July 4, 2016

Ecosystem News

TopCoin is a Counterparty project created by Josh Jones, co-founder of DreamHost, and his partner Michael Blend. The project has been operating since September of 2014 but has largely been flying under the radar.

“Topcoin (“TPC”) is the world’s only cryptocurrency designed specifically for digital goods loyalty programs. Consumers are rewarded TPC for domain name purchases made at partner companies in the TPC ecosystem, and those companies in turn accept up to half the purchase price of new domain name registrations in Topcoin at a value of $1 per TPC. The closest “real-world” analogy to TPC is frequent flyer miles, except that TPC may be used across a broad range of product classes and are easily exchanged for other currencies.”

“Topcoin is designed to disrupt customer loyalty-reward programs, an industry widely loved by consumers that has artificially high transaction costs. Like frequent flyer miles in the travel industry, Topcoin rewards purchasers of digital goods with currency that can be used to purchase additional related services. Topcoin’s initial applications are in the web site creation ecosystem, including domain names and web hosting.”

Topcoin is currently supported by domain registrar Uniregistry with a VPS service and other domain registries coming soon.

IndieSquare Wallet had a recent update that added the ability to choose your optimal transaction fee.

“An optimal transaction fee feature has been added to the latest version and the wallet calculates the optimal fee depending the level of network congestion. Also, you can choose from three priority levels(high, medium, low) for convenience. If you need to send the token as soon as possible, the high mode may make sense while the low mode may be better when you are sending out tokens for fun.”

This is a critical wallet feature due to rising transaction fees and Blockchain congestion. The full update can be read here.

On June 22nd, Storj announced plans for Test Group C. This is the final test group before the full production launch of Storj later this summer!

“We’re delighted to announce Test Group C (TGC) – the last test group before a full launch later this summer. Test Group A generated usable data on network latency, disconnects, uptime, and other factors. Test Group B allowed us to assess farmer contributions, particularly uptime statistics and the total storage capacity of the network. TGC will test real world network conditions and we will reward TGC participants with a total of 1,000,000 SJCX for contributing storage capacity and telemetry data to the network over the next few months.”

The full Storj announcement can be read here.

The Spells of Genesis custom level contest kicked off on July 1st and submissions will be accepted through Friday, July 8th, 12PM CEST. The 1st place winner will win three rare Spells of Genesis cards and all participants that meet the entry guidelines will receive one “WATERSCOURT”, SOG’s latest free blockchain asset.

Counterparty Content

What is Storj? Part 1 of 3

Bitcoin podcast B Libre! had an interview with Spells of Genesis project lead Shaban Shaame.

Will in China wrote a blog post titled “Inserting metadata into the blockchain.” The article is concise, informative, and Counterparty is referenced.

Counterparty asset Scotcoin was written about by CoinTelegraph due to the recent Brexit decision and the subsequent calls for a Scottish independence referendum.

Counterparty News

The Counterparty team posted an update about moving the EVM port forward. Several important safeguards and guidelines were introduced that were covered by Bitcoin.com, CoinTelegraph and Finance Magnates.

EconoTimes.com wrote an article about FoldingCoin’s recent announcements and Counterparty XCP.

Core Development Updates

Counterwallet has been updated to version 1.8.0. This release includes numerous bug fixes, which should help improve reliability as well. Full list of changes is here.

The next release of counterparty-lib is imminent, with only a few outstanding issues (specifically, the PR for better fee estimation and adjustments for the new “bytespersigop” code in Bitcoin Core 0.12.1).

Preliminary support for Windows and OS X has been added to the new build system. Updated instructions are here.

The website content has been overhauled! The new site content more accurately describes the current state of Counterparty, and we have a new Features page.

We’ve added a FAQ for the smart contracts/EVM feature to the site.

Join the Counterparty XCP group on Telegram for breaking news and real-time Counterparty conversation.