April 2018 — Consensus AI Project Update
Greetings from the Consensus Team!
April has been a busy month of setting things up for the Consensus AI team, and we are happy to share some news with you.
Our primary focus during the past month was on the network development. We also welcomed two new team members on board, a new advisor joined us, and took part in the World Digital Assets Summit in Singapore, where our CEO Oleg Gutsol met with the representatives of some digital currency exchanges and wallets, hedge funds and other partners.
Sentient Network Development
In April we finalized the research aimed at solidifying the initial implementation point in line with our design decisions and constraints. Having outlined our functional and non-functional requirements for the Sentient Network and analyzing over 15 major frameworks and blockchains through the prism of our use case, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, it became evident that none of the existing implementations can currently support the use case we need.
Specifically, we looked at:
- transaction semantics: type of utility provided and exact mechanism;
- main architectural style: p2p component based, multi-layered client server;
- address space and derivation protocols, choice of digital signature algorithms;
- support for light and trusted nodes, any distinction between full nodes and consensus participants;
- consensus algorithm, formal proof, guarantees, scalability, potential attacks and vulnerabilities;
- smart contract support and type of implementation;
- transaction processing power, production as well as benchmark results;
- technology stack, codebase quality, developer community, and documentation.
Through this analysis process we extracted a reference architecture for blockchain-based utility token networks.
The next step was to build the basic proof of concept for the network, in order to better understand how our architectural drift will look like as we evolve the protocol. Specifically, we were interested in how our proposed execution model would overlay on top of:
- a general purpose smart contract platform;
- a blockchain building framework;
- a use-case specific utility token network.
From each of these categories we picked a successful project — Ethereum, Hyperledger Sawtooth, and Sia — and prototyped our network. Once that was done, equipped with the new learnings, we drafted the technical specifications roadmap, and started building Sentient and surrounding tooling. Full speed ahead!
Considering the recent developments, we are updating our project description and website materials, and will be sharing them soon.
Consensus AI Platform for Airdrop Accounts
In April we started the migration of the airdrop accounts from Mothership to our own web based platform.
With a few additions to the team, we’re finalizing the system for the airdrop participants to log in, generate their Sentient wallets and download the appropriate wallet software. Optionally, all airdrop participants will be able to verify their identities in order to participate as trusted nodes in the Sentient network.
Once the migration is complete, all airdrop members will receive an email with login magic link and instructions, preliminary we are looking to make this available in the next 4 weeks or so.
Operations
In addition to our operating office in Europe, we have opened a development office in Toronto, Canada (at BrightLane) where our core technical team came together to immerse itself in the detailed design and development of the network architecture.
One of the goals of opening the office in Toronto was to attract talented engineers from the growing pool of artificial intelligence specialists in Canada to help us accelerate the development of the network and the necessary tools.
Team
Two new software developers joined the core Consensus AI development team in April:
1. Vlad Li has joined us as our newest Blockchain Developer. Before becoming a part of Consensus AI, Vlad served as a software engineer at Amazon, platform team lead at 500px and director of engineering at Balance — a project that provides the safest way to buy a mix of digital currencies.
2. Danny Hui perfectly complemented our team in the role of Full Stack Developer. Prior to Consensus AI, Danny was a web developer at Amazon and led a global team of 20 software developers at TD Bank — the sixth largest bank in North America.
We are continuing the active hiring of the exceptional experts to join our dev team. Over the past several weeks, we received more than 250 applications for the open positions and are currently interviewing the top applicants.
At the moment there are 4 open positions:
Blockchain Engineer
Front-End Developer
Senior Full Stack Engineer
Senior UI/UX Designer
We are always looking for people interested in working on hard technical challenges to build new frameworks of collective governance that the future requires. The technologies we envision will fundamentally transform how societies operate and make decisions. Let’s make this change together.
New advisor
Just a few weeks ago we shared exciting news that Jane Zavalishina, former CEO of Yandex Data Factory, joined our advisory board. Jane has an extensive and unique expertise in bringing AI-powered solutions to traditional industries, and we are very excited to have her support.
Furthermore, Jane serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils which plays a key role in providing long-term vision and solutions for the effective governance to various governmental bodies and officials from all over the world. Jane’s advice and support can provide invaluable assistance to the project by establishing the necessary connections and helping the adoption of the platform.
World Digital Asset Summit
Consensus AI founder and CEO, Oleg Gutsol, attended the World Digital Asset Summit in Singapore, an invite-only conference that gathers the best-in-class blockchain projects, developers, investors and representatives of the largest digital currencies exchanges.
Among the participants were Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Ledger co-founder Thomas France, Bancor founders Guy Benartzi and Eyal Hertzog, and many other representatives of crypto wallets and exchanges.
We are actively working to ensure that SEN coin trades on major platforms and is included in popular wallets, and will keep our community updated regarding the progress.
Other news
For a limited number of our community members wishing to become Sentient Network beta-testers we are opening an application very soon, stay tuned.
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