Project Tracker — Issue 8
This monthly post is a roundup of projects using Cosmos, not about Cosmos or Tendermint itself. It’s a dive into what’s happening around the Internet of blockchains.
If you are a project working on Cosmos and your project is not here, please reach out. I’m happy to read your latest blogs and updates and include them. Also update your blog with what you’ve been up to. It’s hard to know what you’re working on if you don’t tell anyone about it.
Big News & Updates:
There is no big news across the projects I typically follow. It’s the end of the year, and there was a ton of big stuff the past few months, so maybe there’s just a lull in shipping major mainnets and wallets. Read below for basic updates.
Less big (but still cool) news:
Akash — Announced an early validator and provider promotion to earn token bonuses for spinning up early providers, customers, and participating in the testnet. Cypher Core has also recently published a [Project Spotlight] on Akash.
Althea — is working on another method of penetrating home internet markets for low service areas with home phone routers. This would enable phone service through a home internet connection under more challenging conditions than in the city or suburbs of developed areas. They have also expanded to a neighborhood in Tacoma in the US, and are moving resources into Nigeria for a small pilot program there.
Aragon — Last month, Aragon announced they would be moving to use the Cosmos SDK instead of Ethereum. Part of their announcement included reassuring language to the Ethereum community that Aragon would continue developing for Ethereum on their previous commitments, but they needed their own chain with more modularity and speed now in order to deliver on their promises. That context is important for this month’s announcements because Aragon have announced their network launch and token launch on the Ethereum blockchain, new branding as Aragon One, and more. I don’t understand how, when, or where we will see Aragon’s flip over to Cosmos, and in what capacity, and I read and write about this stuff every day. My guess is they are still working it out themselves, and in the meantime are trying to clear their kanbans of outstanding things they owe to the community. So, yes they have updates this month, but they’re kind of Ethereum-based updates. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bitsong — Is releasing a testnet wallet that works as a Telegram addon. Nifty.
Forbole — is looking for seed funding. More validators making the case that staking networks are fundable and legitimate businesses.
Hashgard — is developing Bingo into its Wallet I guess? They also shipped v0.1.0 of a virtual machine to the public blockchain. I don’t get this project. There are supposedly tens of thousands of Telegram accounts and a lot of interest, but I straight up do not get what’s going on here. Someone from Hashgard reach out and educate me. It’s less developed Ethereum with a bit more TPS on an unproven model as far as I can tell.
IOV — This month they are announcing another round of fundraising up to $5 mil.
IRISNet — Connected the Rainbow Wallet to Binance DEX, which included a Binance airdrop for 500k IRIS tokens. Many other updates to the wallets and general blockchain testnet to ensure continued upgrades. For example, adding snapshot functionality so the entire state of the chain doesn’t have to be saved at all times, but smaller snapshot versions can contain accurate chain history without holding the massive data pile all at once.
Lino — Lino’s flagship app DLive was the number one dapp on dapp.com with more than 100k unique users. More than Cryptokitties.
Paradigm — No launch notes this month, but they did post a great longer blog about what they are building and why. TLDR: Liquidity pools are the major barrier for many people to engage in advanced trading, so there is a oligopoly in global markets. Paradigm is decentralizing liquidity pools to work with decentralized exchanges, 0x first.
Regen — Get you some Regen hopium in the post about their TechStars Accelerator experience. TLDR: Many others share Regen’s vision, and think they have an exciting and tangible path forward to make a difference and literally save the Earth. Regen also conducted an incentivized testnet and posted results (we’re #28, not bad) encouraging validators to prep for mainnet and learn how rollout is going to go. They also closed their private token sale to add to their growing treasury.
Sentinel — is extending their node participant incentivization, as well as working on updates.
THORChain — deliver front-end updates, staking launch updates, and more. They have a churn mechanism in their staking launch that is neat. They start with only 12 nodes, then every 3 days they drop one node, and add two others that are competing as validators for the positions. They repeat this up to their 99 validator target to encourage bidding for spots, increasing the value of the staking network and securing the chain. They also plan to launch a public testnet with real value associated with tokens to encourage participation and incentivize learning their system before mainnet.
TruStory — The marketing budget is spinning up for user adoption on TruStory, so they’re starting to offer extra cash for winning debates on the internet.
Summary
These project updates were researched from project blogs. If you have a project that’s active but not listed here, please reach out to the Cypher Core team to make sure your update is included in future posts. Cypher Core is dedicated to the Cosmos ecosystem and community and is here to help as a validator (delegate ATOM’s with Cypher Core), as well as to help projects solve business needs like getting your project the sunshine it needs to thrive.
Until next time Cosmonauts, keep shipping!
