Cube aims to strengthen and provide security for the growing code-division multiple access (CDMA) radio communications between vehicles, in advance of an expected surge in CDMA-capable vehicles after 2020.
“Newly manufactured cars from 2020 will be produced with a built-in CDMA,” the develops wrote in their white paper. “Connected cars are expected to be under constant cyber-attack, similar to the malicious attacks toward network-connected PCs. Cube is preparing to embrace a pivotal role in the rapidly changing vehicle market.”
How Does It Work?
There are a host of basic communication levels that autonomous and connected vehicles have – vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to-device, and so on. All are different permutations of the so-called internet of things, whereby machines will be able to speak with one another in real-time to adjust real-world variables to manipulate performance and other factors.
These communications are expected to be under threat from potentially malicious actors. Imagine the havoc a hacker could cause by adjusting self-driving vehicles to ignore the regulated speed limits, distance between vehicles, traffic signals, and the like. Cube hopes to frustrate such hacking attempts using a three-layer security protocol.
The first layer consists of the inherent security of a blockchain system. Cube gets around the limitation in file size posed by traditional blockchains by using a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol and asymmetric encryption.
The second layer is a Cube’s endpoint security technology.
“Cube’s unique technology uses hash to scan and distinguish over 300 million ‘known’ attacks with only 10 MB of disk space,” the developers wrote. “In fact, even with our light-weight software, it holds the fastest endpoint processing amongst the existing endpoint security product.”
The final layer is a cloud-based security check, in which malware can be compared against a national database. Unknown malware varieties are shifted into a virtual vehicle environment to identify capabilities and solutions.
How Does Cube’s Neural Network Function?
The Cube team points to deficiencies in existing neural networks that Cube aims to address.
Extant neural networks for identifying malware suffer from underfitting, low speed, and overfitting. Underfitting refers to a lack of updates in the learning process, which Cube solves by introducing a self-activation function that doesn’t disappear over time. Cube addresses the speed problem by tweaking the code to favor speed over absolute accuracy, which can be rectified later. Finally, overfitting or inflexibility is solved by dropping irrelevant data when the machine is in a learning phase.
What’s Cube’s Transparency Policy?
Cube’s transparency policy hinges on three core principles. Cube plans to file monthly operational and financial reports, structure the company’s finances so that it can operate for three years without additional outside funding, and institute a validation procedure for new employees.
How Does the Cube Token Function?
Cube’s team anticipates that the token will soak up reams of automotive data from both active vehicle users and affiliates, like gas stations and auto dealers. The Cube ecosystem will make that data available on the blockchain, stimulating the consumption and price of Cube tokens.
Is Cube a Public or Private Blockchain?
Cube incorporates elements of both, making it a hybrid blockchain. Certain critical hardware elements, like automaker firmware updates, will be handled on a public blockchain to establish trust.
Public blockchains, however, are inefficient at handling large sums of data quickly. To solve this problem, Cube will maintain a private blockchain to process data.
“Cube is composed of hybrid blockchains that use public and private blockchains together,” the developers explained. “When datafying a vehicle’s drive, tons of data is generated, though the data varies depending on how the data was accumulated. Even when counting only the driving information and the peripherally recognized information used in datafication, enormous amounts of data (up to 4 TB) are generated every day. This takes a lot of time process or share. By contract, vehicles require fast data procession, transmission, and receipt to prevent accidents.”
What About Infrastructure Integration?
Cube’s team sees the culmination of its technology as a link between Cube-enabled vehicles and Cube-enabled infrastructure, like highways and traffic signals.
Fast and powerful processing needs to take place between these endpoints to ensure autonomous vehicles can react in real-time to changing road conditions and the behavior of other autonomous vehicles.
“While a variety of technologies are available to ensure safety when an autonomous vehicle is operated, the technology with in the vehicle alone is not enough,” the developers wrote. “The most obvious method is to install the IoT (Internet of Things) on the road where the autonomous vehicle is running. The autonomous vehicle is constantly in communication with the IoT on the smart road. In this case, it is necessary to certify that the IoT of the smart road is the authorized IoT.”
To perform this constant quality check over such a vast chunk of real estate, Cube aims to deliver a low-cost system that can be distributed in large quantities. In other words, it makes more sense to have a series of smaller, lower-power processors than a single central processing unit for the infrastructure itself.
“Therefore, a method of authenticating a chain closer to real-time than real-time authentication is needed,” the developers wrote. “Cube sees this IoT’s real-time authentication method as one of the important future development factors.”
What’s the Market Look Like?
Cube’s token, AUTO, is listed on OKEx and HitBTC at about $0.0089 as of May 2018. AUTO’s market capitalization is about $56 million with a circulating supply of 6.27 billion. The token’s total supply is 7.2 billion.
What’s Next on Cube’s Roadmap?
Cube expects to complete its blockchain layer in June 2018. The AI architecture will be built by October, and an annual report will be issued in December.
You can visit Cube’s website here and read the white paper here.
