May 2019 Community Update

The Skycoin universe experienced a surge of fresh energy during May as the long dark crypto winter started yielding to the spring of the bulls.

Rather than surrendering to the temptation of hibernation during the aforementioned dark months, the Skycoin team and community were hard at work preparing for the inevitable spring thaw.

This month’s update reflects the fruits of that work.

Development

Development went ahead at full steam with the weekly development updates on the Skyblog showing continuous refinement of Skywire, the Skywallet, Ledger integration, CX and the Coin Hour Bank which are all nearing completion or big milestones.

The magnitude of Skycoin development activity during May resulted in Skycoin reaching the top 5 coins as ranked by Coincodecap.com (measuring development across all public repos). Shoutout to the Skycoin devs and much valued community code contributors! For a snapshot of all this check out the development recap for May.

Skywire

Work on Skywire during the last month included optimization and testing, with the aim being better organization and overall simplicity of the packages and repos while continuing to eliminate issues.

Highlights from the Skywire arena this month are;

• Integration tests for SSH and the Proxy server completed.
• The resolution of several potentially disruptive race conditions.
• Bug fixes related to messaging discover requests as well as the fetching of cryptographic nonces.
• A new uptime tracking service was implemented.

A configuration generation tool for the local test environment was completed.

Ledger Integration

Work on the Skycoin ledger integration continues to move ahead and this month saw the completion of a Golang wrapper to facilitate communication between the Ledger device and the hardware wallet DAEMON. Additionally, the user interface was improved through a refactoring in line with Skycoin’s commitment to a positive user experience.

Skywallet

Skywallet security saw improvement with the addition of more salt sources to increase entropy and the addition of functions to check the memory protection status of Skywallet. Testing and debugging of the firmware resolved several issues, among others a major bug that was causing it to crash on Windows. Several issues pertaining to the crypto library was also resolved.

Coin Hour Bank

The Coin Hour Bank has been undergoing rigorous testing as it is nearing completion and several issues have been resolved while improvements to the user interface increased the overall usability of the UI. Notably, the withdrawal functionality received a lot of work and was continuously improved through testing.

Skycoin Wallet

In more development news, the Skycoin wallet now includes simplified Chinese support. Welcome to all Chinese Skyfleet members who can now transact in their native language using their favourite coin.

CX

Version 7.0Beta of the CX programming language was released with a host of new features, libraries, language improvements and bug fixes. This version of CX sees the introduction of CX chains. CX chains essentially integrates CX into the Skycoin Fiber blockchains. Specialised chains with CX adapted to it can now be created on Fiber.

Check out the full release notes on Github.

Want to learn CX? Watch this awesome video tutorial and start wrapping your head around the future of Blockchain programming. For those of you who prefer written tutorials, check out the CX chains overview and CX chains tutorials (both a work in progress).

CX Labs

The launch of the CX Labs program caused a fair amount of excitement. CX Labs affords developers the opportunity to be financially rewarded for learning CX, Skycoin’s native blockchain programming language, by creating dapps on it. The CX Labs program is structured as a competition that developers can enter by simply joining the CX Labs Telegram and messaging the CX Labs Manager, @legitimus (full info can be found in the pinned message on Telegram).

• The top prize is $2,500 USD paid in Skycoin
• Second place will be awarded $1,500 USD paid in Skycoin
• Participation awards of $300 USD paid in Skycoin and 20 tickets for the Skycoin Rewards Program will be distributed as well
• Dishonest and low effort submissions will not qualify for participation bonuses and will not be rewarded. Put forth your best effort!

The first instalment of CX Labs has been extended to the end of June, make sure your submissions are in by June 30th for judging!

Synth Speaks

Yet another hard hitting interview of Synth was conducted by Coin Interview. This was number seven in the series in which the venerable Synth continued to woe newbies to Skycoin and old salts alike. Guided by a series of well constructed and pertinent questions on the part of Chris, the interviewer, Synth imparted highly relevant information pertaining to the current state of the crypto market. The Skycoin strategy for the medium term was revealed as essentially being the release of all the products that were completed over the preceding period along with a strong focus on marketing.

Framed by a Skyminer and a Skywire antenna on display behind him, Synth then proceeded to describe the relevance of CX as the first actual blockchain programming language and explained how it improved on the shortcomings of first generation attempts. He also elaborated on CX Labs and the CX textbook that is now available and declared that a CX based Telegram clone will be released in 6 months time.

A hugely exciting revelation was the plan to use New York City for the prototype deployment of a city-wide Skywire network. Skycoin will be focussing on a boots-on-the-ground strategy and engaging the public directly through a meetup and deployment campaign.

Comic relief contributed by Skyfleet member @cryptofray

Events and Visibility

Skycoin remains committed to becoming highly visible both inside and outside of the crypto space. As such, exposure via events, exchange listings, and public relations exercises are high up on the priority list. May was no exception and the exciting news bellow reiterates the teams dedication to making Skycoin a household name.

Skycoin is Now Trading on LA Token

One of the fastest growing crypto exchanges in the space is LA Token. They entered Coinmarketcap.com’s top 20 in March 2019 and a quick look at their ongoing performance reveals the reason for their rapid ascension. LA Token boasts a $400 million daily turnover from their 300 000 registered users that trade a whopping 320+ currency pairs. You can now trade Skycoin on LA Token against BTC, ETH and USDT.

Boots on the Ground

During May, the Skycoin team attended various job fairs throughout China to hunt for the best talent available for recruitment to ensure that the exacting standards required to succeed are maintained as the project goes from strength to strength.

The team also attended the 2nd Digital China Exhibition held in Fuzhou. The event ran from the 5th to the 9th of May at the Fuzhou Strait International Conference & Exhibition Center. (Xinhua/Wei Peiquan). Skycoin fit right in at the event which was described as being “a window into the future of technology”.

Join the Skycoin Team

Skycoin is hiring! Major developments are in the offing and we are building the capacity to handle that. If the idea of contributing to the best project in crypto space appeals, check out the jobs section on the Skycoin website for details of these positions:

• SEO Engineer
• Content Writer
• Social Media Manager
• Marketing Manger
• Operations Manager
• Technical Writer
• Backend Software Engineer
• Firmware Engineer
• Circuit Engineer
• Mechanical Engineer
• Industrial Designer OR Intern

All in all then, May was an exhilarating month during which significant traction was gained from the dedicated efforts of the team and community. Spring has sprung and the Skycoin bud is unfolding right on time. May we all be there to harvest the fruits.

Major Announcements

So this is May’s recap, but we were very excited with our recent news as well. If you haven’t yet heard the news, read the announcement here.

Alongside the recent exchange listings, here is a quick summary of things:

• Reduction of Coin Hour burn to 10%
• Testnet Anniversary celebrations
• Multi-language support in the wallet
• Purchase SKY directly in the wallet

The sheer scale of the ongoing development across the myriad of Skycoin projects is truly impressive, and we are excited to see the amazing progress coming soon.

Stay tuned, as there is much more to come with #MonthOfAnnouncements.