Link Development Update

As we shared in our last Weekly Update, we’re hard at work developing Link, our newest blockchain technology. Link is our infrastructure-as-a-service that allows app, web and other software developers to use smart contracts and programmatic blockchains like Ethereum in their applications without requiring any blockchain experience.

We have many exciting updates to share about Link this week, including development news, the introduction of BLINK, new roadmap items and more.

Link Back-End (API) Development

This week, a significant portion of our development time was committed to building the Link back end.

First, we added the ability for Link users to specify the number of minimum block confirmations to wait before confirming a transaction on a specified network. This allows developers using Link to define how fast or slow they want to confirm their transactions.

Another significant addition was adding a POST /my/signature endpoint for signing arbitrary data. This powerful endpoint allows a Link app to sign an arbitrary message payload using its linked Ethereum account.

Why is this important? Because it gives full control of that account on the Ethereum network to the Link app, allowing it to effectively use that account’s private key to sign payloads, including transactions pending submission to a network, even if that transaction is not submitted through Link.

This feature enables scenarios where a Link app may need to use its assigned Ethereum account to perform some operation not available through Link, like transferring ETH or engaging with a network without having direct access to the account’s private key.

We also spent time optimizing the Ethereum signing logic for readability, clarity, & efficiency. Finally, we added support for configuring / refreshing Link access token duration.

Link Front-End (Web App) Development

The Link front-end saw a handful of refinements over the past week. As mentioned above, we added the ability for Link users to specify the number of blocks to wait for a confirmation. This was built into the Link front end.

We also added a status bar to the New Project wizard, so that Link developers can know exactly how far along they are in building a new Link app.

The rest of the front-end work was in tweaks, bug fixes and refinements. Introducing BLINK, the Link Utility Token

At the heart of Link is BLINK, the Link utility token. In short, BLINK is the required “fuel” that powers Link, providing access to the service and API transaction capacity. When a developer uses Link to build an API for their smart contract, and that API is used, BLINK must be consumed.

Our typical customer is a software application developer. They might be working alone, or as part of a large enterprise team. Regardless, when using Link, they will need to pay to use our service. These fees might include monthly subscription costs, API usage, overages, extra user seats and more. BLINK is required to pay these fees.

When a customer pays to use Link, BLINK is consumed. Once these BLINK are consumed, they are locked and removed from circulation. Per our whitepaper, we will conduct these supply removals on an ongoing basis until 70% of the total BLINK supply has been removed. This supply cap is discussed in further detail below.

To learn more about BLINK, please visit our website to read the whitepaper: https://blockmason.link.

Insider Announcement: Support for Three New Blockchains Added to the Link Development Roadmap

Finally, this community is the first to hear about upcoming programmatic blockchains that we will support in Link. We will officially announce the addition of support for TRON, GoChain and Oasis to our development roadmap in the coming days.

In many ways, these three programmatic blockchains are similar to Ethereum. TRON, in particular, has proven very attractive to DApp developers, one of our key target customer markets.

We envision that support for smart contracts hosted on TRON, GoChain, and Oasis will be added to Link sometime in 2019. Stay tuned to the official roadmap and website for further updates and news about other blockchains that Link will support.