Aug 8, 2018

6 min read

Shift

Biweekly update 17th July — 31st July

Development

Core developers:

Craig C. (@craig), New York, NY: Repositories — 46; Stars — 516.
Rob L. (@roblad), London: Repositories — 15; Stars — 68.
Jasper H. (@tjappo): Repositories — 10; Stars — 0.

Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):

July 17 : Decentralized Storage & Hosting Solution, and New Token Utilities Coming at the End of Q3:

Roadmap Improvements & Site Development Plans (the community will, from now on, be updated at least every two weeks)
Updated Roadmap Items
Sidechains and Cross-Chain Automation:

The Shift development team is therefore committed to exploring alternative approaches:
1. Multi-signature escrow wallets: One potential means of more securely managing the transfer of tokens to and from sidechains would be the introduction of specially designed, digital escrow wallets: automated, multi-signature wallets that require both the user and dApp owner to sign specific transaction types.
2. Locking tokens: Another avenue to explore in the search for efficient and secure cross-chain deposits and withdrawals, is the possibility of combining the depositing of tokens to a sidechain account with the locking of a corresponding number of tokens held within your account on the mainchain.

Shift IPFS Cluster Pin Manager & Blockchain Integration with IPFS Cluster

The IPFS daemon will now be modified to obey the blockchain in the regulation and verification of cluster storage through token locking, and of cluster pinning through token usage. Though a good deal of work remains to see this task complete, the Shift Team believes that they will shortly be able to introduce these two new token utilities to the testnet in the form of four blockchain transaction types. The introduction of these token functions will have a radical effect on the extent to which token holders will be able to interact with the Shift blockchain and IPFS storage cluster.

These transactions types are:
1) A LOCK transaction that sends a designated amount of Shift tokens to a virtual wallet where they are stored as a form of collateral, guaranteeing the corresponding amount of storage space is available to the account/wallet owner.
2) An UNLOCK transaction that returns the debited tokens and releases storage space back to the IPFS cluster’s data pool.
3) A PIN transaction. This creates a record on the mainchain containing the asset hash and asset size as data entries. A pin request simultaneously records on the blockchain the individual who sent the transaction. It is necessary to have locked enough Shift to the account for the asset size contained in the PIN request.
4) An UNPIN transaction. This creates a record on the mainchain that is read by the cluster as a cancelation of the relevant PIN transaction, and instructs it to free the user’s storage space, allowing them to grant it to other assets.

the Shift Team expect to have a functioning, decentralized storage solution complete and deployed on the testnet by the conclusion of Q3, 2018.

July 27 : Phantom Screencast by Shift Team in Newsletter on Jul 27, 2018:

The Shift wallet is the user’s window into the blockchain and allows for the creation of a private Shift testnet account through the generation of a secure passphrase. Opened from within the testnet wallet, the Phantom dApp is more than just Shift’s custom-built IPFS file manager, it is the technology that unites many of Shift’s innovations within a single package.

The functionalities of Phantom:

With the IPFS File Manager, Shift has built a UI where users can easily store and access their files and website/web resources held on the project’s peer-to-peer storage cluster.
Phantom’s DNS wizard creates the information necessary to ensure that a domain can be linked to an IPNS hash, allowing it to point simultaneously to all the nodes that a Shift user tasks with storing/serving their data or web content. Shift’s goal is to increase the rate of adoption of IPFS technology while development continues on a decentralized variant of the Domain Name System that includes the ability to point IPNS hashes to pretty URLs without the possibility of domain blocking. For this purpose, Shift team has built Jenga, custom-built DNS monitor.

Video — “Phantom dApp Quickstart Guide | Shift Project” by Shift Project: a video tutorial that covers all users will need to know in order to upload data and host web content on the Shift storage cluster.

Social encounters

Ryver — @heisenberg (admin, July 2, 2018): “Until now, Shift only attended private meetings. The goal for the second half of this year is to attend public events and meetings as well. These type of events will be discussed in Community Updates”.

Finance

July 18 : Reddit — Shift Investment Analysis on Cointobuy.io: 4.4 safety.

Potential Profit +385.6%
Potential Price — $5.5
Rankings: 61/990 by safety; 342/990 by profit.

July 28 : Shift bounties on rexy.io.

Partnerships and team members

No updates.

Roadmap

July 15 : Shift’s roadmap has been updated.

100% completed:

Proof of Concept: New Shift Website
Introductory White Paper (First of Four)
Storage Cluster Optimization
Hydra Decentralized CMS: Pre-Release
Shift Core 6.7.1t
Shift Core 6.7.2t
Shift Core 6.7.3t: Block Reward Division
Shift Core 6.8.0
Shift Core 6.8.1t: dApp Ready
Decentralized Blockchain Explorer
Shift Core 6.7.1: Emergency Patch
Shift Core 6.8.2t
Shift Core 6.8.2
Fully Stable Sidechain

2018

Phantom API — 40% completed. Q2. Expanded. Priority.
Hydra Decentralized CMS: Alpha Release — 83% completed. Q2.
Shift IPFS Cluster Pin Manager — 20% completed. Q2.
Blockchain Integration with IPFS Cluster — 0% completed. Q3. Priority. Q3. Priority. New.
Nano Wallet Update v2.0.0–29% completed. Q3.
Cross-Chain Automation — 67% completed. Q3. Priority.
Real Time Cluster Communication — 5% completed. TBD.
New Shift Core: New Consensus Algorithm — 40% completed.
Sidechain Explorer — 15% completed. TBD.
Improved Shift Chain — 33% completed. TBD.
Improved Shift Website — 77% completed. TBD.
Decentralized Cluster Consensus — 5% completed. TBD.
Phantom dApp UI 2.0–46% completed. TBD.

Rumors

July 17 : Reddit — suggestion — Shift should partner with BAT/Brave browser.

July 18 : Telegram — kwell (admin): “Simple version beta web 3.0 mainchain beginning of q4 2018”.

July 24 : Ryver — predictions about Shift price:

@Leecrypto: “Shift to 10 USD by September”

@Drunk: “I’m definitely sure that Shift will be 50 USD”.

Social media activity

Community relations manager — Birk T., @norrah.

Public relations manager — Jennifer F. @JenniferF (no bio).

Telegram — 3 admins, bot. Discussion about updates, marketing and coding.

Facebook (since March 2016 — till January 2018) — announcements, 10–30 likes, 1–2 shares.

Twitter (since February 2016) — Average number of retweets is 25–50 for one post (tweet about new decentralized website got 351 retweet, 31 December, 2017).

Reddit — The longest thread in 2018 is about 1 million stolen Shift from the team’s dev fund (it has 29 comments).

r/ShiftProject (since March 2016) — new Reddit active forum, 224 shifters (24th July, 2018), 228 (31st July), 1–3 comments.

Bitcointalk.org — 6129 posts, last — July 30, 2018: FAQs, latest news, translation of the whitepaper, videos, exchanges etc. Latest discussions on DPoS and Phantom on TestNet.