

February 2017 (III)

Here’s some of the latest news about Nxt over this past week in February:

NXT COMMUNITY

DEVELOPMENT

NXT IN THE MEDIA

PRICE EVOLUTION

Here below are more details about each:

NXT COMMUNITY

Nxt Foundation – Designers and Writers Wanted

As we mentioned in our previous newsletter, the Nxt Foundation will attend Blockshow Europe 2017, an event organized by CoinTelegraph that will take place in Munich in just a few weeks. It’s expected to become the most important blockchain-related event in Europe this year.

Dave Pearce, board member of the Nxt Foundation, who is going to represent the Foundation in this event, asked for some community members to help make this event a success:

I’m working on a promo item for Nxt/Ardor to go into the goody bag that each attendee will receive, but we do need a couple of banners and a flier or brochure to give away, and I’m looking for volunteers to help with creating either of these: Banners need to be approximately 2m high by 1m wide, in a standard roll-up banner style. I’d like to have one for Nxt and one for Ardor,or maybe one for the Foundation plus one for Ardor. They need to be eye-catching and informative, but not too complex. Anyone want to help out by providing a design ? I can get the printing done in NL and take them with me to Munich, so that’s under control.

There will be a bounty for any designs that we use… We also need a flier or brochure to give away, just to explain in very clear English exactly wtf Nxt, Ardor and the Nxt Foundation are all about. Again: eyecatching and informative, please. Any text writers who’d like to have ago at this, get in touch. A designer would also be welcome.

So now you know, if you have some time and energy to help the Nxt community, this is the right time to do your bit.

Source and more information: https://nxtforum.org/index.php?topic=13135.msg229962#msg229962

Channel #ctblockshow on NxtChat on Slack (Link to join https://nxtchat.herokuapp.com )

Cointelegraph.com/news/as-blockshow-europe-2017-approaches-more-conference-details-are-revealed

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Spreading Nxt – All For One and One for All

Wolffang, an active member of the Nxt community, has made a public call asking for more help to promote the benefits of Nxt and Ardor. As you probably already know, a decentralized community like this doesn’t have a stable source of income, but rather is composed of a lot of volunteers who work tirelessly and mostly in an altruistic way not only to promote these platforms, but also to inform current users about these developments and other day-to-day matters.

Wolffang has said:

As most know Nxt and Ardor have a great community which is really helpful towards others. The Tech is also one of the best around today in crypto.

NXT and Ardor are way underrated compared to the rest of crypto projects.

Besides the great things the Nxt team is doing we can give them a help with promoting, showing and telling people about Nxt and Ardor.

It will help your own investment too.

I Hope you will help out with sharing the tweets, discuss on subjects, help people out, upvote reddit posts, maybe help in polo trollbox to let traders know the good things etcetera.

The latest news is in the #swarms channel on slack.

Twitter: @NxtCommunity @ArdorPlatform Reddit

Reddit.com/r/nxt

Reddit.com/r/ardor

Reddit.com/r/cryptocurrency Bitcointalk Ardor:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1518497.0 Bitcointalk Nxt:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=587007.0 Trollbox: Poloniex.com/trollbox Also for community discussions: nxtforum.org

At Nxter.org, we’ll continue spreading the word as we’ve been doing since the beginning, to try to make more people learn about both Nxt and Ardor platforms, together with the full ecosystem around it. If you’re interested in giving us a hand to achieve this objective, please visit https://nxter.org/get-published-get-paid-nxtp

Source: https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/1-for-all-all-for-1

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Roberto Capodieci – Masterclass About Blockchain Solutions



Roberto Capodieci, CEO of Debune, among many others, offered a masterclass about “Open Blockchain Platform For Trade and Supply Chain”, this past week during the 2nd Annual Supply Chain Finance and its Alternatives in Singapore.

Roberto, who has a great knowledge of blockchain technology and the solutions it can offer, didn’t hesitate to add his personal touch and his usual sense of humour to this event, as we can see in the preview of his introductory speech that he shared with all the Nxters, before delivering it in front of his audience:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this blockchain workshop.

It is gonna be a great workshop. It is gonna be absolutely fantastic.

Believe me. I know all about workshops. It is gonna be the best workshop.

Today workshop is about blockchain based platforms for trade and supply chain…

Capodieci also didn’t lose his chance to mention Nxt in this speech:

…We use Nxt for our blockchain solutions. It is huge, it is tremendous. Very important people uses Nxt. It is so… it is terrific. You could be one of them, because I know how to make tremendous Blockchain. Chose OTDocs, and it is gonna be: “Blockchain First”. Welcome to the workshop! Let’s make Blockchain great again. With OTDocs…

Source: nxtforum.org/general-discussion/price-speculation/msg229759/#msg229759

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Tipper on Slack – New Functionalities

Nxtswe keeps bringing new functionalities to his tipper bot, the tipping monkey of Nxtchat on Slack. With this new update, you can now tip other users just by attaching emoticons to comments of other users on Slack.

Tipper already has a good handful of functionalities built-in and more functionalities are regularly added in. To use this functionality, start a private conversation with the bot Tipper by typing “help” to know all the characteristics and get some help using it.

Source and more information: nxtchat.slack.com/archives/general/p1486850898686487

nxtwiki.org/wiki/Tipper_Service

github.com/libertyswede/NxtTipbot

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Nxter.org – Hall of Fame

At nxter.org, due the positive reaction from the members of the Nxt community welcoming the first printed edition of the book “Snapshot”, the first book about the Nxt platform, and also thanks to the numerous photographs with clear evidences of happiness for getting their book which many owners have published publicly to show their little treasure (which they don’t hesitate to pose with), we’ve decided to start a new section on our website called the Hall of Fame.

Write @nxter_org in your tweet and get on our Hall of Fame

The newest addition to the Nxter Hall of Fame features the Snapshot book that has traveled (Thanks Travin Keith!) to the northernmost public library in the world, in the town called Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago. In the picture, we can see the happy librarian in charge of this establishment showing us their newest acquisition. Congratulations!

Some other members of the Nxt communty are already present in our Hall of Fame. Click here to check it out!

If you don’t have a copy of SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions, we’d like to remind you that the book is already available in a digital version for your reader in many specialized online platforms, (Amazon, iBooks, GoogleBooks, etc, in addition to Nxter.org, where you can also buy it with BTC) or as a printed book under the Print On Demand service by Lulu.com

Moreover, if you buy the digital edition of the book from Nxter.org you’ll also receive a FREE BONUS of a code to redeem 100 NXTP assets, the pdf version of the Nxt 2nd Anniversary e-book, all together with the SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions ebook package (.mobi, .epub and .pdf)

More information: nxter.org/snapshot-nxt-unsurpassable-blockchain-solutions/

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DEVELOPMENT

Ardor – The Public Testing is Going On



On the 11th of February, the tesnet version of Ardor was made available for the public to use. The Nxt community, one that keeps growing, has stepped forward to test the features of the new platform and to check all the functionalities, both new ones and the ones that were already in Nxt: child chains, assets (that you can use on all child chains), bundlers, aliases, data cloud, account control, monetary system, encripted messaging, shuffling, decentralized voting, phased transactions, plugins, decentralized purchasing and selling, and many others.

Ardor is only going to be in testnet for about 5-7 months until mainnet launches, which is expected to happen sometime in the third quarter of 2017. To participate in the Ardor testnet, you have to download the latest Ardor client here and ask for some tokens for the testnet here (ARDR, IGNIS) in order to start testing the new platform by yourself.

On the other hand, if you don’t have time or aren’t interested in helping with the test and just want to feel the experience of surfing through Ardor’s GUI, then you can use some of the open nodes that let you access this testnet, such as the one set up by Riker http://107.170.3.62:26876/index.html or any other node listed here and create a new account (for security reasons, never use your real Nxt account here) to explore everything that Ardor can offer you.

You can stay updated about the latest progress of the testnet by visiting the #developers channel on Nxtchat on Slack

More information: https://nxter.org/nxt-announces-ardor https://nxter.org/ardor-testnet-is-launched/

https://nxter.org/ardor-blockchain https://nxter.org/developers

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Ardor – v2.0.1e for Testnet



A new version of the Ardor testnet has been has been released. The changelog for this version includes some minor bug fixing and improvements to the client UI, as well as peer networking, and improved blockchain download. A Node JS module has also been added. This is an experimental release for testing only, so the source code is not provided with it.

You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Bitbucket. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same as the hash of that file.

A Mac installer has also been included with this version. You you can download it here and start testing Ardor right away with your Mac computer!

Source and more information : nxtforum.org/nrs-releases/ardor-v2-0-1e/

https://nxter.org/ardor-v2-0-1e

Ardor Node JS Module

One of the great improvements that the latest testnet version of Ardor brings us is the addition of Node.js, an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment for developing a diverse variety of server tools and applications, based on the ECMAScript language, capable of asynchronous I/O in event-driven programming and the V8 engine by Google.



This is what Riker, a core developer of Nxt, says about this new addition:

Earlier attempts to develop robust client API library for NXT and subsequently Ardor were faced with several challenges:

1. The API library had to send the passphrase directly to a remote node in order to sign transactions, this meant that the remote node had to be trusted, this severely limited the usability of the API library.

2. Some client libraries did implement local transaction signing but still were unable to validate unsigned bytes data returned from a random remote node thus still making it somewhat insecure to submit transactions to a random remote node.

3. Client API libraries were developed by 3rd party developers which sometimes couldn’t keep up with the protocol changes. In order to address these problems, in release 2.0.1e we introduced for the first time a Node JS module which can be used for JavaScript application development using the Ardor platform APIs. This node JS module is now integral part of the core and in fact is just a thin layer of Node JS wrapper on top of the existing Ardor Wallet JavaScript code. Being so this node module has several advantages:

1. The Node JS module is able to work securely against any random Ardor node

2. Transaction data submitted to a remote node is validated against the returned unsigned bytes

3. Transactions are signed locally so that the account passphrase is never submitted to a remote node

4. Message encrytption can be performed client side

5. API calls work at a higher level compared to the APIs provided by the existing test page, so that for example, complex numeric conversions and various formatting functions are alreayd implemented by the API library

6. Updates to this API library will follow the standard Ardor release process and will be maintained by core developers

To quickly get started using the node JS module, see instructions in the ./html/www/js/README file which is part of the 2.0.1e release.

The ./html/www/js/sample folder contains several code examples to get you started quickly and provide a reference implementation.

Source and more information: nxtforum.org/general-discussion/ardor-node-js-module/

https://nodejs.org/en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js

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Docker Image – Nxt 1.11.3

Chevdor has uploaded the latest NRS in a Docker open source container using version 1.11.3

Docker is a tool that can package an application and its dependencies in a virtual container that can run on any Linux server. This helps enable flexibility and portability regarding where the application can run, whether on-premises, a public cloud, a private cloud, bare metal, etc.

As we mentioned in previous newsletters, running NRS in a Docker container can be even easier than running it “the normal way”. It’s especially useful when running Nxt on a VPS: No java required, no download, no specific configuration… In addition to this, in spite of being a type of “virtual machine”, it does not decrease performance.

Source: https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/nxt-in-a-docker-container

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software) and https://www.docker.com

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NXT IN THE MEDIA

Ardor – Launched on Testnet

This week, some media outlets have covered the launch of the testnet for Ardor.

This article by Ian Allison of International Business Times and this other article published at Fintech Finance, goes over some of the new features that Ardor brings, such as:

A novel multiple blockchain architecture that allows users to create their own, customized subsidiary blockchains, secured by the main chain.

Transactions from these blockchains, known as child chains, are removed from the main transaction ledger approximately every 24 hours, though special dedicated nodes, known as archival nodes, can keep all information if so desired. This approach enables Ardor to scale up to global transaction loads.

Ardor solves the blockchain bloat issue with this prunable child chain infrastructure, which side chains do not solve.

Travin Keith, board member of the Nxt Foundation, has this to say about testnet:

Blockchain technology is increasingly entering the mainstream consciousness. The developers at Jelurida BV have created a platform that makes blockchain technology more accessible and delivers scalable solutions for retail and institutional participants. Its potential applications extend to a number of industries burdened with legacy issues and antiquated transaction processing systems

Antony Peyton also gives a brief overview over at Banking Technology about the launch of testnet. The text enumerates some of the new features in Ardor, which has use cases that go beyond financial transactions. The author gives emphasis in the PoS model in which both Nxt and Ardor are based on, and the benefits this model provides:

Ardor and Nxt operate on a proof-of-stake model that can handle higher transaction volumes at a fraction of the energy cost and at ten times the speed

Source: www.fintech.finance/01-news/ardor-blockchain-platform-launches-public-testing-forum/

www.ibtimes.co.uk/nxt-dev-teams-ardor-blockchain-platform-launches-public-testing-forum-1606225

www.bankingtech.com/729431/blockchain-and-bitcoin-round-up-13-february-2017/

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Deep Dot Web – Smart Contract Scripting (Amended)

In our previous newsletter, we talked about the research paper titled Scripting Smart Contracts for Distributed Ledger Technology which included a certain number of inaccuracies about the Nxt platform.

Fortunately, Pablo Lamela, one of the authors of the article, took the time to chat with Lior Yaffe to clarify some of these issues. Just a few days latter, Pablo announced some amendments to their research. Lior and the Nxt community were very glad and thanked the authors for their interest in clarifying all the details about Nxt.

Palas says:

We have modified the paper in https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1156.pdf to improve the description of Nxt. Thank you @riker, for helping us solve our doubts about Nxt and Ardor. Let us know if there are any other problems with it.

Riker stated then:

Thanks Palas the paper is much more balanced now.

#Nxt is in an academic article titled Scripting Smart Contracts for Distributed Ledger Technology #blockchain https://t.co/yCWDIe1Svx pic.twitter.com/AmsZWp1Ikp — Nxt (@NxtCommunity) February 15, 2017

Source and more information: #Deep_dot_web

eprint.iacr.org/2016/1156.pdf

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PRICE EVOLUTION

Weekly NXT/ARDR Price Evolution

The following graphic shows the NXT / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:

The following graphic shows the ARDR / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:

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