EOS Nation’s EOS Hot Sauce #14
EOSIO scaling, DeFi, Vigor, Good Money, EDNA, LiquidApps, Games, CHAINWISE, EOS Radio
Block.one
While the EOS dApp and BP Community is focused on getting ready for the EOSIO 1.8 Update, the good people at Block.one are pushing hard to continue to grow and improve the EOSIO protocol.
EOSIO software is built to make blockchain applications scalable so that a decentralized economy powered by smart contracts can be adopted by the masses. One year after its launch, the EOS public network has lived up to these promises as it quickly established itself as the most utilized open and permissionless blockchain network on the planet! (Source: Blocktivity, DappRadar). And we are just getting started!
On July 9th, Block.one published an article on Cointelegraph to introduce the strategic vision behind EOSIO to the wider public and explain why blockchain scalability is so important.
“Scalability refers to a blockchain’s ability to provide a rich experience for users independent of how many users have this experience.” — Bart Wyatt of Block_one
On July 18th, Block.one followed it up by publishing a longer article that elaborates how they plan to further scale the EOSIO ecosystem. This article is Part 1 of 4 of a series that will examine the EOSIO Strategic Vision foundation based on four core principles of focus: Scalability, Developers, Users, and Enterprises.
The much anticipated EOS Virtual Machine (EOS VM) plays an important factor here, as it provides the first web assembly specially designed for blockchain applications.
EOS VM is designed to tackle the following problems:
- Deterministic execution of blockchain applications
- The limited capacity of WebAssembly engines
- Bounded memory allocation
- Loading time limitations
- Decreased overall performance and reliability
- Resource reliance
- Overhead calls to native code
- Single-threaded performance
Scaling EOSIO effectively also means a growing amount of data stored in the blockchain’s history. In order to improve the accessibility of this data, Block.one has been working on a series of history tools and just released an alpha version introducing database fillers that read the state data as well as populate PostgreSQL and LMDB databases that can be queried with the specialized client and server WASMs. If you are unfamiliar with some of these terms, head over to their article to find a more detailed explanation.
Diving deeper into these articles you’ll find a clear strategy and long-term goals which Block.one has set for itself. In order to reach these lofty goals, Block.one has been steadily growing their team and we recently saw them opening several new positions such as content creator, technical writer and senior security researcher.
Decentralizing Finance on EOSIO
One of the most valuable use-cases for cryptoassets is its’ ability to generate some much needed competition for traditional finance systems as well as leading curious retail investors to learn more about economics, markets, and finance as they dive deep into crypto research.
From a high level, society has benefited tremendously from telecommunication technologies and globalized markets but there is no doubt that it has left some segments of the human population behind. A fairer, more efficient and accessible financial system seems to be the logical next step in the evolution of money.
Decentralization of finance will play a major role in this process as it offers superior levels of security and eliminates many potential sources of conflict for some people as the underlying protocol doesn’t favor any one party over another.
The fact that Facebook, a platform that can be seen as a representation of a global society, is introducing a global payment system through its’ Libra project is another indicator of this coming evolution of money.
However, Facebook’s plans are just the tip of the iceberg and the term Decentralized Finance (DeFi) seems to be popping up everywhere in recent months.
This week we would like to take a look at some interesting DeFi projects that are built on EOSIO and are decentralizing not only the underlying infrastructure of the validation process but also the control, management, and ownership of their respective projects.
Vigor Stable Coin
First, let’s first take a look at Vigor, a fully DAC-managed project that aims to create a crypto-backed stablecoin that tracks the US dollar without a central counterparty.
Vigor enables participants to separate and transfer both volatility risk and price event risk through open source escrow smart contracts, similar to the MakerDAO but with all the added benefits of the EOS public network.
Participants can be either borrowers or insurers (lenders) and can be elected by the VIG token holders to become custodians empowered to make decisions to steer the project. Furthermore, VIG’s utility is to provide access to the system, to be used as a fee token, and to be used as a final reserve. VIG tokens will be airdropped through a distribution method that is still being discussed (share your ideas!) and will be designed in a way that discourages whale-sized holders.
One thing is clear, in order to get VIG tokens you need to participate in the Vigor DAC by signing the constitution. You can further engage the team in their main Telegram group or on task-specific chats about development, governance or media work. The process of building VIGOR is proving to be decentralized from the get-go, which is great to see.
If this made you curious make sure to check out this nice Vigor explainer video from mBluCrypto or visit their website and dive in deep by reading their whitepaper.
Good Money
Now that we’ve seen how a stable currency can be built and managed in a decentralized fashion, lets take a look at a project that aims to decentralize ownership. For example, users of a platform could earn ownership shares as they interact as a reward for being the true driving factor in the value creation.
Introducing GoodMoney, “the first digital and mobile co-operative banking platform” where users become owners the moment they open an account. By using the platform and its debit card, the Good Money card, as well as through inviting new members, users can increase their ownership share and earn additional rewards. On top of that, the platform promises a 4% yield (2% cash and 2% shares) on deposits, provides a feeless service and 50% of its profits goes to non-profit organisations of the users’ choosing.
While Good Money is not a licensed bank, they can still facilitate banking services (loans and deposit products) which are provided by a FDIC-insured third-party banking partner.
The idea behind this project is very ambitious and we have yet to see them roll out their product. What does make us very excited is that this DeFi platform raised 30 Million USD in a Series A funding round led by EOS VC Galaxy Digital, making this a project worthy of our attention.
EDNA
It was not long ago that scientists managed to read our DNA for the first time and we still have much to learn about these sets of genes that define who we are. Companies like “23andMe”, “AncestryDNA” and “FamilyTreeDNA” made it a business to cater to the curiosity around this topic. Unfortunately, their business models included tricking users into unknowingly giving away their rights to monetize the generated data.
It should come as no surprise then that DNA research is gravitating towards blockchain as more and more people understand the value of personal data and the importance of privacy. Last week we mentioned one such project, GeneOS, which is building its own EOSIO network and this week we discuss EDNA, which runs on the EOS public network.
EDNA creates a professional DNA testing service as well as a marketplace to generate profits from the results. All the information is kept private and secured using similar techniques we know from privacy coins like Zcash and Monero, only allowing the data to be accessed and sold with the consent of the DNA owners. This means that users always get to decide to who they sell their data to, for how much, and for which purposes.
In order to make this service widely available, the initial costs of 1000 USD for the physical DNA test can be covered through a loan, which then gets paid back through the profits generated by selling the test results.
EDNA presents a well thought out economic model around the value of life and strives to protect personal rights. The team even supports a selection of charitable organizations with whom they share a portion of the profits that are generated through EDNA.
EDNA has been in development since before the launch of the EOS public network and was one of the first tokens to be airdropped to EOS genesis accounts. The team has recently announced an update regarding this airdrop.
In short, EDNA is interested in an active user base and they have decided to reclaim airdropped tokens from accounts that showed no EDNA token activity whatsoever. No worries though, all these tokens can be claimed back once a user decides he wants them, as shown at the end of this video.
In order to dive deeper in this project, we encourage you to visit their brand new website or read this excellent and detailed article that covers not just the project but also the whole background of genetics and its associated problems that blockchain can solve.
EOS Nation wins DSP Portal Challenge!
The team at LiquidApps is consistently publishing high quality and thought provoking articles and this week we’d like to highlight two of them.
In their most recent article, CEO Beni Hakak articulates his thoughts eloquently on the topic of reducing the growing rivalries between competing blockchain communities which in recent years turned from healthy discussions to stubborn tribalism. He suggests interoperability as the key to coexistence in his well written article.
In another fascinating article published only one day earlier, LiquidApps applies findings from behavioral economics to the “Air HODL” model in order to help build self-sustaining networks, improve multiplayer games, and accelerate the growth of cooperative communities.
We believe that the messages shared here are highly valuable and it’s great to see the LiquidApps team showing great initiative in not just building amazing tools but also in uniting, growing and nurturing communities.
And finally, EOS Nation has won 1st place in the DSP Portal Challenge! We are extremely grateful for all the support and votes the community sent our way and will keep on building to humbly serve the EOSIO network and all of its awesome community.
Games Games Games!
Once again, there is lots going on in the realm of gaming on EOS! New games are being announced, previously announced games are getting released and released games are growing their user base.
A great example of the latter is Prospectors, a real-time economic strategy game which launched just a couple of weeks ago. Since launch, the game keeps climbing up the rankings and is now already the forth most used dApp across all chains with over 2000 daily active users.
This caught the attention of DappRadar so they introduced the game to the wider dApp community and also co-operated with the Prospectors team on a token lottery event, which creates an additional incentive for new users to check out the game!
Besides having fun playing and earning PGL tokens, Prospectors allows investors to earn dividends. We’re happy to report that the PGL token has been recently added to the growing Tokenyield platform, which is our favorite place to check for potential dividends of EOS based tokens.
The CHAINWISE Group from Germany recently came to our attention and from their recent announcements we expect to see some high-quality products coming soon from this team.
One of these announced products is Chain Clash, a free-to-play collectible and battle game, with the clever approach of utilizing the rivalry that exists between blockchain communities.
Gamers can collect, train, and trade a variety of avatar fighters (NFTS) and join forces with like-minded people to form crypto clans. The game will be launching in Q3 / 2019 and if you want to be one of the early testers you can join the beta testing here.
The second product announced by the CHAINWISE Group is the Wombat Wallet.
While not a game itself, this wallet provides free accounts and a dApp Explorer that promises instant access to some of the most popular EOS dApps, brings more users and therefore more fun to games on EOS.
We want to give a warm welcome to CHAINWISE group and we are happy to have them be part of the EOS Community!
Owning and trading NFTS is also a fundamental feature in Darktown by ITAM Games, which was officially released on July 16th! The launch of DarkTown allows EOS public network users to convert their gameplay into digital assets! This is a new trend in gaming and we expect it to continue to flourish on the EOS public network!
Check out there latest gameplay video.
We congratulate ITAM Games for a successful launch and are looking forward to more announcements on the other games they are currently developing.
EOS Radio Sponsorship
The final announcement we’d like to share is about our sponsorship with EOS Radio!
We are big fans of their weekly, live, high-quality panels and our CEO Yves La Rose has been participating in those actively. We look forward to more healthy discussions in the future and are happy to support EOS Radio as they continue to grow the EOSIO ecosystem!
Thank you for reading this week’s EOS Hot Sauce!
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