Counterparty Update 1/5/17
Ecosystem Updates
Bitcoin and Counterparty were recently on Shark Tank South Africa as a result of an investment made by South African entrepreneur Vinny Lingham. Augmentors will be raising funds in part by selling DATABITS, a token on the Counterparty network.
Following the investment, Corin Faife wrote an article detailing the event. Below are some excerpts:
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“In the most recent episode, Lingham brought bitcoin to the fore by offering his investment to the developers of augmented reality game Augmentors in bitcoin.” - Corin Faife
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“[Under] the new system, the company will raise funds by selling DATABITS, an in-game cryptocurrency that also makes use of the Counterparty token system and [players] will be able to buy items and abilities for their characters.” - Corin Faife
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“We been chatting with Spells of Genesis, Book of Orbs; all of the other Counterparty games have been in touch…” “We’ve been listening to what they’re doing, explaining what we’re doing – you could say that there’s a lot of interest between us.” - Kyle Haffenden of Augmentors
Corin’s full article on CoinDesk can be viewed here.
On a related note, Deutsche Boerse is launching a new exchange for trading virtual goods from video games which is described by Fortune.com as a “multi-billion U.S dollar market.”
“At the moment there are few opportunities for players to legally trade game items,” Deutsche Boerse said in a statement.
Counterparty is the technology in the best position to take advantage of this trend in gaming and already Counterparty is home to the most digital game items of any asset protocol.
According to Fortune.com, “The market for in-game items is estimated to reach a value of more than $46 billion next year and is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of more than 6%, according to research firm Super Data Research.”
You can read the full article from Fortune about this growing phenomenon here.
Storj continues to make great progress. They recently reached a major milestone of 1,000 TB of data stored on the Storj network! Storj is reporting roughly 3 PB of available storage coming from 4,700 farming clients. Read more about these impressive milestones at the link located here.
Storj also released an updated version of their whitepaper that can be read here.
The first WILLCOIN sale from TCG Force of Will ended on December 22nd, 2016. A total of 14,231 WILLCOIN was bought, which comes out to approximately 91 Bitcoin in sales.
WILLCOIN is a Counterparty token that functions as a lottery ticket in Force of Will.
The ORB fountain, used for drawing FoW cards, will be publicly available in the near future and the upcoming batch purchase feature will have a beta release at the same time.
Some of the Force of Will ORBS are playable in Spells of Genesis, making this the first large scale cross-game promotion taking advantage of the unique interoperable nature of Counterparty tokens.
For more information follow Project ORB’s official blog.
Spells of Genesis and Counterparty were featured in Forbes following the soft launch of SoG. Author Roger Aitken discusses Spells of Genesis in depth, particularly how Spells of Genesis utilized Counterparty to trail-blaze innovation in gaming that is being followed by other games through the present day.
It is promising to see innovation via digital game assets gaining traction in the mainstream media. This is an underserved market where Bitcoin and Counterparty can create significant value.
Read the full article on Forbes here.
The FoldingCoin public meeting for the month of December featured both founders of the Augmentors project. This collaboration was a nice showing from both teams and it was an opportunity for the Augmentors team to get up to speed quickly while learning the ropes from Robert Ross and company.
FoldingCoin kicks off the meeting by detailing several of the Counterparty assets that are being distributed to folders. The Augmentors team then had some time to explain the vision for their project, how Counterparty will be integrated and the characteristics of the Counterparty tokens that will be used as in-game assets.
The full meeting can be viewed here.
A beta version for Android of the popular Bitcoin and Counterparty geocaching app known as Takara has been released. By linking IndieSquare Wallet or Book of Orbs to Takara, dropping tokens becomes simpler and more cost effective. There have been many Force of WIll and other tokens dropped using Takara. It is turning into a useful marketing and token distribution tool.
FreeWallet is a free open-source mobile wallet developed by Jeremy Johnson which supports Bitcoin and Counterparty.
FreeWallet runs on iOS and Android devices, supports phones and tablets, and also runs in a browser (Chrome/Safari).
The wallet allows users to send and receive BTC and tokens, create and issue tokens, sign & broadcast messages, supports multiple addresses, and works on both Mainnet and Testnet.
In addition, FreeWallet allows users to protect their wallets using a PIN code or fingerprint support (TouchID), and the wallet uses only publicly available APIs.
Check out the FreeWallet website here.
A #freewallet channel has been created in the Counterparty Slack for FreeWallet users.
Counterparty directors have also started a new channel on Slack known as “#new-projects.”
Counterparty has been growing in popularity in tandem with the rise of tokenization. As the number of projects on Counterparty increases it will be more difficult to vet incoming projects in a timely manner.
The “#new-projects” channel will be used by new projects to explain themselves and to begin to gain credibility in the Counterparty community. If you choose to interact with new projects do so at your own risk!
On the back of rising interest, we want to provide greater tools for preventing scams within the Counterparty community.
The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) put out an investor alert which outlines some of the risks of investing in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. That document can be viewed here.
A tool that has been specifically developed by Counterparty director Jeremy Johnson to aid users in identifying reputable projects is the CoinDaddy Reputation Service, a free service that tracks reputation information on Counterparty assets and addresses.
Users are able to give reputation feedback on assets and addresses. This information is used to determine a reputation rating which is visible for all users to see. Check out the service here.
The service is 100% free to users and also includes an API which will allow any developers to retrieve reputation information on any Counterparty asset or address.
In another proactive measure, the block explorer counterpartychain.io has been updated to display the reputation information for assets and addresses. This allows users to identify a project’s current reputation, as well as the reputation from 30 days, 6 months, and 1 year prior.
BitCrystals, the in-game currency of SoG, is an example of an asset that has established a good reputation with the community.
Counterparty has a content policy for our community Slack that can be viewed here. Our slack is the community HQ so keep that in mind when interacting there compared to other Counterparty forums.
Long-time Counterparty community member JP Jansen recently sold the Counterparty asset PEPE for $500. Proceeds from this sale went to the Counterparty development program. Thanks JP!
Counterparty in the News
Counterparty was featured in several articles on Nasdaq lately. The first article discussed six applications of blockchain technology. Both Counterparty and Storj are featured in this article, Counterparty for our DEx (decentralized exchange) and Storj for their distributed cloud storage technology. Read the article here.
Bitcoin writer Rebecca Campbell has recently published several Counterparty articles on Bitcoin Magazine.
The first article discusses the “true ownership” of game items facilitated by Counterparty and the Book of Orbs project led by IndieSquare.
“If we give gamers the chance to play a great game that has the blockchain as a core element of its economy, then that might help players to take their first steps into the digital currency world,” said Tom Brennan of All 4 Games.
Shaban Shaame, Founder of Everdreamsoft and Spells of Genesis said, “We want to set a new paradigm, not only for the gaming industry, but for the economy at large. An economy of peer-to-peer trades, decentralization of companies, projects and patrimony.”
“This will potentially bring millions of new users to the [Counterparty] ecosystem and help push the whole Bitcoin industry forward,” said Koji Higashi.
The original article from Bitcoin Magazine can be read here.
Another article on Bitcoin Magazine written by Rebecca discussed the soft launch of Spells of Genesis and the advantages gained through integration of blockchain technology into the gaming world. The article can be read here.
Both of these articles were later syndicated by Nasdaq and they can be viewed here and here.
Counterparty was mentioned in an article on BusinessWorld located here.
Storj Gaining Momentum
TechRepublic published an article discussing Storj and the potential for blockchain based storage solutions. John Quinn and James Prestwich of the Storj project answered some questions for author Matt Asay.
“Storj Labs, in turn, makes the Storj project much easier to consume by abstracting away the complications of running a node on the Storj Network. The company handles bridging onto the network, payments, audits, contract negotiations, shard locations, etc. so that the user can have a smooth and simple object storage experience.”
Read the full article from TechRepublic here.
Storj was recently featured in an article on Huffington Post.
According to author Ameer Rosic: “Blockchain data storage will become a massive disruptor shortly. (3-5 years).”
Another quote from Ameer, “For instance, Storj is beta-testing cloud storage using a Blockchain-powered network to improve security and decrease dependency. Additionally, users (you) can rent out their excess storage capacity, Airbnb-style, creating new marketplaces.”
Read the full article on Huffington Post here.
Storj was featured in an article on Dataconomy discussing blockchain as a new economic model. Specifically, author Arunkumar Krishnakumar discusses Storj as a blockchain based solution to cloud computing. Read the full article here.
Storj was mentioned in a blockchain article on LeadersLeague that can be viewed here.
Developer Updates
Counterparty is waiting for Bitcoin to enable SegWit so we can move forward with the launch of PicoPayments and Atomic Swaps on Counterparty Mainnet. These features are completed and awaiting SegWit activation.
Counterparty would like to extend a thank you to BTCDrak for creating the Bitcoin Core 0.13.2 addrindex patch which Counterparty runs on and is essential to future Counterparty upgrades. It will be pushed to the Counterparty master branch shortly.
Counterparty experienced brief downtime, roughly 14 hours, on December 2nd, 2016. No ledger errors occurred and a fix was implemented in a timely manner. More information on the fix can be located here.
Counterparty is glad to report rising developer interest. If you are a developer interested in working on Counterparty or building on top of Counterparty do not hesitate to reach out us and we will try to find a way for you to get you involved!
Counterparty will be holding the first annual Counterparty Meetup in Miami following TNABC. Counterparty meetings will be held January 19th and 20th, a Thursday and Friday. Contact Trevor Altpeter for more information.
Some topics to be discussed:
- Subassets
- Rising Bitcoin tx fees (from a practical perspective)
- Assigning the XCP fee for numeric assets
- Enabling betting using divisible assets
- Enabling callbacks and betting feeds
Join the Counterparty XCP group on Telegram for breaking news and real-time Counterparty conversation.
Share your thoughts or anything I missed at Trevor.Altpeter@counterparty.io.