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Our analysis suggests that all commercial platforms perform three key functions: matching supply and demand (such as rider with driver), verification of supplier reputation through reviews, and payment. DAOs are particularly suited to accomplishing these using technologies like blockchain.

From The online challengers threatening to disrupt the disrupters:

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Between $40 million and $1 billion is held by drug dealers alone at any one time before they convert their earnings to assets.

From Expensive washing? Australia loses $8 billion in cash:

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A SAML provider is a system that helps a user access a service they need. There are two primary types of SAML providers, service provider, and identity provider.

A service provider needs the authentication from the identity provider to grant authorization to the user.

An identity provider performs the authentication that the end user is who they say they are and sends that data to the service provider along with the user’s access rights for the service.

Microsoft Active Directory or Azure are common identity providers. Salesforce and other CRM solutions are usually service providers, in that they depend on an identity provider for user authentication.

From What is SAML and How Does it Work?:

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A SAML Assertion is the XML document that the identity provider sends to the service provider that contains the user authorization. There are three different types of SAML Assertions – authentication, attribute, and authorization decision.

Authentication assertions prove identification of the user and provide the time the user logged in and what method of authentication they used (I.e., Kerberos, 2 factor, etc.)
The attribution assertion passes the SAML attributes to the service provider – SAML attributes are specific pieces of data that provide information about the user.
An authorization decision assertion says if the user is authorized to use the service or if the identify provider denied their request due to a password failure or lack of rights to the service.

From What is SAML and How Does it Work?:

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OAuth is a slightly newer standard that was co-developed by Google and Twitter to enable streamlined internet logins. OAuth uses a similar methodology as SAML to share login information. SAML provides more control to enterprises to keep their SSO logins more secure, whereas OAuth is better on mobile and uses JSON.

Facebook and Google are two OAuth providers that you might use to log into other internet sites.

From What is SAML and How Does it Work?:

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The investment bankers over at UBS reckon that over the next decade global fintech revenues will grow from around $150 billion to around $500 billion, an annual growth rate of more than 10% (triple that of the wider financial sector).

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Square’s Cash App seems to be the fastest growing digital wallet in the US. As disclosed by Square, the number of Cash App monthly active users (MAUs) has more than tripled in two years, from 7 million in late 2017 to 24 million at the end of 2019. The more established digital wallet in the US, PayPal’s Venmo, surpassed 25 million MAUs at the end of 2019 according to our estimate derived from Venmo’s API, as shown below. Venmo seems to be growing its active user base at 50% year-over-year, slower than Cash App’s active user growth rate of 60%.

From Cash App Probably Has Surpassed 30 Million Monthly Active Users:

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The pandemic reveals how the digital world has become our built environment; an environment we cannot exit or escape. This means it’s time we confront the underlying problem―the absence of effective legal frameworks to rein in the practices that we find so objectionable.

From Forget the Techlash. The Lawlash Is Long Overdue | WIRED:

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When self-regulation succeeds at improving conditions for consumers, citizens, or workers, it does so by establishing deliberative bodies that can act swiftly and firmly, and generate clear, enforceable codes of conduct… The Facebook board has no such power.

From Facebook and the Folly of Self-Regulation | WIRED:

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When self-regulation succeeds at improving conditions for consumers, citizens, or workers, it does so by establishing deliberative bodies that can act swiftly and firmly, and generate clear, enforceable codes of conduct.

From Facebook and the Folly of Self-Regulation | WIRED:

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Only in the narrowest and most trivial of ways does this board have any such power. The new Facebook review board will have no influence over anything that really matters in the world.

From Facebook and the Folly of Self-Regulation | WIRED:

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Private currencies also don’t mesh well with the current political environment, which increasingly features demands for more national sovereignty. In any case, new regulations and barriers are already being erected, suggesting that closed networks that use tokens to transfer value securely at scale, rather than Libra-style “stablecoins,” are a better bet.

From The New Digital-Payments Race by Huw van Steenis & Huw van Steenis – Project Syndicate:

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