ARK.io Monthly Update — March 2020 Edition
March is complete and it is time for an overview! This blog post will cover last month’s highlights, activities, achievements, and unique content. Let’s take a look at what has been going on at ARK.io and in the ARK Ecosystem.
UPGRADES
The ARK news and update process is getting some upgrades moving forward and it starts with this article! We are combining the Community Spotlight and Team Newsletter to bring you one cohesive article moving forward. We have also been producing monthly update episodes of the ARK Crypto Podcast, and in addition to that, we are going to start creating monthly update videos for the ARK YouTube channel as well. Lastly, we have categorized things better to improve the experience.
REMARKS
“We’d like to acknowledge everyone in various industries working hard around the world on the front lines of this health crisis, as it became center stage for the entire world during March. While cases of the disease rapidly increased worldwide, medical staff, first responders and essential workers are doing more than their part to combat the epidemic and keep the world running. We know that some of these people are also within the ARK team and community. We sincerely thank you for what you are doing, and I’m sure they also appreciate everyone else doing their part by staying home when possible and engaging in social distancing.”
Justin Renken, ARK.io Senior Brand Manager
EXCHANGE NEWS
The ARK crypto asset is available on over 30 exchanges and more exchanges are being added all the time — for a full list, visit ARK.io/Exchanges. Content created by ARK.io is not investment advice nor a solicitation of investment. Consult your financial advisor.
Spend App AMA. This month, we’d like to highlight the Spend App with VISA-backed debit cards, which seamlessly converts cryptocurrencies like ARK, into fiat at the time of purchase. They recently held an AMA, where they announced the scaling back of consumer services down to just the US and Canada, while simultaneously going hard on B2B services globally. This means cards will only be issued to residents of those countries as a B2C service. However, banking services for those countries are expanding soon, offering FDIC-insured DDA accounts, allowing customers to use Spend services just as a normal bank account, direct deposit and all with crypto services added on top. This would make Spend a one-stop-shop for financial services in both fiat and crypto.
View the Spend AMA transcript answering many questions using this link. If you need a crypto card compatible with ARK outside US/CA, check out Crypto.com VISA Card and Crypto Services (currently US, UK, Singapore).
Switchain Exchange ARK Desktop Wallet Plugin. Switchain Exchange has created a plugin to use directly inside the ARK Desktop Wallet, allowing users to interact with Switchain services without leaving the wallet application.
View tweet announcement here and download ARK Desktop Wallet here.
TEAM NEWS
ARK was founded by an elite team of blockchain experts and enthusiasts from around the globe. Now, with more than 30 core team members, from 12 different countries — we take decentralization to a whole new level.
ARK Hires Elaine Egan as Community Engagement Manager. Elaine has joined us as our new Community Engagement Manager. She will be working across our social media and communication platforms and answering your questions, as well as keeping you up to date with our latest news pushes. When asked why she was interested in joining us, Elaine replied by saying that she was originally drawn to ARK by the open and friendly nature of the community. In her own words:
“I’m interested in the way ARK makes it easy for anyone to spin up a blockchain. Why should developers have all the fun?!” — Elaine Egan
We couldn’t be happier to have Elaine join the ARK Team and offer her skills and talents in furthering the ARK Ecosystem. We believe she will bring a new perspective to our growing community and has a lot to offer to our communications and outreach strategy as well. Catch her on Slack.ARK.io at ‘@Elaine [ARK Team]’ and on Reddit.ARK.io as ‘elainecara.’
View the full article and learn more about Elaine here.
ARK TECHNOLOGY USAGE
The ARK Core Framework is an open-source toolbox that developers can utilize to power various use cases using blockchain technology. The well-documented technology stack coupled with easy blockchain creation tools such as the ARK Deployer make it simple for developers to dive into this emerging technology.
nOS Development Update. Last month, we took a closer look at BCdiploma showcasing ARK technology at the University of Lille’s Technical Day, and this month we are highlighting a Netherlands-based project called nOS, building with the ARK Core. nOS offers intuitive blockchain-powered tools for users and a decentralized portal where apps can be listed and discovered, managed entirely by voter-elected curators. The project released an update in March, touching on Mainnet launch timing, Testnet upgrades and code updates. Notably, they implemented staking logic updates by way of a grace period and power-up period for staked NOS.
View the full nOS update here.
Hey, what gives? We want to highlight and discuss more projects that are utilizing ARK technology in their custom live use cases. As such, we recently evolved the Powered by ARK Program. We will be providing more information on this before April is over. Stay tuned on all of our channels!
ARK WALLET UPDATES
The ARK desktop and mobile wallets are highly secure. The desktop wallet even integrates with the Ledger Nano hardware wallet devices. They are extremely easy to use and launch instantly with no need to sync. Plus, with the ARK Public Network having eight second block times, you can even see your transactions occur in real-time. Whether you’re checking your balance, sending and receiving funds or voting for your preferred delegate — ARK wallets make it as easy as possible.
DESKTOP WALLET
ARK Releases Desktop Wallet v2.9.0 with Major Speed and Performance Improvements. This release focused on performance improvements and a major overhaul of the underlying system that takes care of reading, requesting and saving data (from the inside and outside of the wallet). One of the initial things you will notice is much quicker loading times when opening the wallet. On one of our slowest testing machines that had a lot of profiles, networks, wallets and installed plugins it went from 40 seconds to 12 seconds for the initial load. This is due to how we reengineered and optimized underlying processes. Once opened you will see that switching between wallets, tabs, charts and while retrieving data, the experience is much smoother than with the previous release.
What’s New At-A-Glance
- Plugin images and slider. We have now implemented a way for plugin developers to also include screenshot previews of the actual plugin. Images can also be clicked to expand.
- Add links to multipayment list on show transaction screen. The recipients of multipayment transactions are now linked to from the ‘show transaction’ screen.
- Improved Ledger Hardware Wallet UX. Major user experience improvements to the Ledger hardware wallet device interactions going from caching, updating in the background and fixing some reported bugs (eg. disconnect Ledger when rejecting a transaction).
This is a shortened list of improvements for ARK Desktop Wallet v2.9.0. For a full list of improvements, check article here.
ARK Releases Desktop Wallet v2.9.1 Featuring Expanded Plugin Usability. With this release, we expanded the Plugin Manager’s usability by exposing more internals to developers, adding a new language plugin section and much more!
What’s New At-A-Glance
- ARK Grants indication in plugin entry. Users will know which plugins are funded by the new ARK Grants Program, awarding ARK to developers for their ideas.
- Allow plugins to add languages. Adds the
LANGUAGESpermission, which allows plugins to add new languages. - Allow setting up default fee type. Adds a new option to the profile edition page which allows the user to specify the default transaction fee type used, either
LASTorAVERAGE.
This is a shortened list of improvements for ARK Desktop Wallet v2.9.1. For a full list of improvements, check article here.
NOTE: A new Transaction Export plugin is available within the ARK Desktop Wallet, developed by Delegate Dated and funded by ARK Grants. More information is available in the ARK Grants section of this monthly update.
MOBILE WALLET
ARK Releases Mobile Wallet v1.8.0 Featuring Enhanced Developer Support. This version focused on improving user experience with new input fields and making development easier with updated dependencies, better test coverage and new features (developer mode, Angular Storybook and more).
What’s New At-A-Glance
- Unified input fields. Users will have a shared and identical experience across different ARK products. Now, the user experience is more uniform between wallet types.
- Added ‘developer mode’. This mode unlocks features that will help us (and developers) debug errors found by users.
- Implemented Angular Storybook. Storybook is like a web-editor where you can construct components and their interactions in isolation and see visually how they work.
This is a shortened list of improvements for ARK Mobile Wallet v1.8.0. For a full list of improvements, check article here.
ARK CORE NEWS
ARK Core is a lightweight but very powerful code base that functions as the base component of the entire ARK Ecosystem. Authored in TypeScript, the ARK Core’s modular architecture empowers developers to modify, configure or extend all aspects of the code base with ease.
ARK Core Version Releases. Taken from the Development Report, the following minor Core releases were made public during the last month:
- 2.6.21 at Wed, Mar 4, 2020 7:38 AM
- 2.6.24 at Wed, Mar 4, 2020 12:43 PM
- 2.6.25 at Mon, Mar 9, 2020 9:54 AM
- 2.6.27 at Thu, Mar 12, 2020 10:19 AM
- 2.6.28 at Fri, Mar 13, 2020 1:28 PM
- 2.6.29 at Thu, Mar 19, 2020 1:30 PM
- 2.6.30 at Thu, Mar 19, 2020 1:45 PM
- 2.6.31 at Wed, Mar 25, 2020 6:46 AM
ARK Deployer is Now Updated to Deploy a v2.6 Chain. The ARK Deployer, a simple tool that allows developers from all walks of life to deploy a blockchain in three easy steps, has been updated to deploy a Core v2.6 chain as of last month. This means the ARK Deployer will now deploy the newest version of the ARK Core with your newly created chain. Including new features and transaction types as outlined on the ARK Blog.
See the huge upgrades Core v2.6 brings here, and ARK Deployer news tweet here.
Let’s Explore Core v3 Blog Series New Articles. We recently made ARK Core v3 code public, and have begun moving Core v3 through internal development and testing cycles. To celebrate, we have been publishing technical articles taking a closer look at it. Check out the Let’s Explore Core articles in this list:
DEVELOPMENT REPORT
The ARK Monthly Development Report covers public releases among ARK open source projects, all pull requests (opened, closed, merged), all issues opened and closed in every ARK Ecosystem public repository, the number of contributors during that month, the number of new stargazers and total lines of GitHub code added or deleted. The report has intricate links to GitHub repos, events and releases. We’d like to extend a huge thanks to all our contributors!
See the Development Report for the recent month here.
NETWORK REPORT
This network report summarizes network activity on the ARK Public Network for the recent month.
Total Network Transactions
Total: 58,317
Avg per block: 0.1747
Per type:
Transfers: 54,576 (93.59%)
Multipayments: 2,895 (4.96%)
Votes: 829 (1.42%)
Multisignature Registrations: 4 (0.01%)
Second Signatures: 6 (0.01%)
Delegate Registrations: 1 (0.00%)
Business Registrations: 2 (0.00%)
Business Resignations: 1 (0.00%)
Bridgechain Registrations: 2 (0.00%)
Bridgechain Resignations: 1 (0.00%)
2,476 unique wallets sent an outgoing transaction.
Total Blocks
Full: 126 (0.04%)
Empty: 324,195 (97.09%)
Non-empty: 9,585 (2.87%)
Total: 333,906
Missed: 444
Total Network Fees
Total: 2,075.32164843 Ѧ
Per type:
Transfers: 1,590.48138662 Ѧ
Multipayments: 282.06494000 Ѧ
Votes: 165.61341341 Ѧ
Multisignature Registrations: 20.00000000 Ѧ
Second Signatures: 16.60190840 Ѧ
Delegate Registrations: 0.05000000 Ѧ
Business Registrations: 0.20000000 Ѧ
Business Resignations: 0.10000000 Ѧ
Bridgechain Registrations: 0.11000000 Ѧ
Bridgechain Resignations: 0.10000000 Ѧ
Total Network Votes
Voting Wallets: 41,461
Voting Wallets > 1 ARK: 18,827
Total ARK Voting: 84,035,455.58370773 Ѧ
FRANCE ACTIVITIES
ARK is incorporated as an SCIC in France (ARK Ecosystem SCIC), giving ARK a leg up when interfacing with the legacy financial system. This SCIC is the first of its kind for crypto in France.
- On March 4th, ARK Ecosystem SCIC President Francois Thoorens attended a meeting at the French National Assembly with Danielle Brulebois, MP for Jura. The objective of this meeting was to converse on ARK’s innovative technology and discuss new ways of thinking about blockchain and on the taxation of SCICs. More information can be found here.
- On March 6th, Francois Thoorens attended the official launch event of ADAN, an association of blockchain technology companies designed to further the mission of the technology in France. Members of the association gathered around the topics of the state of digital assets in France and Europe. The event’s goal was also to help with the practical implementation of the new requirements applicable to token issuers and service providers on digital assets of the PACTE law. The event also covered how to improve the existing legal and tax system and to propose targeted support measures to the public authorities. ARK Ecosystem is a founding member of ADAN, and more information on ADAN is available in the blog article linked here.
ARK TIMELINE
ArkTimeline.com is a community resource built and maintained by the ARK Community Committee. The entire history of all ARK achievements and accomplishments are available there, and they are both sortable and filterable.
Here’s a quick rundown for this past month, excluding events mentioned elsewhere in this update article:
- All caught up. Everything’s included in this update article!
- See years of achievements for ARK at ARKTimeline.com.
- See what the future holds for ARK at Roadmap.ARK.io.
- Subscribe for real-time news at Twitter.ARK.io.
VIDEOS
ARK has a growing YouTube channel that features technical discussions and updates, motion graphic explainers, community videos and crypto adventure vlogs. Watch our videos at Youtube.ARK.io and subscribe to our channel in one click using this special link.
ARK Grants Launch Video. During this last month, ARK.io launched ARK Grants, a program funded by 1 Million ARK aimed at funding developers for utilizing ARK technology. ARK Grants will be further discussed in that section of this update article. Here’s the launch video:
Hey, what gives? If you were expecting another ARK Adventure video for this past month, it’s on hiatus while we all stay at home and engage in social distancing to get through this global health crisis. But don’t worry, we will be making other types of video content and hopefully ARK Adventures will be back very soon!
Watch our videos at Youtube.ARK.io and subscribe to our channel in one click using this special link.
PODCASTS
The ARK Crypto Podcast releases weekly episodes all about ARK, featuring interviews, monologues, tutorials, reports, presentations and more. The show aims for a 30-minute runtime and releases new episodes every Friday. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Spotify, Castbox and more. Details, external links and show notes are available at Podcast.ARK.io.
Check out the episodes released last recent month:
Subscribe and see details, show notes, related links, timestamps and more at Podcast.ARK.io.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SPOTLIGHT
Some members mentioned in the Community Service Spotlight are ARK delegates, who secure the ARK network and provide community services. Their inclusion here is in no way an endorsement from ARK.io to vote for any specific delegates, and you should always do your own research and consider all the options when voting for a delegate. ARK.io does not run the ARK Public Network.
Here’s the Community Service Spotlight for this month:
- Delegate ‘Fun’ continued to run ARK games online with daily ARK prizes.
- Delegates ‘Biz_Classic’ and ‘Del’ ran ARK faucets here and here.
- Delegate ‘Alessio’ located and reported vulnerabilities.
- Delegates ‘Goose’ and ‘ArkMoon’ continue their service, ARK CSV Generator and Income Estimator, to aid in trading and income reporting.
- Delegate ‘Jarunik’ ran a general bounty service, get involved here.
- Delegate ‘Cryptology’ continued operating the ARKTippr tip bot.
- Delegate ‘Yakety_Yak’ released German ARK podcasts.
- Multicloud4U co-hosted a webinar with ARK’s Justin Renken.
- Delegate ‘Superskeuo’ ran an ARK trivia activity.
- Delegate ‘Rising_Sun’ provided a report for their lotto.
- The old ARKDelegates.io domain was replaced by ARKDelegates.live. This is the premiere community resource for browsing delegate proposals.
The Community Service Spotlight pulls entries from Reddit.ARK.io. To get something featured here, simply make a post there, and subscribe there for more community content and discussions.
NOTABLE REDDIT POSTS
The Ark Ecosystem Subreddit is a great place to seek ARK knowledge, and you can always find new and engaging content there. New to ARK? Check out my Welcome to ARK Reddit Post with simple instructions to follow.
Here are some notable posts this month:
- A technical support request about installing the ARK Desktop Wallet
- A tech help question about encryption passwords in the ADW
- A question about buying ARK with credit card
- A question about delegate voting strategy
- A clarification about ARK team funds moving to multisig
You can browse more content and contribute your own voice to the ARK Subreddit at Reddit.ARK.io. You may even receive an ARK tip from a community member using Delegate Cryptology’s intuitive ArkTippr Reddit tipbot.
AMAs
Ask-Me-Anythings are periodically conducted where ARK team members answer questions by community members and developers, as well as 3rd party organizations taking questions from the community as well.
AMAs did not take place in this recent month but there are more on the horizon!
These AMAs take place on Slack.ARK.io. Follow ARK on Twitter for invitations to join future AMAs. AMA Transcripts are available on the ARK.io resource ARK Answers.
BOUNTY & SECURITY PROGRAM
ARK runs monthly bounty programs for coders who contribute to our codebase on the ARK Ecosystem GitHub. Independent programmers can work side by side with our international team and make the ARK toolkit even more powerful and stable.
In this recent month, we’d like to acknowledge some of the top earners of ARK bounties:
- GitHub user ‘dated’ earned $870 USD and a 20% bonus.
- GitHub user ‘alessiodf’ earned $250 USD and a 10% bonus.
- GitHub user ‘rigwild’ earned $120 USD and a 5% bonus.
- GitHub user ‘dated’ also earned an additional $400 USD bounty by creating a solution for developers to publish ARK Desktop Wallet language packs coupled with a language plugin generator.
- GitHub user ‘deanpress’ earned a special $200 USD bounty by identifying an issue in ARK Core where discrepancies could occur between pool and database state.
- For the full list of bounty earners and GitHub links, the Bounty Program Report for this recent month can be found here. Thanks to all the contributors!
Multiple coders are contributing to the ARK toolkit 24/7, and you can too — it’s fun, rewarding and you can earn ARK as well!
Get started earning ARK bounties by going here. To report an issue or suggest a feature for ARK projects as a non-coder, follow the video tutorial here.
ARK GRANTS
ARK Grants Launched a 1 Million ARK Fund Last Month. ARK has always placed a large focus on our community of developers. From our Development and Security Bounties to our previous Tier 0 program, we have a wide range of opportunities for developers to get involved in the community and get paid to contribute to ARK. The ARK Grants program is an expansion and refinement of our current offerings, providing a war chest of funds to show our dedication to our community and the ARK Ecosystem.
Technologies and frameworks, applicable project types and proposal submission process can be found in the ARK Grants launch article here.
ARK Messenger Funded by ARK Grants Released. ARK Messenger, a fully autonomous and secure chat service built entirely on ARK technology is now officially complete! Built by a community member and ARK delegate ‘Lemii,’ ARK Messenger runs on its own customized bridgechain. In addition, ARK Messenger also makes use of ARK’s Generic Transaction Interface(GTI) to handle the processing of chat messages.
See the full launch article for ARK Messenger by visiting here. As a developer, you can explore the mechanics of the project and apply them to your own idea through a blog article series available here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
ARK Transaction Export Plugin Funded by ARK Grants Released. The ARK Transaction Export plugin is officially complete! Extracting all the necessary information from your past transactions just got a whole lot easier. Built by Delegate ‘Dated,’ The ARK Transaction Export plugin is a simple and efficient way to extract and log transaction information from directly within the ARK Desktop Wallet.
For details, features and screenshots, check the launch article here.
ARK COMMUNITY COMMITTEE
The ARK Community Committee creates and deploys community resources through anonymous and sponsored ARK donations.
Completed ACC projects include:
- ArkTimeline.com — All ARK’s achievements and accomplishments in one place. Searchable, filterable and linkable by the query string.
- ArkThoughts.com — Community opinions on 30 ARK concepts, including the Core, wallets, Explorer, SmartBridge Technology and media channels.
- Crypto Trivia Night Questions — Trivia questions for Crypto Trivia Night
During this recent month, the committee continued work on codename ‘Project VIDERE II,’ consisting of market research, with chatter visible on Discord.ARK.io #committee channel.
To join the ACC, locate me ‘(Justin (doubled1c3)’ on Discord.ARK.io.
ARK COMMUNITY FUND
The ACF is like the community version of ARK Grants and is not managed by ARK.io. If you have an idea for an ARK project, large or small, and you are looking for funding, consider submitting a proposal to the ARK Community Fund for review. The ARK Community Fund started as a community initiative and the elected board reviews ideas and projects that enhance ARK. Their website is ArkCommunity.Fund.
The ACF is running some giveaways on the #ark_community_fund channel of Slack.ARK.io. Join and check out the chatter in the channel.
WHAT’S NEXT
Now that ARK Core v2.6 is live on the ARK Public Network, the ARK Team has updated its flagship product, the ARK Deployer, to deploy v2.6 chains. That means anyone who is interested in an easy way to create and customize a blockchain will also be able to take advantage of new features and transaction types. However, the development of the ARK Deployer hasn’t stopped there. In fact, massive new powers are coming to the ARK Deployer, and development is nearing completion. Improvements include one-click deployment, which handles the genesis node and peer deployment in the background using cloud services. Bridgechain founders will be able to manage their chain after the fact from within the all-new ARK Deployer front end interface. Even deploying future nodes of an already established chain will be possible. This is one of the major focal points for ARK.io as we move through this quarter. Stay tuned to the ARK Blog and ARK Roadmap for further updates.
FEEDBACK SURVEY
Take a short three-minute feedback survey so we can learn more about your opinions on how we’re doing. We review and track this feedback and use it to further improve our efforts.
GET INVOLVED
Here’s a quick list of what your first steps might be to get involved with ARK:
- Join our community on Slack or Reddit
- Launch an ARK community service
- Contribute code and earn ARK
- Apply for an ARK Grant to fund your idea
- Learn more with ARK documentation
- Launch an ARK node and campaign for forging status
- Create a blockchain in three simple steps
Looking forward to April! Stay safe!
