Crown Meeting Culminates with Use Case Focused Community Meetup at the BlockchainHotel in Essen, Germany
Crown Team welcomes international community at the public meetup
Proof of Stake, Crown Platform architecture, development roadmap, Use Case implementation, central topics of the Development Week
Use case centered community meetup full of innovative ideas and approaches as blockchain technology evolves
Next meetup planned for begining of November in Malta
The BlockchainHotel in Essen, Germany, has served as venue for 10 days packed with development, strategy meetings, and a new edition of the legendary Crown Community Meetup, which congregated individuals and businesses from New Zealand, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Spain, Netherlands, Armenia, Belgium, and Germany, who openly discussed the evolving blockchain landscape while offering innovative approaches on how to keep up with the swift economic and technical changes that blockchain projects are going through. This article offers a chronicle of the most important achievements during this time.
Developers Week
The development team composed of Artem, Ashot, Volodymyr, Chris, and Jacob, were first to arrive in Essen on Wednesday July 25th, hereby kicking off the crown team gathering.
Their development sessions started on Thursday and lasted for a week. Working in a distributed team demands periodical face to face interaction. Complex discussions are necessary and not always possible or efficient through online communication tools. Below, @artem.bv explains what they achieved during this time.
“We need to meet face to face sometimes to discuss development plans and technical details. It brings more energy to the team and makes its collaboration more effective.”
Before the community meeting in Essen on 4th of August, the Crown Development Team had working development sessions for a week organized by @crownfan at the BlockchainHotel. The developers Ashot (aka @ashot), Volodymyr (aka @vshamray), Jacob (aka @hypmermist), Chris (aka @dzlbobo) and myself arrived between 25th and 26th of July and we started working on the ongoing Crown tasks together. We need to meet face to face sometimes to discuss development plans and technical details. It brings more energy to the team and makes its collaboration more effective. The main topics of our dev sessions have been the following:
1) Retrospective & analysis of the last release
2) Short-term planning
The next milestone is available here: https://gitlab.crown.tech/crown/crown-core/milestones/3. It is not a release milestone but rather a dev milestone. After this one is over we will plan another one depending on the community demands and available resources.
3) Long-term planning
based on the latest roadmap points https://crown.link/3n we created a Project Map plan for the next year. We are going to build a backlog from these tasks and let people choose what is more important for us to build for the next stage.
4) Crown Platform Architecture
The biggest part of the meeting was devoted to the technical discussion of the Crown Platform architecture. Different use cases and appropriate tools were discussed, such as API-based development and Turing-complete smart contracts, agents voting & ID registration implementation details
5) Trezor, Coinomi, Co-Pay and other wallets to support Crown
6) NextCloud setup, Gitlab update, Gitlab Ultimate edition submission, Test Cases management tools, Sandbox testnets, Hotfix of the crash, 0.12.5.1 patch
Technical discussions on the Platform architecture, Proof of Stake, optimization of tools and on the go hotfixes were central contents of the development sessions
As we can see from Artem’s summary, the development week included a study of the Proof of Stake design, formalizing a plan for the upcoming development steps on the Crown Platform, structuring of tasks and times, as well as joint analysis and debate of the rich documentation that the developers have been producing during the last months. It was a great experience to witness our dev team living and working together during this time. After the daily full time sessions, we went out for dinner and spiced the beers with discussions on the state of cryptographic solutions, ideas, and of course, spent time getting to know each other better. That is one of our secrets to Crown crypto: A well bonded and coordinated team!
Team Sessions
Shortly after, further team members started arriving to the venue. Co-founders, International Representative, Strategy Advisor, Community Manager, Support Lead, Head of Marketing, among others, worked together on shared tasks and were able to explain in detail what they are currently working on.
We have encountered enormous genersoity by some of the oldest Crown Community members
While the general meeting on Thursday August 2nd was relaxed and agile, the team meeting on Friday August 3rd prolonged itself for more than 6 hours without A/C. The toughest matters were discussed and agreed on, including a revision of the economic situation of the project. Our main goal at the moment is to fund development in order to release version 1.0 of Crown Platform. To launch the platform, we need to secure our developers’ funding, as they work full time on Crown and have no additional income. With the monthly superblock value going below $10.000, we were forced to find alternative funding solutions and lucky to encounter enormous generosity in the last months by some of the oldest Crown community members, who have been donating incessantly so as to guarantee the achievement of our goals.
We are set for another development period
Crown is a distributed and horizontal organization. This entails that no one is capable of taking decisions that affect the whole project, and that we only have leads responsible for the areas they have been designated to. In order to be able to take ecosystemic decisions, the team has to sit together and debate. We are happy to announce that we are set for another development period and that despite the market conjuncture we are suffering, the Crown project is currently not at risk of discontinuing development. This is consequence of an enormous effort made by all affected parties: Developers reducing their salaries, other team members agreeing to receive less compensation, as well as secondary departments dropping their proposals to prioritize core development.
Aitorjs joins the team to work as web developer
Beyond the development achievements, we also reached general Crown Team milestones:
1) Development plans formalized and presented to the team.
2) Financing secured for Q3 2018
3) Aitorjs joins the team to work as web developer. He is a great addition to the community with a wealth of technical experience and also a blockchain enthusiast. Welcome on board, Aitor!
4) farid tejani, chief of marketing, presents his new strategy “taking Crown to market”. View the whole presentation here.
5) SuccessFiles segments were screened at the Community Meetup
6) Crown Platform architecture explained in detail by @artem.bv. View the whole presentation here.
Stay with me to find out how the community meetup went :)
Community Meetup
Our face to face Crown meetings are based on two events. Closed team meetings and an open Community Meetup. While the first event is aimed at development sprints and decision taking on important and complex matters, the Crown Community Meetup is a way of meeting old community members, inviting new ones to join the project, networking and enjoying some time together. Despite the intense heat and vacation time, we were able to attract blockchain enthusiasts and present the Crown project to them. This is a recap of the agenda for the day:
The Community Meetup was not in any way a unidirectional communication act. We invited the Crown Community and partners to present their projects. And they accepted! After an introduction to the history of Crown by co-founder Jan Brody, a technical presentation on the Crown Platform Architecture by Artem, and the marketing strategy design for Crown Platform by farid tejani, our new Marketing Lead, in this edition we were very proud to count on the strong presence of regional and international start-ups that are developing innovative ideas on how to use blockchain technology on Crown, such as Katalytics, Blockchain Solutions, Digital Cactus, and BlockchainHotel.
Jan Brody: “In this difficult period in crypto, we are not afraid, because since 2014 we are building a real community which stands on firm and fairplay values. These values will be at center stage in the eyes of new entrants when the blockchain environment recovers in next months”
The SuccessFiles segments will give Crown massive exposure in the United States
Artem: “We will prioritize our development depending on the interests and petitions of the Crown Community”
Farid Tejani, chief of marketing, presented his new strategy “taking Crown to market”
Daniel Markwart did not only hold an impressive talk on Blockchain Solutions, but was also the lucky winner of the Systemnode Giveaway
Special thanks to our dedicated crown supporters Estandar and CryptoWidow
Katalytics: “The adoption of technology does not solely depend on its quality as technology, but on usability, real life applications, and its actual impact on peoples lifes.”
Panel Discussion
I was impressed by the endurance that the community showed during this very long and HOT day. They held through 45° listening to all the talks and still had enough energy to participate in a thriving panel discussion on the BlockchainHotel rooftop, moderated by farid tejani, where they were able to cool down with some drinks such as the already famous CrownBeer. Farid has been so kind as to share a summary of the intense discussion:
“Crown Use Cases for the Web 3.0”
Participants in the discussion:
Pedro Herranz, G-Me / Contastik
Tobias Gretenkort, katalytics.de
Daniel Markwart, Moritz Stumpf, Blockchain Solutions
Gökhan Köse, BlockchainHotel
Thorsten Hunsicker, Crypto-Rockstars
The panel talk focused on exploring the anticipated use cases that could be launched within the next two years, in order to cut through the hype of blockchain projects. There are so many ICO projects launching with increasingly esoteric, ambitious and narrow use cases, we wanted to discuss more direct and practical ways in which Crown is today able to bring value to the user.
Anonymised data sets permit wider and more distributed research of new treatments
The discussion started with a deep dive in to the data sharing economy, specifically around the possibilities of using Crown to enable data sharing amongst healthcare professionals and the supporting industry. Opinions were enthusiastically divided on this; on the one hand blockchain technology offers a great solution for shared data transfer, however there were concerns (interestingly advocated by the Crown team rather than the project) around the immutability and permanence of the data being stored, privacy, and the way in which access to this data would be managed. Whilst access to health data can be incredibly powerful for the health professional in treatment, the blockchain’s permanent storage is not preferable. Instead, a better use case might be anonymised data sets permitting wider and more distributed research in the search for new treatments.
the challenge consists is linking the physical world to the digital world, marking the physical asset directly and uniquely to the digital proof of legitimacy
We then moved on to identity, supply chain and anti-counterfeit use cases. Here the panel felt that there are several very strong use cases, an example was given around Nike who found their market flooded with counterfeits. The problem is often created within the supply chain, it is tempting for outsourced manufacturers to over produce stock during quiet production periods, which later finds its way in to the market. The panel rightly identified that the challenge is linking the physical world to the digital world; marking the physical asset directly and uniquely to the digital proof of legitimacy. The Crown team is exploring ideas ranging from QR codes to unique digital signatures woven in to the atomic structure of fabrics and materials.
The panel was very excited by some of the practical applications that are coming forward in the area of democratising finance such as the Contastik App automating tax returns for Spanish consumers.
After the panel discussion, further merch and swag was given away
After the panel discussion, further merch and swag was given away and the community took home Powerbanks, T-Shirts, Crown Bags, and tons of stickers to spread visibility of Crown.
Conclusion
To wrap up this report, I asked international representative and Crown event organizer, Olya aka @riseandshine13, for some experienced words:
Meetings like Essen’s show a lot about Crown Platform. At a time when many projects are falling apart after a 7-months bear market, we were able to show our strong presence and long-term goals, as well as our diverse and broad infrastructure design, which permits almost infinite use cases. Despite intolerable heat and vacation time a lot of people came to network, learn about Crown and share their ideas.
Thank you for supporting the Crown project. We hope to see you all again at our next event in Malta!
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