Welcome everyone to the Ubiq report for April 2019.

This month has brought some relief to the markets, with Bitcoin and other Altcoins moving away from recent lows. Our development team officially published the planned roadmap and released Gubiq version 2.2.

Ubiq also won a vote for the next set of coins to be listed on Beaxy exchange, which should hopefully proceed in the next couple of months and several members of the core team and community met at DCTRL in Vancouver.

The report also contains several governance updates, from logo competitions to the first outline of UIP 5 (Escher Hub on the Cosmos Network).

Governance Updates

Escher Airdrop

The fifth Escher Airdrop is currently underway, running from block 816,000 to 846,000.

Escher is our governance token, which is used to vote on key Ubiq Improvement Proposals (or UIPs).

You can claim the airdrop here, which issues Escher at a ratio of 1 ESCH to 1 UBQ in the wallet claiming. This is calculated on the total quantity of UBQ in the wallet at block 846,000.

If there are questions, we recommend users joining the #Esch channel in the Ubiq Discord, we will be happy to answer them there.

UIP 4 to launch in May

The long-awaited vote for selecting the Escher Logo will take place next month during the Escher claim period.

With ESCH utility likely to expand in the coming months, the logo selection is an important step in branding this token.

The UIP discussion and submissions can be viewed on GitHub.

UIP 5 on GitHub for community feedback

UIP5 Has now been posted to GitHub for community feedback. This proposal is for Escher (ESCH) to transition from an UBQ token to the base unit and native staking token of an Escher Hub on the Cosmos Network.

Further details on the can be found within the development section of this report.

Once community testing is complete we will also release some additional technical specifications for the UIP, detailing rate of inflation, block times, maximum number of validators.

Development Updates

Gubiq 2.2. Released — Stay Woke

In early April, Gubiq 2.2. was officially released. Gubiq 2.2 is based on the last release of the upstream Geth 1.7.x branch and contains around 1467 commits merged from upstream Go-Etheruem. This update is optional but recommended.

Development Roadmap Now Published

In the previous monthly report we alluded to an upcoming roadmap for Gubiq this year. This has now been published, confirming our plans for 3 further Gubiq updates this year, two of which will be hard forks.

We recommend everyone reads the blog post below to understand the release process:

Version 2.3 is being worked on and we will have more details to share soon.

New Discord Bot

Dikembe tracking network difficulty and the Escher claim period

We have added a new discord bot. Dikembe uses a websocket connection to a local Gubiq node, tracking current network difficulty and other statistics such as the Escher claim period every 10 blocks.

You can find the bot in #bot-playground in the Ubiq discord.

Ongoing Ubiq Escher Hub Discussion (UIP5)

There has been continuing discussion around the future usage of our Escher token as a cosmos hub and wanted to expand on some potential uses and benefits of this:

IBC. Inter Blockchain Communications. Allows us to have a focus point with transacting with other assets and chains

Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Will complement our Proof-of-Work (PoW) chain Additional utility for ESCH. Namely staking Finality.

Faster and more predictable block times. PoS allows you to always have 6 second blocks whilst PoW has variable times. This is better for certain dApps like a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) as these require predictable times for confirming trades that have been executed.

Governance is baked in which works for the Escher use case.

Alternative dApp model targeting the Cosmos SDK.

Gateway for UBQ and UBQ tokens to other Cosmos Network Hubs. Allows transfers to a Cosmos DEX.

An associated Peg-Zone will allow the flow of UBQ and UBQ tokens between the Ubiq blockchain and the Escher Hub blockchain. This will mean — Ubiq Smart Contract Platform <> Peg-Zone <> Escher Hub

With all of this new functionality there would be a requirement to alter the design of Escher, hence the need to draft UIP 5 and table a vote from the community at some point.

Keep tuned to our updates on the blog and discord as we have big plans for this.

Advertising / Marketing Updates

Meet-Up at DCRTL Vancouver