OAKnode announced a new product crafted for ICON block producers. With OAK, ICON P-Reps candidates can seamlessly onboard to a high-end, secure infrastructure built with block validators in mind. Those validator nodes are continuously monitored by a pool of sentry nodes around them, providing further security from a possible range of attacks. Plus OAKnode enables P-Rep candidates to share validator’s uptime, block production rate or transaction throughput performance either through an interactive dashboard or an API.
ICON ecosystem-based Sharpn has partnered with Hetic, a leading Tech school based in Paris. Hetic has a large business network, and it will help ICON in making France ready for the upcoming massive Blockchain adoption wave. The ICON is optimistic about implementing IISS (ICON Incentive Scoring System) program with the help of the Hetic network. IISS is an incentive-based scoring system for marking the performance of any student.
Stay tuned!
Development
ICON P-Reps News
DECENTRALIZATION
ICON is officially decentralized! This past month saw the team working on updating block structure, completing the role switch function and developing P-Rep tools, network proposals, and election features.
As a reminder, you can monitor P-Reps’ productivity rates on the ICON Tracker. We encourage all ICONists to pay close attention to top P-Reps, who have just claimed their first rewards, and continue spreading your votes around. The 6% burn penalty will only begin on November 29th.
BTP
Beyond decentralization, the team has also made progress on its BTP, with an improved block structure that now supports BTP capabilities; the interchain communication between heterogeneous chains. The feature is currently being stabilized and ICON hopes to share more details in the near future.
Core developers have also started work on improving the P2P network and database integration, which will significantly improve basic network performance over time. ICON is working to improve the network by developing LFT2, an improved consensus algorithm that will ensure higher liveness.
MOBILE STAKING UPDATE
The long-awaited mobile staking update is almost here. Mobile development is complete, but is currently undergoing quality assurance (QA) and should be released in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can try P-Rep Reliant Node’s unofficial mobile staking wallet, ‘MyICONWallet’.
UPDATED GOVERNANCE PAPER
Lastly, ICON has recently updated its governance paper, which gives more details into the Network Proposal system and outlines several network proposals that can be submitted, including Text Proposals, P-Rep Disqualification Proposals, Malicious SCORE Proposals, Step Price Proposals and Revision Proposals. As stated in the paper, “In order to pass a Network Proposal, the proposal must receive approval from ⅔ + 1 of the current P-Reps, as well as reach 67% approval of the stake-weighted vote of the current P-Reps.”
ICONLOOP’s MyID Alliance has officially launched with 39 partners in the sectors of finance, securities, e-commerce and manufacturing.
Their vision? Implement a trusted decentralized ID (DID) ecosystem through ICONLOOP’s proprietary solution, MyID. Their mission is threefold:
- User-Centric: Develop use cases and solve user inconvenience
- Business Focused: Expand the business based on trust authentified by financial secto
- Glocalization: Glocalize MyID-based business model, connect and expand the IDs of countries around the world
WHY MYID ALLIANCE?
MyID Alliance is ready to expand the DID ecosystem.
1. Expansion of DID ecosystem based on the trust built by the financial sector
MyID is authenticated based on proven technology from trusted financial institutions such as banks, securities and insurance firms. This means that these IDs can be accepted in various sectors such as public, e-commerce, Internet, manufacturing, education, NGO and even overseas.
2. MyID’s inclusion in the FSC’s “Innovative Financial Services and Regulations Sandbox”
MyID has been recognized as Korea’s only ID verification platform that can be applied throughout the financial sector.
3. Verified DID technology
MyID is one of Korea’s first DID services registered on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Method Registry, which enables rapid project implementation based on high stability and convenience of blockchain technology.
MYID ALLIANCE PARTNERS
Currently, MyID Alliance is comprised of 39 members in various fields.
Ecosystem partners, all from the financial sector, are those who will be involved with verifying and issuing identities. “These companies will not only issue identity but also apply the issued MyID directly to our services,” said an ICONLOOP spokesperson. When MyID is released sometime in the first half of 2020, it will be introduced to ecosystem partners first.
Growth partners represent future use cases for MyID. In other words, these are the companies that will leverage MyID once the ID is verified and issued by the above ecosystem partners. Lastly, general partners are those who don’t have concrete plans as of yet, but have an interest in adopting MyID and collaborating.
Note: Samsung Electronics and STX Corporation were not listed in a ‘partners’ category, hence their absence from the list below.
EVENT SPEAKERS
On November 5th, partners and advisors of the alliance gathered at ICON’s office in Seoul to commemorate the big event, dubbed the ‘MyID Alliance Partners Day’. Speakers included recently appointed advisory committee chairman, Hun Jae Lee, ICONLOOP’s Josh Choi and Jonghyup Kim, as well as partners Shinhan Bank, POSCO, YOTI and Yanolja.
Hun Jae Lee, chairman of MyID Alliance’s advisory committee, opened the conference by explaining blockchain technology’s potential to open up the future. “To lead the global blockchain market, we need to respond to this quick change to a new paradigm,” he said. “In an era where we have to think about how to open up and participate in the future, I think Korea is ranked third to fourth in the blockchain sector. If we dig in more actively, [Korea] will play a leading role in developing a new economy.”
Lee explained that people, especially in Korea, equate blockchain to crypto and speculation. “I want to change this perception with MyID, that’s why I joined MyID Alliance as an advisor,” he said.
Josh Choi, ICONLOOP’s Chief Communications Officer, stated that the most important aspect in the digital economy is trust between players. He explained that MyID is different from other DID services because it is the only DID service based on the financial sector. In other words, financial institutions can issue certified information for the MyID service, resulting in a much higher level of verification than any other businesses. Choi added that ICONLOOP had its own solid blockchain technology that could power the MyID service.
Hyunki Jang, Shinhan Bank’s Head of Digital R&D Center, spoke about two areas where blockchain can be used in the financial sector. The first is for digital asset management, and the second is through DID services. “MyID service can reduce the three steps of real-name verification, which our financial sector currently has, to just one step,” he said. Shinhan Bank hopes to increase customer convenience through the implementation of DID services in digital asset management, global remittance and payments.
Daeho Shin, Director of POSCO Venture Group, plans to build a smart city in Korea’s tech-friendly city Pohang, so that startups, corporations and organizations can cooperate and work together. “We are planning to issue a blockchain-based local currency that can be used in this smart city,” said Shin. “Especially with MyID service, we will be able to solve ID verification issues by authenticating degrees and personal information a lot quicker.”
Thom White, Future Technologies Team Lead at YOTI, a global identity platform, explained the company’s goal to securely prove your digital identity. YOTI, which stands for “Your Own Trusted Identity”, offers identity verification, age verification, biometric e-signing and authentication services. Through the alliance, YOTI will ensure ID registration and issuance via their mobile app, and MyID will be used to verify the personal information. “DIDs will replace ID cards in future distribution markets,” said White.
Jongyoon Kim, CEO of Yanolja, a hotel booking app, said, “In many occasions, our customers use different login information when they use our service. With MyID, we can avoid this.” Instead of waiting in long queues at check-in, MyID could verify client identities much more quickly and thus improve customer experiences.
ICONLOOP CEO Jonghyup Kim took the stage last to emphasize a new paradigm shift. “As the ID management paradigm shifts from centralized to self-sovereign, ownership is shifting from service provider to user,” he said. “We are ready to open a new paradigm, one where people can own and administer their data based on consensus, in a decentralized environment.”
- First half of 2020: Personal info certification in financial sector (Focus on “Untact”, ie. non-face-to-face, processes in the financial sector)
- Second half of 2020: MyID available on mobile (expand MyID partners to non financial sector)
- First half of 2021: Mobile ID Platform (People can utilize and manage their personal data via mobile)
- ICON Swift iOS Tutorial: Part 1
- ICON CORE by RHIZOME, UBIK Capital, ICONation, and Sharpn
Today, RHIZOME announced ICON CORE, a developer-focused portal and toolset designed to improve the process of onboarding developers on the ICON blockchain. To create ICON CORE, RHIZOME will be collaborating with fellow P-Reps UBIK Capital, ICONation, and Sharpn.
ICON offers a variety of SDKs (software development kits) in various languages including Python, Javascript, Java, Swift, C#, C++, and PHP. The goal of ICON CORE is to extend the basic documentation available on icondev.io by providing a well-documented codebase for a variety of real-world applications of the ICON blockchain in various programming languages.
The use case is clear. Imagine you are a Swift developer who is interested in developing on the ICON blockchain. You see a Python-based tutorial, but can’t find the equivalent material written for Swift. At this point, you may choose to either learn a little Python, or move on to another task. With ICON CORE, the goal is to remove the potential for friction in the learning process, and to make development on ICON more accessible for developers of all backgrounds.
To start, ICON CORE will focus on building an initial list of mini-projects in Python, Javascript, Swift, and .NET, as these four programming languages cover a large range of developers worldwide. At a later stage, the remaining SDKs will be incorporated, and provide localized versions of the portal in various languages.
ICX Station
- Pocket/Figment P-Rep Update
- The ICONbet Dapp: Randomization Function and Verifiabilit
- Voting could be ICON’s killer DApp. Here’s how to design it.
- How to set up an ICON P-Rep
Paradigm Fund has issued new reports on the following cryptonetworks:
- ICON: The world’s first ICX collateralized loans, the Integration with Morpheus Labs and the Former Minister of Finance and Economy to become a chairman of my-ID Alliance’s advisory committee
- CARDANO: Collaboration with New Balance and Partnership with COTI to develop an ada payment gateway
- KOMODO: Partnership with http://Travala.com and CoinCodeCap to deep dive into Komodo’s Codebase
- State of Stake #8
- Crypto Regulation Digest
- AMBROSUS: Bilaxy listing
- AETERNITY: The Lima hardfork Was Performed Successfully, Payment Application Update (0.9.20), A New Version Of The Elixir SDK, Microsoft-backed MIC Partners With Æternity To Promote Blockchain In Malta
- ENIGMA: Meet the Enigma Collective: Laura Weindorf
- COSMOS: Ethermint is live, Akash Network joins the ecosystem, Kava Mainnet Launch, The team at SF Blockchain Week
- THETA: The team at Samsung Developer Conference, The first 100 PGN users to run Guardian Nodes on testnet have been set
- BEAM: Website Update, BeamPay Introduced, UX++ for Beam Wallet, Clear Cathode 3.1 for iOS
- TEZOS: Post-Babylon Reflection, StakerDAO, The First Version of Tplus, Partnership with tZERO, Alliance Investments, and Megalodon, Community Events
- IOST: IOST The First Public Chain Project Speaking On China’s National TV, Partnerships with TROY, Newpool, and PeckShield
- ORBS: Brand New Demos Page, PoC with Global Brand, SecurePro Partnership in Hong Kong, Orbs-based sey Chain, San Francisco Blockchain Week
- CHAINLINK: Prophet as a Node Operator and Partnership with FCLA
- ETHEREUM: Ecosystem and projects’ updates, opinion and research articles 30th edition!
Finance
Roadmap
ICON Development Roadmap Details
Updates to ICON technology roadmap:
- Block Version 0.3 — Improving block structure to support BTP (Completed)
- Role Switch — Switching the role between Main P-Rep and Sub P-Rep (Completed)
- P-Rep Tools — Command line interface to register P-Rep and submit governance variable (Completed)
- Network Proposal — On-chain governance system in which Representatives can submit proposals and vote (Completed)
- BTP — Interchain PoC for ICON-Private Chain (Stabilization)
- DB integration — Integrating block and state database for better management and fault tolerance (Research)
- P2P Network enhancement — Performance of underlying P2P network platform (Research)
- LFT2 — Enhancing the consensus algorithm for more liveness (Research)
Partnerships and team members
OAKnode announced a new product crafted for ICON block producers.
OAK striveы to lower the barriers of entry for anyone who wants to actively participate in decentralized networks.
Now it’s very easy for anyone to deploy a node of any protocol on any machine with just one click or one command line. In just over 3 months OAK enabled to launched over 600 different nodes supporting these networks.
Today OAKnode is making it easy for anyone to deploy a block producing validator. Validators require regional and machine distributed stack to ensure the necessary uptime and security. Until now, this market has been dominated by the selected few who could invest time and money in setting up complex structures.
With today’s announcement, OAKnode has reduced this complex process to just a few clicks. OAK now configures, deploys and monitors P-Rep Infra without any engineering overhead.
High availability distributed system for near zero-level downtime for ICON P-Reps
With OAK, ICON P-Reps candidates can seamlessly onboard to a high-end, secure infrastructure built with block validators in mind. Those validator nodes are continuously monitored by a pool of sentry nodes around them, providing further security from a possible range of attacks.
Trust via transparency
OAKnode enables P-Rep candidates to share validator’s uptime, block production rate or transaction throughput performance either through an interactive dashboard or an API.
Recently, ICON ecosystem-based Sharpn has partnered with Hetic, a leading Tech school based in Paris. Aim of this tie-up is business development for ICON. Elaborating about the outcomes of the partnership, ICON stated that Hetic has a large business network, and it will help ICON in making France ready for the upcoming massive Blockchain adoption wave.
ICON team went on to add that it will organize workshops and hackathons within the school premise, which will make the younger generation aware of the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. As per reports, a number of the firm actively engaged with Hetic are looking forward to the tie-up. Sharpn has also urged that they will act as a bridge between Hetic’s business network and the ICON ecosystem.
Sharpn is a Paris based start-up composed of a team of 5 crypto enthusiasts. Certiv, a dapp developed by Sharpn, will be integrated with Hetic’s system. The dapp’s aim to promoting skill revolution by allowing universities and higher education institution to certify the profile of their students with the help of blockchain technology. It is a kind of record tracker of any student based on his accomplishments like internships, personal or collective initiative, soft skills, etc. Additionally, Certiv was one of the winners of the ICON’s got talent contest.
Besides, the ICON is optimistic about implementing IISS (ICON Incentive Scoring System) program with the help of the Hetic network. IISS is an incentive-based scoring system for marking the performance of any student. Further, the blockchain is soon going to host the ICON initiation hackathon for beginners.
Rumors
No updates
Social media metrics
The charts above illustrate a slight decline in the number of Telegram and Twitter followers. In general, the ICON foundation experiences an average level of social activity.
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of ICON Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
Official channels of P-Reps:
RHIZOME (ICON P-Rep Candidate. Focused on creating and marketing content about the ICON ecosystem).
Insight ICON (Insight’s Distributed Consensus Lab is building automated node deployments, advanced analysis techniques, and distributed applications for the ICON Blockchain)
POS Bakerz (a blockchain infrastructure service and node operator for different Proof-of-Stake blockchains).
block42 Blockchain Company (Unlocking blockchain technology for organizations).
Blockchain@Berkeley (focus on education, R&D, and consulting)
Gilga Capital (Blockchain Venture Capital and Accelerator)
Chainode Capital (Blockchain consultancy and validator services)
