Concordium at Token2049 and many more news!

Maria Amalia

Published in

Concordium

8 min readOct 18, 2021

General 🎙️

Alpha Centauri 2.0 is here

Concordium has released Alpha Centauri 2.0! This new protocol update took effect on Mainnet on October 13th, and it adds three new transaction types to the set of supported transactions. Among the new transactions we have transfer with memo, encrypted transfer with memo, and transfer with schedule and memo.

Besides, the node software is now available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux.

The new node software can be found here. Please make sure to upgrade as soon as possible to keep up with the chain.

Learn more about it here. Check the status page here.

Concordium in London!

Concordium is proud to be a Platinum partner sponsor of Token2049!

On October 7–8, Concordium joined Token2049, on this occasion, Concordium’s advisor, Michael Jackson, took the stage to discuss how DeFi can satisfy regulators. You can watch the presentation here.

TOKEN2049 organizes one of the largest annual digital asset conferences in Asia and Europe, where founders and executives of the leading crypto and blockchain companies share their views on the market.

Learn more at:

https://www.europe.token2049.com

Concordium joins #WeToo in the fight against child abuse

Concordium has chosen to work alongside the #WeToo initiative in the fight against child abuse.

“It is not enough just to raise money; we also need to get it to those who can use it most effectively and quickly. The #WeToo expert committee will choose projects to fund worldwide according to impact and quality. All donations will be distributed, monitored and publicly reviewed every 6 months with interim reviews to ensure milestones are achieved on time by use of the latest blockchain technology from Concordium”. Says #WeToo in their press release.

UNICEF and the World Health Organisation estimate that every year 55 million children in Europe — and about a billion worldwide — are the victims of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse or neglect. At Concordium we cannot accept this and therefore our urgency to drive change in this crucial area.

Protocol Update

On September 22nd, Concordium did a protocol parameters update where the Exchange rate was updated to GTU/EUR — 2.777778 GTU/EUR.

The minimum amount required for baking was adjusted accordingly (to 14,000 GTU), such that the minimum baking amount in EUR remains unchanged.

Concordium is deploying a framework on Testnet that enables the minting of fungible and non-fungible tokens.

We are deploying the first Concordium’s token framework, CIS-1, a standard interface for both fungible and non-fungible tokens implemented in a smart contract.

The interface provides functions for transferring token ownership, authenticating other addresses to transfer tokens, and for other smart contracts to access token balances. It allows for off-chain applications to track token balances, authentication, and the location of token metadata using logged events.

To learn more about Concordium CIS-1, read here.

Dev 🤖

Come and review what our tech team has been working on this past month:

[Concordium-base] — 6 authors have pushed 37 commits to main and 47 commits to all branches. On main, 54 files have changed and there have been 1,839 additions and 1,490 deletions.
[Concordium-documentation] — 11 authors have pushed 92 commits to main and 119 commits to all branches. On main, 48 files have changed and there have been 1,821 additions and 397 deletions.
[Concordium-node] — 8 authors have pushed 46 commits to main and 56 commits to all branches. On main, 120 files have changed and there have been 5,586 additions and 578 deletions.
[Concordium-client] — 4 authors have pushed 41 commits to main and 41 commits to all branches. On main, 26 files have changed and there have been 514 additions and372 deletions.
[Concordium-network-dashboard] — 3 authors have pushed 17 commits to main and 24 commits to all branches. On main, 11 files have changed and there have been 811 additions and 45 deletions.
[Concordium-wasm-sc] 2 authors have pushed 2 commits to main and 2 commits to all branches. On main, 9 files have changed and there have been 75 additions and 34 deletions.
[Concordium-rust-sc] — 2 authors have pushed 3 commits to main and 17 commits to all branches. On main, 7 files have changed and there have been 384 additions and82 deletions.
[Concordium Wallet Proxy ] — 1 author has pushed 2 commits to main and 2 commits to all branches. On main, 7 files have changed and there have been 216 additions and 84 deletions.
[Concordium Ledger app] — 3 authors have pushed 48 commits to main and 68 commits to all branches. On main, 68 files have changed and there have been 1,650 additions and585 deletions.
[Cocordium Desktop Wallet ] — 3 authors have pushed 269 commits to main and 277 commits to all branches. On main, 345 files have changed and there have been 10,393 additions and3,257 deletions.
[Concordium Rust SDK ] — 2 authors have pushed 9 commits to main and 9 commits to all branches. On main, 12 files have changed and there have been 932 additions and101 deletions.

Concordium is working on Supporting users, builders, and customers’ activity via a myriad of tools and features that are currently under development.

Concordium Scan, a community dashboard
Concordium Tokenomics Network Statistics
UI
Concordium Starter (Starter kit to custom UIs for Concordium (VueJS))
Concordium Front-End (Starter kit to custom UIs for Concordium (ReactJS))
Libraries
SDKs for Go, C++, NET, Python, and Java
Web Service Layer (Rest etc.)
DevTools
A comprehensive node dashboard
Token Frameworks
And more.

Besides we have recently released versions our Java and Node.js SDKs:

https://github.com/Concordium/concordium-java-sdk

https://github.com/Concordium/concordium-node-sdk-js

Communities 🤖

Rust and DevX Initiative

Concordium continues to build momentum and consistency in embedding itself as a part of the Rustlang ecosystem through the DevX Initiative. Below are some of the updates.

The 5th RCIG Sync-up call
The DevX Initiative has Co-hosted the 5th Rust Cryptography Interest Group call with prominent members of the wider Rust Community. The purpose of this event is to bring together people from across the Rust ecosystem who want to work together regardless of their specific agendas to make cryptography in Rust better. This month we had a special guest, Niko Matsakis, who is the co-lead of the Rust Language team and is also on the Rust Compiler team. Check out the video here.
The DevX Initiative is a supporting partner of RFMIG Meetup
The DevX Initiative by Concordium is excited to announce that it is a supporting partner of the Rust Formal Methods Interest Group. Formal Verification and Formal Methods is an exciting and very important part of the Rust Ecosystem. Concordium has a huge amount of expertise in this area through COBRA and it’s a great fit for the DevX Initiative to be a part of the leadership of this community through Prof. Bas Spitters. Check out the website here.
The Rust CTCFT Interest Group Panel
The DevX Initiative was invited to be on a panel of Rust Interest Group organizers for the Rust (Cross Team Collaboration Fun Times) meetup. Check out the recording here.
The DevX Initiative on Dev. to
The DevX Initiative is now on the Dev. to the platform. Dev. to is a blogging platform and social network dedicated to developers. It has been growing at a fast pace in the last few months and it’s great to see the DevX Initiative by Concordium there. Expect lots of blog posts coming soon. Check our profile here.
RustConf Keynote video
The annual North American Rust Conference happened on September the 14th please check out the keynote from Rust Foundation Board Member Nell Shamrell-Harrington here.
Announcing Rust 1.55.0
The latest version of the Rust Compiler was released on September 9th please check out this blogpost on the release here.
Rust Core Team Updates
The Rust Core Team has recently had a reshuffle with new additions and a core member stepping down, to read the full details of the changes please check out the blog post here.

Events 🎆

Lars Seier Christensen at Technomania, 2021

Concordium’s founder and Chairman, Lars Seier, took the Main Stage at Technomania, 2021 in Herning, Denmark.

About the event:
On the 6th and 7th of October, 2021, IDA opens the doors to one of the biggest technology events in Denmark, “Technomania”, which is part of hi Tech & Industry Scandinavia in Herning.

Where: Herning, Denmark
When: October 6–7
Learn more: Concordium: Blockchainens svar på World Wide Web

Concordium partner with Rust Tokyo Conference

As part of Concordium and the DevX Initiative’s efforts to support the Rustlang ecosystem, we have recently sponsored the Rust Tokyo Conference.

Research 📖

Concordium and COBRA at Latincrypt 2021
Several papers by Concordium Blockchain Research Center at Aarhus and Concordium’s team have been accepted at Latincrypt 2021, including:
Weight-Based Nakamoto-Style Blockchains by Simon Holmgaard Kamp, Bernardo Magri, Jesper Buus Nielsen, and Søren Eller Thomsen, Christian Matt and Daniel Tschudi.: Weight-Based Nakamoto-Style Blockchains.
LOVE a pairing by Diego F. Aranha and Elena Pagnin and Francisco Rodríguez-Henríquez:
Improved Threshold Signatures, Proactive Secret Sharing, and Input Certification from LSS Isomorphisms by Diego Aranha, Anders Dalskov, Daniel Escudero, and Claudio Orlandi.
Stronger Notions and a More Efficient Construction of Threshold Ring Signatures by Alexander Munch-Hansen, Claudio Orlandi, Sophia Yakoubov.
Latincrypt 2021 is the 7th International Conference on Cryptology and Information Security in Latin America and is organized by the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia in cooperation with IACR, the International Association for Cryptologic Research. This year the event will be held virtually from October 6–8, if you would like to attend, you can register here.
COBRA at EUROCRYPT
Eurocrypt will be held in Zagreb, Croatia from the 17th to the 21st of October. COBRA’s researcher, Jesper Buus Nielsen, and his co-authors will present the paper TARDIS: A Foundation of Time-Lock Puzzles in UC is the 40th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques and one of the three flagship conferences organized by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).
Concordium at The Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC 2021)
COBRA’S team will be presenting their paper, Random-index PIR and Applications at The Theory of Cryptography Conference in Raleigh US.
The conference will be held from the 8th-11th of November
Concordium and COBRA at the 5th International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology
Concordium’s scientific partner Chaya Ganesh, and Concordium’s Senior researcher, together with their co-authors, are presenting their paper Virtual ASICs: Generalized Proof-of-Stake Mining in Cryptocurrencies at the 5th International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology
The event will be held online from October 4–8. Learn more at https://deic-web.uab.cat/conferences/dpm/cbt2021/