Monday, February 17, 2020

[ICON Newsletter #6] New Roadmap Update + New DeFi Project?!

Key HighlightsICON Foundation releases the 2020 Roadmap Update for our technology development organiz
[ICON Newsletter #6] New Roadmap Update + New DeFi Project?!
By ICON Newsletter • Issue #6 • View online
Key Highlights
  • ICON Foundation releases the 2020 Roadmap Update for our technology development organized around 4 key themes.
  • Our community is excited about Balanced Network, a new DeFi project on ICON. The project is a full-on collaboration between ICX Station, PARROT9, Galen Danziger of Mousebelt, and Dan Brehmer of iBriz-ICONosphere.
  • ICON network hits our goal of 100 P-reps. ICON is more decentralized than ever before.
  • 2 grant recipients, Reliant Node and Sharpn publish first development update reports on MyIconWallet mobile app and DevBlockchain.tech, respectively.
  • ICON Foundation hosts 1st P-rep Governance Meeting to discuss ways to improve ICON Incentive Score System (IISS), our staking and block reward distribution system.
  • Catalyst P-rep hosts the 1st P-rep Community Meeting to discuss what everyone can focus on to bring more value to the ICON ecosystem.
  • IConnect Global P-rep hosts local dev meetup in Nairobi, Kenya.
  • The ICON project is featured at ETHDenver 2020 by Fortmatic.
  • ICONLOOP opens a new office in Busan, Korea!
Of all the accomplishments in the past week, the most exciting part is seeing our P-reps collaborating and hustling to bring more value to the ICON network. As you may be aware, ICON is unique in that we are one of the very few projects with a true grass-roots community. ICON extends beyond what the core team is doing in Korea such as #BROOF, which was extensively covered in the last week's newsletter (BTW, some say it was the best one we've published, so go read it!). All the organic community activities that are happening truly exemplifies the power of the ICON project.

Thank you,
Min Kim, ICON Foundation Council

Clear goals are outlined in the 2020 Roadmap
4 Key Themes in 2020 Roadmap Update
4 Key Themes in 2020 Roadmap Update
We believe the four (4) categories mentioned above represent the most important focus areas for our expanding ecosystem and will help us to onboard new network participants and improve the incentive structures for contribution.
Read the full announcement.
2020 Roadmap Update - Medium
Surprise of the week goes to...
Balanced Network is a new DeFi project on ICON
Balanced Network is a new DeFi project on ICON
Balanced
The Balanced Team is excited to officially announce our $ICX DeFi project! Please read the blog post below to learn more about the collaborative effort between @IcxStation, @parrot9design, @gedanziger, and @dbrehmer.

https://t.co/9iLSsQ4OJ5
5:26 PM - 12 Feb 2020
Wow! Our P-reps are really stepping up to the plate by collaborating together. Balanced is a collaborative effort between ICX Station, PARROT9, Galen Danziger of Mousebelt, and Dan Brehmer of iBriz-ICONosphere.
According to the official announcement, Balanced is a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). It incentivizes people to deposit their ICX as collateral and borrow tokens pegged to the value of real world assets. The first token will be the ICON Dollar, which is pegged to USD.
Be sure to follow Balanced on Twitter and Medium for the latest updates.
Read the full announcement.
Balanced: Bringing DeFi to the ICON Ecosystem - Medium
Strong progress with grant projects
Last month, the ICON Foundation approved 2 grants:
  • MyIconWallet: Reliant Node team is building a mobile version of MyIconWallet. The original proposal can be read here.
  • Devblockchain.tech: Sharpn team is building an interactive tutorial to learn ICON smart contracts on its website. The original proposal can be read here.
Progress reports for those grants can be viewed thru the links below:
MyIconWallet - Report #1 - icon.community
Devblockchain.tech - Report #1 - icon.community
New voting feature on forum.icon.community
We're seeing more grant proposals come in by the day and we want the community's voice to be heard. Click "Vote" on your favorite ideas to move them up the priority list. See the example below:
Also, drop your comments in the threads. Positive or negative comments are both encouraged. But always be respectful and polite. We review the grant applications every week!
100 P-reps! 1st Governance Meeting!
Bohdan | Everstake
The first meeting with #ICON Foundation successfully passed! IISS Revision, i_rep, P-rep Contributions and much more

Thanks to all participants @minhokim @iconviet @ubikcapital @ICONDAO @_BongAnHa @VelicFinancial @icon4 @eublockmove

P.S. Happy to discuss ICON even at 3 AM 😴💤 https://t.co/lwVU8QhDsC
5:07 PM - 14 Feb 2020
Coincidentally, the very first P-rep Governance Meeting happened in the same week the ICON network onboarded our 100th P-rep. 100 is a significant milestone and evidence that our network is becoming more decentralized like we originally envisioned.
The P-rep Governance Meeting #1 took place online via video conferencing at 3pm PST on February 14, 2020. The turnout was spectacular considering the timezone differences. The majority of the top 22 P-reps were in attendance and few Sub P-reps joined in as well. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss improvements of the network, specifically:
  • IISS Enhancement: Our goal is to continually work towards a fairer reward distribution for all ICON stakeholders. For the discussion, the ICON Foundation drafted Open Discussion for IISS Enhancement in the Community Forum. We plan to provide an official proposal on IISS enhancements shortly.
  • i_rep: Our goal is to moderate the network's inflation rate. The ICON Foundation proposed to lower i_rep to target inflation below 6%. We await to see how P-reps respond in the coming weeks.
  • P-rep Contribution: Many have asked how P-reps can contribute more. The ICON Foundation proposed high-level actions that can improve active wallets and increase the number of transactions.
Watch the full meeting on our Youtube channel. The video recording is 2 hours long; therefore, we recommend turning on 2x speed.
P-rep Governance Meeting #1: IISS, i_rep, and P-rep Contribution (Feb. 14, 2020)
P-rep Governance Meeting #1: IISS, i_rep, and P-rep Contribution (Feb. 14, 2020)
P-reps are organizing their own meetings
Even without the ICON Foundation, our P-reps are organizing themselves to bring more value to the ICON ecosystem. This is simply amazing.
Meeting participants include Blockmove, Catalyst, Everstake, ICON BOOM, ICONation, Parrot9, POS Bakerz, RHIZOME, and UBIK Capital.
Watch the full meeting on Youtube. The video recording is 2 hours long; therefore, we recommend turning on 2x speed. 
ICON P-Rep Weekly Meeting #1
ICON P-Rep Weekly Meeting #1
Dev meetup in Nairobi, Kenya just happened
P-reps organizing online meetings are not enough. IConnect Global team from Kenya held an offline dev meetup in Nairobi. Follow the team on Twitter to see more event photos. We think they have the coolest logo.
IConnect Global
The developer community in Nairobi is excited about the promise the ICON network offers, and we look forward to real-world solutions to come from this demographic https://t.co/7kn1hYcx8t
2:56 AM - 14 Feb 2020
ICON Project featured at ETHDenver 2020
The Fortmatic team plans to bring key management solutions to the ICON ecosystem, making the onboarding process much smoother. We hope to share more progress updates for you on this initiative.
ICX Station
Proud to announce that #ICONproject was featured at #ETHDenver by being the first blockchain partner of @fortmatic

They provide key management solutions for Ethereum ecosystem and we believe this partnership will make the onboarding process seamless for ICON ecosystem as well https://t.co/l7svmd66df
6:04 PM - 14 Feb 2020
ICONLOOP expands to Busan
Our presence in Korea continues to grow. We are now expanding to Busan, the second largest city in South Korea.
While ICONLOOP will keep its headquarters in Seoul, it will station three (3) employees in Busan and begin operations in March.
Read the Full Article.
ICONLOOP Selected for Busan Fintech Incubator | The Iconist
In case you missed it
VIDEO: JH Kim Money Today Interview (w/ English Subtitles)
ICON - London Meet Up 1.0 Tickets, Wed 19 Feb 2020 at 18:30 | Eventbrite
Visualizing Public Blockchain: Finance, Oracle, and Interchain | Meetup
VELIC
[Share] Token Sale - Latam Cash
🔥Latam Cash IEO will be coming on VELIC.
🔥Stay focused on VELIC!
- Latam Cash: https://t.co/2BcMMZHEVF
- VELIC: https://t.co/S8PqPk17SP
- IOS: https://t.co/FeDLy7dds8
- AOS: https://t.co/sb08o14d1l
#VELIC #IEO @latamcash https://t.co/KY7l8S6TCg
11:17 PM - 12 Feb 2020
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Howdy,

Got some news I need to share with you before we get into today's update…

Our CTO, Vadim Macagon, will now be handling Loom Network operations — and we're really excited about this 😃

The board was looking for new blood to lead Loom into the next chapter and beyond — and they agree Vadim is just the person to do so.

We'll also be publishing an article about this on our blog. Stay tuned.

So here's what I got for ya today…

LOOM Gets Listed on Coinbase Pro in New York 📈

Announced last week, one of the most well-known exchanges in the world has listed LOOM token in full trading mode!

👉
Check out the LOOM trading page on Coinbase Pro.

You know what else is going on?

Basechain Numbers Continue to Climb ⛓

• 420M+ tokens staked
• 71,152+ wallets in use
• 16.7M+ transactions secured
• 21.5M+ blocks verified
Basechain has been growing at an incredible pace since this mainnet launched back in 2018.

Once again, we would like to give a HUGE THANKS to our amazing validators, token stakers, and the whole Loom community!

If you would like to stake your LOOM tokens and earn compound rewards, then head on over to the Staking Dashboard.

There's also a handy Staking Guide plus an FAQ for easy reference.

...And in other Loom Universe news:


That's what's been going on over here.

We'll have more news for you soon — and until then...

Stay awesome!
See you in two weeks,
– Robert
P.S. I've been on this AI kick recently… and I just watched a great video on AI and consciousness, narrated by Stephen Fry. It's only 13 minutes and definitely worth a watch 👀

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Friday, February 14, 2020

Law & privacy

To view this email as a web page, go here.
February 14, 2020

HOLIDAY NOTICE: Blockchain Bites will publish next on Tuesday, Feb. 18. Happy Presidents Day to our US readers. And Happy Valentine's Day to all.
_________________________________________________________________

ILLEGAL MIXING: After Larry Harmon's arrest for allegedly participating in a money-laundering conspiracy worth more than $300 million in cryptocurrency, the Department of Justice has said mixing, the process of obfuscating transactions on a blockchain, is illegal. “This indictment underscores that seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions in this way is a crime," Brian Benczkowski, a DOJ Assistant Attorney General, said. Full story

$1M MINIMUM: Cryptocurrency investment firm Polychain Capital is raising $200 million for a second fund aimed at venture investing, that’s $25 million more than its first fund. According to an investor slide deck obtained by CoinDesk, the new fund opened at the beginning of 2020 and is accepting minimum investments of $1 million for up to three years. Full story

TOUGH TALK: Tensions with Iran may be behind U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s cryptocurrency compliance comments on Wednesday. The New York Times reported the Trump administration “has expressed growing concern” that this technology is being used to “evade American sanctions on countries like Iran.” Full story

SMALLER GALAXY: Galaxy Digital, the cryptocurrency merchant bank founded by Michael Novogratz, has laid off 13 people, roughly 15 percent of its workforce, sources said. The layoffs occurred across the board in early January, though all of the New York-based firm's business divisions were left intact. Full story

BLACK SWANS: The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence is advertising for a post-doc researcher to study what would happen if the U.S. dollar lost its status as the world’s reserve currency. The agency said the research – the first of its kind for the intelligence community’s post-doc program – could help the U.S. prepare for “black swan” events that would threaten the dominance of the dollar. Full story



NEW SERIES: CoinDesk Research has launched Monthly Reviews, which feature a series of charts that reveal insight into institutional participation in crypto assets and adoption of fundamental user narratives. Download January’s for free here.
GOLDEN PROSPECTS? Bitcoin’s short-term and long-term daily moving averages look likely to converge soon, forming a golden cross, a bullish pattern not seen for nearly 10 months. Based on historical data, that could springboard the recent rally to new highs. That said, there are still some signs of overbought conditions, indicating buyer exhaustion, which could produce a pullback. Full story
 
MAJOR IMPLICATIONS: With bitcoin holding above $10,000, CoinDesk senior reporter Leigh Cuen joins Markets Daily to discuss the developments and implications in the case alleged against Larry Dean Harmon. Harmon’s case before the DOJ raises pressing questions about developer liability and the future of privacy-concealing transactions in the crypto industry. Listen in

WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER
 

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