In this last dev letter of 2017, we cover a couple of very important developments for iExec. First, a historic milestone has been reached: iExec has gone MainNet. Second, the release of the iExec Dapp Store was pretty exciting for everyone, as it gives a glimpse on the future of decentralized apps (dapps). Here’s a recap of what has been done recently.

Strengthening our ranks: A research-engineer joins us

In terms of human resources, we managed this month to strengthen our team once again. Lei Zhang is joining the team as a research-engineer in security and cryptography. Lei obtained his PhD in 2009 from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse / SupAero and NICTA (National ICT Center of Australia). His work experience as a research engineer has been very diverse, spanning from research and academia (INRIA) and startups (InsideSecure, OODRIVE) to established companies (Intel).

Lei has a deep expertise in cybersecurity, applied cryptography and hardware-based security. He developed his expertise in security in the areas of IoT, NFC, Secure Elements, cloud computing, biometry, Linux kernel, and even worked on military applications of these technologies. At iExec, Lei will lead innovation in the most crucial area of the project by exploring new solutions, and creating partnerships that will push forward the state-of-the-art decentralized cloud services we’re building.

iExec goes MainNet: The 1st off-chain computation

Going MainNet is a great event for any Ethereum project. We’re delighted to announce that we are gradually deploying iExec on the Ethereum MainNet. On Thursday 21, December 2017, for the first time ever, an actual RLC token has been used to trigger an off-chain computation for the FIGlet application.

The callback transaction

FIGlet is a program for making large letters out of ordinary text

Dapp Provider: 0xf33cddcd0bc63127d9b4b1331115c4fdc0bfdb36

Dapp User: 0x968883460d448cd1d606d843ef0dc87076f3f4ab

The Dapp User chooses a text to print and a figlet font to apply, then calls iexec submit: 0x4f69d3a76f018ee2db19d52265075435e8b7ad0201cc04d06f4124a4ec45fed4

More details on how this transaction happened from A to Z on this log.

Computing result on the MainNet

This means that RLC tokens can already circulate through the platform. The direct and major consequence is that developers are now able to earn real money from the dapp they deployed and listed on our brand-new Dapp Store.

The explorer is MainNet ready

Discover the world of dapps

As promised last month, on December 20, we released our Dapp Store that will contain all the apps deployed on Ethereum/iExec. As of now, the Dapp Store shows both application examples and link to projects that will rely on iExec for their execution. We invite you to visit the store at http://dapps.iex.ec and read the blog post that supported this release.

For now, our target is to welcome 50 dapps before the release of our V2. With time passing, more and more of these dapps will provide a front-end for increased comfort in the user experience. We’re living exciting times and additional announcements will be made in the coming weeks. 2 new partnerships and 3 new dapps will be listed in January 2017.

The iExec Dapp Store

The Dapp Challenge: How to write a good submission

As you know, we have launched a program to encourage developers of blockchain applications. The contest is very open: we plan to reward up to 30 dapps for a total of $150,000.

We have already received many proposals and we would like to emphasize that applications do not need to be already working to be eligible. The jury will evaluate proposals based on four criteria : impact, innovation, background, and feasibility. Don’t forget in your proposal to provide elements allowing you to score on these four criteria, as they will make up for your final mark! Don’t forget also that pushing some code may actually help with the last criteria ;-)

Tutorial 2: How to deploy an existing app on iExec

We just released a new Katakoda tutorial that shows how to deploy an existing application on iExec/Ethereum. In this tutorial, the chosen application to deploy is FFMPEG, which is a popular framework for video transcoding.

You will learn in a couple of minutes how to have off-chain computation performed thanks to the iExec SDK. Needless to mention that this tutorial can be of great help for developers planning to apply for the Dapp Challenge.

https://www.katacoda.com/sulliwane/scenarios/ffmpeg

Merry Christmas!

2017 is coming to an end and we are proud of the work accomplished. Next week, some of us will enjoy a well-deserved rest and family time. The rest of the team will be present to pursue the work and prepare for a 2018 kick-start, which already promises to be exceptional.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2018!

Join us!