Mira Boketova

Install Meteor

Linux and Mac: curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh

Windows: link

Install the app

Clone this repository and meteor npm install in it. This will install all dependencies coming from npm including the ones required for development.

Start the app

Finally, do meteor in the folder to start the app in development mode.

Options:

-p 3456 for running on a different port than the default 3000.

--production will minify and merge the javascript and css files.

Meteor will automatically push any change on the code to the browser while you keep the meteor dev server running.

Going in-depth

Running blockchain locally

You can run a blockchain locally on your PC to avoid sending transactions onto the live network. Follow instructions in dtube/avalon, then just change API to 'localhost:3001' in the settings page to point your UI to your development chain.

Working with Uploads

For doing anything on the upload side, it is strongly recommended to run your own dtube/ipfs-uploader. Once running, simply turn the localhost setting to true in client/settings.js and it will upload locally instead of our production servers.

Working on the Player

As you can see, we use the embed directly available on emb.d.tube. This is the dtube/embed repository. Feel free to clone it and directly point the client/views/commons/videos/player.js to your file:// version of the player if you want to make changes that include the player.

Working with pre-rendering for bots

The dtube/minidtube repository is responsible for all the pre-rendering and serving a decent version of d.tube to bots which normally wouldn't be able to.

Common Issues

If you are using windows, the meteor npm seems to be buggy at times. You can try using the normal npm instead if you have that installed.

After each meteor or package.json update, you will need to re-run meteor npm install

For any help, feel free to join us in our Discord Channel

Contributing

If you want to contribute to the project, please read this page.

Ardor platform

The Ardor blockchain uses the PoS consensus algorithm and it is the next stage in the development of the NXT platform, which was created by the developers of Jelurida BV back in 2013. The expectations of the blockchain industry from the Ardor platform are extremely high, as it promises to solve a number of important issues that the industry currently faces. Ardor architecture allows users to create their own, individual blockchains using sidechain technology – sidechain blocks based on the main blockchain. Transactions entering the main blockchain from the sidechains are deleted from it every 24 hours. Although specially designed nodes (the so-called archive nodes) can store all the necessary information. This approach allows, if necessary, to scale the network bandwidth, significantly increasing its load, and does not require specialized technical knowledge of users.

NXT platform

The NXT cryptocurrency platform is developed by Jelurida. It has been working and has been actively used in production for several years. Developed based on Java, the most appropriate programming language for financial applications, NXT allows users to develop and add new features quickly. As a new generation of blockchain, it was developed from scratch and had wider functionality than simple money transfer transactions. The NXT platform supports:

trading tokens created by users themselves (asset exchange),

transferring and purchasing digital goods,

decentralized crowdfunding,

a voting system with flexible vote-counting parameters,

execution of conditional transactions by phases (similar to multiple signatures (multisig) in Bitcoin, but more powerful),

messaging and many other features.

New functionality is regularly updated with a team of developers with new features every few months, which proves the flexible architecture of the platform.

Today, our focus is on the largest investment company in the world by managed assets and one of the largest by market value — BlackRock.

As of the 4th quarter of 2019, BlackRock has $7.4 trillion under management, thanks to which it leaves Vanguard to enviously meditate on charts and statistics. How did BlackRock come into being?

From "black stone" to "black rock"

In 1988, Lawrence Fink (who had just left First Boston), together with seven enthusiasts, decided to create their own asset management company. We turned to Peter Peterson from The Blackstone Group for support (money). Blackstone appreciated Fink's concept based on risk management and gave $5 million to this startup in exchange for 50% of the shares of his company.

In the period from 1989 to 1994, the assets under management of the company grew from $2.7 billion to $54 billion, and the share of Blackstone decreased from 50% to 35%. The company received its name — BlackRock in 1992, when the possibility of entering an IPO was considered.

However, in '94, Fink and Schwarzman (the head of Blackstone) argued over the distribution of profits - Larry wanted to give the growing income to new employees in order to attract more qualified personnel, but this would further reduce Blackstone's share.

As a result, in 1994, the BlackRock division selling mortgage assets (the ones that caused the market to collapse in 2008), and with it Lawrence Fink, for $240 million, transferred to PNC Bank Corp, which is still the largest shareholder of the company.

In 1998, BlackRock went public with a price of $14 per share (now more than $500) and turned into a real financial locomotive. In the following years, they bought up many companies, but perhaps the best acquisition can be called Barclays Global Investors with the iShares exchange-traded fund. For $13.5 billion, BlackRock received a fund with $1.2 trillion in assets.

Now it is a global corporation from the "Big Four", providing consulting and investment services and products for private and institutional clients. Her track record includes contracts with the Fed, ECB and governments, and her investment portfolio includes shares of banks and technology giants.

Centralization

️Analytics as the basis of the corporation's work has greatly influenced its structure. If in the same Vanguard each division is a subsidiary and solves its problems independently, that is, it works almost autonomously, then in BlackRock all structural divisions use BlackRock Solutions. This is an analytical sector with the same Aladdin that evaluates all transactions and investments.

It is difficult to say how much the divisions depend on BlackRock Solutions, but, apparently, all investments, with the exception of those invested in ETFs, pass through the employees of this department beforehand.

Divisions and owners

According to NASDAQ, BlackRock's market value is slightly more than 72.5 billion, and 85% of the company's shares are owned by institutional investors:

At the same time , the company includes the following subsidiaries:

Most of the managed funds (as of 2017, this is $3.5 trillion out of $5.3) are distributed among these subsidiaries. Another $1.5 trillion was accounted for by ETFs and $300 million by collective funds. According to the official website (although the data is still there for 2015), Black Rock has 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.

By the way, the company seems to have recovered quite successfully after the "March swing" and has almost recovered to the pre-quarantine level:

Main areas of activity

BlackRock Corporation includes two powerful wings — analytical and investment, and they are represented by the following types of services:

Financial Markets Advisory

FMA is a division of BlackRock providing investment and risk management consulting. In fact, most of the company's active activities are financial analytics and risk analysis. FMA's clients are both institutional and private investors.

By the way, in 2009, the Fed ordered an analysis of "toxic assets" left on the market after the crisis from BlackRock. In 2010, under a contract with the ECB, I checked the financial statements of Irish banks, and in 2011, by order of the National Bank of Greece, I conducted a full analysis of the state of the country's banks.

BlackRock Solutions services are singled out separately (it works for both clients and the company itself) and Aladdin platforms. In 2018, he managed more than $10 trillion from 150 institutional investors from around the world. Because of this, some analysts see Aladdin as a threat — other companies simply receive ready-made data without conducting their own research, which makes them dependent on BlackRock.

Investment funds

BlackRock has 3 main types of investment funds under management:

• iShares is a group of more than 1,000 exchange—traded index funds that account for more than 26% of all managed capital. Due to this concentration, BlackRock is a monopolist in this market — they account for about 40% of all ETFs. An example of such a fund is the IVV iShares Core S&P 500 ETF linked to the index of the same name.

• Collective — BlackRock Mutual Funds also accumulates huge funds — $300 billion as of 2017. It is when analyzing investments from general and closed funds that Aladdin is used. Mutual Funds includes such types of funds as multicurrency (MALOX, BEEIX), equity funds (MADVX, BIBDX), fixed income funds (BSIIX, MAMTX). Together, they allow you to invest in almost any industry in various regions of the world.

• Closed—end funds are funds with a limited number of participants. What is known about them is that in 2017, BlackRock had 73 CEF, in which $46 billion was collected.