Hi Blockchain Enthusiasts👩💻,
In this week’s bi-weekly newsletter we’re discussing:
Akashian Challenge Phase 2 Wk. 2
Irisnet gets a prominent role in China’s BSN
Desmos Testnet Phase 5
ICON As Digital Gold?!
ICON NFT Released
Cosmos Stargate Update
🔥 Askashian Challenge Phase 2 Wk. 2
Over the last two weeks, Phase 2 of the Akashian Challenge is going full speed. Week 2 of Phase 2; chaos is the latter, is a test for throughput of the DEX. This challenge will let the Akash team identify performance bottlenecks. The week two challenge builds on the user provider experience challenge from week 1. Stakin has enthusiastically synced a node on the latest Akash Testnet (Testnet-v3) and deployed a provider.
🎉 Irisnet gets a prominent role in China’s BSN
In other inspiring blockchain news, Irisnet has been chosen to support the development of China’s Blockchain Service Network (BSN) to create the Internet-of-Blockchains. For those of you unfamiliar with China’s BSN, it is a government-led initiative to increase interoperability and reduce development costs. Telecom provider China Mobile, payments provider China Unionpay, and Red Date have all invested in BSN, and Red Date is the leading software architect. The BSN will create an inter-chain, inside-BSN service hub, for which Irisnet will power the communication between blockchain frameworks as well as to the outside world.
📱 Desmos Testnet Phase 5
The proof-of-stake blockchain ecosystem is booming with innovations, applications and network implementations. We’re especially excited about the Desmos Network. This network aims to redesign social networking and to improve the well-being of users on social networks through blockchain technology.
After successfully implementing the possibility for users to create posts containing hashtags, tag a person and report a post in Phase 4. Desmos Testnet Phase 5 started on July 10th, focussing on creating posts with hashtags, tagging persons inside posts, reporting posts and creating or editing a profile. Additionally, users can play around with the current features and earn Desmos Tokens as rewards.
💰ICON As Digital Gold?!
Many people believe that Bitcoin is digital gold. However, a study of Dr ICON conducted to see if ICX would be able to move more closely to the gold price and could be digital gold, shows that ICX might be a better guess. With collected cryptocurrency data and gold price data from November 1st 2019 to June 14th 2020, the correlation between gold and different digital assets was calculated, and the Linear Regression and Neural Network were analyzed.
And what they found was surprising! ICX has the highest correlation with gold compared to other assets. To see how they’ve come to this conclusion, check the full article.
🤯 ICON NFT Released!
Last month, we wrote an article about the ICON Global Commission Rate. And this month, the announcement of the NFT (non-fungible token) standard release has gotten us all fired up. The last call for changes ran till July 13th so that any interested parties could take a look before that date. We’re very excited about the application of the NFT technology and are looking forward to the use-cases on the ICON Network. Keep an eye out for our NFT article, coming up soon!
🪐 Cosmos Stargate Update
In other news, the most significant Cosmos update so far, Stargate, has been announced. The main focus of Stargate is to enable higher transaction throughput, cross-chain transactions, accelerate UI development and upgrade automation.
The Stargate upgrade will be a significant improvement for the Cosmos ecosystem in many ways. The ability to connect Cosmos-based chains using Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) is one of the most well-known benefits. Cosmos Hub will be taking charge of the Stargate upgrade. For more information, check out the Q&A video.
DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking, delegation, and cryptocurrencies involve a high degree of risk, and there is always the possibility of loss, including the loss of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some protocols. We advise you to do your due diligence before choosing a validator.