Over the course of Q1, there have been several developments to both Matryx, our blockchain-based collaboration tool, and Calcflow, our VR app for visualizing vector calculus in an interactive environment.

This year, we plan on doing some upgrades to the platform based on user feedback and extending functionality. Such as adding additional integration into the Nanome Application used by large pharmaceutical companies within R&D, major updates to Calcflow, and more.

Matryx

We have engaged with Level-K, a 3rd party code auditing company for Ethereum application development. Level-K will provide security evaluations for the Matryx Blockchain Platform code and recommendations. It is a collaborative process on iterating past security vulnerabilities while maintaining the game-theory of our application. We have finalized three major components of the platform.

First to Hash: Being able to arbitrarily upload files to be cryptographically hashed and stamped on the blockchain and is in reference to “First to Invent” which has been a prominent Institutional Intellectual Property policy. This is also used for 3rd party time-stamp authorization in pharmaceutical companies for idea creation content such as software interactions and simulations, lab notebooks and IP works record keeping.

Crowdsourced Science (Tournament/Bounty): The ability to have a tournament/round/submission structure on the public blockchain to crowdsource the iteration of different scientific ideas.

Collaboration: This “tracking of work” feature set enables users to track each contribution and iteration on a specific project as an individual and in groups. This has immutable proof of the contributions and allows for teams to work collaboratively in a trust-less manner. This is one of the key value propositions for blockchain technology in the space of collaboration between different teams.

Each of these major components solves real-world uses cases thanks to the inherent nature of public ledger technologies and the distributed computing nature of Ethereum.

Take a look at our current alpha (alpha.matryx.ai) which will be replaced pretty soon with our latest major updates and UI refactors alongside the latest platform functionality.

Create a Tournament in Matryx

Why Audit it at all?

Audits are an important part of responsible code management prior to a production deployment on the Ethereum Mainnet. By having security experts come in and look at your code, you are able to get invaluable insights and confirmations for expected behavior.

An Example: Smart Contract Front-Running

While working with Level-K, an industry-wide problem called “Front Running” is a topic of that is always discussed since it is of such large concern for secure applications. Front Running is when a user submits a transaction and sits in the mempool, but has not been mined yet — the miner looks at the user’s transaction and submits an identical competing transaction with higher gas to get it mined first. This was a huge problem in decentralized exchanges and has been discussed at different Devcons. You can learn more about it here.

Taking some of the advice from the experienced auditors and developers for the latest solutions to these problems helped enable the Matryx team to add additional lines of security to key transactions. Topics like Front Running cause a need for more security mechanisms and in-turn adverse user experience in application usage and even game theory.

Along the way of the last few months and with suggestions from auditors, we have changed various aspects of the platform to ensure a better user experience through the use of taking less valuables metadata off the blockchain. This means that the open-sourced API will be deprecated for a newer private version.

Additionally, a new web-UI version is being built to take into account these changes and the new modules built for blockchain interactions within a modern web-app. The web application re-design took into account user feedback on the previous platform and provides a much smoother experience. We have made a bunch of helpful modules to work with Web3 within Vue.js applications. You can see the blog of one of our Lead Developer’s open-sourced contribution here.

(Also, we’re seeking a new designer. Email us today!)

Enter a Tournament Submission in Matryx

Calcflow

We’ve also updated Calcflow, such as the ability to better interface with blockchain wallets and transactions, as well as user interface updates and performance improvements. Calcflow development has also started for the support of the Magic Leap Augmented Reality Headset with the intention of releasing it on the Magic Leap store.

Several new engineers will contribute to the Calcflow code base over Q2, and will develop new modules to be used in the classroom. We will be discussing opportunities throughout 2019 such as grants relevant to the education portion of Calcflow and educational partnerships.

An IRB study is in progress for Calcflow at the University of California San Diego. We can expand more on this when it’s complete.

We are looking for more partners (university and industry) that we can leverage for more user feedback and more pilots deployed. Feel free to send us references!

Thank you for believing in the Matryx Project and its ability to make an impact.