This is not financial advice.
During the last two weeks IOST illustrated high social activity in media landscape. One of the main keynotes of IOST’s activity was co-founder AMA session where voting details, roadmap and more mobile wallets were covered. It was comprehensive AMA as Jimmy Zhong shed some light on great future plans. Partnership with Unlimited Tower, an experienced game development team, was announced. The collaboration is expected to open up the world of new possibilities in the field of igaming on the blockchain. Finally, Endless Dice, the Endless Game team’s first mini-game, is officially launched and total transaction volumes have broken 700M IOST on its very first day. Endless Game ranks in the 2nd spot by transaction volumes in 24 hours among the public chains on DAppReview, and ranked the 3rd by transaction value.
Development
This article is a guide on how to build a smart contract and publishing it via the command line on IOST. This guide is for developers interested in creating an IOST smart contract using JavaScript.
This article addresses two questions: creating an IOST account and creating your token on the IOST blockchain.
IOSTABC Block Explorer was created by EOS Park. The advantages of IOST unique consensus mechanism — Proof of Believability are gradually unfolding. Now IOST mainnet is supported by over 60 Servi Nodes who are taking turns to produce blocks in 10 minute interval rotations. This is a substantial improvement over Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) networks which are controlled by exclusive groups of Supernodes (usually 20–30+ Supernodes per network).
In contrast, IOST Proof-of-Believability (PoB) consensus does NOT use Supernodes, which creates a fairer and more equitable blockchain network that is, at its core, community governed.
Three Advantages of IOST Mainnet:
1. Equitable Wealth Distribution
PoB consensus ensures more equitable wealth distribution. In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, larger and older sets of coins have a higher probability of signing the next block, and Block Producers have incentives to collude with each other and form cartels. On the other hand, in Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks, the high waste of computing resources has been a thorny issue for a long time, and are increasingly controlled by large mining pools.
PoB design inherently addresses these weakness in PoS and PoB. PoB not only rewards nodes based on account balance, but also takes into account how much contributions they are making to the community. Nodes who make more contributions to the community receive more rewards, which incentives them to contribute more, creating a positive contribution cycle.
2. High Performance P2P Network
IOST’s transactions per second (TPS) output reached up to 8,000 in its beta test. With greater user adoption and more DApps onboard the mainnet, IOST will start to see the scalable nature of the IOST mainnet shine and the IOST mainnet’s full potential will be displayed for our community.
3. Highly Secure and Efficient V8 Virtual Machine
Virtual machines on blockchain platforms mainly focus on running smart contracts. After researching the vulnerabilities in EVM on Ethereum and EOS, IOST fundamentally solved these design flaws by building the IVM based on V8 Core, after considering V8’s high performance on Node.JS and Chrome.
As more users and developers join the IOST ecosystem, we will continue to educate users and developers on how they can interact with the various Dapps on IOST, and participate in new ecosystem initiatives, thereby growing the IOST network.
Games
Cell Evolution, the first sandbox game built on the IOST mainnet, is now officially launched.
At present, members of the IOST community can play with this Dapp through the iWallet:
Game play is easy. There are only six operation buttons: Divide, Evolve, Mutate, Sleep, Apoptosis, Inherit.
Divide: Increase the number of cells according to divide parameters.
Evolve and Mutate: Three parameters — reproductivity, adaptability and survivability, can be enhanced under specific conditions. This is the core hidden rule of the game, which requires players to explore and discover the evolutionary law and variation logic themselves.
Sleep: Sleep can restore life cycles, and the number of recoveries is related to survivability and the external environment.
Each of the above operations represents a day in the game, corresponding to the survival day +1.
Inherit: Hereditary cells can inherit the attributes of certain DNA as initial attributes at the beginning, with a probability of inheriting better attributes as well as lower attributes. Inheriting better attributes will assist players in going for high scores. Players who want to repair the world (world repairers) can choose to go for a selective genetic start. This increases the interaction between the world and individual cells, and encourages people to integrate more into the cell world, to try for higher world scores, which also makes it easier to gain advantages at a later stage.
Apoptosis: Apoptosis is a biological term and a very important discovery in nature. Some cell sacrifices are necessary to the maintenance and renewal of organisms, and these cells quietly withdraw after completing their mission. Here, through this function, we give world repairers more creative space. When you choose apoptosis, the cell’s life cycle will immediately return to zero, and the highest attributes of reproduction, adaptability and survival will be partially integrated into the world’s DNA. Sacrifice oneself to benefit the world!
The gameplay for IOST Joy Snake is very simple. The player controls the direction of the snake via the movement pad on the left side of the screen. Movement can be accelerated by clicking the Rocket button on the right side of the screen. Holding this button will maintain the snake’s acceleration.
Similar to the traditional Snake game, the snake grows in length by eating the coloured beans on the screen, while avoiding any collisions with other snakes. The interesting part — when the snakes eat the coloured beans, players stand a chance to earn IOST and JOY tokens!
Green beans represent IOST, and red beans represent JOY tokens. JOY earned in-game allow players to participate in rewards given out by the game development team.
To claim IOST from the green beans consumed, players need to survive until the end of the game countdown. Otherwise, only JOY can be claimed.
The first IOST blockchain game — Endless Dice, the Endless Game team’s first mini-game, has officially launched, and total transaction volumes have broken 700M IOST on its very first day.
Currently, Endless Game, a virtual online game arcade which is highly transparent in its profit sharing, ranks in the 2nd spot by transaction volumes in 24 hours among the public chains on DAppReview, and ranks the 3rd by transaction value.
What are the advantages of Endless Dice?
The team uses a proven and reliable random number generation process and is the only platform that gives cash rewards back to players.
- Betting is mining, and you get dividends every day. The more you bet, the more Endless Token (iet) you will earn.
- Endless Dice takes out 40% of its revenue to give back to players on a daily basis.
- As a universal token, iet can also be used in other games.
- Endless Dice is proven to be fair, random and equitable — Endless Game team has no means to influence the dice results.
- Invite a friend to receive a bonus for each referral! You can receive 10% of the iet from their betting, and this dividend will continue to accumulate for you:
How does it work?
Endless Token (iet) works in a very simple way. Endless Game firmly believe that all players are equally important as our investors and team members. Therefore, Endless Game will share 40% of the revenue as dividends for its users on a daily basis.
How are iet issued?
- Total iet supply is fixed at 100 billion. Endless Game project team hold 48.8 billion, which will be used for operations and airdrop and will not receive any dividends.
- The other 51.2 billion will be distributed to users and receive dividends.
How to distribute dividends?
- The Endless Game team will distribute 40 per cent of revenue to iet holders on a daily basis.
- You need to stake to obtain iet.
- The amount of dividend you can receive per day is proportional to the amount of iet you stake per hour
- Tech Update: 26 March 2019
See also:
Social encounters
Here is a quick highlight of various questions answered by the co-founder during the AMA.
Is there a way to create wallets based on a mnemonic seed? If so, what is IOST’s derivation path and wallet address format?
Yes you can create wallets based on that. More mobile wallets will start to support this soon. Now we have an account system like EOS.
How do the wallet nicknames (eg. “bissiost”) actually work? Since the user can obviously choose them, they cannot be derived from a wallet address, but need to be linked to them. How is this linking achieved? Is it a permanent, never changable link? Where and how is it stored and retrieved?
It’s like EOS.
When users want to vote, right now they have to rely on a third party exchange/platform, such as BISS. In contrast to the principle “not your keys, not your coins” we currently have to rely on a third party and would lose our coins if it goes down or away. The same is true with the staked coins, since after staking (ie. voting), they are in the hands of the nodes that you would have to trust as a third party. Is there no way of a truly decentralised way of voting, where you stay in true possession all the time with your own private key or seed?
You can vote anywhere now. BISS is only a tool. You are welcomed to vote on blockchain and more wallets will be supporting this. BISS is not our official voting portal, they are a node and a reliable partner. That’s it. Just like you can vote for EOS nodes on some exchanges.
When will we see enterprise solutions and executions?
Already in progress. Announcements will be made in the next 2 weeks.
What mobile wallet supports iost dapps, like Endless casino?
Trust wallet will support IOST. TokenPocket, Cobo wallet and a lot more. Just need a bit of time. And our chrome extension wallet is coming soon. (Now under review by google)
Over 2Billon vote staking, there is still high sell pressure, are you guys selling team’s unlocked tokens in January?
No we are not selling. We will announce the new lockup plan soon.
Have you any plans with major companies?
Yes. You will see some announcements with big players like AWS soon. Enterprise solutions are also in progress. For example we are working with Chinese NASA on their drone solutions now.
Along with the success of mainnet, do you have other targets like previous roadmap? And can we know about your future step later?
It seems like we are ahead of our original roadmap. New plans will be announced soon. This year we will primarily working on user adoption. In terms of technology, we are working on layer 2, side chain and more.
What do you think would be a sweetspot as staking ROI to keep a ecosystem sustainable, and interesting enough for developers and end-users to actually adopt?
It really depends on multiple things, for example: the price of IOST. So only the market will tell. But now i think we have a good plan to onboard developers and supporters.
How many tps maximum?
A lot faster than EOS. :) cause we have better VM. While being a lot more decentralized. (No super nodes)
For the first Year Iost is giving 840m Iost to build a eco system. How Will the eco system get Funded After that?
We are well funded by institutional investors like sequoia Capital China, Matrix Partners and more. Over 100 employees now.
About the huobi node with billion votes locking the 1st spot. will this affect other nodes or the decentralization?
No. Think of that as BTC mining pools. Those votes belongs to tens of thousands of users.
Jimmy, any update on the “Secret Weapon” you referred to in an interview a couple weeks ago?
Yes. Coming in April. Basically it’s a tool to lower barriers for Dapps & their users.
Is there any development on the Alibaba Cloud (Japan) front?
Yeah. Enterprise solutions take time to develop tho. If anyone has done it before you’d know what I meant.
Is there a list of servi nodes somewhere? how can i find if a node is a servi node?
You can check out BISS or the block explorer. Now there aren’t many but we are planning to get 500 this year.
Have you talked to Trezor wallet and can tell if they will support IOST?
Will do
Will IOST eventually be easily enough to use for normal people, like my family members?
Yes that’s the goal. And will be achieved this year.
So Jimmy, We asked a lot from you, but what can we do as a community to serve adoption and awareness?
Thanks so much for your support. I truly appreciate it. I think this year we are trying to accomplish a few things: 1) adoption 2) branding 3) nodes/votes for more 1+2
1) is mainly on us, but if you know any devs, introduce IOST to them :)
2) this one we can use a lot of help. IOST is the first decentralized & scalable solution (layer 1) and we will be the 4th public chain that has a great ecosystem after ETH, EOS and TRX.
Now it’s still early, but in a month or 2 you will know what I meant.
3) we always want more nodes. No matter you are a supporter, developer, investor, marketer or really, anyone. As long as you want to help, you can become a node and start to make some $ by getting votes. Your voters will get rewarded too.
To become a node you can fill out a form now. This will be a open process soon (so no form needs to be filled out) but now lots of folks don’t know how to get the node set up technically, so filling out the form help us to help you set it up correctly.
Are there plans to integrate a payment app on IOST, directy linked to retail-payments? RATE3?
More than RATE3, but stablecoins support is our first step.
Is there a tool or website that tells in real-time how many of the circulating tokens are staked for voting?
Check our IOST.biss.com. A node made this for us.
Finance
- BigONE @BigONEexchange has announced their support for the $IOST Token Swap Roadmap
- You can buy $IOST on @binance via the $IOST / $USDT and $IOST / $BNB pairs.
- IOST.BEST Node doubles daily rewards of their voters!
IOST.BEST node launches a rewarding system for members of the IOST network who vote and hold their votes on IOST.BEST node. This will double the reward received by the voters.
The time period of the special offer is March 25, 2019 — August 25, 2019.
Who can take part:
- Users of the IOST network who voted for IOST.BEST node from 25.03.2019 to 25.08.2019
- Network users who voted for IOST.BEST node before March 25, 2019
Reward is calculated on a daily basis. The calculation is made in accordance with the following formula:
Daily node reward received for given votes — 105 million (year) / Total number of votes given by users for all nodes (iost.biss.com resource) / 365 (days per year) * (multiply) number of votes given by of the IOST network user for IOST.BEST node.
Payment of the reward:
Payment of the reward is made daily until 23.59 Moscow time (UTC + 3). The reward is paid strictly in accordance with conditions set forth in this special offer.
Timing of payment and amount of reward:
- 100% (of the daily reward of the IOST network user who voted for IOST.BEST node) from March 25, 2019 to May 26, 2019, 23.59.59 Moscow time (UTC + 3) inclusive.
- 80% (of the daily reward of a user who voted for IOST.BEST node) from May 27, 2019 to August 25, 2019 23.59.59 Moscow time (UTC + 3) inclusive.
- The reward is paid to all members of the IOST network who voted for the IOST.BEST node during the timing of the special offer from March 25, 2019 to August 25, 2019 or before March 25, 2019, and who hold their votes until August 26, 2019.
- The full reward payment period is 5 months from March 25, 2019 to August 25, 2019 at 23.59.59 Moscow time (UTC + 3) inclusive.
From May 27, 2019, a special prize fund of 20% of the total reward accumulated between May 27, 2019 and August 25, 2019, will be allocated to encourage the first 3 participants with the largest number of votes given for IOST.BEST node:
- The prize fund comprises of 20% of the total rewards accumulated during the period from May 27, 2019 to August 25, 2019 23.59.59 Moscow time (UTC + 3) inclusive.
- The prize fund is distributed among the first 3 participants who have retained their votes at IOST.BEST node for the longest time and given a greater number of votes than the other participants of this special offer:
- The prize fund payments according to the special offer:
- Place — 50% of the prize fund
- Place — 30% of the prize fund
- Place — 20% of the prize fund
PAYMENT OF THE PRIZE FUND IS MADE BEFORE 04.09.2019.
IOST Node Liebi has developed an exclusive DApp — IOST Voter, to help Voters learn more about how their rewards from the voting program. Liebi is an elected Node in the IOST ecosystem, and currently sits in the 41st position with over 3.5 Million votes.
IOST Voter is an app tool developed by Liebi which helps users to track their IOST voting and accumulated rewards. IOST Voter compares the Nodes’ reward distribution policies, and users can claim their daily rewards with just one click.
The tool has seven features:
- Review the reward distribution policies of each Node to help users quickly select the Node with the highest potential return.
- One-click collection of daily voting rewards.
- Check each node’s reward details.
- Support additional rewards distribution by Nodes with such policies.
- Calculate expected voting returns.
- Check the Nodes you have voted for, and initiate vote redemptions.
- Check vote redemption records and time remaining for vote redemptions.
FAQ
1. Is it safe to vote in IOST Voter?
Yes, all voting will happen on the IOST blockchain, which ensures that all votes are transparent and traceable. You control your own assets, so it is very safe to vote on IOST Voter.
2. Can I redeem my rewards on a daily basis after voting?
Yes. As per IOST rewards distribution rules, all Nodes share 50% of non-block production rewards to their voters. Nodes can not interfere with this process as these 50% rewards are automatically distributed by the system. Note that any additional rewards promised by Nodes to their voters will require these Nodes to distribute directly.
3. If I do not have an IOST mainnet account, how can I vote?
Two options.
Option 1: Register an IOST account through IOSTABC or TokenPocket for free, and transfer your IOST into this account. Open IOST Voter in TokenPocket and cast your votes.
Option 2: deposit IOST into BISS exchange, and vote for Nodes on the IOST Voting Portal.
4. All my votes are in BISS, how can I redeem my rewards?
The BISS exchange is a partner of Liebi. The additional dividends issued by Liebi will be sent to your BISS account by BISS on the next day.
See also:
Vote for IOST: https://iost.biss.com/#/nodedetail?id=79
How To Vote On The IOST Mainnet And Get a 50% Share Of Node Rewards
IOST Pumps! | How to Earn FREE IOST Rewards | Endless Dice Gambling Game
Bounty program
New Applications:
The last project of IOST’s Developer Bounty Program online IDE was claimed by IOST community developer. Bug bounty program, DApp referral program and tech article contest are still welcoming white hats and developers to participate.
- Online IDE: 1 application
- Desktop wallet: 1 application
- Development document translation: 1 application
- Multi-language SDK: 1 application
Project Updates
- Online IDE: @simplestory team’s had created account and get connected to testnet through Chrome iWallet. Discussed with IOST tech team on contract deployment and have researches on contract compiler.
- C# SDK: @saif team has voluntarily developed C# SDK for IOST. Although this project is not listed in the bounty program, IOST is sincerely grateful to the team for their contributions.
- IOST Developer Bounty Program Update: 16th Week
New Applications:
- Online IDE: 1 application
- Article submission: 2 submissions
- Bug report: 2 reports
Project Updates:
- Ruby SDK: IOST team has completed the review of this project, the developer will be rewarded with bounty.
- Online IDE: @simplestory team has started studying the document and the team will start development next Monday.
Bug Reports:
- Community developer @Metanyx reported to IOST that calculation errors exist when voting contract of the system reaches a critical condition, and generate unexpected outputs.
IOST’s feedback and decision: We fixed the problem and the developer will be rewarded with 60,000 IOST as bounty.
- Commnity developer @AGL reported to IOST that web page https://iost.zendesk.com/hc/zh-cn/requests/new has risk of being uploaded with random files.
IOST’s feedback and decision: we think it is very low probability and is not risky to IOST mainnet. The team decided to ignore this risk.
See also:
Claim the tasks: https://dwz.cn/yRBudAD6
Bug Bounty Application Form: https://goo.gl/forms/fCh32utJ7AjPqJKC2
Referral Submission: https://dwz.cn/KgAkIEBH
Submission Email: tech_support@iost.io
Developer Slack Community: https://invite.iost.io/
Roadmap
What’s next?
- the new lockup soon
- “Secret Weapon”, a tool to lower barriers for Dapps & their users, is coming soon
- Mobile wallet for Dapps
- More Dapps, transactions & users.
- Real projects w/ enterprises/govs.
- Stablecoin
- ICOs on $IOST
Partnerships and team members
IOST have reached in-depth cooperation with the world’s largest Dapp ecosystem platform — DappReview. DappReview has now added an exclusive section for IOST: https://dapp.review/explore/iost.
The various Dapps built on IOST Mainnet will be exclusively shown in the DappReview IOST section. Endless Game was the first Dapp to be launched on IOST, and had received overwhelming response by shooting up into the Top 3 of rank charts in less than 24 hours, and in less than 48 hours, transaction volumes had exceeded 1 Billion IOST.
Beyond the exclusive IOST section, DappReview will also support data analytics for IOST applications, providing timely data for IOST users and community.
Following the launch of the IOST mainnet and exciting Dapps, IOST has cemented its position as the fourth usable public chain platform besides Ethereum, EOS and Tron.
Now you can play with dapps and vote for nodes directly on tokenpocket. It has deepened IOST cooperation with TokenPocket to bring the first one-stop wallet solution for IOST community.
The launch version of TokenPocket supports basic functions such as IOST account registrations and account imports, IOST payment transferss, resource staking and more.
TokenPocket is now launching additional features to officially support IOST Nodes voting, and also allow our users to access Dapps directly on TokenPocket.
Get TokenPocket on Mobile: https://www.tokenpocket.pro/
IOST officially announced its partnership with Unlimited Tower, an experienced game development team, which is expected to be officially launched in April. This partnership between IOST and Unlimited Tower will lay the foundation for the Next Generation On-Chain Battle SRPG Dapp, and open up a new world of possibilities in the area of blockchain + gaming.
Unlimited Tower is a strategic role-playing game. Players can collect various characters to form teams, strengthen equipment and explore maps. The game currently has over 200 items, characters and monsters. When you fight, your character will gain experience points, which can be used to level up and strengthen the player’s attributes. The team that successfully guard the tower will receive Token rewards.
Each player has 10 combat units, including one hero, four servants and five monsters. Obtain combat units and remember to increase for attributes for your various characters. Tokens are need for the acquisition of combat units and equipment. This is done through buying and opening random treasure boxes, of which the random chance of opening items and receiving characters are provably fair via the blockchain.
Unlimited Tower is currently in the pre-registration test phase where you can get 300 UGT token after register including a limited edition panda.
Rumours
No updates.
Social media metrics
The charts above show the increase in the number of Telegram and Medium followers. However, the number of Twitter followers is declining.
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of IOST Facebook likes, Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
