Hello, and welcome to our biweekly recap on ICON! Here you can find all the news and updates that happened within the ecosystem over the past two weeks. So let’s first have a quick take of what was up in ICON.
The dev team released “Goloop”, a smart contract enabled enterprise-grade blockchain software written in Go with many unique features providing a secure, immutable and scalable environment to develop decentralized applications. This is a major release from a development point of view. Next, the ICON Foundation will submit a Network Proposal (Revision Proposal) to activate the Revision 11 feature. This Revision 11 is already included in Loopchain 2.6.0, ICON Service 1.7.7, icon-rpc-server 1.5.1. and Reward calculator 1.2.2.
What’s more, in August, the Foundation approved six grants ranging from DApp development and developer tools to design and documentation. These approvals follow the nine grants approved in July, the highest total since launching this initiative late last year. Among new grantees are Stash, a rewards program for ICON, $ICX Staking Lossless lottery, OpenDevICON Continuing development proposal, and FutureICX 2.0, a gamified Trading Platform.
Some milestones appeared on the public side of the ICON. The technology and ecosystem expansion partner, ICONLOOP, signed an MoU with Saramin HR, which operates the job placement platform and search engine Saramin, to collaborate in building a blockchain-based digital ID and authentication ecosystem. Saramin HR is Korea’s leading job placement platform, similar to Indeed.com. The purpose of the MoU is to increase Saramin’s customer experience and value through ICONLOOP’s blockchain certificate issuance and management service ‘broof’ and its digital identity platform ‘MyID.’ Furthermore, ICONLOOP signed a business agreement with Initech, a financial security company, that will promote private authentication based on decentralized identity verification (DID). Through this agreement, the two companies plan to link Initech’s technical competitiveness specialized in the authentication and encryption area with the blockchain-based DID technology capabilities possessed by ICONLOOP. The aim is to develop a new private authentication system to replace public certificates and create new business opportunities.
By the way, MyID Alliance Partners number increased from 73 to 78. After Zzeung issued the first financial DID with Shinhan Bank, Shinhan’s affiliates such as “Shinhan Card”, “Shinhan Financial Investments” “Shinhan Life” “Orange Life”, and “Jeju Bank” has joined the MyID Alliance to verify and utilize the DID.
Now let’s talk a bit about the current token metrics. About 60% of the circulating supply is staked vs. 38.4% at the end of 2019. According to the ‘ICON in numbers report,’ the total supply, circulation, staked, and voted ICX have all increased since the week of 1st September. This led to a decrease in staking reward by 0.44 % points. Only a marginal decline in the average transaction was observed since the previous week. There was also an increase in voters by 161.
Check the report below for more, and see you in two weeks!
Development
The ICON Foundation is going to submit a Network Proposal (Revision Proposal) to activate the Revision 11 feature. This Revision 11 is already included in Loopchain 2.6.0, ICON Service 1.7.7, icon-rpc-server 1.5.1. and Reward calculator 1.2.2. You can find a release note for this update at the link.
Summary of this update:
- Add an ability to fix the Invalid Unstaking Request issue caused by Multiple Unstaking Vulnerability
- Fix the logic associated with ‘HAS_STAKE’ variable to get rid of Invalid Unstaking Request
- Add a new JSON-RPC API: ‘debug_getAccount’
Goloop is a smart contract enabled enterprise-grade blockchain software written in Go with many unique features providing a secure, immutable and scalable environment to develop decentralized applications. Above, you can check its github repository that contains the source code of the Goloop software, which will serve as base modules for enterprise blockchains as well as the implementation base for ICON 2.0 protocol.
KotaniPay is a financial solution that offers an on-ramp and off-ramp for users to the ICON network using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, minimizing the requirements on devices to enable access to the blockchain using basic feature phones. USSD service utilizes cellular connectivity, enabling use in resource-poor settings and enabling access for all.
They are currently in the middle of the development of the mobile applications for iOS and Android devices. The basic concept of the App and the user interface is already implemented. But there are still a few small details which need attention from development side. The integration of the NFC scan functionality is already fully implemented for Android. On iOS, the usage of the NFC interface wasn’t fully enabled for third-party-developers for a long time, therefore this needs still a little more time to be fully functioning.
Learn more in the article above.
In this phase, the following tasks were completed, mainly for backend and UI development.
- Tasks completed
- Docker-based development/test environment configuration
- Common UI component
- Onboarding part of mobile app
- Security settings including Passcode, Touch ID, and Face-ID
- UI/UX experiments to improve user experience
- loopchain analysis
- loopchain-r
- Integration with RDB
- BlockData Analysis
Awareness and social encounters
Key Highlights:
- ~58% of the circulating supply is staked vs. 38.4% at the end of 2019, and 0.5% higher than 2 weeks ago. The upward trend continues.
- Less than 20 days to join ICON Hyperhack for a chance at $20,000 USD in prizes & additional consideration for up to $50,000 USD ICON Grant.
- MYID officially launches with the announcement of Jeju Island COVID-19 certificate & collaboration.
“DID is the starting point of MyData,” said CEO Kim. “We are currently discussing exchanging personal data between companies, but in the future, there will be ‘individuals’ at the center of the data distribution flow.” In this case, he explained, “You will need a DID with separate service and ID.” In order to allow users to provide their own data to the desired company when needed, it is argued that a DID that can be authenticated anywhere is required. He said, “In the case of Pass or Kakao Pay operated by a centralized institution, ID is subordinate to the service,” he said. “By digging into this point, we will increase DID competitiveness.”
The ICON Africa team hosted the concluding part of the 4 meetups which took place across Nigeria and Ghana, this last event took place in the wonderful city of Kumasi in the Ohwimase Ashanti region, Ghana. This event was mainly a Q&A session, as it was hinted in the last event. The host of the AMA also welcomed onboard 3 more volunteers who joined the Icon Africa team, they intend to propagate ICON more into research universities in the country and also assist in content creation and distribution.A total of 33 people attended the event.
Also check an overview of Icon Africa #2, Offline Event In August 2020.
In this edition of ICON Weekly, Shinhan Bank integrates MyID into its native banking app, Fortmatic adds ICON support for Magic SDK, and RHIZOME hosts an AMA in the CryptoVigilante Telegram channel.
In this edition of ICON Weekly, Brian Li discusses the recent DeFi boom and bust cycle, and about how ICON can potentially become an alternative to Ethereum for building DeFi platforms.
- 192,332 social post mentions +118.28%
- 209,787,090 social post engagements +63.93%
- 403 average daily social contributors +68.62%
Roadmap
- According to the recent Roadmap Update from 31st July:
[Loopchain]
- DB Integrations — Integrating block and state database for better management and fault-tolerance.
- P2P network enhancement — Enhancing the performance of underlying P2P network platform.
- LFT 2.0 — Enhancing the concensus algorithm for more liveness.
[Interchain — BTP Enable use of DApps on heterogeneous blockchain]
- Interchain PoC for ICON-Public Chain — DApp on heterogeneous chain can be used from ICON wallet, and vice versa
- Interchain service launch with business partner — DApp service that operates on heterogeneous blockchain is released
- Interchain SDK for public chain — Interchain SDK is used for developers to generate various interchain DApps
- Interchain SDK for private chain — Interchain SDK is used for developers to generate various interchain DApps
- C-Rep features with BTP — C-Rep is responsible to bridge between heterogeneous blockchains
[Sidechain — A new layer of the ICON Network to support a reliable smart-contract environment]
- Sidechain — Smart-contract purpose sidechain will be connected with ICON Network using BTP Technology
[Parallel Processing — Scalability solution for TPS Enhancement based on parallel processing]
- Parallel processing with manual decorator — Parallel processing raises TPS sharply with manual decorator on Python EE
- Parallel processing with automatic decorator — Parallel processing raises TPS sharply with automatic decorator on Python EE
[IISS — Measures the contribution of all Voters, P-Reps, DApps and EEPs]
- Incentive distribution function for C-Reps — C-Reps are rewarded with ICX
- Contribution Proposal System — Enables contributors to obtain funding for a project that benefits the ICON Network.
- IISS 3.0 — Add features to improve decentralized cryptoeconomy and governance stability
[Transaction Fee System — DApp provider and users can share commission and pay with Virtual Step]
- Virtual Step 2.1 — Virtual Step distribution to SCORE
[Services on ICON — Vault — Decentralized key management service]
- Launch Vault feature in ICONex Wallet — Decentralized key management feature is integrated in ICONex wallet
- Launch service with business partner — Vault feature is launched with business partner
[Services on ICON — DEX Trade heterogeneous tokens]
- DEX for trading between tokens on heterogeneous blockchain based on BTP — Token holders can trade tokens of heterogeneous blockchains with interchain protocol and DEX
[Services on ICON — Secret Vote — Enable secret vote environment in public blockchain]
- Secret vote smart contract — alpha version — Development of secret voting function in public blockchain
- Secret vote service launch with business partner — Launch of secret voting service with business partners on public blockchain
[Services on ICON — STO Provide platform for security token offering]
- STO smart contract — alpha version — Security tokens are generated on ICON smart contract
- Official STO platform launch as ICONest 2.0 — Users can generate security tokens using ICONest 2.0 equipped with GUI and legal guidance
Partnerships and team members
The technology and ecosystem expansion partner, ICONLOOP, signed an MoU with Saramin HR, which operates the job placement platform and search engine Saramin (www.saramin.co.kr), to collaborate in building a blockchain-based digital ID and authentication ecosystem. Saramin HR is Korea’s leading job placement platform, similar to Indeed.com. The purpose of the MoU is to increase Saramin’s customer experience and value through ICONLOOP’s blockchain certificate issuance and management service ‘broof’ and its digital identity platform ‘MyID.’ Furthermore, it will contribute and collaborate in building a more robust and vibrant blockchain-based digital ID and verification ecosystem in Korea.
After Zzeung issued the first financial DID with Shinhan Bank, Shinhan’s affiliates such as “Shinhan Card”, “Shinhan Financial Investments” “Shinhan Life” “Orange Life”, and “Jeju Bank” has joined the MyID Alliance to verify and utilize the DID.
- DApp: STIN — Combine NFC and the ICON Blockchain Progress
- DApp: Stash — A rewards program for ICON
- DApp: $ICX Staking Lossless lottery
- Developer tools: OpenDevICON Continuing development proposal
- Design and documentation: PARROT9: Bridge and ICON documentation
- DApp: FutureICX 2.0 Gamified Trading Platform
Initech is a financial security company, together with ICONLOOP they will promote private authentication based on decentralized identity verification (DID). Through this agreement, the two companies plan to link Initech’s technical competitiveness specialized in the authentication and encryption area with the blockchain-based DID technology capabilities possessed by ICONLOOP. The aim is to develop a new private authentication system to replace public certificates and create new business opportunities.
- POSTECH issued a degree program to 293 graduates such as Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate, and Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology (GIFT), through the blockchain certificate service ‘broof’
Other
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The Saramin News by Rhizome Wire
