Source: Pexels.com

After a hellish December plagued with network troubles, crazy bugs threatening a few million bucks, accounting deadline chimes and wild crypto swings — barely getting through the xmas with all the family duties and badly resource deficit work stuff arranged properly, things had finally looked fine for a good Saturday night’s sleep and a relaxing New Year’s Eve at the log cottage with the lady.

I started the engine two hours late. Woken up close to noon to wind back a couple of weeks’ constant slept debt, the original plans for a calm final day of the year seemed just fine, only to soon be noticed of passing with the fading daylight of just a few short hours near the arctic circle.

No doubt I’d still be able to fetch all the fireworks, generator fuel and raw jumbo shrimps in good time before letting go of the remote office duties for the year, composing a short wrapup for the nice HEAT community, and heading for a relaxing stroll by the dusk to bask the stress off in sauna. Or so I thought…

Not surprisingly, this sequence events and expectations on a metaphorical level fairly precisely mirror the first year in HEAT the 3rd generation crypto platform.

Starting with a smooth ICO and set up for quick launch with most of the work done already, HEAT’s entry to the middle of coinmarketcap top 100 in August 2016 seemed technically appropriate: well baked, not too hyped up dandy like many of the ICOs until then (and now).

Still it took a further five months to launch the genesis block, and a couple of months more to get the network straight. Our estimated technological edge of 6–12 months had shrunken in half by then. Our upper hand on the infrastructure, however, was still intact as none of the competitors despite pushing it seemed to have no clue what it takes to push real licensed EUR into blockchain and service that on a decentralized gateway.

Deploying EUR on the blockchain proved to be as difficult as sourcing jumbo shrimps at the arctic circle on the New Year’s Eve two hours before the shops close. Just when we were set up the legislation in some influential part of Europe changed to the worse, so we had to run the legal framework again to accommodate. The SEC acting on their whim and far east banning ICOs when we were set up again didn’t help for sure.

The last thing we needed was a consensus core level bug materializing in the last couple of weeks. Battling with the network to stay alive, the core team again stretched to the extreme, not saving sacrifices during the Christmas holidays to save the project’s ass. We’ve still got a little to explain and make up to our families, but HEAT is again rocking. The spirit of the community — which may be small but exceptionally adept in recognizing the hardships of riding at the forefront of the cutting edge world-changing technology— has been nowhere insignificant in getting us back on track once again. In fact it has been crucial.

HEAT has a little to lose and a lot to gain in the next months. Starting in Jan- Feb, the overdue technical updates and co-operation releases include:

mobile wallet

EUR gateway(s)

major ITO launches on HEAT (funding in HEAT / BTC / EUR /ETH)

smart vouchers

company options and shares sale

We got the following message from one of the coolest HEAT fans on facebook:

“HEAT

Sleeping giant in 2017

Awaken giant in 2018”

We take this as an omen. You might want to do likewise!

We’d like to thank the Heat Ledger Ltd staff and contracted acquaintances for a very exciting and progressive 2017, and extraordinarily fantastic 2018:

Dennis (lead dev)

Svante (CEO)

Alexey (core dev)

Glenn (advisor, strategy, infra org)

T*** (UI deployment, testing, ideas)

T** (accountant, strategy, legal advice)

M*** (accountant, whip)

T**** (blockchain projects, social)

R**** (promotion)

M*** (EUR Gateway co-op )

S***(EUR Gateway co-op)

M**** (EUR Gateway co-op)

E***** (UI design)

R***** (Marketing, strategy)

B***** (Influencer marketing)

R*** (Online marketing)

N****** (Marketing Director onsite)

C***** (UI strategy)

S***** (design, web code)

T***** (design, inspiration, support)

I*** (tech dev)

The HEAT community (ideas, support, strategy)

After what looked like insurmountable obstacles, I got to obtain the jumbo shrimps and fireworks. The stroll, being delayed two hours, can be done tomorrow. The log cottage is already +14 degrees celsius after 8 hours of shivering and lighting up every piece of combustible material around. Soon out of wood, the sauna is still warm and fireworks intact. Five minutes to midnight — not a second too early but just in time.

The same will happen to HEAT Ledger when deploying our scalable blockchain solutions and decentralized asset exchange to the market. We wish a Happy New Year 2018 to all HEAT supporters. It will be a prosperous one.