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Will Shanghai Upgrade bring any fee reduction for Ethereum users after The Merge ‘Disappointment’?

November 7, 2022

Ethereum Merge gas fees shanghai upgrade

In September, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ethereum, underwent a software update called “The Merge.” The Merge is a meticulously planned changeover from a Proof of Work consensus mechanism to a long-awaited Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. Using a consensus process, numerous anonymous participants can agree on a transaction so that it can be recorded in a ledger. This Merge signifies a substantial shift in how the Ethereum blockchain verifies a block, eventually changing how transactions are handled, lowering the ether token’s supply and considerably increasing its price.

Every user who wants their transaction to be included in a block on Ethereum must pay transaction costs, sometimes known as “gas fees.” The space on the block is awarded to the bidder, who offers the maximum amount of gas. As there is greater demand for Ethereum block space, fees have skyrocketed in recent years. While many anticipated that the gas fees would reduce post The Merge, unfortunately, that is not the case. This is because the purpose of the update was to strengthen network security, making it nearly difficult to attack the network. It will also use less energy, by around 10,000% less energy, making it more energy-efficient.

Contrary to popular belief, gas prices will most likely stay the same as a result of The Merge since the network won’t become significantly quicker or able to handle more transactions per second. In reality, this upgrade would result in blocks being generated 10% more frequently, which is a rather negligible difference and is unlikely to be seen by users. Additionally, neither The Merge nor any other parameters affecting network capacity increase block size. In other words, no more block space will be made available by The Merge. As a result, the network continues to charge users more fees to access block space, with the amount of competition increasing as a result.

But there is a possibility of reducing the transaction fees in the next phase after The Merge.

Withdrawing staked ETH will be made feasible by the Ethereum network’s upcoming significant upgrade, “Shanghai,” which shall wrap up unfinished business from the historic “Merge” update. In October, the Shanghai testnet, code-named Shandong, was announced. The testnet will allow developers to test new protocols before the “Shanghai” update is expected to happen in 2023. Several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) will be tested in Shandong by Ethereum’s core developers, who will then create, modify, and narrow down the number of upgrades to be included in Shanghai when it eventually goes online. These EIPs include ideas for network effectiveness, scalability, and gas prices.

According to Bloomberg, the Shanghai upgrade is anticipated to let users who pledge or stake the network’s native Ether cryptocurrency eventually remove their money from the specialized digital wallets used to place network transaction orders. Before that occurs, a few minor tweaks would be made. For example, one of them is WARM Coinbase, which will drastically lower some costs paid by prominent ecosystem participants known as builders, who already have significant influence over Ethereum.

Transactions sent via Ethereum are packaged into blocks by builders like Flashbots and BloXroute, then forwarded to validators who put them in the proper order on the blockchain. At present, Flashbots is the largest builder and distributes more than 81% of these blocks.

Some critics are concerned that this may lead to it using its influence to gain an advantage or demand more money.

88% of validators have chosen to collaborate with the builders since September, when the new method utilizing builders was introduced into The Merge to get additional fees from traders attempting to execute a range of profitable tactics. The builders are compensated for organizing transactions in a certain sequence, which can let a trader, for instance, purchase a coin before another party and resale it to them for a greater price.

One rationale for the WARM Coinbase change is that it would enhance the builders’ industry’s profitability. According to Matt Nelson, a product manager at ConsenSys, an Ethereum infrastructure provider, some fees builders pay to the network could decrease by 26 times once it is deployed.

To accept new tokens on the network and serve as a conduit to validators, some users, such as builders, must have access to coinbase, a specialized blockchain application. There may be several interactions between each of these transactions and the coinbase. The moniker “warm” the coinbase comes from the fact that it costs more to access the coinbase for the first time. Once it has warmed up, further memory accesses are less expensive. Coinbase now starts out warm and is put into memory for a much lower gas fee upfront.

Microsoft to extend free technology support for Ukraine in 2023

Sahil Pawar

November 7, 2022

Microsoft free technology support Ukraine 2023

Microsoft would extend free technology support for Ukraine throughout 2023 as Russia’s invasion of the country continues, said the company in a blog post.

Microsoft said it will provide additional technology aid of almost $100 million, bringing its support for Ukraine to over $400 million since the beginning of the war.

The company’s support will ensure that critical infrastructure, government agencies, and other sectors in Ukraine continue to run their digital operations and serve citizens through the Microsoft Cloud, said Microsoft’s President Brad Smith.

According to senior government officials as well as western security researchers, Ukraine has also been the target of several cyberattacks by Russia since the beginning of the conflict in late February. Several companies across Europe and North America have mobilized to offer aid to Ukrainian authorities and people.

Microsoft also said earlier in June that it was making substantial cuts to its business operations in Russia, adding its name to the list of companies that had decreased their exposure to the country in lieu of the invasion.

Russian forces swept into Ukraine in February this year in what Moscow calls a special military operation to eliminate dangerous nationalists and protect Russian speakers. Kyiv calls Moscow’s military action an unprovoked imperialist land grab.

MSU Researchers Release ‘DANCE,’ a Python Library for Deep Learning

Disha Chopra

November 7, 2022

Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) have released ‘DANCE: A Deep Learning Library and Benchmark for Single-Cell Analysis’ With DANCE, developers can create deep learning models using the comprehensive tools that scale analysis.

The DANCE toolbox incorporates 3 modules, 32 models, 8 tasks, and 21 datasets that are a benchmark for performance comparison of several other computational models undertaking single-cell analysis. Currently, DANCE can be used for:

Multimodality Analysis
Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis
Single Modality Analysis

What sets DANCE apart is that it sets the benchmark by making all datasets available with a “single parameter adjustment.” To find the best model for each task, all algorithms are refined using a grid search on all of the acquired standard benchmarks. Additionally, all associated super-parameters are kept in a single command line for convenience.

Consequently, end users only have to pass the single command line, already including all super-parameters. The researchers utilized PyTorch Geometric (PSG) framework to standardize the model as a fit-perfect-score model, where the models are fitted to input training instances

As of now, DANCE is yet in progress and lacks a unified set of tools for visualization and preprocessing. Researchers plan to incorporate it and make DANCE available to all as a SaaS (software-as-a-service) so users can create deep learning models without relying on their device’s storage and processing capabilities.

Compose and license royalty-free music with Beatoven.ai

Sahil Pawar

November 7, 2022

According to statistical data, there are at least 800 million videos on YouTube and over 2.4 million podcasts on the internet, possibly even more. It is hard to quantify precisely how much audio and video there is on the internet since more content is being uploaded constantly. Most of today’s digitally produced and consumed content, be it YouTube videos, podcasts, audiobooks, or any other, needs good music and background scores. However, finding the right music for videos could be challenging. Luckily, the first-of-its-kind platform in India called Beatoven.ai leverages artificial intelligence to take the hassle out of composing and licensing music for content creators. Let’s delve deeper into the inception of this innovative AI startup.

An Innovative Music Tool

Beatoven.ai is a generative music tool that helps content creators to compose original soundtracks for their content. Users can specify the genre, duration, pace, and moods they need for their music, and Beatoven.ai will compose a track within a few minutes that will match your preferences. Moreover, the tool provides customizations like volume adjustments, instrument selection/removal, and adding multiple moods to make your track perfect. The last step involves downloading the track, and the license gets instantly mailed to the registered email address.

The Initial Idea

This innovative AI startup was co-founded by Mansoor Rahimat Khan and Siddharth Bhardwaj, who currently serve as CEO and CTO of Beatoven.ai, respectively. The founders met at the Entrepreneur First program as part of their Bangalore cohort. Both being musicians and technologists, they wanted to create something for the music tech space. “Upon speaking with more than 200 video and podcast content creators, we found a recurring need for a tool like Beatoven.ai, which can be a one-stop background music solution for their content. We are an AI-powered music creation tool that helps content creators compose their original soundtracks,” said Bhardwaj.

The company launched with a pre-seed round of $55,000 from Entrepreneur First. Further, it built out its MVP using those funds and took it to a few potential users. “We have raised $1.05 million from Entrepreneur First and Redstart Labs, a subsidiary of Info Edge, so far. Our expected goal is to hit $1 million ARR by the beginning of 2023. Being a deep technology SaaS (software-as-a-service) product, we had to raise money to build the product and the tech interface before we could start monetizing it,” says Mansoor.

Behind The Scenes

Mansoor Rahimat Khan, co-founder & CEO of Beatoven.ai, is a professional sitar player with 17 years of experience in the recording and live music industry. He is an alumnus of the Georgia Tech Centre for music technology and has, in the past, been associated with several music tech startups such as EDMofy, ACPAD, etc. Siddharth Bhardwaj, co-founder, and CTO, of Beatoven.ai, is a multi-instrumentalist and music technologist who has been working at the intersection of music and technology for over seven years. Siddharth has a master’s degree in Sound and Music Computing from the Music Technology Group at UPF Barcelona and has extensive experience in signal processing, deep learning, and generative music.

A Musical Adventure

Beatoven.ai claims to be India’s first and only AI music startup and focuses on regional music from around the world, especially Indian classical music. “The problem with generative music startups in the past has been their black box nature, where the user has to painstakingly edit the tracks themselves in case they did not like it. With Beatoven.ai, users can incrementally build their tracks by re-composing sections of the composition and tweaking volume, instruments, moods, etc.,” said the CTO of Beatoven.ai.

Beatoven.ai launched in July, 2022 and has seen a steady growth of users trying out the tool since then. The platform now has 15k+ users using the tool, who constantly give feedback and pointers to improve it further. Bhardwaj said, “Building Beatoven.ai with the customers is one of our biggest strengths. Another thing we are proud of is the team that we have built here. It’s a mix of world-class musicians, engineers, researchers, and designers. Having worked with 200+ artists, we have created new monetization opportunities for indie musicians in India and abroad who were hit badly by the pandemic. In the process, we have raised $1.05 million from InfoEdge Ventures and Entrepreneur First.”

The startup plans to break entry barriers in terms of music and audio creation in general. With its focus on regional musical genres across the globe, Beatoven.ai aims to have the most sophisticated global music library. “This would lead to many more people creating their own piece of music in the style that they want to experiment with,” says Bhardwaj.

Writing in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Disha Chopra

November 6, 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) has created several windows of opportunity across diverse fields, and writing is one of the relatively emerging ones. AI writing assistants came as spell checkers in the early 1980s and soon got embedded in many word processing programs like WordPerfect. Over the next few years, they integrated into systems, beginning with Apple’s macOS. Around the same time, the first book produced by a computer, “The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed,” was published, marking the beginning of artificial intelligence in literature. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that AI was used in online writing when StatSheet started producing text based on sports statistics.

Now, AI Writing tools use algorithms that generate content similar to a human’s. With AI writing, numerous daily tasks that people perform manually can be automated. Also, it makes the process much simpler by cutting effort and saving time. AI writers compile information from numerous sources and learn how to generate meaningful content in light of what it has learned.

AI Writing tools have been around for a while. Users must be aware of tools like Grammarly (launched in 2009) and others like Jasper and Writesonic can generate paragraphs given a few suggestions. Many other developments in ‘conversational AI,’ like Google’s LaMDA, are being used to develop AI-powered writing assistants, like Wordcraft, a prototype that can assist creative authors in developing new stories. LaMDA is so precise that it generates output that looks like another human does it.

It mainly assists in writing fictitious material, which makes it different from other tools. According to Google, it is a “text editor with purpose” integrated into a web-based word processor. With other models like GPT-3, users can rephrase, write English paragraphs, produce functional code, translate them, and generate text responses on behalf of humans.

Whilst such AI writing tools provide many advantages; they are still far from replacing human writing because of multiple drawbacks that are yet unavoidable. Firstly, even top-tier AI writers still require human involvement. Just like in September 2020, The Guardian published an article drafted by GPT-3 by providing a text prompt, “Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” However, the article was edited before publication. This is because even though the technology has advanced significantly, it occasionally makes contextual, grammatical, and compositional errors.

Machine-based writing technologies learn only from the kind of data they have been trained on. This limits the base of knowledge, emotions, and experience that AI can add to the content it writes. Since AI tools often scan the web for writing samples, the content generated by them violates Google’s standards for automatically generated content. This affects the performance of AI-generated content in search engines as well.

Lastly, as people have become aware of AI writers, they have started relying on them mindlessly. Even students are using AI writers to get a way around their homework. These AI writers have advanced to the point where they can produce a decently average high school essay.

Despite the limitations mentioned above, people widely use AI writing tools as it saves time and effort. Others believe that AI writing might replace human writers and deprecate authentic content. Nonetheless, it cannot replace human writing, at least not shortly. However, over the next few years, AI writing will improve as processing abilities improve and more data is accumulated to train the tools. The technology will also improve the capabilities of understanding the nuances of the text. Organizations that have acknowledged the potential will develop a market where lacking such technology will be a glaring competitive disadvantage.

How is 2142 taking the leap with an NFT comic book?

Gareema Lakra

November 5, 2022

2142 is a community-driven, sci-fi transmedia created by a team of innovative minds from Belgrade (aka the city that never sleeps) in Serbia. It is a team of seven, including Dusan Zica, Mladen Merdovic, Nenad Krstic, Rade Joksimovic, Darjan Mikicic, Vladimir Pajic, and Dragan Jovanovic, and all have a background in the video game industry. The 2142 project started in May 2022, the world’s first NFT (non-fungible token) webcomic book narrating a super cool sci-fi adventure. To get into the depth of this brilliant idea of NFT comic and the fiction world the team of 2142 is building, Analytics Drift interacted with the CEO and co-founder of 2142, Dusan Zica.

What is 2142?

2142 is an NFT project and comic book that might change the world’s perspective on NFTs. According to a report from nonfungible.com, NFT got a vast fandom and marketplace trading going as high as $17.6 billion in 2021. These are sold on cryptocurrency platforms like Gemini, Binance, Metamask, OpenSea, Coinbase, etc. NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens existing on a blockchain that cannot be replicated and can represent real-world items like artwork and real estate. Tokenizing NFT assets makes buying, selling, and trading more efficient than ever, reducing from minimum to zero probability of fraud and looking super cool simultaneously.

Collectors had swamped the NFT marketplace for a while with funky monkey pictures. However, the monkeys might sway other people, Dusan has a different opinion and stated, “I hate today’s NFTs. I hate stupid monkeys with golden cards in their mouth because I truly believe it’s just a matter of hype. It doesn’t have any aesthetical, philosophical, or artistic value, and they don’t make sense to me.” With this thought to provide value and meaning to NFTs, 2142 started building an NFT comic book named “2142” and created an NFT marketplace. The comic’s story arch revolves around the idea that technology and spirituality can go together and not manipulate each other. Additionally, the community of 2142 has around 1500 people who talk about combining science fiction with mythology and cosmic myths based on real astronomical theories.

The beginning of the comic is aligned with the mining of the last Bitcoin in 2140, and in the year 2142 AD, the planet Earth has turned into a polluted dystopian world. The world is high and dry, controlled by corporations and brand sectors in both the real world and the Metaverse, when the long-forgotten secret came out of the legend to give hope.

Here is the synopsis of the comic:

As the world lies in ruins, Metaverse is the opium of
the masses and the last Bitcoin has been mined to
shake the foundations of a known world, three troubled
humans and one strained AI get trapped into hideous
astral conflict at the end of the great cosmic cycle.

Follow them on an epic journey throughout their
spiritual awakening in the physical world, virtual reality,
and astral planes. While, at the same time, the ancient
deities start to awaken, alien demons ravage the Earth,
and AI fights AI for the decentralized liberation of all conscious entities.

Another myth becomes a reality as the mysterious
Satoshi’s wallet activates for the first time to purge the
planet from mega-corps and Metaverse brand sects.
Deep beneath the mortal coil of our suffering planet,
the chant is murmured: “Mother Earth, it is time…”

The creation of 2142 includes borrowing existing things and adding fictional elements. Dusan added, “We decided to use Satoshi Nakomoto, the mysterious maker of bitcoin, as one of our main characters who is going to be practically like an artificial intelligence god in our comic book, tabletop, and RPG.” Dusan also confirmed that 2142 is planning for a video game which is in the pre-production phase and will soon be announced on the website.

How is 2142 an investment?

Apart from the great fiction story one gets to read, when one buys the comic book, they buy NFTs too. There are 21 NFTs in a bundle priced at $30, which is not much for NFTs and comic books. Additionally, collecting the comic book will give you doubles, meaning double pictures, panels, pages, and covers for selling. As 2142 has its own marketplace, the trading of comic books and NFTs is easier and helps buyers regain their investments. “We are not targeting those NFT guys. We’re targeting comic book fans, and we are targeting science fiction fans, and we are targeting video game players and gamers,” Dusan said about their target audience.

Now, there has been a crash in the NFT market this year, resulting in losing the hype of NFTs for the last couple of months, and barely any NFTs are sold. In this phase, 2142 has built a AAA high-quality teaser trailer and preparing to release an animatic trailer. Dusan said, “It’s the worst and the best time to do the NFTs. It’s the worst time if you want to sell them because people are not buying the NFTs right now. It’s not even close to what it was one year ago. And the best time to do NFTs because now, if you make a good NFT project, a long-term project, you can become a leader in a year or two or five.”

Gauging public confidence in AI-based content moderation tools

Preetipadma K

November 5, 2022

Cornell study on confidence in AI content moderation — Image Source: Pixabay

According to a recent study from Cornell University, people’s perceptions of the moderation decision and the moderation system are influenced by the type of moderator, human or AI, and the “temperature” of harassing content online.

The study, which has just been released in the journal Big Data & Society, made use of a unique social media website where users could submit food-related content and leave comments on others’ posts. The website includes a simulation engine called Truman, an open-source platform that uses pre-programmed bots developed and managed by researchers to replicate the activities (likes, comments, posts) of other users. The Cornell Social Media Lab, under the direction of communication professor Natalie Bazarova, developed the Truman platform, which was named after the 1998 movie “The Truman Show.”

The Truman platform gives researchers the social and design flexibility to explore a range of study topics concerning human behaviors in social media. This allows them to create a controlled yet realistic social media experience for participants. According to Bazarova, Truman has been a really helpful tool for the group and other researchers to develop, implement, and test designs and dynamic treatments while allowing for the gathering and monitoring of people’s actions on the site.

For a number of digital and media platforms, social media websites, and e-commerce marketplaces, content moderation has grown to be a crucial technique for fostering their success. This entails eradicating unrelated, offensive, unlawful, or otherwise improper content that is regarded as inappropriate for the general public.

While AI may not be available to flag every offensive content on social media or other websites compared to humans’ proficiency, it is useful when faced with humongous troves of online data. Besides, AI moderation costs are quite low, and it saves us from being subjected to mental trauma due to viewing hours of inappropriate content.

Nearly 400 participants were informed that they would be beta testing a new social media platform for the study. They were chosen at random to participate in one of six experiment conditions that varied the type of content moderation system (users; AI; unknown source) and the harassing comment they encountered (ambiguous or clear).

Participants had to log in at least twice daily for two days. During this time, they were exposed to a harassing comment between two separate users (bots), which was regulated by a person, AI, or unidentified source.

The researchers discovered that when the content is fundamentally equivocal, users are more inclined to question AI moderators, particularly how much they can trust their moderation choice and the moderating system’s accountability. The level of confidence in AI, humans, or an unidentified source of moderation was almost the same for a comment that was more visibly harassing in tone. There were no distinctions in how participants judged the fairness, objectivity, and comprehension of the moderating process. Overall, the study results highlight that when an AI moderator is visible, people tend to doubt the moderation decision and system more, which emphasizes how challenging it is to successfully control the exposure of autonomous content moderation in social media environments.

According to Marie Ozanne, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of food and beverage management, both the perception of system accountability and trust, whether the system is considered to behave in the best interests of all users, in the moderation decision are subjective assessments. If there is uncertainty, an AI appears to be questioned more than a human or an unidentified source of moderation.

The researchers propose that future studies examine how social media users would respond if they saw people and AI moderators working together, with computers able to manage vast volumes of data and humans able to read comments and identify subtle linguistic cues. In other words, they are looking to research a hybrid moderation system to understand the complex process of content moderation. This is important because the increasing negativity in the social media landscape has led to the adoption of AI as a content moderator.

When presented with ambiguous content, it is natural that the participants questioned the AI moderators. This is mostly due to concerns that completely automated content moderation by AI would be overly blunt and will unintentionally violate the right to create and circulate essential information.

While NLP has made great strides in content parsing, AI systems may struggle to interpret context effectively. AI systems currently lack the ability to comprehend fundamental human notions like sarcasm and irony as well as the political and cultural context, both of which change from time to time and region to region.

Until now, AI has aided content moderation by utilizing visual recognition to identify a wide range of error-prone content (such as nudity or accidents). It occasionally depended on matching content to a list of prohibited content, such as propaganda films, child pornography, and copyrighted information, which calls for humans first to develop a list of prohibited items. In either instance, AI has falsely flagged comments that had information about ethnicity, sexual identity and culture. Thus, causing people to have low confidence in AI-based content moderation.

At the same time, we need to rely on AI for content moderation as new data is created. Humans cannot flag every content during a conversational exchange between two parties in real-time. Further, studies have shown that constant exposure to online toxicity has detrimental effects on the human mind. From PTSD to real-life violence (e.g. violence due to religious nationalism and islamophobia in Myanmar).

The only solution is to make a ‘responsible, fair, trustworthy, and ethical’ AI system adept in content moderation with the help of humans.

Truman may be downloaded for free from the public GitHub repository. Cornell encourages other scientists to design and carry out their own studies using Truman. The university has also released a pdf document with a full how-to guide for installing and utilizing Truman for your research.

UAE set to become world’s first metaverse-as-a-service hub

Preetipadma K

November 4, 2022

With the arrival of Singapore-based Metapolis, the UAE is poised to see the next step in the growth of the metaverse. The company bills itself as the world’s first “metaverse-as-a-service” (MaaS) enterprise and has ambitious plans to link organizations from diverse industries to the virtual world.

Arabian Business reports that to help all economic sectors in the UAE and the greater GCC area establish new business insights and income streams, as well as expand their customer and client engagements to the virtual world, the Metapolis MaaS platform will offer a full range of services. Though the metaverse is currently linked with the arts, sportswear, real estate, and fashion retail, other businesses, such as healthcare, are making modest efforts to create a presence in the fast-developing virtual reality.

According to Sandra Helou, co-founder, and chief commercial officer of Metapolis, if SaaS (software-as-a-service) emerges as the well-established business model to dominate the web2 space, the future transition to web3 will surely see comparable market potential for MaaS businesses. Helou disclosed that Metapolis has also offered to guide clients on the full spectrum of services – from conceptualization through metaverse implementation and development.

The Singapore-based firm Metapolis revealed last week plans to establish its worldwide headquarters in Dubai as part of its ambitious plans in the UAE. Helou Metapolis claims that the company, which already conducts business in the US, Europe, and Asia, intends to increase its physical presence in other GCC nations, though a specific date is yet to be set.

JP Morgan Executes First DeFi Transaction on Polygon Blockchain

Preetipadma K

November 4, 2022

JP Morgan, an international banking company, has completed the first cross-border transaction ever utilizing decentralized finance (DeFi) on a public blockchain. On the Polygon Layer-2 blockchain employing a modified version of the Aave protocol’s smart contract code, JP Morgan issued 100,000 tokenized Singapore dollars (or $71,000) during the transaction. Then, JP Morgan swapped the tokenized Singapore dollars for tokenized Japanese yen, with Tokyo-based banking firm SBI Digital Asset Holdings on the opposite end of the transaction.

The first-ever industry pilot transaction was made possible on November 2 by the Project Guardian of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Project Guardian investigates possible decentralized finance (DeFi) uses in the wholesale funding market. In other words, the pilot marked a new step in researching the many use cases for tokenized assets and DeFi protocols, including how traditional financial institutions could conduct financial transactions. The pilot program also included participation from Oliver Wyman Forum, a corporate leadership platform, and DBS Bank, the largest bank in Singapore.

The exchange was not strictly a cryptocurrency transaction because the parties utilized virtual representations of fiat currencies, but it still exemplifies how actively big financial institutions are embracing blockchain technology.

According to MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty, the latest pilot has contributed to developing the nation’s digital asset strategy. He noted that live pilots led by industry participants exhibit how, with the right safeguards in place, digital assets and decentralized finance have the potential to transform capital markets.

Umar Farooq, CEO of Onyx by JP Morgan, a blockchain-focused business unit inside the asset management firm, informed Bloomberg that JPMorgan’s on-chain transaction was the first time that a large bank, probably any bank, has tokenized deposits on a public blockchain.

A whitepaper that summarizes the key learnings from this pilot program was published by Oliver Wyman Forum in collaboration with DBS Bank, JP Morgan, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings. The paper includes the advantages of digital asset interoperability and transaction efficiency that institutional DeFi protocols can introduce to financial markets,

Aave believes that the pilot represents a significant step toward linking traditional finance assets to DeFi as DeFi is set to bring a turning point for the industry.

OpenAI releases public beta of DALL-E API

Preetipadma K

November 4, 2022

The image-generating AI system DALL-E 2 from OpenAI is finally available as an API, allowing developers to embed it into their applications, websites, and services. DALL-E 2, an enhanced version of DALL-E, is a transformer language model that enables users to create and modify creative pictures using natural language inputs. OpenAI announced in its blog that developers can now quickly integrate its AI image-generating tool to take advantage of its capabilities. With this announcement, DALL-E has followed in the footsteps of joining GPT-3, Embeddings, and Codex in Open AI’s API platform.

On October 20, OpenAI disclosed information on the New York City-based startup Cala’s usage of the DALL-E API for a particular business use case. By providing a digital platform that enables designers and producers to develop and produce clothing lines, Cala positions itself as the “world’s first operating system for fashion,” integrating the process from product conceptualization to order fulfillment. The inclusion of DALL-E-powered text-to-image generating tools will enable Cala users to create fresh visual design concepts from provided reference photos or natural word descriptions. Even Mixtiles, situated in Tel Aviv, registered for early access to API when co-founder Eytan Levit noticed the potential of the image-generating technology.

According to Luke Miller, product manager at OpenAI, the API has three main functions. Users have the option to create a picture, edit a portion of it, and generate various revisions of that same image.

Registration with OpenAI is necessary in order to use the API, and you’ll need a private API key to access the DALL-E generator. Additionally, OpenAI charges for each image that is produced depending on the image resolution. Images with a resolution of 1024×1024, 512×512, and 256×256 cost $0.02, $0.018 per picture, and $0.016 per image, respectively.

While the DALL-E API is now in public beta, OpenAI will keep tweaking and enhancing it through the year’s end. According to Luke, the company is quite enthusiastic about all the ways that developers will be able to adapt this technology to unique requirements, applications, and communities in order to progress even higher than before.

One major change compared to earlier image results from DALL-E. is that the inclusion of a watermark won’t be necessary for photos created using the API. With the release of the API, OpenAI has decided to make watermarking optional after introducing it during the DALL-E 2 beta as a means to identify which images came from the system.

However, with the availability of the API, minimal changes have been made to the terms of the policy. This might be disappointing for those looking forward to OpenAI, considering the ethical implications of generative AI tools on legal grounds and bias in results. On the plus side, using DALL-E 2 API to generate violent, pornographic, and hateful content is still banned by OpenAI. The company continues to use a combination of automated and human monitoring systems to keep users from sharing or uploading pictures of people without their permission or images they do not have ownership or permission.

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