June 2019 Community Update

June 2019 will go down in history as Skycoin’s #MonthOfAnnouncements, and, what a month it turned out to be! True to form, the Skycoin team brushed aside any distraction and kept delivering throughout the month to ensure that Skycoin’s trajectory to the top remains steady.

Development

The usual flurry of development activity carried on throughout June and Coincodecap.com consistently shows Skycoin among the top 10 projects ranked according to all Github activity. During June, the Skycoin Github saw a massive 963 commits from 21 developers, meaning Skycoin was placed at number 2 out of all projects for the month!

Check out the Development Recap or full development articles can be found here: Wallet Update | CX 0.7.0 | Week 23| Week 24| Week 25| Week 26

Skywire

Work on Skywire continues unabated, with a major milestone last month being the implementation of the dmsg system (Previously called Skymessenger).

Other points of interest in Skywire include:

• Completion of public environment tests
• Profiling for Skywire nodes
• Public deployment certificate issues have been sorted out

Skywallet

As Skywallet nears release issues discovered during the review cycle are being resolved. Firmware update functionality was added, as well as a version endpoint to the daemon.

CX

June saw the release of version 0.7.0 of Skycoin’s powerful blockchain programming language CX. The focus of this release is the integration of CX into the Skycoin Fiber blockchains called CX chains. Fiber is the way to create specialized blockchains with CX code adapted to it, using Skycoin’s blockchain technology. It is important to note that it is not the Skycoin blockchain itself that is affected by CX chains, but a new blockchain using the same technology.

Due to the importance of getting CX chains right, there was a previous public beta of CX 0.7.0. This public release fixes all known issues of CX integration with the blockchain from the beta. The most important one is that we increased the size of the biggest possible CX chain program from 32 KB to 64 MB.

The description on how to do the integration of CX and the blockchain can be read here: https://github.com/skycoin/cx/wiki/CX-Chains-Tutorial.

Coin Hour Bank

The Coin Hour Bank has now added a comments column in the transaction table, as well as one-time password (OTP) support for withdrawals. We have also fixed the email notification for successful withdrawals, improving the overall user experience.

Wallet updates

Several significant wallet updates implemented into Skycoin Core wallet version 0.26.0:

• The Coin Hour burn rate was reduced from 50% to only 10%. Great news for all those Coin Hour hoarders that wish to trade on an exchange but were reluctant to lose precious Coin Hours.
• In-wallet Skycoin purchases using Bitcoin and a few other selected alts. This service is provided by swaplab and makes it possible for our users to purchase Skycoin without having to register on an exchange.

The team was very happy to announce the launch of the new Android wallet with Japanese language support towards the end of June, followed a few days later by the iOS version. We welcome native Japanese speakers to the Sky family. What would the land of the rising sun be without a SKY for the sun to rise into?

Desktop users fret not, we haven’t forgotten about you! Japanese will be supported in the desktop version of our wallet before you know it.

Synth Speaks

Skycoin Technical Lecture Series

When Synth speaks, we listen! This month saw the release of the first four (of many) episodes from the Skycoin Technical lecture series. In the series, Synth lectures on the history of Blockchain, what Blockchain is, the dynamics of the Blockchain economy and how Skycoin enhances the entire concept. The technical lecture series is a must watch for anyone remotely interested in understanding the Blockchain phenomenon.

Stokesy Interview

In a smashing six part series, Adam Stokes conducted what is arguably the most detailed interview with Synth to date. Synth rose to the occasion and in true form answered an array of pertinent questions with a deep conviction stemming from his profound understanding of, not only the subject at hand, but also a plethora of supporting subjects. This one is a must-watch.

Crypto Rich Interview

Crypto Rich conducted an update interview with Synth that was posted as a three part series on his Youtube channel. The interview about Skycoin was ominously applicable to Rich’s life as he regaled the story of being censored by Youtube. Youtube randomly removed 80 of Rich’s videos with no reason other than vague allusions to “being in violation of community guidelines”. This clearly makes an excellent case for Skycoin and the quest for privacy-centric, censorship free, distributed Internet.

Events and Visibility

Coinsbank Blockchain Cruise

Billed as the Blockchain industry’s biggest conference, the Coinsbank Blockchain Cruise attracted hundreds of the most high profile, and best known Blockchain personalities. Skycoin was a major sponsor to the 4 night event that kicked off in the picturesque city of Barcelona. All attendees received a Skycoin gift pack containing T-shirts, hats and CX books.

A range of panels and keynotes were hosted on a variety of subjects pertaining to cryptocurrency, they focussed primarily on government adoption, regulations and security tokens.

Synth stepped into this somewhat benign setting and, with his trademark propensity for cutting to the core of the matter, delivered a show stopping keynote address. His presentation covered Blockchain in general as well as Skycoin’s progress over the last 8 years on the journey to meshnet based global dominance.

Skycoin also sponsored the 2 hour media panel that featured, among others, trading legend Tone Vays and Michael from Boxmining. Miguel, the creator of The Future is Now films was also on the panel and has committed to showcasing Skycoin in an upcoming episode.

All in all the Skycoin delegates gave positive feedback about the cruise and considered it to be a successful event where much was learnt and gained.

Cryptonimist article

Emanuele Pagliari of the Cryptonomist honoured Skycoin with an in-depth piece commencing with the origins of Skycoin. The piece then goes on to examine Skycoin’s many features that we all came to love. Feeless transactions, privacy and security, high scalability, and lower power consumption are among the features that are detailed. Emanuele next examines specific components, specifically Fiber, Skyminers, CX & CXO.Writing extensively on the benefits of Skywire. Over all it’s a well written piece that does justice to the magnitude and scope of the Skycoin project.

Exchange Listings

Skycoin’s #MonthOfAnouncements would not have been complete without a new exchange listing. Instead of being content with a measly single exchange listing, Skycoin announced three new exchange listings during the month of June.

• LAToken exchange listed ETH, USDT, BTC and LA trading pairs for SKY
• BitBns listed a SKY:USDT pair.
• Coinsuper, not to be left out of the action listed both USD and BTC trading for SKY in June.

Not an exchange listing per se but no less exciting, was the announcement that Bastionpay will be accepting Skycoin payments. Bastionpay is a new crypto payment app from Blockshine Technology, a government supported Blockchain initiative backed by many countries around the globe. It holds all digital assets in a bank grade custodial service, and despite being a new entrant in the market they can already boast about being the fifth most downloaded app in its category. Bastionpay will extend Skycoin’s reach through its all-purpose crypto payment wallet and messaging app, crypto-to-fiat ATMs, and crypto web payment solutions.

Skyfleet

The Skycoin community is one of the most active in the space with members regularly contributing articles, videos, infographics and memes. There’s far to many to mention them all! However, every once in a while an exceptional contribution surfaces; this month that contribution is form Skyfleet member Fray with “My Skyminer”. This video stood out head and shoulders from the crowd, the Skycoin team and Skyfleet thank you!

A regular question that surfaces in Skycoin’s Telegram rooms is; “What is the value of Coin Hours?” Well, the first large Coin Hour sale in history is now confirmed, with 1.6 billion Coin Hours sold for 4300 SKY. In 2018, Synth airdopped the Coin Hours on the lucky Skyfleet member who held them for a year before creating the @coinhourauction Telegram group announcing that he would be auctioning them off. Bidding started almost immediately and eventually closed at 4.3K SKY, about $8000 at the time. Although mostly speculation at this point in time, with the LBank SCH (Skycoin Coin Hour) listing fast approaching, Coin Hours will soon adopt a real market value.

New York Operations

As many of you are aware of by now, NYC has been chosen as the testing grounds for Skywire. The team is in frantic preperation mode as they plan a city-wide rollout, and as Synth would put it, “We’re looking for boots on the ground!”. Currently we’re looking for someone to be the manager of a monthly NYC event, someone to perform admin tasks such as finding a venue, catering, reception etc. And finally a confident speaker with a solid comprehension of the Skycoin ecosystem.

Interested parties can apply here: [email protected]

To wrap up the community update, we would like to celebrate Skywire’s testnet on its one year anniversary! In just one year the Skywire testnet grew to include an astonishing 10000 nodes (give or take). To put things in perspective, that number rivals Bitcoin’s mainnet.

Skyfleet members that are participating in Skywire’s testnet received and extra 10% participation rewards to mark this joyous occasion! Congratulations and thank you for helping realize the Skycoin vision of true Internet freedom, the way it was meant to be.

That is all from our side for June #MonthOfAnouncements but that doesn’t mean the announcements are over. As always, Skycoin will keep on delivering, along side the Skyfleet as shown in the latest Monthly Manifest article. Stay tuned to any of our many communication channels and you won’t miss any of the action.