South Korea to launch blockchain-based vaccine passports

The Prime Minister of South Korea has announced a blockchain-based vaccine certificate will launch later this month, but the concept has proven controversial across the world.

South Korea will introduce blockchain-powered vaccine passports via a smartphone app later this month, the country's prime minister said Thursday.

South Korea is joining a number of other nations in introducing vaccine certificates that enable cross-border travel while mitigating the risk of infections.

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun suggested there could be substantial benefits for citizens at home too:

“The introduction of a vaccine passport or ‘Green Pass’ will only allow those who have been vaccinated to experience the recovery to their daily lives,” he said during a daily inter-agency pandemic response meeting.

The government developed the app using blockchain technology as a way to provide security against the possibility of identity theft. "[Systems] in other countries also do not store personal information while allowing the verification of vaccination statuses," Chung noted.

While 77,000 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in South Korea so far, the country saw another 551 daily cases on Wednesday. The Government hopes to have vaccinated 12 million people by June.

Brazil is also using a blockchain-based system to track vaccinations, while IBM helped New York develop the Excelsior Pass, which uses blockchain technology for information security. The New York state government said of the pass:

“Businesses and venues can scan and validate your pass to ensure you meet any COVID vaccination or testing requirements for entry.”

China has implemented a system and the European Union plans to do so by June. The International Air Transport Association is developing an app called Travel Pass, which may become the standard for cross border travel.

Vaccine passports remain highly controversial, especially in the US and in parts of the crypto community. The Republican Governor of South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, called the concept “one of the most un-American ideas in our nation’s history” while Ron DeSantis, the Republican Governor of Florida, is trying to ban mandated COVID passes in the state.

Crypto may also play a small role in thwarting efforts to impose non-blockchain based vaccination certificates. The BBC reports that cyber security agency CheckPoint found 1,200 ads for vaccines and vaccine passports on the darknet:

“Check Point investigators found many sellers offering forged documents, including one supposedly from the UK, with a vaccination card for $150 using the hard-to-trace cryptocurrency Bitcoin as the payment method.”

from https://ift.tt/3sFbnzG
https://ift.tt/3m9A0BW

Comments

DeFi isn’t dead, it just needs to fix these 3 critical problems

It’s been a rough year for DeFi, and it may not get any better until projects focus more on security, regulation and usability. The persistent challenges decentralized finance face have been well documented by a handful of analysts and the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem re-enforced the fact that something is critically wrong with DeFi. I think DeFi today is completely broken for 99% of the population. The promise of a more transparent financial system has been overtaken by greed. UST/LUNA is just the latest in a string of bad developments: — Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 11, 2022 Let's take a look at what experts say DeFi needs to do in order to have another revival. Improved usability To date, the promise of open and uncensored access to a global decentralized financial system has been largely hampered by the complicated interface, confusing multi-step staking processes and lack of clarity surrounding the yields on various tokens. What do you thi...

ENS DAO delegates offer perspective on DAO governance and decentralized identity

AlphaWallet CEO and Spruce co-founder talk about their roles as contributors to the Ethereum Name Service following the project's recent airdrop. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for the ENS community. Cointelegraph spoke to two ENS DAO delegates who applied for the opportunity to represent the community and stay involved in the decision making process: Victor Zhang, CEO of AlphaWallet, an open source Ethereum wallet, and Gregory Rocco, co-founder of Spruce, a decentralized ID and data toolkit for developers. Zhang spoke about his experience as an external contributor to ENS and an early supporter since 2018. Zhang initially sought to help ENS by offering Alpha Wallet as a user-friendly tool for resolving .eth names and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Essentially, if a user inputs an .eth name in the AlphaWallet, it will show the wallet address, and vice versa using reverse resolution. Alpha...

Institutional demand for crypto isn’t subsiding, but impact will be gradual

As another $2-trillion stimulus package looms in the U.S., institutions will continue to look at BTC as a hedge against inflation. For example, just last week, when the currency was hovering around the $30,000 threshold, a whole host of pundits was warning investors to brace for impact, suggesting that the premier crypto asset was on the verge of a correction and could once again dip to around the $20,000 region. However, in just one day, Bitcoin was once again playing with the bulls, retesting the $38,500 limit, only to witness a selloff and eventually settle around the $33,500 region. While for most crypto veterans that might have been another day at the office, others branded the upsurge as “Elon’s Candle,” which relates to Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who included “Bitcoin” in his Twitter bio as well as sent out the following cryptic message “in retrospect, it was inevitable” to his 40 million-odd followers online. Regardless of the cause, has the recent price volatility sca...

Crypto Coin Search

Search This Blog