Orbs is Good for the Seoul: the recap of Orbs’ July activities
Orbs took Korea by storm this July for Korea Blockchain Week. For months we have heard how ready Seoul is for more blockchain technology advancements and cryptocurrency markets, and Orbs felt this on our trip to the Korean capital.
Korea Blockchain Week
I took the stage more than once on blockchain scalability at corporate investment in the industry, at Beyond Blocks — Seoul. We found an incredible partner in Beyond Blocks, whose Seoul conference was the biggest event the country has seen yet for blockchain. Our partners DX Exchange, ex², COTI, PumaPay, ChainKey, and Zinc all got to demo their projects. The Orbs Ecosystem truly left its imprint on Seoul.
I took the stage for “The Mainstream Effect — The Startup x Corporate Connection.” Sitting with Ella Qiang from Stellar, Simon Yu from Storm, and several more, talking about what corporations are looking for and what they will need to adopt blockchain smartly and correctly.
But I was especially excited to receive feedback from the community on my presentation of Orbs. The reaction to “A New Path Towards Blockchain for the Masses” was amazing. Korea, being a blockchain pioneer not only in regulation, investor participation and a ready-for-adoption community, is now the first country with top market leaders like Kakao, KT Corporation, Lotte, Tmoon and Samsung in the mix. The market is supposed to grow from under $50 million to nearly $1 billion in the next four years, placing Korea in a unique position to become the global leader in blockchain, and we’re excited to be a part of it.
There is readiness — now — for what Orbs is building.
We promised after our first Seoul meetup in June that South Korea would be one of Orbs’ main hubs moving forward. I’m proud of everyone else who got the chance to take to the mic at Beyond Blocks and other events throughout the week.
We partnered up with iCapital.io for their iCapital Blockchain Party in downtown Seoul. I sat on a panel on the future of the industry, led by CNBC’s Ran Neuner. Our partners COTI, Endor, and Zinc were all there too.
Startup Alliance Korea hosted a special event on July 20 where Orbs Head of Business Development Aryeh Altshul got the chance to present ”Startup Nation,” about Israel’s rise as a blockchain leader.
Kakao, Ground X, and TXGX
The Orbs team joined eight other companies at Jeju Island, the corporate headquarters of Korean chat giant Kakao. Kakao’s blockchain subsidiary Ground X led by Jason Han put on its first ever Tech Forum by Ground X, which is forming its own blockchain by the name of Klaytn. The exclusive invite list included less than 300 people. But our very own Leonid Beder was honored to give one of the keynote addresses: “Threshold Cryptography and Distributed Key Generation.”
You can read more about his presentation in his recent blog post.
Hanging out with Endor at MIT
Leonid had a busy July, flying back home to Israel from Korea only to hop on another flight for Boston. Chief Research Officer Ori Rottenstreich joined him for a joint event with Orbs partner Endor at MIT.
The event opened with MIT Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland, one of Endor’s two co-founders and also the author of best-selling book Social Physics. Pentland’s fellow MIT personality Dr. Yaniv Altshuler moderated the “Experts Panel” on the future of the industry featuring Leonid with Dr. Thomas Hardjono, Dr. Mihaela Ulieru and Prof. Alex Lipton.
https://twitter.com/orbs_network/status/1022592863874502657
Ori delivered a keynote on “Helix: Transaction Ordering Protocol,” a preview of our coming white paper on the ordering process for Orbs’ consensus algorithm.
Orbs Talks: Explainer Videos on their Way
Orbs started filming its first series of explainer videos on blockchain technology and the Orbs consensus algorithm, Helix. Presentations by Orbs CTO Oded Wertheim, Head of Research David Yakira, researcher Ido Grayevsky, and researcher Maya Leshkowitz. The videos should be out in mid-August, with more explainers to come.
New from the Blog
July saw Orbs’ best and brightest tackle some major security and regulatory issues in the industry.
Leonid covered the Bancor breach in two parts: Lessons Learned from the Recent Bancor Incident and In Defense of the Bancor Safety Hatch. Ido Grayevsky went deeper in describing Helix and its random ordering of transactions. Oded Noam explained why Ethereum’s gas problem is inherent to the system. And finally, our parent company Hexa Group’s VP Trading Ilan Sterk comments on the need for certifying a Bitcoin ETF.
Launch Updates
Alpha testing is continuing apace with the beta mainnet and token release targeted for the end of Q3. See the latest post on Orbs’ progress. Stay tuned for more updates.
Join the Orbs community:
- GitHub: https://github.com/orbs-network
- Telegram: https://t.me/orbs_network
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/orbs_network
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ORBS_Network/
- Read the Orbs white papers: https://www.orbs.com/white-papers
