This last month signifies the close of another successful quarter for us at BLOCKv. Since Q2, we have onboarded over 40 developers to the beta platform who are building unique immersive campaigns that focus on developing one to one relationships between the customers and the brand. Since the beta launch of our platform in Q1 of this year, our technology team has been hard at work to improve and expand the platform, as outlined in the BLOCKv white paper roadmap. For the Q2 update we are proud to share the launch of exciting new features and document the improvements we made to select platform elements.
New Features Launched
EOS Blockchain Integration: We have implemented an integration layer to the EOS blockchain to allow developers to create programmable, non-fungible tokens (vAtoms) on EOS. The process of vAtom creation on EOS is similar to the already existing integration with Ethereum. Developers can include a dedicated EOS section in a vAtom template variation in two ways:
- By defining the section and choosing the network they want to work with (a BLOCKv testnet or EOS mainnet) which will lead to ownership change being recorded on the EOS blockchain.
- By defining additional states and values which will also be recorded on the EOS blockchain.
In the coming months, we will provide a tutorial on how to use this feature in detail. This integration is a big step for BLOCKv in abstracting blockchains as we work on continuously adding more blockchains.
Integration with High Fidelity’s VR solution: We have developed a plugin for the High Fidelity platform allowing vAtoms to be visualized and interacted with in a High Fidelity Virtual Reality world. This means users will be able to seamlessly interact with and transfer vAtoms between virtual and real worlds. We will further explain how the plugin works and showcase examples on how to use this exciting new feature soon.
Multi-tenant analytics data for publishers: We have implemented a data lake solution for publishers which means that every action triggered for a vAtom, emitted by a publisher, is recorded in an anonymized fashion. Publishers will be given access to the data lake and will be able to connect this data to the BI solution of their choice to run analyses.
Viewer SDK’s: We have released a web SDK which supports the development of a web browser based vAtom viewer app. Additionally, the iOS and Android SDK’s have been updated and completed to include all vAtom viewer API functionality. The updated SDK’s, including documentation, are available on our GitHub.
Developer Portal
To help guide our developers and simplify the interaction with our platform, we are continuously working on adding new documentation manuals, tutorials, and features on our developer portal. In the last quarter, the portal has been updated to include the following components:
Try-It Lab for JavaScript: The ‘Try-It Lab’ allows developers to execute our APIs from within the portal environment. Try-It Lab for JavaScript SDK brings the same interactive and ready-for-use approach to the JavaScript SDK. It allows developers to quickly start testing and using the JavaScript SDK.
New endpoints and changes: We have added new endpoints as well as optimize existing ones. The developer portal will soon include a dedicated section where we will highlight additions and announce upcoming (breaking) changes with a deprecation timing. This will not only serve as a tracking tool for developers, showing precisely what is coming, but also prepare them to adapt to and make use of new features as they see fit.Here is a list of the new recently added API documentation and tutorials:
- Default User Token
- New Perform Actions such as AcquirePubVariation, Redeem, Discover, and Activate.
- My Events
- My Threads
- My Thread Messages
- vAtom Discover
- Ethereum Enabled vAtoms
Platform Improvements
We are still officially in beta and are continuing to make improvements to the platform to make it more robust, manageable and scalable. This also includes requests submitted to our support team from developers building in beta. Here are some of the principal changes:
Draft mode while designing vAtoms:
- Child vAtoms (both draft & published) stored in a draft container are not lost when the container is deleted. Instead, they are moved out of the container.
- Unpublished vAtoms that have to be deleted cannot be put in contract to avoid an incorrect state of the contract.
- It is not allowed to redeem a published vAtom for a draft one or vice versa.
- It is not possible to exceed the allowed number of draft vAtoms.
GeoPos spoofing protection: We have improved the security for the Drop and PickUp actions to better detect fake GPS locations.
New websocket event bus implementation: We have improved our websocket service bus for real-time updates of vAtom changes for clients. This is a next-generation solution bringing us into the scalability range that is needed for BLOCKv’s upcoming initiatives. The service can be connected to using the following endpoint:
wss://ws.blockv.io/ws?app_id=abc&token=xyz
Params:
app_id = application id
token = a jwt access token as received from the login or register use API call responses.
Languages: In addition to the existing languages of English and Russian, we have recently added support for Spanish.
Security: As a technology platform, security is of utmost importance to us. We are working with external specialists for security audits and continuous penetration testing.
Outlook for Next Milestone
Here is what you can expect for Q3, 2018:
- End of the beta phase and a full release of the platform
- Self-service tools for onboarding developers and publishers
- Beta version of our brain framework (with manual onboarding)
- Beta version of our cyclers framework (focusing initially on some reactors with manual selection of early bird external cyclers)
- Ability to use own private keys for blockchain based vAtoms instead of the platform managed ones
- New solution for asset management via CDN with better protection of assets and easier access.
