Biweekly update 9th October — 23rd October

Development

GitHub metrics

There is also a private GitHub repository.

Developer activity (from coinlib.io)

Twitter — SHIFT Project @ShiftNrg: “Phoenix has spread its wings and is preparing to fly! Our website has been successfully transitioned to the Phoenix Cluster!”

Social encounters

October 23rd, 2018 in Official Telegram Group: Werner Heisenberg (Vice-president / Operations manager):“The concept of conferences is something for the future”.

Finance

You can change SHIFT on SimpleSwap — instant exchanger with more than 175 currencies.

Partnerships and team members

No updates.

Roadmap

October 17, 2018: The Shift Team has updated the Project Roadmap with new features and information, with translations to follow soon.

Development:

100% completed:

Proof of Concept: New Shift Website

Introductory White Paper (First of Four)

Storage Cluster Optimization

Hydra Decentralized CMS: Pre-Alpha Release

Shift Core 6.7.1t

Shift Core 6.7.2t

Shift Core 6.7.3t: Block Reward Division

Shift Core 6.8.0t

Shift Core 6.8.1t: dApp Ready

Decentralized Blockchain Explorer

Shift Core 6.7.1: Emergency Patch

Shift Core 6.8.2t

Shift Core 6.8.2

Fully Stable Sidechain

Hydra Decentralized CMS: Alpha Release — Q2, 83% completed.

Hydra is a custom IPFS-compatible Content Management System (CMS) that provides a storage solution for dynamic data. This component is included with Shift in order to make web development on platform simple and user-friendly.

Phoenix — Q4, 90% completed. Priority.

Phoenix is the software we have designed that allows the Shift platform to create an IPFS-based storage layer and subsequently manages the pinning of data to it. Phoenix consists of two components. Phoenix-core is a peer-to-peer library allowing Phoenix peers to form an IPFS swarm, while Phoenix-cluster is a module for the issuing of PIN commands to the IPFS swarm.

Blockchain Integration with Phoenix — Q4, 83% completed. Priority.

Phoenix will be integrated with the Shift mainchain in order to provide a means of decentralized governance over Shift’s IPFS storage layer. The blockchain layer is essential in verifying account ownership, as well as assessing whether wallets contain sufficient SHIFT tokens necessary to claim storage space and execute functions.

Nano Wallet Update v2.0.0 — Q4, 33% completed. Priority.

An update of the current Nano wallet (v1.1.0) will accommodate the use of decentralized storage solution.

Atomic Swaps — TBD, 0% completed. New.

As the team was not fully satisfied with the concept of multi-signature digital escrow wallets, they have decided to look into real atomic swaps instead of cross-chain transactions as an alternative means of connecting different chains with each other. An atomic swap can be described as a four legged transaction. With this transaction type two users are involved, both owning two accounts in their mutual possession, with each user owning one wallet located on Chain 1 and one on Chain 2. The transaction goes as follows and requires the approval of both users: On Chain 1, User A transfers a certain amount of Token X to the wallet of User B, while on Chain 2, User B transfers a corresponding, simultaneously agreed amount of Token Y to the wallet of User A. The implementation of atomic swaps will allow tokens of chains that also support atomic swaps, to be directly traded with the SHIFT token, subsequently allowing for the ability to claim storage on platform.

New Shift Core: New Consensus Algorithm — TBD, 37% completed.

A new consensus algorithm is being researched. When the team is satisfied with findings, the new consensus algorithm and motivations for its development will be explicated in a special white paper dedicated solely to this topic.

Phoenix Websocket Communication — TBD, 0% completed.

This update will allow websocket communication between clients using Phoenix. Websocket communication is essentially a protocol for relaying messages between web browser clients. Instead of having to poll for updates, the browser can send a message to a group of servers and anyone who is listening in that pool will receive it instantly. Websocket communication would be a remarkable achievement in the field of decentralization: it is a prerequisite for supporting real time applications such as live chat or multiplayer gaming on the cluster.

Decentralized Cluster Consensus — TBD, 5% completed.

Phoenix will be integrated with a verification protocol that will assess whether Phoenix peers are hosting the content they should be hosting. This requires a consensus mechanism that keeps track of which Phoenix peers are hosting what content.

Improved Shift Chain — TBD, 33% completed.

There is an issue with the Lisk addressing format: when addresses are created, the character length of the output is random. As a result, the number of characters of a wallet address can vary without any control number. Although in the case of Shift, all wallet addresses end with the letter S, this variability could sometimes cause users to accidentally send SHIFT tokens to a non-existent address. Team is therefore going to implement the HD wallet BIP address standard, which is used by Bitcoin. This address format has the huge advantage over Lisk’s format of allowing the implementation of input validation, preventing the character length of the output being random.

New Shift Website — TBD, 50% completed.

With the launch of Shift’s first storage cluster and Shift’s current website on December 31st, 2017, the team provided a proof of concept exhibiting the capabilities of IPFS. They now plan to revamp the Shift Project’s website in collaboration with a world class advertising agency to effectively communicate Shift’s value propositions to the public and provide an updated overview of Shift’s consumer and enterprise-level use cases. They foresee the new website being launched with the release of the technical white paper on the planned re-architecturing of the Shift platform. Furthermore, the Q1 improvements of the IPFS daemon have allowed to improve current website with ‘pretty URLs’, deep linking, a custom 404 error page, and stricter node monitoring by Jenga to fix 404 errors. However, the current website sometimes still experiences bad gateway 502 errors. This is due to the instability of the IPFS Cluster software that is currently used to host website. Soon, the current website will be hosted on the first version of Phoenix, that, in theory, should bring the downtime of website to absolute zero.

Public awareness:

100% completed:

Animation Series: Blockchain

Collaboration: Coins and Steel

Screencast: Phantom dApp Quickstart Guide

Shift Project Progress Report — Q4, 80% completed. New.

We’re currently working on a progress report that is essentially a summary of the most important development achievements of the past year. The intention of this report is to give people an insight into what decisions have been made regarding development and why these decisions have been made. The report is also intended to provide the reader with an understanding of the road we’ve travelled in order to realize the imminent release of our decentralized storage and web hosting solution. In addition to our website, the progress report will also be published on social media channels (Facebook, Reddit and Bitcointalk) to better spread awareness about our upcoming release and to begin a new era of social media engagement.

Partnership: To Be Revealed — Q4, 0% completed. New.

A major partnership will be revealed during Q4. The date of the reveal will likely fall after the release of the decentralized storage solution on the testnet, so that it is able to maximize the mutual benefit for ourselves and our collaboration partner.

Phoenix Pilot Program — Q4, 0% completed. New.

With the completion of Phoenix we have managed to create a stable IPFS swarm. This allows us, with the upcoming realization of its blockchain integration, to enter a new phase in conducting partnerships and collaborations with companies that are looking for a trustless, decentralized storage solution. We hope to release the blockchain integrated storage solution to the testnet as soon as possible so that the Phoenix Pilot Program can then become an ongoing part of platform-community relations.

Screencast: Decentralized Storage Solution — Q4, 0% completed. New.

Once the decentralized storage solution is released and available for public testing, we will produce two unique video tutorials/screencasts. One video will demonstrate how to install and use Phoenix, while the other will demonstrate the storage user interface of the Nano wallet.

Applying for New Exchange Listings — TBD, 0% completed. New.

With the release of our decentralized storage solution, our platform will have a real use case, and thus our (testnet) token a real utility. With that implementation of a token utility we believe that the viability of new exchange listings will be greatly improved. We are therefore in the process of pursuing new listings to be realized following the release.

Introductory Business White Paper — TBD, 90% completed.

The Introductory Business White Paper will explain Shift’s business development strategy, including expanded details about its growth, PR, and partnership projects for 2018 and 2019. This white paper aims to communicate Shift’s value proposition and its goals in non-technical language that is easy to understand for the average consumer. Since the Phoenix Pilot Program can only be started once the decentralized storage solution is released to the testnet, we expect most partnerships to be established after the release. Since partnerships demonstrate Shift’s use case, the Introductory Business White Paper will be released to coincide with the formalization of these collaborations.

Financial White Paper — TBD, 0% completed.

With the revelation of our pricing model, we’re very much looking forward to its public testing. The testing will provide us with data that can help us optimize our pricing formula. We’re planning to collaborate with a faculty member of a university department of economics/econometrics who could help us analyze the data we gather during the testnet phase and, based on that data, define new parameters for the formula to ensure our pricing model is both rapid and valid in incorporating changes in supply and/or demand.

Rumors

No updates.

Social media activity

Social media activity

Telegram — Discussion about updates, voting, marketing and coding.

Facebook (since March 2016) — announcements, 10–30 likes, 1–2 shares.

Twitter (since February 2016) — Average number of retweets is 25–50 for one post (tweet about new decentralized website got 351 retweet, 31 December, 2017).

Ryver — discussion on voting, roadmap and bounties.

Reddit — The longest thread in 2018 is about 1 million stolen Shift from the team’s dev fund (it has 29 comments).

Information from Cryptocompare.com

Bitcointalk.org — 6147 posts. Last post — on October 04, 2018: FAQs, Phantom, latest news, translation of the whitepaper, videos, exchanges etc.

New communication channel — Discord (unofficial) — 22 members so far (October 23rd, 2018).

There is a slight growth in Shift community over time. The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Shift Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.

Social media activity