Welcome everyone to the Monthly report for March 2019.

This month saw two major Gubiq updates, with version 2.1. being released and 2.2. in pre-release. Several more updates are planned throughout the year and our core development team is working hard on releasing a planned roadmap which will bring Ubiq in line with Byzantium and Constantinople updates.

The Ubiq family also grew this month with The Sphere project completing its token swap and now running on the Ubiq network.

Development Updates

Gubiq 2.1. Released

Ubiq core developers Luke and Julian released a major update to Gubiq (our command line Ubiq client):

As mentioned in the quarterly, this update is based on the last release of the upstream Geth (Ethereum’s command-line client) 1.6.x branch, which includes block downloader/synchronization code refactoring, consensus code refactoring and several other optimizations. In total, this release contained around 500 commits merged from Go-Ethereum.

While this update is an optional release and does not require a hard-fork, we highly recommend that users update to the new version of Gubiq. Gubiq 2.1 sets the stage for further updates based on Geth 1.7.x and allows us to then schedule a hard-fork which will bring Ubiq in line with the Byzantium hard-fork changes.

Gubiq 2.2. Pre-Release

The binaries for Gubiq 2.2. are now released and can be downloaded from GitHub.

A more substantive update will be announced when this version goes live.

Development Roadmap

Since Ubiq launched, our policy has been to not provide a development roadmap. Since cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are a new phenomenon, remaining fluid in development allows the team flexibility in responding to new changes in the ecosystem. An example of this was the response by the Ubiq development team to the increasing 51% attacks via rental services. Ubiq devs quickly responded and changed the hashing algorithm from Ethash to Ubqhash.

However, opposite to previous intention, we have decided to include a roadmap specifically for the large number of updates that we have coming up for Gubiq this year. As there are two further hard-forks planned, this gives our community visibility of the planned changes well in advance.

We are currently working on an article which will outline these changes in more detail. The high-level plan is:

Gubiq 2.1 (current release) = Based on Geth 1.6 final branch

Gubiq 2.2 (in pre-release)= Based on Geth 1.7 final branch

Gubiq 2.3 = Based on Geth 1.8 final branch

Gubiq 3.0 = Based on Geth 1.8 final branch + Byzantium hard fork

Gubiq 5.0 = Based on Geth 1.8 final branch + Constantinople hard fork

Stay tuned to our social media channels and Discord to be informed as to when we plan to release these.

Ubiq Cosmos Hub Discussion

Recently, we started a discussion in the #ubiq-research channel in discord, around the possibility of having Escher (ESCH) maintaining the governance aspects but also becoming a staking token as a Cosmos hub.

We are exploring this possibility as a community and have included introductory links below. Please look through and contribute to the discussion in discord:

Overview of Cosmos Hub Governance

Introduction to Cosmos

Cosmos Governance Tutorial

Node Update

Ubiq customer branded node — Photo courtesy of Headrush

With the large number of Gubiq updates taking place during this year we would like to take this opportunity to remind the community of the recent blog post by Matt:

This post provides some important information regarding updates to the automated scripts and is a recommended read for all Full Noders, as this makes the upgrade to Gubiq 2.1. even easier.

Advertising / Marketing Updates

Ubiq Featured in a Sponsored post on Altcoin Trader’s Blog

Popular Crypto trader and twitter influencer Nik Patel contacted the team regarding an opportunity to be featured in a sponsored post in March.

Nik’s blog enjoys a large audience of unique viewers on each of his coin reports and gives a detailed, fair and unbiased review of each of the coins he assesses. On balance, we proceeded with paying for the exposure.

The team and I would like to personally thank community members Eleven, Saintgermaine and J40 for providing the funding for this sponsored post.

The post went live early March and is a recommended read for our community:

All coin reports grade the coin out of 10, with the rating for Ubiq scoring 8 out of 10.

Nik also has recently signed an agreement with Binance, meaning our coin report will be reposted on Binance Info, which is viewed by over half a million monthly visitors.

Exchange update

Cryptopia Now Trading some markets

As many will be aware, Cryptopia suffered a security breach which led to a police investigation and subsequent shutdown of the exchange.

Recently the team at Cryptopia pushed the site live again, with 40 markets active. Currently, the UBQ/BTC pair is not an active market, however many of the tokens secured on our network are actively trading (GEO & Qwark to name a couple).

As mentioned previously all Ubiq funds were safe during the hack and we expect normal markets to resume in due course.

Beaxy listing Update

In the February Quarterly, we informed everyone that Ubiq was due to go live in their third round of listings, due approximately at the end of March.

Part of this listing process meant that we had to provide a letter from a U.S. based lawyer certifying that Ubiq is not a security. Many thanks again to our community members, Eleven, J40 and two anonymous donors for providing funding for this.

Because of the time required for the lawyer to pull together the required evidence and Beaxy’s round 3 of listings becoming full, the decision was made to list Ubiq in round 4 (approximately mid to late May).

More good news is that once the lawyer has produced this letter, we may use it for future regulated exchange listings. This one-off expense has the potential to help Ubiq many times as we seek to expand our exchange offerings.

Token Activity / Updates

Sphere Token Swap Completed

Sphere successfully completed their Token Swap on March 15th from their own independent chain to a token on the Ubiq network.

Bittrex hosted the swap and all SPHR token holders received their new tokens at a ratio of 1:5 (5 SPHR on the new chain for every 1 SPHR held previously).

We would like to take this moment to welcome the Sphere team to Ubiq! Be sure to stay up to date with their development via the Sphere medium blog.