September 27, 2016

Ecosystem Updates

Spells of Genesis has launched the web version of the game and their team has been busy adding features which include in-game gain, achievements and leaderboards. Check out the announcement here. An unofficial Spells of Genesis Telegram group has also been created here.

A collaborative effort from EverdreamSoft and IndieSquare, Book of Orbs aims to bring players true ownership over digital game assets. The Book of Orbs beta launched on iOS and Android stores this month. Additional functionality is on the way and regular updates are provided on IndieSquare’s blog.

Force of Will (FoW), which is part of the ORB platform, ranks 4th in sales volume in the North American hobby channel collectible game category behind only Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic: The Gathering. Players will be able to acquire rare FoW cards on the Bitcoin blockchain, similar to SoG cards, by consuming WILLCOIN. Further details on WILLCOIN will be published soon. The beta version of the battle simulator has launched and the information can be found here.

BitGirls, which will air on Tokyo MX TV this fall, with 14.3 million households as potential viewers, allows viewers to vote for their favorite BitGirl via Counterparty tokens. BitGirls is a major announcement for Counterparty. Bringing blockchain voting to a nationally syndicated television show that will also be available worldwide will bring unprecedented visibility to Counterparty and Bitcoin. For more information please visit Bitgirls.io.

Storj has released SJCX Transparency Plan Part 1. Storj offered the following excerpt:

“tl;dr No more than 10 million SJCX per year added to the supply in 2016-2017. Updated plan no later than Q3 2017, after the production system has been running long enough to give us the necessary information.”

Storj also put out a new post titled Introducing KFS: a local file store inspired by Kademlia.

Zaif, a major Japanese cryptocurrency exchange with a daily average bitcoin trading volume that exceeds 5000btc, added support for Counterparty assets. Currently, XCP, ZAIF, BitCrystals and SJCX are available against JPY and BTC in addition to upcoming BitGirls support.

The Counterparty Slack has been experiencing imposter accounts of notable community members. Be vigilant and do not send money to anyone on the Slack. If you are unsure if the person you are speaking with is legitimate reach out to an admin. The team directory is also a helpful resource.

Several Counterparty community members have launched a rare pepe Telegram group, a specialized wallet service located here, a project HQ here and a directory of cards here.

Counterparty in the News

Counterparty community member Joe Looney’s website, https://btcpaymarket.com, was featured in an article by Live Bitcoin News.

Project ORB was covered by Bitcoinist and The Merkle.

A quote from The Merkle: “Two games will be supported during the initial stages. Spells of Genesis, which was to be expected, and the to-be-released Force of Will. Both games are trading card-style offerings, with tokenized in-game assets available through the {bitcoin} blockchain. Items from either game will be cross-compatible, which should make for an exciting ecosystem.”

Spells of Genesis performed their first game reset and introduced guilds.

“The purpose of the reset was to prepare for a new solo rewards season, giving players a fresh start to compete for spots on the solo leaderboards and attain new game items, according to EverdreamSoft’s marketing and communications manager, Markéta Korteova.”

“EverdreamSoft will continue to work on the game during the new season, preparing it for further launch phases. The addition of new features are on the horizon, which will be revealed as the subsequent two resets near.”

Full coverage of this event can be read on Bitcoinist.

Another notable article was written about Spells of Genesis titled Bitcrystals: Revolutionizing the Gaming Industry with Cryptocurrency.

Blockfreight was covered in Finance Magnates.

Alex Sterk hosted Shaban Shaame of SOG, Robert Ross of FoldingCoin and Christian Moss of MandelDuck on his show #Blocktalk.

BitGirls was covered by CryptoCoinNews, CoinTelegraph and the International Business Times, among other outlets.

Some excerpts from the CCN article:

“A Japanese TV show called ‘BitGirls’ will begin next month with a cryptocurrency theme. The show will feature interactive blockchain voting and a crowdsale to be hosted on a Japanese exchange, Zaif.”

“The BitGirls ICO will launch on Zaif on October 3, 2016. Each girl participating in the show will start a pre-sale of their own tokens, known as Torekabu, which will be sold in limited quantities. Additional tokens will be available after the weekly episode airs.”

“Every Torekabu token can be traded for bitcoin, ZAIF Counterparty tokens and XEM, the cryptocurrency of the NEM blockchain. Instead of issuing a dividend for the tokens, investors will have voting rights called ‘hyou.’”

Development Updates

Ethereum Virtual Machine

Ruben, who’s taken the lead on development of the EVM, came across a complex technical issue that’s delayed the release. The issue isn’t related to the base functionality of the EVM, but rather has to do with allowing smart contracts to hand off assets to second-level smart contracts. General token support will be available at launch and the deeper asset integration will be completed sometime after the initial launch on testnet. Smart contracts on Counterparty will use XCP for gas and will be executable based off bitcoin events such as address balances.

Subassets

Subassets add an additional classification to Counterparty assets. For example, the owner of PIZZA will be able to create subassets such as PIZZA.DOMINOS and PIZZA.ROUNDTABLE to the parent asset. When a subasset is created, a small amount of XCP will be burnt as a method of preventing spam on the network. The subasset fee has a secondary effect of increasing the utility of XCP.

Subassets greatly increase the utility of tokens. If a project needs to issue assets with common terms like XCPASSET.STOCK, XCPASSET.PASSKEY or GAMENAME.SWORD it will be able to do so under a single parent token. This has exciting implications for blockchain game developers as well, who will have the ability to create tokens that are in the format of GAMENAME.CARDNAME.

P2SH (Pay to Script Hash)

Bare multi-sig functionality was recently broken by a change in Bitcoin Core and is not currently supported, which impacted the functionality of Counterwallet. P2SH is bare multi-sig’s successor and will allow users to secure their funds in the same way that bare multi-sig did in the past. Technical information regarding P2SH can be found on Ruben’s GitHub and in the official Counterparty forums.

Payment Channels and Atomic Swaps

Storj and F483 have completed their work on payment channels and atomic swap functionality. Once segregated witness is activated in Bitcoin Core, payment channels and atomic swaps will be activated in Counterparty. Technical information regarding payment channels and atomic swaps can be found at picopayments on GitHub.

Bounty and Developer Program

The Counterparty community directors have outlined initial guidelines for an upcoming bounty and donation program. The plan is still being refined internally and a formal announcement is planned for a release this week. The purpose of the program is to fund specific development initiatives and 100% of funds will go to that purpose.

Join the Counterparty XCP group on Telegram for breaking news and real-time Counterparty conversation.

Counterparty based Telegram groups: