Op-Ed • June 29, 2019, 11:13AM EDT
UPDATED: July 25, 2019, 6:01PM EDT

Proof of Work: Lottery concept comes to open finance

Read the non-AMP story on Theblock.co
Benjamin Friedrich

Quick Take

  • Keep and Solana are two projects to keep an eye on
  • An interesting new concept has been created by the project PoolTogether. Users can enter a “lottery” where money is pooled together to be then be lended out on the open finance platform Dharma for 15 days. All the users receive their principal, but one lucky user receives all of the interest earned
The following newsletter is republished with permission from Eric Meltzer of Primitive Ventures, a global venture investment firm with a focus on blockchain and related technologies. You can follow Eric on Twitter at @wheatpond and subscribe here to Proof of Work.

A few housekeeping notes; We’re now running updates from Keep & Solana, two interesting new projects. As I’ve noted before, we run updates from a variety of projects with the only criteria being that they are doing something interesting technologically or socially in the space—I’m not an investor in either Keep or Solana, but am personally interested in reading their updates and seeing how they progress.

A neat thing someone built recently: PoolTogether, a lottery based on the prize-linked savings account mechanic, where each user locks up some money, and then one user is awarded all of the interest accrued on everyone else’s deposits (which are lent out on PoW’s own compound.finance, but the principal is returned to each depositor. Interested to see if anyone forks this to a rake-free version (PoolTogether takes 10%), since doing so would be trivial. In the case where PoolTogether spent all of their 10% rake doing marketing, I’d expect that to outcompete a totally rake-free version that no one would have any incentive to market.

Especially interesting updates from Sia, Grin, and the Plasma group this week. More next week!

Bitcoin & Friends

Aviv from Spacemesh

Spacemesh is a programmable cryptocurrency powered by a novel proof-of-space-time consensus protocol.

  • Full node: Added ed21599 signatures to transactions and made the p2p address-book persistent to store, and configurable from store. we've added numerous improvements to our automations tests and to the framework itself, as a preparation for more rigorous tests.

  • App: focus is on node integration for getting transactions and statuses and on error handling across the app.

  • Community: Made available Wasm 2019 Berlin Workshop videos.

JZ from Decred

Decred is an autonomous digital currency with a hybrid consensus system. It is built to be a self-ruling currency where everyone can vote on the rules and project-level decision making proportionately to their stake.

Johnny from Stellar

Stellar is an open network for sending and exchanging value of any kind. Its global network enables digitization of assets - from carbon credits to currencies - and enables movement around the internet with ease.

Izaak from Coda

Coda is the first cryptocurrency protocol with a constant-sized blockchain. Coda compresses the entire blockchain into a tiny snapshot the size of a few tweets using recursive zk-SNARKs.

  • Avery hooked up wallet GUI to interact with working daemon.

  • We sent out the first edition of our ’Succinct’ newsletter, which was a team effort but special thanks to Claire and Carey.

  • Our most recent testnet ran for 2250 blocks with proof of stake! It crashed due to some bad infrastructure code.

  • Paul added GraphQL apis for querying the trustworthiness of peers.

  • Conner re-added MacOS builds to our CI.

Privacy coins

Mitchell from Monero

Monero is a open-source, privacy-focused cryptocurrency using the ASIC-resistant CryptoNote PoW algorithm. It enforces all privacy features at the protocol level to ensure that all transactions create a single fungible anonymity pool.

Daniel from Grin

Grin is a community-driven implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol that aims to be privacy preserving, scalable, fair, and minimal.

Beni from Beam

Beam is a confidential and scalable cryptocurrency based on Mimblewimble.

  • We are happy to announce the 2019 Qtum & Beam Privacy Hackathon that will challenge participants to leverage the Qtum and Beam platforms in order to develop anonymous assets and blockchain privacy solutions - June 19th - August 18th, 2019 - Learn more here and register here

  • [SWAP] List of cases when we need to notify second side about failures (will be supplemented) #702

  • [SWAP] Display "Swap conditions match" first before claiming "Swap Accepted." #666

  • [SWAP+CLI] - Move the all related SWAP command to separate group in help #731

  • There are 163 open issues in /beam

  • Excluding merges, 10 authors have pushed 51 commits to master and 57 commits to all branches. On master, 90 files have changed and there have been 10071 additions

Smart contracting platforms

Evan from Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized platform for applications that aims to resist fraud, censorship or third-party interference.

Jing from Plasma

Plasma Group is building "Generalized Plasma", a layer 2 scaling infrastructure for Ethereum that allows for general state transitions on layer 2.

Peter from NEAR

NEAR is a sharded proof-of-stake blockchain.

  • 21 PRs across 10 repos and 10 authors. Featured repos: nearcore, nearlib, near-shell, and near-wallet

  • Streamlined our release process

  • First version of staking is complete and currently being tested

  • Deployed test version Nightshade, our new model consensus

  • Updates across all libraries for Nightshade merge

  • Bug fixes and UI improvements in wallet

  • Updated syntax in near-shell

  • Added advanced access keys in core

  • Chunks for sharding are underway in a ~1800 line PR

AJ from Tezos

Tezos is a self-amending blockchain that features formally verified smart contracts, on-chain governance, and a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm which enables all token holders to participate in the network. 

Topper from Quorum Control

Quorum Control makes Tupelo, a permissionless proof of stake DLT platform purpose-built to model individual objects that enables flexible public or private data models.

  • Opened the 0.4.0 TestNet to the public!  It is now fully available for anyone’s use.

  • Held an event in conjunction with BerChain to demo the Tupelo platform for the Berlin development community.

  • QC team is fresh off a full team offsite where we finalized the Q3 roadmap focusing on ease-of-use and adoption for application developers.

  • Check out the PGC talk by QCs CMO Stephanie Mello as she lays out strategies for bringing blockchain and community to gaming for developers.

Andrew from Solana

Solana is a scalable blockchain that utilizes proof of history to verify the ordering and passage of time between events. It consists of a network of 200 physically distinct nodes which support a sustained throughput of more than 50,000 TPS. 

  • We are preparing for Mainnet in Q3/Q4.

  • We just published a piece explaining Proof of History and why that leads to super quick blockchains. 

  • We are about to announce Turbine - Solana's Block Propagation Protocol.

  • We are working on the Tour del SOL, or Solana’s validation-client competition.

  • We have added 4 team members in the past 60 days and are hiring.

Michael from Loom

Loom Network is a platform for building highly scalable DPoS sidechains to Ethereum, with a focus on large-scale games and social apps.

Myles from EOS

EOS is a new blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications.

  • Block.one published details on EOSVM, a new WASM-based VM that will be introduced in EOSIO 2.0

  • NEWDEX has developed smart contracts for fully on-chain matching and settlement of exchange orders. They are now in the process of having the contracts audited by security firms. 

  • Korean exchange Bithumb announced its plans to start participating in EOS voting

  • Everipedia launched Everipedia 2.0

Kate and Dean from Agoric

Founded by pioneers in secure development and distributed systems, Agoric uses a secure subset of JavaScript to enable object capabilities and smart contracts.

  • We are excited to announce Agoric’s partnership with Cosmos and Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation. Agoric and Cosmos are jointly creating the IBC (Inter­Blockchain Communication) protocol. IBC will provide true interoperability across multiple blockchains, and expand the market available to millions of current and future smart contracts developers worldwide.

  • Dean spoke at Zcon1 (video here) with an update on what we’ve accomplished since last year’s Zcon0, including the creation of a secure runtime for JavaScript (SES), a running end-to-end Cosmos-based testnet, the Cosmos IBC collaboration, and further work on our smart contract framework and components.

Financial Infrastructure

Antonio from dYdX

dYdX is a decentralized exchange for margin trading, borrowing, lending, and eventually derivatives. dYdX allows traders to trustlessly short and get leverage on crypto assets.

  • Launched direct borrow flow! Use dYdX to borrow crypto directly to your wallet

  • Launched the ETH-USDC market through 0x

  • Launched improved cross trading flow

  • Enabled unlimited duration borrows on dYdX. Borrow any asset for as long as you want!

  • Working on adding limit orders

  • Hiring product designers & engineers full-time in SF!

Brendan from Dharma

Dharma is the easiest place to borrow and lend cryptocurrencies. It enables non-custodial peer-to-peer lending through smart contracts on Ethereum.

  • Launched upgraded borrow experience! borrowers can now submit orders with custom principal amounts, interest rates, and collateral requirements. We'll go out and find the lender.

  • Rolled out new community updates to Dharma telegram group and various high value accounts

  • Began working on an affiliate program

  • We're hiring full stack engineers in SF!

Coulter from MakerDAO

Lazar from MARKET Protocol

MARKET Protocol is a framework for creating tokens that track prices of traditional or digital assets.

  • We officially launched MPX and Position Tokens, introducing our first token  – leveraged BTC/DAI! Traders can start trading on MPX (ex. US for now)

  • We published Part 2 of our MPExplained educational series: Trading Position Tokens. Check it out to learn more about trading BTC/DAI tokens

Robert from Compound

Compound is a money market protocol on the Ethereum blockchain — allowing individuals, institutions, and applications to frictionlessly earn interest on or borrow cryptographic assets without having to negotiate with a counterparty or peer.

  • Helped launch PoolTogether, a no-loss lottery built on Maker's DAI and Compound v2

Layer two and interoperability

Zaki from Cosmos

The Cosmos Network is a decentralized network of independent, scalable, and interoperable blockchains.

Alexandra from Polkadot

Polkadot empowers blockchain networks to work together under the protection of shared security.

Paul from Veil

Matt from 0x

0x is an open protocol that enables the peer-to-peer exchange of assets on the Ethereum blockchain.

  • Hosted an internal hackathon earlier this month. Check out the projects here

  • 0x relayer Bamboo Relay has implemented a Coordinator model to allow for unlimited soft cancels

Tony from Liquidity.Network

Liquidity Network is a transfer and swap platform for any token

  • Liquidity Network's COO Guillaume Felley will present NOCUST at the Ethereum Technology & Application Convention at Beijing on 29-30 June 2019. Let's join him there! Full event details here

Dong Mo from Celer

Celer Network is a layer-2 scaling platform that enables fast, easy and secure off-chain transactions for not only payment transactions, but also generalized off-chain smart contracts.

  • We've fixed CelerX game bugs under unstable network conditions.

  • We are integrating new off-chain service provider data.

  • We completed syncing game and reward history data and finished setting up sing-up and invite flow testing environment. 

  • We are preparing for mainnet internal release.

  • We completed work on upgradability of channel contracts and migrated system setup to Kubernetes.

  • We began end-to-end system and performance testing this week.

Application infrastructure

Alexandra from Parity Technologies

Parity Technologies builds core blockchain infrastructure, from Parity Ethereum, an Ethereum client, to Polkadot, an interoperable blockchain network.

Matt from Keep Network

The Keep Network is a privacy layer for public chains, enabling interactivity with private data and interoperability across chains. It does this with keeps, off-chain containers for private data that help smart contracts harness the full power of the public blockchain.

  • Private testnet is up and running

  • Callbacks for relay entries - as an application developer you can specify what contract and what function should be invoked when your relay entry is ready

  • Command-line interface for calling smart contract functions - it's used primarily for development purposes - we can call any function from our smart contracts from the command line, and execute view functions in previous blocks' context, it's very helpful for debugging purposes.

  • EIP 152 confirmed for next Ethereum hard fork

David from Sia

Sia is a decentralized cloud storage platform leveraging blockchain technology to create a data storage marketplace that is more robust and more affordable than traditional cloud storage providers.

  • RC2 version of the upcoming 1.4.1 version of Sia was released in Discord for testing. It features memory use, performance and UI improvements compared to the previous RC.

  • Eddie, Zach, Manasi, and Steve worked on multiple improvements on the UI, as more clear explanation texts, improved screens when creating an allowance or recovering backups, the ability to cancel the allowance on the UI and the correction of multiple visual glitches.

  • Matt added a new API endpoint for checking the current filter of hosts set up by the user: /hostdb/filtermode [GET]. On siac, this is used with the command siac hostdb filtermode. The previous command for setting a new filter has been moved to siac hostdb setfiltermode.

  • David tweaked the Hosts selection process when the renter forms an allowance, that now penalizes harder hosts with little remaining storage if the software expects it won’t suffice for our storage needs.

  • The Sia network reached 400 TB of used storage. This represents a 100 TB increase in the last 25 days

  • The Goobox app developers published an article explaining how to backup Synology NAS machines on the Sia network using their SiaS3 product: https://medium.com/@goobox/backup-files-to-sia-using-synology-nas-goobox-2f31e273bbab


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