Clearmatics Stories #4
Hello from Clearmatics,
I hope you’re all having a great start to February and surviving the cold snap. Hailing from Canada, I wouldn’t actually describe this as cold — try waiting at the bus stop on a Tuesday morning in sub thirty degrees! — but even the weather this past week has taken me a little by surprise. So take care out there.
There have been plenty of happenings at Clearmatics HQ over the past few weeks to keep us busy. Most importantly, we’re gearing up for the blockchain hackathon that we’re hosting on the 5th and 6th of February. HackIon is going to focus on Ion, the platform-agnostic interoperability framework. Everything you need to know about the event is here.
We’re really looking forward to it and it was great to be recently featured on Coindesk. The article they put together about us should give you a little more background about what we’re planning to do on the day and sets out why we think interoperability is so crucial to the future of financial services. HackIon is our way of doing what we can to help shape that future.
I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
Best regards,
Christophe MacIntosh
Communications & Community Lead at Clearmatics
Recent blog posts from Clearmatics
Protocols vs. Software (Part 1): Protocol approach for interoperable systems
Over the course of two posts, we explored open protocols vs software monopoly from a distributed system perspective. In this first post, we showed why open protocols as globally accepted standards are necessary for interoperable distributed systems and will prevail over a closed and proprietary model.
Protocols vs. Software (Part 2): Protocol approach for resilient distributed systems
In the second part of our protocols vs software series, we built upon the topics discussed in part 1, exploring how to build a resilient distributed system, and laying out the argument for resilient systems to follow a protocol-first approach.
What we’re reading
What to Expect When ETH’s Expecting
From Hackernoon, check out this excellent and insightful engineer’s guide to ETH2.0, the planned replacement for Ethereum.
Constantinople enables new Reentrancy Attack
An important article on Medium explaining how the upcoming Constantinople Upgrade will introduce cheaper gas cost for certain SSTORE operations. A side effect of this move is that reentrancy attacks will be possible when using address.transfer (…) or address.send (…) in Solidity smart contracts. Read this update and beware.
Ethereum 2.0: Casper will launch testnet this year
The third Blockchain Connect Conference was held earlier this month in San Francisco and the most anticipated part of the conference was the closing speech by Clearmatics advisor and founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin. Amongst other highlights, Vitalik set out how Ethereum will continue to develop. Read his views on Hackernoon.
The Year in Ethereum
On Medium, this article is an insightful look back at 2018, a year where a heck of a lot happened in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Polkadot Proof-of-Concept 3: A Better Consensus Algorithm
The third Polkadot proof-of-concept is now live. It powers a new testnet, “Alexander,” that implements the brand-new GRANDPA consensus algorithm. This article on Medium sets out why GRANDPA could be the granddaddy of all consensus algorithms.
How Stablecoins Become Currency to Buy Coffee
As this excellent article on Breaker asks, having solved bitcoin’s volatility problem, will stablecoins go on to conquer e-commerce? But long before they start challenging Visa or PayPal’s share of online payments, important issues still have to be dealt with.
Should Central Banks Lock Out Non-Bank Payment Providers?
The fact that one set of payments providers gets access to the core payments system while another is shut out seems quite arbitrary. The American Institute of Economic Research weighs up the pros and cons of this system.
Vitalik Buterin: Casper CBC and Ethereum 2.0
Our friend and advisor, Vitalik Buterin delivers the keynote at the Blockchain Connect Conference in San Francisco as hosted by SV Insight, in which he explains how he sees Ethereum continuing to develop. Check out the full video on YouTube here.
Food for thought
“Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets drivers work with the customer directly.” ~ Vitalik Buterin
Thank you for reading our newsletter. We hope you enjoyed it.
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Christophe MacIntosh, cmacintosh, Community & Communications Lead, Clearmatics
