DevCentral Connects - November 15, 2022 - DevSecOps in Blockchain

Oh boy - https://www.thestreet.com/investing/cryptocurrency/ftx-collapse-about-to-claim-first-huge-victim-blockfi

Yep - this stinks. The clues we may get that something like this is a scam (such as render quality) are getting increasingly difficult to discern. I saw a VFX artist yesterday illustrating what he can do with NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields). 

"A neural radiance field (NeRF) is a fully-connected neural network for generating novel views of complex 3D scenes, based on a partial set of 2D images. NeRF takes input images representing a scene and interpolates between them to render a complete scene."

Quick snippet from someone reviewing the possibilities on YouTube (https://youtu.be/WSfEfZ0ilw4?t=133)

An awful lot like deepfake but the upshot is using even less inputs a render can be made that is near photo-realistic down to specular highlights (reflections) and opacity (seeing through glass). This basically resolves all those issues that tend to be associated with 'low quality' content that may set off alarm bells.

Could be an interesting update to the old DevCentral Connects episode on DeepFakes I suppose.

So I think there are a few lessons to be learned from the FTX disaster. First, is that anything crypto and blockchain related that cannot be verified with code or that is backed by cryptography is risky. This is why self custody of crypto is so important, the term "Not your keys, not your crypto" means exactly that. This is what we call third party risk. All major platforms have them... Including banks.

As for the hack, that could have been avoided by storing your funds on a multi-signature self custody platform, Bitcoin and Ethereum both have these type of solutions. The idea is holding your funds in a vault that requires multiple signers to withdrawal those funds. 

Additionally, One thing I live by is if its too good to be true, it probably is. 🙂 Don't trust, verify. 

Crypto, in finance, still smells like speculative/speculation to me. Blockchain tech is super cool and I *want* to support that generally speaking; just not by buyng XYZcoin.

So, just spotted this... LOL

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-attempts-to-raise-fresh-cash-despite-bankruptcy-11668520573

JRahm and I have discussed Deep Fakes in the past on DevCentral Connects... and now we see it cross with FTX... scary how this can be used for bad

https://twitter.com/jason_koebler/status/1594720003923722240?s=20&t=K3nlfz16XkElfEZz1akgyw

So who else is keeping tabs on the FTX disaster? I have a bit of crypto but doesn't look like any exposure across to FTX.