OpenST 0.9.1 Released

Staking Simple Tokens “OST” on Ethereum against minting branded tokens on the OpenST network of side blockchains.

Simple Token is building the complete blockchain toolkit for business.

Today we are releasing OpenST v0.9.1 on Ethereum mainnet, as well as several important steps towards mainstream businesses launching their branded token economies with Simple Token.

The OpenST protocol allows for the staking of Simple Tokens “OST” on Ethereum against minting branded tokens on the OpenST network of side blockchains.

This enables mainstream businesses to launch their own branded crypto-currencies on the OpenST network, backed by staked OST, affording for higher throughput and transaction volumes than currently possible to achieve on public Ethereum. The OpenST platform allows Ethereum smart contracts to run faster and cheaper while leveraging the security properties of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work.

OpenST is a layer-2 protocol that extends the capacity of Ethereum mainnet.

In this 0.9.1 release we implement the first cornerstone of the OpenST protocol: the ability to stake value on Ethereum mainnet and mint a new representation of that value on a utility chain, effectively increasing the computational capacity of Ethereum mainnet by sharding across different cores. OpenST smart contracts have also been restructured to store value separately from the logic that implements the protocol.

With v0.9.1 the first OpenST utility chain has been linked up with Ethereum mainnet.

Developers can connect and run a full node and sync with the OpenST utility chain (instructions). To send transactions to the utility chain a developer can request us to transfer some OST for them from Ethereum mainnet to the OpenST platform for them to utilize for their OpenST transactions and smart contract deployment. To make such request, please contact us at 0.9.1@simpletoken.org.

To develop locally you can setup your environment by following these instructions.

v0.9.1 also marks a major upgrade to the OpenST platform API’s, enabling hosting of actual branded token economies whereas 0.9.0 was purely a staging/demo environment.

We note that v0.9.1 does not yet implement an open validator set for the OpenST computational cores. The validators in 0.9.1 are rather whitelisted running go-ethereum’s clique Proof-of-Authority. We acknowledge that this is a (temporary) shortcut taken to enable early beta trials; we are now able to start working with companies (and any Ethereum smart contract dev) to deploy their branded tokens with Simple Token — and to fine-tune the APIs and the developer experience to build mainstream applications on OpenST.

In OpenST 0.9.2 (coming in a couple weeks), developers will be able to directly login to an early version of the Simple Token company dashboard using their ETH address (without contacting us) and conduct complete end-to-end OpenST demos and tests without our involvement.

We have also in 0.9.1 established the first (early) version of our API references.

As always, the community is encouraged to ask us questions on Telegram.

Developers can also chat directly with our devs in our Gitter.

The complete change log to 0.9.1 is also in our Github.