August was another fantastic month for Skycoin, as we accomplished new milestones and impressive growth in every facet of the project. The Skycoin developers and community continue to build the SKY ecosystem undistracted by price talk, fair-weather investors and speculators. Here are some highlights.
Software
Skywire
Skywire is a new decentralized internet protocol that allows users to earn coins for providing bandwidth in a peer-to-peer, decentralized manner. Skywire will serve as a source of endogenous demand for SKY within a closed-loop Skycoin economy.
Skycoin devs remained heavily focused on finalizing Skywire mainnet. Currently, Skywire is in testnet mode and users are rewarded with Skycoin for running Official or DIY Skyminers. In August, 12,000 SKY was distributed among DIY miners and 18 000 SKY was distributed to official Skyminers. At the end of the month there were approximately 7400 nodes on the network, corresponding to 875 active Skycoin miners scattered across the globe. Mainnet will allow direct bandwidth metering with Skycoin’s inflationary, consumable, derived currency called Coin Hours.
CX
Skycoin’s dedicated programming language CX (based on Golang) aims to radically reduce time and knowledge required to code blockchain applications. The team is putting the finishing touches on a CX handbook that will serve as an educational tool for college students to start blockchain programming on Skycoin using CX. It is envisioned that the best of these college blockchain projects will be supported and brought to implementation within the Skycoin ecosystem. Community software projects written in CX are emerging and have been rewarded with generous Skycoin bounties (see below). The lead developer of CX put out a very exciting short video on using the CX REPL.
Wallets
The official mobile wallet was released for Android, bringing all the functionality of the desktop wallet to the cell phone. It includes advanced features allowing users to select coin address inputs and specifically allocate transfer of Coin Hours. The iOS mobile wallet is currently under development. A helpful new video illustrating the simple and advanced functions of the desktop wallet was also released.
Hardware
Hardware wallet
The Skycoin dedicated hardware suite is poised to expand its product range beyond the Skyminer with the addition of a hardware wallet. The hardware wallet has been designed by our talented engineers in the Skycoin hardware incubator to be low-cost and easy to use. Skycoin-native hardware wallets are key to achieving our goal of widespread mainstream adoption of Skycoin.
Antennas
Motorized directional WiFi antennas will soon commence production. These are essential for Skywire to operate as a fully independent wireless MESH network and provide the backbone for decentralized wireless internet service providers. The antennas beam a highly targeted WiFi signal point-to-point and can be adjusted based on the presences of other antenna nodes within range. Rollout of the wireless antennas in conjunction with Skycoin mainnet will be a significant milestone for the project, marking Skywire as the first blockchain-incentivized active MESH network.
Trading SKY
Trading platforms for Skycoin expanded in August with the listing of SKY on Coinspot, an Australian exchange with SKY/AUD pairs. We also now have our own dedicated community OTC Skycoin website, BuySky, which enables face-to-face trades of Skycoin through direct transfer.
Governance
We were thrilled to announce the arrival of John Otto Peters to the Skycoin advisory board. Mr. Peters was formerly the Chief Financial Officer of the private security contractor Triple Canopy and brings a wealth of financial and business knowledge to help steer the Skycoin ship into the future.
Cyberbalkanization and Skywire
August saw the release of the first article in a comprehensive series examining the fundamental problems with the internet which are solved by Skywire. ‘Cyberbalkanziation and the Future of the Internets’ is an in-depth look at the fascinating but worrying trend of nationalized internet jurisdictions that prevent open communication and facilitate domestic censorship. This is part of our plan to raise awareness of Skycoin and Skywire beyond blockchain circles and into the mainstream.
Conferences
Skycoin Western Team
The Skycoin team was on the road throughout a busy August. The ChainXChange conference in Las Vegas was the first stop and Skycoin was a major sponsor. Director of Events Daken Freeborn wowed the crowd with his talk explaining the purpose of the Skyminer, which was extremely popular among the curious attendees. Check out the team photos and the amazing summary video!
A large delegation then traveled to Hamburg, Germany for the Blockchance conference which provided a platform for exhibiting the Skycoin ecosystem partners and Skycoin’s technological vision for the future. It was sponsored by the City of Hamburg and featured Dr. Sebastian Saxe, the CDO at Ministry of Economics, Transport and Innovation of Hamburg and Carsten Ovens, a representative of the Hamburg State Parliament.
Skycoin China team
The Skycoin China team have also been spreading the good news message with a visit to Melbourne, Australia. They presented to a Chinese audience and manned a display at the Blockchain Ecology Summit which was part of a Chinese/Australian trade expo. Visitors were were able to see some of the first manufactured examples of the upcoming hardware wallets.
A blockchain conference was also co-held by Skycoin at a business school in Shanghai. Skycoin China COO Chris presented Skycoin to an audience of 80 blockchain enthusiasts along with many other blockchain experts from China.
Synth interviews
Lead developer Synth provided more fascinating insights and Skycoin development updates through a series of new videos released throughout August. The inaugural Synth Show Uncensored lasted almost 3 hours, with Synth answering community questions and providing his uniquely humorous perspective on a range of issues. Synth caught up with crypto YouTube channels Coin Interview and CryptoRich for repeat interviews, providing an update on Skycoin progress. Synth’s keynote speech at Blockchance was made available for the community’s viewing pleasure.
Skycoin Merch store
In late August the Skycoin merchandise store came online. Skycoin apparel is currently on sale including tee shirts, hats, socks and hoodies. The store will eventually allow direct purchase of Skycoin hardware including Skyminers, hardware wallets and antennas.
Skyfleet Participation
A coin is nothing without its community, and our loyal Skyfleet continue to prove themselves as some of the most dedicated in the space. In August we saw many hilarious Skycoin memes and great retro Skycoin posters in the community. Special mention must be made of some fantastic community achievements:
Skyfleet member Tae Kwon Douglas released the first game written in CX. PacMan CX was released to demonstrate the capabilities of our blockchain compatible programming language.
Meanwhile another community member, Anto, released Crappyball, based on FlappyBird featuring Pusheen the Cat as a tribute to Skycoin collectibles game Kittycash. Both of these community software developers were rewarded for their pioneering efforts with Skycoin development bounties (300 SKY for CrappyBall and 1500 SKY for PacMan CX which equates to $1000 and $6750 at current prices respectively). Tae Kwon Douglas has already began on his next project Casino CX featuring games such as slots, roulettes, blackjack and dice. Keep it up Douglas!
BigOokie continues his stellar contribution to Skywire with the release of his Wing Commander software which allows community members to manage their Skyminer nodes through Telegram.
Ivan Payan created an invaluable tool for the Skyfleet to check the uptime of their Official and DIY Skyminer nodes, helping everyone to make sure they get the maximum reward for each testnet monthly reward period.
Christian Ott created two amazing new Skycoin infographics, the first depicting several key aspects of the Skycoin ecosystem, and the second illustrating Skycoin growth in four key domains. Both were used by the official Skycoin team at the recent Blockchance conference in Hamburg. He also wrote an informative piece on the Skycoin Fiber coin Solar Bankers.
Charles Bivins provided the community with highly detailed accounts of both the Las Vegas and Hamburg conferences, as well as a fantastic article on the various DIY Skycoin miners.
Valued Reddit contributor AskACapper continued his active curation of /r/skycoin with a photo stream of all the creative DIY Skyminers, providing a fantastic testament to the creativity of the community. There is also an instagram page featuring DIY Skyminers.
Skyfleet artisans Jules, Louis and Thomas shipped their amazing collectible Skycoins to all those who had pre-ordered. These physical Skycoins were made in pure 24k gold, pure silver and gold-plated options. They are now available to purchase through their website and the official Skycoin merchandise store!
This is just a brief summary of the amazing achievements of the Skycoin developers and community in August. We are working hard to recognize all who are contributing to the growth of Skycoin, as your efforts are appreciated and noted!
There are so many ways to get involved. Join the discussion on the official Telegram group or on r/Skycoin. Organise a Skycoin meetup in your country through one of the 23 national Skycoin Telegram groups, and use this fantastic presentation template. Build a DIY Skyminer to earn Skywire rewards and post your build on Skywug forum or Skywire Telegram group. Software devs can check out the Skycoin github repositories or do some coding on CX. Anyone can write an article on Synth’s latest interview, create an infographic poster that explains some aspect of this grand project or just spread the word.
Onward and upward Skyfleet!
Website: https://www.skycoin.net/
Telegram: https://t.me/Skycoin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Skycoinproject
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/Skycoin
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzLASufel2No4vSt4rudHSQ
