February is in the books and it’s been an extremely successful month for the IOST team. We’ve made serious progress on our code and are looking forward to launching our MVP private test net (v0.1 Apollo) in the near future. We also added several talented advisors to the team, built several international strategic partnerships, and were listed on new exchanges. This week two of our founders spent time in Korea setting up a permanent office, we announced a slogan contest, and we’ve put the finishing touches on the beta for our website rework.

Korea

Jimmy and Ray flew to Korea this week to set up our permanent office there. Jaebin Lee will be the Korean Regional Manager for the Internet of Services. He graduated from KAIST — one of the most prestigious STEM schools in Korea, and previously worked at Samsung and the Boston Consulting Group. He is an angel investor and has been a crypto investor since 2014. Jaebin has a depth of experience in cryptocurrency and team management. We are thrilled to have him and are highly confident that his deep knowledge and understanding of the Korean market will be an invaluable resource.

Jaebin Lee

While in Korea, Jimmy and Ray took the opportunity to speak with several major Korean exchanges, including Korbit. They also met with the team from Hashed — Korea’s most famous cryptocurrency fund. Korea is one of the most important markets for the cryptocurrency industry and the IOST team plans to enrich our ecosystem with Korean businesses partners. We are excited to make Korea one of the focal points of our global growth plan.

The IOST team also had the pleasure of speaking with Hani, a large Korean traditional media company, and got to know the coindesk Korea team. Jimmy sat down for an in-depth interview and once it is published, we will be translating it into several languages.

Developer Updates

1. [Transactions] Transaction deployment and execution on blockchain in testing.

2. [Nodes] Commitment of transactions on nodes wrapped. Delivery service module is about code and test complete.

3. [Ledger] All State modules and transition modules implementation begun. Re-construction of state logic still in testing.

4. [Issue tracking] Issue tracking rule is finalized and formally enforced.

Slogan contest

The slogan contest has been an enormous success and we are excited to pick the winners in the coming weeks. Everyone on our team will cast several votes among the most promising options in order to pick the winners. The entire IOST team is looking forward to seeing what the community has come up with! If you have yet to submit a slogan, there is still time to participate. The deadline is 11:00 AM (EST) on Friday March 2nd.

Website Rework

The redesign for the official IOST website is ready to roll. We’ll be launching it for a select group of users first. Once we receive their feedback, we will be launching the new version to the general public. The new website will help to make our vision more accessible.