1 of 12 “We are inventing the future. Think about surfing on the front edge of a wave. It’s really exhilarating. Now think about dog-paddling at the tail end of that wave. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun. Come down here and make a dent in the universe.” – Steve Jobs

The Elastos Western Team returned from TokenFest in Boston while community member Rosh Ghadamian hosted a meetup with Rong Chen sponsored by the City of Melbourne and several top universities.

We are making a dent everywhere we go.

Elastos continued its forward momentum this week. Let’s recap.

Technical Updates

1. Completed the AuxPOW+DPOS exception process verification

2. Java version of the SDK to increase the wallet function, convenient exchange docking

3. Developed multi-signing function for mobile wallet

4. The mobile wallet is changed to a short connection to improve the concurrent support capability

5. The mobile wallet now uses the checkpoint mechanism to improve the wallet initialization speed

6. SPV synchronization speed optimization

7. Started the sidechain smart contract test;

8. Completed the main chain test of the token chain

9. Modified the blockchain browser to be compatible with sidechains

10. Elastos Carrier Native SDK now supports Travis CI-based continuous build and automated testing of Circle CI

11. Carrier’s interface is complete (adding session cookie support, API for getting error information, and preliminary group API implementation)

12. The synchronous update of the Elastos Carrier iOS API

13. Started Trinity’s development support for the iOS platform

Slightly Less Technical Summary

There was a continued push towards the development of the consensus model of AuxPoW+DPoS for elastos blockchain. The mobile wallet gets lots of updates for more optimization and also, the java version of the wallet SDK is now available which will make it easier to integrate ELA to more exchanges and third party wallets. The smart contract sidechain went into the testing phase and the main chain was tested in support of the token sidechain while at the same time, the blockchain explorer was modified to be compatible with the sidechains. And last but not least, as part of the alpha release, the trinity browser was only available for android devices but the development for ios support is now also underway.

The Elastos testnet is officially open for public use. If you are a developer, you can now view our repositories on GitHub. More information can be found here: http://elanews.net/2018/07/26/elastos-developer-news-testnet-launch/

Useful links:

A Developer Beginner’s Guide

Developer Portal in Cyber Republic

Developer Documentation on Github

Elastos Smartweb Alpha

Elastos Community

Elastos Community Global

Community News

September 12

Elastos Foundation Director, Ben Lee, was a guest on the Bitmain AMA to resolve some confusion within the community. The following is an excerpt of the content:

Q: How can individuals participate in project development?

As an individual or a group leader, there are many ways to participate in community building and project development. Those with experience in technology development can do things like check for bugs, fix bugs, and develop DApps. You can also become an Elastos Ambassador who organizes Meetups to evangelise for Elastos. Tasks can be proposed or accepted on www.cyberrepublic.org.

Q: It is understood that ELA is merged mined with Bitcoin, borrowing from the strong consensus of Bitcoin to guarantee security. However, if there are fewer miners using merged mining in the early stages, will there be a risk of a 51% attack over the long term, similar to the previous system of copycat coins? So I would like to know the plan for actual implementation of merged mining and whether there is a corresponding protocol.

Currently, the Elastos and BTC.com mining pool is carrying out merged mining and will gradually connect to the hash rates of other BTC and BCH mining pools. Since the BTC.com mining pool is one of BTC’s three largest mining pools and it has long been ranked as BTC’s number one mining pool hash rate, if a 51% attack is launched, its hash rate must exceed that of BTC.com’s mining pool.

According to the development plan, the consensus mechanism will be upgraded from AuxPoW to AuxPoW+DPoS. The blocks generated from miners must be confirmed by an arbitrator, further reducing the risk of being attacked by hash rates or malicious miners, guaranteeing the security and trust of sidechains.

Q: As an Elastos community member, what are our rights in community operations? What are our obligations?

Under the structure of the Elastos Community Collective Governance Committee, community members enjoy the following rights:

1. The right to participate in elections for and be elected to the Collective Governance Committee;

2. Community members may impeach Collective Governance Committee members through the wallet function and once the number of votes for impeachment reaches the number defined in the community constitution, that person will automatically be dismissed from their post and replaced by an alternate committee member.

3. Community members may look up the current proposals under consideration using the wallet, and view information like the initiator, a description of the proposal, the quantity of ELA involved, the number of supporting votes.

4. Each proposal passed by the Collective Governance Committee will have a period of public notice, during which time community members may vote using the online wallet. Once opposing votes reach a defined number, the proposal will immediately be annulled.

5. The rights described above will go into effect after the generation of the election of the first Collective Governance Committee.

The rules of operation of the Collective Governance Committee are currently being established and we welcome everyone’s comments and questions at: [email protected]

Q: I have the following questions about Elastos:

No. 1: Is there a plan to launch a mobile version of the DApp wallet? When is it expected to be launched?

No. 2: Is there currently an actual application scenario? If so, which exist? Or when in the future will the actual application scenarios be realized?

No. 3: Will a split in the Elastos Foundation occur in the future, in the same way that ETH experienced a rollback, leading to the emergence of ETC?

1. The mobile Dapp wallet is expected to launch by the end of October;

2. I understand that the ecology needs both production and consumption. For Elastos, production is responsible for digital assets which can be validated by rmtf (music, movies, books, etc), consumers are the users of traditional apps and are responsible for consuming these digital assets, and ELA is used for payment during the consumption process. In this ecosystem, a positive development ecology can only be established once the ELA begins to circulate. This is why it is necessary for the Elastos ecosystem partners to either be able to manufacture high volumes of consumable digital assets or for them to have a hold of high volumes of users;

3. The split occurred because a difference in opinion of the community arose regarding development, thus causing a split into two chains which developed in two different directions. If these questions had been posed in 2015, no one would know the answer.

September 14

Elastos N.A. Strategist, Zach Warsavage, gave a 5 minute presentation at the Boston Token Fest on the topic of “Stewarding Blockchain Communities for Exponential Growth”

The team reported back from TokenFest that they took part in several interviews and met many great contacts at the event. Elastos and Cyber Republic were met with real enthusiasm by attendees. The majority of people the team spoke to about both projects were thrilled at the capabilities and vision of both Elastos and Cyber Republic.

September 16

Elastos founder Rong Chen participated in the Intergenerational Innovation Forum Celebration of The 60th Anniversary of the Tsinghua University Department of Computers and Technology. The forum’s theme was “Remembering the beginner’s mind, concentrating on computing for 60 years; remembering the mission, awakening the wisdom of mankind’s next 100 years,” during which representative department members enrolled between the years of 1970 and 1980 shared.

September 21

Rong Chen attended a community meetup in Melbourne

Events and Meetups

Los Angeles

Elastos is a sponsor at the Hollywood Entertainment Technology Festival. Zach Warsavage will be a speaker at this event. For more information visit: https://hetfest.com/

Manila

Link: https://www.meetup.com/Elastos-Philippines-Community/events/254502830

Tokyo

Community Art Assets

Elastos and Cyber Republic wallpaper designs are now available for desktop and mobile: https://bit.ly/2CwJe8g

Elastos Interview Series

This week we meet the Lead Evangelist and VP of Development, Clarence Liu:

Let’s go back to the beginning, tell us about yourself?



Well I’m Canadian born and raised, graduated from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver in 2009 with a degree in Computer Science. I soon found myself in Silicon Valley working as a software engineer in financial systems, where I became a VP of Engineering by the age of 27. At my last position I developed banking payment systems at a startup backed by NFX Guild, the leading VC firm in Palo Alto.



As a software engineer that spent all my time in startups I take pride in wearing many hats and getting involved in all aspects of an organization to help in the best way possible. Of the six plus years I’ve spent in Silicon Valley I’ve done everything from software architecture and data analytics to front-end development and marketing integrations.

How did you get introduced to Elastos?



I’ve always been interested in blockchain, I used to mine it in 2009 and kept none of it regrettably, but it wasn’t until Ethereum came around that I saw the true potential of it. Around that time I caught up with my old colleague Kevin Zhang, we used to work together as software engineers, and he proposed an idea to do smart contracts off-chain and asked for my input. One meeting turned into numerous chats, at that time he wasn’t with Elastos so we were just bouncing ideas off each other, but we definitely had some amazing talks and felt we had something cool. Then one day out of the blue he called me over to his house, he told me to take a seat, he told me a bit about Elastos, and suddenly it was like, “everything we talked about, what if we had the chance to actually do it?”. And well the rest is history I guess.

What is your view on blockchain technology?



I believe blockchain technology can radically change the world and offers humanity a choice it never had before, it opens entirely new business models and efficient ways of organizing the economy. For example right now there is an entire industry built on collecting and selling our private data that only exists because there is no technological solution to allow us to securely use the internet and own our own data. But now we have a way to completely upend that model and give people a better way forward.



At the end of the day I understand it removes lucrative middle-men jobs, impacts entire industries and disrupts many existing business models. But I think when we show people how we can do things differently, that there’s a choice, there will be a gradual change.

What were your initial thoughts on Elastos?



When I started, Elastos was just beginning to expand and go global, and I had an early chat with Fay Li where she really impressed upon me the importance of building an infrastructure, the size of the core team and the resources they had at their disposal. From that I knew there was an opportunity to start something really amazing, most other blockchain projects have only a handful of core engineers, but here we had a promising, little known, project brimming with potential.



Can you tell us more about your role at Elastos and Cyber Republic?

Actually I’ve recently added a primary title as VP of Development, I think this better reflects the things I focus on, which is developing not only the Elastos international community but also the global engineering team, as well as anything R&D related. For example I was just at Georgia Tech, RMIT Melbourne and University of Texas Arlington trying to set up partnerships to work on new technologies for Elastos.



In fact, a lot of the meetups I went to and helped organize as Lead Evangelist were aimed at finding talented entrepreneurs, professionals and developers to help us do research and development to improve and build the Elastos ecosystem.

DAPPS currently have limited scalability and low user adoption, where do you think is the problem how could these problems be solved?



I think we can loosely divide the dApp users into the crypto savvy, the crypto curious and the “no-coiners”, it’s the last group that’s hard to reach and also the largest. For these users it’s hard to explain the benefits of dApps, but I think there’s two ways to penetrate the mainstream market.

First the user experience needs to be equivalent or better than current centralized apps, to achieve this we need people of diverse skill-sets to all contribute to dApp development.

But more importantly I believe there needs to be a real monetary benefit to using dApps before real adoption is possible. I believe using dApps and blockchain is not just being a consumer but also a producer and participant in a new economy. When we not only achieve data security and privacy, but also data monetization, that’s when people will actually want to use dApps.

Being a software engineer, how excited are you about this technology and do you have plans for building on Elastos?

There’s a certain beauty to deploying a decentralized application full well knowing you can’t retract it, it takes open source to a whole new level. With open source you can give something for other developers to build with, but with dApps you can give something for anyone to use. No central authority needs to maintain it, it just exists, and if it has real world benefits then it will continue to provide this benefit.



And yes I absolutely have plans to build on Elastos, I have a ton of ideas and will likely take an advisory or software architect role on some projects as we ramp up development.

How would you convince other developers to work on Elastos?



I don’t think it’s really about convincing other developers to work on Elastos, I feel that building a platform is something where if you build it properly, developers will naturally come. I think innately developers and engineers are overflowing with ideas and just looking for the best platform to build on. Right now Elastos isn’t ready so we need to go out there and convince them, but obviously the goal is to attract them with the best tooling, support and platform they can build on.

You have travelled around the world attending meetups, what is the general response/reaction that you receive from the crowd?

Almost every crowd I’ve talked to doesn’t realize the implications that blockchain technology will have on the world. It’s almost as if they only understand what the technologies are and how they work, but not the real applications of them.

To this end I almost always get an amazing reception when I start my talks explaining not just what smart contracts are, but how they can be used to build an IoT/robot economy, automate entire industries, decentralize power and increase market competition, culminating in better solutions for everyone.

Or when I talk about data privacy, initially some people don’t seem phased, perhaps they are complacent with how the current tech giants collect and sell our private data. But when I mention that the future smart home could end up tracking every time you leave and return home through a smart lock, or how your DNA can be used to target medical ads people seem to perk up. Then I tell them about how they can own that data securely, and then turn around and sell it, that’s when they start to pay attention. It’s as if all of humanity just accepted that the current status quo was the only option.

I think if we are going to spread the benefits of blockchain we need people to be able to imagine what a world with blockchain technology is really like and how much better things could be.

Away from you the lines of code and flying around the world, what do you enjoy doing in your free time?



What free time? Just kidding, I do have an awesome husky that keeps up alongside me when I bike, she’s a husky so they are really hard to tire out. But other than that I do pretty much work all the time.

To me there are two possible futures, one which is an aberration even worse than what we have now where the tech giants merge and own us and all our data. It’s a future where we basically have no choices except the illusionary options purposely directed at us and we are all just data points.

Or another future where we take back our data and actually participate in the new economy instead of being force fed choices by the highest bidder for our data. Myself and all contributors to blockchain projects whether they know it or not are in a race.