2017 Retro and the Year Ahead

Beginning of this week, we hosted our third community call where Gnosis co-founders Martin and Stefan gave a retrospective of 2017 and presented an updated roadmap for the year ahead.

What have we been up to? 2017 Retro and Major Milestones

Olympia (Live)
On Monday, we achieved a major milestone: we successfully launched Olympia, the first application of our prediction market platform. It provides participants with a playful environment to try out trading in prediction markets and win GNO tokens as a reward for successful predictions. For developers aspiring to build dApps on top of our platform, Olympia should serve as both a test environment and an inspiration for what is possible to create with Gnosis. We’re very thankful for all the feedback we’ve received so far from the community and are working hard to keep improving the product.

In case you haven’t predicted how much cryptokitties will make up of the entire Ethereum network by December 22nd, definitely do so now and don’t hesitate to send us feedback about your experience!

Dutch Exchange (Q2 2018)
As you might have already seen in an introductory post on our blog, we will launch a decentralized exchange for ERC-20 tokens based on the Dutch auction principle. We’ve made some really good progress on its development and plan to go live early in Q2 2018. This week, we will introduce the auction mechanism in detail on our blog.

A nice side effect of the Dutch Exchange is that it can basically also serve as a reliable, on-chain price oracle for ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. This is especially important for our WIZ token mechanism — with our auction based exchange serving as a price oracle, smart contracts can understand what tokens are worth.

Gnosis Safe (Q1 2018 for Android/Q2 2018 for iOS)
Currently, the way most people are interacting with the Ethereum network is by entirely relying on private keys. If you ever lose access to your private key, you’d lose access to all assets that are in your wallet. That’s why we think that Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is a really good tradeoff between usability and security. The Gnosis Safe wallet is geared towards single users using 2 or more factor authentication. The additional factors can be held by mobile devices (phones, tablets) and hardware ledgers.

We finished a first MVP for Android — feel free to download the Android APK from our repository and install it on your phone. By the end of January, we plan to release the next MVP that will feature 2FA. In March 2018, we hope to have the first Gnosis Safe Alpha featured in the App Store.

Gnosis JS/Smart Contracts Beta
We had the smart contracts audited and already released a few versions of our Gnosis JS library for which we also created detailed documentation. The Gnosis JS library is the foundation for Olympia.

Management Interface Beta
We’ve successfully released the alpha version of the Gnosis Management Interface in the form of our prediction market tournament Olympia. While the Management Interface can be considered as a generic approach, Olympia simply is a fork of it, adding the elements that are required to run our competition on top (i.e. high score, OLY tokens, etc.). If everything goes well with Olympia, there’s a good chance that we will release a first version on the main net including only a handful of markets before the end of 2017.

GnosisDB
Currently, queries that you would usually do against a database are extremely slow if you do them against the Ethereum Full Node (or the guest client for example). That’s why we’ve built GnosisDB, a storage for prediction market data that lives on the blockchain. The Gnosis database is replicating what is already entailed in the smart contracts and enriching this data with information from IPFS. Gnosis DB makes all the data available in a way that it can be easily and quickly curated from the front-end.

We use GnosisDB for both the Management Interface and as part of Olympia.

Hackathons
This year, we tried to get talented developers excited about the power of developing on Ethereum by being part of several hackathons: Cal Hacks, the world’s largest student hackathon hosted by UC Berkeley, InOut, India’s biggest community hackathon, and ETHWaterloo. Stay tuned about our upcoming developer incentivization programs to be announced in 2018!

What is still on our To Do?
Crytoeconomic Experiments (Q2 2018)
We made a lot of progress on the cryptoeconomic experiments (the smart contracts are written), but decided to run these next year since it makes sense to have an easy-to-use user interface ready first that can accommodate a broader audience. Therefore, we prioritized Olympia which will soon also support the conditional markets needed to conduct the planned cryptoeconomic experiments.

We’re very happy that Robin Hanson officially joined the Gnosis Advisory Team team. His help and expertise has been invaluable for the experiment setup as well as the Gnosis’ prediction market design and some of his ideas have already been implemented into our core infrastructure. In the coming months, he will continue to advise us on the experiments to test the viability of Futarchy.

Reality Keys/Oracle Integration (Q2 2018)
For the year ahead, we will look into oracle integrations with providers like Reality Keys, Chainlink, or Reality Check. Fortunately, many companies have entered this space which will give us a good opportunity to reevaluate the current market and see which integrations make the most sense for us.

GNO/WIZ Functionality (Q1 2018)
While we’ve already started to integrate the GNO/WIZ functionality, we will fully release it into the wild in the new year once it can actually be used on our services. We're in discussion to rename the WIZ tokens to OWL.

https://blog.gnosis.pm/2017-retro-and-the-year-ahead-42959d1380b5

An Announcement about STORJ Token Lock-ups

When our team at Storj Labs architected the STORJ token sale, our goal was to ensure we had enough runway to realize our grand vision: to build the largest, fastest, most secure, decentralized cloud storage platform in the world. To accomplish this lofty goal, we created a reserve of 245 million tokens we could use in the future to fuel the growth of our network. These tokens were placed into a six-month lock-up to be used at a later date.
http://blog.storj.io/post/168735310988/an-announcement-about-storj-token-lock-ups

Five Things You Need To Know About BANKEX Partners



As a fintech company, BANKEX has always been keen on establishing new collaborative innovation partnerships to acquire new technology and develop new products. Our numerous partners share our passion for blockchain and Proof-of-Asset Protocol. Here are five things you need to know about BANKEX

https://blog.bankex.org/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-bankex-partners-8de238dd5b1f

Токены SDAO залистили на бирже yobit и цена цена сейчас очень неплохая, хотя обьмы особо не радуют, а когда планируется раздача токенав участникам твиттер компании?
https://yobit.net/en/trade/SDAO/BTC

Only Coin with Confidential Ring Transactions at the Protocol Level

TPAY is the only coin to provide the ultimate privacy of confidential ring transactions at the protocol level coupled with zero-knowledge proofs, stealth addresses, encrypted chat and a full Tor network integration.

Other coins have combined some of these features, but only TPAY has unified all of them in a single unbreakable platform. Monero features the most impressive privacy profile absent of TPAY, but it lacks Tor network integration and the embedded secure communications interface where TPAY users enjoy the real-time encrypted chat.

It is interesting to note that Bitcoin itself, along with the supposedly secure Dash token, have no advanced security features. ZCash is widely considered to be a highly secure and anonymous coin, but it is linkable and falls short by not having true end to end anonymity.

https://medium.com/@TokenPay/only-coin-with-confidential-ring-transactions-at-the-protocol-level-6b3eb47125d8

Clear your festive diary: here's a Christmas party with a crypto twist, hosted by BABB to launch the private pre-sale of our token, BAX.

We're gathering around the fire to toast marshmallows and tell stories. One story in particular: the origins of BABB and our journey so far...from one man with big dreams and no bank account, to a fast-growing startup poised to raise millions via a token sale.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/baxmas-the-christmas-party-with-a-crypto-twist-tickets-40777710229

STOX: The Crowd & The Blockchain



Crowd Prediction are a powerful tool for generating insights which are beyond the reach of data and market research. The evolution of blockchain technology has given rise to several new prediction market applications. These platforms utilize digital currency to provide a decentralized, real-money (tokens) prediction market.

While other platforms appear to be focusing on providing traditional markets, Stox is focusing on becoming a prediction market platform on a novel applications and broader categories. Stox believes that thinking and information processing (cognition), coordination (optimization of the utilization), and cooperation (how groups for networks of trust) applies to co-creation, and principles of the crowd prediction.

Stox is a prediction market platform that rewards the users for correctly predicting the future events (a decision market to capture collective wisdom). Stox prediction markets allow users to purchase and sell shares in the outcome of an event. Users can enjoy predicting everyday events in real time, and potentially profit from the outcome.

Stox combines the magic of prediction markets with the power of decentralized networks to create a stunningly accurate forecasting tool. This all happens on the blockchain. In a centralized prediction market, one person has to report back on the outcome of the event. This encourages mistakes or even corruption. Stox is decentralized and uses blockchain with thousands of users reporting on outcomes using reputation. With Stox, anyone anywhere in the world can create a market by asking about anything.

People believe that one day there will be prediction markets for everything. Where every question can be easily solved by pointing to an existing prediction market (or creating a new one) and having their question answered to the full extent of human knowledge.

Unfortunately, the number of assets that exist in a market category is inversely proportional to the liquidity of each of the assets. This is part of where Stox partner with Bancor to maintain liquidity. Bancor is an ERC20-compatible token template, which offers continuous liquidity via an on-chain market maker. With this integration, anyone can buy or sell STX at any time, without risk of not having a counterparty, and at predetermined cost (even “slippage” exchange rate changes during the trade can be calculated in advance)

https://medium.com/@Willitchang/stox-the-crowd-the-blockchain-c8c7967da7ca

https://medium.com/dropdeck/improving-borrower-lifetime-value-5f7d20f3e4c0
IMPROVING BORROWER LIFETIME VALUE

Lenders are always looking for ways to increase product penetration from their clients/customers. By diversifying the types of revenues from customers portfolio and customer risk profiles are improved. For example by cross selling a trade finance facility to a borrowing customer will improve the risk profile as the revenue type is diversified to include fees apart from interest income.

In most cases the information for such opportunities are not easily available to lenders unless the clients discuss the same. Even when known it is likely that other banks/lenders are already owners of the opportunity or are providing the service.

When these information sources are widened to include business associates such as suppliers, dealers, distributors and service providers who are aware of the client’s business methods this enhances the opportunity for lenders/investors to diversify into their client’s eco space. In this way they also are able to monitor and track the exposure and potentially drive new outcomes for all.

This will mean higher lifetime value for the financier. This will also open up opportunities to enter new customer businesses by considering upstream and downstream industry chains.

Dropdeck offers the opportunity to lenders/investors to identify such situations where they can choose which eco system to enter on account of diversified risk.

Dropdeck not only incentivises stakeholders in the investment/lending supply chain but also widens the choices for the seeker. From an investor/lender POV it diversifies their portfolios and helps gauge new types of risk by bringing in cross border opportunities. Subject to legal regulations and tax regimes this can be a very useful new source for SMEs looking to seize business opportunities and also go global.

Securitizing Your Crypto Assets: Explained Using Crypto Kitties

If you’ve been following recent news, you already know about Crypto Kitties:
the digital pet that’s also a cryptoasset. With some of these Crypto Kitties
being sold for $100,000+, it’s clear these crypto assets can have immense value.



https://medium.com/cybertrustbank/securitizing-your-crypto-assets-explained-using-crypto-kitties-ec23317f2220

We have extended our community video submissions to 15 January for our Zcoin music video. Watch what our amazing community has submitted thus far! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlkq-Bd5GTo

Qtum: the sleeping giant

In a rush? Check out the numbers and quick facts in 30 seconds.

The great Napoléan Bonapart said it over a century ago: “China is a sleeping giant[…]When she wakes, she will move the world“. And this giant has been shaking the cryptocurrencies world by all means. From huge trading volumes, tremendous mining capabilities, to ones of the most hyped projects and ICOs, this astonishing shift of status quo relies greatly on the Red Dragon. Today, we will go over the intriguing Qtum project with a fine-tooth comb. Praised to be “the best team out of China and Asia” by Ethereum’s co-founder Anthony Di Iorio, all eyes are fixed on the project.

https://en.decentral.news/2017/12/16/qtum-sleeping-giant-china/

Peercoin is now in the final stretch of its soft fork, less than 10% remaining before the protocol switch is triggered



https://www.peercoinexplorer.net/forkwatch/

The Enjin Smart Wallet is due to launch for Android sometime in December, 2017, while the iOS app will follow in Q1 2018.

It will be the most secure mobile wallet in the world.

We are organising this thunderclap in order to give Enjin Coin supporters and any new fans an easy way to contribute to our marketing efforts.

Let's spread some buzz folks!

Do note that the exact launch date we'll be changed - we're sure to launch by the end of the year.

https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/65971-enjin-smart-wallet

BCDC, through its RecycleToCoin project, is launching the scheme. It will allow; through its partners like the Plastic Disclosure Project (PDP), everyday families and companies all over the world to first calculate and then offset their entire annual plastic footprint. Unlike the often-controversial carbon offset schemes which can seem intangible, BCDC’s Global Plastic Offset Scheme will only support projects proven to tackle plastic pollution; while supporting others which will help reuse current and future plastics. Its funding will also be recorded on the immutable blockchain; so, there will be full accountability to all stakeholders
https://globalplasticoffsetscheme.com/

GONETWORK — RASHID KHAN, CEO, AND XUN CAI, COO — HIGHLY SCALABLE, LOW-COST MOBILE NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ETHEREUM

https://www.futuretechpodcast.com/podcasts/gonetwork-rashid-khan-ceo-xun-cai-coo-highly-scalable-low-cost-mobile-network-infrastructure-ethereum/
One of the biggest problems with blockchain currently is that it cannot handle large amounts of transactions at the same time, and such transactions are not inexpensive–for example, many blockchains cannot handle more than three or four transactions per second.

As adoption of blockchain technology grows, this problem will only get larger. To solve this, GoNetwork has developed a mobile network infrastructure for Ethereum and ERC20 tokens that would allow thousands of transactions per second.

Being able to scale to allow this many transactions simultaneously would have the effect of reducing the cost per transaction, and would be ideal for anyone who is creating their own business or application that requires fast and cheap transactions. Their idea was one of the winning submissions at the ETHWaterloo Hackathon.

Chronobank Makes Time For Estonia’s Crypto Effort



As Estonia rolls out the public-private program to launch its cryptocurrency and fund its ambitious blockchain program via a Token Generation Event (TGE), Chronobank joins as a partner and advisor, helping the Baltic state to tokenize its labor relations.

https://cointelegraph.com/press-releases/chronobank-makes-time-for-estonias-crypto-effort

AI is able not only to calculate moves in chess but also to help business
https://twitter.com/miniapps_pro/status/942046671541800961

Anyone who has not yet updated to 4.2.1.6 / 4.2.1.7, please do so now, with a fresh bootstrap, otherwise the other nodes will ban you
https://twitter.com/bismuthdev/status/942053375398612993

Hit On Net Neutrality Could Be Blow To Bitcoin. FCC head Ajit Pai has managed to deal a major blow to free and neutral Internet usage by repealing the Net Neutrality laws. https://cointelegraph.com/news/hit-on-net-neutrality-could-be-blow-to-bitcoin