Latest news with #DonHo
San Francisco Chronicle
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Breakout moment': S.F. Symphony marks a first in 88th visit to Stern Grove Festival
Of all the antiquated and exotic stringed instruments that have been performed in the San Francisco Symphony, it had never had a ukulele on its stage backed by a full orchestra until Sunday afternoon at Stern Grove. The performance was by Taimane, a Hawaiian virtuoso who was discovered busking on the streets of Waikiki by none other than Don Ho, who brought her onto his show at age 13. Back then she called him 'Uncle Don.' Now she is 36 and tours the world with her own stringed quartet, but never before this weekend had she played with a major orchestra on the mainland, and she put it through the test by using elements of Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane along with Bach. Her mission was to 'provide perspective for people who only know the ukulele as a toy or a souvenir,' Taimane said before the show as she huddled in her dressing room with her band, drinking hot tea and trying to stay warm in the summer fog. 'The ukulele is kind of an underdog, but it can be as serious as a violin.' Audiences love underdogs, and 50,000 people signed up in advance for Sunday's annual performance by the San Francisco Symphony, which has performed at the grove for 88 years. Performers wear their summer white coats to blend in with the fog and the program can be counted on to push the boundaries, though never as far as an electric ukulele. 'It's all about introducing people to classical music,' said Carissa Casaldo, who programs the summer show and recruited Taimane after hearing her perform on an NPR program called 'Tiny Desk.' She then flew to Hawaii in April to see her perform with the Hawaiian Orchestra. 'I wanted someone upbeat and relevant and trend-forward,' said Casaldo, who came to San Francisco a year ago from the Seattle Symphony. 'It's all about introducing people to classical music. The Stern Grove audience is not the same as the audience at Davies Hall.' For one thing tickets are free with a reservation, and with a lottery system inaugurated this year, there were 10,000 winners from 50,000 applicants. The free show is supported by donors who get a table in front of the hillside. On Sunday, for the first time since the COVID-19 shutdown, table donors were also invited into the historic Trocadero Clubhouse for a pre-show interview with a KALW radio host and Symphony conductor, Edwin Outwater, who is also director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. A standing-room-only crowd piled in to see the old wooden barn with a bullet hole in the front door for the first time since a tree fell on the roof and put it out of commission in 2022. It has now been rebuilt. 'It's a grand reopening of a unique part of Stern Grove that we haven't been able to use for years, since a tree smashed it to smithereens,' said Bob Fiedler, executive director of the Stern Grove Festival. It was Taimane's second show with the San Francisco Symphony, having opened the weekend with a July Fourth fireworks show at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. 'They were great to watch, to listen to, and to escape to a tranquil state of mind,' associate principal bass player Daniel Smith said before Sunday's show. 'In other words, they were sick.' Taimane had never before played San Francisco and personalized it by having the band wear traditional lei po'o wreaths that the band's dancer had scrounged from Stern Grove vegetation. It was a big moment for the ukulele, and the band played in the dressing room for half an hour before taking the stage so the players' fingers would be warm in the fog. They also stretched and had a glass of wine. 'It's a breakout moment for the ukulele and for the Symphony, too,' she said beforehand, 'to trust us to make something new.'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chainproof Combats Ethereum ‘Slashing' Losses With Guaranteed Yearly Yields
Crypto insurer Chainproof announced a new product Wednesday that lets Ethereum stakers protect against slashing and guarantees them a minimum yearly yield. Slashing, while rare, is a big concern for stakers. It's a feature that keeps the validators who process transactions on Ethereum in check by taking away some of their tokens if they publish incorrect data. Most slashing happens due to code bugs in validator software or human error, not because validators try to attack or cheat the system. Chainproof's product, which involves a partnership with insurance broker IMA Financial Group, will top up stakers' yield if slashing causes their returns to fall below the Composite Ether Staking Rate, or CESR, a benchmark rate that represents the mean, annualized staking yield generated by all Ethereum validators. CESR was created by CoinDesk Indices (a CoinDesk subsidiary) and CoinFund. "As staking takes center stage across a new generation of ETFs and other institutional financial products, it will be imperative for institutions to insure that yield,' Chris Perkins, President of CoinFund, a partner behind the CESR benchmark, told CoinDesk. Staking is the act of locking up tokens on a blockchain to help validate transactions, earning a reward from the network for the stakers. Ethereum stakers can earn around 3.5% annually. Since Ethereum started allowing users to stake in 2020, validators have been slashed 474 times, according to data. In one high-profile incident in 2023, Bitcoin Suisse, a company that provides staking services for institutional clients, lost almost $200,000 after 100 of its newly set up validators were slashed. The financial damage caused by slashing on Ethereum is small compared to hacks or DeFi protocol bugs. Still, many crypto security researchers worry that an event where thousands of validators are simultaneously slashed is a serious risk. Chainproof's offering isn't the first insurance product for Ethereum stakers. Nexus Mutual, a crypto insurance alternative, offers coverage that pays out on each individual slashing incident and covers losses up to a predetermined amount. However, it does not guarantee yearly returns. Chainproof's insurance differs in that it will reimburse losses of 95% to 98% of the CESR benchmark rate over a one-year period. If their total earned staking rewards fall below this level, the policy automatically reimburses them, guaranteeing the amount of rewards they will receive. It's a small difference, but one that Chainproof's customers say is needed for institutional crypto adoption at scale, Don Ho, the firm's co-founder and CEO, told CoinDesk. The firm will launch its staking coverage on June 1 with early access programs for large-scale validators and institutional staking providers. Several companies involved in Ethereum staking, including Blockdaemon, Pier Two, Globalstake, and P2P, already plan to offer Chainproof's coverage to their clients. Read more: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
