Wow, what a whirlwind week! Between back-to-back, post-Consensus follow-ups, dev meetings, beta bashing, podcast interviews, and community initiatives I feel like time has been flying! There’s a lot to update you on today, so let’s jump right in.

Post-upgrade test network goes public

Our post-upgrade test network, version 1.0.8, is now available for public use and has support for tiered masternodes, PoS v3, atomic swaps, SegWit addresses, and HTLCs. If you’d like to tinker with it, there is information about how on our wiki.

Contact me on Telegram if you’d like some test funds.

New Hires

We’re pleased to announce that a new UX designer, Mathias Aspegren, will be joining our team. Mathias is a professional User Experience & Digital Designer who is passionate about digital product development and enjoyable user experiences across touchpoints. With eight years of experience, he has excellent insight into translating complex information into intuitive user interfaces and converting solutions that focus on users, their behavior, and their needs.

Mathias has helped a large number of Denmark's largest brands and retailers with digital solutions, including Danish Bank, Denmark’s national bank, Audi Denmark, Nescafé, and many more.

We have had dozens of candidates apply for our lead blockchain engineering position, and we are beginning to narrow them down to the final contenders. The decision will not be an easy one, but I’m encouraged by the level of skill and passion that the applicants possess. Engineers from some of the top projects in the space are vying for a spot with Divi, and I know that whomever we choose will be an excellent fit for our culture and vision.

Mobile progress

This week, Dmitry was out of the office for vacation, but we were still able to make significant progress towards the launch of the mobile Smart Wallet.

We developed and stabilized a notification system so that users receive instant notifications about incoming rewards, masternodes successfully deployed, send and receive confirmations, and application errors.

Additionally, we continued to fix bugs, improve the UX, and began scoping and designing the user on-boarding flow.

Partnerships

Our partnership with Etch grows ever stronger as we begin to scope out exactly what our business relationship will look like moving forward and tag team media engagements.

We are also in preliminary negotiations with a fiat payments company to partner with them to create a currency agnostic platform that includes both cryptocurrency and fiat payments. Stay tuned for more information on that as things move forward.

Our partnership with FreeTalk Live will commence next week with a tentative recording scheduled with Tim Sanders and Geoff McCabe.

Media

This week has been incredible for earned media. Check out some of the coverage we’ve gotten below.

Blockchain South Africa Presentation

A few months back, I visited Johannesburg, South Africa to deliver a presentation on how User Experience can be improved to lower the “Friction Tax” created by cryptocurrency applications in their current state. Check out the recording below:

‘Stache My Crypto Podcast

I appeared on the influential ‘Stache My Crypto Podcast with Shea Newkirk, where we discussed Masternodes, Proof of Stake, and earning an income with cryptocurrency.

I talk with @NSapProductions from the @DiviProject about how Masternodes work, why they are a good source of passive income in cryptocurrency, and how much of a niche it really is within the crypto ecosystem#crypto #passiveincome #masternode #DIVIhttps://t.co/grfBqvOU10 pic.twitter.com/tdKb7b5rbo — The 'Stache (@CryptoStache) May 22, 2019

Masternodes Buzz

We received multiple mentions on Masternodes.Buzz this week.

Crypto Rich

Divi CEO, Geoff McCabe and Etch CEO, Euros Evans appeared on Crypto Rich’s channel to talk about the partnership between our organizations.

Bad Crypto Podcast

My Consensus 2019 update with the Bad Crypto guys aired this week. You can hear it around the 20:00 mark.

Top 10 Best Performing Masternode

Divi was featured in the top ten best performing masternodes this week by Masternodes Buzz.

Community articles

Two community articles were published this week by avid Divi fans.

Wrote a little something about diversity and what it means for adoption. Oh and the great work being done by @DiviProject

https://t.co/4DWfqI3Zhr — KT [ - Divi Enthusiast - ] (@KTDivi) May 23, 2019

Upcoming events

I will be delivering a presentation on earning an income with Masternodes and Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies at the next Cryptos & Tokens meetup in Irvine, CA on May 30th. It’s a free event and I’d love to see some of our community show support!

As always, have a great weekend, and if you have any questions, find us on Telegram or the Forum