Telos Blockchain Network — Weekly Report — November 15th, 2018
Earning Respect
(Update: the Hashtag Rewards campaign mentioned in this report is now closed.)
When we first announced Telos (just 18 weeks ago) the EOSIO community was cautious, to say the least. And of course, they were right to be. No new project deserves instant respect, and Telos is no exception. But in cryptoland, “caution” about a new project is easily mistaken for much stronger feelings. In my view, Telos has been an underdog outsider since the start.
This past week has changed that. I was fortunate enough to travel to San Francisco with the GoodBlock team to compete in the EOSIO Hackathon. It was a great experience. First of all, Block.one knows how to throw an event. The venue, food, and swag were top-notch. And they brought out the big guns: I got to speak to a lot of Block.one employees, including Dan Larimer, himself. Dan was interested in Telos and what progress we are making. I enjoyed telling him that we would launch very soon with a number of resiliency improvements, like BP rotation, plus all the governance functions including WPS, Ratify/Amend, and Arbitration with elected arbitrators. I told him that Telos probably was closer to his original vision than the current EOS chain because it includes all of those parts.
It was also great to meet so many EOSIO colleagues who I’d only met through Telegram discussions. It turns out, just about everyone still talks the same and looks just like their avatar pictures. The only real surprise is how tall people are (or aren’t). I really enjoyed connecting with people in real life. But the real surprise came when Team GoodBlock placed in the Hackathon Top Ten and got to pitch in front of the entire group — including Dan, again. This was a bit of a watershed moment for Telos, I feel. For the whitepaper author and core dev team to be selected by the judges showed me that Telos is accepted as a player in the EOSIO space. We are no longer really the outsiders. People may still have their ideas about which chains are better, or better for certain purposes, but Telos is undeniably a valued entity in the EOSIO world, even before we have launched. The community has spoken and Telos has earned its respect.
Now, let’s launch this chain!
— Douglas Horn
Here’s what we accomplished this week:
- Telos Places in Top Ten at EOS Hackathon
- Scaling Blockchain Conference November 12th
- IPFS Test Nodes
- Development Updates
- Telos Improvement Proposals (TIPs)
- Telos Foundation Board Nominations Closed
- Telos Launch Group ‘Go/No-Go’ Vote on November 20th
- Exchange Hashtag Campaign Ends November 19th
1. Telos Places in Top Ten at EOS Hackathon
At this year’s EOS Hackathon in San Francisco, 75 teams from around the world competed for a top prize of US$100,000 and the invitation to the EOS Grand Finale in Cape Town, South Africa this December. Developers were challenged to build an EOSIO application that derived its competitive advantage from aligning interests amongst stakeholders or directing value back to users. Submissions were scored based on their utilization of EOSIO blockchain technology, creativity, impact and scalability.
Several TLG members participated in the Hackathon as competitors and mentors including, Rob Konisdorf (EOS Detroit) as a mentor, and competitors: Justin Giudici and Jerry Huff (Infinitybloc), Jesse Schulman and Don Peat (CalEOS), Daniel Lazor (EOSMetal), Marlon Williams (Telos Miami), and Douglas Horn, Beth Farnham, James Davis, Peter Bue, Craig Branscom, and Ed Silva (GoodBlock). Competitors worked for 26 hours to build an original hack that included at least one EOSIO smart contract.
One of the Telos Teams (Craig, Douglas, Ed, Marlon, and Peter) were selected in the top-ten for their music streaming, voting, creation, and revenue-sharing Dapp LSTN. LSTN demonstrated streaming music over IPFS, which is the first public demonstration of using IPFS in an EOS.IO smart contract. They presented the DApp onstage to a panel of judges that included Dan Larimer. GoodBlock is assessing building out the full LSTN Dapp on Telos.
Read Block.one’s EOS Hackathon recap here: https://medium.com/block-one/blockchains-beautiful-souls-hack-round-the-clock-at-eoshackathon-san-francisco-block-one-921acaf1240a
2. Scaling Blockchain Conference November 12th.
The Scaling Blockchain Conference took place on November 12th in San Francisco following the EOSIO Hackathon. Presenters from Telos included Michael Gucci (Z-Meta VC), Rob Konisdorf, and Douglas Horn. Rob’s presentation introduced audiences to concepts in EOSIO. Douglas’s presentation was on EOSIO Sister Chains and was presented with Domenic Thomas, the CEO of Worbli.
3. IPFS Test Nodes
The Telos development and network operations teams are building capacity to deploy Interplanetary File System (IPFS) which is a decentralized file storage technology that greatly expands the capabilities of EOSIO. IPFS has not yet been implemented on EOS. However, at the San Francisco Hackathon, Team GoodBlock was able to publicly demonstrate music streaming over IPFS. Some of the Telos governance contracts (WPS, Ratify/Amend, etc) will require IPFS in order to be deployed.
Stephanie Sunshine (GoodBlock) has been leading the development of IPFS test nodes using the strategy of maintaining a pin set across an IPFS swarm. Craig Branscom wrote a contract that is currently in testing by John Hauge (Telos Voyager) with support from Jesse Schulman. The contract offers a solution for mainnet launch that will financially incentivize block producers (BPs) to maintain IPFS nodes. However, IPFS can also be maintained by people who are not BPs. While IPFS is a requirement for the governance contracts and launch, BPs will not be required to implement IPFS.
Check out the Telos IPFS Repository on GitHub: https://github.com/jhexperiment/telos-ipfs-notes
4. Development Updates
This week, Ed Silva of GoodBlock completed the merging of the Telos system contracts into the EOSIO contract repository using EOS Contract Development Toolkit (CDT). The merge is currently in regression and unit testing.
EOS Contract Development Toolkit: https://github.com/EOSIO/eosio.cdt
5. Telos Improvement Proposals (TIPs)
Two proposals were considered for adoption by the Telos Launch Contributors group this week. TIP-32 proposed a vesting schedule in response to the expected TLOS token supply increase due to concerns about initial token pricing. TIP-33 called for limiting the voting power of Telos Foundation Rewards Pool (TFRP) tokens held by Telos Launch Group contributors to prevent the emergence of whales on the Telos Blockchain Network. Both TIPs were written by EOS Detroit (Adam Zientarski and Rob Konsdorf).
TIP-32 was voted down (Yes — 6, No — 24, Abstain — 0). Discussion centered on the questions about development and testing required to implement a vesting smart contract in the time available.
TIP-33 was withdrawn from voting until the authors can revise it in light of the failure of TIP-32, which TIP-33 relied on. It may be re-submitted.
TIP-032: Vesting Schedule for Telos Foundation Rewards Pool Tokens
https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0032.md
TIP-033: Voting Restrictions on Telos Foundation Rewards Pool Tokens
https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0033.md
Watch the Telos Launch Group call to review the voting discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36oITuTrb7Q
6. Telos Foundation Board Nominations Closed
Nominations for the Telos Foundation Board are closing today, November 15th, 2018, with over 20 nominees currently listed. The Telos Foundation is governed by a board of 12 elected board members who will elect an Executive Director and a RAM Administration Director. Telos is committed to having established governance upon launch, and conducting the The Telos Foundation Board elections as soon as feasibly possible after the Telos launch will empower voting for ongoing business such as grants.
Review the nominees for the Telos Foundation Board here: https://telosfoundation.io/foundation
7. Telos Launch Group ‘Go/No-Vote on November 20th
Next week the Telos Launch Contributors Group will make the deciding vote on whether the Telos Blockchain Network is ready to launch. We are closer than ever to completing all of the benchmarks required by the Telos Launch Checklist, so there is a very good chance of a ‘go’ vote. Anyone can stream the call live from EOS Detroit’s Youtube channel on Tuesday, November 20th at 17:00 UTC: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbdh6f2U54_18YEe89xpnA
Review the Launch Checklist here: https://telosfoundation.io/launch
8. Exchange Hashtag Campaign Ends November 19th
The Telos Exchange Hashtag Campaign is part of the Community Rewards Pool program allowing community members to earn TLOS tokens for reaching out to their exchanges about listing Telos with the hashtag #IWantMyTLOS. The campaign will end on November 19th, so get those posts out there quickly!
Join the Telos conversation and get more info!
Telegram: https://t.me/HelloTelos
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HelloTelos
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TelosFoundation.io
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTelosNetwork
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TelosNetwork/
Discord: https://discordapp.com/channels/466757729508261889/468500684858327040
