Community Update: June 2022

Welcome to our latest community update. Today, we cover some of the key developments that have happened in recent weeks, including the option to spend ETN on AnyTask.com, detailed information about the upcoming smart contract implementation, new blockchain developers joining the team, insight into our business development strategy, and finally a roundup of Richard Ells’ public appearances.

You can now spend ETN on AnyTask.com

The option to pay with Electroneum (ETN) at AnyTask.com has finally arrived! Sellers earning ETN on the freelance platform can now spend their ETN directly with other freelancers, opening up the opportunity to scale up one’s business and recruit other high-performing freelancers to fulfil a greater number of orders, in a quicker period of time.

Prior to the feature becoming available to all users on 8 June 2022, ETN Payments had been in BETA with a number of the ETN community’s users who applied to take part in the programme several weeks ago. The programme began on 25 May 2022 and was completed on 3 June 2022.

“When I create an NFT illustration, I solve problems for my clients. I use all the best software and techniques acquired over years of art and design studies. My clients appreciate the hard work and dedication I show them, and so they often come back to me time and time again. This is great! However, the requests aren’t always within the services I offer. Not to disappoint, I outsource some elements to other freelancers. Now, with the option to pay with ETN on AnyTask.com, it is faster, cheaper, and easier to work with the professionals I already know and trust.” — NetoRobatto, AnyTask.com Freelancer

This is just one of the many updates happening to the AnyTask™ Platform every single week. With over 744,000 users and 39,000 live tasks, AnyTask.com is growing in leaps and bounds. If you have purchased from AnyTask.com recently and had a great experience, we would love to hear from you!! Why not share what you had made on social media and tag @AnyTaskOfficial in your post 😊

Ethereum’s EVM coming to Electroneum blockchain

Smart contracts provide the foundation for many popular trends found within the blockchain space today, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and yield farming. However, smart contracts can do so much more. They have the potential to transform many of today’s legacy systems Financial services, healthcare, government, insurance, and logistics are just some of the sectors that’ll likely be impacted by blockchain and smart contract technology in the next decade.

Simply put, smart contracts are computer programs that operate upon a blockchain to perform automated tasks. The self-executing lines of code found within smart contracts allow parties to transact with each other without the need for any central authority. A popular example of this would be Uniswap — an Ethereum-based decentralised network protocol that allows users to trade cryptocurrency without an intermediary.

In order to function, smart contracts need a virtual machine (VM) to operate. VMs provide a digital environment within which applications can operate. Today’s most popular blockchain-based VM is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which Electroneum’s blockchain team will start integrating within the coming weeks and months.

It’s important to mention that we are not transitioning ETN into an ERC-20 token. Electroneum will remain its own network. Instead, we’re integrating EVM into the Electroneum blockchain, which in turn enables interoperability with the Ethereum Blockchain and other Ethereum-compliant blockchains.

Here is a summary of the key features we anticipate will be coming to the network soon:

• Ability for users to create smart contracts
• IBFT consensus with single block finality for transactions
• Significantly lower transaction fees
• Potential for Electroneum to expand into the DeFi, NFT, and Metaverse
• Simplified cross-chain interactions with other popular EVM-based projects
• Scope for Electroneum’s partners to build applications on top of the blockchain
• Creation of remote nodes for users to access
• Creation of a test-net faucet, enabling users to receive test-net ETN

We will aim to share further information, including the token migration, in our next community update.

Four universities are set to become blockchain validators

Since our last community update in March, four Universities have shared their intention to become validators on the Electroneum blockchain. We hope to have signed contracts within the coming weeks. As soon as contracts are signed and validators are onboarded, we will aim to share this information via an announcement.

Two new blockchain developers joining the team

It’s incredibly sad to hear of organisations laying off hundreds of staff as a result of the recent downturn in the cryptocurrency market. We’re very pleased to inform you that no such activity is happening here at the ETN-Network. We’re 100% dedicated to growing the project over the coming years and are heavily investing in our staff. We’re very excited to announce that we are welcoming two new blockchain developers to the team … and we’re not stopping there! We’re looking for several more talented front-end and back-end developers. If you, or someone you know, is interested in working with us please reach out to our HR team.

Working on new ways to earn and spend ETN

The priority in our business development strategy is finding new ways for people to earn ETN. We are pleased to say that one contract, in particular, is nearing completion. Once signed, the project will move into the development stages. Depending on the scope of the project, we could be several months away from releasing the new feature, however, the concept remains an exciting one. From what we can tell, it could be a first for the crypto industry.

We’re not short of other companies to work with; in fact, we have a number of ongoing discussions with potential partners who are keen to work with us given our access to users in developing regions such as Africa, Latin America, and South-East Asia. However, we remain to ensure these are the right fit for the ETN-Network users. For now, we continue to tread carefully to ensure we do not put any undue risk on the project, which unfortunately does mean we move slower than we would like — but please know we’re doing this in the interest of longevity.

Our second priority is on providing new ways to spend ETN. We previously mentioned a development that we’ve been working on for a while now, which will allow African users to purchase food, building materials, and other items remotely and organise collection from around 1,000 retail locations. We hope to pull the curtains off this feature at some point soon, but there are some outstanding questions in relation to how the retail locations deal with out-of-stock items which is putting a delay on the project. As soon as this is resolved, we should be ready to launch this feature.

We’ve also had a great deal of feedback from our users who are loving the ability to spend their ETN on mobile airtime and data top-ups, however, as prices are always changing it is challenging to ensure our users are getting the best prices. We are therefore beginning to scope out a tool for internal use which will help determine, in real-time, what the best packages and providers are for a given country. This will not only allow our partners to improve their offerings to our users, but it will allow us to onboard new providers who can provide better prices in key target regions. Our goal, after all, is to get as close to the face value of the top-up as possible, which is a mean feat considering the number of parties involved. But we are getting there!

Finally, since the invasion of Ukraine in February, we’ve been working in the background on some fundraising ideas. Initially, we had hoped to distribute ETN to each of our Ukrainian users, however, after some analysis, we determined this would not be possible as it would contradict our pledge to maintain ETN’s token inflation below 2%. We, therefore, began discussions with several parties on some fundraising initiatives that would benefit from our global reach of users and community members. We hope to share more information on this soon.

Appearances by Richard Ells

Keynote speech for the Digital Pound Foundation

Last month, Richard Ells provided the keynote speech for a webinar entitled “How could a digital Pound facilitate financial inclusion?”. In his speech, he spoke about the need for greater financial inclusion across the world, and how new forms of digital money could bring tremendous freedom to the more than 1.7 billion people around the world who remain underserved by the financial system today.

Following his speech, Richard was joined by a panel of incredible financial inclusion experts who each contributed to the discussion around the challenges of financial inclusion. The panel included:

• Susan Friedman, Head of Policy, Ripple
• Dr Estelle Brack, Founder & Chairman, KiraliT
• Sofie Blakstad, CEO and Founder, hiveonline
• Victoria Thompson, Founder, Orora

The webinar is now available to watch on YouTube, so please feel free to watch it there if you happened to have missed it:

22 June: Evidence presentation to UK Parliament

Richard Ells will be attending an event at the UK’s Houses of Parliament on 22 June where he will be presenting information on behalf of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain. Key questions being addressed include:

• What is the current stage of Government’s and mainstream brands in accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment?
• What does the current development of cryptocurrencies mean for financial stakeholders — How are they now responding/adapting to the developments?
• How should cryptocurrency payment systems be regulated to make it safer for investors and less appealing to cybercriminals?
• Should cryptocurrencies be seen as a security? A commodity? Or a property?
• Will Government’s develop their own cryptocurrencies to rival those already in the market? (to follow China’s example)

Richard will be one of a handful of formal evidence givers. Following the presentations, a Q&A will take place with the members of the houses of Commons and Lords. The press have been invited and the meeting will be recorded, so you will have a chance to view the evidence meeting online once it has taken place. For more information, head over to the Eventbrite page.

Originally published at https://news.electroneum.com on June 17, 2022.