Protocol Weekly is a newsletter to exclusively showcase the progress of layer-1 and Ethereum layer-2 protocols.
With the rise of US mid-term elections, we’re seeing Augur usage grow to a total of $3M! While small in amount, it does demonstrate a fundamental use case and adoption of decentralized technologies. Also, I recently wrote a little piece about the state of crypto after Devcon last week, would be keen to hear your thoughts on it — https://medium.com/p/ece23e885206. In addition to the layer 1 updates, we’re opening up this opening statement to anyone who’d like to share something insightful to our readers. Get in touch if you’re down or know someone who is.
From Alexandra Heller (Communications):
- We’re teaming up with the ZCash Foundation to build a new ZCash client.
- Gavin Wood went on Epicenter to discuss the early days of Ethereum, how Parity came about, the new blockchain framework Substrate, and the case for on-chain governance.
- Robert Habermeier presented how Parity is using Substrate to build Shasper at Devcon.
- Also at Devcon, Björn Wagner presented on using the Parity Bridge to bridge DApps.
- The recording from Web3 Summit’s panel on WebAssembly for blockchain development is out.
- We now have a newsletter to announce important developments.
From Ricky Dodds (Head of Institutional Markets):
- ICONLOOP showcased blockchain identification, voting and payment services as a demonstration of the Seoul blockchain standard platform at the Seoul International Digital Festival 2018. Medium
- 2infinity created an easy to use dApp tutorial for those interested in building on ICON. Check it out here. Medium.
From Hunter Hillman (Head of Growth):
- We officially partnered with SpankChain!
- We’ve nearly finished up a new protocol specification that secures, simplifies, and adds functionality to our payment channel hubs.
- Our co-founder Arjun spoke at DevCon and DeFi Summit — Prague. We’re still waiting on the video for DevCon, but you can check out his DeFi presentation here.
One thing we need help with:
Test out a Connext Hub and give us feedback in our Discord!
From Jake MacDonnell (Head of Growth):
- Exchange credit risk is hard to understand, so CDx has released the first CDx Credit Report! Ratings for the Top 100 cryptocurrency exchanges, based on four predictive factors: cybersecurity, regulatory risk, track record, and exchange volume. Click here to read.
- Development of CDx’s first swap exchange is well underway and we have begun testing functionality internally! Click here for a sneak peak.
One thing we need help with:
We are always looking for talented people to join the CDx team in Toronto! Currently hiring for an engineering role here or you can email jake@cdxproject.com to learn more!
From Lazar Jovanovic (Community Manager):
- In less than a week, we will launch MPX, our simulated derivatives exchange dApp! Subscribe to our Product Hunt page to learn more.
- Wyre hosted us for their latest Wyre Talks, check out the podcast to hear our CEO Seth Rubin discuss how we are solving the problem of volatility in crypto.
- Our CTO Phil and PM Robert had a productive week in Prague at the #DeFi Summit and Devcon. It was great to connect with many of you there!
From Leila Lin (Associate):
- LoopringDEX Listed TOS and LGR (Batch#14).
- Loopring director Matthew talked about Loopring protocol 2.0 with VitalikButerin.
- Loopring and PWC are in business together.
From Patricia Bentley (Business Developer):
- The design of Achievement Network is being updated. Improvements are being made to the user experience in order to make the tutorial more streamline.
- Improving our developer UX/UI for the SDK. We modified the API endpoints to be REST compliant. Please continue to send us your feedback at our dedicated developer Telegram group.
- Liquidity Network will be attending Web Summit 2018 as beta startup entrants this week.
From Dan Zhang (Communications):
- Audited the OmiseGo Plasma MVP contracts. This is our most significant audit to date. For Ethereum to reach mainstream adoption it needs to scale. We’re proud to help Ethereum reach the next step in its journey to mass adoption.
- Our CEO Richard Ma and Sr. Research Engineer Martin Derka demo Plasma Dog — one of the first blockchain games utilizing the OmiseGo internal test network.
- We’re hosting the Blockchain Advocacy Coalition Roundtable on Nov. 14th — supporting smart blockchain regulation
- Released our October Community Update — a huge month for Quantstamp. We made progress on the next version of the protocol, improved our UI, spoke at key events, and more.
One thing we need help with:
If you’re interested in being a node operator for the Quantstamp Betanet Protocol, apply here. We’ll contact you if you meet our requirements.
From Jess Houlgrave (Co-Founder & COO):
- This week we launched our galleries feature for artists and galleries to showcase their public records. Our first gallery launched was with artist Vesa who is planning to use Codex Records to record provenance for his physical works. We also launched a gallery for Ikohaus Gallery.
- In other exciting news, we announced a partnership with UK based Tagsmart who produce DNA tagging solutions for the art world. We’re really pleased to be partnering with them to allow Tagsmart users to create Codex Records with a seamless click and to allow users of Codex Records to integrate Tagsmart’s technology to help preserve provenance.
One thing we need help with:
Recommend our gallery feature to artists you know… and keep up with our progress on twitter.
From Brendan Forster (Head of Growth Operations):
- Hosted #DeFi Summit — Prague on Monday, and had over 200 attendees. You can watch the video recordings here (1, 2, 3, 4)
- Conducted UX Research and iterated on Dharma Lever front-end
- Attended DevCon.
One thing we need help:
We’re hiring for a product manager, a product designer, and more. Check out our open positions here.
From Richard Liang (Growth Operations):
- DevCon — Our team attended DevCon from October 30th — November 2nd. We met with a lot of developers, traders, and exchanges interested in building on or supporting Set. If you want to get involved in any way, make sure to reach out to us in our Telegram channel.
- DeFi Prague — On October 29th, we co-hosted the DeFi Summit in Prague which drew over 250 people. Our breakout session was a workshop on DeFi standards and interoperability. Check out the recorded livestream of our session and all the others here.
One thing we need help with:
We’re looking for talented software engineers to join our team. If you want to be at the forefront of shaping the world of open finance, take a look at our Angelist page here.
From Jay Kurahashi-Sofue (Marketing):
- We’re continuing to roll out more Spaces on AirSwap. To date, we have rolled out 32 Spaces, where users can trade over-the-counter without giving up custody of their assets. We invite you to come make a trade!
One thing we need help with:
We have many positions open on the Engineering team, as well as a few others within other teams at AirSwap. If you’re interested in what our team is working on at AirSwap, please submit an application in the “Careers” section here.
From Shane Hong (Marketing):
- With the KyberWidget, crypto holders can now use over 50 different ERC20 tokens to purchase credits on the WisePass lifestyle platform. These credits can be exchanged for various perks such as bottle service, fine-dining, grooming services, movie screenings, VIP event access and much more!
- Kyber recently participated in 4 workshops in Tokyo, Japan. These different workshops were in collaboration with Blockchain EXE, DMM, LayerX, and ProSEED and Miss Bitcoin Mai, and helped to educate more than 100 developers about Kyber’s liquidity protocol. Loi and the team were there to personally answer questions from the community.
- Datum (DAT), Quarkchain (QKC), Republic Protocol (REN), Maker (MKR) and Distributed Credit Chain (DCC) are now available on Kyber Network. These 5 tokens are accessible through KyberSwap and other platforms that are tapping into our on-chain liquidity protocol, such as MyEtherWallet, imToken, Trust Wallet, Easwap, and many others.
- The Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) initiative was featured by Coindesk and ETHNews.
From Jannis Pohlmann (Tech Lead):
- Persistent Subgraphs: Graph Nodes now resume indexing all previously deployed subgraphs when starting up.
- Code generation for GraphQL schemas: In order to simplify working with entities, reduce the verbosity of mappings, and in many cases, remove the mental burden of having to think about the types being used, we’ve added code generation for entity classes based on the subgraph’s GraphQL schema.
- Subgraph Validation: We now validate subgraph manifests and GraphQL schemas in Graph CLI at build time. This means you will be able to spot mistakes much earlier, rather than having to wait for your subgraph to fail after being deployed.
- Block & transaction data in event handlers: Information such as block hash, block number, transaction hash, and timestamp is now available through block and transaction fields on the event.
- Official Docker images & Graph Node builds for Linux: Thanks to our official Docker images, which are built for master, release tags and select branches, as well as a preconfigured Docker Compose setup and Graph Node release binaries built for Linux, building the Rust codebase yourself is no longer necessary.
- Check out our Development Update for the rest of the improvements.
One thing we need help with:
Would you like to get involved in developing The Graph? We’ve begun identifying easy starting points for new contributors: good first issues in Graph Node, good first issues in Graph CLI. We will add more soon.
If you’re excited about The Graph and would like to explore a position on the team, take a look at our careers page.
From Kevin Lu (Growth):
- We have published a new package that introduces the new authorization flow and implements seamless Metamask interactivity dependent on user activity (such as logout/login).
- We are working on introducing Wallet-Connect into our products which will then allow for the use of a mobile wallet to pay and start a subscription on the go.
Participating Projects:
ICON, Parity.
Connext Network, CDx, Market Protocol, Loopring, Liquidity Network, Quantstamp, Codex Protocol, Dharma Protocol, Set Protocol, AirSwap, Kyber Network, The Graph, 8x Protocol.
Updates Not Included This Week:
Wanchain.
Abacus Protocol, Civic, Enigma, Matic Network, Aion, Origin Protocol.
Know a protocol that should be part of this list? Drop us an email at hello@8xprotocol.com.
8/11/2018
