[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

Ethereum Project NEWS 22-03-2017

Aragon releases first Public Alpha – User oriented dapp to create and manage DACs with ease (testnet only) Wink

https://blog.aragon.one/releasing-aragon-alpha-602284a5380c#.r9j24b1c6

One month ago, we introduced our vision of how companies and organizations will work. And we set to make it a reality. Today, I want to personally thank all the community for the warmest welcome we could have ever dreamed of for Aragon.
So, today, we are releasing Aragon Alpha to the world. It comes as a desktop app for macOS, Linux and Windows, and runs on the Kovan Ethereum testnet.

ERC20 coins with reserves - Bancor Network smart contracts (alpha) on GitHub Wink

https://github.com/bancorprotocol/contracts

Bancor is a smart-contract-based token conversion protocol, which enables a single party to convert any token to another, without requiring a second party to exchange with. It achieves this through the use of reserve-tokens, which provide liquidity through autonomous algorithmic price discovery, regardless of trade volume.
The Bancor protocol represents the first technological solution for the classic problem in economics known as the “Double Coincidence of Wants”, in the domain of asset exchange. For barter, the coincidence of wants problem was solved through money. For money, exchanges still rely on labor, via bid/ask orders and trade between external agents, to make markets and supply liquidity.

Dr. Greg Colvin who works on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) joins Lunyr advisory board Wink

https://twitter.com/Lunyrinc/status/843864004925693952

Lunyr is a decentralized crowdsourced encyclopedia which rewards users with app tokens for peer-reviewing and contributing information. It aims to be the starting point of the internet for finding reliable, accurate information.
Making the EVM scream - Dr. Greg Colvin at Devcon 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p30mjDMhmlE

The Dapp Daily — March 21st, 2017 Wink

https://dappdaily.com/the-dapp-daily-march-21st-2017-fa45d3a3d6d#.vgo5egm5f

Tons of updates from the Ethereum ecosystem by sourcerers.io

iEx.ec Virtual Machine Management Wink

http://iex.ec/?p=705

To continue Oleg Lodygensky‘s series of articles introducing the technology behind the iEx.ec Blockchain-based Distributed Cloud, this article presents the iExec Virtual Machine Management.
This series of articles aims to be as concise and didactic as possible, introducing paradigms step by step. So far, we have introduced technology in terms one may already be familiar with when discussing global computing: decentralized services, pull mode and peer to peer (P2P) communications.

Announcing PEPERIUM - Rare Pepe and Meme Trading on the Ethereum blockchain Wink

https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/11552/announcing-peperium-rare-pepe-and-meme-trading-on-the-ethereum-blockchain

Hello everyone! I am excited and proud to announce the start of an exciting new project powered by the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS.
PEPERIUM is a decentralized meme marketplace and trading card game (TCG) that will allow anyone to create memes that live eternally on IPFS and Ethereum. The beta starts on April 20th, 2017 so this is a great opportunity to comment and suggest features, as well as receive the new meme trading token for Ethereum, RARE. All details are given in this white paper, and it is a living document, so expect plenty of updates, charts, and design diagrams in the weeks to come. Extending my thanks to all and look forward to being a part of the exciting Ethereum community.

How a Doctor from Japan can use Matchpool Wink

https://medium.com/matchpool/how-a-doctor-from-japan-can-use-matchpool-62a368084dd3#.rfmdmzix8

This doctor will be able to open a pool of doctors, now from that point on every patient that will approach him Will be directed to his pool and will get matched to a doctor right for the treatment.
Matchpool will help this doctor and many other doctors to utilize their networks and connections to help others. Matchpool is enabling The Matchmaking Economy, which can be applied to every service industry that requires agents, for example recruitment and property.

Matchpool World Tour Wink

https://medium.com/matchpool/summery-of-matchpool-roadshow-142afd78cbd8#.6txwjfubk

After a long couple of months of travelling, speaking and pitching around the world, I wanted to summarise all the places that Matchpool has been, what we achieved, who we met and the partnerships formed.
We are very excited for the crowdfunding this Saturday and invite you to take part in our amazing journey. We will be hosting a live stream whilst the crowdfunding commences at 12:30 GMT on appear.in/matchpool on Saturday 25th March.

Matchpool Cap: $ 5 Million USD in ETH Wink

https://medium.com/matchpool/matchpool-cap-5-million-usd-in-eth-f7bf1b3438f2#.pnht15n4t

In this article we want to explain shortly what our cap is and the initial creation process of the coins. We are getting a lot of questions from people asking us what our ETH cap will be after the recent Ethereum rise.

Edgeless Casino Launched Black Jack BETA 0.1 Wink

https://medium.com/edgeless/edgeless-beta-0-1-announcement-8c3ca97de2c0#.qhw0z5in3

The time has come! Let me introduce Edgeless Black Jack beta 0.1
beta.edgeless.io - Ethereum based Black Jack with decentralised random number generation and payouts.

We love this fan-made Edgeless casino video! https://youtu.be/tYoJO0JO59I Be part of the Edgeless story #Ethereum #casino #crowdfund Wink

https://twitter.com/edgelessproject/status/844150398374068224

Decentralised Edgeless CASINO by etherslots.win The Ethereum smart contract-based Casino offers a 0% house edge and solves the casino transparency question

The Etherian - Diving Deeper into ĐApps Wink

https://theetherian.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/the-etherian-weekly-slackgitter-update-3-12-2017-3-19-2017/

Note From the Editor: WE NEED VOLUNTEERS!!! If you like this post, please come over to https://gitter.im/The_Etherian/Lobby and cover a dapp.

Pi Day ENS Launch Postmortem released Wink

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xr6JELHHWb5ONl_WvJDmIwbfShTgWpMqiNRag2IdmLI/edit

maurelian @reddit: This is an excellent review Nick. I appreciate that the planned actions don't have a timeline on them, they just have to be done properly. I'm excited about what's coming out of this, and at the enthusiasm the community is showing. Since the non-launch, it seems like a lot of people have a much better understanding of both the ENS' potential, and how it works under the hood.

Real Estate Transactions: Built on REX, Powered by Ethereum Wink

https://blog.rexmls.com/real-estate-transactions-built-on-rex-powered-by-ethereum-b54210de07fa#.yrum48rbg

At REX, we are building a global real estate listing platform that’s free of ads, free to use and search, and incentivizes contributors. Why start with listings? Isn’t the blockchain better suited for transactions? We’re asked this question all the time. We want to take this opportunity to walk you through our rationale.

Blockchain Comes To Madison Avenue, MetaX delievers adChain - Promises To Create More Secure Transactions Wink

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/297566/blockchain-comes-to-madison-avenue-new-tech-promi.html

MetaX, a startup working with blockchain technology developer ConsenSys, officially launched today, offering a new service enabling similar secure distributed ledger technology for advertising and media buys.
Dubbed adChain, the system would ensure that an ad buy’s contract is effectively unbreakable, and that if the terms of the buy are not honored at any step in the process, it would be immediately transparent to any party with access to the chain.

Ethereum The World Computer 22-03-2017

[Release] Ethereum Studio with Solidity Debugger and Scenario Management is ready for you, no installation required, just click and run. The easy way to develop Ethereum today Wink

https://live.ether.camp/?publish=new

3esmit @reddit said: I'm developing using only Ethereum Studio and GitHub. I can even use IPFS/Swarm or a webserver in node. The debugger works like any other debugger, it simple to use, just place a breakpoint and run in debug. Scenarios are transactions list that can be executed in a play button.

Ethereum JS Ecosystem Updates - Ethereum Blog Wink

https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/03/21/ethereum-js-ecosystem-updates/

It’s been a fairly busy for the last couple of months for the Ethereum javascripters. To start with, there was a really great hackathon with IPFS
Also, during this time Aaron Davis (Kumavis) made some excellent progress towards a JS light client by utilizing IPFS’s libp2p to build a in-browser mesh network and IPLD to provide the merklization layer. This will be important work in the future for building pure in-browser clients. Also Casey Detrio worked on a standard json RPC test suite

March 19th Update -Week in Ethereum News... by Evan Van Ness
http://www.weekinethereum.com/

Subscribe to the email list here: http://evanvanness.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=4c6ec57a148e890524b6ac91f&id=7061f7fa65

Tools and technologies in the Ethereum ecosystem Wink

https://medium.com/blockchannel/tools-and-technologies-in-the-ethereum-ecosystem-e5b7e5060eb9#.bl2wsl7q5

If you are a developer new to Ethereum/blockchain, it is possible you are overwhelmed (at least I was) trying to understand all the tools and technologies in the Ethereum ecosystem
So I decided to briefly describe the various components you come across frequently while starting to learn Ethereum. Hopefully this will help you get a big picture of the Ethereum ecosystem and how all the pieces fit together.

This Dark Web Market is Planning to Add Support for Ethereum Wink

http://www.coindesk.com/dark-web-market-planning-add-support-ethereum/

One of the most well-known dark markets is looking to add support for ethereum in the coming weeks.
A moderator for AlphaBay – one of the world's most popular dark markets, according to data from DeepDotWeb – took to Reddit over the weekend to announce that it would integrate ether payments beginning on 1st May.

Fixing safety proof on dynamic validator PoS Wink

https://medium.com/@pirapira/fixing-safety-proof-on-dynamic-validator-pos-5d8d463d8ae8#.dca6e2p27

On Saturday, after I had released the last blog post about verifying Vitalik’s Casper with dynamic validator sets, Vitalik found a typo in the slashing condition 1
The new proof was ready on Monday afternoon. This is done in a rushed manner and is in a messy state, but so be it; when you are designing things on some abstraction, sometimes, you can perform agile, mechanized proof development.

Ethereum Developers Publish Roadmap for EVM Upgrade Wink

http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-roadmap-evm-upgrade/

A group of developers is working to replace the existing EVM – which enables the utilization of scripts on ethereum – with one built on the WebAssembly, or wasm, programming language. WebAssembly was launched in 2015, backed by a team drawn from Google and Microsoft, among other companies.
In a new blog post published today, Martin Becze, the Ethereum Foundation's JavaScript client developer, outlined the next stages of the eWASM initiative, which will include the launch of a test network sometime this year.

Synergy in Ethereum Wink

https://medium.com/@codetractio/synergy-in-ethereum-52eb8fd6fa2e#.af13qb4of

Ethereum, this is just the Beginning
The Potential of Ethereum
A Push and A Pull — Steps Towards Mainstream Adoption

Ethereum Singapore Meetup - Digix presenting Truffle, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Wink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFW6W-DIdIo&feature=iv&src_vid=DywlPPSv_QQ&annotation_id=channel%3A58cade18-0000-2855-9c5a-94eb2c18e58e

Andrew Keys (ConsenSys) will be doing a keynote special on ConsenSys and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Chris Hitchcott (Digix) will speak on the Digix Stack and Truffle, an Ethereum Development Framework by ConsenSys.
"We have had over 250 companies reach out to us since the launch of Ethereum Enterprise."
"This is the tip of the iceberg.. 30 initial members.. interest from 250 members [since EEA launch]"
"You will be blown away when you see the next group of members onboarding, kinda the who's who of planet earth"
The developer community is growing faster than anything I've seen in my life"
"This is a ground swell guys. This is a revolution"

ETHEREUM TALKS 22-03-2017

Is the Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) the Next Trusted Evolution of Online Casinos? Wink

https://hacked.com/decentralised-autonomous-organisation-dao-next-trusted-evolution-online-casinos/

Ethereum decentralised properties are a perfect storm for addressing the concerns of online gaming that not only squares the odds, but creates a transparent and open environment that players can trust. Random Number Generation delivered by Smart Contracts is proving itself as an ideal technology for bringing change to the sector.
There are some DAO ICOs coming up that create a coin as a Token which offers certain obligations, rights, and benefits for investors. DAOCasino is a bit different and more like a Token launch rather than an ICO. It encourages and gives incentives to communities of game developers, auditors, and partners to participate in the eco system – where each can receive an income based on the contributions made.

Security lessons from the ENS launch Wink

https://medium.com/@_maurelian/security-lessons-from-the-ens-launch-c5bc96bf439e#.amrapawz3

This is an important moment for the Ethereum community to show what it’s made of. The reaction so far has been overwhelmingly understanding and supportive, and I hope that continues. This kind of even headed response will allow developers to learn and improve, and ultimately contribute to a much stronger ecosystem.
I still believe the ENS project is foundational and promising to the Ethereum ecosystem, with the potential help Ethereum cross the chasm, by making crypto as user friendly as email.

Why Ethereum will be bigger than Bitcoin Wink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBc04MZZPqY&feature=youtu.be

My telegram channel with my thoughts on Ethereum : http://telegram.me/cryptoportfolio
My telegram BOT: http://telegram.me/cryptoportfoliobot
My presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/DanAntonov...
My twitter : https://twitter.com/EthereumRussian

Interview with Richard Craib of Numerai; the AI based hedge fund using machine learning and Ethereum to incentivize good data modeling Wink

https://twitter.com/blockchannel/status/843698953740668928

https://soundcloud.com/blockchannelshow/episode-15-a-hedge-on-ethereum-with-numerai
On this episode of BlockChannel, McKie, Dee and Dr. Petty are joined by Richard Craib. Richard is the mind behind “Numerai”; an AI-based hedge fund that feeds off of data science and machine-learning modeling. Models that are used on Numerai for algorithmic trading are submitted by users (Data Scientists) on the platform, where they are rewarded “Numeraire” tokens for successful modeling.

Fred Wilson (famous VC) had a blog post this morning about decentralized startups and gave a lot of talk to Ethereum. Wink

http://avc.com/2017/03/the-decentralized-startups/

If someone were to ask what the most successful startups of this decade are, the answer would likely be Snap (market cap $22bn). Uber and Airbnb might also be on the list although those companies were launched in the prior decade (2009 and 2008 respectively).
But what might be missed is the massive success of the decentralized startups, most notably Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) this decade.

VladZamfir:" If the price of ether stays high, I really hope the Ethereum community considers slashing block rewards by at least a factor of 4."
https://twitter.com/VladZamfir/status/843445814420783105

Vitalik commented: I feel ambiguous about this.

Object level argument first. ETH block rewards are currently $14.3 per second. Next highest is Zcash at $4.77 per second. If we drop 4x, then that would put ETH at second place. If the price drops 3x then we would go down to $1.2 per second, which puts us down to third place below Zcash and Monero. At this point, we may be much more vulnerable to 51% attacks. A drop up to 2x seems safe to me, a larger drop less so.

Second object-level argument. Suppose conservatively the proof of stake switch happens in 15 months. A 4x block reward difference starting 3 months from now is only ~7 million coins, and quite possibly less if we do hybrid proof of stake in the mean time. It may be most pragmatic to just let the issue slide until we can reduce block rewards even further (I am projecting 0.1-0.6 ETH per 14 sec) through a full PoS switch.

Now, the meta-level disagreement. I think that as Ethereum is maturing, we need to start taking norms, schelling points, and stability of policy more seriously, especially on key economic parameters. That is, moving fast on precompiles is still fine, but mucking around with block rewards, staking rewards, etc arbitrarily much less so. This is in part because while Vlad fears what miners would do to the blockchain if unfettered, I have similar fears long-term with what developers would do if unfettered, and we should be acting to limit through social norms what any of these groups can do on its own.

There are two situations in which I support dropping the block reward:

As part of a hard fork which delays the ice age, and has the property that miners get net expected revenue that is somewhere between the revenue that they would get if the ice age was not stopped and the revenue that they would get if 5 ETH blocks with no ice age continued forever. That is, taking the ice age delay into account, the hard fork would not hurt miners relative to the baseline of inaction. Such a reduction should also have strong community consensus.

As part of a switch to hybrid proof of stake, that is a step along the roadmap to full proof of stake. If Ethereum switches to an algorithm that can be reasonably described as only 50% relying on miners and 50% relying on stake, then it seems totally reasonable to cut the reward given to miners by 50%, and give stakers 50% the reward that they will eventually receive.

I will do my best to lobby for low rewards but also as low as possible transaction costs Wink

https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/843445652625543171

Please note that this quote was within the context of a future POS solution.
My view: We should always strive for maximum efficiency: so if a system can be designed which expenses less (low block rewards) at sufficient security - it should! However - block rewards are a efficient solution to basically tax every coin holder. I think the Bitcoin approach with the plan eventually only those transacting should pay for security and HODLERs free ride is going nowhere.

Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #12 Notes/Video Wink

https://github.com/ethereum/pm/blob/master/All%20Core%20Devs%20Meetings/Meeting%2012.md

EIP Signaling/Voting System [Hudson]
https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/225 Clique PoA protocol & Rinkeby PoA testnet [Peter]
In STATICCALL Opcode should state-changing operations should actually throw, or just be reverted after the call returns? [Martin]
EIP 161 Clarification and Proposal to update the YP to say that built-in accounts (pre-compiles) are never empty and update implementations based on that. [Yoichi]
Metropolis Update
Test Cases for EIPs [Martin]

Ethereum Gum Ball Machine Wink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5PKi39n0cc

AngelList founder says Ethereum is promising and disrupting VCs Wink

https://twitter.com/naval/status/843877040021360642

Are you a talented smart contract developer based in Switzerland or keen to move there? MELONPORT IS HIRING! Wink

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g08i_uM-Yl4oTCgYCiGDR31d9RIYR6yvfZE_Xjlgyc8/edit

Truffle has hit 50k downloads! Wink

https://twitter.com/trufflesuite/status/843864577213259777

#Truffle hit a big milestone. 50k downloads! Thanks to all of you for your continued support! 💃🎉 http://truffleframework.com/dashboard/

Ethereum Community Vote On Miner Rewards Wink

https://www.ethnews.com/ethereum-community-vote-on-miner-rewards

Ethereum is following a roadmap that will see mining slowly phased out as the network moves to securing itself with a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol. Vitalik Buterin has already outlined his multi-step plan to ease PoS into the network on top of Proof-of-Work (PoW), eventually leading to a hybridized PoS/PoW system, which will ultimately roll into pure PoS.