We wanted to take some time to update the community on our experience at the Consensus 2017 conference, the connections we made there and our plans for Blockchain Foundry and Syscoin going forward.

The Blockchain Foundry Booth

Blockchain Foundry Booth at Consensus 2017

The reception we received from our sponsorship and our booth was fantastic. Dan Wasyluk had a live demo of the latest Blockmarket internal Beta 3 running, and Dan, Chris and Sebastien spoke with a steady stream of investors, corporate representatives and other blockchain enthusiasts. There was so much interest in Blockchain Foundry and Syscoin that we were pinned to the booth by a flood of interested parties, often times with Chris, Dan and Sebastien talking to different individuals in parallel. We also had our brochure on display, which Brad Hammerstron and our incredible community did a great job creating. It was a huge hit, we were constantly having to print more copies as they were a hot item for visitors. You can access a digital copy here.

Blockmarket is our focus at the moment, but it’s important to remember that Syscoin’s infrastructure can quite literally support hundreds of use cases. Additionally, as a company Blockchain Foundry also offers blockchain software development and consulting services. Many of the people we spoke with at Consensus are interested in other applications of our technology and were very receptive to using Syscoin as a business blockchain solution tailored to their particular use cases with Blockchain Foundry consulting them on how best to execute such an integration.

We spoke with corporate reps looking to leverage blockchain to their advantage in a number of different fields- decentralized identity solutions, supply chain management, insurance, micro finance and beyond; all areas we can help serve better with the blockchain. We have multiple followup meetings set up already and we will keep the community updated as these opportunities evolve.

Decentralized Identity Foundation

Blockchain Foundry joins the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) with its Syscoin blockchain and Alias service.

One exciting development that was announced at Consensus was the formation of the Decentralized Identity Foundation. Blockchain Foundry is one of the founding members of DIF, along with organizations like Microsoft, Accenture, ConsenSys, Blockstack, Tierion and others. This is a significant milestone for Blockchain Foundry, as we partner with the other members of DIF to create a new open-sourced decentralized identity network and establish a new set of standards to oversee a new way of looking at identity.

We have already developed a blockchain identity service which allows users to log in anywhere within Blockmarket for Web. Through our partnership with Microsoft we discovered that many projects are working toward similar goals, but with a much larger scope. We can now combine our collective expertise and create open standards which will benefit everyone working in the identity space. These standards will be incorporated in our products, with identities being used as top level services to enabling sharing of physical and digital assets securely across different blockchains. This is a significant benefit for us because many of the companies we are working with and wish to work with require proof of identity as a core part of their blockchain implementations. Being part of the team that sets and creates the blockchain identity standards allows us to deliver those requirements better, faster and in a more informed manner than others.

Watch this presentation to learn what decentralized identity means and how it could help the ecosystem.

DIF will work on a broad array of identity initiatives, ranging from a system to move identity away from centralized actors and provide decentralized access to services, to integrating blockchain technology with biometrics, to a utility-like service that links business processes with blockchain-based timestamps as a way of proving the identity and actions of users across organizations. We are very happy to be a founding member of DIF and look forward to helping to drive these initiatives forward.

Blockmarket Desktop Beta 3 Almost Ready!

The conference took up more of our bandwidth than projected but nevertheless we continued to work on Blockmarket Desktop Beta 3 while at the conference and were showing off that progress to conference attendees. We will be releasing Beta 3 to the public on Monday, May 29, 2017. This is a major update and includes a number of improvements and bug fixes, the list is still being updated but you can check it out on our Github page. This release focuses on the usability and functional issues testers have reported. We will have more info alongside the blog post Monday in which we release the beta binaries but in short our goal is for this to be the final beta in regards to bugs and functional issues users have reported with the current features present in BM beta3. We’ll then add escrow alongside additional user experience improvements, release that as a target final beta (Beta 4) and as long as no major issues are discovered in the security audit be ready for Blockmarket final release in the June time-frame.

Changelly Integrates Syscoin!

Changelly, a popular platform for purchasing cryptocurrencies using fiat or exchanging between cryptocurrencies recently added Syscoin just before the Consensus 2017 conference. This is a major milestone for the project as it paves the way for the “so easy your grandma can use it” type experience that has always been the goal of the Syscoin project at a consumer level. Through Changelly’s website or through their API users will be able to purchase SYS directly in-wallet without having to first figure out how to:

Buy BTC with fiat in their country How to transfer purchased BTC to an exchange for SYS How to then send that SYS back from the exchange to their wallet to actually start using Syscoin services.

With Changelly that process is distilled down to a few clicks that require little to no knowledge of Bitcoin/Syscoin and the intricacies of the blockchain. We are already working to integrate Changelly directly into Blockmarket Desktop and will likely release it to the public shortly after version 1.0 of Blockmarket Desktop. This capability fundamentally reduces the amount of “friction” users encounter when trying to enter the Syscoin ecosystem – and that’s a big deal. Expect to see Changelly capabilities directly within Blockmarket Desktop soon.

The Road Ahead

Coming back from the conference we’re more excited than ever for the future of Syscoin and Blockchain Foundry. We also have more work to do than ever with the contact to followup with and the partnerships and opportunities those discussions with yield. Practically no one at the conference knew about Syscoin, much less Blockchain Foundry and what services we provide.

Simply by us being there a whole new group of high level, international investors is now aware of Syscoin and Blockchain Foundry. What’s more is that these are the types of investors we need to be targeting – real businesses looking to leverage Syscoin and the blockchain to their benefit or venture capitalists looking to add blockchain to their portfolio rather than day traders already familiar with Syscoin. While some of the team was busy in New York, Jag Sidhu was busy in Hawaii fostering new partnerships between Blockchain Foundry and the Government of Hawaii- which we’ll have even more details on next week.

As we follow-up with all of the investors and companies we interacted with at the conference we expect to see more and more opportunities opening up for Syscoin and Blockchain Foundry. Get ready to start seeing Syscoin becoming available in more and more places – both physical and digital, very soon!