UNews — Entering LEO, Two Worlds Collide, New Partnerships, Ecosystem Adviser and More…

It really is amazing what can happen in 30 days. When we last published UNews, 1 UUU was about two tenths of a cent — this was after what the community considered a huge run at the time and Bitcoin was trading under $8,000 USD. Fast forward to now and where are we? U Network token price has soared and at one point pushing towards 1 cent, Bitcoin nearly touched $14,000 USD and Upbet decided to allow players to withdraw staked tokens. It really is amazing how dynamic the cryptocurrency sphere is and how quickly people’s fortunes can turn around. This said lets have a look at what has happened in the U Network sphere since our last edition…

Entering LEO

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

In the cryptocurrency world we sometimes borrow terms from the space industry, so I am going to borrow LEO to explain what has happened with U Network in the last 30 days. If we are on a ‘Moon Mission’ there are multiple stages you must go through in order to meet your objective of reaching the Moon. Firstly you have to build the infrastructure and secondly develop the software to work with it, lets call this the Build stage. Many would argue this is what the U Network team have done for the past 18 months, develop and refine the plan, implement the infrastructure and develop DApps such as Chongdongshu, Ugot, Upbet and the Yeke or “Coconut Shell”.

Lift Off of Falcon Heavy — SpaceX

In the previous UNews we discussed the price change that occurred in the space of 7 days, in retrospect we can consider this the Lift Off stage for U Network, as after these initial gains U Network built on the momentum. Fuel was added after Lift Off by community members, making vocal the recent gains on Twitter. Since then and with support from Bitcoin — noting the price of UUU has consistently bucked the trend of Bitcoin’s volatility, we have continued to see gains. To me this has led to us entering the LEO stage of U Network’s Moon Mission.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash — A view in real terms of Low Earth Orbit

LEO or Low Earth Orbit is naturally the next stage in the adventure. U Network has lifted off and now in a holding pattern, with occasional changes in altitude. In real terms, LEO stretches from about 200km — 2000km above the Earth’s surface, noting the International Space Station spends most its time around 340km. In price terms, we can consider LEO for UUU to vary between 12–68 sats and we are comfortably in that range now — I’ll let you work out what a Moon price might be from that. In my opinion, it will be important for U Network to stay in LEO for a while, building support, developing on their proven products and continuing to create interest prior to entering into the next phase of the journey which will in my mind will involve TLI — Trans Lunar Insertion.

In Yi, Paul and Peter, the U Network core team have the vision, plan and strategy in place to successfully reach the TLI stage in the future. These plans and strategies will need to work in conjunction with a great marketing and promotional campaign in the East and West lead by Ken, Julia, Kris and Jennifer in order to make U Network a widely recognized name in the blockchain industry and later across the globe. For now though, lets enjoy the ride as token holders, welcome the multitude of new community members and experience the view from LEO together.

Two Worlds Collide

When thinking of U Network social groups, many are familiar that we have a Telegram, but few, particularly from the west, would know of the U Network WeChat group . With that in mind, UBuild developer Trevor, the western visionary of a content utopia was curious to know the sentiment and on-goings in the Chinese group.

Separated by language and time, Trevor ventured in. Quickly finding friends, allies and realizing that the group had many of the same quirks as that of that of Telegram, he was accepted in as one of WeChat’s own.

Arriving full of questions and trusty translator app at the ready, Trevor was eager to find out what the group knew about their new China focused product dubbed ‘Coconut Shell’ and what they thought it meant for U Network’s future. What will it do? What is its role? How will it set into motion events that might tear apart the fabric of space and time?

Likewise, Trevor received questions about the product of the west in Upbet — the product that could be used to reward people that accurately predict the future value of everything — the monetization of Twitter in affect. It was established that the intermingling and collaborations of U Network communities will be vital to our future success. The battle to take on our content platform rivals is at hand. Not only the likes of Steemit, but also Medium, Facebook and Twitter and many others. This battle will be long, it will be hard, but with the combined power of the U Networkien, nothing is impossible and we shall be victorious.

Upbet

So much has happened in the last 30 days with Upbet. Have had hints of the future, an unprecedented move from the Upbet team to allow people to unlock their stakes tokens — with varied community response, and some large markets starting to form so lets break this down.

We have been advised of impending updates to the platform with Yi stating in a Discord chat:

The the whole back end of Upbet has almost been rebuilt

A new token is coming to the platform

Furthermore U Network Bi-Weekly Report 29 also hints at a new adjustment to the new UI. Both of these were reiterated and confirmed in the recent AMA with Yi Lu.

Besides the U Network team, no one knows for sure what these updates are as yet, though we hope that they have listened to the community feedback since the products inception that include: 2FA or Withdraw Email Confirmation, Instant/Automatic withdraw to the paired wallet, Email notification when players comment/ask questions of your market, Enabling Profile Customization after signup, Decentralized Appeals Process, Diversified Staking Options and… an Option to break your locked stake period.

Announced on 2 July, Upbet allowed a 3 day period where players with over 500,000 tokens locked in a Stake would be allowed to withdraw. The reason for this, the team says “Due to UUU price going up and receiving many feedback’s about unlock request”. Unsurprisingly this was met with glee and criticism depending on your point of view.

One Discord member reached out, asking questions of how the Upbet team came to this decision more than, “Because people asked to violate the terms of the conditions of participation on Upbet” and “What will be done to prevent this from arbitrarily happening in the future?” Both of these are excellent questions! Another Telegram member I spoke to said that they were weighing up the options, but the fee to withdraw the UUU would be hefty.

To me, the Upbet team in any case were in a difficult predicament. By providing this unlock opportunity they have pleased some who otherwise would have been locked in to their choice. On the other hand, Upbet have displeased some that argue the staking mechanism is there to prevent ‘weak hands’ from being able to sell. In fact we asked the question of Yi Lu in the AMA regarding the teams decision process in coming to the unlock period. UNews highly recommends any interested community members follow the link to the AMA and read the full discussion here.

UBuild have had an idea posted to discuss how withdrawal fee can improve citing that with the rise in value of BTC and UUU, the cost to withdraw is now excessive. The idea points out that:

“We have to weigh the needs of our existing users against the desire to offer new registrants rewards for referring. Attractive rewards help us grow, but sky high withdraws have the opposite effect and create a bad reputation for Upbet. Should we reduce the withdraw fee on Upbet? If so, to what? If so, should the referral fee also be reduced down to the new withdraw fee? Are there other reward mechanisms we could discuss that are less likely to be abused?

Clearly this is a complex and difficult discussion, one that requires many opinions in order to find the right solution. Have you got an idea, opinion or suggestion you want heard? Head over to UBuild and take part in this complicated topic.

Lastly, community member Pawaluodi has started a discussion regarding how the content (market) creators are rewarded in Upbet. From the Twitter pole Pawauodi has ran, of the 17 respondents 71% agree that content creators should be rewarded from both the winning and losing sides stakes. This is another complex issue that was briefly discussed in the AMA and will no doubt be discussed further within the team and community.

New Partnerships and Adviser!

The U Network community have been treated to a couple of new strategic partnerships in the last month. Firstly we had:

1. U Network getting added to the SWFTPay Wallet

2. A New Strategic Partnership with EKT

3. A New Adviser coming on board! We welcome Samuel Li to the team as the UUU Ecosystem Adviser and look forward to seeing how his insights can shape and direct the project moving forward.

Anything else?

UBuild called to action the U Network community to win a public vote with the BEZEX Listing Challenge. The community responded positively and at time of writing had 68% of the vote.