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Monday, April 6, 2020

ICON Newsletter #13 - New Roadmap Update + Interoperability + MyID

By ICON Newsletter • Issue #13 • View online

Key Highlights

ICON Foundation released March Roadmap Update including LFT2 and interoperability updates.
Weekly transaction activity increased 20% vs. December 2019 levels.
45.8% of circulating supply staked increased 0.3% from last week and compares to 38.4% at the end of 2019.
ICON network continues to expand with 120 P-reps, up from 117 from a week ago.
Main P-reps increased i_rep to 43,232 from 42,897 the previous week.
ICON Foundation approved 3 grants this week: Atomic Wallet, Messari Disclosures Registry, and ICON Hyperconnect Hackathon.
ICX_Station releases Part IV of ICON, deconstructed taking a deeper dive into ICON's on-chain governance.
MyID Alliance makes headlines adding 5 new partners, including Bithumb, one of Korea's largest exchanges.
4th P-Rep Community Meeting was held to discuss IISS 3.0, marketing $ICX and incentivizing Sub P-reps.

ICYMI: In last week's newsletter, we discussed the importance of voting for P-Reps who are growing the network, either through on-chain or off-chain efforts. We also highlighted that areas where we need to improve the ICON ecosystem. ICON project extends beyond what the core team is doing in Korea such as #broof, MyID, and VisitMe etc. Organic community activity is necessary in order to power the project to the next level.

CORRECTION: Layah Heilpern, a well-respected journalist, joins ICONPLUS P-Rep team (Check out her Video on twitter). We previously incorrectly wrote that she joined Interblock team.

Let's keep pushing one another to reach our goals!

Stay safe and thank you,

Min Kim, ICON Foundation Council

The first quarter is in the books!

We had a great start to 2020 showing strong improvements in ecosystem growth including: active wallets, staking %, transactions and community. Additionally, we saw a marked increase in mentions not only on social media, but also in top tier publications and across national media in Korea. We expect to keep this momentum to continue throughout the remainder of 2020 but we're happy to see our efforts noticed by the market right now.

Ricky Dodds

@RickyLeeDodds

It's great to see $ICX hold up despite the recent volatility and uncertainty in the market. In fact, in Q1 it's one of the best-performing assets in the space (at +87%) outperforming traditional equities by over 100%

$LINK $XTZ $ETH $BNB #Bitcoin $ATOM https://t.co/2A6JZlDF9t

9:50 AM - 1 Apr 2020

$ICX was highlighted as 2nd best performer in Q1 of coins with market value over $100 million.

ICO Analytics

@ICO_Analytics

TOP 15 best performing crypto assets in Q1 2020. The assets with market cap $100M+ USD are included in this cart.
$hbar $icx $lsk $bsv $okb $dash $cro $btg $leo $link $ht $xtz $rep $ftt $nem https://t.co/38wjU1MsEs

6:22 AM - 2 Apr 2020

March Roadmap update

March was another busy month for the core team. We released the IISS 3.0 framework and continued to research its implementation and the respective timing. We also continued to make progress on interchain and our blockchain transmission protocol (BTP). Lastly, we announced that we'll be releasing our next generation LFT 2.0 consensus algorithm in the coming days!

ICON

@helloiconworld

Our NEXT-GENERATION LFT2 Consensus Algorithm is finally being unveiled to the world after 3 years of research.

📃 LFT2 White Paper
📘 Full Audit Report from KAIST University team https://t.co/AIc690viQF

11:36 AM - 1 Apr 2020

BTP 1.0: Our interoperability technology

BTP 1.0 is the interchain technology allowing the transfer of value and information between private loopchains and our public chain. We are excited to announce that the core team is currently preparing a draft IIP (ICON Improvement Proposal) for BTP 1.0.

In the IIP, we will release the overall structure of the BTP technology to the community.
We will also be including a demonstration video.

MyID continues to pull away from the pack

Last week, the MyID Alliance added 5 new partners to its MyID consortium, bringing the total number to 57! Highlighting this week's additions was Bithumb Exchange, one of Korea's premier crypto exchanges.

"This collaboration with the MyID Alliance will be applied to ID services for employees initially & later to asset management & other services for increased efficiency & privacy." - Bithumb

Other additions are S-1 Corporation (a Samsung Group subsidiary, security solution provider with a ~$3B market cap, and ~$2B in revenue), Suprema, Arom IT, and TEEware.

MyID highlights:

Regulatory support: the only digital identity solution given the regulatory sandbox for use in the broader financial services industry.
Technical maturity: loopchain was built from scratch by the ICONLOOP team and has been in use by many enterprise clients over the past several years. Other ID alliances have limited experience building blockchain solutions.
Business scope and potential user base: MyID will be able to act as a KYC identity and be used to open financial accounts. Additionally, it can store other 'life accrued' data such as work experience, certifications, and even health care data to utilize with other third-party verifiers. No other ID alliance has this broad of a business scope or potential user base.

For more details on MyID check out Newsletter #9: MyID vs. Competition.

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Major Crypto Players Sued

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April 6, 2020

By Daniel Kuhn

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TOP SHELF

Hi, I’m Daniel, a reporter covering the people and ideas behind some of the most promising distributed technologies that CoinDesk covers. I also head up the newsletter you're reading, Blockchain Bites, which as you can see has gone through a few changes. Blockchain Bites will still be your go-to daily summary of all things notable in crypto, but with more of an eye toward the big picture. I also plan to keep iterating, and I'd love to hear what you think of what you see here — feel free to drop me a comment anytime at daniel@coindesk.com.

Thanks for subscribing and your continued support. Now, let’s get to the news.

At least 10 class action lawsuits were filed against major crypto firms and personalities accusing them of offering unregistered securities. Network validators blocked approximately $3.2 million worth of steem belonging to dissident token holders. And code update Stratum V2 launched providing greater security to bitcoin mining pools. Here's the story:

Class action
Plaintiffs filed at least 10 class action lawsuits against some of the biggest names in crypto, including Binance, KuCoin and BitMEX operator HDR Global Trading, as well as blockchain projects like Tron, Block.One and Kyber Network. The thread tying these cases together? Accusations the companies facilitated the sale of unregistered securities (aka “tokens”) to the public.

Frozen steem
Witnesses on Steem have frozen eight accounts, putting a total of 17.6 million steem (worth approximately $3.2 million) in limbo. "We are at an extremely difficult time in the history of Steem, and the power of communities are [sic] the key to make Steem great again," said a Steemit blog announcing the move. A tit-for-tat between Steem's old and new leadership boiled over after Justin Sun purchased a majority stake in the Steem blockchain two months ago. Dissident token holders forked to a new blockchain called Hive, and it now appears some of their original Steem tokens are locked.

Going digital
Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) think COVID-19 may accelerate the adoption of digital payments and sharpen the debate over central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Issuing their forecast in BIS’s April 3 Bulletin, they researchers said COVID-19 is changing the public's relationship with cash, despite the scientific community’s consensus that coronavirus transmission via banknote is relatively unlikely.

Market maturity
Crypto companies kept buying each other last year even as both M&A and funding deal flow in the industry took a dive, according to a report by PwC. While the number of M&A deals dropped from 189 in 2018 to 114 in 2019, representing a whopping 76 percent decline in value to $451 million, more than half of the deals were initiated by crypto-native firms, indicating that larger companies acquired smaller firms providing ancillary services.

Planned obsolescence
MakerDAO is planning its obsolescence. Rune Christensen, Maker’s founder, has a two-year three-plank plan to turn over work done by the MakerDAO Foundation to organizations controlled by token holders. "The rollout of the self-sustaining MakerDAO initiative is going to be a very much a step-by-step process that will happen very carefully and deliberately," he said.

Subsidiary scam
Victims of an alleged crypto ponzi scam have filed a class-action lawsuit against a Wells Fargo subsidiary, claiming a financial advisor associated with the firm defrauded 150 investors out of $35 million.

Revolut's crypto will not be Americanized
Revolut, a UK-based neo-bank, will now allow a larger swath of clients to buy and sell cryptocurrencies supported in its banking app. While the challenger bank successfully expanded to the U.S. in March, American investors are still excluded from crypto trading.

Blockchain stimulus
As coronavirus roils markets, U.S. legislators are committing to providing financial aid to citizens through the CARES Act. But, legislation lacks certainty around how and when financial relief will be delivered. CoinDesk columnist Stephanie Hurder writes that blockchain can be an essential tool in providing clarity, and for Congress to “show their commitment” to delivering this needed stimulus.

AROUND THE WEB

The Gemini exchange is adding Basic Attention Token (BAT) on Friday (Decrypt).
Decrypt takes “a look at China’s most prolific crypto venture firm,” NGC Ventures.
The Bank of Korea, the country’s central bank, has launched a pilot program for testing digital won. (The Block)
Poloniex launches token sale platform, with Tron’s decentralized stablecoin system as first project (The Block)
Crypto to the rescue after Khan Academy’s COVID-19 traffic surge (Cointelegraph)
Loom Network to cap off troublesome quarter with a network upgrade (Messari)

MARKET INTEL

Modest rally
Bitcoin has rallied above $7,100 at press time, a 5 percent gain from the previous 24 hours. The move began during Asian equity market trading hours as Japan’s Nikkei index moved up 4.2 percent. Many analysts attribute the changing sentiment in both crypto and traditional markets to positive data showing the coronavirus crisis may soon lessen.

Gold bugs out
In the recent market turmoil, bitcoin did not act like the uncorrelated asset many thought it was. Nor did gold. As things calmed down a bit (or as we got used to the new volatility), gold resumed its upward climb. But there are problems: gold is not as fungible as we assumed. During this period, BTC’s correlation to equities rose sharply, while its correlation to gold fell. Still, the BTC/Gold relationship is stronger than that of bitcoin and equities, CoinDesk's head of research Noelle Acheson writes in Crypto Long & Short, a newsletter that looks closely at the forces driving cryptocurrency markets. You can subscribe here.

Security patch
Braiins, the company behind the world's sixth-largest bitcoin mining pool has released software to patch security problems with such pools. This software update, called Stratum V2, provides better privacy for miners and protections from so-called hijacking attacks, where other entities temporarily steal their hashing power.

Halving report
In May of 2020, bitcoin is expected to undergo its third “halving,” a programmed supply reduction that has in the past coincided with a strong run-up in the bitcoin price. In this paper, we explain what the bitcoin halving is, why it matters and why the market is so focused on this event.

LET'S TALK BITCOIN!

The long tail of COVID-19
BitTorrent creator and Chia CEO Bram Cohen joins Let's Talk Bitcoin! to discuss the limitations of Satoshi's approach to Nakamoto consensus, how he believes it can be improved and the lasting impacts of coronavirus lockdowns.