Welcome to Nebulas Weekly Report #28, delivering updates and developments on the Nebulas project. This report is maintained by the Nebulas team. Please send feedback to contact@nebulas.io, or tweet us @nebulasio.

LAST WEEK’S News and Reports

Our three co-founders attended the Nebulas Community Meeting in Shanghai

On May 6th, Nebulas hosted a community gathering at the Tencent Innovation Space in Shanghai. The Nebulas co-founders — Hitters Xu, Robin Zhong and Aero Wang — took to the stage at the same time to introduce the Nebulas Incentive Program and share their thoughts on the blockchain industry, including these three insights:

To have the mind of “thinking in blockchain”, consider how the business landscape can benefit from decentralization and tokenization, and think of blockchain’s transformative potential as on par with that of digitalization and the internet industry. Blockchain entrepreneurs must propose our own product philosophy based on the characteristics of the blockchain, and look for entry points outside of the mainstream to create a valuable blockchain project. Don’t be too influenced by the prospect of increased payments “transaction efficiency” thanks to blockchain. Try build on this concept, and devote your resources and focus to even broader and original aims.

A video of this community meeting will be posted soon. Please stay tuned!

The Nebulas Incentive Program is open. Submit your DApps and invite friends now!

The Nebulas NAS mainnet coin swap has begun. Our founders were in Shanghai to talk about Nebulas and blockchain. Nebulas Labs attends the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Festival, and Atlas Protocol wins an award.

The Nebulas Incentive Program has officially launched. We are now accepting your DApp submissions, to fulfill our aim of building a virtuous ecosystem for the long term, so that everyone can derive value from decentralized collaboration. Nebulas has sent invitations to developers and referrers around the world who share the same values as Nebulas. The total amount of bonuses is as high as 460,000 NAS, which is equal to more than $4.5 million USD on May 7.

The official website for the Nebulas Incentive Program is now live. Here, you can register for the program and submit your DApps. (The DApp submission portal is located in the “My DApp” after you complete your registration.) If you submit a DApp and pass our review you will get 100 NAS as a reward, and if your DApp is the best one of the month, you’ll win a 20,000 NAS reward. And you can still participate in the program if you aren’t a developer! Just invite your developer friends to sign up. You’ll get 40 NAS for each developer you refer that builds a qualifying DApp. Invite more developers and you’ll stand a chance at winning the top monthly referral award of 10,000 NAS.

To make it easier for developers to take part in the Nebulas Incentive Program, we’ve also launched a series of articles that explain how to build a qualifying DApp in JavaScript in a day, in addition to articles to provide more detail into the requirements of the program:

The coin swap to NAS Nebulas mainnet tokens from NAS ERC-20 tokens is also underway, with exchanges including Huobi.pro and Gate.io are supporting the coin swap.

Nebulas first announced that start of the NAS mainnet coin swap exchanges on April 30. As of publishing time, Huobi.pro and Gate.io have taken the lead in supporting this coin swap, and more exchanges have said that they are working on supporting the coin swap too. For further information, please pay attention to the relevant announcements from each exchange.

The Nebulas web wallet can also be used to receive mainnet NAS tokens awarded by the Nebulas Incentive Plan. We will soon release our web wallet to support our coin swap with full functionalities. Please stay tuned.

Nebulas co-founder Aero Wang attended the Future of Blockchain meeting in Shanghai

On May 5th, Nebulas co-founder Aero Wang attended the Future of Blockchain meeting in Shanghai, where he gave a presentation on “Thinking in Blockchain.” His talk introduced the philosophy of Nebulas to the blockchain industry as well as the Nebulas Incentive Program. Aero also posited that blockchain is a brand new transformational technology that should be considered and applied from a new perspective. As such, the thinking of blockchain through an “internet lens” may not be appropriate, and could even hinder the blockchain industry, as it may lead to blockchain’s key boons and characteristics being overlooked.

Nebulas Labs participates in the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Festival, and wins the award for ‘Project Excellence’ at the festival’s Blockchain Summit.

On May 2nd, Nebulas Labs attended 2018 the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Festival in Santa Clara, California. The Atlas Protocol (ATP), the first application-layer protocol on the Nebulas blockchain and joint effort between the Nebulas Labs and the xGoogler Blockchain Alliance (GBA), was recognized as an outstanding international blockchain project by the festival, winning the “Project Excellence” reward. The Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Festival is one of the world’s largest innovation and entrepreneurship annual conference. In addition to technology leaders, conference attendees included the Chinese Consul General in San Francisco, Linquan Luo, and Lily Mei, the mayor of Fremont, California.

LAST WEEK’S Top Commits

Mainnet Development Progress

Network transmission optimization

A large amount of transaction data needs to be synchronized between different nodes of a blockchain network. We optimized the network transmission protocol to effectively compress the data in the block, achieving a data compression ratio of 2:1. Comparing on the premise of the same transaction volume, the network transmission time of the optimized block has been significantly reduced.

Multi-level calls between smart contracts

Users deploy their smart contracts to build their own project on the Nebulas. In order to support interaction between business, Nebulas add support for mutual calls between smart contracts. From an implementation point of view, multi-level calls between smart contracts are encapsulated into one transaction, guaranteeing atomicity, consistency, and isolation.

Random Function Optimization

The random function of the Nebulas is based on the VRF (Verifiable Random Function) proposed by the Siling Award winner Silvio Micali and implement the function of “verifiable random number”. To improve the security level, we optimized the input parameters of VRF this week by increasing the random seed of the previous block and block hash across multiple dynasties.

NebPay

In order to support more convenient and secure payment, we have released the 0.1rc version of NebPay. A unified payment interface is defined to facilitate multiple calls from different platforms. For example, by using NebPay, a DApp developer can complete payment (transfer or contract call) easily in mobile app, a desktop browser plug-in, etc.

Documentation

Last week, we updated the Chinese and English tutorial documentation based on user feedback from our community. We will continue to focus on feedback voiced by our community and do our best to help everyone understanding blockchain and Nebulas.

NebPay document: https://github.com/nebulasio/nebPay/blob/master/README.md

Hot FAQ

1. What should I do if it is really slow when cloning the repo?

A: It is mainly a network issue. Please check https://github.com/nebulasio/go-nebulas/issues/88 for reference.

2. How do you define a qualified DApp?

A: DApps that qualify for the Nebulas Incentive Program must contain a GUI, interactivity and availability. We also consider the robustness of the program and its usability, and we are looking especially for innovative ideas. These standards are a bit subjective, but we base our evaluations on the interests of developers as the first principle.

3. What is the maximum length of a smart contract? Or how much information can be uploaded in a single interaction with a smart contract?

A: Up to 128k payload is allowed to be uploaded by a smart contract.

4. How to apply to the NAS testnet?

A: Testnet application link：https://testnet.nebulas.io/claim/

Nebulas Incentive Program system

In order to support the Nebulas Incentive Program better, Nebulas has created an online portal where you can register, invite developers, and upload DApps:

Community: