March 2019 Community Update

March madness is a good description of the sheer volume of high quality development and progress made across the expanding Skycoin ecosystem. Mainnet launch, hardware wallet updates, and a new CX release were the highlights on the software side of activity.

Within the Skyfleet, Drew Macgibbon lead the charge with the Skycoin Rewards Program, resulting in a number of fantastic new articles and videos by a host of first-time contributors. The first of the Skyfleet Projects was also announced - Skycoin integration into BTCPay Server - this is huge! Read on for all the Skycoin happenings in March.

Skywire

After ten months of intensive testing on 10,000 nodes of the Skywire testnet, the first iteration of Skywire mainnet was released in March. The mainnet software has been rewritten from the ground up and is primarily focused as a platform for developers to start building the next generation of distributed apps. All existing apps have been rewritten and optimized for the mainnet, including a distributed and secure chat app, SSH, and a multi-hop tunneling proxy app.

Over the course of the next few months we will be releasing new iterations of the Skywire mainnet software with new features, facilitated by an updater that will provide the ability to conveniently install new iterations. Stay tuned for additional information, technical details, and further updates from the team.

Developers are encouraged to install the mainnet software from the Skywire GitHub on a new Pi node and begin testing. Bug reporting should be done through the repo, with steps taken to reproduce the bug, and include any feedback. Details of the process will be available in the README.md and CONTRIBUTE.md. Documentation can be found at the Skywire GitHub Wiki. General discussion and support for mainnet takes place on the Skywire Mainnet Telegram channel.

Upcoming features for Skywire mainnet include:

• A new intuitive UI for developers and users to easily interact with the mainnet
• Bandwidth monetization will be coming soon that will allow users to earn Coin Hours through bandwidth sharing
• Coin Hour Bank
• Skycoin transactions utilizing CoinJoin
• Remote management of unlimited nodes
• Port the CXO protocol onto Skywire for distributed data storage in preparation for the Obelisk consensus implementation

Skyfleet, do not install the the developer Skywire mainnet software on your testnet whitelisted Skyminer nodes, as you will stop receiving testnet rewards. If you are thinking of building a DIY miner or buying an official Skyminer, now is a great time. You will help to build out the network and will receive testnet rewards until mainnet bandwidth metering is implemented. The more nodes online, the more robust the network becomes!

CX

CX is Skycoin’s native programming language. March saw the release of CX version 0.6.2. Check out the CX GitHub release page for more details.

CXFX is a graphics library created by 2dbug that aims to facilitate games development in CX. It provides a library that allows developers to focus on building their apps instead of having to write everything from scratch. This month it was merged into the official Skycoin repository.

At first, CXFX will be a library-only environment, allowing access to CXFX functionalities from within a CX program. The goal eventually is to have something like a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) game editor, similar to Unity.

To learn more about CXFX, check out the articles on creating a blockchain game engine and the future of blockchain gaming. Also make sure to follow CXFX on Twitter. To contribute to the project, join the CXFX Telegram group, visit the CXFX GitHub repository and read some CXFX tutorials. Skycoin is allocating resources to help advance engine, however this is a community project at heart and will require contributions from the Skyfleet.

Skywallet

The Skywallet is our own first-party hardware wallet. This month, the Skycoin devs made the Skywallet daemon feature-complete. The daemon will enable Skywallet integration with any future wallet distribution, such as the upcoming web wallet, as well any third-party wallets that choose to do so.

Ledger support for SKY

A major milestone was reached integrating Skycoin within the Ledger brand of third-party hardware wallets - the first Skycoin transaction has been signed with a Ledger Nano S device!

Stay tuned for more updates as we work hard on both hardware wallet projects, as ensuring security is our highest priority before we will enable use of these devices.

For detailed development updates on Skywire, CX and hardware wallet progress, follow the Skyblog. For real time updates on major Skycoin milestones, follow Skycoin on Blockfolio.

Synth Speaks

Synth chatted to YouTube interviewer Keith Wareing, answering questions on a wide range of Skycoin topics including McAfee, the progress on Skywire Mainnet and his vision for Skycoin as a future blockchain platform for many of the current internet uses.

Synth’s March Telegram talks were compiled and posted on YouTube. Listen to Synth discussing Skywire mainnet here and here.

Official Articles

On Medium, The Justification for Skywire: A Technical Explanation takes a look into the protocol and monetary problems that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies experience and explains how Skywire solves these problems.

The February 2019 Community Update was also published.

Developer updates are posted on the Skyblog, where you can read all the updates described above in-depth. There was the Skywire Mainnet Public Testing Announcement, the CXFX Graphics Library, a March 8th Skywire Dev Update, the CX 0.6 & 0.61 Dev Update, an update on Skycoin’s Integration into Ledger, and a March 29th Dev Update.

Official Videos

Using Skycoin with your customers showed how Skycoin will be implemented into a customer rewards program. An official video summary of the San Francisco Developer Week was also released.

Skycoin Jobs

If you are interested in working directly on various aspects of Skycoin with the dev team, check out the jobs listed on the official site. We are currently looking for a Mechanical Engineer, Circuit Engineer, Software Engineer (Backend), Firmware Engineer, Marketing Manager, Operations Manager and Technical Writer.

Community videos

Loyal Skyfleet member and proficient coder BigOokie released two excellent walkthroughs for the installation of Skywire mainnet on MacOS and installing CX Language on MacOS via Homebrew.

Skycoin Rewards Program

The Skycoin Rewards Program (SRP) incentivizes the Skyfleet to create Skycoin content through raffle tickets to win Skycoin, Skywallets and other merchandise. The higher the quality of content you produce, the more chances you will have to win a prize.

Writing an article, making a YouTube video or hosting a Skycoin meetup are some of the eligible categories. For complete details on how the program works, read this article and join the SRP Telegram group. For ideas on what type of content to make, read this article.

Winners will be announced on a game-show style YouTube livestream, to be held on the first Sunday of every month. Once you have produced content and earned entry tickets, tune in to the Skyfleet YouTube channel to watch the game show each month! The first show was held on April 7th at 01:00 UTC. Read the results here.

Skycoin X BTCPay Server

BTCPay Server is an open-source, self-hosted payment processing platform that allows merchants and individuals to receive payments of Bitcoin and a range of altcoins in a censorship-resistant manner. Integration into BTCPay Server will be a huge step towards expanding the transactional use of Skycoin. This will be the first of the Skyfleet Projects, which we encourage the community to help build. Start by reading this summary article, checking the Skyfleet GitHub account and contacting the developers on Telegram.

Other community news

• There is a new hub for CX Game development on reddit. r/CX_Language is a great place to discuss all things CX and to update the community with your latest project written in the Skycoin programming language.
• For Vietnamese Skycoin fans, check out Skywirex, a blog filled with news and Skywire tutorials written in Vietnamese.
• Thanks to Sudo’s infographic competition, we saw a slew of amazing new infographics explaining various aspects of Skycoin. These have been compiled into a memes and graphics pack, which can be downloaded from the Monster Memes and Image Pack. The winners will be announced soon.

Skycoin Meetups

Joel the Man hosted a meetup discussing Skycoin and MDL Talent Hub, one of our Fiber partners.

There are several meetups around the world scheduled for April. Olemis Lang hosted a Skycoin developer hackathon on April 6th in Havana Cuba, details here.

Skycoin Telegram Groups

It can be hard to keep track of the all the different Telegram groups in the Skycoin project. Here are some groups that you may not yet have joined:

• Skywire Mainnet - a place for developers interested in exploring the first versions of Skywire mainnet, and for support and to discuss features/issues.
• Skywire Antenna Group - discussion and support for Skyfleet working on building out the Skywire wireless mesh network.
• Skycoin Game Dev - discussions on game development written in CX.
• Skycoin CXFX - a Telegram group for those building and using the CXFX game engine.
• Skycoin 3D Print - the place to go for all Skycoin 3D-printing-related discussion.
• Skycoin Meetups Worldwide - the place for posting/announcing your Skycoin meetup.
• Skyfleet News - only Skyfleet news links, no chat. Great for keeping up to date with the growing amount of ecosystem development and content.
• Skycoin Rewards Room - for submitting Skyfleet content and claiming your tickets to the monthly Skycoin Rewards Program (SRP) raffle run by Drew Macgibbon.
• Skycoin memes - the dankest Skycoin memes live here.

That’s everything from March, another incredibly busy month of building and development. Stay engaged with the community across Telegram, Twitter, Medium, Reddit, YouTube and GitHub. Dont forget about getting your entries in for the first Skycoin Rewards Program raffle. Onwards and upwards, Skyfleet!