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Welcome to the Zeroth Technology blog space

This is where we share our latest thinking, rants, and some ramblings... it's also the archive for everything we've been talking about for years.

The Role of Content Addressability in Context Units: Building Distributed Knowledge Systems

A technical exploration of how content-addressable storage principles enable robust, distributed knowledge management through immutable context units

Introduction

When we think about things our knowledge flows like water - it's hard to grasp why we know something or where we learned it (we sometimes don't stop to think about if it is even true), yet we are able to draw conclusions that we "think" are right. If we later ask "why did I think that" we can rationalize our thought process to explain/convince others, but that is usually done in hindsight. We like to think that logic and reason guided us to a conclusion, but most of our decisions are just made by our gut and we then justify them later. The more often we turn out to be right the less we are challenged and the more confident we are in our thinking.

Enhancing Digital Identity Verification

A Strategic Framework Against AI-Driven Identity Fraud

Abstract

The proliferation of AI-generated deepfakes has escalated threats of identity fraud in digital communications. This paper examines existing identity verification methods, introduces a strategic framework employing layered defenses to significantly increase attacker complexity, and proposes integrating cryptographic visual signatures alongside traditional verification methods. By analyzing attacker-defender dynamics using game theory, and referencing contemporary adversarial economics literature, we demonstrate the practical effectiveness of combining multiple verification modalities to deter identity fraud.

Are Enterprise AI Agents just RPA rebranded?

There’s nothing new under the sun… If 20 years of technology consulting has taught me anything, it’s that a good story can be retold forever. Sometimes we just need to update it with the current buzz words or fit it to current the narrative for it to seem relevant. Today’s narrative of choice, of course, is AI. We hear a lot about how enterprise AI agents are going to revolutionize corporate organizations, but when I ask people how, it sounds a lot like the same old story.

Data Asset Token vs. Product Token

I’ve recently been thinking a bit about data as an asset and the concept of data asset tokens. Much of my thinking was influenced by Michael Clark whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the recent Filecoin Uncharted event (thanks Porter). This post is probably more about vocabulary than content, but vocabulary is important (at least that's what I tell my kids).

Nexus: A counter argument to blockchain's "Achilles heel"

Often we have books by great thinkers that shape the way we view the world and influence our outlook on the future. For me Yuval Harari is one such thinker. In this post I share my reaction/counterpoint to a statement that Prof. Harari makes in his new book "Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI".

Blinky Light Thing: An Approach for Verifiable Real-Time Video

Zeroth Technology, Inc

  • James Canterbury
  • Patrick Macom
  • Ankur Garg

https://zeroth.technology

August 1st, 2024

Executive Summary

This white paper introduces the Blinky Light Thingy (BLT), a novel approach for real-time video authentication in live-streaming environments. The BLT embeds cryptographic messages into the physical environment being recorded, making it difficult to modify the video feed in real-time and avoiding the reliance on specialized trusted hardware. This approach addresses the growing challenge of distinguishing between authentic and generative content, particularly in the context of live video streams where it is becoming more common place for someone to "wear" the filter of another person and perpetuate fraud in what is typically considered a trusted environment. By utilizing Ethereum Attestation Services, a "do-it-yourself" hardware device, and open sourced encoding/decoding software, BLT provides a robust method for verifying both the identity of the presenter and the contemporaneousness (real-time nature) of the content.

Contract Wallets as Containers

There are interesting things happening with account abstraction, but one function I haven’t heard much about is transferring the ownership of a wallet from one user to another. There are a bunch of use cases where this could be useful, I'd like to share my thoughts on how this effects supply chain.

Interobjectivity... ?

I love a good buzz word, especially one that sounds smart; could this be a new narrative that helps us express our intents in a digital world? In exploring where this came from it helped me crystalize my understating of the difference between rules and laws in autonomous virtual worlds. Even though that sounds like a stretch, this is gong to effect the way we do things in the real world sooner rather than later.

Does Knowing Make You Accountable?

In my recent post about supply chain a friend replied in the comments that “I’ve come to the realization that big business doesn’t want that level of transparency, because transparency = accountability.”.  To which my quick counter reply was “Being able to keep transactions confidential is key, but even this creates accountability - so we need an incentive that can outweigh that risk ”.  I then suggested that this would be a topic for my next post, so here it is 😃

Does knowing make you accountable?  What are the real motivations for supply chain transparency.

Why hasn’t blockchain solved our supply chain issues yet?

This is a drum I’ve been beating for many years now - In my opinion using decentralized networks to create trusted and controlled visibility into the supply chains that literally affect the lives of billions of people every day is inevitable; but we are not there yet…. In this post I summarize my latest thinking on the topic.