wallet address.

“We know that the future of DeFi will be cross-chain and multi-chain but there’s currently no simple, decentralized way to make transactions and conduct business across different blockchains. Catalog solves this by connecting any user instantly to the entire DeFi ecosystem through one, incredibly easy-to-use app. This is the first of many applications that will be built on the Ren blockchain to power this borderless vision and we’re incredibly excited for the future.” 
– Susruth Nadimpalli, Co-Founder of Ren Labs

Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap on Ethereum or Raydium on Solana have become critical to swapping assets built on those specific blockchains, Catalog will enable users to swap tokens on the same chain or those on other chains in seconds.

By leveraging the Ren technology that has already been used to process almost $10 billion in secure cross-chain swaps, Catalog benefits from the secure and complex cryptography leveraged by Ren that creates secret private keys unknown to even the network itself.

Led by Amber Group, investors included Multicoin Capital, Alameda Research, BlockTower, Cumberland, GBV Capital, Chiron Partners, Fisher8 Capital, LedgerPrime, Bixin, ROK Capital, and PetRock Capital.

The post First Ren blockchain app Catalog raises $7.5M to develop cross-chain asset metaversal exchange  appeared first on CryptoNinjas.

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By: CryptoNinjas.net
Title: First Ren blockchain app Catalog raises $7.5M to develop cross-chain asset metaversal exchange 
Sourced From: www.cryptoninjas.net/2022/02/23/first-ren-blockchain-app-catalog-raises-7-5m-to-develop-cross-chain-asset-metaversal-exchange/
Published Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2022 22:23:18 +0000

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Tech

Uber’s facial recognition is locking Indian drivers out of their accounts 

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9 hours ago

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September 28, 2023

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Srikanth before and after comparison image edited

One early evening in February last year, a 23-year-old Uber driver named Niradi Srikanth was getting ready to start another shift, ferrying passengers around the south Indian city of Hyderabad in his midsize sedan. He pointed the phone at his face to take a selfie to verify his identity. The process usually worked seamlessly. But this time he was unable to log in.

It didn’t take long for Srikanth to come up with a theory as to why. He had just returned from visiting the Hindu Tirupati temple, 350 miles away, where he had shaved his head and prayed for a prosperous life.

The Uber app prompted Srikanth to try again, so he waited a few minutes and took another picture. Rejected again.

“I was worried about bookings. We have daily targets where if we complete a certain number of bookings, we get incentives,” Srikanth says. “I was anxious to log in and start driving, and not waste any time.” So he tried once more. This time he used a second phone to pull up an image of himself from before he visited the temple. When he took a picture of it, Uber informed him that his account had been blocked.

Srikanth is not alone. In a survey conducted by MIT Technology Review of 150 Uber drivers in the country, almost half had been either temporarily or permanently locked out of their accounts as a result of problems with their selfie. Many suspected that a change in their appearance, such as facial hair, a shaved head, or a haircut, was to blame. Another quarter of them believe it was due to low lighting.

Srikanth thinks the split-second decision to take a picture of another phone cost him his livelihood: he went from earning over $500 a month to nothing. He spent months afterward trying to get his account reinstated, to no avail. Eventually he had to move back to his hometown, where he works a few different jobs and makes barely 10% of what he used to.

Srikanth is far from the only worker in India who must interact with facial recognition technology. In addition to the country’s 600,000 Uber drivers, many others work for the homegrown ride-sharing platform Ola and for startups such as Swiggy, Zomato, and Urban Company. All ask their platform workers to upload selfies for logins or verifications.

Before and after comparison photos of Srikanth after a change to his haircut and facial hair
Niradi Srikanth, before and after he changed his facial hair and hair style.COURTESY PHOTOS

In other markets, gig workers have fought back against facial recognition. In the UK, for example, at least 35 Uber drivers claimed last year that their accounts were wrongly terminated. The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain has blamed a “racist algorithm.” Uber has faced at least two lawsuits in the UK because of the software

Some countries and regions have moved to provide better protections for gig workers. The EU proposed a directive last year to improve working conditions and provide algorithmic transparency. And in September 2021, California court struck down Proposition 22, a ballot initiative that excluded gig workers from employee benefits under state law. These regulations recognize that algorithmic systems can “negatively impact the rights of workers,” says Divij Joshi, a lawyer and a PhD candidate at University College London. But India currently has few legal protections in place for gig workers, Joshi says: “These same transparency efforts are not being seen in India from a policy or regulatory lens.”

If problems persist—and protections remain limited—they could have an outsize effect, and not just on work. “Labor platforms in India are starting to become a key interface between the worker, the market, and the government—they enable loans for cars or even credit for larger household expenses,” says Aditi Surie, a senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, who has done research on gig work in India. In a country where such work can catapult someone from precarity to a middle-class existence (especially when estimates suggest that the majority of people worldwide who fell into poverty during the pandemic live in India), getting blocked from or

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By: Varsha Bansal
Title: Uber’s facial recognition is locking Indian drivers out of their accounts 
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/06/1064287/ubers-facial-recognition-is-locking-indian-drivers-out-of-their-accounts/
Published Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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The Download: fusion power’s future, and robotic running

Published

11 hours ago

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September 28, 2023

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This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Why the dream of fusion power isn’t going away

There’s a joke about fusion power that always comes up when people start talking about the technology. It goes like this: Fusion is the energy of the future … and it always will be.

Fusion reactors could someday deliver cheap, abundant power with no carbon emissions. But the promise of “someday” has been around for a long time without payoff. Fusion has generated so much excitement but also so much skepticism. It’s the ultimate long shot in energy technology.

But despite the massive technical challenges, the promise of fusion’s round-the-clock power with no carbon emissions means that experts say we mustn’t give up on it. Read the full story.

Psst: our climate reporter Casey Crownhart will be discussing the future of long-shot climate technologies like fusion during our second annual ClimateTech conference, taking place at MIT on October 4 and 5. Nab your ticket now

This story first appeared in The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

This robotic exoskeleton can help runners sprint faster

What’s happened: A wearable exoskeleton can help runners increase their speed by encouraging them to take more steps, allowing them to cover short distances more quickly, a new study has found.

How it works: The researchers built a lightweight exosuit with steel cables powered by electrical motors attached to the runner’s thighs. The motors pull the cables, mimicking the contraction of muscles. The exosuit helps people run faster by assisting their hip extension—the powerful motion that propels a runner forward.

Big ambitions: Buoyed by their findings, the researchers want to see if their exosuit can help a runner to beat the men’s world record for running 100 meters. They’re working on a customized exosuit for Kyung-soo Oh, a former national elite runner in South Korea who had retired, in a bid to break Usain Bolt’s record of 9.58 seconds. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

MIT Technology Review flash sale!

It’s the final day of our flash sale, allowing you to subscribe to MIT Technology Review from just $8 a month for digital-only access, or $99 a year for both digital access and to receive our print issues in the post.

Even better, you’ll receive a free copy of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2023 issue as well. Sign up today and save 17% off the full price.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Meta has released a slew of AI chatbots with famous personas
Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg-inspired AI chatbots are coming to its apps. (The Verge)
Its new conversational chatbot Meta AI is its answer to ChatGPT. (WP $)
Meta is confident that private data hasn’t been used to train the model. (Reuters)
Chinese AI chatbots want to be your emotional support. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The Hollywood writers’ strike is over
After they managed to secure protections against AI writing scripts. (TechCrunch)
Studios can still present writers with AI-generated material, though. (Motherboard)
There’s no contracted agreement with the major AI firms in place, either. (Wired $)

3 OpenAI is secretly working on a consumer device 
In conjunction with tech design supremo Jony Ive, no less. (FT $)
Hardware for the AI age is an interesting proposition. (The Information $)
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Google is increasingly handing over location data to the police
And innocent people’s information is often caught up in the process. (Bloomberg $)

5 X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino says it will make a profit next year
Despite Elon Musk’s recent announcement about a major drop in advertising revenue. (WSJ $)
Yaccarino says 90% of its top advertisers have returned. (Bloomberg $)

6 We’re living in the age of the austerity influencer
Money-saving experts hold a huge sway over their budget-conscious audience. (The Guardian)

7 We don’t build cities anymore
But trying to fix the ones we already have isn’t simple, either. (The Atlantic $)
The smart city is a perpetually unrealized utopia. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Wikiracing is seriously wholesome
The art of racing between Wikipedia articles in as few clicks as possible is harder than it sounds. (Slate $)

9 Online creators are having an identity crisis
They’ve outgrown their personal brands, but their fans won’t let them change. (Bustle)

10 Scientists are releasing armies of crabs in Florida
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By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: fusion power’s future, and robotic running
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/28/1080408/the-download-fusion-powers-future-and-robotic-running/
Published Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2023 12:10:00 +0000

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The Download: Uber’s flawed facial recognition, and police drones

Published

1 day ago

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September 27, 2023

By

1f5bc

This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Uber’s facial recognition is locking Indian drivers out of their accounts

One evening in February last year, a 23-year-old Uber driver named Niradi Srikanth was getting ready to start another shift, ferrying passengers around the south Indian city of Hyderabad. He pointed the phone at his face to take a selfie to verify his identity. The process usually worked seamlessly. But this time he was unable to log in.

Srikanth suspected it was because he had recently shaved his head. After further attempts to log in were rejected, Uber informed him that his account had been blocked. He is not alone. In a survey conducted by MIT Technology Review of 150 Uber drivers in the country, almost half had been either temporarily or permanently locked out of their accounts because of problems with their selfie.

Hundreds of thousands of India’s gig economy workers are at the mercy of facial recognition technology, with few legal, policy or regulatory protections. For workers like Srikanth, getting blocked from or kicked off a platform can have devastating consequences. Read the full story.

—Varsha Bansal

I met a police drone in VR—and hated it

Police departments across the world are embracing drones, deploying them for everything from surveillance and intelligence gathering to even chasing criminals. Yet none of them seem to be trying to find out how encounters with drones leave people feeling—or whether the technology will help or hinder policing work.

A team from University College London and the London School of Economics is filling in the gaps, studying how people react when meeting police drones in virtual reality, and whether they come away feeling more or less trusting of the police.

MIT Technology Review’s Melissa Heikkilä came away from her encounter with a VR police drone feeling unnerved. If others feel the same way, the big question is whether these drones are effective tools for policing in the first place. Read the full story.

Melissa’s story is from The Algorithm, her weekly newsletter covering AI and its effects on society. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Twitter won’t be able to cope with the next natural disaster
Its looser moderation and verification make it harder to sift out reliable information. (Wired $)
The platform is now poorly equipped to fend off bad actors too. (Slate $)
There’s still no clear viable alternative to Twitter. (The Verge)
Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Crypto’s staunchest defenders are trying to rewrite history 
The same people who lobbied against regulations are now criticizing the US government for not reigning in Sam Bankman-Fried. (The Atlantic $)
FTX’s collapse was triggered by its reliance on four tokens. (WSJ $)
Goldman Sachs is planning a crypto spending spree. (Reuters)

3 Neuralink is being investigated for animal cruelty
The number of deaths is higher than it needs to be, according to staff complaints. (Reuters)

4 Women are suing Apple after their exes used AirTags to stalk them
Despite the company’s claim the device is “stalker-proof.” (Bloomberg $)

5 Facebook is threatening to pull news from its platform in the US
If Congress passes new pro-publisher legislation. (WSJ $)

6 America’s drug shortages are getting worse
Essential drug shortages are becoming more frequent, and longer-lasting. (Vox)
The pandemic has likely changed children’s microbiomes. (The Atlantic $)
The next pandemic is already here. Covid can teach us how to fight it. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Who should pay for gene therapy?
While it’s possible the cost will drop over time, we don’t know how long the effects of the therapies will last. (Wired $)
This family raised millions to get experimental gene therapy for their children. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A spirituality influencer’s fans keep getting arrested 
Rashad Jamal’s followers have been accused of killing several people. (Motherboard)

9 How TikTok makes, and breaks, aspiring singers
Wannabe artists can perform to online audiences of millions before they’ve played a single in-person show. (New Yorker $)
TikTok is expected to ride out the social media advertising freeze. (FT $)

10 Microscopic replicas of famous paintings could help to foil forgers
🖼
Thanks to a bit of inspiration from butterflies. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“Do we really need to say,

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————

By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: Uber’s flawed facial recognition, and police drones
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/06/1064334/download-uber-flawed-facial-recognition-police-drones/
Published Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2022 13:10:00 +0000

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