Reach — October Update

Another very successful month for Reach is in the history books. This month was feature-packed, plus we added a new member to the team who will be raising awareness of the benefits of our platform. It was the first full month where developers could try out and test Reach for themselves. We are already far ahead of our planned growth curve. Full-stack developers that have tried to build blockchain applications in the past but found it too difficult are loving Reach. We want to say a big thank you to all the community members. You are providing us valuable feedback and confirming that we’ve made many right decisions. :) I’m looking forward to what the next month brings.

Product Update

Algorand TEAL Phase 1

The most exciting news is that we can now compile to Algorand. This means no more having to write TEAL contracts, and it means that sophisticated DApps on Algorand are possible. The best part about this is that all of you who built your applications to launch on Ethereum will be able to also launch on Algorand, with just a minor configuration change. This is how it will work with all protocols that we connect to in the future. So you no longer have to worry about rewriting your application for new chains. You can dig into the details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QXISWGoul4 (The phase 2 video will be better quality. :))

Set and Wait

Set allows you to set the identity of one of the participants programmatically before they send their first message, and Wait allows you to force a delay in the stream of messages in the programming, which can be used to represent maturation of a contract. Jay used this functionality in the Trust Fund Workshop.

Array and Disjoint Unions Functionality

We have also added the ability to create and manipulate arrays and disjoint unions within Reach. This gives you, as a developer, the flexibility to create most data structures. Arrays also support group operations, like map and reduce!

Added TypeScript

We originally created our standard libraries in vanilla JavaScript, but Dan performed a massive porting job over to TypeScript for additional type safety. The change has already proven invaluable for detecting errors, as we’ve been changing and improving the standard libraries for more uniformity and sharing between the Ethereum and Algorand backends.

Documentation Update

Added Workshops

With new features comes new workshops. We have added the Hash Lock, Relay Account, and Trust Fund workshops. The workshops are designed to give you ideas on what to build, and how to build the best version of them with Reach.

Community News

Added a New Member

We welcomed Shanthi Purushotham to the team. She is going to help us with getting the word out about Reach because building an amazing product is only part of the challenge; the other part is making sure people know about it.

Cardano Community Introduction

We have recently been participating in the Cardano Community in order to evaluate whether we want Cardano to be the next protocol that we will integrate. They have been very receptive and it’s been a lot of fun working with them.

Deciding On the Next Protocol

In addition to Cardano, we’ve met with a few other protocols. The conversations have been going very well, but we really want to go where there is the most demand. So if you think that we should build on your chain next, please let us know!

Sponsoring ETHOnline

We are sponsoring ETHOnline. It is the largest ETH hackathon of the year, and we are giving away $5,000 worth of prizes for people to build things with Reach. ETHOnline ends on October 31st, and we are excited to see what people build.

First Virtual Workshop

Jay led our first virtual workshop as part of ETHOnline. It’s about an hour-long and walks you through setting up your first application.

Next Month

Browser Integration

This will allow for Reach applications to work through the browser on Ethereum.

Algorand Phase 2

Algorand Phase 1 showed that we could create TEAL applications. Phase 2 will focus on ensuring all features of Reach are supported in Algorand.

VSCode Integration

VSCode is one of the most popular IDEs, and we want to make sure that developers who use VSCode to write Reach applications have a positive experience. This month we plan on launching Version 1 of our extension, which will provide syntax highlighting for Reach.

More Virtual Workshops

We will focus on partnering with universities, and existing blockchain meetup groups, to provide them with the tools they need to build Dapps. We will also start leveraging our partnerships to offer workshops to their communities as well.

Needs

Content Creation

The more content the better. We are awarding a $500 prize for the best content created this month through our ETHOnline sponsorship. This can be anything from creative memes to blog posts about the Reach verifier. So show us your creativity and skills! If you are interested in creating content, please join our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/AZsgcXu

Introductions

We have scheduled conversations with many developer groups this month, but the more the merrier. If you know of any developers or developer groups that we can speak to about the benefits of Reach, that I can talk to please let me know. Our hope is that through a workshop, participants not only become motivated to learn more about blockchain, but see the value in a solution like Reach, go on to use it, and ultimately share it with their friends!