FirmaChain Technical Update Schedule (with. Augustus Hardfork)
During the first half of this year, FirmaChain team focused on the scalability of our mainnet Augustus. Along with our Whitepaper 1.2 version update and our attempts to delegate validators for Augustus, our team also made significant progress on the following fronts: a) stabilization of Augustus, b) development of our NFT service, and c) technical update of our e-contract platform, DONUE.
Since we believe that a majority of our holders will be most interested in the progress of our NFT service, we will clarify this issue first and foremost. We’ve completed our blueprint for a NFT trading marketplace and currently, our tech team is in the process of developing the marketplace.
With the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information (hereinafter referred to as “Specific Financial Transactions Act”) taking effect on September of this year, our activities were mostly focused on successfully setting up and stabilizing the systematic infrastructure of our blockchain business. Such activities include hiring a third party consultant to aid our team in achieving ISMS and receiving legal review on whether our blockchain business would fall within the purview of the new regulation. Since some of the aforementioned activities are more geared towards realignment of our internal affairs rather than FirmaChain’s overall development progress, we believe a lot of our holders will be interested in the latter.
Along with the new government regulation, COSMOS also released a major update on their blockchain ecosystem which rendered us to maintain an agile stance throughout the first half of this year. Starting the second half of this year, per our dual track strategy we are simultaneously developing a dApp for our NFT marketplace, stabilizing our internal system as well as our mainnet and expanding features that are offered through our e-contract platform DONUE.
Although those who are already familiar with FirmaChain would no doubt be aware of, for those who are wondering what our project has to do with COSMOS’s recent major update, let us explain. FirmaChain’s mainnet Augustus has been constructed based on COSMOS SDK which utilizes a Tendermint based conesnsus protocol framework.
Therefore, during the second half of this year, we are planning to update Augustus based on Cosmos’s Stargate upgrade (Cosmos SDK 0.43.0), which allows blockchains to connect with each other using the first standardized protocol for inter-blockchain communication (IBC). Through this update, we are expecting enhanced usability for Augustus.
This upgrade of Augustus will fix a number of software bugs and update features for IBC and smart contract.
What is Stargate?
A large scale upgrade with far reaching influences that not only includes tendermint core and SDK but also its client, wallet and partners, Stargate can be referred to as the internet of blockchain.
Stargate is one of many upgrades that achieves the roadmap provided in the Cosmos whitepaper. For the first time ever, Cosmos blockchain can connect with each other using a standardized protocol for IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication). IBC allows siloed blockchains based on Cosmos SDK to connect with each other to form an ecosystem of Cosmos network.
Stargate enables a higher transaction throughput, cross-chain transactions, accelerated UI development and so much more.
As mentioned above, in the second half of this year, with Stargate upgrade included, we will complete and activate FirmaChain’s mainnet Augustus hard fork.
We are currently receiving advice from an outside consultant on obtaining ISMS while also continuously receiving legal memos on our NFT marketplace service. The main agenda for the latter is whether the application of Augustus to our NFT marketplace would fall under the purview of the new regulation when specific guidelines for NFT trading platforms still remain to be further clarified by the government and relevant institutions.
The legal review we’ve received so far states that since the new regulation mainly focuses on cryptocurrency exchanges we must be circumspect in weighing the potential impact of the new regulation on FirmaChain’s NFT marketplace service. Therefore, from our perspective we had to be prudent in our decision making if we were to satisfy both our holders and our service users.
Rushing the launch of our NFT marketplace and token migration would become an issue both in the market and amongst our holders in the near term. However, in the long term, such hasty action could ultimately result in all parties, including FCT holders, service users and the FirmaChain team, taking unnecessary risks in carrying out our business. We’ve decided to err on the side of avoiding such situation from happening, and additionally complying to all regulations stipulated by the government and protecting the interest of our investors. As a result, we have conducted a thorough review of Augustus hard fork in Q2 — originally scheduled for Q4 — and have decided to safely launch the Augustus hard fork within this year while strictly complying to all regulations.
Following is an excerpt from an article that summarizes why obtaining ISMS is a must for the FirmaChain team and also why we had no choice but to take a conservative approach in formulating our business strategy.
[BlockMonday] Weighing the risk of overflooding NFT business in the market
Bloter, Written by Lee, Keonhan(…)
…is the NFT’s current ambiguous legal stance. The debate around whether NFT, issued based on blockchain, can be considered as the same class of asset as cryptocurrency assets such as bitcoin has been around for a while. Recent interpretation by legal scholars leans more towards classifying NFT as the same class of asset as bitcoin.
One evidence of such interpretation is the fact that under the Specific Financial Transactions Act the government defines cryptocurrency assets as “eletronic tokens with economic value those of which can be transferred or traded eletronically.” In the case of NFTs, despite the absence of an official verdict, since they have economic value and are tokens that can be traded electronically, the chances of NFTs to be considered as the same class of assets as traditional cryptocurrency assets remain high.
Under the above scenario, platforms that allow the trading, auctioning and sale of NFTs can be considered as Virtual Asset Service Providers or VASP and hence, would fall under the purview of the new regulation. If so, in order to operate within the legal boundary, the service provider of an NFT trading platform must undergo the strenuous and complex procedure that the Specific Financial Transactions Act requires all VASPs to follow. One such requirement stipulates all service providers to obtain ISMS, which require months of preparation and thousands of dollars in spending. The risk of service suspension proportionately increases as many service providers would find it extremely burdensome to meet the requirement that the new regulation stipulates, on time.
(…)
In order to maintain a more conservative policy stance, major revisions to the process of “selecting” validators and to the overall governance policy was inevitable. Additionally, because the core logic of the policy must revolve around not on a security token basis but instead on a utility token basis, we’ve decided to revise our governance policy for validator selection. Instead of the original process of validator ‘selection’, which was to be finalized by Q3, we’ve decided to change the process to a ‘participation’ basis. In other words, instead of FirmaChain ‘selecting’ validators for our mainnet, we will allow parties to participate, at their own will, in the validation process. From FirmaChain’s original governance policy, any and all changes relevant to the validator selection policy will be applied accordingly. The hard fork of Augustus will happen with all of the above changes taken into consideration.
In Q3, FirmaChain team will focus on coming up with an update strategy and adding additional features to DONUE. In Q4, our team will update DONUE, launch the Augustus hard fork, open our web wallet service, initiate our token swap service and open our NFT marketplace platform. Additionally, we will initiate the technical development of certain features that could be added to our DID service.
Where could I find the progress of technical development?
Overall progress of our technical development will be released via Github and medium. The link to our Github page is https://github.com/FirmaChain
Overview of the Augustus Hard Fork
- Revision of our validator selection and governance policy: Shifting the basis from a security token basis to a utility token basis (block creation contribution and fee policy, community pool etc.)
- Upon completion of the validator participation process, conduct test for a maximum period of 60 days on our testnet
- Support Token Delegation feature (delegate voting right to the validator of choice)
- Stargate upgrade based on Cosmos SDK 0.43.0
- Launch public testnet (Colosseum-1) for validator testing
- Upgrade NFT trading features
With the Augustus hard fork, we will update our participation and reward system so that FCT holders will be more incentivized to freely participate in the validation process. Such will result in an increase in the number of users of our service within the FirmaChain governance ecosystem. Moreover, we believe that Augustus hard fork will allow us to further stabilize and enhance the management of our blockchain business and to come up with a business strategy that effectively reaps the long term benefits and forsees far reaching consequences.
Matters such as prolonged testing period on our testnet, set-up of token delegation feature and enhancement of web wallet are inevitable as we revise our governance policy. However, once all of the relevant issues are settled FCT holders will not only be able to profit from trading FCT but also from freely participating as node validators within the FirmaChain ecosystem.
As always, we will try our very best to become a more friendly project to all those out there.
Thank you.
About FirmaChain
FirmaChain seeks to replace all written contracts governing social and legal issues by using an electronic contract platform based on FirmaChain’s data blockchain. Since traditional written and electronic documents are easy to forge, and the verification procedures are complicated, blockchain’s decentralization is used to solve the problem. FirmaChain can check the contract’s validity through its hash function, which can be verified in an independent node. This verification process can be used as a means to resolve legal disputes. Blockchain is an effective technology that eliminates the risk of forgery of such documents, and it is applied to the first DApp (decentralized application) of FirmaChain — DONUE.
For more information about FirmaChain, or to join our team, please contact us at info@firmachain.org.
🔴 Official Channel
Official site : http://firmachain.org
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Medium : https://medium.com/firmachain
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Github : https://github.com/firmachain
