Optional Mainnet Ignition 1.0.3 Update
The Qtum Team released some minor updates to the Ignition wallet. These are optional, but may improve staking performance. Please visit our Github to download:
Remember, always encrypt and back up your wallet. Use a very strong password, and keep multiple copies of the backup on various forms of media (USB drives, DVD-r’s, SDcard, etc). If you forget your password, your Qtum is gone forever. Try to use a separate device to store and stake your Qtum, this could be anything from a Raspberry Pi to an old laptop. The quality or speed of the device doesn’t matter much, but the security is paramount. The issue with using your main computing device is the risk of keyloggers or viruses stealing your funds.
The Qtum Team has submitted code to the Ledger company, so there should be a Ledger Nano hardware solution soon. They are very busy, so it may take a while longer.
For more information on using the Qtum wallet, please see our guide:
Qtum Decentralized Applications Update
Qbao
A new Decentralized Application called “Qbao” announced they would build on the Qtum platform:
If you read through some of their blog entries, you can see that they are trying to streamline access to the Qtum ecosystem. Here’s an excerpt from the above blog post:
“Check out the #Qbao #Android now available on #google Play store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aether.coder.qbao
The version of Qbao1.1 is a mobile terminal that supports Qtum and Qtum tokens (such as InkChain, Bodhi, Energo). But if you think it only has the wallet function, then you are wrong! Qbao is not only a wallet, we are going to became the WeChat of Qtum Community! Qbao is now in the process of developing social functions, including groups, friends, red envelope of Qtum, and so on. The next step is to make the Qtum DAPP store. You can use the DAPP on Qtum easily, so that the Bodhi will help you to predict the market, and the InkChain will help you to register the copyright. Owning Qbao means owning the door to a world of Qtum.”
Medibloc
Medibloc is a Qtum Decentralized Application that focuses on healthcare. Their public ICO starts on November 13th. Their 2 founders are both doctors, making this a high caliber team. Here’s an excerpt from their introduction blog post:
“MediBloc’s healthcare information platform is a personal data ecosystem for patients, providers and researchers, built on blockchain technology. Our mission is to:
Streamline medicine for patients, providers and researchers by redistributing value behind personal healthcare data ownership.
Through MediBloc, you can effectively own your medical data, providers can remove redundancies to provide better care, and your valuable data can help researchers push the advancement of medicine faster than ever.”
For more information about Medibloc’s crowdsale, please see their ICO schedule blog post here:
Vevue
Vevue is a platform for sharing user-generated video experiences. Users exchange incentive based Vevue Requests thru the mobile app to earn Vevue Token . Pin any amount of Vevue Token to any location and attach a short message. Receive video content in return. Vevue Token is multifunctional. It is also a utility token for decentralized video copyright exchange. Copyright information is stored on the Qtum blockchain. Content creators can retain or transfer their copyright using Vevue Copyright Wallet
Vevue’s public ICO started at Qtum block #35000 (October 28th’ish). For information on how to participate, please see their github article:
To watch the progress of this ICO, please see their site:
Ink
“Recently, Ink announced that the team has been building a global Intellectual Property (IP) asset ecosystem based on the Qtum blockchain. Ink is defined as a Ledger where artists can register works and generate businesses, an Exchange where arts can be incubated and thrive, and an Ecosystem advocating for anyone who creates original content. Ink is established on the Ink Protocol, a decentralized solution harnessing the power of Sovereign Consortium Blockchains, Qtum Public Blockchain and Cross-chain Protocol for the global Creative Industries.”
Qtum team visits Korea!
Members of the Qtum team visited Seoul last week to attend 3 meetups. In attendance were Patrick, Stella, Xiaolong, and Brett. We wrote a picture journey here:
Qtum Nodemap Gets a Makeover
There is now a count of which country has the most nodes. Currently first place is bouncing back and forth between the USA and Republic of Korea.
Please remember that a node is a connection that allows incoming and outgoing connections. They broadcast transactions, and share the immutable ledger with others who request it. This is how a decentralized network operates, when you are looking for a confirmed version of the Blockchain, you usually get it from other nodes. It is possible for someone to make a copy of it, prove that it hasn’t been modified, and then share it over another platform (torrent, website, ftp, etc).
A decentralized network is hard for a central authority to interrupt. The Qtum team relies on the confidence of the community, which is why we work so hard to improve the source code.
Mobile Qtum Wallets
The Qtum Team released 2 wallets last week, both of them for mobile devices. The Android and Apple wallets are available on their respective storefronts.
We also released a mobile wallet for Apple devices:
Qtum listed on other exchanges
There were a number of exchanges that listed Qtum over the last week:
Bithumb, World’s Largest Exchange by Volume
Upbit, a Bittrex Initiative in Korea
Quoinex, a Japanese Licensed Exchange
“QRYPTOS is a leading secure ICO listing platform and crypto-only exchange, and QUOINEX is the first global fiat-cryptocurrency exchange licensed by the Japan Financial Services Authority.
This dual listing will enable the Qtum token to be traded against fiat currencies such as the Japanese yen (JPY), the US dollar (USD), the Singapore dollar (SGD), the euro (EUR), as well as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
Blockchain Canada Exchange (BCEX), a Rebranded Chinese Exchange.
These secondary markets should make it possible for people looking to build on the Qtum platform to purchase the tokens required to fund their Smart Contracts if they did not during the crowdsale.
Be Aware of Sophisticated Scams
There was an incident earlier where a “price widget” was advertised in Qtum social media channels. This was a very clever ploy to imitate an existing piece of technology, but the only difference was that it contained scamware. This allowed attackers to outright steal Qtum tokens from unsuspecting holders. Please be vigilant.
Qtum Lead Developer, Jordan Earls, reached out to the community on Reddit to warn others against sophisticated attempts to steal Qtum tokens:
Qtum Lead Developer Guest Appearance on Futuretechpodcast.com
Qtum Lead Developer, Jordan Earls, was featured on the Futuretech Podcast.
Click here to listen:
Qtum on Boxmining and Coincast Livestreams
Boxmining:
A few days after the livestream, we met Michael at a Blockchain event in Shanghai:
Coincast:
We also spent a bit of time in the studio with Ryan at Coincast and took some pictures:
Community Created Content
Qtum has an amazing community. There are literally thousands of people across the globe that have a shared interest. There is now over 12,000 people in the various Qtum Wechat channels in China. The Korean community number in the thousands, communicating on Kakaotalk, Line, Telegram, and others. The Western communities keep growing.
Check out some of the great content we have noticed over the last week:
User “Cryptominder” shows Qtum users how to modify their Raspberry Pi’s to notify staked blocks
From Cryptominder:
## Do this just once: Install jq (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/), e.g. on Raspberry Pi
$ sudo apt-get -y install jq
## List staked blocks
$ ~/qtum-wallet/bin/qtum-cli listtransactions “*” 10000 | jq ‘.[] | select(.amount == 0 and .vout == 0 and .category == “send” and .address == null) | { time: .time | strftime(“%B %d %Y %I:%M%p %Z”), blockhash: .blockhash, confirmations: .confirmations}’
User “Jb395” discusses the “Qtum Mainnet Results” for the last week:
JB395 also has a Github repository, check out “QtumMon”
“ A python script to monitor a wallet server app on the Qtum blockchain, log new blocks, and send emails/texts for PoS staking events. Description: A program to monitor the Qtum wallet server application qtumd application, send emails and logs activity. QtumMon uses qtum-cli to send RPC queries to the qtumd server application to identify staking events, and log various activities of the application. QtumMon sends a query to check for a new block approximately every 4 seconds. QtumMon will check that qtumd is running with staking enabled (ecrypted for staking).”
He also does a simulation of the Qtum network to test the different results in a staking environment (Using Skynet):
User (and Qtum Korea Telegram moderator) “Jaedong” operates the Qtum Korea Community website:
User “Silverminer” discusses how to update your Raspberry Pi wallet to Ignition 1.0.3 on Steemit:
User “Anuzis” creates a script that notifies the staker when they have solved a block.
QTUM Raspberry Pi Monitor
- Simple script to notify of block wins, monitor temperature, and performs basic sanity checks.
- Under 100 lines (on release), easy to review and modify.
Buy a Qtum Teeshirt on Amazon:
Some community images from last week:
New Article about Qtum Cryptoeconomics
This article discusses why decentralized Smart Contract platforms (Like Qtum and Ethereum) require a ‘mechanism’ to stop malicious users from attacking the network. It also explains some of the calculations involved.
This guide was written for a casual audience, but the hardcore version is available here:
Here is a Russian translation we found on our Slack:
Qtum Onboards the First Advisor: Jeffrey Wernick
Qtum is excited to announce the addition of veteran investor Jeffrey Wernick to our advisory board. Jeffrey’s 40 years of experience includes investments in Uber and Airbnb, after which he turned his focus to bank transactions, lending platforms, and the blockchain industry. His advisory role will help guide Qtum’s international growth and development strategies.
For more information, please see our blog post:
Qtum’s Proof-of-Stake Implementation Vs. Ethereum’s Casper
Lead Developer Jordan Earls wrote a post in our subreddit earlier explaining the differences between Qtum’s Smart Staking and Ethereum’s Casper. He also goes into detail about the “Nothing-at-Stake” non-issue.
Hackerone Bug Bounty
The Qtum Team just finalized this program with Hackone, offering over $100,000.00 in bounties for people who can find vulnerabilities in our source code. This will be a private event, as in Hackerone will leverage their own community of professional hackers. If you would like an invitation to this program, to participate for cash prizes, please get in contact with the Qtum team. We will publish more information on this topic in a separate article.
Demon Hacks 2017 Hackathon
The Qtum Foundation sponsored the 2017 Demon Hacks Hackathon in Chicago last week.
You can see more information about this organization at their website:
We contracted the winner of the St. Louis Distributed Hackathon, Dev Bharel, the leader of the team that won the Qtum Challenge prize, to represent us at Demon Hacks. Dev did a workshop about Qtum, where about 50 people attended, to teach them about Blockchain and Qtum. This Hackathon was unique, as it wasn’t a Blockchain focused event. We are reaching out beyond our traditional network to try and increase the number of developers interested in Qtum.
The winners will be announced shortly, but if you would like to see the submissions and prize schedule, please see their Devpost:
Here are a few photos taken from the event. The Qtum team is giving away $200.00 USD cash per participant who wins the Qtum prize, along with a promotional spacesuit.
Thank You!
From all of us at the Qtum Team, to our great community, we appreciate your support. If you would like to speak with us directly, we have multiple social media channels:
Bitcointalk
Forum
Telegram
For Spanish Telegram:
Please message the Qtum Foundation account for an invitation:
Website
