Disclaimer & Notes
I've made these chapters from the RSVP but the timing is slightly off, the video I recorded was a little bit too late, add 1:48 to the timings the above YouTube video or listen on SoundCloud (also below) and/or download my screen recording which might be slow. I'll see if I can correct it programmatically since this happens often.
Also @ash made a screen recording as well.
Also please note that it seems that some of the topics were not discussed! As you see there is no timings. Please let me know if there's been a mistake.
00:00 Excerpt from this weeks Bitshares State of the Network Report
- Boxing legend Evander Holyfield is teaming up with Cryptonomex in a full-scale Joint Venture to raise a billion dollars for humanitarian disaster preparedness.
- Bitshares has reached a new All Time High (ATH) this week and has broken the 2 Billion USD market cap barrier.
- The Smartcoin market now exceeds 100 Million USD all of which is backed by BTS collateral. Current Bitshares collateral backing of the smartcoin economy is valued at over 393 Million USD. (1:3.9)
- This week has seen good growth in the Bitshares smartcoin economy seeing BitGold supply increase by 68%, BitCNY supply increase by 40% as well as Ruble up 25%, BitBTC up 18% and USD up 16%.
- BitXCD Eastern Caribbean dollar is now live on the Bitshares network. BitXCD is a unique SmartCoin, because it is not backed by BTS but by bitUSD, as a 2nd level SmartCoin.
04:22 Evander Holyfield just endorsed AriseBank and BitShares
Suggested Duration: 5 to 10 minutes
Evander Holyfield, the 5x heavyweight boxing champion, recently endorsed AriseBank and BitShares in "the biggest fight in history"
A decentralized cryptocurrency bank in called AriseBank in reported to be in the process of acquired an FDIC-Insured Bank. This bank plans to have several interesting characteristics:
- The bank will connect to the BitShares blockchain and enable easy access to Market Pegged Asssets such as bitCNY, bitUSD, bitGold, bitSilver, bitBTC, bitEUR, etc.
- The bank itself does not know the identity of its account holders and instead relies on a identity verification platform to uniquely identify its users.
- It is suggested though not confirmed that the non-investment account holders maintain the private keys to their accounts.
- The bank will provide ATM cards with which account holders can use to convert their cryptocurrency tokens into the local fiat currency.
- The bank will provide VISA credit cards which can be used to spend an account holder's cryptocurrency.
- The bank will provide a merchant payment service to enable the easy acceptance of cryptocurrency as payment.
Additional details can be found from an interview with Jared Rice, and also a description about some criticisms about the endeavor.
12:45 Worker Proposal to renew Alfredo Garcia as Bitshares core developer
Suggested Duration: 5 minutes
Alfredo Garica has posted a worker proposal to renew his existing work as a core developer for BitShares. Discussions about this new worker proposal can be found here
Amount: 6600 bitUSD / month for 160 hours / month
Timespan: 2018-01-22 through 2018-07-07 (6 months)
Escrow: chainsquad, dev.bitsharesblocks, elmato, fox, lin9uxis
The work that he has performed covers a huge scope of the BitShares architecture ranging from:
- most layers of the BitShares Core (API, blockchain operations, node plugins, the CLI software, etc.),
- assisting with releases and hardfork planning, tools for users (ongoing work on the blockchain explorer),
- tools and assistance for other developers,
- documentation within the wiki pages and docs.bitshares.org, and
- tracking and addressing of issues.
15:14 @lin9uxis has been providing a server for testing node software for free (thank you very much!). Alfredo is asking for some funds to cover the expenses of two servers for a total of $200 / month.
A review of his work during the past 6 months can be found here.
19:09 Graphene Developer Conference in Shanghai on January 20, 2018
Suggested Duration: 2 to 5 minutes
"... bitcrab, the founder of gdex.io, who is also the core leader of Bitshares Chinese community, is calling on a Graphene Developers' Conference on 20th January, in Shanghai. He will also sponsor this conference. The rest of us in Chinese Bitshares community will be volunteers.
Anyone who is interested in Graphene from all over the world will be welcomed ! And please leave your message if you know any project that are using Graphene technology."
21:56 Witness Proposal from South Africa
Suggested Duration: 2 to 5 minutes
Etienne Marais is proposing a witness that will be operated out of South Africa. The witness account name is etienne-marais. Discussions about can the proposal can be found here.
Etienne plans on setting up a new asset on BitShares called ZAR (South African Rand) and will provide a feed for it in the coming months.
26:45 Witness Proposal by Zhaomu
Suggested Duration: 2 to 5 minutes
Zhaomu is proposing to operate a witness, with technical assistance, from outside of China. He has already successfully configured a witness node on the BitShares TestNet.
"As a member of greater China representative, I am in charge of collecting and reporting news of the marketing progress in China. Besides, I also translated BTS's technical documention that needed by exchanges."
Zhaomu has been very helpful at opening dialogue between the different language communities within BitShares. Some of his work can be found here
- https://steemit.com/bitshares/@billbutler/translated-by-zhaomu-l
- https://steemit.com/cn/@lzmlam/ui-a-record-about-bitshares-ui-wp-biligual
- https://steemit.com/bitshares/@lzmlam/bts-greater-china-representative-worker-proposal-bilingual
- https://steemit.com/cn/@lzmlam/a-letter-to-bitshares-shareholders
30:46 Witness pay
Ongoing discussion, informal poll on the BitShares talk forum. Witnesses are paid per block in BTS.
BitShares Fee Reduction
Suggested Duration: 5 to 10 minutes
Two proposal are/were being considered by the BitShares Committee regarding fee changes on the network. The motivation behind the fee schedule change is due to (a) the fee schedule being technically priced in BTS although they are targetted to a USD value, and (b) the recent large increase in USD-price of BTS.
Two proposals have been presented for review by the committee: the original, and a counter-proposal. The first expired without sufficient support. The second is under review and if approved will come into affect by January 9, 2018.
This updated price feed is also essential to Victor of BitPeso for whom a transfer fee of 0.02 USD is on the upper edge for what would be acceptable for his business.
One a related note, customminer has created a BSIP to technically define fees in terms of bitUSD rather than BTS.
What's on deck for Saturday? @Taconator? @SteemPower? 😊
Last week's hangout and after party was a feast of knowledge and wisdom that went on for hours. @kimchi-king kept the topics rolling for us. Hopefully we will continue that this Saturday.
Lots of "rumor and buzz" going around about an EOSIO/Bitshares announcement - any truth to this? Is this playing into the recent rise in BTS/USD price?
Bitshares doing it's thing, not breaking a sweat...
34:40 Crypto-Currencies as Medium of Payment
Suggested Duration: 2 to 5 minutes
BitShares Blockchain Foundation posted an article highlighting the benefits of a stable digital token as a medium of exchange.
A well-known obstacle to greater adoption of crypto-currencies like BTC as a medium of payment is the high volatility of its exchange value, due to its limited supply. As a consequence, the unit price varies (sometimes significantly) over short periods of time. This makes BTC unpractical for merchants that need to pay their suppliers in cash - especially in bearish markets where this currency risk can ruin a business.
The article then goes on to highlight three concepts that maintain a peg.
- Asset-backed Peg (e.g. USDT backed by an IOU)
- Liquidity-backed Peg (e.g. NuBits backed by BTC)
- Market-backed Peg (e.g. bitCNY backed by BTS)