Welcome to the tenth edition of the Expanse Newsletter for 2018. This publication is a bi-monthly newsletter issued on the 1st and 15th of each month to share happenings within our community. Here are a few highlights in this edition:

The Airdrops You Have All Been Waiting For

Our team of engineers in Islamabad has been busy developing use cases for airdrops planned for both EXP and LAB tokenholders. We are excited to report that development for the following airdrop categories is approved and well underway. Although the development is not complete, we expect to announce concrete plans in our next newsletter:

Tokens based on signing up for an airdrop opportunity

Tokens issued upon phone verification

Tokens issued for sharing the web site and blogs on social media

Tokens issued for contributions to the community.

Random issuing of tokens for free

We are very excited about this development and the opportunity to provide even more rewards to our loyal community.

Meet the Latest Additions to Expanse.tech’s Growing Team

This week we are announcing two new awesome team members. Although we’ve added many other new development engineers and opened a new office in Islamabad, they will be the focus of the next newsletter.

Meet our new writer, Jitendra “Jay” Rathod. Jay has a Master’s Degree in Microbiology. He was a professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology in a college where he taught these subjects to students of the graduate and post graduate courses, for eight years. He, however, realised that his passion was writing and quit his job to make a career in it. He has been a content writer for more than eight years now and has worked for many companies in a wide variety of industries. He has led content teams and has created, and successfully executed, content marketing campaigns for many clients. Jay will lead the newsletter and blog development efforts for Expanse. Jay is also a passionate believer in the limitless possibilities of the blockchain technology and wishes to see a world seamlessly running on it. Soyal Abjal Momin joins our team as a Consultant who will help us get Tokenlab and Expanse listed on more exchanges. Soyal has extensive experience and a long record of success in listing of coins/tokens on exchanges. He also supports the nitty-gritties of ICOs. Having inside knowledge of various exchanges, Soyal is in an enviable position to help blockchain enterprises save on listing fees of coin developers. He is based in India.

StreamCoins Alpha Launches

Stream Coins alpha has launched. You can access Alpha Here. The alpha is enabled on twitch.tv/ExpanseOfficial and with it, you can create a wallet and tip others. We will soon be enabling loyalty rewards and start migrating EXPB to StreamCoins.

StreamCoins is a platform that content creators always wanted but never got. Well, now they have one and it comes powered with a cryptocurrency. StreamCoins is a platform for content creators to integrate the EXP tokens into their streams. As a content streamer, you join the platform, create a wallet, fund it and invite the bot into your channel. It is essentially a Twitch Bot that rewards viewers with EXP tokens just for viewing a stream. It also has a tipping feature built within it. If you like the stream of a creator, you can tip him or her. Users can also tip each other if they provide something of value to one another.

Streamcoins Alpha is now live with limited functionality. Currently the wallet, twitch bot and tipping are enabled. When we are satisfied that the platform is indeed secure, we will be enabling the loyalty rewards.

So, stay tuned for more info about the progress of this exciting platform.

The Expanse Grants Program

Expanse.tech has created a $1,000,000 development fund to provide financial grants to innovative projects built in and around Expanse. Awards range from $5,000 to $50,000, and there are no strings attached: you continue to own your IP, are free to publish however you wish, and can use the grant funds without any restrictions or obligations to Expanse except all projects must use the Expanse network in some way.

The grant process is a linear lifecycle that starts with creating the funding opportunity, applying, making award decisions, and successfully awarding the grant.

The specific actions along the lifecycle are grouped into three main phases. Each of the three phases has its own page that provides a more detailed look at the process:

Pre-Award Phase – Funding Opportunities and Application Review

Award Phase – Award Decisions and Notifications

Post Award – Implementation, Reporting, and Closeout

Grant Pre-Award Phase

Application Review Process

Once the application submission deadline passes, the awarding team gets to work on reviewing the applications. The specific process for reviewing an application varies based on the type of grant you applied for. The generally applicable steps are as follows:

Initial screening to ensure application is complete

Programmatic review and assessment of the substance of the applications

Financial review of proposed budgets

Award decision and announcement

Initial Screening of Application

In the initial screening, sometimes called a basic minimum requirements review, the grants team will check each proposal to make sure it includes all the requirements to qualify for the grant. What the specific requirements are will vary for each grant, but common elements are – eligibility, whitepaper, stage of development and budget attachment.

The key for the initial screening is that the grants team is looking for the presence of the required element, not the quality of the element. If your application does not meet all of these basic requirements, then your application is likely to be rejected.

Programmatic Review and Assessment of Applications

The remaining applications undergo a thorough review and assessment for their technical and programmatic quality and competency. Again, this varies depending on the type of grant you applied for. We plan to open up the review process to the community later and allow for public voting.

A common format is a peer review panel of at least three people, who assess and score each application independently. Then, the peer review panel will convene to discuss the merits of the applications. A series of policies and assurances are in place to maintain a fair, objective process based on material facts in the applications and without conflicts of interest (COI) for the peer reviewers. The Expanse Grants staff monitor and participate in this review process.

Financial Review

While an application may have technical and programmatic quality, your budget also needs to be well-documented and realistic. The Expanse Grants team conducts a cost analysis, reviewing each line item and the overall proposed budget to ensure compliance with statutory and financial regulations. Additionally, the financial review also factors in the total budget for the grant program in relation to how much money each application requests.

GRANT AWARD PHASE

Once we complete the application review process, the Award Phase begins. The final award decisions rest solely in the hands of the Expanse Grants staff with fiduciary responsibility and legal authority to enter into binding agreements. Expanse Grants staff review and make award recommendations based on the programmatic and financial reviews of the applications. These recommendations are reviewed by a series of levels in the agencies to ensure high-quality, fair, and unbiased decisions.

NOTICE OF AWARD

Once the final award decisions are made, the awarding agency sends a Notice of Award (NOA) to the entities selected for funding. The NOA is the official, legally binding issuance of the award. When you or your organization accepts the grant (i.e., by signing the grant agreement or by drawing down funds) you become legally obligated to carry out the full terms and conditions of the grant.

GRANT POST AWARD PHASE

The post award phase comprises a significant amount of work over the duration of the award dates, which includes implementing the grant, reporting progress, and completing the closeout requirements. The Expanse Grants team that gives the award to you is also there to assist you and ensure that you or your organization complies with the grant terms and conditions. Your job is to faithfully and diligently carry out the grant program.

REPORTING

The agency monitors your progress and expenditures through various programmatic and financial reporting procedures, as well as using performance metrics per the grant agreement. While the majority of award recipients carry out the grants ethically and efficiently, these monitoring procedures are necessary to maintain transparency and to prevent fraud and abuse.

The awarding team typically has a grants management officer and program officer designated to each grant, both of which you will work with throughout the life of the grant. They are the ones who will review reports and conduct site visits, so we recommend you build an effective line of communication with these staff members. It is better to prevent issues by talking to your grant and program officers to clarify grant terms or expectations than it is to submit a report and wait for problems to be identified and recourse initiated.

The specific reporting requirements, schedules, and systems can vary for each grant, so please check with your grant management officer for the grant terms and conditions carefully for this information.

CLOSEOUT

The closeout step is where the grant process ends. In order to complete a closeout, you, the award recipient, must submit the final financial and programmatic reports. The receipt must submit all financial, performance, and other reports required under the grant within 90 days after the grant award expires or is terminated. The Expanse Grants staff will review these reports to ensure compliance will all the grant terms and conditions as well as to make sure you spent all the funds appropriately.

How do you know when a grant is officially over?

The Expanse Grants team will confirm that the recipient has completed all of the required grant work and all the applicable administrative tasks. Until the Expanse Grants team confirms this, you are still responsible for fulfilling all the terms of the grant. The closeout process can take several months if there are financial concerns or questions to reconcile. Also, if you or your organization acquired any property using grant funding, the closeout step is when you must make sure to handle this property exactly as the grant stipulates, which includes completing the appropriate reports on this property. Lastly, you are typically required to retain your grant records for at least three years from the date of the final expenditure report.

Strategic Partnership Between Expanse and AnyTrade

AnyTrades was born as a project that seeks to provide crypto users with access to the benefits of large capitals, regardless of the amount they have at their disposal. Thanks to the backup capital and the strategies they have designed / implemented, they can offer this service in which the user who wants to sell small quantities of cryptocurrencies simply registers on the platform and accesses excellent prices that only large volumes can get.

The business model of AnyTrades is based on offering the customer security, speed and fair prices. As mentioned above, when managing a backup capital, AnyTrades can afford to make immediate payments to their users without the need for them to wait for AnyTrades to collect both their cryptocurrencies and those of others. This is because AnyTrades receives continuous real-time feedback of the volume they collect daily and their reserves.

AnyTrades allows the user to obtain their fiat currency without the need to pay high commissions, expose themselves to possible scams or lose their funds irretrievably due to ignorance of the proper use of the different platforms.

AnyTrades has a large market within the Steemit community, made up of people who are committed to the growth of projects that have a solid purpose that allows them to change the lives of millions of people. AnyTrades has amassed a portfolio of more than 1,500 clients from various regions in just 2 months, the majority of whom are located in Venezuela, a country where there is great interest in the use and development of blockchain-based projects due to the great benefits that this technology provides in terms of quality of life.

AnyTrades and Expanse are both projects that share a common ideology; the philosophy that people must be allowed to turn their dreams into something real and they need only to be empowered with the wherewithal to achieve that.

AnyTrades wishes to make Expanse known to their community through their channels of direct communication with users – Discord, Steemit, Telegram, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Email and their website.

Currently, they intend to start with two specific strategies:

Facilitate the fast and secure acquisition of subscriptions to the Expanse Twitch channel through AnyTrades platform.

Through the AnyTrades platform, user can buy Expanse through fiat currencies like Bolivars, Argentine Pesos, Chilean Pesos, Dollars or other currencies through PayPal.

AnyTrades is working on creating tutorials in Spanish on how to mine Expanse through Twitch and various articles that explain in detail the characteristics of the project to new users. This informative content, they believe, will reach a wider community that will benefit both AnyTrades as well as Expanse.

Compelling Quotes from our Discord Community

In every newsletter, we’ll be featuring a few awesome quotes by members of our Discord community. It seems only apt that the first quote be from our CEO and Expanse.tech founder, the General himself, Christopher Franko, in response to that ridiculous Weiss Report.

“The vision of Expanse is powerful. We are talking about open and honest elections, brand new form of governance, liberated equity, liquid identities and self sovereignty.. it’s no wonder why we have such an uphill battle… We are working on stuff that strikes them where it hurts. They don’t want to see us empowered.”

The second one is from a Discord Spanish Community member, who says that:

“En la mineria hace falta solo una cosa.. paciencia..” This means that “In mining, all you need is patience.”

The third quote is from another Discord Spanish community member, who says,

“Entre hacer y no hacer, siempre hacer,” which means “Between doing and not doing, always do!”

And finally, this fortnight’s final awesome quote is from Omar Alvarez, the Creative Director of Expanse and CEO of GameBoard.

“The socialist governments base their policies on collecting taxes from those who can pay and giving freebies to all equally. How does that make sense when everybody does not work with the same eagerness and strength? Such policies only create inequality and increases poverty. We hate socialist governments but we ask to be treated like this… Gentlemen, this community will not be built like that, it will be built upon the blood and sweat of all in a bid to improve our lives as we work. Nothing is free and there is no glory in getting what we want given to us as charity. Want a better Expanse and price? Then I invite you to work to achieve it!”

Join our Discord

Expanse Discord is live and kicking! Discord is a great communication platform, better than Slack. Join our growing community on Discord and you can also speak directly with the Expanse team or others in the Expanse community. Sign up for Discord today!. Thank you. https://Discord.me/expanse The Expanse Ambassador Program is designed to provide support and guidance for those of you who would like to help us spread the word about Expanse by hosting local meet-ups—wherever you are in the world. Getting involved is easy. Simply download and complete the Ambassador Program application at this link: https://expanse.tech/join-the-ambassador-program/ Then email it to Scott Williams, [email protected] Scott and his team are available to answer your questions and will also assist you by: Providing Expanse-branded apparel for the meet-up host (the ambassador).

Guiding you through the process of selecting a location.

Supplying Expanse giveaways for drawings or contests.

Assisting with presentation materials.

Providing a small allowance for food and libations for your meet-up guests. Expanse is thrilled to have you in the Expanse Army. Be sure to join Discord if you are not already part of it at this link: https://Discord.me/expanse – and grateful to all who would like to join the Ambassador Program!

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