Welcome to the Ubiq report for October 2019.

The Ubiq network has reached an important milestone this month, with our 1,000,000 block being found.

1,000,000 blocks found! Graphic by Tunachum

This report also contains some key development updates from Ubiq core developer, Luke and some updates from the team who recently attended Devcon5.

Governance Updates

Escher has now been Distributed

Escher Airdrop #6 concluded this month, with 14.01% of the available UBQ supply signalling for the airdrop.

Escher Airdrop Participation

This airdrop gave accounts signalling a ratio of 1 Escher for every 1 UBQ in the account. The Escher has now been distributed and you should be able to see this in your address using one of our block explorers. 2 further airdrops are planned at this ratio.

Development Updates

Gubiq 3.0

Development work has been coming along nicely for Gubiq 3.0. We are pleased to announce that this is nearing completion and fork testing has begun.

This update will activate Byzantium, Constantinople & St. Petersburg from upstream and includes a fix for uncle rewards.

OpenRPC & Octano d0x

Gubiq 3.0 adds OpenRPC support via the new rpc.discover method, which returns an OpenRPC document defining the Gubiq JSON-RPC API.

OpenRPC is an interface description for JSON-RPC, this allows us to generate interactive documentation and client libraries (i.e web3.js) using the Gubiq API itself, reducing dependence on upstream while also minimizing overheads.

For more info on OpenRPC see: https://open-rpc.org/beginners

We would also like to introduce Octano d0x, a tool allowing developers to view, edit & create OpenRPC documents.

Developers/services integrating Ubiq can now view the Gubiq RPC documentation here: https://octanolabs.github.io/d0x

New public RPC API endpoint for developers/services: https://rpc.octano.dev/

Advertising / Marketing Updates

Eth chain DAG comparison website

Ubiq has recently been featured on a DAG size comparison website against Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. DAG size growth has been a hot topic in the Ethereum community recently.

When Ubiq was first designed, the block time was set much higher than ETH and ETC, with an average target of 88 seconds. This means the DAG growth is much slower:

UBQ v ETH DAG growth

As you can see from Alex’s tweet and the chart below, ETC and ETH miners with 4GB video cards are starting to experience issues with mining these chains. Ubiq’s design means that mining with 2GB cards is still feasible and predicted to stay this way until 2027.

UBQ DAG size vs ETH and ETC

For more information on what a DAG is, read our Ubiq research primer on the Mining Ecosystem.

Alex featured on Crypto trading channel

Alex recently attended the Coinigy Bitcoin & Altcoin Trading Talk podcast on YouTube. Episode 60 with Alex can be listened to using the link below:

Devcon5

Julian and Alex attended Devcon5 earlier this month. Devcon is an annual conference hosted by the Ethereum Foundation, which provides an opportuntiy to network with members of the Ethereum community, as well as developers and market thought leaders.

Alex and Julian photographed at Devcon with Coin Artist

Alex also had an opportunity to speak at Devcon, covering a range of Ubiq related topics, such as experiences from running our own EVM, the relationship between longer block times, fewer uncles, decreasing node requirements and improving decentralization.

Alex speaking outside at Devcon

Ubiq sticker campaign

As mentioned in the previous Quarterly report, there has been a community push for marketing, with a number of sticker designs being made available on the Cryptanthropy store. With several recent conferences being attended here is a selection of photographs of these stickers being spotted in the wild:

Exchange Updates

Bittrex International change

Bittrex Exchange recently announced that for their International (non-US) exchange, users would be transitioned from Bittrex Internation to Bittrex Global.

This move will not effect UBQ markets, nor any of its tokens. Any users of Bittrex exchange will have to accept their new terms of service to be transitioned over.

We have included a link below explaining the move and so the community is updated.

Token Updates

GeoCoin

Dropped an additional 2,350 GEO on the map.

GEO and SPHR hit top of homepage on Bittrex Oct 2nd

https://twitter.com/alex_sterk/status/1179463227555450880?s=20