Here’s What’s New in Today’s XYO Aristotle Release
Today we’re releasing the biggest update to XYO and its components since we executed the first location-based smart contract at Spatial in 2018. Nearly every aspect of XYO will be impacted or improved by these updates — here’s a look at the major changes and why we’re making them.
Quick disclaimer: Not all links are live quite yet. We aim to have everything but the iOS app live by late afternoon on Thursday, California time. We’ll update this post with any changes.
Why Aristotle?
If you caught last week’s livestream, you know about the importance we place on Dataism and on making data open and accessible. Android releases are named for desserts. Mac OS releases are named for big cats. XYO releases are our opportunity to shine the light on prominent Dataists. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was a student of Plato and is considered one of the fathers of Western Philosophy.
The New XYO Network Apps
We’ve released an XYO Network Web app and a brand new version of the XYO Network Android app. If you’ve been using the beta version of the XYO Network Android app, you’ll need to install this new version through the Play Store. The XYO Network app for iOS will be released in the App Store in the next few days — once it’s live in the App store we’ll let you know.
The XYO Network apps are the “remote control” you’ll use to onboard and check into your own Sentinels and Bridges. You can claim your own devices, update their firmware, and set the wallet where they’ll send their earned XYO. You can even point all of your outgoing data to a specific Archivist — even one you’ve set up yourself! The XYO Network apps also let your phone serve as a Bridge. Talk about a handy multi-function tool!
Explore the Matrix
If the XYO Network apps are the “remote control” for your Sentinels and Bridges, the Matrix is the tool most users will use to interact with the XYO network as a whole.
The Matrix will consist of a few major components:
- A dashboard where you’ll be able to view important XYO statistics like a map of Bound Witness Interactions (that include an absolute location component), a count of the number of onboarded nodes, a list of recent Requests, and a block explorer.
- A map layer where you can see where Bound Witness Interactions have occurred, the density of Sentinel and Bridge deployment, and even monitor the history of Bound Witness Interactions for a specific Sentinel or Bridge. This will even include data from COIN users!
- A node explorer that allows you to examine any specific XYO node, including its history of Bound Witness Interactions. When staking is live, this is where you’ll be able to add stake to specific nodes.
- The requests portal, where you’ll be able to pay XYO to make Requests of the network. For this release, you’ll be able to learn whether or not two XYO nodes have interacted.
- Our governance platform including the current parameters for XYO and details on what can be changed. When PLCR voting is live, this is where you’ll be able to submit proposals and vote on changes to things like the reward structure and other parameters.
Until Thursday, April 25th, the Matrix will point to Kovan, an Ethereum Testnet. This allows developers to experiment and explore with no-cost transactions and gives our dev team the chance to observe and adapt to the way real-world users are interacting with the Matrix. On April 25th, the Matrix will begin pointing to the main Ethereum network, and Requests made using the Matrix will cost actual XYO. Right now, Requests made directly through an Ethereum Diviner or a Smart Contract (as opposed to through the Matrix) will cost actual XYO and result in actual XYO rewards to Sentinels and Bridges.
XYO Network 2.0
Most XYO nodes will be updated as part of the Aristotle release. Updated SDKs are available through the Developer Portal, developers.xyo.network.
The XYO Archivist and Diviner SDKs are now available through our Developer Portal. You can use these SDKs to spin up your own Archivists and Diviners.
There is an updated version of the Sentinel firmware. You can update your Sentinels using the XYO iOS or Android apps. (Unfortunately, because of the way browsers handle Bluetooth, Sentinel firmware cannot be updated using the XYO web app at this time). It will take approximately 5–10 minutes per Sentinel to update the Firmware — make sure you don’t close out of the XYO app while the firmware update is running. It’s recommended you completely disconnect from other Bluetooth devices like speakers while updating your Sentinels. If you have any issues with your update, you can contact us at support@xy.company.
Bridge update
Initially, the hardware Bridges in your Geomining Kits were designed to run on Google’s Android Things platform. Last month, Google announced that the Android Things platform would shift from being a general IoT operating system to one designed solely for smart speakers and smart displays. To ensure that we can offer support and development resources for our hardware Bridges over the next few years, we’re switching operating systems from Android Things to Raspian.
There are two ways you can update the operating system on your Bridge.
The easiest way is to simply replace the SD card in your Bridge.
Starting Monday, April 1st, we’ll begin sending everyone who bought the Geomining Kit an email asking them to confirm their shipping address.
We will NOT ship a new SD card until you’ve confirmed your address.
Once your address is confirmed, we’ll send you a new SD card with the updated Raspian operating system free of charge.
You’ll just need to unplug your Bridge, remove the original SD card, and replace it with the new one. If you don’t see an email asking you to confirm your shipping address right away, don’t worry. We will be sending them out in batches to Geomining Kit owners over the following week.
If you’re someone with advanced I.T. skills, you can update the operating system on your Bridge yourself by re-imaging the SD card. This is a relatively complicated procedure — if you haven’t done it before, we recommend requesting a new SD card.
As Raspian is an open-source project, there should never be a need for us to make an update like this in the future. Future updates should all be able to be installed using the Bridge’s internet connection.
Developers.xyo.network
There’ve been all sorts of updates and additions to the XYO Developer Portal in the lead-up to Aristotle. You can explore the portal yourself to see what resources are available. Moving forward, we’ll be adding “difficulty ratings” to many of the resources we provide — some of the tools are accessible for a novice to use, and others are intended for experts. We’ve also added reference docs for multiple SDKs and many new “Getting Started” guides such as “Starting up your first Archivist,” “Using dApploy and dApper,” and a “Payable on Delivery” demo.
What’s next
Aristotle is a huge step forward for XYO, but we’ll always be iterating and improving on our technology. Here are some of the things we plan to release over the next few months:
- Implementing staking of nodes through the Matrix
- Building out APIs for integrating XYO functionality into apps and services
- Adding additional Request parameters
- Integrating the full XYO SDK into the COIN app
From here on out, you can expect us to release any major XYO updates on the fourth Thursday of every month. Our dev team will make ongoing minor updates and changes throughout the month, but new features will generally roll out on this schedule.
This has been an information-dense update, so here are some of the useful links for you to explore. Not all links will be active right away — we aim to have everything live by late afternoon here in California.
