April (IV)

Welcome, dear Nxters and other followers!

Spring is a time for growth and the crypto community sure is growing. With growth comes growing pains like exit scams. With growth comes news that South Korea’s largest token exchange is going to have an ICO, in Switzerland. Growth requires effort, work, time. This newsletter started small, tiny, insignificant. But with time, and much hard work, we slowly grew. We continue to grow and reach tens of thousands of readers every week – but we know we can do better with your help!

Last week saw a lot of interesting news from the world of Nxt / Ardor / Ignis. Several great videos of Lior Yaffe, the co-founder of Jelurida, answering community questions were released, a new Ardor / Ignis paper wallet generator was released, there is a new UI proposal for the NXT marketplace, more news on lightweight contracts, and a passionate plea for assistance from YOU – yes YOU, reading this right now…with your eyes! All this and more below.

We welcome back our old readers and warmly welcome our new ones. We want our readers to stay up-to-date with the blockchain evolution and we also want our readers to keep themselves and, their data, as safe as possible. Become experts in the Nxt / Ardor / Ignis blockchain ecosystem. So lean back and learn about all of last week’s progress.

COMMUNITY

Jelurida – Update Q&A Videos Why are Ardor Child Chains a good choice for Business? Why Using Java in Ardor makes your life Easier?



MEETUPS

BUSINESSES ON ARDOR

DEVELOPMENT

IN THE MEDIA

PRICE EVOLUTION

This week’s newsletter is put together by apenzl, Jose, James, and rubenbc.

COMMUNITY

Prior to Jelurida going to Barcelona to attend Meetups and pitch at the 4YFN event, the Nxt and Ardor community members got a chance to post their questions to Jelurida on nxtforum.org. Lior Yaffe answered those same questions in front of a camera during his time in Spain, and now the videos of his answers are being released. We are looking forward to seeing more released in the near future.

Veronica wrote:

Hello Everyone! We are pleased to begin sharing our Q&A video series with Lior. We will start by addressing some of the most strong selling points of Ardor, Jelurida, and Blockchain as a Service. Stay posted here, and subscribe to our YouTube page!

Why are Ardor Child Chains a good choice for Business?

Lior spoke about how business-friendly Ardor’s parent/child architecture is for small-medium sized companies.

Why using Java in Ardor makes your life Easier?

This second video caused a few heated discussions on the ArdorNxt.slack, as it is not emphasized that even though Nxt and Ardor are programmed in Java, any other language CAN be used with its API.

Lior elaborated in writing:

APIs can be developed in any language. The challenge is that while any language can be used, if we don’t provide the libraries to implement the basics like local signing and decimal conversions and encryption it will be costly for anyone to use it. That’s why we stress Java for server side and Javascript for client side. I mean, with Java and Javascript you can use this cheat sheet for example and not reinvent the wheel: [Ardor Cheat Sheet] Building these APIs in Python is possible but will take you a couple of weeks. Don’t misunderstand it is very important for the corporate world, less for the public community.

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Hodl the Coin

Limesoda, an Austrian Web Agency, released a small addictive game last week, the HODL-ARDOR game. The game is a Flappy Birds clone whereby you try and “HODL” your ARDR token for as many “days” as possible.

Some well-known Nxters already devoted some time to play this game:

Moreover, Alexander Pfeiffer, director of the Institute for Applied Game Research at Danube University Krems, showed this game at a lecture in the series “Subotron Pro Games”, held on April 19th:

Alexander Pfeiffer also presented numerous other examples of the creative use of blockchain in the game industry.

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FreeBird 2.0.1 Released

This is the first release of FreeBird 2.0. As mentioned in some previous Nxter newsletters, FreeBird 2.0 is a former Nxt application developed by Nxt community member “goodrain”, that is now being issued on Ignis. Freebird 1.0 will continue to run on the Nxt blockchain.

With FreeBird, you can publish a microblog, send public and private messages, like, follow, RT, comment, forward messages and tip authors in a decentralized way. The low fees on the Ignis chain make it a good use case for writers who do not want to risk their blog being shut down. Make sure the Ardor client is running before you open FreeBird 2.0. The development progressed faster than expected, so FreeBird 2.0 has been issued faster than expected.

Change log:

Use ARDOR wallet instead of NXT wallet;

Record nickname in data message;

Record follow & cancel follow actions in data message;

Removed fb.permanentData property. Always use prunable messages to store data.

Using FBC2.0 (ignis asset:10901629157658360185) to publish data; Note:

You should run ardor-client before running FreeBird.

It will take some extra time to download the data from ardor-client.

To send messages with Freebird you need FBC assets and NXT/IGNIS.

You can find ICO details by sell orders:

FBC 1.0 : NXT asset id 17582972238882915337

FBC 2.0 : Ardor asset id 10901629157658360185

The issuing account is NXT-P8B2-RE3T-US43-ANLZW / ARDOR-P8B2-RE3T-US43-ANLZW.

Source

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Ardor / Ignis – Paper Wallet Generator

Bitcointalk user, box0211, (box1413 on nxtforum) announced the release of a customizable paper wallet for Ardor and its child chains – along with other coins. Paper wallets make great gifts of small amounts of crypto – so it is a great way to physically send a friend some ARDR or IGNIS.

He wrote:

Paper wallets are very good for adoption as it can be easily gifted to newcomers to the space. The Ardor paper wallet is compatible with Ignis and all childchains, even AEUR. The background art can also be changed to fit a theme or for specific company marketing. Use any email / pass or just put in something random. Feedback on these would be great. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3335760.0

Main Features

Bitcoin segwit bech32 paper wallets

Monero, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ardor/Ignis paper wallet and graphics

User changeable background for easy customization. (Gifts, Birthdays, Weddings, Promotions, etc.)

Generates unique multiple cryptocurrencies with a username passphrase combination

Identicon integration for a visual representation of your address.

Scrypt hardened to make brute force guessing almost impossible. Address generation is both memory and time-intensive.

Multi-Key paper wallets using Shamir Secret Sharing Scheme. (WIP).

Keep in mind these paper wallets are meant to store small insignificant amount of coins which are meant to be given away as gifts or for short term storage. Even with a simple 8 character passphrase, the scrypt address generation is meant to be memory and time-intensive so others can’t easily guess your secret.

Generate Paper Wallet

Source

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Exchanges

A new week brings new challenges and new crypto exchanges and we compiled a simple and easy to digest list of the latest relevant changes. Opportunities to demonstrate support for ARDR / IGNIS and good old NXT are still out there:

http://bit.ly/Ignis-Ardor-Exchange-Progress

Vote to list NXT / IGNIS / ARDR on more Exchanges

Lior wrote:

With regards to [new] exchanges, we are competing for exchange listing with 100’s of other projects, some are better funded and with 0 substance so exchange listing for them is do or die. Some exchanges ask for ridiculous fees, just last week we had an exchange that nobody heard about, asking for a 15 BTC listing fee. Some exchanges has a policy to only list ERC20 tokens, some are upgrading their infrastructure, some would list us but want to charge 20% commission for every trade. This is an ongoing process. We will get there.

Readers like you can actively help to get Nxt / Ardor / Ignis listed on crypto exchanges.

Bithumb

Let your voice be heard:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzAZF-CnfquN4MomAOzoWb_GZEUl9PZmtLQi18Cfg4sZPJXg/viewform

https://twitter.com/BithumbOfficial/status/974560572451598336

Dontoshi

You can vote for NXT/ARDR/IGNIS:

https://dontoshi.featureupvote.com/suggestions/6975/nxtdecentralizing-the-future

https://dontoshi.featureupvote.com/suggestions/6945/ardor-platform-ardr

https://dontoshi.featureupvote.com/suggestions/7053/ignis-coin

CoinPulse

You can also vote for NXT/ARDR/IGNIS here:

https://request.coinpulse.io/suggestions/7170/nxt-coin-decentralizing-the-future

https://request.coinpulse.io/suggestions/7171/ardor-platform-ardr

https://request.coinpulse.io/suggestions/7172/ignis-coin

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MEETUPS

Meetup Reminders (By Order)

Meetup in Madrid: BLOCKCHAIN – SMART CONTRACTS, on May 7th

The second edition of Campus Madrid’s Blockchain for Business Meetups will introduce you to the concept of Smart Contracts. Also, the Ardor testnet will be demonstrated. Make sure to bring your own laptop, download the client and gain hands-on experience with IGNIS and ARDR.

Join the Meetup

The first edition of the Blockchain for Business Madrid Meetup was recorded, and the well-prepared session is truly a must-see for everyone with an interest in Nxt, Ardor, Ignis, other child chains, BaaS, Jelurida, and business adoption of the tech we love:

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BUSINESSES ON ARDOR

Janus – Status Update

We received news about the JNSHash mining operation, which is expected to go live in May, see below. In the meantime, Janus is highly active with their Kreds project, with their first scraper site online and a growing community in that space. Also, expect a new Nxter “Under the Knife” interview with the Janus team coming soon.

We are excited to announce that Kreds ($KREDS) has been listed on @southxchange. Start trading pair:https://t.co/IOluPI7nED

Happy trading!

Onwards and Upwards.#Buyintoprojectswithproducts #UnlockthePotential pic.twitter.com/3I0jxUybnL — KredsBlockchain (@kredsblockchain) April 20, 2018

The $Kreds team is working on a web wallet to make it easier to onboard website users that Kreds #cryptocurrency is integrated with. Launched in February follow the progress @kredsblockchain and product @KredsPolitics — Janus (@Janus_Token) April 22, 2018

JNSHash UPDATE

bjorn writes, today:

The building owner stated May 1st we could move in and begin setup. This is based on his construction team finishing the framing and drywall of the facility and installation of the first 400 amps electric. Once that is ready we can begin getting the building filled with all the equipment. It requires several people to get this setup we have all the parts but need to create a new rack system. It will take some time even after may 1st. As we are starting with a room, need to hang drop outlets, set up network, cards, rigs, etc. Then a major change to the system and payouts is required via an exchange system. Hashpower exchange versus our methods from last year announced. We have a developer working on that now and if everything goes as planned then the exchange for hashpower and the mining rigs should coincide when ready.

Follow Janus on Telegram and Twitter



Do you want more info about Kreds? Visit: https://www.kredsblockchain.com/

Janus asset ID on the ARDOR platform: 4348103880042995903

Here is how to Claim your Kreds Balance if you are a Janus Holder.

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Bitswift Childchain Update

Last week Bitswift launched their Ardor forging pool, and updated its community with the following news:

sleepysmurf at nxtforum:

Ardor forging pool has come online.

Please check https://bitswift.network for details.

bitswiftbro:

Over 2 Million Ardor now forging on Bitswift pool.

Not bad for a 1 week old new pool… Bitswift LZLZ approaching the top 10 block generators

Moreover, sleepysmurf also stated:

https://bitswift.io – our dedicated blockchain / token site has come online. Please check it out.

Join Bitswift on Telegram, Discord, and Reddit.

Learn more about the Bitswift ecosystem

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DEVELOPMENT

C’mon, Let’s Do It!

Growing is not a passive activity, it requires time and energy. Sure, you passively can sit there, watching market caps and price evolvements on CMC and wait for Jelurida to make all your dreams come true, as a NXT / ARDR / IGNIS / child chain token holder. Or you can take action and be a Nxter, and help grow the community and the ecosystem. Realize that with the already existing tech from the Nxt and Ardor core devs, almost anything is possible.

Bitcoin and Ethereum currently have the network effect. Nxt and Ardor do not, not now at least, but have the working solutions to many of the problems that such other coins and platforms are still trying to solve, on paper. We have the solutions, but not the network. To grow we need YOUR HELP, and we know that there are just so many talented members of our community who can help us.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO CODE TO HELP US. If you do not write code but are an artist like DarkSideJosh, a simple blog writer like me, a social media guy like zuqka, or if you have skills in other relevant areas, like marketing, business development, accounting, even proofreading or philosophy, and you know what the Nxt or Ardor blockchain platforms are capable of, have the vision of what is to come, oh man, you should be part of this weekly newsletter as well. We turn down sponsored posts from Ethereum devs, Bancor and obscure ICO projects weekly, because we, at Nxter, believe in the tech we represent.

You should join us. Help us to grow the adoption, the blockchains, make a real impact. Is this development? If you read all the weekly updates from us, you know it is!

New and old readers will know we have Jelurida, the brilliant brains behind the core tech, newly incorporated, in a company that owns the IP and sells private Nxt solutions and Ardor child chains to make money (!) so that they can keep going, keep inventing, and yes, keep updating the public blockchains, which are decentralized and permissionless. Be they flagships or showcases for Jelurida – they are public blockchains, ours and open to anyone. You know, we have an ecosystem of Nxters, community members, exchanges, developers, anon and public speakers, real businesses, and investors, who care deeply about all this.

But is it cool to write this? Even if it is, should it be in the developer’s section of the Nxt newsletter, wouldn’t it be way better for SEO reasons, and for readers, to make this rant an independent post, and maybe even post it on Steemit or Medium, not on nxter.org?

You are likely right, but TBH, I don’t care. Less than a year ago, I was part of a decentralized community, a starfish experiment that just so happened to also develop the most groundbreaking blockchain technology out there, and the core devs still keep doing it. We gave birth to projects like NEM, Waves, IOTA, KMD, Sia had their ICO on Nxt, Jinn did, just to mention a few. Now things are different, sure. My next rant will be in an independent post, and maybe the core devs, now Jelurida, will become better at sending targeted sales letters to the press and only saying what people like to hear, not what problems they are working on. Until then – take this as a shout-out to all active community members, all Nxters from around the world, who are blogging, hosting or attending meetups, creating applications or just brainstorming them, airing their knowledge of our tech on forums worldwide, and also to investors who make donations to projects like ours, or simply buy and HODL, because they know it is going to be worthwhile. Thank you.

There are plenty of ways to contribute and help expand our ecosystem. Some play around with the code, eventually turn their projects into businesses, crowdfund them on the Nxt or Ignis blockchain, or with AEUR, or make use of the fact that we’re still so small that the core devs will answer your dev questions themselves in Slack or on nxtforum. Educate yourself here, for free, and you will be well fitted for a great future.

We, at Nxter.org, see ourselves as a loudspeaker for growth. We have our social media channels, our website, an email list of 50K+ subscribers, a bunch of great people, core team or more loosely connected, from all over the world, who are up to moving this venture forwards. What we need is more people, more hands, more Nxters. If you want to help, with anything, send a message to EAVH-SLEV-KSEE-EE2KP, or email us here.

Walletnxt.com – Third-Party Wallet – Update

Development is quickly progressing with the WalletNxt multi-chain mobile wallet. Last week we learned that there is now an online version plus a download for Mac and Windows available. Works with NXT, of course, but also with your ARDR and Ardor child chain tokens.

Zhang wrote:

Online Mobile Wallet: http://h5.walletnxt.com/

From the official website: http://walletnxt.com/EN

Source

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NXT DGS Optimizations

Speaking of the community: member “Right.Here” from nxtforum created this project to update the Nxt Marketplace (formerly known as the Digital Goods Store (DGS)) section with a sleek and more modern UI that is ready for installation.

He wrote the following instructions:

Hi after reading in our favorite magazine nxter.org that there will be a big UI relooking, I decided to share my modest work in the hope that it will be useful and maybe will add some green in my account well, this is the codes for NXT (only) marketplace, i will publish the codes for the NBCK in its relative topic here

https://nxtforum.org/nxt-blockchain-creation-kit/dgs-optimizations/ to try, download NXT-DGS.zip from here (link in green):

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=28137852009882414436 extract it (to folder) you will find 3 files, you just have to:

– remove nrs.dgs.js file here: …

xt\html\www\js

rs.dgs.js and replace it with the file from the zip file – remove the dgs.html here: …

xt\html\www\html\pages\dgs.html and replace it with the file from the zip file – open the “add.to.app.css” file with a text editor or an IDE and copy paste the lines in it to …

xt\html\www\css\app.css at the very end of the file after the last } clean your browser cache… refresh the wallet and open the DGS enjoy and good continuation

The link for the NBCK modified DGS…

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=89824987339145637292 the same way here to add it in your NBCK (not in NXT)

https://nxtforum.org/index.php?topic=9305.msg242538;topicseen#msg242538 the difference between this one and that for NXT is the automatic display of the coin symbol … the rest of the code is the same I added in this version a failover that displays a replacement image in the caousel…in case there are no products with images in the last 50 listed products… Enjoy and good continuation 😀

Source

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Weekly Reminder – About Lightweight Contracts

Last week Lior Yaffe introduced the concept of Jelurida’s new, and truly promising, Lightweight Contracts functionality. Knowing that the pruning of data is a cornerstone feature of the Ardor Platform, the community has raised some very cogent questions. The following question from the forums spotlight important distinctions about how it works and underlines the importance of having archival nodes:

Pask:

A question, if there is pruning [of Ardor child chains] every so often, a smartcontract that always read the temperature of New York and write it in the blockchain, the information will be pruned and sent to the file nodes, but will the light contracts also be pruned?

Lior:

Both the contract and the information registered by the contract will be pruned eventually. Once the contract is pruned, nodes still running the contract, will continue to run it until the node is restarted. Once restarted the node will try to restore the pruned contract from any archival node which still stores it.

Read more about Archival Nodes

An introduction and FAQ about the new Lightweight Contracts concept can be found on Lior’s blog.

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IN THE MEDIA

Lior Yaffe in Medium – Oracle Contracts on Ardor

An Oracle, in the context of the blockchain, is a process which retrieves information from an external resource and registers it on that blockchain. These Oracles provide a bridge between the blockchain and external resources and with Ardor, do so very efficiently. The ability to develop and deploy them quickly is important for any smart contracts ecosystem and Ardor lightweight contracts provide a flexible and straightforward mechanism to develop Oracles which can interface with any external resource which offer an API interface, even those behind paywalls.

Lior wrote:

As you recall from my previous articles Lightweight Contracts , Lightweight Contracts FAQ, and More Advanced Contracts, Ardor contracts are not executed by every node like Ethereum contracts. Instead, they are executed by one or more selected nodes. This makes the Ardor contracts ideal for Oracle implementation for loading information from external resources and recording it on the blockchain. To summarize, Oracles provide a bridge between the blockchain and external resources. The ability to develop and deploy them quickly and efficiently is essential for any smart contracts ecosystem. Ardor lightweight contracts provide a simple and flexible mechanism to develop Oracles which can interface with any external resource which provides API interface, including resources which require authenticated access or even paid services.

Source

CoinDoo – Ardor Review

This post does a good job explaining what Ardor is to someone who has never heard of it. While not rigorous in details, it is useful enough to include here.

They wrote:

Ardor works with Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. That means the mining activity isn’t involved. Also, the Ardor platform is a Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) model. It allows developers create their own applications using the usual programming languages, such as C# or Java. The high security is guaranteed. Anyone can create its own digital currency using the Ardor platform. This makes the blockchain be more accessible than Ethereum, for example. The platform was designed to also solve the existing blockchain problems related to scalability and bloating process. To solve the dilemmas with the high size of files, Jelurida (the team behind the Nxt and Ardor blockchains) implemented a new architecture, called Child Chains. That’s how Ardor became the main chain or the parent chain. Its functionality is to assure a strong security to the whole network.

Source

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Cryptouniversity.nl – Wat is het Ardor (ARDR) en waar kan ik het kopen?

This Dutch language article is entitled: What is Ardor (ARDR) and where can I buy it? It provides a long overview of Ardor and at the end highlights several third-party exchanges where users can obtain ARDR. Note, this article assumes a working familiarity with crypto.

PRICE EVOLUTION

TradingView – ARDR/BTC by ilothebest



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TradingView – ARDR LOOKING JUICY HERE!

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TradingView – NeXT Generation 26 Day by Quickies



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TradingView – Ardor Cup and Handle by kperMan



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Weekly NXT/ARDR/IGNIS Price Evolution

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

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

The following graphic shows the IGNIS / Bitcoin exchange price at Bittrex over the past couple days:

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That is all for this week, Nxters. Follow us on Twitter or Telegram for important breaking updates during the week as they happen. The blockchain world, like the flowers, is blooming and the sky is not even close to the limit of the potential for this great technology. See you back here next week! We will keep you updated on the growing world of distributed ledger technology.

Help Nxter.org grow and help us continue to provide excellent and focused coverage on the ever-growing blockchain space by rewarding us for our hard efforts. Donation address: NXT-TK9J-MEKH-MUP9-HFCH2 / ARDOR-TK9J-MEKH-MUP9-HFCH2.

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