CWC Newsletter #25 (May 4, 2020)
By Taylor Ryker, Analyst
Top 10 Headlines of the Week for EOSIO
This past week saw more EOSIO developments, funding announcements, and launches that highlight the continued growth of the EOSIO ecosystem.
Below are the top 10 headlines of the week for EOSIO:
1. Telos Developments: Gaming, Stablecoins, and Partnerships
2. Growing Decentralized Finance Sector on the EOS Mainnet
3. Upgraded EOSIO Messenger: Sense Chat
5. Block.one's Venture Capital Announcements
6. EOSIO-sisterchain Proton Launches Mainnet
7. Social Media Voice and Block.one's Patent
8. pEOS Update to Community
9. EOSIO Challenge and Syed Jafri
10. Grant Thornton and EOSIO
1. Telos Developments: Gaming, Wallets, and Tokens
This past week saw some great developments and partnership announcements within the Telos Network, an EOSIO sisterchain.
The Telos Network is making big strides in on-ramping blockchain gaming companies and studios, such as the Qudo platform and Unity Games. With the Qudo platform's proof of gameplay, the platform will benefit gamers by allowing them an opportunity to earn cryptocurrency tokens for in-game achievements and high scores. With their partnership with Blockbastards, the Telos Network is looking more attractive to blockchain gaming development due to its effective gaming engine, Unity, and useful features to integrate tokens within games.
Following these gaming developments, the Telos Network announced their partnership with Wombat Wallet to further attract users into the Telos ecosystem. Wombat Wallet "offers free account onboarding, simple user experience and a feeless experience for regular dapp users. This ease and reliability of Wombat is a huge boon for Telos web based games and applications."
In what seems to be a competitor to Emanate, a music rights trading platform called Zeptagram became more visible in the EOSIO community. Zeptagram seems like it is hosted on the Telos blockchain.
Lastly, Ecoin migrated 1.5 million users to the Telos Network. Ecoin, a startup focused on referral marketing and digital identity, is poised to help expand Telos' mainstream footprint: "Ecoin is expected to expose millions of new users to the rapidly growing list of Telos-based dapps. Ecoin will also be performing an airdrop of Ecoin tokens to active Telos accounts to better integrate with the strong Telos community."
2. Growing Decentralized Finance Sector on the EOS Mainnet
Decentralized finance on the EOS mainnet is expanding. This week Bitcoin was able to be issued on the EOS mainnet. pTokens is a British company that allows for cross-chain interoperability while providing liquidity for cryptocurrencies. For example, pTokens such as pBTC and pEOS are able to transact between different blockchains such as EOS and Bitcoin. pTokens are seen as an essential component for decentralized finance applications by connecting different blockchains together.
This past week saw pTokens announce that pBTC is now compatible with the EOS mainnet. The news that pBTC tokens will be compatible with EOS indicates the growing need for stablecoins and bitcoin in the burgeoning decentralized finance sector of the EOS mainnet. Decentralized finance applications like Equilibrium's stablecoin EOSDT will benefit with the multi-collateralized version supported by pBTC.
On May 1, 2020, the team at Equilibrium announced that their website and web application has now become a fully functional decentralized finance portal. The new dashboard gives users better tracking and history tools to access savings pools, liquidity pools, and loans backed by Bitcoin, EOS, and EOSDT positions.
3. Upgraded EOSIO Messenger: Sense Chat
The developers behind the EOS-based messenger Sense Chat is getting ready to launch their upgraded platform, which will be blockchain agnostic and will also be connected to EOS and other blockchains. The former messaging platform will be called EOS Chat and will be intertwined with all the EOSIO blockchains and tokens. The new upgraded platform will be known as Sense Chat.
With the development of Voice as more of a blogging platform, the inclusion of Sense Chat as the messaging and video chat application is a welcome addition to the EOSIO social media space. On Sense Chat, the user will be allowed to transact or trade between many different tokens while the user will be only allowed to use Voice tokens on the Voice platform.
4. Everipedia's PrediQt Beta Network Debuts
The team behind the EOSIO-based wikipedia, Everipidia, announced the official debut of the beta release of the PrediQt Network, a prediction market. PrediQt is similar to the Augur platform on Ethereum where users place bets on future predictions. For the PrediQt Network, users monetize predictions via IQ or EOS, and PrediQt smart contracts pay out the future winners.
5. Block.one's Venture Capital Announcements
This past week saw a couple announcements about Block.one's new investments through their venture capital arm.
Galaxy EOS VC Fund has been announcing new investments in gaming companies in the blockchain space. On April 29, 2020, Galaxy EOS VC Fund participated in a $700k round for a gaming company called Bright Star Studio. The studio's first game Ember Sword is a free-to-play game with low barriers where players collect resources and sell them to other players. A report believed that "this investment by Galaxy EOS VC Fund is more likely that the game will now run on the EOS or any other EOSIO blockchain."
FinLab EOS VC Fund announced their investment in Berlin-based Gapless, an all-in-one app for your vehicle which allows users to build a complete comprehensible history and to use third-party services related to the vehicle. This investment is for the first blockchain platform for vehicle owners.
Block.one also announced that they are funding several companies and platforms addressing COVID-19 from their EOS VC Grants program and FinLab EOS VC. Their first COVID-19 investment includes privacy-preserving DNA/RNA kit provider Genobank.io who has partnered with the Telos Foundation to develop an open-source application named Agerona that will allow users to securely source low-cost COVID-19 testing.
Their second investment is in "PUML Better Health which is a health and wellness platform that allows corporates, brands and sponsors to reward members for completing healthy activity challenges." Block.one's final COVID-19 related ventures are with Moonlighting and Innoplexus. Moonlighting is an on-demand freelance marketplace, and Innoplexus is a platform for drug discovery and development.
Block.one's current digital Hackathon "Coding for Change" is primarily focused on having EOSIO developers create applications that speaks directly to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are interested, here is the registration page, and the Hackathon is still ongoing and the deadline is June 1, 2020. The winning application will receive $100,000, and the judges are Ivan on Tech and Ran Neuner.
6. EOSIO-sisterchain Proton Launches Mainnet
On April 29, 2020, Proton, an EOSIO-sisterchain, announced their successful launch of the Proton Mainnet. The Proton Blockchain uses XPR as its native token. With the support of EOS Mainnet Block Producers such as EOS Cafe and CryptoLions, Proton was released to the public with a goal to make cryptocurrency spending and trading to be very easy and user-friendly.
By attempting to bridge finance with cryptocurrency through a better user experience environment, Proton is set to deploy their upcoming product called Metal 3.0 Wallet. The Metal 3.0 Wallet will allow users to sign-in seamlessly through a verified identification using distributed identity providers. In addition, Proton will build a universal signing API gateway that will be fully released with Metal 3.0 Wallet.
7. Social Media Voice and Block.one's Patent
The Block reported that "Block.one has won a patent for a blockchain-based bidding method that aims to encourage positive feedback on social media platforms." This announcement comes at a moment when the Voice community on Telegram is becoming more impatient for updates and critics lament that Voice is not poised for success.
This social media patent will directly assist in the development of Voice so that it can successfully launch in Q1 2021. The patent indicates that Block.one is still committed to supporting the growth of Voice. In addition, it shows that the leadership team at Voice recognizes that the current private beta version needs much reform and upgrades before its official launch.
8. pEOS Update to Community
pEOS, a privacy EOS token, released a community post detailing their current accomplishments and laying out future plans. The team behind pEOS accomplished setting up a system for private transactions on EOS, creating a friendly user experience, building a staking rewards platform, and delivered alpha versions of the UI wallet for Windows and Mac. They also "proposed the first EOS Improvement Proposal (EIP) and convinced Block.one to implement it. Even if they eventually failed to deliver on time."
For the future, the team at pEOS are committed to deploying the EIP on an EOSIO-based chain and the privacy features on the EOS mainnet. They are planning to release a new version of the wallet for the EOS mainnet that will enable fully private and confidential transactions. Privacy is a key feature that many community members have demanded, and pEOS seems like a good fit.
9. EOSIO Challenge and Syed Jafri
Another Block.one sponsored event is the EOSIO Challenge, a $200,000 competition to see who or which team can build an Ethereum Smart Contract within an EOSIO Smart Contract. Block.one announced that the review of submissions will occur in late May.
A couple months ago, EOS Cafe Block CEO Syed Jafri announced that he had completed the EOSIO Challenge. Block.one CTO Dan Larimer tweeted Jafri's youtube tutorial on February 27, 2020. To follow-up on the EOSIO Challenge, Jafri tweeted that he uploaded another youtube tutorial on April 29, 2020 to introduce "a way to connect the eosio.evm contract on EOSIO nodes directly to Ethereum services Metamask and Remix. eosio.evm is now feature complete, and can handle all transactions and signing flows currently seen on Ethereum."
The EOSIO Challenge asked the community to figure out a novel solution in bridging the EOS and Ethereum developer communities. Jafri's code will help lay the foundation so that Ethereum developers can leverage the scalability and performance of EOS to enhance their users' experience.
10. Grant Thornton and EOSIO
Accounting firm Grant Thornton announced that they have developed and will deploy a platform called inter.x to record inter-company transactions using an EOSIO blockchain. Inter.x will provide immutable data to ensure and prove audit integrity.
The utilization of EOSIO by a large, global financial company shows that even though retail investors may not discern the real value of EOSIO there are those in higher positions that are silently stamping their approval by transitioning to the EOSIO ecosystem.
Disclaimer: KJ Kingsley is not a financial advisor and holds the digital tokens or cryptocurrencies represented in the content above. This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this post constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by myself to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the author’s employers.