Pierre Samaties shares an overview of what the cooperation agreement between DFINITY and the UNDP actually covers. Three technologies: cloud engine technology, Caffeine AI, and AIware (ie: OpenSaaS). Each gets applied across three verticals, starting inside the UNDP itself, then with the civil society organizations, and then with other governments, by taking the playbook of Pakistan's lessons learned and the success it has had to the next country. @PierreSamaties @dfinity @UNDP

Welcome to OISY, Sarah! 💙

Appreciated Charles. We both go back to the earliest days.

🚨BIG $ICP NEWS: DFINITY is extending its partnership with Carnegie Mellon! This is huge as they are #1 ranked U.S. university for Computer Science AND Artificial Intelligence. @dfinity helped advance WebAssembly and built the Internet Computer around it. $ICP is building alongside the very best in tech. 🔥

Proud that DFINITY continues to support the WebAssembly community and contribute. Team member no 5 was co-inventor, giving us the foresight to build the Internet Computer network around this critical standard that's becoming increasingly pervasive. cs.cmu.edu/wrc/

Only the tip of an iceberg folks 🔥 The Internet Computer is the 1st network providing core, mainstream technological utility, not a token database. The world needs sovereign, tamperproof cloud that turbocharges AI: ICP is the first breakout network since Bitcoin and Ethereum.

X Space: Internet Computer for Nations Sunday 20 September 1:00 PM CEST · 3:00 PM GST · 4:00 PM PKT · 7:00 AM EDT nitter.net/i/spaces/1aKbdEqdAvqJX… Hear the latest on: • Pakistan, the first country operating a Sovereign Cloud Engine, using Caffeine.ai to build and deploy government apps directly onto its own infrastructure • The pilot of a sovereign messaging app for Pakistan • The @UNDP and DFINITY collaboration to bring sovereign digital technology to other nations and institutions, capitalizing on the progress driven by the Pakistan Digital Authority (@digitalauthpk) • The Internet Computer as a new tech stack for AIware that empowers agentic nations With: Dr. Sohail Munir, Chairperson, Pakistan Digital Authority (@sohailmunir) Ali Theyab Al-Zuhairi, Digital Economies Lead, UNDP (@AliATheyab) Pierre Samaties, Chief Business Officer, DFINITY Foundation (@PierreSamaties) Matt Grogan, Co-founder, OpenChat (@Grogan73)

There's a crazy reason behind how I understood the true importance of fully decentralizing compute. The story needs telling, so here goes. Back in 2015, I'd long shifted to being part of the early crypto scene, but maintained Fight My Monster, a venture-backed MMO game & social network I previously founded that had 3M users, which was self-sustaining financially. I'd found a long-term home working on decentralized compute, but couldn't let down the community that played the game. Fight My Monster was built in 2010-2012, using what was a completely novel architecture at the time that enabled it to scale (i.e. add massive amounts of users) at low cost, and with minimal administration. Essentially it comprised three core backend components. The first, was simple web hosting, which served the frontend game code and assets into its users' web browsers (I used a popular content distribution network). Just like the web-serving, the two other backend components had to be "horizontally scalable," which means that to support more users, and the associated compute and data, all I had to do was add more hardware, without any need to rewrite the backend software code, or perform excessive systems administration. This enabled me to scale fast in the early days, with minimal staff and financing. The second component, was a horizontally scalable game server framework called "Starburst", which was a work of love I created myself. This was built on top of an open source server that supported RTMP, an Adobe network protocol that allowed Flash media (remember that!!) assets running inside web browsers to directly talk to it. Starburst hosted game/social network logic and routed huge numbers of events being generated by the game to users in near realtime. The third component was a horizontally scalable NoSQL database called Cassandra (if you follow databases, you'll know that a modern derivative called ScyllaDB is currently doing well serving realtime AI needs). On my team, I had the only Cassandra core committer outside the company that built it. Further, I was the first serious party using the Cassandra beta in anger, and it got corrupted at 800,000 users, which was followed by a very testy 24 hours recovering the data, and bringing it back online (one moment I was going to the moon, the next moment I thought things had gone irreversibly wrong, but luckily things worked out). What was cool about Cassandra was that you could literally just add nodes (i.e. server machines with big hard drives installed) to horizontally scale its storage capacity, read throughput, and most importantly, its write throughput, which is very rare thing, and in my application absolutely crucial, because Fight My Monster generated a simply vast amount of data. Of course, another very important aspect of Cassandra was that it was fault tolerant, and I used a replication factor of 5, which meant everyone's data was very safe (or so I thought...). A replication factor of 5 meant I only needed nodes 3 online, for any specific "quorum of data," for it to be writable. Unlike a blockchain, Cassandra wasn't Byzantine Fault Tolerant, which meant that I had to manage the security of my infrastructure carefully to make sure hackers or malware didn't get in. But back then, hackers weren't interested in an MMO game/social network where most of the users were kids, and this wasn't supposed to be a general platform for others to build on. My main technical work pressure was just that the nodes hosting the database were under enormous strain owing to the amount of data being generated, and would therefore regularly blow up! This meant that I would have to login to my infra every so often, decommission broken nodes, and add new ones, which was easy enough, because the fault tolerance meant the job didn't have to be done immediately, and the "bare metal" machines involved could be orchestrated through my cloud provider... Fight My Monster used a setup years ahead of its time, and it allowed me to scale up with ease. Moreover, the fault tolerance, and the simple backend architecture with only 3 core system components, meant minimal administration and stress was involved in keeping it running. So what was the important lesson, which plays an important role in my thinking, and in ICP, to this day? You must surely have sensed that something crazy happened, and now I will share it publicly for the first time. I was traveling in Asia, as part of the "traveling circus" associated with the early core Ethereum community, visiting related parties (people often forget the importance of Asia, and China particularly, in helping support the early crypto scene) and attending Ethereum-related events, where I mainly talked about complex Computer Science techniques I had developed that I wanted to be used to make networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum scale and perform better. I don't want to drone on about "what is used to be like in crypto," but I will say that it was a magical time, and I owe a lot to early people for some amazing memories. It was also engaging, and I wasn't checking my email. Consequently, what I did not see on my travels, were email after email warning me of the fact that the credit card that was paying for Fight My Monster's Cassandra nodes had expired.... So what did the cloud operator do when I didn't respond within a few weeks (it wasn't many, but I forget the exact number). Well, they simply deleted all the nodes!!! It's hard to describe how I felt when I got back home to Palo Alto in California, and discovered what had happened. It was a mixture of shock and horror, a kind of hollow feeling in my stomach, adrenaline surges, and unfolding dread, as I worked as fast as I could to fix it, only to confirm that what had happened was irreversible. People who've been hacked in crypto will know the feeling. That was it. Fight My Monster was dead. Some part of the community even created a change dot org website pleading for it to be brought back online. Despite the loss of what it might have been worth, and the guilt, in some ways it was liberating, as I no longer had responsibility to maintain it, which probably would have done ad infinitum for the community. Plus it became a fond memory for a generation of kids and some adults that played it, before the game had a chance to grow too old and tired, and it allowed me to focus on what had become my obsession — decentralized compute networks. The lesson however was very clear to me. You can create decentralized compute infrastructure that can scale, and is fault tolerant, but if you have a single point of failure, anywhere, at any moment, it can be toast. That's why I'm always concerned when I hear about blockchains that depend on administrator keys held by the core devs, or blockchains that go down, or almost go down, when a huge chunk of their nodes are shutdown by a cloud running them, or because the cloud running them has technical problems. This problem of great fragility is vastly more prevalent than you might imagine in our industry. The learnings from the Fight My Monster disaster informed how the Internet Computer was designed. It's not only the number of nodes that matters, there are more important things. If nodes are anonymous, the number of independent parties running the bulk of them might be far less than you might think. Further, while large in number, they often turn out to be running on a small number of clouds— and even if they are owned and operated by a few different parties, the cloud might suddenly decide it doesn't want them anymore, and shut them down overnight, as Hetzner once did to a famous blockchain. What matters in practice is the number of independent parties running the nodes, and the physical and jurisdictional independence of the nodes. This simple insight is that was behind "deterministic decentralization," which will appear in new form inside the forthcoming "ICP cloud engines" extension of the Internet Computer. ICP cloud engines allow enterprises (typically) to create what is effectively an Internet Computer subnet whose configuration they themselves control, by choosing nodes to combine from a pool that acts as a marketplace. Currently there are more than 1.5k nodes waiting, and the number is growing. An engine provides a serverless cloud platform with remarkable properties. It is the ideal place for AI-built apps and services, because the has been stack designed to allow AI to generate advanced AIware software with ease, which AIware is secure and resilient. Apps are tamperproof (immune to infrastructure hacks), always-on (and thus incredibly resilient), optionally autonomous (which means there is no backdoor), digital assets native, and many other things. Engines also run e.g. the Open SaaS suite of AIware apps that can be used to run enterprises end-to-end. Cloud engines make installing and maintaining complex apps like Open CRM or Open Email as simple as installing and maintaining phone apps. Nodes are hot-swappable. That means you can change the compute replication factor, swap out the nodes for different ones, without interrupting what the cloud engine hosts, providing freedom from compute vendor lock-in, and, if you want, you can use a new class of nodes on hyperscalers, as well as traditional Internet Computer nodes, so it will function as a general compute marketplace. The cloud engine framework guides people to combine nodes that have independence, but provides flexibility that shared Internet Computer hosting doesn't have. For example, an enterprise in Germany might choose nodes that reside only in the EU, to meet GDPR requirements. However, the cloud engine console, which is autonomous, and served from the Internet Computer network, and updated by the NNS (the Network Nervous System, the world's most advanced DAO), guides users and warns them heavily if they combine nodes from the same node provider, or which are based in the same data center, say, or run by the same cloud operator. Thus, even with ICP cloud engines, the lessons of Fight My Monster live on. People will wonder why the framework pushes them so strongly to combine independent nodes, but there is a good reason, which is just as relevant for the wider blockchain community today, as it was in 2015. Looking forward to sharing cloud engines soon.

The most expensive part of a hospital bill may never touch the hospital at all. A patient admitted for care has no way of knowing whether the price on a medical consumable reflects its actual cost or a markup fixed long before it ever reached the ward. That gap in information is, at its core, a public health issue. A survey of hospital consumables in Maharashtra found an IV infusion set with a trade price of ₹11.05 carrying a printed MRP of ₹325 ; a markup of 2,841%. A syringe procured at ₹6.75 carried an MRP of ₹57.20. A catheter procured at ₹29.41 carried an MRP of ₹310. These are not elective purchases. Patients cannot compare prices, seek alternatives, or question a number printed on a box while receiving care and the MRP itself is often fixed upstream by manufacturers and distributors, disconnected from the trade price by a wide, unexplained margin. The result is a system where the party bearing the cost has the least information to evaluate it. The regulatory gap is structural: scheduled medicines are capped under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013. Most medical devices and consumables are not leaving both the pricing and the information around it almost entirely unmonitored. A review of these findings and clear guidelines on the permissible gap between trade procurement price and declared MRP have been recommended to the Department of Pharmaceuticals and the NPPA ; a step toward closing not just a pricing gap, but the information gap patients are left to bear alone. #PublicHealth #GoodGovernance #Leadership #TukaramMundhe moneycontrol.com/news/busine…

Imagine an open source order book exchange, updated by the world's safest and most proven DAO, that's 100% onchain (i.e. actually), providing a ledger of every transaction that has taken place #MULTIDEX protos.com/what-happened-to-…

Genau dafür haben wir den Internet Computer aus der Schweiz heraus entwickelt. ICP-Tech ermöglicht es dir, sowohl hinsichtlich Infrastruktur als auch der Apps vollständige digitale Souveränität zu erlangen und sich damit von US-Big-Tech-Unternehmen zu lösen. Hinzu kommt, dass die Infrastruktur cyberresilient gegenüber Data Center Ausfälle und den üblichen sonstigen Angriffsvektoren ist. Sie bietet ebenfalls eine ideale Plattform für Agents, die nicht nur Software entwickeln und betreiben, sondern auch in der Lage sein sollen, sämtliche Apps live abzufragen. No Vendor-Lock-in, all open-source. Check: internetcomputer.org

JUST IN: Internet Computer has processed about 81 times more transactions than Ethereum ICP is at 301 billion lifetime transactions, against Ethereum’s 3.7 billion

MULTI/DEX working nicely: as short liquidations occur with the rising price, the Insurance Fund is earning a return for its LPs. Meanwhile, major upgrades coming soon as it heads towards production.

Oh look, centralized software is drowning in critical CVEs again. Shocking. $ICP is the only solution. Period. Change my mind. You can’t.

As predicted. Only network software solves this.

The United States really needs to start looking at the Internet Computer Protocol(ICP) if we’re going to keep our critical data, apps, and services safe. Using AWS or Google Cloud is getting more dangerous with each passing day — and the International Monetary Fund agrees. #ICP

ICP cloud engines are the simple answer to challenges like these — critical apps and services shouldn't be dependent on single hyperscaler clouds or data centers, or any other single points of failure. Cloud needs to work like the internet.

$ICP gained 40% in the past week to a market cap above $8.8 billion. This comes after @dfinity's @dominic_w shared a video demonstrating an AI model running on a blockchain within a smart contract. Watch "Chart of the Day", presented by @cryptocom: coindesk.com/video/breaking-…

NEW: The United Nations Development Programme partners with @Dfinity to pilot decentralized AI and sovereign cloud infrastructure across governments and civil society organizations.

🚨 The widespread attacks against the Internet Computer continued again today, and thankfully, have failed again. The cabal's latest attack targeted the ckBTC "bitcoin twin" minting canisters. This time, they spent thousands of dollars on ICP tokens in the course of their attack, but only caused minimal disruption. What did happen: the attacks revealed the need for some useful hardening, and the NNS (i.e. the network's autonomous governance and orchestration system) took down the ckBTC canister for an upgrade. The downtime was ~1hr. Though the disruption was minimal, we must not thank the attackers for helping improve the network, because they are criminals. The attacks reveal more about who they are: 1. They are willing to throw buckets of money at their attacks, confirming they are professionals on a mission, rather than amateurs. 2. Since their attacks lack a common thread (such as trying to steal tokens), we can see their true purpose is to harm the reputation of the Internet Computer by causing disruption. Of course, as an ecosystem, we have experienced widespread attacks designed to harm our reputation before, albeit in different forms. Most famously, in May 2021, the Internet Computer was widely seen as a potential crypto industry disruptor. A key narrative at the time was woven around the potential of web3 apps that would actually run on blockchain networks i.e. "onchain," as per the original meaning of that phrase. The fly in the narrative's ointment, however, which was being used to sell the potential of some major up-and-coming chains, was that the Internet Computer was the only network that could actually host general-purpose apps and services built from "smart contracts" (which are far better called "network code") thanks to years of R&D by the DFINITY Foundation. A successful launch of the Internet Computer threatened to puncture this web3 apps narrative, which was at the heart of their marketing and fundraising efforts. Furthermore, their insiders were aware of the years of R&D at scale that had been performed to create the Internet Computer network, and they were downright terrified of the competitive threat it posed. Simply put, in the fever of 2021, they feared that if the Internet Computer launched successfully, it might dramatically reduce their ability to hoover up billions from the markets in the crypto bull run. The resulting attacks by corrupt but powerful industry actors involved massive market manipulation on an exchange before/after launch that made the ICP token price crash, lawsuits by a corrupt law firm secretly on the payroll of a big industry actor, and massive further manipulation of public perception using huge social media astroturf armies, paid crypto press, and even a huge mainstream publication whose key reporter was linked to an actor who is now in jail. Events took place on a historic scale that was completely extraordinary, and I hope the full story, including what it was like dealing with what took place, makes the light of day some day — I am pleased to say there is no comparison to what is happening today. As a result of these past events, to this current day, a large majority of people who consider themselves crypto industry aficionados, and interested investors and journalists, remain completely unaware that most blockchain networks can only host tokens and lightweight financial logic. The corruption and criminality of the time successfully hid what the Internet Computer does differently from other networks, and created a reality distortion field that persists to this day. Crypto Leaks, an investigative journalism website that publishes reports based on covertly recorded video created by undercover investigators, has exposed what was behind some of the extraordinary happenings. Thankfully, several of those exposed by Crypto Leaks now sit in jail, and American judges later took action against the law firm involved, among other wins Crypto Leaks gifted to the industry. However, many of those exposed have so far escaped major consequences, and crypto press has often taken a hear-no-evil see-no-evil approach, preventing people from learning what happened. That's a shame, because we all want the crypto industry to be a clean place, where competition is fair and normal. My personal view, is that the happenings of 2021 marked a pivotal moment for the industry, when the original crypto movement, and technical folks and idealists interested in making the world a better place through innovation and advanced cryptography and computer science, were overwhelmingly steamrollered by sharp-elbowed speculators and manipulators. The Internet Computer ecosystem would have set a standard for the crypto industry that kept it honest, but as a result of its suppression at the time, we got an age of speculation and scams, and vaporware and narratives, in which money could often much more profitably be invested into hyping rubbish than into R&D that produces technological utility. Thankfully, what happened is now far in the rearview mirror for the Internet Computer ecosystem, because it has moved on to mainstream pastures, and has a incredibly exciting future ahead. Those currently paying for the new tide of poisonous trolls on web3 social media, and black hat hackers, will be disappointed to find this isn't 2021. Initiatives such as Caffeine (see caffeine dot ai), the AI chat service that builds apps on the Internet Computer, have shown that the network has enormous mass market utility, which does not depend on tokens and speculation — for example, 99% of those building on the Internet Computer using Caffeine have no idea that their apps run on a secure crypto network that can play the role of cloud. Now, forthcoming advances like ICP "cloud engines", and initiatives such as Open SaaS and the Internet Intelligence Gateway, and growing sovereign tech adoption, and many other things currently underway, promise to take the network to another level entirely. Crucially, as intended since work began in 2015, the network is becoming a revolutionary new tech stack for the AI era, and for the sovereign tech movement generally. While the massive potential exists in mainstream fields, projects like MULTI/DEX (dot ai) also continue to demonstrate how the extraordinary capabilities of the network can also be applied in fields such as defi. As the Internet Computer rapidly approaches escape velocity all over again, the moment when its stunning differentiating features and capabilities will become obvious within the web3 industry also approach again. Today, networks talk about AI tokens, and digital currencies for AI. Cynically, one might imagine these things were created because they are easy for retail investors to latch on to, if not undestand. Meanwhile, the Internet Computer has pioneered a new kind of onchain "AIware" software (Motoko), which, when compared against software running on traditional technology stacks, creates apps and services that integrate AI in game changing and previously impossible ways, which software can also be written and maintained far more effectively and safely by AI agents working autonomously without human oversight. The potential of AI is real and truly beyond anything we have seen before, and I predict that AIware will power one of the largest business transformation stories in history. For the Internet Computer, an exciting event horizon approaches all over again, and my guess is this is agitating some people in the crypto industry. It may even be reactivating bad actors from the past. But, we in the ICP community are not afraid, because these bad actors are a spent force. Moreover, the Internet Computer's future now depends on the mainstream world much more than it goes the crypto world, and the mainstream world affords these bad actors no power. Of course, crypto would be better without them, and that's why DFINITY continues to offer substantial rewards to anyone who can provide information that exposes them, but — This latest growing wave of attacks is in fact just a hot signal that it's game on again for the Internet Computer, which we should all welcome. And, seeing the Internet Computer reach its potential, after all the years of toil and effort, is what keeps my fire, and the fire of many others, burning bright. We stay focused in pursuit of our goals, no matter how long it takes. We are creating the next tech stack for the AI era, we remain undeterred, and the potential of what we have created is tremendous. My thanks again to the ICP community 💪