NEO News: Week in Review – December 3rd – December 9th

NEO

December 5th, NEO Global Development (NGD) updated its technical document How to Become NEO Consensus Node, which includes requirements, application information, and the voting process for hosting NEO consensus nodes. After a year of improvements to the NEO blockchain, the NEO Foundation expects network decentralization to be realized in 2019. Consensus node applicants will be selected every three months to begin operating on TestNet, and will be eligible for MainNet after six months.

December 7th, NGD announced the second NEO DevCon will be held in Seattle, US on February 16th and 17th. The theme for NEO DevCon 2019 is “ContiNEO – We keep on going” conveying the determination of the NEO community to continue its effort to realize the new Smart Economy. A full day development workshop is also planned to take place.

Early bird tickets are on sale now for $149 and are available until January 15th. 100 limited community discount tickets are also available for $99 using the code I-LOVE-NEO. Full price tickets will be $299.

NNT Catch Up

Last month NGD completed its European hackathon tour, which included a weekend in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. Each hackathon had a unique theme for the participants, such as developing dApps with Go language, dApps that utilize non fungible tokens (NFT), and identity-related dApps. Erik Zhang, founder of NEO, and Peter Lin, NEO R&D, were amongst the judges evaluating final deliverables. Included in the article are the top projects from the three events.

NEO News Today covered the winners of the Junction Hackathon, where NEO hosted a blockchain track. Hack Junction attracted over 1,300 developers, designers, and technologists who gathered for a weekend of product development across a series of tracks. NEO’s track challenge was focused around the theme of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) voting. Using NEP-5 standards, participants developed voting applications using smart contracts.

Developer Groups

December 7th, NeoResearch has announced a new competition where participants may submit statistical reports focused on different areas of the NEO blockchain. The competition will focus on statistics about NeoVM, node syncing times, NEO blockchain storage data, plus more. The three best reports will be awarded with 250, 100 and 50 NEO respectively.

December 9th, NEO St. Petersburg Competency Center (NEO SPCC) hosted a hackathon, in St. Petersburg, Russia. NEO SPCC was introduced at a meetup on November 30th, along with a NEO-based distributed file storage project. At the hackathon, participants were asked to design an idea that can be served by NEO’s digital economy, and to create a smart contract using Python, C#, or Javascript.

Ecosystem

December 3rd, Travala released its November report, which included partnerships, UI/UX improvements, development, and community awareness. Through its partnership with Hotelbeds and Hotelpros, Travala expects to provide access to 1.5 million properties across the globe. With regards to its platform, Travala states the team worked on “major infrastructure optimization to improve system performance.”

December 3rd, Endorsit published its weekly report, covering the progress of its decentralized application, internal test recruitment initiative, and some updates for its community. Beginning next week, users will be invited to participate in its internal testing program 10 participants at a time. Also in December, Endorsit’s ecological community will undergo a restructuring.

December 3rd, Effect.AI announced a new ambassador program, which is claimed to be motivated by the many community-driven initiatives started by its members. The new initiative will have a primary focus of promoting Effect Force, which is the platform’s first and core product offering. Invitations for the program will remain open until December 15th with applications being reviewed and accepted in the first week of January.

December 3rd, DeepBrain Chain published its bi-monthly report highlighting recent project developments and events attended. In the announcement, DeepBrain Chain reminded readers of its free trial program for new users of its AI Training Net.

December 3rd, APEX Technologies announced a Christmas-themed bounty program, entitled The Twelve Nodes of CPXmas. Participants will be able to earn raffle tickets in an upcoming draw to win a share in a 500,000 CPX bounty.

December 4th, Ryu Coin released its bi-weekly update, where the project reaffirmed a mid-December 2018 release date for its upcoming public beta. Additionally, Ryu Coin have begun the selection process for its previously announced job openings in the areas of business and software development.

December 4th, Red Pulse published a development update covering PHOENIX and events attended in November. The update detailed company directory and watchlist features that were added to PHOENIX and rolled out near the end of the month.

December 4th, Narrative announced an update to its roadmap, which includes pushing back its beta release to March of 2019. Narrative states that the changes made in the alpha update have “set us up to deliver more consistently in the future” as “critical architecture and infrastructure” challenges are solved.

December 4th, Jarvis+ published its weekly report, which covers progress made in research and development as well as its continuing operations. In the report, Jarvis+ claim the platform’s machine learning cluster was completed, as well as its virtual dialog. Besides development, Jarvis+ also reminded readers of its numerous games and bots that currently run in the platform’s Telegram channels. 

December 5th, nOS and NEO-ONE announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to simplify the development and adoption of dApps through the use of co-beneficial solutions. Both nOS, a virtual operating system that acts as a NEO dApp gateway, and NEO-ONE, a dApp development suite developed by the NEO Tracker team, are focused on catering to web developers through the use of JavaScript and TypeScript.

December 5th, Aphelion released a weekly update that includes a hint towards regulatory compliance for the DEX, as well as contributions to the NEO core code. Aphelion’s NEO core contribution, GitHub Pull Request #500, offers a solution for issues with the NEO MemoryPool that have lead to congestion.

December 5th, QLC Chain announced that it’s nearing the launch of its dApp, WinQ 2.0, with a new multi-chain wallet and utility token, WinQ GAS (WGAS). In preparation for the launch, QLC Chain is inviting VPN operators and active community members to test the platform. The first round of testing will continue until December 14th.

December 5th, Senno announced it will join an acceleration program sponsored by Energy Australia. Through the program, Senno will receive coaching from over 100 industry experts, mentors, and partners.

December 6th, Alphacat released its bi-monthly development report, which includes the addition of over 15 new products to the ACAT Store. In November, Alphacat opened the ACAT Store’s doors to listings from third-party developers, who are both working in cooperation with Alphacat, and independently.

December 6th, Travala announced two partnerships with Latin American lodging wholesaler HotelDo, and the Indian lodging supplier GRNConnect. The partnerships are part of a strategic effort on behalf of Travala to offer 1.5 million bookable properties on its upcoming beta platform. The beta is tentatively scheduled to launch in Q1 2019.

December 8th, Guardian Circle released a November update, which included an announcement that the project is rebranding to Guard. In the video, the team also noted they’re preparing for the launch of its dApp, Guard 3.0, in Quarter 1 of 2019.

December 9th, PikcioChain released an article highlighting how the PKC token will be used in the platform. PikcioChain stated dApps that operate on the PikcioChain MainNet will generate personal data transactions that will use PKC tokens. Additionally, the project said they’re launching an Employees Participation Plan that will reward users for their contributions.