Recent News Roundup #6Sorry for taking so long to write the update since
Roundup 5, there was some delay as I was busy with work and NEM projects.
There has been a recent update in the testnet adding the functionality of
Mosaic and Namespaces. Currently, work is being done to add these to NCC by Reverend but until that is done, there is a basic Nickel tool that will allow people to make transactions.
Reverend also updated
Blockexlpore.in with the ability to label accounts or comment on them. It helps to get an clear idea of NEM’s distribution.
Telegram now has a tipbot made by the Rev. It also has a dice roll function for those feeling especially lucky. Or for those generous nemsters that like to make it rain, that is available too.
Patmast3r worked really hard to integrate Slack and Telegram so that is back up and mostly working. He has built the bridge from scratch and it is working better than ever. Thank you to Pat for working hard on that.
Unfortunately our
autosign bot for adding people automatically to Slack is down, and for now people may only be added via sending me a message. The process to get it going again isn’t very hard, but it was still beyond my programming level. If somebody would like to look into it, here are the instructions. It takes about 30 minutes. Please help keep the community alive. I think is
this how it is done or possibly like
this.
Makoto many months ago took a leap and quit his job trying to get VC funding. The good news is out of 80 teams 4 were chosen to be sponsored by the VCs. Makoto presented
DragonFly Pay, a remittance app to be built on NEM using NEM technology that he is coding. Part of his reward for passing is some money to fund his project and free office space in Tokyo and San Francisco for a year, as well as access to important partners via the VCs. Congratulations to him.
He continues to be busy at work having meetings and giving talks regularly about NEM when not coding. I talked to him on the phone today and he currently is in Malaysia on one such business trip, with lots more to do coming up.
The
Sound of NEM competition has started. This is a game where you have to guess a sound and if you get it right you can win 500,000 XEM. Each guess costs 1,250 XEM. So far nobody has won it. Answers must be in English but instructions are also in
Chinese and
Russian. Please help spread the word of this contest on other forums or social media.
The first application for community funds has been reviewed and processed. A sum of 50 million XEM will be rewarded to
Crypto Apex as long as they meet their milestone guidelines. These milestones are seperated into 4 parts of 12.5 million each. Crypto Apex will have reached the last milestone when they have incorporated XEM <-> fiat into NCC. And yes, the plan is to make many different fiat pairs, not just one.
The main devs have all been working hard on preparing
Mijin, which is a private ledger. Mijin is a forked version of NEM’s code with some tweaks and upgrades to it to meet the demands of private institutions. It is up to 100 transactions per second at the moment with native support for assets, naming system, messages, and of course multisig. Research into Mijin has already led to some improvements in NEM’s code on the testnet.
The mobile wallet app development has finally kicked into gear after some long delays. We now have a nice looking iOS app working on the testnet with a lot of its features finished or to be added in the coming weeks. It is taken much longer than anticipated but it is now written in Swift 2 and looks better. Work on testing translations into other languages should be supported in the next release as well as working out some bugs. After that adding the UI support for multisig, the configurations page and harvest information page will finish the app. We have 20 members now testing mobile apps between the Android and iOS versions. If you are interested in beta testing the mobile app (Android or iOS) please contact us here:
https://forum.nem.io/t/mobile-app-beta-testing/1426/48If you would like to see some sample screen shots, there is a folder in the
NEM Drive called
iOS App.
The code for Node Rewards is coming close to be finished and work on the website has begun by Quantum Mechanics and Stuart. No date is set for launch because it will be ready when it’s ready, but some may wonder if there will be a launch this month? It hasn’t been ruled out yet, but when a ninja attacks nobody knows.
As far as NEM governance goes, the Sustainability Fund
http://blog.nem.io/update-sustainability-fund-final-redemption-numbers/ was recently split up into the following sub-funds:
NIS Node Rewards
Silver Coins for Distribution to Stakeholders
Community Fund
Mobile Application and NCC Development
NEM Sustainable Ecosystem Loop Fund (NEMSELF)
Unconventional Operational Costs Fund II
Marketing
As always we are looking for people to help volunteer and work on this project. In recent months the press has really started to give a lot of attention to the blockchain (as in not Bitcoin) and there will be a lot of people coming soon to crypto to check out its capabilities. While the underlying code for NEM that the devs have built is amazing along with the APIs, our appearance at first glance is far from being polished. If you would like to help us, I can add you to a board where lots of ideas have been posted and we can see if there is some way you can help out.
Meet a NemsterToday we will introduce Mixmaster.
1. How did you become interested in NEM?
- I became interested in NEM because I recognized problems with both PoW and PoS. NEM's PoI looked like a very interesting approach and so I decided to support the project.
2. What did you study in school?
- I studied medical engineering and graduated with a masters degree.
3. Please describe NEM in 3-8 words.
- NEM grows slowly but surely.