What team æternity accomplished between Phases 1 and 2.
Development
Protocol development reached a point where all upcoming applications are able to run safely. Detailed description about æternity’s technology can be found in this new blog post.
We are now focusing on interface (SPV Wallet, block explorer) and feature development (State Channels, Trustless Markets).
Zackary Hess, our tech lead, is currently working on implementing lightning routing via State Channels.
So far messages travel 6 out of 10 lightning handshakes, meaning in the coming days we will have off-chain transactions with lightning routing ready for deployment in the testnet!
Features currently being developed
State Channels
- Using the State Channels for processing bets and payments successfully
- Using Lightning Routing via State Channels
Recently done:
- Setting up the State Channels to accept & process Oracle bets
- Setting up the State Channels to accept & process payments
- 1 Hop-Lightning transaction (payment)
Tasks up next:
- Multi-Hop lightning transaction (payments)
- 1-Hop lightning transaction (contract)
- Multi-Hop lightning transaction (contract)
- Trustless moving of contract to a shorter path
Research
Integration with other Blockchains
In the wake of our quest for potential partnerships and collaboration possibilities, we encountered the question about how complex or difficult it would be to make the æternity and its consensus algorithms compatible with other blockchain protocols, e.g. via interledger. æternity’s decentralized oracle is a feature that other blockchain projects may be interested in.
According to Zackary, this can be done with a minimum amount of difficulty, as there is only one thing to do — installing a new hashing algorithm (instead of the currently applied SHA256).
Use-Case Concepts
Education
We can utilize æternity’s powerful features to disrupt education with blockchain by creating an open marketplace where students and teachers alike, can trade private or group lessons. It should include social profiles of both teachers and students and could be gamified. Also, by using æternity’s oracle, students can allow more than one teacher to rate a test, exam or other work.
Charity Crowdfunding
Enhance crowdfunding platforms with the ability to better granulate release and coordinate and review application of funds.
Supply Chain Management — Automation
We managed to sketched up a high level concept of how in the near future, Supply Chain Management (SCM) could be fully automated and transparent to leverage profits for everyone involved, proportional to the energy/time/attention invested.
Organization
Working on a release plan
In order to properly test the code and all its components thoroughly, a regular roll out of newly written code onto the testnet (for integration test purposes) is vital.
We are currently discussing how to establish a secure, efficient and lean release process to roll out features as fast and secure as possible. At the same time we are working towards offering an attractive platform to gather resourceful, motivated & progressive developers around meaningful projects and ideas.
Human resources
The æternity team is interviewing developers and UI/UX designers to extend our core with like-minded individuals that can contribute to the process of making the æternity mainnet a reality. More nimble minds joined our cause during the incubation phase, here they are:
- Michal Zajda — SENIOR ERLANG ARCHITECT
- Alex Siman — SENIOR WEB DEVELOPER
- Andrey Stehno — SENIOR FULL-STACK DEVELOPER
- Alessandro De Carli — TECHNICAL BLOCKCHAIN ADVISOR
- Steve Dakh — CRYPTO TECH ADVISOR
For more information, check out the updated team page on the website.
Expanding the community
Part of the team is working on facilitating the Ledger Nano S claim process and aiding people in Slack & Telegram with troubleshooting. Shipping has already commenced.
We have collected your ‘sent from exchange’ issue requests and are evaluating how to proceed with issue, please be patient here, as despite our best efforts, we expect to have some more ‘sent from exchanges’ cases. We would like to again ask any potential contributors to NOT send directly from exchanges! Read this before you contribute.
Incubating æternity
We are about to conclude the process of establishing a Liechtenstein based foundation, in order to formalize and strengthen æternity, as well as other open-source blockchains and projects. The government of Liechtenstein welcomes technology startups and the progressive judicial system is an ideal harbor to commence the voyage into the blue ocean of blockchain technology.
Once the foundation is set up, we will start the incubator program to facilitate the brightest, most promising minds and projects to start being build on æternity. One of the locations for the Incubator will be Ukraine and Bulgaria, due to the availability of experienced developers and a well-developed cryptocurrency/blockchain community.
We are happy to announce our provisional appointment to ‘Research and Technical Advisory’ (RATA) at the Hong Kong based Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium. With this initiative, we are striving to make a change by improving global SCM, making it more transparent, efficient, profitable and sustainable.
Building networks
Right after the Phase 1, we spread out to carry the word of æternity to the ears of understanding, as well as building and maintaining potential partnerships and collaborations.
This is a complete list of meetups and conferences that we attended during the incubation phase:
- BlockShow Europe 2017, Munich, April 6, 2017
- Blockchain Stuttgart, April 24, 2017
- Webit.Festival Europe, Sofia, April 25–26, 2017
- Blockchain Cologne, Cologne, May 4, 2017
- Founders Club Maastricht, Brightlands Campus, Heerlen, May 11, 2017
- æternity Hong Kong Meetup, Hong Kong, May 14, 2017
- FinTech Matters 2017, Vienna, May 17, 2017
- Gottfried Von Haberler Conference, Vaduz, May 19, 2017
- Consensus 2017, New York, May 22–24, 2017
- æternity Berlin Meetup, Berlin May 30th, 2017
- Blockchain for Healthcare, Berlin, May 31, 2017
- Blockchain Expo Europe, Berlin, June 1–2, 2017
More event details at the dedicated blog post.
Meetups
In addition, over 25 meetups in different cities all around the world were held during the incubation phase! Seoul, Beirut, Capetown, Malta, Rotterdam, Venezuela & Berlin, just to name a few.
We will be happy to see you at one of the upcoming meetups or maybe even start one in your own town?
Wiki Bounty
The Wiki Bounty has drawn some attention and populated the Wiki on GitHub with lots of content, feel free to dig in.
Building and maintaining a formidable, creative, colorful and vibrant community is a rewarding task, primarily because almost everyone involved is creative, industrious, open minded & respectful.
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