Hello everyone,

We’ll have from now on 3 main formats on Medium:

Dev Letters that will outline the recent progress of our team of developers Project Updates that will highlight our recent achievements in terms of partnerships, as well as discuss strategy, adoption, marketing and hirings Field Reports that will evaluate and summarize our participation to events, meetups and conferences

This is the first Project Update, and you can expect such a post every two weeks.

Building the iExec ecosystem step by step

In order to boost the development of applications on the blockchain and encourage developers to try out its SDK, iExec reserved a prize pool of $150,000 to be distributed among different dapp projects.

We’ve received 37 participations in total from multiple countries, which is a real success! The iExec Jury ran its due diligence processes on these projects, and has retained 15 winners of development grants.

Discover the 15 winners of the iExec DApp Challenge! These applications will receive $150,000 of funding in order for them to reach their milestones and integrate the iExec DApp Store.

Still $10,000 to be granted

There is still $10,000 of funding to be received by an additional dapp (or two). There were some use cases and ideas that we were expecting, but unfortunately didn’t receive as dapp submissions. For this reason, we would like to grant the remaining $10,000 to developpers willing to implement the ideas we have in mind (or their own idea if it seduces us). You can get in touch with us through the links at the end of this post.

A new addition to the DApp Store: Worldcloud in R

Wordcloud of the iExec whitepaper

A wordcloud is a graphic representation of words, typically those used in a document or website, in which the words are arranged artistically in close proximity, and the size of each word is proportional to the word’s frequency.

Since we can now dockerize applications to be run on the iExec cloud, we were previously able to add R as an application on the DApp Store. Therefore, we can now use R to generate wordclouds.

The Wordcloud in R dapp consists of an R script that can analyze the content of a PDF and generate a wordcloud PNG image. Head to our Github page to know more about the implementation process of this dapp, and to check the Ropsten transaction that generated a wordcloud based on the iExe whitepaper.

Secret provisioning with Intel SGX

On the iExec platform, we need a novel mechanism that is able to:

Protect the privacy of dapps and their data

Efficiently control the execution of dapps

Protect the execution of dapps and their result

SGX an ideal solution to these needs because it offers a highly secure bubble (SGX enclave) which is totally isolated from the untrusted system. When your application runs in this bubble, it is encrypted and protected by a classified key derived from the CPU key. Even the higher-privileged root, kernel or hypervisor is not able to invade into this bubble. Check out our latest Dev Letter to know more about this topic.

2 interns have joined the team

Hantong JI is joining the team as an intern who will be involved with Ethereum smart contracts. Hantong has spent 2 years at the French university UTC studying Complex Systems Engineering. At the moment, he is evaluating the deployment of the iExec smart contracts on other blockchains. In the upcoming weeks, he will be working on V2 which targets classic compute intensive applications with a very large user base. Hantong is being supervised by our Ethereum Developer, François Branciard.

Maysa Abou Jamra has also recently joined iExec as an intern. Born in Lebanon, she is now studying Computer Science at the Claude Bernard University in Lyon. Deeply interested in cryptography, Maysa wanted to deepen her knowledge in this field, and is therefore working on the performance of Intel SGX and its role in protecting the privacy of dapps and their data, and efficiently controling their execution and results. Maysa is being supervised by our cryptography expert, Lei Zhang.

We’re still hiring! If you’re familiar with blockchain and if your favorite playground is marketing and community management, let’s have a chat together! https://iex-ec.workable.com/jobs/666127

Next events we’re attending

Hereby a list of the upcoming events we’ll be attending or sponsoring. We’ll be glad to meet you at:

Blockchain In Toulouse

21 Feb 2018 — Toulouse, France

Julien and Lei will present iExec at La Cantine, an event organized by Bitconseil.

21 Feb 2018 — Toulouse, France Julien and Lei will present iExec at La Cantine, an event organized by Bitconseil. Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC)

8–10 March 2018 — Paris, France

The iExec team will also be present at EthCC, at Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. We’ll have a keynote speech as well as organize a workshop to get developers more familiar with the iExec SDK.

3D Rendering on top of iExec

Since we’ve released Blender as an application on the iExec DApp Store, we’ve been receiving many works done by the community. I just wanted to end this project update on a fun note, by sharing with you one of these: the iExec Lambo!

Credits to u/mreima

Stay in touch

iExec re-invents cloud computing by building a decentralized marketplace where everyone can monetize their applications, servers, and data-sets. Blockchains cannot support the kind of computational needs that many dapps will require, and this problem will only compound exponentially as more dapps release their working platforms and products. Blockchains need a solution that allows them to compute off-chain and bring only the results on-chain. iExec provides exactly that solution.