We are very happy to announce that the Blockmarket for Desktop Beta1 has now been publicly released! The entire team has been working extraordinarily hard, around the clock, to get this release out and we will continue to release updates to this product between now and our final release on May 22nd.

Blockmarket is a game changer for the Syscoin project and ecosystem. It is the first step toward releasing consumer-facing products developed by Blockchain Foundry Inc. using cutting-edge technology with a polished and user-friendly interface. Blockmarket for Desktop will completely replace all of the functionality currently contained in the Syscoin QT Wallet, making Syscoin’s distributed marketplace more usable and providing a myriad of new features. As long-standing community members will know, the core functionality of the Syscoin network has been in place and working for over three years; this release puts a more usable face on it and continues the team’s promise to deliver and bring this technology to the mainstream.

As discussed in previous posts and on Slack, Twitter and Telegram- this is a beta release. As with other Syscoin betas, it will run on testnet until the final release, and certain functionality will be missing from this initial release. Missing features will be added in short order as we release additional Beta products, and will be visible and testable before the final release.

*Please note that you MUST clear your testnet data(located in the testnet3 folder) before attempting to run Blockmarket for Desktop(if you have contributed to testing Syscoin in the past).

The features missing from beta1 can be found on the beta status page, which we will keep updated as we continue to iterate and release new betas.

Bugs, issues, enhancements etc. should be *expected* at this stage of development. There is currently an outstanding bug that affects a subset of Mac users and causes Blockmarket to hang on the loading screen. The team is aware of this issue and working to resolve it as quickly as possible. It only affects a subset of Mac users and with this public release we’ll gain the information needed from a larger testing base to enable us to resolve the issue even faster.

Our team is here to help and be responsive, but we need the community to step-up and help us test this product as thoroughly as possible. The focus of Beta1 is cross-platform testing on a larger subset of operating systems (Mac/Windows) and ensuring core functionality works on those operating systems. All features not included in a given beta are still part of Syscoin core and will be present in subsequent beta release and the final release. Additionally the beta1 release is not intended to be the final visual style and thus we ask users to hold off submitting visual-related issues until at least beta2.

No Impact to Final Release

The beta1 delays to release a better first-impression product have zero impact whatsoever on the final release date for the first mainnet-enabled Blockmarket for Desktop release, which will occur on May 22nd, 2017 as planned, just ahead of the Consensus 2017 conference.

Please help by reporting issues

If you run into a bug, problem, or issue are which you feel could be improved please check to see if the issue has already been reported, if it has not please log a new issue.

Please do not log visual/aesthetic issues during Beta1. Beta2 will be released shortly, after which we welcome feedback on visual/aesthetic and usability issues.

This is a big moment for the team and community. Thank you for your ongoing support and let’s work together to make the testing and final release of Blockmarket a huge success!

To access the beta you can download it below. Again, as a reminder it is locked to testnet. Please note that you MUST clear your testnet data(located in the testnet3 folder) before attempting to run Blockmarket for Desktop(if you have contributed to testing Syscoin in the past).