Around the Block, 05-04-18
4 min read

Around the Block, 05-04-18

This week's bear market sees developers and crypto asset buyers making most of the moves. I heartily recommend catching up with EthCC if you didn't make it as well as Cosmos' wonderful introduction to building custom blokchains.

Meanwhile the tinkerers will be building DAO prototypes on Aragon's new platform and building new non-fungible tokens using the new ERC721 contract.

💎  Ethereum

The State of Ethereum Scaling, March 2018

"From the 8th to the 10th of March 2018, Paris got flooded with Ethereum professionals, researchers, investors and enthusiasts from all over the world for the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC). since our focus at Loom Network is on scalability, in this article we’ll focus on covering the scalability talks of EthCC."

ERC721 full implementation pull request has been merged

Why this is important. OpenZeppelin is a project that provides standard smart contract templates for common use cases. The ERC721 standard is designed to support non-fungible tokens like CryptoKitties and we can expect to see new DApps building on ERC721.

Smart Contracts on Ethereum (Workshop)

"Learn how to use the actually interesting parts of blockchains instead of just staring at price charts: Programming a decentralised, manipulation-resistant world-wide singleton computer open to everyone."

Using Machine Learning to understand the Ethereum blockchain

"The immutable, public records and decentralized nature of blockchain networks provide an exciting sandbox for data scientists, offering whole new world of data to analyze and patterns to recognize. To begin understanding how we go about pulling meaning out of this seemingly chaotic data environment, we’ll begin by describing two main categories of machine learning that are being developed by data scientists at Consensys, and give a few examples of how each can be applied in practice."

Aragon Core v0.5 — ”The Architect” release

"This is the first release powered by aragonOS. The new smart contract operating system for protocols and DApps. Thanks to aragonOS, Aragon Core v0.5 is the most powerful way to create and manage any type of decentralized organizations."

Build your decentralised organisation on top of Aragon

"Hey there fellow creators! This post aims to be a resource for anyone who wants to set up any kind of organization using Aragon’s technology, which released its beta just a few days ago. It’s supposed to function as a workshop in which creators find the initial guidance necessary to start experimenting with the possibilities of DAOs, the new kind of digital organizations!"

Curation Markets & Curved Bonding Update: 02 April 2018

🏛  Platforms

Understanding the value proposition of Cosmos
Why application specific blockchains make sense

Arguably the most educational piece of the week - Gautier breaks down the blockchain into three distinct layers and covers tools Cosmos is building to support new blockchain creation. The second article offers an alternative shorter summary.

Waves Launches Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway Framework

"New framework allows developers to quickly and easily deploy gateways to integrate new cryptocurrency coins within their ecosystem. With that, users can then begin trading on the Waves Decentralized Exchange (DEX)."

IOTA-Based ‘E-Krona’ Cryptocurrency To Be Launched By Sweden

"Eva Julin – new e-Krona crypto-project leader, stated that the Swedish bank has chose IOTA as its support for the project. Simultaneously, the bank is sitting down with 19 other firms to get everything working and ready as it is planned the project will be given the green light in 2019."

JPMorgan's blockchain head is leaving to start her own business

"The exit is an example of a talent drain that is beginning to take shape in banking and financial services with engineers and business execs moving over to blockchain and crypto projects that are seen to have serious growth potential."

Why this is important. Last week we covered the rumors that Quorum would be spun out of JPMorgan. This news sheds light on some of the constraints the project must have faced.

Loom Network SDK Alpha Release — First 5 DAppChains Announced + SDK Roadmap

"This is big news for the Ethereum community: It’s one of the first examples of a highly scalable and performant DApp running on a sidechain backed by Ethereum, and even Vitalik took notice."

IBM is finally getting serious about cryptocurrency

"We're going to see a lot more convergence between those two ends of the spectrum. The bitcoin and cryptocurrency space that has been hands-off for enterprises and the private, country club blockchain space that is on the other side."

The 1st NEO Dev Competition Successfully Concluded

"Since its launching on Nov. 20, 2017, over 500 developers and teams have signed up for the event with 77 entries submitted. The competition is overwhelmed by the passion of NEO fans from different parts of the world. The competition gets together like-minded people who make use of NEO technology to turn their creative ideas into excellent works."

💻  Developer tools

0x launch react-docs

"A full-page React component for rendering beautiful documentation for Solidity and Typescript code generated with TypeDoc or Doxity."

Maian: automatic tool for finding trace vulnerabilities in Ethereum contracts

😅  Misc

CryptoZombies Lesson 6! The Phantom of Web3.js, MetaMask, Infura, and building front-ends for your DApps​

The famous CryptoZombies tutorial, one of the most beginner-friendly Solidity tutorials out there, returns with Lesson 6.

C4YT Blockchain Hackathon, April 6-8

Zcon0, June 25-28

Building a secure messenger

Why this is important. This article has nothing to do with distributed ledger technology, but has transferable lessons around security. It talks about common misunderstandings, for example, around the value of changing the encryption algorithm. A few blockchain projects could learn from this article.

🚀  Releases


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