NEO News: Week in Review – February 4th – February 10th

NNT Catch Up

NEO News Today recently spoke with NGD global business development manager, Tamar Salant, who shared insights regarding NEO’s approach to securities on the blockchain and the purpose of the newly established Digital Assets Alliance (DAA), a consortium of participants from various industries. The discussion centered around securities as digital assets, understanding the law, empowering developers, the Global Blockchain Compliance Hub, and the slow and methodical approach to entering the security space.

NEO News Today published a summary of Da Hongfei‘s 80 minute interview with Brad “Blockchain Brad” Laurie, released on February 3rd. Topics of discussion included various technical aspects of blockchain and development, scaling, gaming, adoption, the structure of the NEO Foundation, plus much more.

In the interview, Da announced the development of an NGD satellite office in Seattle, US. Further details are to be released at NEO DevCon on February 16th and 17th in Seattle, US.

NEO News Today released its second NEO community development summary. This report covered notable contributions made to both the core NEO protocol and independent projects created by community-based developers throughout December 2018 and January 2019.

The University of Geneva in Switzerland is launching a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) on blockchain development. It is the first blockchain course to offer a full module on NEO and allow students to claim 12 European ECTS credits. The course allows students an opportunity to “learn how to develop decentralized applications with blockchain and DLT” and features four modules.

Ecosystem

February 4th, For The Win (FTW) deployed its NEP-5 Lottery Platform (NLP) on the NEO MainNet. The platform currently supports two games: a lottery and user-created raffles. The first of its kind on the NEO network, the NLP empowers users to operate and maintain the lottery. All interactions with the lottery are 100% automated by the smart contract itself.

February 4th, Alphacat reported the ACAT Store marketplace had reached 65 listed applications. In the month of January, Alphacat added 12 new applications to the mobile-focused ACAT Store.

February 5th, Nash published details of the off-chain matching engine at the core of its upcoming non-custodial currency exchange. Matching engines are used in electronic exchanges to complete trades by pairing bids and offers from the traders. The Nash team aims to design a matching engine that delivers the best aspects of centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges.

February 5th, Thor laid off 50% of its staff and cited a need to “correct cash flow,” by acquiring new banking partners, institutional investors, and customers. Aphelion, the only exchange to trade the THOR token, delisted the token following claims made by recently laid off personnel. Amidst the organizational restructure, Thor acquired three new advisory board members.

February 7th, Switcheo launched its new Switcheo Account function, which allows traders to access the exchange using a familiar username and password login system. Switcheo Accounts will be able to trade on all chains without requiring individual wallets.

February 7th, nOS announced a partnership with Integro, an e-learning platform that provides cryptocurrency incentives for its educators and students. Though the partnership Integro will incorporate nOS functionality (nOS ID, nOS APIs, and nOS Filesystem & Blockchain) into its platform. On the other side, nOS will publish education material for developers on the Integro platform, and plans to reward the use of Integro’s LMRS platform on the nOS Client. 

February 7th, Nash released an article that outlined its smart contracts, which parallels work on the exchange’s matching engine. Nash stated that its smart contracts “are designed to be simple and portable” in contrast to its “complex” matching engine. Further, the “second-layer strategies” will be used to offer the trading of blockchains such as Bitcoin that do not support smart contracts. 

February 8th, Travala announced its SMART discounts and loyalty program, which aims to promote the AVA token with additional incentives and provide utility on the platform. Through the SMART discounts and loyalty program, participants will be able to save up to 10% on accommodation bookings through Travala.com.

February 8th, Aphelion suspended withdrawals of NEO/GAS due to “a vulnerability that allows UTXO funds to be withdrawn, affecting NEO and GAS held by the DEX contract.” In addition to disabling all markets, Aphelion de-whitelisted approved KYC users so they cannot deposit new funds.

February 8th, Coupit announced the pre-alpha release of its Marketplace. The first group testers will be able to test the platform on Wednesday, February 27th, 2019. Coupit tentatively plans to launch the Marketplace platform to the general public in April of 2019.

February 10th, Aphelion announced it had verified the vulnerability relative to the UTXO assets on its exchange contract, which has been fixed and moved into a testing phase on TestNet. Aphelion expects to deploy the new contract to MainNet within one week.

Events

February 16th and 17th: NEO DevCon (Seattle, US)

February 25th: NEO Colorado meetup (Denver, US)