Looking Back on a Successful 2019 at BlockStamp
It’s been a big year for BlockStamp!
We’ve been hard at work building an ecosystem of what we call fair-play apps around the BlockStamp blockchain. These apps help digital citizens do business, communicate, and have fun safely without unnecessary interference or information barriers.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the most important progress we’ve made with these apps in 2019!
We’ve added off-chain multiplayer options added at BlockStamp Games.
We originally launched BlockStamp Games with games powered entirely by the BlockStamp blockchain. These are the fairest, most transparent games we believe you’ll find anywhere on the internet. No house fees — just pay a transaction fee to place your bet in the blockchain.
This year we’ve launched off-chain BlockStamp Games Rooms to let players enjoy the experience with their friends — and even act as the directors of their own casinos.
The games are still completely fair but run off-chain to increase speed and allow for Room administrators to share in the profits of the Room.
Those are profits in a strict sense: there are only success fees when players win a bet. We call it a “win-win house edge” that you won’t find anywhere else!
Read more about the off-chain games and the possibilities they open up here and here.
We’ve started actively contributing to the OpenBazaar marketplace project.
OpenBazaar is the internet’s freest free market. It is actually decentralized, unlike many of the other supposedly uncensorable marketplaces that have popped up (and disappeared) over the years.
OpenBazaar buyers typically use a listing explorer to find products for sale. We identified a need for a listing explorer that actually shows everything available for sale on the network.
So we built the BlockStamp OpenBazaar Listing Explorer — with a special twist! Vendors can burn BST to promote their products by moving them up in the search results.
It’s a great way to establish credibility on the marketplace, as vendors can demonstrate that they have “skin in the game,” so to speak. It wouldn’t make sense to burn BST on a product that doesn’t exist! Read more about it here and here.
We’ve also contributed to OpenBazaar’s “Verified Moderator” program and suggested some best practices for buyers and sellers. Everyone on OpenBazaar can use this program and the BlockStamp listing explorer to do business more safely. Read all about how it all comes together here, here, here, and here.
We’re about to launch BlockStamp Communicator, the *most private* private messaging app we’re aware of.
At the time of publication, BlockStamp Communicator hasn’t been released — but we’re doing our best to ship before the end of 2019. There’s still time :)
Anyway, we’ve done the majority of development work on the app in 2019.
And this is important work. BlockStamp Communicator encrypts messages like many other messaging apps out there.
Unlike any other similar solution we’ve seen, though, BlockStamp Communicator messages can have zero links between the sender and receiver. Other messaging apps have a theoretically traceable link even though it is often not realistic to trace it.
BlockStamp Communicator users can choose to pay the BlockStamp blockchain transaction fee to send a message for excellent privacy or perform what we call “transaction mining” for total privacy. Read more about it here and here and why we call it “sword-in-the-stone encryption” here.
We’ve made an important node update to support core BlockStamp use cases.
Speculation is all well and good — and we do believe that the BST price will appreciate over time. But we believe that the best use of the BST crypto coin is as a medium of exchange in the fair-play apps we — or anyone else in the community — build.
Accordingly, the block rewards are now set at 1 BST in perpetuity. Read more here.
Believe it or not, that’s not all we have going on over here :) Remember that we’re also a proud partner of Hprox, an IP-sharing privacy network in which you can use BST to buy bandwidth. You can also use the BlockStamp data sealing / timestamping app for any digital file. We’re expecting interest to pick up as time goes on.
Check back next week for a breakdown of what we’re planning for 2020!
Make sure you’re part of the BlockStamp social community and feel free to ask any questions there!
About BlockStamp:
BlockStamp is a Bitcoin blockchain fork hosting an ecosystem of fair play apps, including a true-odds multiplayer crypto gambling platform, a decentralized marketplace listing optimizer, and a private messenger with sword-in-the-stone encryption (launching soon).
