[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

Ethereum Project NEWS 25-03-2017

Decentralized ad exchange built on top of Ethereum Wink

https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Basic Attention Token radically improves the efficiency of digital advertising by creating a new unit of exchange between publishers, advertisers and users. It all happens on the Ethereum blockchain. The value of the token is based on user attention, which simply means a person’s focused mental engagement.
From the creator of Javascript and the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, with a solid team – funded by Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, DCG, Danhua Capital, Huiyin Blockchain Venture among others.

The Dapp Daily — March 24th, 2017 Wink

https://dappdaily.com/the-dapp-daily-march-24th-2017-f9f1400aea9f#.t39n2kyst

Updates from the Ethereum ecosystem by sourcerers.io

Lunyr Crowdsale Contracts Audit from Mikko Ohtamaa — All Green Lights Wink

https://medium.com/lunyr/lunyr-crowdsale-contract-audit-from-mikko-ohtamaa-all-green-lights-e86a66f823bf#.pqijcan0y

We are pleased to announce that the Lunyr crowdsale contracts audit by Mikko Ohtamaa (CTO of TokenMarket.net) has passed with all green lights.
“The source code is one of the most carefully commented smart contracts I have seen.”

Great ICOs coming up! Especially excited about Status, Mobile OS for Ethereum! Wink

https://github.com/Scanate/UltimateICOCalendar

There are a lot of ICO calendars with incomplete information. So, why not crowdsource it and allow people (including founders) to contribute? The ICOs listed here are either upcoming or currently ongoing. If you would like to contribute, submit a pull request with the information you would like added. If you have any random suggestions (like adding a column), feel free to post an Issue.

Blocktix : Decentralized Network for Event Hosting & Ticketing Using Ethereum’s Blockchain Wink

https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/03/22/blocktix-decentralized-network-event-hosting-ticketing-using-ethereums-blockchain/

Blocktix is a novel, decentralized platform for ticket distribution and event hosting. The platform operates via Ethereum’s smart contracts, which enable verification of authentic tickets rendering it almost impossible to counterfeit them.
Blocktix is aimed at providing a decentralized network for distribution and sales of tickets. Individuals as well as companies can buy and sell tickets via means of cryptographic digital signatures stored on Ethereum’s blockchain

Introducing Lendroid - Digital asset lending protocol and platform Wink

https://lendroid.com/

Lendroid makes no sense in the absence of other DApps and tokens on the Ethereum platform. But in combination with other DApps, the real power of the Lendroid can be realized.
There is a need, and there will be a greater need for borrowing funds for short term not by pawning physical gold or a house but by pawning a digital asset. Imagine opening a mobile app, depositing 20 REP / 10 MKR tokens and receiving 5 ETH / 100 USD-DC into your account that you can spend immediately. You pay back 5.01 ETH / 101 USD-DC in 10 days and receive your 20 REP / 10 MKR deposit back.

LaborX core and LaborX dapp Wink

https://blog.chronobank.io/laborx-core-and-laborx-dapp-c4088a01f12#.16ikawauv

ChronoBank’s core functionality will be provided by a set of smart contracts that match workers with employers for specific tasks and handle private data and payment. Here’s how the two major strands of the project will operate and interact.
LaborX core comprises a complex set of smart contracts and user information stored on the Ethereum network. Its purpose is to act as the ‘back office’ of a decentralised recruitment agency, and it will contain data including a complete list of users’ public profiles, jobs they have each completed, current ratings, and more.
LaborX dapp, meanwhile, can be considered the ‘frontend’ of the ChronoBank project or the front desk of the recruitment agency. Whereas LaborX core is based on Ethereum’s smart contracts, LaborX dapp is a client-side application written in Javascript. Its job is to communicate with the LaborX core and provide a user interface for workers and businesses seeking to post or accept jobs — in the same way that a regular cryptocurrency wallet provides the functionality to interface conveniently with the blockchain.

Our Ethereum Dapp Creators Issue 03 interview with Auryn from FirstBlood Wink

https://blog.status.im/ethereum-dapp-creators-issue-03-firstblood-34c4879f7342#.lm7zyk8q0

In our third issue, we’ll be getting into the world of online gaming and eSports with Auryn Macmillan and FirstBlood.
This interview series is about the people who work hard to develop decentralized applications on top of Ethereum.

Smartpool is live on testnet Wink

https://medium.com/smartpool/smartpool-alpha-release-472d60f1ef7b#.dpfk3pkfr

Smartpool, the first mining pool that runs over an Ethereum smart contract is released. It’s buggy and for testnet (Kovan) only. If you want stable version, wait for beta release.
We are happy to announce the first alpha release of Smartpool, the first mining pool that runs over an Ethereum smart contract. The release contains a client that interacts with parity and ethminer and a smart contract that serves the role of a pool operator and is running on Kovan testnet.

Forget Bitcoin. The Blockchain Could Reveal What’s True Today and Tomorrow Wink

https://www.wired.com/?p=2166018

For Joey Krug, the openness of a blockchain could deliver far more powerful prediction markets than ever before, spreading them to a much larger number of people, while keeping regulators at bay. Krug is one of the young technologists behind Augur, a San Francisco nonprofit working to build a service atop the Ethereum blockchain where anyone can launch or join these markets
A prediction market is like the stock market, except that you’re not buying stock in companies. You’re buying stock in outcomes.

'Slack Meets Tinder' Matchpool Launching Crowdfund For Dating Scene Disruption Wink

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2017/03/21/slack-meets-tinder-matchpool-launching-crowdfund-for-dating-scene-disruption/#5d7597177e5f

Matchpool, the incentive-based community platform that is touted as allowing anyone to open their own “matchmaking pool”, is to launch a crowdfund campaign later this month in a move described by the blockchain start-up’s CEO and co-founder Yonatan Ben Shimon, a former hedge fund manager, to disrupt the dating scene on a “global scale.”
Like a ‘Slack meets Tinder’, Matchpool allows individuals to create ‘pools’ - similar to Slack Channels or Facebook Groups - to facilitate connections among friends and niche communities. The blockchain-based service has the grand aim to disrupt the multi-billion dollar dating industry and modernize the centuries-old matchmaking profession

Storj to Migrate Decentralized Storage Service to Ethereum Blockchain Wink

http://www.coindesk.com/storj-migrate-decentralized-storage-service-ethereum-blockchain/

The official blog post cited the lack of development in Counterparty as a concern, one that could be solved by ethereum.
It further credited ethereum's ERC20 token standard (which effectively allows exchanges to more easily add support for new coins), and the progress on its layer-two solutions aimed at micropayments as other influencing factors.
Storj also reported that users (colloquially called 'farmers') have been asked to pay increasingly high fees as a result of block size constraints on the bitcoin network. (Due to bitcoin's limited block size, those who send transactions effectively bid for space, a development driven by increased use and limited capacity).

TodoList sample app made with Truffle and React Wink

https://github.com/mbeaudru/ethereum-todolist

While a TodoList app is not suited to ethereum-based backends, I originally wanted to do one to get my hands on this technology and to have a very simple app actually doing something I am familiar with as a front-end developper.
The goal of this sample app is to help anyone wanting to understand what are ethereum contracts and how they be used as a distributed back-ends, with its limitations as well.

Evaluate CoinDash on #WINGS for a #BlockchainOscar #Blockshow Wink

https://blockchain-oscar.wings.ai/#!/home/project/0x65af65e848f274941eff459523509280f29b961103ebbe2913d8eb0d0a1b5ab5/info

CoinDash is social trading platform specific for crypto assets. Built as a social network where users can follow top crypto investors, invest like them and learn from them. Coupled with advanced crypto portfolio management tools, CoinDash removes the barrier of entry for investing in crypto assets, bringing it to mainstream adoption.

Ethereum The World Computer 25-03-2017

UN World Food Programme is going to use Ethereum blockchain to track delivery and payments Wink

http://www.coindesk.com/un-group-advances-ethereum-aid-tracking-pilot/

The World Food Programme (WFP) is utilizing the Ethereum blockchain to distribute cash assistance to the world’s hungriest families, demonstrating that the technology can aid humanitarian organizations to safely and quickly send help to nations who need it the most.
As the food-assistance branch of the United Nations and the world’s largest humanitarian organization, it is undertaking a project employing the Ethereum blockchain as it works at changing its approach to how it feeds the hungry.

Announcing Support for Multi-member Consortium Blockchain Networks on Azure Wink

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/multi-member-consortium-blockchain-networks-on-azure/

Today, we are releasing a set of solution templates in the Azure Marketplace that address the first two topologies configuring multi-region and multi-member Ethereum Consortium Blockchain Networks with a simple multi-step process through the Azure Portal or cmdline.
These solution templates are designed to make it easier and quicker to deploy and configure a multi-member consortium Ethereum network with minimal Azure and Ethereum knowledge

Hockey Sticks in Ethereum: Increase in interest of geth, web3, MetaMask, Truffle, solc
https://medium.com/@codetractio/hockey-sticks-in-ethereum-9c01adff3925#.irr67qclp

Hockey stick is a common term used in startups to denote exponential growth in a metric such as users and revenue. In this article we look at some potential hockey stick charts for Ethereum.

Coinbase granted N.Y. approval to offer ether trades Wink

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/coinbase-granted-ny-approval-to-offer-ether-trades

Coinbase has received approval from New York financial regulators to offer trading of the digital currency ether, along with other products and to offer a debit card service called Shift Card, the New York State Department of Financial Services announced Wednesday.
Maria Vullo, superintendent of the New York agency, used the Coinbase approval to reiterate her stance that state regulators are in the best position to provide oversight to the fintech industry. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has proposed creating a charter for fintech companies.

Truffle 3.2.0 Released! Wink

http://truffleframework.com/blog/truffle-320-released

We've built infrastructure for providing you boilerplates on demand!
We've added huge speed improvements to the Truffle command line tool.
Solidity tests can now be given default balances.
Javascript abstractions got an upgrade making it easier to send Ether directly to your contracts as well as trigger your contracts' fallback functions.
Migrations got an extra scout badge (function parameter)
there's no more naming restriction on contract names!
there's a new way of requiring contract artifacts within your migrations and tests

Smart contracts explained from an entrepreneur's point of view - a 101 ultimate guide Wink

https://hackernoon.com/an-entrepreneur-programmer-and-user-walk-into-a-smart-contract-the-ultimate-ethereum-blockchain-7b8dbd0c8463#.7ifsd870s

What you do need to know about blockchain and what you may just skip
What is the difference between a smart contract and a conventional web site
Interacting with blockchain
What it takes to build an infrastructure
Which developer skills are required

Ethereum India Summit 18 May 2017 Mumbai to feature Vitalik Buterin - Press Release 22 Mar 2017 Wink

http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/fintech-storm-brings-vitalik-buterin-inventor-of-ethereum-to-mumbai-for-blockchain-india-week-may-12th-19th-2017-784552.htm

Vitalik Buterin, Founder of Ethereum, was Guest of Honour along with pre-eminent leaders in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) such as Ethereum, Consensys, Microsoft, Wipro, IBM, Synechron, Accenture, TCS etc.
Now they are bringing to Mumbai the global Blockchain talent led by Vitalik himself, deemed the foster father of Blockchain, and the whiz kid who invented ethereum at 20, and listed in Fortune 40 under 40 in 2016 - to Blockchain India Week - 12-19 May 2017 - a week full of hackathons, workshops, conferences and CEO-CTO forums aimed at fostering relationships and facilitating enterprise collaborations with the global cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Never Use Passwords Again with Ethereum and Metamask Wink

https://hackernoon.com/never-use-passwords-again-with-ethereum-and-metamask-b61c7e409f0d#.xonjexgik

I build a lot of proofs of concept at ConsenSys for various clients and usually they want something that leverages the Ethereum blockchain to solve some business use case. Strangely, these systems often get designed with standard web logins (i.e. with a username and password).
I always ask myself why I’m designing things this way since, after all, this is an annoying aspect of every web application that Ethereum can solve today.
So I’m finally putting my foot down and designing that solution.

Post-Bitcoin Technology (Ethereum) Has Geeks, Giants, and Hackers Excited Wink

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/post-bitcoin-technology-has-geeks-giants-and-hackers-excited

In late February about 200 executives, coders, and developers gathered in the downtown Brooklyn office of JPMorgan Chase & Co. to hear an all-day pitch for a new industry group called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
Ethereum? It’s the ghostly sounding name for a so-called blockchain technology similar to the one that made the digital currency bitcoin possible.

Ethereum: The not-Bitcoin cryptocurrency that could help replace Uber Wink

http://mashable.com/2017/03/24/ethereum-bitcoin-explainer/#PkJfpg.LFaqZ

Ethereum, which is kind of like Bitcoin but slightly nerdier and more complicated, edged up against Bitcoin in its daily volume earlier this month. In plain english, Bitcoin is much bigger in terms of monetary value, but Ethereum is being used so much that it's facilitating nearly as much business.
But there's more to Ethereum than there is to Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency, called ether, runs on a "smart contract." The smart contract is a blockchain technology and "if:then" system that allows Ethereum to be traded if a certain condition is met.

Blockchain Could Help Artists Profit More from Their Creative Works Wink

https://hbr.org/2017/03/blockchain-could-help-artists-profit-more-from-their-creative-works

Anyone who follows the cultural industries — art, music, publishing, theater, cinema — knows of the tussles between artists and those who feed off of their talents.
“A lot of untapped creative energy is wasted on the practicalities that living in a centralized paradigm foster,” writes Zach LeBeau, CEO of SingularDTV, a blockchain-based digital content management and distribution platform. His vision is to decentralize the entertainment industry so that creative individuals can profit from the films, videos, games, and art they help to make. He expects decentralization to “realize a world that utilizes the greatest potential of every person.”

Ropsten Revival Wink

https://github.com/ethereum/ropsten/blob/master/revival.md

We are pleased to announce that the Ropsten testnet has been revived! Thanks to a generous donation of GPU hashpower, the Ropsten chain has been cleared of the spam blocks that had accumulated in a recent attack.
To revive the Ropsten chain without changing the protocol (i.e. without a soft or hard fork), we mined a new highest-difficulty ("heaviest") chain from a block prior to the DoS attack. Because the new revived chain has the highest difficulty, it is now the default chain for all Ropsten testnet clients. And because the chain excludes the DoS attack blocks, syncing to Ropsten is once again a fast and low memory process (the cleaned state is around 1 Gigabyte).

ETHEREUM SHOUTOUT 25-03-2017

PSA: Embark has passed 31.000 downloads AND it was the most popular Ethereum Framework this past month. Wink

https://twitter.com/iurimatias/status/844876409399136256

heliumcraft @reddit: Embark is one the most popular DApp Frameworks, with it you can easily develop and deploy Decentralized Applications that use diverse decentralized technologis such Ethereum Smart contracts, IPFS, Whisper, Swarm and Orbit.

Andreas asks if we'd like him to speak at DEVCON3 in Cancun Wink

https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/844450590059122688

. @Dakotaquint1 Thinking about it. What do #ethereum people say? Would you like to hear me talk in Cancun?
Hudson Jameson‏ @hudsonjameson @aantonop @Dakotaquint1 Anyone is welcome to submit an application to speak at Devcon3. Visit http://ethereumfoundation.org/devcon3/ for info.

What is Ethereum CHATBOT and why it is important Wink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yguigTcnx30

In this video I try to explain how chatbots can be integrated into Ethereum. Also, I am presenting my telegram bot and taking an interview from the bot developer . Check it out!

The Ether Review #59?'??'"?'?Money Talks, Polychain Capita Wink

http://podplayer.net/#/?id=32122892

By now word of the Andreessen-Horowitz/Union Square Ventures investment in the digital asset hedge fund Polychain Capital was reached far and wide across the cryptoverse. Among other things, this interview with founders Olaf Carlson-Wee and Ryan Zurrer explores the questions that must be asked while establishing a long term crypto portfolio. Much of the discussion is especially pertinent in light of the recent ETH jump

Why Bitcoin projects migrate to Ethereum Wink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGCd4DIEqjM

In this video I try to explain the reason for Bitcoin projects to migrate to Ethereum . Check it out!

New Melonport meetup running in Zug (CryptoValley), Switzerland 🇨🇭 April 4th 2017! Join us! Wink

https://www.meetup.com/Crypto-Valley-Forum/events/238556881/

The next First Tuesday event will again take place in Schiff Bar, in this charming old house right in the center of Old Town Zug, just like last time. This evening Mona El Isa, CEO of Melonport and one of our own Crypto Valley members, will introduce their Ethereum based start-up in the asset management space.

When something which is also very big outperforms Bitcoin by 20x in the last 15 months. It deserves paying attention to. #Ethereum Wink

https://twitter.com/TommyWorldPower/status/845480515985702912

[poll] OpenBazaar on Ethereum? (ENS, Raiden, stable coins, smart escrow/auction/assurance contracts) Wink

https://twitter.com/duosearch/status/845411016213180418

Lunyr Overview Presentation 3-23 Wink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSg5HAwinII&feature=youtu.be

Arnold Pham and Andrew Tran, cofounders of Lunyr, introduced their project and the token crowdsale at an Ethereum Developers Community meetup in Silicon Valley.