Hello, and welcome to our fresh recap of the recent news from within the IOST ecosystem! Since our last biweekly update, a lot has happened, so let’s have a sneak peek before going deep in the details! As a crucial element for the sustainable development of the IOST blockchain, IOST has released significant updates and optimizations for the Partner Program in the first half of 2020 and will keep delivering new versions in the future. From Staking Mechanism v3.0 to Staking Mechanism v4.0, IOST partners’ incentive policy was updated to provide more rewards for partner nodes that make worthy contributions to the ecosystem. But not only contribution incentives have been increased, but IOST has also launched an on-chain governance mechanism, hoping to find a balance between community participation and governance efficiency. One of the essential releases of the past two weeks is a newly updated mainnet roadmap. For the second half of 2020, IOST will fully explore the DeFi ecosystem. At the same time, IOST will continue to work on the Nodes Program, DApp ecosystem, cross-chain technology, implementations, compliance development, cooperation with government & enterprises, community expansion, and industry practitioners to jointly promote the construction, development, and growth of IOST blockchain.
Furthermore, recently the dev team coped with working on the IOST data analysis platform for internal statistical analysis of transaction volume/transaction value/active DAPP, fixed some known issues and prepared to release a new version of the mainnet, and create the block header incremental Merkle tree hash to adjust for light nodes.
Next, IOST was listed on Blocknomy crypto research & ranking platform, ranking 11 out of 73 crypto assets.
IOST co-founder & CTO gave lectures at the International Summer School Program hosted by the Blockchain Center at the University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland. ”Deep Dive into Blockchain ” program sponsored by the IOST Foundation attracted more than 60 students worldwide.
By the way, on July 23, 2020, the Q2 Global Partner Node meeting was held with the participation of IOST co-founder Terry Wang, IOST representatives, and over 70 global partner nodes, including Paradigm team. The central part started with IOST co-founder Terry summarizing the development in the first half of the year and explaining the development roadmap for the second half of 2020. Then, the IOST Foundation team representatives gave their summary. And finally, the node partner representatives delivered a speech and demonstrated their past contributions and plans for IOST.
What’s more, IOST announced a partnership with ProDeFi. The combination of IOST — a global top 100 token listed on Binance with ProDeFi’s hybrid financing solutions — will add another layer to the decentralized global economy. IOST and ProDeFi have features and aspects that complement each other. This partnership is the next logical step in opening up classical finance to blockchain benefits, while also enabling broader access to IOST’s high-speed blockchain network.
This was just an overview — for more precise info and other highlights, please, check the recap below! Stay updated, and see you in two weeks!
Development
[Development]
- Development of the IOST data analysis platform for internal statistical analysis of transaction volume/transaction value/active DAPP
- Fix some known issues and prepare to release a new version of the mainnet
- Development of the block header incremental Merkle tree hash to prepare for light nodes
[Operation and maintenance]
Performed node’s technical communication for access and exit
[Community Growth & Mainnet Statistics]
Social encounters
The ranking is assessed based on a range of parameters: Product Progress, Team, Token Fundamentals, GitHub activity, Marketing & PR, Partnerships, and Uniqueness.
Blocknomy.net is a data-driven crypto assets research tool that utilizes Human & Machine Intelligence to provide unique insights, analytics, and social statistics to simplify crypto research.
Huobi Japan Inc. is cooperating with HashPort Accelerator Inc. to hold a voting questionnaire event to reflect the customers’ voices for listing new cryptocurrencies on Huobi Japan.
IOST is one of the six projects supported by HashPort Accelerator in this listing voting event, and in Japan market expansion. With the endorsement from HashPort Accelerator and the support from Huobi Japan, IOST hopes to fast-track the plan in tapping on the Japanese market.
Support IOST and vote on Huobi Japan by 16 August 2020 to compete against the other 5 cryptocurrencies for the listing on Huobi Japan. You can find detailed rules in the article.
- Networks’ governance updates highlighting the recent update of IOST On-chain Governance Mechanism by Citadel.One
As projects mature, users and team members analyze mainnet data, validators provide feedback, and the community shares their thoughts, some design flaws and room for improvements become apparent. That’s when the governance mechanism kicks in, and proposals are made to apply changes to the protocol. In this article, Citadel team shares an overview of the latest significant governance changes of networks supported by the platform.
International Summer School Program hosted by the Blockchain Center at the University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland, has started that from July 6, 2020, for three weeks until the 24th. ”Deep Dive into Blockchain ” sponsored by the IOST Foundation. More than 60 students from around the world are participating in the program. Before diving into IOST, Terry discussed the innovation of Bitcoin and the challenges of the consensus mechanism PoW, as well as the solution to the Byzantine General problem (each army is a node in the system, the message is likened to a transaction, etc.), a decentralized economic zone proposed by a person/group (unidentified) calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto.
Terry then highlighted about scalability, using Ethereum as an example, explaining that the Casper project, which is moving from the current PoW to PoS, aims to solve the problem by sharding technology to work in pieces, and the Plasma project, which is a layer 2 solution, aims to solve the
Find out more about the latest IOST news and why it’s in a prime position to rise. BitBoy Crypto discusses staking and why it is the backbone of DeFi crypto projects.
Finance
According to IOSTABC, the OKEx mining pool experienced an increment of 430 million IOST at 17:47:58 on July 16 and were all used to vote for IOST partners. So far, the number of pledged IOST votes in the entire network has officially exceeded 5 billion, reaching 5.06 billion.
Check a guide:
The 4 contracts (Perpetual Lobby, Perpetual Loans, Staking Pools and Uniswap) are the core foundation of the Perpetual Ecosystem, their purpose is to create an economic system that can grow overtime. Additionally this is just the start for PER with many new exciting things coming that will increase its utility, the transfer volumes and the overall value of it.
Read a document on PERpetual Tokenomics.
Roadmap
According to the recent roadmap update:
For the second half of 2020, IOST will fully explore the DeFi ecosystem. At the same time, IOST will continue to work on the Nodes Program, DApp ecosystem, cross-chain technology, implementations, compliance development, cooperation with government & enterprises, community expansion, and work with industry practitioners to jointly promote the construction, development, and growth of the blockchain ecosystem.
Q3:
- Implement and optimize IOST on-chain governance mechanism
- Implement and apply IOST cross-chain technology
- Explore DeFi, complete and land at least three DeFi applications
- Launch top IP series dapps
- Optimize the ecological mechanism and layout of partner nodes
- Expand the Community plan V2, optimize the core community structure
Q4:
- Complete compliance process in Japan, South Korea, the US, Singapore, Vietnam and other countries
- Utilize zero-knowledge proof technology for user privacy improvement
- Expand cooperation in blockchain business between at least five top global enterprises
- Cooperate with traditional industries in NFT deployment
- Build a richer partner node ecosystem
- Build community KOL matrix in 20+ countries around the world
Partnerships and team members
July 23, 2020, the Q2 Global Partner Node meeting was held with the participation of IOST cofounder Terry Wang, IOST representatives, and over 70 global partner nodes from all over the world.
The session consists of 3 main parts:
- IOST co-founder Terry summarized the development in the first half of the year and explained the development roadmap for the second half of 2020
- The IOST Foundation team representatives gave their brief summary and speech
- The node partner representatives presented and demonstrated their past contributions and future plans for IOST
IOST co-founder Terry kickstarted the meeting with a concise summary of IOST development in the first half of the year. Technical highlights include continuous technical innovation, multiple regular mainnet updates, and optimizations. IOST’s technology was well endorsed in the CCID Global Public Chain Technology Evaluation Index as the #1 spot in the basic technology aspect.
Another notable update in the past quarter was the introduction of updated staking mechanism 4.0 in which the unstaking period was significantly shortened from 7 days to only 3 days. The new node policy to be implemented from Q3 moving forward also provides better incentives for nodes with more contributions. While increasing contribution incentives, IOST has launched an on-chain governance mechanism, hoping to strike a balance between community/node participation and governance efficiency.
See the article above for more details and couple shots with Paradigm team inside:)
The combination of IOST — a global top 100 token listed on Binance with ProDeFi’s hybrid financing solutions is one that will add another layer to the decentralized global economy. IOST and ProDeFi have features and aspects that complement each other, and this partnership is the next logical step in opening up classical finance to blockchain benefits, while also enabling broader access to IOST’s high-speed blockchain network.
“This partnership between ProDefi and IOST aims to connect the IOST Dapp ecosystem with off-chain real-world financial services in a secure, trustworthy and timely manner. IOST and ProDefi shall mutually benefit each other with community expansion, product development, technical support and marketing resources. The two aim to jointly create a decentralized world with blockchain mass adoption becoming a new norm, by enhancing cooperation in the integration of blockchains and traditional financial solutions.”
— Terrence Wang, Cofounder of IOST
Citadel offers users to create platform-native wallets for all supported networks with one seed phrase. If an IOST holder wants to create multiple wallets, they all can be managed with only one password. The hierarchical deterministic key generation is used to derive a theoretically infinite number of cryptographic secrets from a single master seed. In this way, users’ private keys can be determined and intrinsically “stored” in a single master seed. Citadel uses a standard called BIP39 for the generation and interpretation of the master seed.
A brief overview of the functionality brought to IOST with Citadel app:
- Non-custodial platform for staking
- Fast onboarding of new holders
- No need to care about RAM and GAS
- Vote on IOST governance proposals
- Support for one-seed wallet, hardware, import/export existing wallets
Singapore-based company GreenCore is a New-Energy Eco-system Reconstructed by Blockchain. IOST and Greencore will work closely in devoting R&D resources towards research and development of layer-2 scaling solutions for Greencore through applying IOST’s advanced public Blockchain technologies to optimize Greencore’s Blockchain infrastructure. Through this partnership, IOST will offer Greencore with its novel and advanced off-chain scaling technology while benefiting from the most promising application scenarios from Greencore, such as the New-energy trading and settlement marketplace.
Longbit exchange officially joins the IOST ecosystem as a candidate node and aims to boost the IOST ecosystem in multiple fields such as trading, technology, community development, dapp ecosystem and project investment.
It will integrate its own resources, and vigorously cooperate with IOST in community building, media promotion, asset management, etc., to help IOST develop in the field of Defi. LongBit’s unique resources and capabilities can complement IOST and provide long-term value for system development. After becoming an IOST node partner, Longbit will deeply participate in the governance of the public chain, integrate the resources of its own media, exchanges, and third-party service organizations, and use mature and secure on-chain governance and operation experience to vigorously promote the development of the IOST community.
Social media metrics
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.
