October 30, 2017

Continuing on from last month, Counterparty continues to move forward with some exciting updates from the community. Implemented from our funded CIPs – the Counterparty Protocol has also seen some vast improvements this month – fulfilled by donations from the Counterparty community using our bounty program.

Ecosystem Updates

Counterwallet an optimized web wallet for easy user interaction, has recently been updated with a slider tool to instantly reflect the change in BTC fees when toggled in making a transaction.

Counterwallet enables all of the functionality of the Counterparty platform to become available in your browser while providing maximum security. The slider tool has been implemented to further allow ease of use and accessibility for users.

SaruTobi Island an RPG (Role Play Gaming) app created by Counterparty supporter Mandel Duck continues to crowdfund for chapters two and three of the game – whose first chapter is now available on iOS and Android devices globally.

This forthcoming extension of chapter one will further promote SaruTobi island’s main premise in focusing on the usage and optimization of blockchain items. Christian Moss, Mandel Duck’s lead developer, teases the further development of the in-game AR token reader within the island’s new laboratory level.

As we mentioned in last month’s newsletter, this exciting layer not only adds a fourth dimension to the game but allows the Counterparty community to see their Counterparty tokens displayed before them in real life, as part of the app’s future plans to utilize payment channels (in collaboration with IndieSquare).

Further additions to SaruTobi island include an expansion of the original story mode, Tamagotchi mode – which has since been made available on the app – and multiplayer gameplay, with the potential of bitcoin rewards eventually being added to the game’s levels upon the completion of sufficient crowdfunding.

Teaming up with Spells of Genesis, the MANDELDUCKCD blockchain card offered as a reward to crowdfunders, will soon become a Spells of Genesis blockchain card. Both SaruTobi and Spells of Genesis cards are available within separate trading environments in Book of Orbs.

Book of Orbs users will rejoice to learn that a web app is officially in development. The Counterparty wallet, previously available on both iOS and Android – now solely the latter – offers client-side encryption and trading of ‘ORBs’ upon the Bitcoin blockchain as well as between gaming environments. Not only is the web app offered as an alternative to iOS users who hadn’t had the app installed prior to its removal, but it offers a new method of accessibility and new potential layers of functionality to users – optimizing the framework of blockchain technology that it was built upon.

Spells of Genesis recently celebrated the launch of the Japanese edition of their game with a collaborative Takara campaign.

Spells of Genesis is a TCG (trading card gaming) app combined with multi-level arcade aspects, built upon blockchain technology to pit players with the strongest decks against each other for leaderboard ranking; all the while exploring the fantasy realm of Askian.

Takara allows users to race against each other to hunt and collect both BTC and tokenized assets, answering clues as a part of their mission. These assets can often be used across various apps and in-game for cross-platform use.

Held in three parts, developer Everdreamsoft collaborated with Mandel Duck prior to, throughout and, after the Tokyo game show this past September, to launch an event using Mandel Duck’s geocaching app.

Across Tokyo, users were able to collect BitCrystals – the game’s premium currency – and blockchain cards, that they’d be able to use within Spells of Genesis.

In more recent news, Spells of Genesis has publicly released a roadmap using popular software, Trello. In their roadmap, Spells of Genesis details exciting concepts of community voting that allows the game to progress based on community feedback,

in an effort to reach back and acknowledge the token sale and player inputs that aided the launch of the game.

“We want to share our roadmap with you because we appreciate your help during the token sale and value player input.”

Announced via this roadmap as ‘in progress’ is the much-anticipated blockchainization of in-game cards with an initial limit of 3 cards per month. Players will also be able to link to a wallet of their choice whereas before they were only offered Book of Orbs in-app.

Augmentors similarly publicly issued a roadmap as of late. As the first known augmented reality mobile game built upon blockchain technology. Funded by a token sale of the game’s eventual in-game currency of Databits (now tradable on the exchange for other cryptocurrencies) the RPG and TCG combination game is aimed to be released in 2018, with an earlier release coming this year for early backers of the game.

More recent, Augmentors news comes from a community update detailing the progression of the game’s development. Updates that differ from the first ‘pre-alpha’ stage of the game’s development are improvements that will lead with enhancements to the game’s speed and depth. This decision will progress forward with a strategic real-time game mechanic.

From Counterparty’s interpretation, with the utilization of Blockchain technology, spells and abilities to be used in-game will manifest as cards that will be buildable upon player’s creatures. The deck building capabilities of the game are multifaceted and will stem beyond the aforementioned.

The update also welcomes a new addition to Augmentors team in the form of new developer Stefan, as well as detailing a new gamer focused website that will see further updates in the coming weeks. Augmentors has also recently shared an updated logo as well as an incredible time-lapse detailing the modeling of their Tundris creature.

This latter point nicely segues into the announcement of the game’s community competition – for holders of their Databits token – to name the next Augmentor creature.

Freewallet, an open-source wallet which supports Bitcoin and Counterparty, recently announced the release of desktop versions of the wallet with support for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. With these additions, Counterparty users are now able to use all the features of the Counterparty platform from any desktop computer or mobile device.

Developer and community member J-Dog also announced his intention to build Decentralized EXchange (DEX) and Betting interfaces into FreeWallet in the coming months, and created bounties for both tasks. The DEX interface will have support for automatically signing BTC orders on the DEX, which should greatly simplify the process of using BTC on the DEX and bring more BTC liquidity to Counterparty. The betting interface promises to allow any user to operate an oracle and earn a percentage of any placed bets, as well as provide an easy-to-use interface for users to browse feeds and place bets.

Community members who would like to support the continued development of Freewallet or the above-mentioned bounties are encouraged to make a donation to the bounty directly in Freewallet or to purchase an XCHAINPEPE card. Users who make a donation to support development will be granted early access to FreeWallet features before they are released to the general public.

Age of Rust is a multiplayer adventure game utilizing blockchain technology to support its combination of RPG (Role Play Game), TCG (Trading Card Game), arcade and adventure premises, has recently expanded on its collaboration with Book of Orbs – as announced in last month’s newsletter.

While the app offers its in-game token Rustbits as a prize for certain in-game achievements, the currency now extends its reach outwards in facilitating the sale, trade, and collection of Age of Rust cards within Book of Orbs.

Age of Chains a video game built upon blockchain technology using the Counterparty protocol utilizes trading card elements to offer players an intergalactic space adventure whilst funding the development of the game to its completion. In recent news, Age of Chains recently announced the release of their latest series 2 card, “Quarks, Master of Black Holes” that continues the Age of Chains narrative. Age of Chains cards can be traded and sold within the Book of Orbs environment for XCP.

Coval has publicly announced development on Emblem, a protocol that will run atop of its platform, that utilizes side chain technology to securely verify transactions in bulk. Emblem will be designed as both a web and mobile app and can be considered the full implementation of the Coval platform. Emblem is built up of four components. Utilizing this same sidechain technology, these are Private Blockchain Asset, Public Blockchain Asset, Encrypted Data Room, HTTP/DAT URL (emblem.id). To read more you can head over to Coval’s medium article where their suggested use cases for both Emblem and Coval are Content creators, merchants, and general business to name a few.

Counterparty in the News:

Counterparty itself was mentioned in similar contexts on both Steemit and CoinTelegraph in recent weeks as discussion over decentralized exchanges gained traction.

The first article, “Decentralized Exchanges: The Future for Trading Cryptos” encouraged the use of the decentralized exchange when withdrawing and selling cryptocurrency, as opposed to using centralized mediums such as Coinbase.

The author pointed out that users may not even realize that these exchanges are indeed centralized and questioned their popularity given Crypto’s ethos to be anything but. Highlighting Counterparty as one of a few exchanges that are decentralized, Counterparty is listed as an option for the Bitcoin blockchain where the author also lists options such as Openledger and Etherdelta.

Like the first article, CoinTelegraph’s “Will Decentralized Exchanges Replace Peer-to-Peer Exchanges Completely?” points out the issues centralized exchanges experience with security such as the recent Bitfinex hack and Chinese regulation issues.

CoinTelegraph’s article highlights Counterparty’s longevity within the blockchain community as evidence of being able to tackle forthcoming challenges – highlighting the DEX as capable of ultimately competing with the centralized exchange, in becoming more accessible to the daily user and tackling regulation issues – despite P2Ps continued popularity today.

The Counterparty protocol was also mentioned in a discussion about the recent and upcoming Bitcoin blockchain hard forks on Forbes. While the article does cite that Counterparty was at its prime before fees became so high, recent upgrades to the protocol seek to challenge this opinion. You need only check out our 9.55.3 update for additional details.

Spells of Genesis was praised in an article on CoinTelegraph recently as having become a pioneer in tokenized gaming. The article, “Blockchain: Best Thing For Gaming Since Invention of Internet” focuses on the use cases of tokens beyond currency, before leading into the gaming industry and the tokenization of game items for cross-platform use.

“Let’s start with one of the pioneers in this field, Spells of Genesis. This is a card game based on Blockchain technology, both in its infrastructure and storyline.”

Spells of Genesis was also mentioned in Japanese media outlet, Coin Choice, as developer EverdreamSoft attended Tokyo Game show in September. The article provides an in-depth introduction to the game’s premise and blockchain infrastructure, even extending into an analysis of the game’s premium trading currency BitCrystals, that can also be used to trade assets within Book of Orbs.

Age of Rust was featured in Crowd Sourcing Week, in an article discussing Tokens and ICOs in gaming. With a nod to the Counterparty protocol, the article uses Age of Rust as a use case to explain how tokens are used simultaneously as both in-game items and ICOs.

Developer Updates:

With much anticipation, Counterparty is happy to announce that in the past couple of weeks counterparty-lib 9.55.3 was activated at block 489956. This update implemented CIPs 9, 11 and 12, along with a fixed lock issuance workaround, leading the way in an effort to move Counterparty forward with significant momentum in the coming months.

A reminder of these Counterparty Improvement Proposals (CIPs) are as follows:

CIP 9 – Enhanced sends with memo field support

CIP 9 adds additional functionality to an asset send while at the same time making asset sends 40-45% cheaper and more efficient. Enhanced sends have a smaller transaction size, eliminate dust outputs, and add a memo that enables greater efficiency and lower transaction fees for exchange operators.

CIP 11 – Shorten Transaction Type ID Namespace

CIP 11 reduces the size of ALL Counterparty transactions by 3 bytes, thereby further lowering the transaction costs (BTC fees).

CIP 12 – Memo Requirement through Broadcasts

CIP 12 will allow services such as exchanges, to require that a memo is included with a send. This requirement allows exchanges to have their customers deposit directly to the exchange hot-wallet, and reduces the operational cost of using Counterparty in an exchange environment.

In the next month, the following CIPs are scheduled for release following the fulfillment of bounty amounts. We have updated our donation page to reflect the status of this and we’re pleased to announce that CIP 10 is already in development!

CIP 6 – P2SH data encoding

P2SH data encoding will allow Counterparty to utilize more space for transactions. CIP 6 will be beneficial to large transactions and is a prerequisite in supporting some of the more advanced send types, such as multi-peer-multi-asset (MPMA) and Multiparty Counterparty Aggregate Transactions (MCAT).

CIP 10 – Multi-Peer Multi-Asset Sends (MPMA)

Multi-Peer Multi-Assets sends will allow many assets to be sent to many peers in a single transaction, simplifying batch transactions, and reducing transaction fees even further.

CIP 15– Segwit Support

Enabling Segwit support within Counterparty will enable users to spend less on transaction fees and enables potential future enhancements. Updating Counterwallet will allow users to choose if they want to send assets to a segwit enabled address or a traditional address.

CIPs planned for release in early 2018:

CIP 13 – Multiparty Counterparty Aggregate Transactions (MCAT)

MCAT will allow Counterparty users to group their transactions with those of other Counterparty users, to reduce their sends costs considerably. Most users will be able to utilize this feature to send transactions for less than the cost of a single bitcoin transaction.

CIP 13 will also allow Counterparty users to utilize MCAT nodes, to send assets across the Counterparty Network, and pay for the transaction fees in an asset other than BTC.

Counterparty is a community funded project which progresses solely through the generous time and monetary donations of others.

Again, please visit our donations page to stay up to date on the current bounty and development status of any CIPS, and consider making a donation to support their continued development. Alternatively, please share or RT Counterparty CIPs on social media so we can help fulfill them faster!

In more exciting news, our Counterparty roadmap is now live for the community to view on the footer of every page at Counterparty.io, for your convenience.

Counterparty.io Updates:

The Counterparty website has recently undergone some updates including:

A new projects page has been created to showcase some of the exciting new projects that are using the Counterparty platform such as Age of Rust, SaruTobi Island, and Rarepepe.party.

If you have a project that utilizes the Counterparty protocol that you’d like to let us know about, please email projects@counterparty.io.

The wallets page has been updated to include some of the more recent wallet additions like Freewallet, Rarepepewallet, and Book of Orbs, as well as more traditional wallets such as Counterwallet and Countertools.

As mentioned earlier, a roadmap page has been created, outlining Counterparty’s accomplishments to date. The roadmap also outlines the exciting new features that we are planning on building into the platform in the coming year.

We have also recently opened up a press channel for any media inquiries and would ask any media outlets to contact press@counterparty.io.

Please join the @Counterparty_XCP group on Telegram for breaking news and real-time Counterparty conversation!

Disclaimer: This newsletter is sent as an informational piece, and no part of it should be taken as financial advice.