Protocol Weekly is a newsletter to exclusively showcase the progress of layer-1 and Ethereum layer-2 protocols.
This week had two exciting launches, Veil and Grin, going live on main-net! The hype around Grin, in particular, is quite interesting as it follows the ethos of cypherpunks (no premine or pre-sale) but also presenting an opportunity for larger institutions to buy in. Many will be watching the price as the inflation schedule starts off very high (100%) combined with the overall bearish market sentiment. Veil, on the other hand, represents the new emerging trend of crypto companies/projects building centralized products on decentralized infrastructure. Have we shifted away from fat protocols back to user experience layers capture majority of value? Only time will tell…
From Alexandra Heller (Communications):
- We received a $5m grant from the Ethereum Foundation for our years of contribution to the Ethereum ecosystem and to complete the following work: eWasm compatibility, shipping a light wallet for mainnet, and completing our work on sharding Phase 0 and 1.
- On Coindesk, Jutta Steiner wrote about web 3.0’s critical mission and keeping our heads above the hype
- Parity core dev Ben Kampmann discussed how Substrate uses WebAssembly at a Rust meetup.
- 2 of the top 40 coins are building on Polkadot. Full list of projects building on Polkadot.
- Adrian Brink released a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a Polkadot parachain.
- Community-developed Polkawallet, a mobile wallet for Polkadot, is in the works.
- Afri Schoedon, Parity Ethereum Release Manager, continues to attempt to educate the online public about the size of Ethereum full nodes.
- We now have a newsletter to occasionally announce important developments.
From Leila Lin (Associate):
- Stealthex, an anonymous crypto exchange (non-order book model), is listing LRC. The users of Stealthex can have complete control of their crypto-assets.
- Loopring is glad to become one of WBTC DAO members and Loopring’s Ethereum address for WBTC as a DAO Member is: 0xd8056194369F71A98b82799132F71f34084F7660.
- Loopring is invited to attend the Asian Financial Forum (AFF) in Hong Kong during 14–15 January 2019.
- Loopring and PwC release the joint study — Trust Framework For Fiat-backed Stablecoin.
From Siddhartha Jain (VP — Operations & Marketing):
- Addition of pre-hooks on the standard ERC20 token contract on the Matic chain, to allow for custom DApp-specific conditions. DApp developers can now perform conditional checks before the token transfer takes place.
- Our Proof-of-Stake Validator node implementation has been put through internal rounds of testing and so far we have had excellent results.
- Change in synchronization logic between Validator and mainchain Staker contracts for proposer selection based on status of actual checkpoint submission on mainchain
- ERC721 support added to the Matic Plasma smart contracts. This will allow secure transfer of any ERC721 tokens on the Matic Network.
- Significant UI changes on the Matic wallet app, which will support both mainchain and Matic transactions, along with WalletConnect integration.
From Titus Capilnean (Director of Marketing):
- Proof of age verification for vending machines became a reality at ConsenSys 2018 thanks to Civic’s partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev. If you didn’t see #cryptobeer in action last year, take a look at our case study.
- We announced a partnership with Johnson Controls, an industry leader with customers in over 150 countries. Learn more about how the Civic and Johnson Controls partnership will simplify and streamline the identity verification process for managing visitors.
- “Identity is at the core of everything that we understand about ourselves. And ultimately, it’s what makes us human.” Chris Smith, our VP of Business Development, talks about Civic’s belief that identity is a human right.
- As we learn of blockchain being used to digitally store government records such as birth and marriage certificates, Civic is right alongside the trend of leveraging this technology to ensure that a person’s digital identity remains safe and protected.
- According to Forbes, “the number of identity theft victims in the US rose to 16.7 million in 2017. The cost of all of that lost data amounts to nearly $17 billion.” Online impersonation and fraud is rampant but solvable with a tool like ID Codes by Civic.
One thing we need help with:
We want to hear from you! Tweet us @civickey and tell us what you think the future of identity is. What developments you would like to see in identity verification in 2019?
From Rodrigo Coelho (Community Lead):
- We’re hosting Graph Day on January 25th at the Grand Theater in San Francisco.
- The day will focus on what’s needed to make Web3 go mainstream with speakers from eWasm, LivePeer, Compound, and other projects. Talks will cover the latest in protocol design, dApp adoption, scaling, UX, and investment theses.
- Here’s the event page with agenda: https://thegraph.com/graphday
We’d love to see you there!
- We are proud to announce the addition of two small but powerful additions to Origin listings: editable listings and support for selling multi-unit listings. For more information, refer to our medium post here.
- Jon Hearty, our Head of Business Development, recently spoke at a virtual meetup (Road to India DappFest) organized by Blockchained India. There were approximately 80 attendees, and we received a strong positive feedback from the community. Thank you all for your support.
One thing we need help with:
KryptoSeoul, South Korea’s leading blockchain community-builder will be hosting its first SF meetup on Jan 28th. Origin is proud to support KryptoSeoul’s first meetup here in SF, and will be speaking along with other prominent projects such as Cosmos, 0x, and Celer Network to discuss lessons learned in 2018 & insights into future outlook for 2019. Please RSVP here and say hello! Lastly, please continue to checkout our Origin Marketplace DApp. Try creating a listing on our DApp, and buy/sell using real ethereum.
- Brave recently launched their newest web browser featuring their new ad system. AirSwap and Fluidity were part of a wider-group of initial launch partners for the new ad system. Read more about the partnership on CNET.
- We just updated our Order Information page (Before and After comparison)! You can take a look at a live Order Information page here.
- Like with our update to the Order Information page, we’re continuing to improve on the instant.airswap.io experience. Please share with us any feedback you may have!
One thing we need help with:
If you’re interested in what our team is working on at AirSwap, please submit an application in the “Careers” section here.
From Shane Hong (Marketing):
- EDCON, the global Ethereum conference, has integrated the KyberWidget to allow the purchase of conference tickets using ERC20 tokens directly on their website, demonstrating how Kyber can be used to facilitate token payments for real world use cases.
- To encourage adoption of decentralized token payments, MakerDAO and Kyber will be supporting a 10% discount on EDCON ticket purchases if they are bought using ERC20 tokens. Only the first 200 tickets purchased will receive this discount.
- Kyber Network and KyberSwap were featured in a Coindesk piece by 256 Ventures’ David Lu, where he talks about how DEXs are the key to a DApp comeback in 2019.
Participating Projects:
Parity.
Loopring, Matic Network, Civic, The Graph, Origin Protocol, AirSwap, Kyber Network.
Updates Not Included This Week:
Wanchain, Aion, ICON.
CDx, Abacus Protocol, Enigma, Set Protocol, Codex Protocol, Colony, The Graph, POA, Quantstamp, Connext Network, Dharma Protocol, Paradigm, Market Protocol, Liquidity Network.
Know a protocol that should be part of this list? Drop us an email at hello@8xprotocol.com.
16/1/2019
