ARK Monthly Update — May 2020 Edition
May is complete and it is time for an overview! This blog post will cover last month’s highlights, activities, achievements and unique content. We are now bringing you a better categorized and more detailed update newsletter moving forward and producing monthly update podcasts on the ARK Crypto Podcast as well as update videos on the ARK YouTube channel. Let’s take a look at what’s been going on at ARK.io and in the ARK Ecosystem.
REMARKS
“ARK has always been known for constant and detailed communications, with the proof on ARKTimeline.com. We feel it’s very important to keep the community of developers, projects and ARK lovers alike informed. According to Roadmap.ARK.io multiple items are nearing 100% completion and we’ll be sharing some more details on some of these items in this month’s update. Aside from ARK being listed on the Piixpay exchange this month, we’ve been working around the clock on product testing for some upcoming releases. The testing stages are going very well. We are squashing bugs and implementing new features.”
Justin Renken, ARK.io Senior Brand Manager
ROADMAP PROGRESS UPDATE
The ARK Roadmap features various projects and sub-projects that ARK.io is working on. It is a percentage-based project dashboard for the developmental pipeline of ARK technology. Let’s look into a special update on the progress of our roadmap.
ARK Marketplace. The ARK Marketplace will be an all-new property built from the ground up to give the entire community one central location to call home. The initial beta launch will include some of the most important aspects including delegates, businesses, blockchains and plugins. This has been underway for quite a while, starting this month the project has entered alpha testing. Many ARK Team members across multiple departments have been testing the product thoroughly and providing feedback. This was the Alpha 1 testing phase. We are pleased to report that this product will enter Alpha 2 testing phase next week, which means more external players in the ecosystem will be able to bring a fresh perspective to the product experience. We are ensuring that the user experience and supporting documentation are good enough for any user to utilize the ARK Marketplace.
ARK Deployer Upgrades. ARK Deployer will be receiving several key upgrades to the process of deploying a blockchain powered by ARK. As always, our goal with ARK Deployer is to continue to improve the process and make it as easy as possible to launch your own blockchain. Users will be presented with a far-improved web-based graphical user interface, making it possible to deploy blockchains powered by ARK with one click after you generate your custom configuration. The ARK Deployer will support multiple hosting providers as well as provide users with the flexibility to easily deploy servers and entire networks with a few simple steps. It’s safe to say that the improved ARK Deployer is light years ahead of the current version, bringing more people the ability to create a blockchain than ever before. Alpha 1 testing round has completed this recent month, showing that the ARK Deployer is definitely doing what it’s supposed to do. We are pleased to report that Alpha 2 testing (i.e. external testers not just ARK Team) will begin after the ARK Marketplace Alpha 2 cycle is complete (somewhere around two weeks).
Additional Upgrades and Improvements. Without leaking too many intimate details, you should know that the ARK Team is also improving and enhancing other products, services and projects in order to make the user experiences gel together. The goal is to create a more cohesive experience now that the ARK Deployer and ARK Marketplace will act as the bones for building a thriving ecosystem. Keep in mind, those products present an elevated user experience and vision for ARK, and thus improvements are underway to bring the other projects/products up to speed with them. More details on this will be released in due time, but we can definitely say we are talking about more than just a ‘fresh coat of paint.’ Stay tuned on all channels!
EXCHANGE NEWS
The ARK cryptoasset 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.
ARK Listed on Piixpay Exchange. This month, we are very excited to announce that ARK has been added to the Piixpay Exchange, a simple conversion service allowing users to exchange cryptocurrencies to Euro and send them directly to the user’s bank account.
Learn more about Piixpay at their website.
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.
Sam Harper-Pittam Transitions to QA Lead. Sam is a long-time ARK community member who was hired onto the team in late 2018 to fill a community engagement role. Since then, Elaine Egan was hired to fill the role in March 2020 and Sam has transitioned into a position as quality assurance lead, working with team members to ensure consistency and function across ARK products and projects. In the recent months, especially in May 2020, Sam has been working diligently to that end. He has been managing and collaborating with a testing team within ARK.io spanning multiple departments. This team has been alpha testing roadmap items that are nearing completion and providing feedback that Sam processes for the development teams. Soon, he will be bringing certain external alpha testers into the mix, putting fresh eyes on product testing. Sam is really in the groove with things and reports that testing is going great.
Get to know Sam better in his 2018 hiring article 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.
Unikname Launches uns.network Built with ARK Core. On May 4, Unikname joined the Powered by ARK Program and successfully launched their livenet, uns.network. The full details and network properties are available in the launch post released on the ARK Blog on May 5th. Unikname Connect was born as a European alternative for social authentication. The goal with Unikname Connect is to offer a respectful alternative to user privacy. The distributed network and the protocol dedicated to handle IDs rooted in the blockchain is called uns.network, aiming to secure any web and mobile connections and to protect the user’s privacy. This blockchain is specialized in providing decentralized ID (also called DID), and offer a good Distributed Public Key Infrastructure (also called DPKI) solution, the basis of the next generation of authentication protocols. Unikname provides universal anonymous IDs, formatted like this — @unikname, secured by the uns.network blockchain, to empower privacy and cyber-security over the day to day web. Unikname Solutions makes the uns.network blockchain capabilities available to businesses and every web user through DApp, SDKs and API.
View the May 5th launch article here. Learn more about uns.network in their blog article here, and listen to them on the ARK Crypto Podcast Part 1 and Part 2.
nOS Project Building with ARK Core: Databases & Schemas. On May 21, 2020, nOS released information about how schemas and databases relate to the nOS blockchain. 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. One of nOS Network’s main purposes is the ability to create and contribute to public databases on a decentralized platform. On the network, validators will be able to register schemas. Schemas are objects that describe the types of data that a database should contain. This way, apps can pull all databases related to that schema (for example, all the “music” databases from the top 50 validators), and combine it into one big database. Any application can use the network’s databases for free. Soon™, schemas and databases will be available on the testnet, with the tools to create schemas and maintain databases.
View the nOS blog article on databases and schemas here.
ARK WALLET UPDATES
The ARK desktop and mobile wallets are highly secure. The desktop wallet even integrates with 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 near 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.
There was no new updates for the wallets during May, so the versions below are up to date! Be sure to always use the newest versions of the applications.
DESKTOP WALLET
The current version of the ARK Desktop Wallet is v2.9.1. For a full list of improvements, check article here.
MOBILE WALLET
The current version of the ARK Mobile Wallet is 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. Developed 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 this previous month:
- 2.6.36 at Mon, May 4, 2020 7:50 AM
- 2.6.37 at Tue, May 12, 2020 7:29 AM
- 2.6.38 at Wed, May 27, 2020 5:12 AM
Learn more about the ARK Core from this announcement blog article and on the six-part Let’s Explore Core series from the ARK Blog, starting with Part 1 — Infrastructure.
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 STATISTICS REPORT
This network statistics report summarizes network activity on the ARK Public Network for the recent month.
Total Network Transactions
Total: 56,717
Avg per block: 0.1695
Per type:
Transfers: 52,790 (93.08%)
Multipayments: 3,394 (5.98%)
Votes: 528 (0.93%)
Second Signatures: 1 (0.00%)
Delegate Registrations: 3 (0.01%)
Business Update: 1 (0.00%)
1,894 unique wallets sent an outgoing transaction.
Total Blocks
Full: 101 (0.03%)
Empty: 325,384 (97.25%)
Non-empty: 9,095 (2.72%)
Total: 334,580
Missed: 220
Total Network Fees
Total: 2,529.54062726 Ѧ
Per type:
Transfers: 1,698.20273621 Ѧ
Multipayments: 586.46261000 Ѧ
Votes: 160.87875326 Ѧ
Second Signatures: 5 Ѧ
Delegate Registrations: 28.99652779 Ѧ
Business Update: 50 Ѧ
Total Network Votes
Voting Wallets: 41,639
Voting Wallets > 1 ARK: 18,731
Total ARK Voting: 86,705,822.91961101 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.
ADAN Activities. ARK Ecosystem is a founding member of ADAN, an association of blockchain technology companies designed to further the mission of the technology in France and the EU. More information on ADAN is available in the blog article linked here. See activities below:
Letter to Members of Parliament on the Extension of the French VASPs Regulation. In 2019, France built a new and innovative set of regulations to regulate virtual assets service providers. However, while the current regime aspired to the emergence of a strong and competitive industry, France is currently exploring the possibility of modifying this regime by making it mandatory to register ‘crypto-to-crypto’ players and subject them to new requirements. ADAN wishes to warn of the risks associated with such an evolution of the current regulatory regime:
- As it stands, the proposed system is unsuitable for digital assets and therefore ineffective against financial crime.
- The proposed system is also doubly disproportionate. The risks posed by ‘crypto-to-crypto’ transactions are extremely low, and the costs induced by this proposed system are exorbitant.
- The economic slump we are currently experiencing is hurting the entire French economy. This period should be more about supporting our businesses.
Accordingly, on May 5th, 2020, ADAN has sent a letter expanding on this to several French elected representatives and urges the authorities to suspend their project and take time for reflection and consultation. Instead, ADAN proposes to establish rules that are more proportionate and better adapted to this industry to ensure proper financial security objectives.
Survey for a Regulation Adapted to Security Tokens. ADAN is actively working on regulatory issues related to security tokens. Last March, the Association responded to the European Commission’s consultation on markets in crypto-assets’ in which ADAN expressed its views on the regulation of security tokens, and supported the idea of a European Digital Laboratory led by the AMF. It is within the framework of this work that ADAN is delighted to launch a major survey as of May 19th, 2020 in partnership with Gide 255, AMAFI and AFTI among the players involved in the development of the security token market.
Answer to the European Commission on the Review of the MiFIDII/MiFIR Regulatory Framework. ADAN has responded to the European Commission’s consultation on the review of the MiFIDII/MiFIR regulatory framework. The Association thanks the European Commission for allowing it to share its vision on the need to accelerate the digitization of the European economy. ADAN believes there is an opportunity to be seized that will enable digital assets and blockchain technology to build a more ethical, transparent and open system. ADAN’s position, presented in this response document, includes the following elements:
- The benefits of blockchain and digital assets to optimize financial infrastructures
- Digital asset solutions to accelerate the digitisation of the European economy
- The necessary prerequisites to implement such solutions
- Regulatory obstacles that need to be overcome.
Learn more about ARK.io co-founding ADAN here, and see their site 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:
- On May 1st, ARK.io published a general article titled The Benefits of Cryptocurrency Debit Cards. The article addresses issues and answers questions about how these crypto debit cards work, and shows an example of one in use with ARK. Simplicity, versatility and convenience are all topics in the article. Three services are highlighted: the Spend card, Crypto.com card, and Swipe.io card. View the full article here.
- On May 11th, ARK.io published a general article titled The EARN IT Act: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. This article received wide traction in places like Reddit where it was posted on some non-crypto subreddits, and received over 300 upvotes on one of them. In a nutshell, the Act is designed to force companies to ‘earn’ protections from liability related to the exploitation of minors. Currently, the status quo automatically grants these protections based on the nature of a company’s product or platform. The rub here is that the Act aims to abolish end-to-end encryption, an important aspect of the Internet when it comes to the protection of privacy for Internet users. Check out the full article here.
- ARK32 NASCAR in the Coca-Cola 600. On May 24th, ARK Co-Founder Travis Walker used his personal funds to sponsor the GoFas ARK32 NASCAR Racing Team featuring Corey LaJoie in the Coca-Cola 600 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Travis has a long-standing relationship with the racing team and recently sponsored them in 2019 for the Brickyard 400 as well. Check out the vlog on the ARK YouTube channel for that 2019 race here. Congratulations Corey and team on a successful race!
- On May 27th, ARK.io published a general article called The Digital Dollar: Now or Never. The article was shared around the Web in various places. This article focuses on the idea of a Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC. It discusses China, Facebook’s Libra and a global pandemic that is leaving policymakers scrambling. It also refers to the Banking for All Act, a piece of proposed legislation that gives details on a possible digital dollar. Read the full article on the ARK Blog here.
- All other events and activities are listed elsewhere in this monthly update. All caught up!
- 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, tutorials, crypto adventure vlogs and more. Watch our videos at Youtube.ARK.io and subscribe to our channel in one click using this special link.
ARK.io Monthly Update April 2020 Video. If you missed it from last month, check out the April 2020 edition of the ARK.io Monthly Update video:
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 this 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. Core Chameleon released in May, a free Core v2.6 plugin for all ARK-powered networks. Developed with combined funding from the ARK Community Fund and forging rewards from Delegates ‘Fun’ and ‘Alessio.’ It protects forging nodes from socio-abuse and technical attack vectors that target delegates among other things. See the announcement here. Also, the Universal Delegate Monitor plugin inside the ARK Desktop Wallet now supports nOS and uns.network, see the announcement here.
- 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.
- Delegate ‘Rising_Sun’ continued to run a treasure loot program, update here.
- Delegate ‘Deadlock’ continued maintaining ARKStats.Live.
- Lynx Art Collection recently released metal ARK wallets, with one of them being recently highlighted in the ARK Subreddit.
- ARK was nominated in multiple categories for Blockchain Awards.
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 positive message from a community member
- A question about Personal token swap
- A reminder about the desire for mobile wallet Ledger X integration
- A tech support question on viewing balance in the wallet
- A question about multipayment transaction fees
- A query about OKex exchange status
- A tech support question about unvoting
- An question with logging into the wallet after a long period of inactivity
- A thoughtful community check-in post by an ARK delegate
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.
There were no AMAs this recent month
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 or by reviewing chat history of the #AMA channel in Slack.ARK.io.
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.
This recent month, we’d like to highlight Delegate ‘Alessio,’ who reported two security vulnerabilities and earned ARK bounties for doing so:
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. 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 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, I have taken the results of ‘Project VIDERE II,’ consisting of market research and I am taking action accordingly. Also there will be a new phase of the project coming to the committee soon, allowing committee members to earn even more ARK, no coding involved!
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.
This recent month, the ACF co-funded a release called Core Chameleon. Core Chameleon is a free Core v2.6 plugin for all ARK-powered networks. The funding was sourced from the ARK Community Fund and forging rewards from Delegates ‘Fun’ and ‘Alessio.’ It protects forging nodes from socio-abuse and technical attack vectors that target delegates among other things.
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
The ARK Team is cross-collaborating on multiple roadmap items with a number of them on the home stretch to completion. Internal and external alpha testing will be in the forefront as the final bugs are squashed and features added. June is going to be a great month for ARK, and it’s recommended to stay closer to our Twitter feed and blog than usual, as some great things are on the way. Don’t be the one who missed our special announcements coming very Soon™.
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 June! Stay safe!
