NEO
NEO reached the two year anniversary of its MainNet launch on October 17th, and NEO News Today created an infographic looking back on the many milestones of the NEO network over the last two years.
To celebrate the two year anniversary of NEO, NGD has announced the launch of three competitions. Each competition is tailored for different skill sets and abilities, and will give the community the chance to win GAS prizes. Competition categories include community videos, technical articles, and wallpaper design.
KPN was voted in as a NEO MainNet consensus node, after hosting a stable consensus node on the TestNet for three months. KPN was officially elected to the NEO MainNet at 6:13:12 on October 20, 2018 (GMT+8).
The NEO Consensus Node Page was updated in an effort to improve transparency and provide the reader with a quick overview of the status of NEO consensus nodes.
NEO Global Development and Arqit announced a research partnership. Arqit is a non-profit community-driven blockchain project that is developing a quantum resistant blockchain ecosystem. The partnership will strive to “accelerate the pace of R&D on NeoQS” and ensure blockchain communities remain secure in a future dominated by quantum computers.
NGD participated in the Blockchain Summit Latam (BSL) in Bogotá, Colombia on October 17th and 18th. This BSL was the third NEO has been involved with, having previously provided a keynote speech and hackathon support in May of 2018, and hackathon support in August of 2018. NGD business manager, Tamar Salant, provided a keynote presentation. City of Zion (CoZ) developer, Jaime Kindelan, hosted a workshop in Spanish entitled “Developing a Decentralized Application on NEO.” Kindelan and fellow CoZ member Fernando Díaz Toledano also participated as mentors and advised teams during the BSL hackathon.
Developer Groups
CoZ announced the winners of its third competition, the NEO tutorial competition. It awarded 10 participants with 1,350 GAS each for their submissions, and noted three runners-up for their contributions. Tutorial topics covered include various methods of working with smart contracts, creating games, issuing tokens, and building on a PrivateNet.
NewEconoLabs (NEL) released its bi-weekly progress report covering the first half of October, which includes updates about the BlaCat game platform, neondebug, and CryptoGladiator v1.0. BlaCat is currently in its demo version, with new language tools, wallet support, and token functions incorporated. Neondebug has been under development in-house, and allows for debugging smart contracts during code compilation, contract deployment, transactions, and invocations. Also, CryptoGladiator is being prepared for “Genesis Prologue,” in which game behaviors will be handled by a central server.
NEO News Today has written an overview of BlaCat, highlighting how the platform aims to ease the transition to blockchain for game developers through its dApp software development kit (SDK). The BlaCat gaming platform is divided into two main components; the NEO sidechain “ZoroChain,” and the BlaCat application. Users will interface with the BlaCat application where they can use the wallet, access games, and trade virtual assets on the market. ZoroChain provides the infrastructure required by those games. Also, the BlaCat platform will officially launch in November, alongside an initial batch of 27 games.
Ecosystem
APEX Network was added to Delta Direct, a function of Delta portfolio tracking application version 1.4. The application seeks to act as a direct link between token projects and investors by providing update notifications.
New Kind of Network (NKN) published its bi-weekly report. Highlights included GitHub source code development progress, growth and testing of NKN’s public TestNet nodes, the “Lemur” release that went live at the start of September, and its partnership announcement with IoTeX.
Red Pulse opened its Phoenix platform to all outside contributors, which is to be used by “investors, analysts, researchers, and professionals for keeping up to date with the latest happenings in the Chinese economy.” As an incentive to become an early contributor, Red Pulse will be doubling its daily reward pool to USD $5,000 for the first month, to be doled out to contributors.
NEO Name Service (NNS) surpassed 10,000 registered “.neo” domains. Auctions for domain names started on October 9th, 2018, and are ongoing. NewEconoLabs (NEL) founder Liu Yougxin stated that “the number of domain names started is more than 10,000 in a few days after its MainNet launch. Currently, it is the most used dApp on NEO.”
QLC Chain launched its TestNet, making it an open source blockchain that “applies the virtual machine to manage and support integrated smart contracts.” As of October 10th, 2018, QLC’s internal testing and community-exclusive testing show the network capable of handling 3,500 transactions per second. Following the launch of its TestNet, the QLC Chain team held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit. Questions mostly surrounded the development and testing of the TestNet, the QLC Chain roadmap, and next steps.
Alchemint reported continued refinement of its “SAR-C” collateral-backed stablecoin in its latest September progress update. Alchemint is developing “SAR-B” stablecoins for the NEO blockchain, to be issued by trusted institutions, as well as “SAR-C” stablecoins, available for creation by the general public. The trade value of SAR-C stablecoins is backed by digital assets, that are mortgaged in a smart contract, to be held as collateral.
Pikciochain signed a second collaboration agreement with the CNRS French Institute and also announced a bounty rewards program for translating its “Hubble” open source Python SDK to other programming languages. The platform is offering USD $1,000 worth of PKC for high-quality translations for Java, Swift, node.js, C, and C++.
Alphacat has announced a research cooperation with UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science (UCLA Engineering). UCLA Engineering’s Electronic Engineering Laboratory will provide a “Signal Analysis Specialist” to analyze transaction data. The objective will be to shorten calculation times while improving the accuracy of Alphacat’s price forecasts.
nOS and Travala announced a partnership to offer a user-friendly booking marketplace that supports cryptocurrencies, cheaper rates, and next-generation tokenized incentive structures. Additionally, nOS has reduced its hard cap and initial circulating supply by about 40%. The initial public sale was listed at USD $15,750,000 and has now been reduced to USD $10,000,000.
nOS announced a partnership with Data Access Worldwide, an enterprise software development company that boasts clients such as Coca Cola, Star Leasing, SoftData, Cerner, Berendsen, and VolkerRail. The partnership will the see the organizations integrate each other’s technologies and collaborate on research and development.
Trinity released an open letter to its community and held a live Q&A session. The letter addressed a readjustment of the team’s goals and roadmap in the face of a cooling bear market for cryptocurrencies across the board. David Li, the platform’s founder, hosted the event shortly after publishing the open letter.
Endorsit launched its October Promotion Program, which will run until November 4th, which rewards authors in EDS for writing articles on the Endorsit platform. Each author can earn a maximum of 5 million EDS and a minimum of 50,000 for approved articles. Alongside the rewards for authors in EDS, other incentives include authors who submit the most amount of articles and referring new authors to the October Promotion Program’s pre-selection group.
Spotcoin released its weekly roundup, which highlights progress made in growing the platform’s community, its upcoming token sale, and a spotlight video of its attendance at the NEO Black Sea Community Hackathon.
Token Listings
Asura Coin (ASA) was listed on Switcheo.
Travala (AVA) was listed on Aphelion.
Apex (CPX) was listed on Aphelion.
Bridge (TOLL) was listed on Aphelion.
Effect.AI (EFX) was listed on Aphelion.
Upcoming Events
October 23: NEO Moscow Meetup.
October 25: NEO Saint Petersburg Meetup.
October 26: NEO Berlin Meetup.
October 27 & 28: NEO Blockchain Hackathon in Berlin, Germany.
November 3 & 4: NEO Blockchain Hackathon in Zürich, Switzerland.
About The Author: Dylan Grabowski
Dylan is a reformed urban planner with a passion for covering the Neo ecosystem. His objective as a writer for Neo News Today is to report news in an objective, fact-based, non-sensational manner. When not behind a computer screen, he can be found in the mountains rock climbing. Find Dylan on Twitter (@GrabowskiDylan).
More posts by Dylan Grabowski