Greetings everyone! Following our last project update, we entered IoTeX Technology Month in June! We have had an extremely eventful and engaging month attending several blockchain conferences, publishing several research papers, unveiling our Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism in a yellow paper, and launching our second code release, Testnet Alpha (codename “Strive”)! We are thrilled to share with you all the updates and advancements that took place this past month, including token issuances, listings, partnerships, and more.
Token Issuance and Listing Updates
Token Issuance
On May 23 (2PM PDT), we held our global token launch for the IOTX token! We successfully and seamlessly converted our community members’ points that they received in various community reward programs into tokens tradable on exchanges. The IOTX token is the utility token for IoTeX blockchains, used for various purposes including gas for the blockchain, root chain and sub chain management, and network-wide governance.
We have also we prepared a “Global Token Launch FAQs” video for you to learn more about the purpose of the IOTX token and token issuance / listing details. We hope this video answers your questions!
Token Listing
Following our token issuance, we have been listed on three top cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, gate.io, and Kucoin!
Finalizing our first set of listings on top exchanges has been a rigorous process full of legal and operational hurdles, but we are thankful for your patience and happy to finally announce this news. We truly appreciate the trust and support from every single one of you. Thank you again for your continued support!
Technical Updates
Testnet Alpha (“Strive”) Release
We launched our second code release, Testnet Alpha (codename “Strive”), on June 28! It was an extremely exciting day as the IoTeX team has been working endlessly on delivering this release to our community. It is now officially live and open sourced.
You can check out the code on our Github here:
We have received great feedback with this release, especially alongside the launch of our IoTeX Explorer which can be found on iotex.io/explorer.
In this second release, Testnet Alpha strengthens IoTeX’s innovations introduced in our first code release, Testnet Preview (“StoneVan”) and adds some exciting new in-house features. Most notably, the implementation of our optimized elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) library and full implementation of our in-house consensus mechanism, Roll-DPoS, reinforce the goals of privacy, scalability, decentralization, and interoperability.
Detailed instructions for running the Strive code are provided in this README file, and a detailed demo video can also be found here:
The IoTeX-core project is open sourced and licensed under the Apache License 2.0 — we are thrilled to have the support of contributors outside of the core team! Contributions to help IoTeX reach its full potential, including style/bug fixes, feature recommendations, proposals for schemes/algorithms, and help with documentation, are all welcomed and greatly appreciated. For code contributions, please refer to our Contribution Guidelines for more information. To report issues, please file an issue on our Github page.
Academic Paper (DKSAP-IoT)
We released an academic paper, “Faster Dual-key Stealth Address for Blockchain-based Internet of Things Systems (icbc2018–9009)” that was accepted and published in early June by one of the world’s most reputable academic blockchain conferences, the 2018 International Conference on Blockchain (ICBC 2018)! This paper describes IoTeX’s enhancements to the already state-of-the-art dual-key stealth address protocol (DKSAP), which is used by projects like Monero. IoTeX’s new protocol (named “DKSAP-IoT”) is an IoT-friendly adaptation of DKSAP, which reduces computational overhead by 50% compared to DKSAP, paving the way for its application to blockchain-based IoT systems.
See the full “Faster Dual-key Stealth Address for Blockchain-based Internet of Things Systems (icbc2018–9009)” paper here:
Yellow Paper (Roll-DPos)
We are thrilled to also announce that on July 1, we have published our yellow paper on Roll-DPoS, our in-house randomized DPoS consensus mechanism, which is implemented in our latest code release: Testnet Alpha (codename “Strive”)!
This paper from the IoTeX R&D team is a technical deep dive into the cryptographic techniques used to optimize the consensus process for large-scale IoT systems. Our Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism enables massive scalability with a more decentralized approach than normal DPoS. See how we achieved this in our yellow paper here:
Welcome Zhijie to Our Tech Team!
Staff Blockchain Engineer
Zhijie has just joined us as a Staff Blockchain Engineer to architect and develop IoTeX blockchains. He has a wealth of experience in distributed systems, P2P networks and big data over the past 10 years. Zhijie was actively working on open source projects such as MapReduce, Pig and Samza. He is the committer and PMC of Hadoop and Samza, and a member of Apache Software Foundation. Having earned a Ph.D in Computer Science at National University of Singapore, Zhijie also has 10+ publications and patents.
Zhijie was formerly leading efficiency and optimization of data infrastructure at Facebook. Before that, he was a member of the Technical Staff at Hortonworks, focusing on Hadoop YARN, which is the resource management system for various Hadoop ecosystem workloads. Prior to Hortonworks, Zhijie was working as a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft, working on a cloud-based file synchronization service.
Community Updates
IoTeX Profile System
Shortly after our token issuance on May 23, our profile system went live to assist the community in redeeming points earned from community reward programs. It is accessible from our website (iotex.io) to help minimize scams and fraudulent activities, improve user experience and security, and to make it easier to manage IoTeX points.
You can view your ETH address, view your points earned from our community reward programs, and submit points redemption applications.
More detailed instructions here: https://medium.com/iotex/iotex-token-issuance-announcement-f8315146d22f
Login Page:
AMA Campaign (June 2018)
To welcome IoTeX’s ‘Technology Month’ in June, the IoTeX team held an AMA on Reddit to answer any questions the community had for us regarding topics ranging from tech, to our team, to tokens, and even our favorite movies (basically anything)!
Thank you to everyone who participated and for raising such thoughtful questions. We appreciate the support and always love engaging with our community! Check out the AMA details here:
More details: https://medium.com/@iotex/iotex-ama-june-2018-94a7d6da9bbe
Tech AMA Campaign (July 2018)
We held another AMA to begin July, focusing on more technical questions especially around Roll-DPoS and our recent Testnet Alpha: Strive release. Again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! We received great questions from the community and as always, the IoTeX team loves engaging with you all. We are excited to announce that we will be holding AMAs to the community bi-weekly from here on out! Each AMA may center around different topics, so keep an eye out for them to get participation points and bonus points for submitting the most thoughtful questions.
Check out the AMA details here:
We will be posting a blog update soon about the July 2018 AMA announcing the hand-picked winners who have submitted the most thoughtful questions!
First IoTalks Launched
With the goal of sharing candid perspectives on the broader blockchain ecosystem and more about IoTeX’s team, we introduced the first IoTalk on June 7! In this first IoTalk, we shared a chat with one of the masterminds behind IoTeX’s technology — our Head of Cryptography, Dr. Xinxin Fan. In this video, Dr. Xinxin Fan introduces DKSAP-IoT and delves more into IoTeX’s innovations.
Meetups (LG Executive Group, DoraHacks, FRII)
The IoTeX team had an engaging month of meetups in May and June! We had a great time connecting and sharing in-depth views of IoTeX’s vision and philosophy with developers and enthusiasts of blockchain related-challenges. Thank you to everyone who spent time with us to participate in our events and community meetups.
On June 18, co-founder Jing gave an insightful presentation to the LG Executive Group, shared IoTeX vision of Internet of Things exploration, reached consensus with the audiences, and elaborated how IoTeX would use revolutionary privacy-centric blockchain infrastructure and decentralized networks to change the traditional perceptions of the IoT.
Meanwhile, our Co-Founder Raullen, joined by Head of Cryptography, Dr. Xinxin Fan and Blockchain Staff Engineer, Zhijie, held a meetup with the hackers from Dorahacks community, and had an in-depth, sincere and productive exchange of views on next generation E-health, renewable energy & smart power, smart homes and general blockchain-related challenges.
On June 28, our Community Manager Alina attended the FRII meetup in Moscow, bringing together startups and corporations!
Conferences (Blockchain Korea , Crypto Developers, Blockchain Connect, ICBC)
In addition to meetups, the IoTeX team had a fast-paced and productive month in attending several conferences delivering keynote speeches and sponsoring and participating in a hackathon.
IoTeX began the month attending the 2018 Blockchain Korea Conference in Seoul which was hosted by Asia Economy TV, Ether Lab, and GBIC! Our co-founder Qevan Guo spoke on “how blockchain technology can change our lives”. It was an amazing day of panels, interviews, and networking for the IoTeX team to share our vision with the global blockchain community.
Held from June 10–12, IoTeX attended the CPC Crypto Developers Conference at Stanford University. Our co-founder Raullen Chai delivered a keynote speech to unveil for the first time our Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism and joined a privacy-focused panel with ZCash, Enigma, and more.
The IoTeX team attended the Blockchain Connect Conference held at the San Jose Convention Center on June 26–27 engaging with investors and enthusiasts at our booth. Our IoTeX hacker team also participated in DoraHacks’ Blockchain for Future Hackathon! They were hard at work all night and finished with an amazing solar energy project.
In Seattle, WA, Dr.Xinxin Fan, our Head of Cryptography at IoTeX shared his research on dual-key stealth addresses (DKSAP-IoT) at the International Conference on Blockchain (ICBC 2018) on June 28.
Partnerships
IoTeX has also made huge strides this past month with a few partnerships we are excited to share with you all.
We announced our partnership focused on blockchain and smart contract security with CertiK on June 14. CertiK is a blockchain and smart contract verification platform founded by top formal verification experts from Yale and Columbia University and former senior software engineers from Google, Facebook and FreeWheel. CertiK has verified the IOTX token contract, and IoTeX will continue to work with CertiK and other global project contributors to ensure their blockchain and smart contracts are truly secure.
We are also honored to announce that we have partnered with Blockfolio and joined their private beta for Signal. Blockfolio is a free crypto portfolio management app offering complete cryptocurrency management with easy-to-use tools to keep track of all your cryptocurrency investments.
imToken, CoboWallet, and MyEtherWallet Now Supports IOTX
Beginning June, imToken began natively supporting IOTX. Similar with BTC, ETH, and 19 other popular tokens, IOTX can easily be added to imToken without manually entering the detailed contact address. imToken is the world’s largest Ethereum digital asset wallet, with more than 100,000 daily new users and 4 million monthly active users.
We also received native support from CoboWallet and IOTX can also be added to CoboWallet without needing to manually enter the detailed contract address.
Lastly, kicking off the month of July, MyEtherWallet has also been added to the list of native supporters of IOTX. If you check your MEW wallet, IOTX will automatically show in the token balance at the bottom right. MyEtherWallet (MEW) is a free, open-source, client- side interface for generating Ethereum wallets & more. It is one of the most popular wallet for cryptocurrency.
Livestream (China)
Our Co-Founder Raullen Chai joined a Chinese livestream for the first time on July 6 sharing about IoTeX’s recent Testnet Alpha: Strive, and the Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism. “比特币世界” is a famous livestream channel in China.
Beijing Meetup
Our co-founder Raullen Chai attended a meetup in Beijing on July 7 which was helped by Link VC, one of IoTeX’s very own investors!
Multi-Language Support to Community Groups
In order to provide better services to our community, we are working on building sub-communities in different languages! Specifically, our korean groups and channels are now ready for you to join. Check them out below:
- IoTeX 한국 새소식 채널: https://t.me/iotexchannelko
- IoTeX 한국 커뮤니티: https://t.me/IoTeXGroupKO
- Medium_KO: https://medium.com/iotex-kr
Upcoming Events
Korea Blockchain Week
The IoTeX team will be heading to Seoul, Korea to attend Korea Blockchain Week from July 16–20! Korea Blockchain Week is Asia’s most prominent blockchain conference and is taking place for the first time in Korea. We look forward to meeting global leading blockchain enthusiasts and to sharing our vision of IoTeX!
Blockchain & IoT: The New Frontier (Rome Meetup)
Join Larry, IoTeX’s Head of BD, in Rome on July 11 to explore the intersection of blockchain and IoT!
Testnet Beta
IoTeX’s next code release, Testnet Beta, is planned to be released in late August 2018. The next phase of IoTeX development will focus on scalability and robustness of our code, and expected features include full support of scripting & Virtual Machine (VM), initial support of cross-chain communication between sub-chains, and a pluggable transportation framework with UDP & TCP support.
In Addition…
The IoTeX Technology and R&D teams will be releasing more academic and research papers on not only the theoretical aspects of our innovations, but also the applicable and conceptual aspects. We are also excited to share more news soon!
About IoTeX
IoTeX is the auto-scalable and privacy-centric blockchain infrastructure for the Internet of Things (IoT). IoTeX’s global team is comprised of Ph.Ds in Cryptography, Distributed Systems, and Machine Learning, top tier engineers, and experienced ecosystem builders. IoTeX is developing several in-house innovations to push the frontier of blockchain 3.0, including a blockchains-in-blockchain architecture for heterogeneous computing, lightning fast Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism, and lightweight privacy-preserving techniques. IoTeX is bringing autonomous device coordination to the masses by “connecting the physical world, block by block.”
Stay connected with us!
Website: https://iotex.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iotex_io
Telegram Announcement Channel: https://t.me/iotexchannel
Telegram Group: https://t.me/IoTeXGroup
Medium: https://medium.com/@iotex
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IoTeX/
Join us: https://iotex.io/careers
