Hi everyone. As per usual it’s been a busy week here at Aventus. With our first protocol component out of the way we are moving full steam ahead on our main-net first protocol beta release. Thanks to all of you who took part in the community poll. We have also had two new staff members joining us and the office is slowly starting to full up. Here’s what we’re going to be covering today:

Protocol update

Binance vote

Interview with Amin Siala

New team member! Meet Robyn, our Head of Communications

New team member! Meet Adrian, our Software Engineer

Voting Module

Protocol Update

On Tuesday we released our blog Aventus Protocol (Part 1): Deep Dive on Voting. In this we discuss the voting mechanics’ four phases: Setup, Lobbying, Voting & Revealing. We also dive deep into the implementation and round the blog off discussing the limitations and future work.

Binance Vote

Binance is a centralised exchange based out of China. The exchange claims to have solved many problem points found on substitute exchanges, such as Bittrex and Poloniex. The benefits include:

Multi-tiered & multi-clustered system architecture i.e. safety stability

Capability for processing 1,400,000 orders / second

High liquidity through abundant resources and partners

All devices are covered (Support Web, Android, Html5, Wechat, PC)

Multiple-Language Support

Multiple-Coin Support (BTC, ETH, LTC, BNB)

Would you like to see AVT listed on Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange?

Please cast your vote HERE

Interview with Amin Siala

Last week, we did a podcast with Amin Siala, who hosts Imperial College’s Business Podcast series. He interviewed us on our journey from the start of Aventus straight through to the token sale and beyond. We really enjoyed sitting down and chatting with him and hope you guys find it interesting too. It’s 1h20, but definitely worth it if you’d like to get to know a bit more about us.

New team member! Meet Robyn, our Head of Communications

Our new Head of Communications has joined us this week and we’re thrilled to have her working with us. We sat down with her on her first day and had a little chat:

Hi Robyn, its great to have you! Can you first introduce yourself please, tell us a bit about you?

Thanks, I’m glad to be here. Well I’m 23 years old and I currently live in Germany near Bremen, but I will be travelling across to London weekly to meet up with the team. English is my mother tongue, although I am pretty much fluent in German as well having spent a few years growing up here. I actually grew up all over, including South Africa, Germany, Cambridge (UK), London and Dubai. So I’m a bit of a global nomad.

What is it that you do at Aventus?

I will be taking on the role as Head of Communications.

Tell us a bit about your education and prior work experience — what did you work on, do you think any of the previous projects you worked on would be particularly applicable to what you will be doing at Aventus?

Sure! I studied a BSc in Architectural and Interdisciplinary Studies at University College London. 60% of my degree was based in the Bartlett School of Architecture and I had the opportunity to really push and develop my design and creative thinking skills. The remaining 40% of my degree was split across various departments at UCL. I have always had a keen interest in film and marketing and therefore chose to study modules in the Business School, as well as in the film department.

After graduating I moved to Dubai and joined a yacht brokerage as a marketing intern. I have always been a very driven and motivated person and I quickly worked my way up in the company to marketing manager. Not the easiest of tasks, as I had previously worked for the team I was now in charge of. I have never shied away from a challenge though. One of my main tasks at the firm included growing their social platforms by creating stimulating content and engaging the community. Video based content was key here. I believe this experience is vital to the position I am now in at Aventus. I may not be from a tech background (although I am learning quickly), however I have strong design, filmmaking and marketing skills, which I believe will be a great benefit to the company and add another dimension to the marketing.

When did you first hear and start learning about blockchain? What is the most interesting thing about it to you?

Initially I heard about it when Bitcoin begun to gain media coverage. However, I didn’t fully research it until Alan started his thesis on blockchain.

I think what I find most interesting is the fact that it can be applied in such a large number of ways and across so many different sectors. The endless possibilities make it truly exciting and it has the capacity to influence not only professionals, but also just your average person on the street. For example someone wanting to buy a ticket to an event for a fair price!

What do you hope to achieve at Aventus? What are you particularly excited to work on?

I aim to grow the existing platforms even further and start new platforms that community members can join and follows us on, such as Telegram Messenger and Facebook.

As I have already mentioned filmmaking is a passion of mine and I am probably most excited about making engaging video based content for the Aventus community. So watch this space!

How can the community get more involved with what you are doing at Aventus?

We are already present on many platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Discord & Linkedin and these are good places to follow us and get up-to-date news and information about Aventus. I will soon be launching a Facebook page and Telegram Messaging. We also have a blog, which has loads of useful information and our monthly mailing list is the perfect catch up/summary of all that’s going on. It would be great for the community to get more involved by perhaps suggesting the type of content they’d like to see. Just tweet us, as I go through all tweets daily and respond to as many as I can.

Why do you think Aventus is relevant for society, and specifically for ticketing?

I think blockchain companies, such as Aventus, are extremely relevant for our modern society. Blockchain helps eliminate human errors, it prevents exchanges taking place without the consent of all parties involved, … and the list goes on and on. A key feature is that it eliminates the risks that arise when data is stored centrally. Our privacy is vital and knowing that all online transactions we do are secure and trustworthy is imperative.

Applying this to the ticketing industry helps eliminate fraud, inflated prices in the secondary market and put simply will mean that people buying tickets don’t get ripped off or lose out and organizers can benefit from secondary market sales.

What are your hobbies?

I enjoy a lot of sports. Fun fact, I rode horses professionally for a while at a world famous stud in Germany. Great experience! However, one broken shoulder later and I decided to focus my attention back on an academic career. Otherwise I run most days and I love watersports like wakeboarding. Oh and I am a very keen baker (expect a lot of cakes in the office!!). Tuesdays aren’t Tuesdays without The Great British Bake Off.

New team member! Meet Adrian, our Software Engineer

Hi Adrian, its great to have you! Can you first introduce yourself please, tell us a bit about you?

Hi all, I am just a Spanish guy that went to university to study Computer Science because I liked computers. I learned to love programming and Java even before it was a decent language, then about 4 years ago I was introduced to Scala and, after a bit of a rough start, now I can’t live without a good functional language with a strong type system.

What is it that you do at Aventus?

I work as a Software Engineer, mainly focussing on back-end and functional programming. In summary, I make the clocks mechanism that no one notices as long as it works well. I am full of energy to drive the Aventus software forward.

Tell us a bit about your prior work experience — what did you work on, do you think any of the previous projects you worked on would be particularly applicable to what you will be doing at Aventus?

I have worked on ticketing before and I understand the domain and the tricky problems it brings so I hope my expertise can help solving problems before they arise.

I have experience working on highly available distributed systems that automatically and rapidly adapt to changing load requirements as well as designing resilient architectures that handle service degradation gracefully in adverse circumstances. I am sure this knowledge will come in handy when implementing next generation ticketing software in Aventus.

More recently I have been working on a large advertising company where I had an excellent opportunity to develop both my Scala and leadership skills while working as a tech and team lead. There is not a problem we cannot face as a team.

When did you first hear and start learning about blockchain? What is the most interesting thing about it to you?

I first heard about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies back in 2010, at the time it got me interested as cryptography was a subject that I loved but I never got past an academic interest.

The most interesting aspect of blockchain are the amazing prospects that it brings for technology and society. It has an immense potential to change the world for the better and I love being a part of it.

What do you hope to achieve at Aventus? What are you particularly excited to work on?

Because of my background in ticketing I feel the pain that uncontrolled touting is causing on fans, artists and the whole industry so I hope I can contribute to make a different in this area.

This just happens to be aligned with an excellent chance to grow my career by working on exciting new technologies and building an outstanding product.

How can the community get more involved with what you are doing at Aventus?

In my opinion the blockchain community has a huge potential to grow, for most people including many excellent developers, cryptocurrencies are like magic, however it all comes down to concepts that have been around for a long time used in clever ways.

We should lower the entry barrier and make this field more approachable for software enthusiasts on all levels to have an even healthier community to drive blockchain forward.

Why do you think Aventus is relevant for society, and specifically for ticketing?

Aventus will play a key role into improving the technology of a massive industry like ticketing. Implementing more open and fair practices and allowing ticketing agencies to give their customers a much better service.

Moreover, it is our plan to become a large contributor to the opensource community, producing quality tools that many could benefit from.

What are your hobbies?

I like to balance my time working with computers by doing trekking, going on motorcycle trips or having long sessions of board games with friends.

On the more geeky side of things, I love electronics and robotics and I have built some nice machines, some of them more clever than your average robotic vacuum cleaner! I also love computer games, particularly the strategy genre, and I both play and design (or try to) my own.

Voting Module

As promised by the end of the week the voting module will be released on the test network. We will publish a separate blog post covering this.