Hi again, all! It’s been a very busy month for TOP Network and not without fruits! TOP token is listed on both Binance DEX and Bithumb Global, besides being listed on Huobi. This will ensure more liquidity, and knowing a bit about exchanges and the ordeal of listings, one can expect more will follow shortly after. The largest exchanges want enough volume and we are certainly getting there.
This month we had two AMA’s in the Telegram channel that are both well worth the recap. First one was my fellow TOP Ambassador: Brad Laurie. Brad, also know as BlockchainBrad, has been doing wonderful things for the industry in terms of transparency with his comprehensive research since 2017. The second one was recently (today, actually), by none other than Steve Wei, our CEO. This was Steve’s second AMA in the Telegram channel and, like before, it was a blast having him.
Other than that there’s the big waiting till the mainnet launch, which has been postponed until further notice, but scheduled for Q3.
That sounds bad, doesn’t it?
Actually, it doesn’t. It’s best to not release software before it’s adequately tested and ready for the consumer, but in most cases, poor software will just do. Releasing software is in most cases a race to the finish line and just like the Formula 1 or Tour de France, crashes happen.
If you have been using computers for some time, it’s highly unlikely you haven’t had the pleasure to get stuck with a program called Microsoft Windows. Back in the day, it created beautiful blue screens and occasionally kept your computer running. This was mostly because of more effort was done to hide the source code, then to deliver high-performance software. It was designed to run, no matter how frustrating (Vista and 8) — they just released the OS and left you with the additional bugs and patchwork. Service packages, they called it. They threw in some extras and nobody batted an eye. Everybody uses it daily, so it must be all right. And if they truly hate it, just skip the current version and you can re-install the previous version while we shove the next down your throat.
Another industry that has the luxury of not having to produce the highest quality of the software is the videogame industry. Engines like Unreal help game developers on the right track to produce something presentable, but great games are scarce and cost a lot of money (and talent) to finish. How many games are plagued with bugs that, just like Windows before, are at the mercy of patches? I remember having to pull all sorts of tricks out of my hat just to keep accessible save games on Fallout: New Vegas on the PS3. Not to speak of the XBOX version.
But hey, it’s not like anyone died, you know? It’s not like it’s a plane crashed or anything. Thankfully, planes do have a different approach to software and decision making than Operation Software for a desktop (although there are really good OS’s out there, albeit slightly more difficult to master). Decisions in planes are based on Byzantine Agreement and are Fault Tolerant computer systems — this means the system is designed to continue operating even if three is a disk failure, bug, in- or output device failure, errors, physical damage and so on.
You can imagine designing such a system is beyond an OS that is mainly used for typing, browsing and executing files or playing video games to a satisfactory level. You would rather keep that rocket on the ground to prevent disaster and human casualties than to give it a premature green light and cross fingers after liftoff. There’s no reboot or reload.
The same goes for blockchain projects, especially the ones like TOP Network that not only have to make sure a transaction is successful but convey all sorts of messages successfully. It’s no longer keeping track of a certain dataset that broadcasts the current state to others in a permissionless network (being hard is that is, already, without a very strong PoW-algorithm that is backed by some serious hash power).
Although these networks can certainly receive updates and software upgrades, flaws can be detrimental for the project as a whole. Examples can be 51% attacks that pretty much rooted out smaller projects like Verge or Bitcoin Gold. Not to compare these projects to any major project whatsoever with higher standards.
That’s the reason why innovating blockchain project’s code should be peer-reviewed. TOP Network’s chain source code is being audited right now and we will have to wait some more and not have a Titanic on our hands, sinking on her maiden’s voyage. Peer review is a third party looking at your code. Another party can be very helpful, because they may have a different view and skillset. One might be able to code communication protocols impeccably but might not know all the ins and outs whitehat hackers know about smart contracts and how to make them waterproof.
It’s good to see TOP is being fully transparent on the matter and let everybody know what’s going on behind the scenes and is taking everything as serious as they should be.
TOP Network will be open-source after launch, which will help improve the code as we move forward, but we need the code for the project to have a certain standard, so it can’t be exploited by malevolent actors or have high-risk vulnerabilities that may compromise the project in any way.
You can find TOP Network on:
Email Contact: contact@topnetwork.org
Official Website: http://www.topnetwork.org
Telegram: https://t.me/topnetwork_top
Twitter: https://twitter.com/topnetwork_top
Medium: https://medium.com/@topnetwork
Steemit: https://steemit.com/@topnetwork-top
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/topnetwork_top
About TOP Network
TOP Network is a decentralized open communication network that provides cloud communication services on the blockchain. TOP offers secure, low-cost services such as messaging, calling, video, VPN, CDN, IoT data sharing and more.
TOP Network is also a high-performance public blockchain platform designed to handle real-world business of any size or volume. Powered by innovations including three-layer network, two-layer sharding, two-layer lattice DAG and PBFT-DPoS*, TOP can process several hundred thousand transactions per second on the blockchain.
The long-term mission of TOP Network is to build a public blockchain infrastructure for all Dapps. Our world-class team of over 100 developers is striving for this goal.
TOP Network originated from the common underlying network layer of Dingtone, CoverMe and SkyVPN, three communication apps built by the TOP team before the blockchain project. These apps, having attracted over 60 million users in total, will be ported to TOP Network upon the launch of TOP and generate huge volumes of transactions in the TOP ecosystem.
TOP Network was founded by serial entrepreneur Steve Wei and his colleagues in late 2017. Steve was one of the earliest employees of WebEx in the 1990s. After WebEx, he founded a successful video conferencing software company which was acquired by Huawei in 2010. In 2012, Steve co-founded Dingtone, a public listed company operating popular communication apps such as Dingtone, CoverMe and SkyVPN.
On March 26th, TOP Network made its debut as the first project launched through Huobi Prime — Huobi’s selective Direct Premium Offering platform. A total of 1.5 billion TOP Tokens were sold out in seconds, after which the price of TOP surged 2770% once it was freely tradable. Upon the listing, TOP’s trading volume hit $100 million in just eight seconds and surpassed the trading volume of Bitcoin at $250 million in less than a week, ranking first in terms of volume on Huobi Global. Before that, TOP Network has closed $15 million early investments from prestigious institutional investors and individual billionaire investors, including DHVC, Fenbushi Capital, NEO Global Capital (NGC), Ontology Global Capital (OGC), LD Capital and more.