1. Apollo Africa update

Following the incredible announcement of Apollo signing an MOU with the nation of Lesotho last week, the Apollo Africa team is busy with preparations for the next meetings with top officials to discuss the next steps in helping the nation achieve its goals of becoming a leader in technology for the continent of Africa. The team is also preparing for the launch of our many other initiatives in nations across the continent. You can view a complete list of these on our roadmap.

2. Bitmart net buying competition

BitMart is inviting users to participate in their newly launched, net buying competition. Winners of this competition will receive a combination of APL and BMX tokens. Prizes totaling 10,000,000 APL and 50,000 BMX will be awarded to the top four winners. The contest will run from 11/11/2019 10:00 AM to 9:00 AM 12/02/2019 10:00 AM (EST). If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up with Bitmart today! Full contest details can be found here.

3. New Apollo University videos

The next installment in the Apollo University video series have been released. Be sure to check out these highly requested videos in our series covering the security features available in our vault wallet.

Removing a Vault Address From a Device

If you missed last week’s videos, you can find them here:

Importing a Vault Wallet Address Using a Secret Key

Importing a Vault Wallet Address Using a Secret File

Stay tuned each week as we unpack the many features of the Apollo platform.

4. New Decentralized Apollo Bank location

Our Decentralized Apollo Bank Network is growing. The Apollo team is proud to introduce the latest addition to our network of locations in South Africa. Iron Lady is our second location in Klerksdorp, South Africa. Be sure to stop by if you’re in the area and pay them a visit!

Anyone interested in joining our Apollo DAB Network can fill out an application here on our website.

5. New merchant partner: Cryptostorm

Needing an extra layer of privacy? You’re in luck. A new VPN service provider has joined the growing list of merchants in the Apollo network. Cryptostorm, a VPN service provider, is now accepting Apollo as a form of payment for all of your VPN service needs. Visit cryptostorm.is and signup today!

6. Community update

The Apollo Telegram community has seen significant growth in the past two months with thousands of new Apollonauts joining the discussion since the beginning of September. The Apollo team would like to greet all our new community members with a warm welcome!

The holidays are already upon us, and our December community contest is right around the corner. The contest will start on December 1st and will continue through the end of the year. Apollonauts will have the opportunity to compete each day for a chance to win free APL.

If you are interested in helping on our community team, volunteer opportunities are always available. Please contact our community director Lee Behnke for more information.

7. Development team update

Apollo DEX

The team has finished:

A bug fix for secret file import/export (desktop)

Fix to restore functionality for the alias send feature

Implementation of a new endpoint to return a contract by order ID

Addition of a new page where users can view a list of errors

Fix to restore the ability to search by account ID

The team is continuing work on:

TradingView chart implementation

Data modeling for TradingView chart (backend)

Updating mobile wallet applications

Bug fixes

The team has deployed these fixes on testnet and regression tests are underway. Over the next few weeks, the team will focus on fixing bugs discovered by QA specialists during these test cycles and preparing the code to move to the next stage of tests in preparation for the next public release.

Sharding and code optimization

Regression testing continues as the team focuses on fixing various bugs discovered during these cycles, for example:

Number format exception

Shard creation is skipped

Issues with shard import and phasing pool

Problems with prunable parts of the shard archive

The testing process is further complicated by the need to restart the sharding process after each fix is applied.

Additionally, the team is continuing optimization of resource consumption on hardware nodes. Some users have reported problems such as:

Slow block generation (more than 12 seconds for some transactions)

Nodes with limited memory availability falling out of sync

Progress on this issue has been made and the team is preparing an update of the H2 DB version (to v.1.4.200). This update should allow for data migration without a full blockchain download.

The team is continuing to develop integration auto-tests.

DAG R&D

The team is continuing the development of a viable mathematical model for DAG, the best defensive countermeasures for possible attacks and solutions to the following problems:

The time complexity of topological sorting

Solutions to the longest path problem

Determining if a path between two vertices exists in a directed graph

DAG processing logic

Defining key guarantees and achieving Liveness

8. Academic review and validation

The Apollo team has had the privilege of speaking with academics from several universities around the world to discuss participation in the validation process for features such as database sharding and atomic swaps. Several have expressed interest in contributing their own expertise to the project as well. A case study of the recent MOU with Lesotho is also being considered and could be used as a springboard to showcase Apollo’s capabilities to other nations considering the applications of blockchain technology.