`We have a had a pretty interesting week in the cryptoverse. From Monero users benefitting from the hard fork to Australia taking giant strides towards wider crypto adoption. Let’s take a look at the highlights from this last week in crypto.
Hot News From The Week
- It looks like Monero transaction fees are down 97% since the successful execution of their hardfork on October 18.
- Speaking of slashing transaction fees, it looks like Litecoin is going slash off an extra 90% from their transaction fees
- Ripple seems to be on the verge of incorporating their xCurrent payment solution with The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), one of the largest banks in the Middle East
- Australia Post, which happens to be one of the oldest Australian Institutions just announced that their customers will now be able to buy bitcoin on participating exchanges within minutes through its Digital iD service.
- In a huge step for Coinbase, they got approval from the State of New York to offer Crypto Custody Services
- Sony, the tech giants, have announced that they are creating a multi-purpose crypto hard wallet.
- Royal KPN, the Dutch Telecoms giant, has confirmed that they are a NEO full node operator.
- In order to crack down on tax evasion, the Spanish Government also passed a bill on October 23rd that they are going to ask cryptocurrency investors, to declare all the assets they hold at home or abroad.
- There is some great news for potential investors. Al Kelly, the VISA CEO, said that they could support crypto in the future if the global market “moves in the direction of embracing consensus currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
- Despite a blanket ban on all cryptocurrencies, a Chinese arbitration court declared crypto-assets as legal property
Question of the Week
Every week we are going to ask our community a question and post results right here. This week’s question was:
“What’s the best way to learn about #blockchain technology? Share your thoughts!”
The options being:
- Accredited Post-Secondary
- Online Courses
- Accelerated Bootcamps
- Conferences
Let’s look at how the community voted:
Looks like the community overwhelmingly believes that online courses are the way to go. Do you agree with our community? Let us know.
GitHub Commits
A weekly check ofGitHub commits is a healthy indicator to know which projects are undergoing the most development. Checking this data is a good sign of knowing which projects are attracting developer attention. The following data and graphs have been takenfrom Coin Checkup.
#1 0x Project
According to their website, “0x is an open, permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens [and potential other tokens] to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain” and will be used for “powering decentralized exchange.”
0x came about in October 2016. Co-founders Will Warren and Amir Bandeali had a vision of a future where all kinds of assets, stocks, currencies, precious metals, could be traded publicly on the blockchain as tokens.
Last week they were at 110 commits and this week they managed to do a whopping 253 commits. So, nearly 143 commits were done this week alone. This shows that more and more developers are attracted by the 0x Project. They have seen quite a lot of developer activity since they completed mainnet testing for their v2.0 on September 24.
#2 Golem
Golem is one of the most ambitious projects being built on top of Ethereum. The idea is to build a marketplace for computational power and resources. Golem is headed by CEO Julian Zawistowski and raised ~$8 million in their ICO.
Last week they had 49 GitHub commits and they nearly doubled that this week with 96.
#3 Genesis Vision
As they move closer to their launch date (end of October), it looks like the developer activity on Genesis Vision is growing strength to strength.
Genesis Vision is the decentralized platform for the private trust management market, built on Blockchain technology and Smart Contracts. They combine exchanges, brokers, traders, and investors into a decentralized open and honest network, making the financial market even more global.
Last week they were at 81 commits and this week they have gone up to 115 commits.
Must Watch Podcast Episodes Of The Week
Let’s take a look at the top 3 podcast episodes of the week.
#1 Monica Quaintance at Epicenter
Monica Quaintance is the Head of Engineering and Adoption at Kadena. Kadena is building both a public network protocol and private blockchain infrastructure. Their Chainweb protocol will soon launch as a public network and smart contract platform.
You can checkout the episode here.
#2 Richard Craib at Unchained
Richard Craib is the founder of Numerai. Numeraire or NMR is the token which powers the Numerai ecosystem. From their whitepaper,
“Machine learning competitions are susceptible to intentional overfitting. Numerai proposes Numeraire, a new cryptographic token that can be used in a novel auction mechanism to make overfitting economically irrational. The auction mechanism leads to equilibrium bidding behavior that reveals rational data scientists’ confidence in their models’ ability to perform well on new data. The auction mechanism also yields natural arguments for the economic value of a Numeraire token.”
You can checkout the episode here.
#3 Rene Pickhardt at The Bitcoin Podcast
Rene Pickhardt is a data science consultant, hacker, and a bitcoin & lightning network enthusiast. In the podcast, he talks about counterintuitive marketing insights concerning crypto, the tech behind it, and mass adoption.
You can checkout the episode here.
Updates From The ICO World
Let’s at three of the hottest ICOs right and analyze whether they are worth your time or not. We have used Top ICO List for our data.
#1 Boomstart Network
Boomstarter is the first global fundraising platform based on crypto, the blockchain technology, and smart contracts. The team is based mostly in Russia. The goals that they are aiming for are:
- Global participation
- Speed
- Transparency of transactions
Boomstarter.Network aims to lift a number of serious limitations typical of the existing crowdfunding services.
The project has a soft cap of $3 million USD and a hard cap of $20 million USD. As of writing, they have raised ~$3.36 million USD, surpassing their soft cap.
ICO Start Date: August 6, 2018
ICO End Date: October 31, 2018
General Sentiment
Ian Ballina, YouTuber, “It is like building in the Netflix in the 90’s.”
Vlas Lezin, ex VP Goldman Sachs, “It empowers millions to change the world.”
Dmitry Pshenin, TokenUP Agency, “I know this project for a long time. The business has been operating for more than 5 years. This is one of the most successful crowdfunding platforms in Russia. A very strong team, so I do not doubt the success of the project. The project has all the opportunities to bypass the traditional Kickstarter and Indiegogo platforms, which have a ban on foreign projects.”
Igor Karavaev, Skolkovo Foundation, “There are too many fundraising platforms already on blockchain. Why to compare yourself with kickstarter then? The team and the project’s development are too localized to one country which is also a disadvantage for an ico project. The whitepaper underlines it. No proper competitive analysis ot business planning scenarios. Why ICO?”
Bojan Krstic, Systems Engineer, “Absolutely unclear what this should be. Platform, the blockchain, smart contract improvement. in one sentence is ICO for ICO. Even team seems experienced with crowdfunding in Russia for a while, there is no need for blockchain in the project at all. Charity on crypto is simple whoever require money for some cause they can just share wallet address, only thing what should be done is one website to connect donors and users. That can be done under 10k USD.”
#2 Natmin Pure Escrow
Natmin Pure Escrow is a decentralized application that provides pure Escrow Services built on Blockchain Technology. Their main aim is to revolutionize the Escrow industry by utilizing Blockchain Technology to facilitate Escrow transactions for a fraction of the price of conventional Escrow services.
Some more interesting features of Natmin:
- They are a self-regulating system
- They provide secure transactions between the buyer and seller with extremely low fees
- Uses smart contracts for implementing and regulating Escrow transactions
- Reduces middlemen and fraud possibility
Natmin has a hard cap of $6 million USD.
ICO Start Date: September 1, 2018
ICO End Date: December 31, 2018
General Sentiment
Jeremy Khoo, VeChain, “Escrow has always been a straightforward use of the blockchain, and Natmin does this in a highly commercial way. Team is solid and looks to be able to execute this product quickly.”
Igor Karavaev, Skolkovo Foundation, “Perspective idea. Not very long WP but contains main issues – quite comprehensive explanation of business planning. The team is OK to implement it. I have not got where the MVP is demonstrated, the link leads to the landing page.”
Alena Narinyani, Journalist, “Today, blockchain technology is used in many areas – many international companies are focused on reducing costs and increasing transparency. And this project responds to these ideas – I think that, when it will be implemented, it will make innovations more accessible to a wide range of projects and users. Good professional team and promising project.”
#3 Bethereum
Bethereum is a decentralized, social betting platform built on Ethereum technology. It allows users to bet with their friends and other users and not against a bookmaker with house odds like centralized betting systems. All bets on the platform are carried out via the Bether token (BTHR).
Some features of Bethereum are as follows:
- Bethereum leverages the blockchain to ensure the safest and most transparent betting experience.
- Since there are no middlemen involved, the users create the bets, set the rules, and provide the liquidity themselves
- These funds are protected by smart contracts which automatically distribute the winnings.
Bethereum has a hard cap of $12.5 million USD.
ICO Start Date: September 30, 2018
ICO End Date: October 31, 2018
General Sentiment
Vasily Sumanov, ICO Advisor, “It is an exciting project for me. Social and sports betting is the massive industry, in some countries (for example, Hong Kong) betting companies pay a very significant amount of taxes for government, even compatible with the banking sector.”
Stephen Drew, Crypto Global Capital, “Very big industry, but also very competitive. Great idea now comes down to execution.”
Giacomo Arcaro, ICO Growth Hacker, “Gambling is the best market ever and it will be totally disrupted by the blockchain. I believe that Bethereum has got good chances to be successful but the vision has to be better redefined to be more profitable. Product is really well developed and explained properly on the whitepaper”
Tobias Schulz, Investment Manager, “There are several risk factors involved. Firstly, it is a platform business and needs a lot of customers and interaction to become successful in the long run. Second, they don’t have an advisor that I can trust. Third, there might be regulatory issues on the horizon.”
Paul Mears, ICO Investor, “Don’t see so much industry experience, strange to pick Hong Kong as a base given the betting regulation there. This is very competitive now with several companies ahead of the game and I think looking at the roadmap these guys will have missed the boat”
Infographic of The Week
For this week, we want to show you how smart contracts work. Smart Contracts are the heart and soul of blockchains from the second generation and beyond
The post Monday Crypto Recap 10/29/18 appeared first on Blockgeeks.
