Hello to our fantastic crypto community! While countries are closing the borders and universities are switching to remote education because of COVID-19, the Orbs team continues to support stable development distantly. In the recent March update, they shared some relevant information about the past activities and also reported that four events they had planned for this month were all postponed due to CDC guidelines. The current situation is controversial; however, the team optimistically hopes to have “a busy and healthy summer”! So let’s recall some of the latest events that occurred within the project.
On the one hand, there were great things like hosting a US federal delegation and participating in useful talks to launch the industry forward. On the other hand, these COVID-19 precautions make for unusual schedules for team members who are used to attending significant events and meetups which have slowed down to a complete halt in the foreseeable future. Before the special measures were taken, the team coped with attending and arranging some of the events. Among them were U.S. — Israel Joint Fintech Dialogue, Blockchain workshop with Vision Fund, 4th Stanford Blockchain Conference 2020, and a presentation to the Israeli Government’s Crypto-currencies Task Force. For more precise information — check the update below.
Furthermore, starting 12th March 2020, the ORBS PoS Wallet will allow Galaxy device users to generate, store, and manage tokens for use within Samsung Blockchain Wallet. They will work together with Samsung Blockchain to bring new and exciting blockchain experiences to the Samsung Blockchain ecosystem of devices and Orbs PoS Universe. The state of the latter, by the way, is pretty persistent. There are currently 20 registered Guardians and 16 Validators running in production; over 1700 Delegators participating in the Orbs PoS ecosystem and two applications successfully running on the Orbs Network. The community is likewise expanding; there is a slight growth in the number of subscribers in social networks and vivid activity in chats. Join Orbs’ official chat in Telegram not to miss anything! Be safe, and follow our updates!
Development
- The ORBS PoS Wallet will allow Samsung Galaxy users to experience Orbs PoS Universe within the Samsung Blockchain Wallet — Starting 12th March 2020, the ORBS PoS Wallet will allow Galaxy device users to generate, store and manage tokens for use within Samsung Blockchain Wallet. They will work together with Samsung Blockchain to bring new and exciting blockchain experiences to the Samsung Blockchain ecosystem of devices and Orbs POS Universe.
Download now for free.
- According to the recent March Update:
There are 20 registered Guardians and 16 Validators running in production. There are now over 1700 Delegators participating in the Orbs PoS ecosystem.
There are 2 applications running on the Orbs Network:
- Vchain 1960000 — Open-Rights (https://www.open-rights.org/)
- Vchain 1970000 — Receipts Notarization (https://www.linet.org.il/)
Social encounters
On one hand, great things like hosting a US federal delegation and participating in useful talks to launch the industry forward. On the other hand, these COVID19 precautions make for unusual schedules for team members who are used to attending large events and meetups which have slowed down to a complete halt in the foreseeable future. In Orbs Tel Aviv headquarters, they have taken measures including private transportation and orders to work from home, as well as daily updates and guidelines from the state and abroad regarding the news.
- U.S.-Israel Joint Fintech Dialogue — On Feb 26th, Netta and Ran Hammer had an opportunity to participate and present at the first-ever U.S.-Israel Joint Fintech Dialogue. This was the first time the US has ever held such an event with any other country. Fortunately, Orbs got to be the most predominant participant from the private sector, presented the views on the proposed regulation to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Alternative Data, and also got to promote several blockchain topics in the ensuing discussions. For instance, companies like MasterCard, Visa, AWS, Leumi Bank, PayBox, etc., did not have a slot to present and some didn’t even get a seat at the table, so it really is a great privilege to have been part of it.
- Orbs Hosting the US Treasury — They presented Orbs, the core team, technology, and offers. They also had a chance to discuss potential use cases, with an emphasis on the public sector and social impact. The Assistant Secretary and staff were very receiving and seemed enthusiastic about the offering for the public sector. The Assistant Secretary suggested Orbs meets with different agencies within the administration to see how they can collaborate, with a few specific ideas already discussed during the meeting.
- Blockchain workshop with Vision Fund — They had an amazing day with SoftBank investment arm, AKA Vision Fund, a 100 billion dollar fund and one of the most influential hi-tech funds in the world currently. They highlighted the fundamentals of blockchain technology and the core value derived from it, Orbs and the unique approach to the market. Lastly, they elaborated on 4 different, practical use cases.
- 4th Stanford Blockchain Conference 2020 — Danny Brown Wolf and Ran Hammer attended The Stanford Blockchain Conference as part of the ongoing engagement with the Silicon Valley blockchain community. During the conference, they were kept updated on some of the biggest projects (Libra included), caught up with partners and opened-up more about Orbs to present media outlets and other stakeholders
- A response to the World Bank’s invitation for prototype build for the traceability of loan disbursements (IPB 20–0801) — They provided a full conceptual blockchain-based solution for tracking and tracing funds. This solution allows any government, financial aid organization or other financial institutions to monitor and manage budgets on a per-project basis down to the last mile payment.
- Presentation to the Israeli Government’s Crypto-currencies Task Force — Assaf Bielsky and Ran Hammer presented to the special crypto-currency regulatory task force formed by the Bank of Israel, with the participation of treasury, tax and securities regulators. The objective of the task force is to create a regulatory environment that will accommodate the growth of the blockchain and crypto industries, and it is now on a learning tour with the leading blockchain companies in Israel.
- Danny Brown Wolf at Hyperledger Conference — The future is open source! See post.
- Rachel Wolfson tweeted: “Fun last day at Hyperledger forum with Danny Brown Wolf of Orbs coming up with use-cases for supply chain management using blockchain”.
Upcoming events:
They had 4 events this month which were all postponed due to CDC guidelines. Hopefully, we’ll have a busy and healthy summer!
Orbs Universe
Delegators, in order to receive rewards, you should delegate to an active guardian who does not miss voting deadlines. If your guardian misses voting deadlines, you will not get rewards in this period.
Guardians, please note that elections are every 20000 Ethereum blocks, it is approximately 3 days. A Guardian vote is valid for about 1 week. We recommend voting every 6 days to be on the safe side.
Voting deadlines calendar (estimated)
You can delegate your Orbs tokens via link. After the end of the closest voting period, you can check your rewards here.
Roadmap
Recently, Daniel Peled shared that they have not only achieved everything they set-up to do in the 2019 research and development roadmap but are also slightly ahead of schedule.
What’s next?
According to the new Roadmap:
- Proof-of-Stake Core Infrastructure V2 — Implement the next version of the Orbs Proof-of-Stake architecture with various improvements making the existing implementation more efficient, easier to use and more powerful with the ability to rely on stronger incentives like locking.
2. Proof-of-Stake Ecosystem Tools — Create tools for participants in the Orbs PoS Universe. Validators will benefit from easier ways to keep their node healthy. Guardians will have better ways to measure Validators. Delegators will have easier ways to stake and observe network activity.
3. Orbs Audit Node — Audit nodes are important for network security. They allow any external participant (not necessarily a Validator) to verify that the network operation is correct. Audit nodes may choose to audit only a single or subset of virtual chains.
4. Orbs Two Tier Consensus — Two tier consensus is the hybrid aspect of Orbs. It allows to build permissioned apps — where the app can select its own block producers. These apps run over a permissionless infrastructure — where validators are selected by the network.
5. Virtual Chains Infrastructure — Virtual chains are a key feature of Orbs that provides isolation between apps. It gives the network infinite scalability and sharding; and provides apps with lower cost of operation, guaranteed resources and independent governance.
6. Validator Node Deployment V2 — The next generation of how a Validator deploys and operates an Orbs node. Improvements include efficiency for reduced operation cost, higher availability and uptime, optimizations for even more scaling and improved security.
7. Orbs Smart Contract SDK — Allow developers to build even better apps with Orbs for more versatile use cases. Developers are requesting richer API’s that support more languages, more powerful data structures and more flexible interoperability.
8. App Developer Experience — Increase developer adoption by making the app development experience on Orbs easier than ever. Help developers learn how to build on Orbs and give better developer tools to debug and test their smart contracts.
9. Ready-Made Use Case Templates — Increase business adoption of the Orbs network by offering solutions for popular blockchain use-cases. These templates reduce the integration time of blockchain technology into a business from months to days.
10. Network Production Enhancements — The Orbs network is in production mainnet from March 2019. Continue the process of making the network more mature, reliable stable, performant and secure — so it can host even bigger apps with more users and more value.
11. Protocol Enhancement Research — Long term research for core improvements to the Orbs protocol. Every big feature like privacy with zero-knowledge proofs requires months of academic research before being implemented in production and added to the core.
12. Online IDE for App Developers — Similar to Ethereum’s Remix, the online IDE lets app developers write smart contracts directly from their web browser without installing any tools. This is a great way to make experimentation with Orbs easier with less friction.
Partnerships and team members
No updates.
Other
- Stay safe! The Orbs family around the world is taking all steps to stay safe and clean.
- Happy Purim from Orbs Tel Aviv!
- A potential pitfall of booking the venue months in advance. Hyperledger Conference happy hour at Corona Ranch. See post.
Social media metrics
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Orbs Facebook likes, Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
