WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-US 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.600 Hello and welcome to Distributed Systems and Blockchain in the News. 00:00:04.600 --> 00:00:15.100 My name is Thomas Bocek and the first article we have in this week is about clouds. 00:00:15.100 --> 00:00:19.000 It's the following article here. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:29.900 In this article, a company successfully reduced its operational costs by moving from AWS to a bare metal solution. 00:00:29.900 --> 00:00:35.700 Saving over $230'000 per year. 00:00:35.700 --> 00:00:47.300 Initially, they were using AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service for their open source observability platform. 00:00:47.300 --> 00:00:49.200 It's OneUptime. 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:58.700 The company recognized that their service could run more cost effectively someplace else. 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:00.800 So they moved 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:08.330 to bare metal and they are using collocation for that. And for this 00:01:08.330 --> 00:01:17.450 transition they are using Microk8s so it's the following project here I'm not 00:01:17.450 --> 00:01:25.450 sure how to pronounce it Micro Kubernetes IO whatever it's called and 00:01:25.450 --> 00:01:33.090 this proved to be a robust choice even for production and it's not just for 00:01:33.090 --> 00:01:38.610 edge computing or development so this they are using in production as well and 00:01:38.610 --> 00:01:44.850 the transition enabled dedicated resources resolving the noisy neighbor 00:01:44.850 --> 00:01:51.770 problem that happens if you are on a cloud you are shared resources and the 00:01:51.770 --> 00:01:58.770 other, the neighbor the tenant also on your machine does lots of things and you 00:01:58.770 --> 00:02:01.970 will have the penalty for that 00:02:01.970 --> 00:02:03.070 that you have for waiting time, for example. 00:02:03.070 --> 00:02:09.870 This control allowed for optimized performance 00:02:09.870 --> 00:02:13.670 and efficiency with customization 00:02:13.670 --> 00:02:17.310 from operating system and storage types. 00:02:17.310 --> 00:02:21.630 So you have the full control over your stack 00:02:21.630 --> 00:02:24.230 and technologies like Kubernetes, 00:02:24.230 --> 00:02:27.110 so they still use Kubernetes and Helm charts. 00:02:27.110 --> 00:02:29.790 They helped with this transition, 00:02:29.790 --> 00:02:33.350 streamlining the process of moving from cloud 00:02:33.350 --> 00:02:35.470 to a private server. 00:02:35.470 --> 00:02:38.630 So they are still using cloud technologies, 00:02:38.630 --> 00:02:42.590 Kubernetes, Helm charts, but they're self-hosting it. 00:02:42.590 --> 00:02:46.750 And regarding the storage and load balancing, 00:02:46.750 --> 00:02:51.590 the company, they are using NFS network file system 00:02:51.590 --> 00:02:55.830 and MetalLB for their bare metal Kubernetes cluster. 00:02:55.830 --> 00:03:00.830 and they also then talked about their financial impact. 00:03:00.830 --> 00:03:17.990 So before the migration, the AWS cost per month was over 38'000 US dollars per month and after the migration, it went down to 5'500 US dollars per month. 00:03:17.990 --> 00:03:25.990 But of course, they had to do the transition and this transition costs roughly 150'000 US dollars. 00:03:25.990 --> 00:03:31.990 So this will be amortized quite quickly. 00:03:31.990 --> 00:03:44.990 And the company also talked or on this blog, they also talk about backups, multi-location clusters, backup of clusters for emergencies. 00:03:44.990 --> 00:03:58.990 And they also addressed the need for server administrators and highlighting that the colocation facilities, they do much of the hardware maintenance or if hardware breaks, 00:03:59.990 --> 00:04:05.050 They don't need to run because this colocation facility does this job for them. 00:04:05.050 --> 00:04:08.350 And this also reduces, obviously the costs. 00:04:08.350 --> 00:04:16.790 So in conclusion, while cloud services like AWS offer flexibility, they might not 00:04:16.790 --> 00:04:23.070 always be the most economical and the company's transition to bare metal, 00:04:23.070 --> 00:04:29.670 leveraging open source technologies brought greater control and cost savings. 00:04:30.550 --> 00:04:38.830 And to be fair, they could have used EC2 instances, AWS, but this would 00:04:38.830 --> 00:04:48.930 not solve the noisy neighbor problem because there you also have shared resources and it would still be more expensive than the current 5,500 00:04:48.930 --> 00:04:50.270 US dollars per month. 00:04:50.270 --> 00:04:57.430 But reducing the monthly fee from $38k to $5.5k. 00:04:57.750 --> 00:04:59.990 This is really impressive. 00:04:59.990 --> 00:05:09.130 The next article is about the cryptocurrency USDT. Tether behind USDT 00:05:09.130 --> 00:05:16.090 is a major player in the cryptocurrency ecosystem so if we go to CoinMarketCap 00:05:16.090 --> 00:05:26.330 we see USDT is here placed 3rd so it's quite huge and in collaboration with OKEx 00:05:26.330 --> 00:05:31.170 which is another exchange and the US Department of Justice they have 00:05:31.170 --> 00:05:39.690 voluntarily frozen about 225 million USDT tokens and these tokens were linked 00:05:39.690 --> 00:05:45.450 to an international human trafficking syndicate in the Southeast Asia involved 00:05:45.450 --> 00:05:50.650 in a "pig butchering" romance scam. So what is pig butchering? A pig butchering 00:05:50.650 --> 00:05:55.370 romance scam involves a scammer building a romantic relationship with a victim 00:05:55.370 --> 00:06:00.370 then convinces the victim to invest money and 00:06:00.370 --> 00:06:04.980 and once the victim invests a significant amount of money, 00:06:04.980 --> 00:06:08.020 the scammer disappears with the funds. 00:06:08.020 --> 00:06:12.980 And this action represents the largest ever freeze 00:06:12.980 --> 00:06:17.660 on USDT demonstrating that despite operating 00:06:17.660 --> 00:06:22.660 on the decentralized blockchain, for example, Ethereum, 00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:27.540 the regulators and companies can have a certain control 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:29.660 over these digital assets. 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:34.540 And the freeze was a result of a joint investigation 00:06:34.540 --> 00:06:38.860 using the blockchain analysis tool from Chainalysis 00:06:38.860 --> 00:06:43.100 and the investigation allowed Tether and OKEx 00:06:43.100 --> 00:06:47.820 to provide US law enforcements with information 00:06:47.820 --> 00:06:51.740 of these illicit funds flow through the blockchain. 00:06:51.740 --> 00:06:55.420 Tether's CEO emphasized that their commitment 00:06:55.420 --> 00:06:59.220 to safety and transparency in the crypto space indicating 00:06:59.980 --> 00:07:07.420 a willingness to work with global law enforcement. Similarly OKEx chief investigation officer 00:07:07.420 --> 00:07:13.420 highlighted their proactive approach to collaborate with industry stakeholders and 00:07:13.420 --> 00:07:21.900 mainly US law enforcement. And this incident shows that while cryptocurrencies like USDT 00:07:21.900 --> 00:07:29.660 may operate on a decentralized system or on a decentralized platform, regulatory agencies and 00:07:29.660 --> 00:07:36.940 companies themselves can still play an important role in overseeing and influencing these digital 00:07:36.940 --> 00:07:51.580 assets especially in the context of illegal activities. The next two articles involve the 00:07:51.580 --> 00:07:59.900 Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, and the first article 00:07:59.980 --> 00:08:08.860 is about Kraken it's from the SEC site directly here so the US Securities and 00:08:08.860 --> 00:08:16.020 Exchange Commission has charged Kroaken a crypto trading platform with operating 00:08:16.020 --> 00:08:23.020 as an unregistered securities exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing agency the 00:08:23.020 --> 00:08:31.640 SEC's complaint states that since September 2018 Kraken has been unlawfully 00:08:31.640 --> 00:08:37.040 facilitating the buying and selling of crypto asset securities 00:08:37.040 --> 00:08:44.680 without registering these functions and this lack of registration has allegedly 00:08:44.680 --> 00:08:51.240 deprived investors of critical protections such as SEC inspections and 00:08:51.240 --> 00:08:59.000 safeguards against conflicts of interests and Kraken is accused of mixing customer funds 00:08:59.980 --> 00:09:08.460 with its own, leading to a significant risk for its customers and actually here 00:09:08.460 --> 00:09:15.640 this point where they mix the funds this is a bit scary so we remember the case 00:09:15.640 --> 00:09:25.260 of FTX they also mix the funds the other big news is around Binance and 00:09:25.260 --> 00:09:33.020 Changpeng Zhao. Changpeng Zhao the CEO of Binance the world largest cryptocurrency 00:09:33.020 --> 00:09:41.060 exchange has resigned and pleaded guilty to the US anti money laundering law 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:48.420 violations leading to a settlement in which Binance will pay 4.3 billion US 00:09:48.420 --> 00:09:53.700 dollars in fines. This resolution addresses both criminal and civil 00:09:53.700 --> 00:10:01.700 allegations with Zhao personally agreeing to a 50 million criminal fine. [update: $150m] 00:10:01.700 --> 00:10:24.980 The case reflecting the intensifying regulatory scrutiny of the cryptocurrency industry, particularly in the U.S., marks a significant moment in the ongoing efforts to enforce legal and financial compliance within this rapidly evolving sector. 00:10:24.980 --> 00:10:47.980 Zhao's departure from his executive role while retaining still majority of the shares, so retaining still ownership and substantial fines imposed, underlying the seriousness of the charges and the commitment of the U.S. authorities to regulate the crypto market. 00:10:47.980 --> 00:10:59.980 So that's it for this week and I was asked about whether one should leave their funds on Kraken or Binance or have it maybe on the hardware wallet 00:10:59.980 --> 00:11:08.790 and I always remind of the case of FTX where they also mixed customer funds 00:11:08.790 --> 00:11:14.850 with company funds and then this blew up and lots of people lost their money so 00:11:14.850 --> 00:11:22.450 my advice is so if you want to remain in control of your cryptocurrency assets 00:11:22.450 --> 00:11:30.730 then use non-custodial solutions can be a hardware wallet can be a paper wallet 00:11:30.730 --> 00:11:36.650 the problem there is so these are your keys you're responsible for it if you 00:11:36.650 --> 00:11:42.250 lose it you also lose the funds on the other hand you have control over this if 00:11:42.250 --> 00:11:49.730 you money is on for example or was an FTX then you your money is simply lost 00:11:49.730 --> 00:11:55.490 same can happen, I I'm not saying that it will happen but you're not under control 00:11:55.490 --> 00:12:01.330 for example what happens with Binance or what happens with Kraken