Retrieve your Airdropped Coins Without Exposing your Passphrase in the Clone’s Wallet
Difficulty – High Intermediate
Nxt and Ardor are released under the open-source JPL license.
This means that if anyone clones the Nxt blockchain or the Ardor Platform, s/he will have to distribute 10% of his/her newly issued crypto token to the people currently holding NXT (or IGNIS, in case they clone Ardor), among other requirements.
Sounds nice for NXT/IGNIS holders, doesn’t it?
Right, but first you have to understand how the airdrop procedure works.
A SNAPSHOT of the Nxt blockchain is recorded, the date for the snapshot is set by the cloning team. The snapshot documents the state of the blockchain, e.g. the NXT balances in all accounts. This is needed for the distribution of the clone coins.
Once the clone’s wallet has been released, you can use the same account number (or passphrase) that you use to log in to your Nxt wallet to log in to the clone’s wallet. There you’ll find the airdropped coins. But be careful! Your passphrase is the key to your Nxt account, remember?
Since you can log in to both wallets with the same credentials (using the same passphrase), if someone discovers your passphrase when you log in to the cloned blockchain’s wallet, they’ll also have discovered your Nxt/Ignis/Ardor credentials. So it’s understandable that some people may have concerns about entering their precious Nxt/Ignis/Ardor passphrase in to the clone’s wallet, because they don’t trust the wallet creator, maybe there is only an online web wallet available, so they can’t check the clone’s source code, or for any other reason.
Since the passphrase is everything you need to access an account (and spend all the funds there!), if someone discovers your secret passphrase when you enter it into a clone’s wallet, they will get access to the same account in the Nxt / Ardor blockchain, with your NXT and IGNIS/AEUR/ARDR (etc.) funds.
So how do we avoid this risk?
We already mentioned some ways to do so in our Weekly Newsletter, but in this post, I’m going to show you a practical example with Apollo, a Nxt clone that according to the JPL license, had to distribute 10% of the APL coins to NXT holders.
You’ll learn how to transfer your APL coins from the account you own to another account (e.g. an exchange’s account) without entering your passphrase into Apollo’s wallet.
Before starting the process, you should:
A- Make sure you have enough funds in your account to complete the transaction and pay for the transaction fee: 1APL (or, in other words, 10⁸ ATM)
B- Know the destination account number (APL-…-…-…-…)
C- Know the public key of the sender’s account (since you don’t want to enter your passphrase into the clone’s wallet or use their API).
Apollo’s (initial) supply was = 31B
Nxt supply = 1B
10% of the Apollo supply (to be distributed among Nxt holders according to the JPL license) = 3.1B
So 3.1/1 = 3.1 Apollo for every 1 NXT you held in your account at the time of the snapshot (14th of January, 2018).
Ok, What’s the Procedure?
The procedure would be as follows:
1- Make sure your Nxt client isn’t running on your device. If it is, stop it (right click on the Nxt icon in the notification area > Shutdown) before continuing. Running the Nxt client and the Apollo wallet at the same time on the same device could lead to some trouble since both wallets use the same ports for their connections.
2- Install the Apollo wallet on your local device and run it. You may want to use a VM.
No, you can’t just use the online web wallet because we’ll need access to the API, as you’ll see later. Unfortunately, this wallet UI has disabled the “Don’t broadcast function” that you can find in the Nxt wallet, so we’ll have to use the API for some steps instead of using the wallet UI.
Side note: Advanced users who don’t want to install any wallet on their local device for steps 3 to 7 could alternatively use Apollo’s web wallet to find peers with open API. Just create a new account (don’t use your real existing Nxt/Ignis/Ardor account) to log in to Apollo’s web wallet > Cockwheel icon at the top right corner of the wallet > “peers” and then manually connect to a peer with the API service active by typing in your webbrowser:
3- Once the wallet is launched, open the following address in your web browser: http://localhost:7876/test. This will give you access to Apollo’s API. Don’t freak out, the API might look complicated the first time you look at it, but it’s not that difficult.
4- In the API interface, in the “Search” box close to the top right corner, type sendMoney and press Enter. Two results will come up. We’ll use the “sendMoney” one to set up our transaction.
5- Just fill the following fields: recipient: The destination address (APL-….-….-….-….)
amountATM: The amount of ATM you want to send (1 APL = 10⁸ ATM). For example, if you want to send 100 APL coins, you must type 10 000 000 000 ATM in this field (i.e. add eight zeros at the end of the APL amount you want to transfer)
publicKey: The public key of the sending account
feeATM: The fee (in ATM) for the transaction. 1 APOLLO = 10⁸ ATM, so to send coins, the fee would need to be 100 000 000 ATM (i.e. 1 APL)
deadline: 10 (max number of minutes for the transaction to be completed – You can’t enter a different figure here, but 10 is ok)
broadcast: in this field type “false” (we’ll broadcast the signed transaction later)
message: Some exchanges require you to attach a message when depositing funds there. You can type that message here
6- Once all the needed blanks are filled in, we scroll down and click on the Submit button
7- Now, in the “JSON Response” field, you’ll receive the answer that we’re looking for. Among all the data returned, we are interested in the “unsignedTransactionBytes”, which contents our unsigned and unbroadcasted transaction. We’ll copy the content of the unsignedTransactionBytes – withouth the ” “- to the clipboard. And we are finished with Apollo’s API.
8- Head to https://www.nxter.org/nxtbridge-offline/ to make use of this awesome app developed by scor2k and Nxter Magazine, that will allow us to sign any Nxt transaction in a safe way – it works with clones like Apollo, too!
9- We need to download “NxtBridge OFFLINE”, which is a small html file (index.min.html) and open it in a web browser (for maximum security we can open it on an offline device, as explained here)
10- We type our secret passphrase and paste the unsignedTransactionBytes bytes that we copied to the clipboard (step 7) into the proper fields. Then we click on the “Check transaction before signing” button, and check that everything is alright (don’t worry if it shows NXT-…-…-…-… formatted addresses instead of APL-…-…-…-… , the prefix isn’t taken into consideration by the wallets)
11- And there you go! We received the “Signed Transaction” bytes, signed with our Nxt/Apollo passphrase. Now we just have to broadcast it to the Apollo blockchain. To do this, we simply log in to the Apollo online wallet using any APL-…-…-…-… account number. And once logged in, click on the Cockwheel icon at the top right corner > “Transaction Operations” > “Broadcast transaction”
12- Once here, we can paste the “Signed Transaction” bytes we received in step 11 into the box and then click the blue “Generate” button. Our transaction has been successfully transmitted to the Apollo network without exposing our passphrase. Done!
Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor core developer, has announced that Kristina Kalcheva and Tomislav Gountchev, both members of Jelurida, will be attending the Blockchain Expo Europe 2017 event, which will take place on the 1st and 2nd of June in Berlin. This event will be focused on learning and building partnerships in the emerging blockchain space and will explore the industries that are set to be disrupted the most by this new technology. These include: legal sectors, financial services, healthcare, insurance, energy, music, government, real estate, and numerous others.
Jean-Luc states:
Jelurida will be presented by Kristina and Tomi at Blockchain Expo Europe June 1-2, 2017 in Estrel, Berlin.
This event will be bringing together more than 1500 people across key industries for two days of world-class content from leading brands embracing and developing cutting-edge blockchain technologies.
The Blockchain Industry conference track will look at a variety of platforms and services from startups to cloud providers, including developer networks, applications and APIs as well as the impact on legal, finance and government sectors with smart contracts.
Blockchain Technologies will focus on the evolution of blockchain and its applications. The conference will explore the many launches and trials being conducted, the different uses of blockchain technology in these verticals, and the vast opportunities in these sectors.
On the 18th of May, the Janus team organized an interesting Questions and Answer (Q&A) session which was moderated by Travin Keith, Marketing Director and Blockchain Advisor of the Nxt Foundation, on the #janusproject channel on NxtChat on Slack. The aim of this event was to make public the addition of Alphonso Morris Jr as the new Content Product & Marketing Manager as well as Public Relations & Brand Ambassador for the Janus team.
Travin Keith, aka Marenkar, gave the starting signal this way:
Welcome everyone to the QA with the newest member of the Janus team, Mr. Alphonso Morris jr. I have personally verified his information to be accurate based on several techniques to prove identity.
Below are some answers given by Alphonso to the questions stated by users:
Question: Who are you and what is your career experience?
Alphonso: My full name is Alphonso Morris Jr… I have several years of experience in various fields not as much in the Crypto / Blockchain world more so in the fields of Photograpy, Event Planning & Promotions. Public Relalations Director, Artist Management, Personal Assistant, Music & Television for over 20yr
Q: What ways will you help the Janus team expand grow as both a team and future company?
A: Explaining how good something can be to others is easy when you have a team & product as good as this . Were all driven to succeed focused on producing quality, I believe creative minds tend to work well together my interactions with members of the team has been very good. I believe my 30 plus years of public relations, world travel and personal contacts will benefit the team as we grow. I’m anxious to get into the creative process.
Q: What advice do you have for potential investors looking at JANUS?
A: I joined the team two months ago and my observation of Janus is that its a solid company. They have good direction, good products, dedicated to their investors and their brand. Janus is also growing exponentially
Q: To what degree can you utilize your ‘special’ industry contacts to help your team gain an advantage with online business sites and other Janus activities?
A: From my personal experience we are only as good as our word on any level. Information is power in the right hands coming from the right people. I’ve earned mutual respect from some influential people in the entertainment industry who Iv’e worked for or with over the years. People like Ken Ehrlich (Tv Producer Grammys), AMA’s, Usher Raymond (Music Producer / Entertainer) I consider close contacts. There’s always the possibility of a outright endorsement of a product, company, idea or the like based how Bjorn wants to proccede… With my unlimited contacts in music and television it wouldn’t be a problem for me to explain Janus to as many influential people and companies as possible
Q: Since you are the brother of Boyz2Men member, do you know Beyonce through him? There’s a group trying to parody her name as blockchain.
A: She was on The Evolution tour with Destiny’s Child and Boyz II Men in 1997. I was their personal photographer during the tour.
Q: Speaking of Nxt, did you try to play with Nxt features? And if yes, what is your first impression?
A: Yes I have It installed and have looked at it. Its a very powerful platform!
…
The session extended for over an hour and there was time to discuss many questions about the present and future situation of Janus, but there was also time for sharing some personal and professional anecdotes from situations that only a person immersed in such a world as Alphonso has experienced throughout his career. No doubt he is a great addition to the Janus team.
Adel, the blockchain project incubator that uses Nxt technology as a base to build its ecosystem, has recently published its 11th Whitepaper, titled “Foundation of a Community Accelerator”, where a new plan is outlined to make sure that enough funds are collected to move forward with building the Adel ecosystem and progressing with its roadmap.
This way, in case the 900 BTC minimum will not be reached, ICO contributors will have the opportunity to vote for the adoption of this new plan that will give ICO participants the ability to receive a new 20% Post-ICO bonus on their contributions, in addition to the ICO bonuses already achieved through the ICO. Contributors will also have the chance to ask for a refund of their contributions before this voting process takes place. You can find more details about all of the above in the aforementioned White Paper.
G. Dusil: the advantage is that 1st round contributors all get a 20% Post-ICO bonus plus their accumulated ICO bonus – contingent on the members voting on the plan outlined in the white paper. In other words, we either refund contributor BTCs back to participants, and no ADL will be issued, and no bonuses. Or contributors agree to the plan and get up to (a theoretical bonus limit of) 40% more in ADL. Make sense?.
At the same time, the Adel team has announced an initial agreement with the exchange Stocks.Exchange so that the new “Adel” token will be listed in this exchange once the ICO is over. This exchange was created by Vadym Kurylovych, a member of the Nxt communty, where, in addition to buying and selling some tokens like Nxt or BTC , you can also receive dividends on your account which are issued to token investors. This has already been done with the JNS assets that users can keep on their account in this exchange.
G. Dusil: We are excited to be working with Stocks.Exchange, as our first crypto exchange provider.
On the 15th of May, Marenkar opened a 1250 ARDR bounty (i.e. around 160$) on the Ardor channel on Reddit to the first user who could correctly expand and solve a challenge. The proposed challenge was:
Set Up
Jayne is forging ARDR and let’s assume that he will forge the next block.
Mal sets up bundler with
Minimum Rate = 5 IGNIS/ARDR Therefore, a single basic transaction will cost 0.5 IGNIS because 5/1 = 0.5/0.1 where 0.1 ARDR is the base transaction fee.
Fee Limit = 10 ARDR Therefore, Alice will pay the maximum fee of 10 ARDR ( VERIFY This means that once 10 ARDR has been paid, the bundler will be shut down. )
Overpay = 0 ARDR No overpay in effect. ( EXPAND In your example, include an overpay more than 0 and explain what happens to it)
Transaction
River sends 5 IGNIS to Simon and pays 0.5 IGNIS to Mal, as he is the only bundler ( EXPAND Explain what happens if another bundler is present. What condition would make Mal be the bundler over the other bundler? Also include the information of the other bundler like how I did with Mal’s. Use whatever other name you like. ). Mal then receives the 0.5 IGNIS.
There are no other transactions in the child chain block so Mal pays Jayne the 0.1 ARDR fee to include the transaction in the block.
It did not take long before GCMartinelli, a new community member, solved the problem by drafting a detailed response which was later confirmed and accepted as valid by some of the Ardor core developers, thus winning the prize. You can see the full explanation on the Ardor channel on Reddit. We recommend that you frequently check this channel in case more bounties come up.
As we already announced some months ago, the IGNIS token will be the primary transactional token on the Ardor network when it launches, and until new child chains are spawned. Ignis tokens will be distributed ~ 50/50 to NXT holders/Nxt core development team. The ~ 50% Ignis which are to be distributed to the core development team will be theirs to use to fund the continued development of the Nxt and Ardor platforms.
Jean-Luc, wrote:
Ignis will be created in the Genesis block of Nxt 2.0. At the moment NXT holders will get 50% Ignis of their NXT balance. The other 50% will be reserved for the devs, for instance to do an ICO with, or something else. As this is still one year in the future, the exact method of this is still being debated.
This week, Jelurida, the corporation that brings together all the Nxt and Ardor core developers, has announced that it’s preparing an announcement with more details about the upcoming Ignis ICO:
Jelurida will conduct an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) for most of the 500,000,000 remaining IGNIS coins planned to be created, in a crowdfunding sale, to be performed before the above mentioned snapshot. The funds collected in the ICO will be used by Jelurida to ensure the future development of the Nxt and Ardor blockchain platforms. Some small percentage of IGNIS coins may be kept by Jelurida for future use, but as the goal of the ICO is to provide financing for the company, most of the funds collected will be converted to fiat and not kept in crypto.
Full details of the ICO terms and conditions, with exact amounts and timeline, will be published as soon as all details have been finalized, but at least one week before the start of the ICO.
Coin and Assets Shuffling is a core feature on Nxt which enables users to mix their funds quickly and efficiently with other users’ funds by creating a random mapping between the existing user accounts and new recipient accounts provided by the users.
A few months ago it was customary that some members of the Nxt community set up a weekly “shuffling party” to make use of this Nxt feature and shuffle some NXT in a decentralized manner with differente users, thus showing the world the potential and abilities of this platform.
Recently, lurker10 has invited the community to re-launch this interesting initiative but, this time, using the ARDR asset for the shuffling.
Let’s do it again for ARDR asset on Shuffling Sundays?
Please remember that participants must keep their node running at the time the shuffling process takes place in order for it to finish properly, together with other minor conditions. Initially, the agreed on time was on Sundays between 15:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC, because this was the time which was most convenient for multiple time zones in order to have the largest number of participants. However, always check the active shufflings in your Nxt client to see which ones are open.
One good reason to shuffle ARDR now is that on the Ardor platform it will not be shuffleable, parent chain does not support coin shuffling. Do it now before the snapshot, while it is still an asset.
The blockchain industry and its applications are booming. As a result, more and more people are interested in this technology and new developers join this ecosystem everyday. Recently, some job offers were published on Nxtforum and NxtChat on Slack related to blockchain. The candidates must have enough familiarity and expertise with the Nxt blockchain. These are the job offers:
…The company’s developing on open source version at the moment but is in advanced discussions with Jelurida about license
Flgalaxy is a FinTech company founded in 2015 with the goal of reaching out and letting consumers and merchants have the tools needed to build lasting relationships with customers. It builds applications using the power of blockchain architecture to offer secure borderless commerce options from the ground up.
We strive to further the movement around the world to open up markets and empower individuals and businesses alike to work together and establish prosperous local communities while also bringing people together by further allowing people with unique products to get them to the public.
We hope that with the advanced tools that we provide, our partners can continue to grow and develop new businesses and build strong relationships with customers by rewarding them in ways that help them continue to enjoy the new products that come as a result of their efforts. We believe that the blockchain is an a powerful emerging force in freeing the global economy and that is why we have chosen to place our time and effort into building apps that leverage its strengths to continue the process of removing barriers and rewarding consumers and businesses alike.
Nxter Magazine – 2000 Followers on Twitter and 450 Newsletter Subscribers
We have a reason to celebrate! Nxter’s twitter account has reached 2000 followers and our weekly email newsletter is already regularly sent to over 450 subscribers! Thank you all!Nxter is a community driven initiative, so we encourage you to keep giving us your support and sharing our news and articles to achieve wider visibility. Remember that you can also publish your own articles, subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on social networks, in order to always stay on top of everything that happens around Nxt and Ardor.
Beecrypt – A Decentralized P2P Exchange That Will Be Built On Top of Ardor
Beecrypt is company based in Bangalore, India, managed by highly specialized technology experts, successful entrepreneurs, and veterans in the semiconductor & fintech industry. This company has recently announced that Beecrypt’s flagship product, Migretor, a decentralized P2P exchange for cryptocurrency, as well as a wallet, will be built on top of Ardor.
Migretor would be featuring:
Usability with an easy to use application which runs ubiquitously on all platforms
Secure, with no custodian for user funds. Users will be in full control with no trusted third party of their funds
Utmost transparency in exchanging in a decentralized manner by locally signing all transactions before broadcasting to the network
Unprecedented privacy with end-to-end encrypted message exchanges
Robust, effective against DDoS
On chain transactions
Cost-effective exchange
Hariharan Parasuraman, CEO at Beecrypt states:
Beecrypt is excited to develop Migretor on top of the Ardor blockchain platform as it offers the first real world solution to the blockchain bloat problem.
TheWireMaster, an active member of the Nxt community, and admin at NxtFolks as well as the composer of the Ardor song, has recently published an article titled “Ardor Fees, Child Chain Fees, Bundlers, Forgers… Let’s Clarify” at TheWiring.com. The text explains how the forging process on the Ardor main chain will work as today’s NXT forging. However, in Ardor, these blocks will contain transactions from the main chain and from the child chains. The Ardor main chain will be the only one forging and providing the blockchain infrastructure to all child chains.
The article includes some practical examples showing how the bundling process works.
A “bundler” is the link between the child chain and the main chain. It’s the one that collects the child chain fees and then pays the main chain (Ardor) to pack those transactions in a block…
…The field “Minimum Rate” is a multiplier for the defined Ardor fee for that specific transaction. The result of that multiplication will be the minimum transaction fee in child chain token users will have to pay so that the bundler will bundle their child chain transaction
“Fee Limit” is the total amount you want to spend in Ardor fees.
“Overpay”is the extra you want to pay more in case of competing bundlers. This is a multiplier of what you will pay in terms of Ardor fee.
Let’s hypothetically assume that these are the fixed prices for a couple of transaction in Ardor (still in development so let’s not be too picky with the exact amounts):
Now lets assume a bundler is set with these parameters:
Minimum Rate: 10
Fee Limit: 200
Overpay: 0.1
Someone now sends a message to someone else in the Ignis child chain. The client will automatically set the fee to the minimum fee offered by the bundlers. Let’s assume that our bundler is the only one, then the fee that will be applied will be:
0.1 Ardor fee x 10 Minimum Rate = 1 Ignis
So the message will be delivered with 1 Ignis fee.
The bundler then has to pay 0.1 Ardor + (0.1 Ardor x 0.1 Overpay) = 0.11 Ardor
TradingView – Time to Continue this Crazy Race with NXT
TradingView is an advanced financial visualization platform that is easy and intuitive to use, with many users around the world making use of it. The service provides all the charting tools you need to share and view your trading strategies.
Recently, a technical analysis of the NXT price has been carried out by Paulto. This user has given his thoughts of the path that NXT’s price is going to follow.
The Bears left a dance floor, new strong lever support detected, seems like a good time to enter this mad train now
We’d like to point out that we are just sharing the opinion of an analyst because they are referring to NXT. However, that doesn’t mean that Nxter approves nor disapproves this opinion. Investors are always responsible for doing their proper research and analyzing the risks when investing in volatile markets such as cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain Event by El Pais Retina – Decentralized Voting
In this month’s first weekly newsletter, we announced that Lior Yaffe, Nxt and Ardor core developer and member of Jelurida, was going to attend to the Retina technology forum, an event that took place on the 9th of May, 2017 at the Palacio de Congresos de Madrid (Spain), which was organized by El País, the largest circulation newspaper in Spain, and Accenture. At the forum, many different round-table discussions took place and lectures were given by acclaimed experts, including Lior himself.
This technology brings transparency in everything we do, allowing users and corporations to save time and money in a safer way, by getting rid of middle men.
For over 15 minutes Lior Yaffe and Alfonso Peña, the Communications, Media, and Technology Senior Manager at Accenture, had the chance to explain a plausible real-life voting use case based on blockchain technology, more specifically with the technology of Ardor, in a very simple, fast, effective, and completely decentralized way. The Voting System is one of the many features included in the core of Nxt and Ardor. There are many others, such as Account Control, Encrypted Messaging, Decentralized Data Cloud, Decentralized Asset Exchange, Decentralized Marketplace, and many others, which make it possible to perform a wide variety of practical use cases as Lior and Alfonso show:
Some traditional newspapers in Spain have written about this decentralized voting application, such as Cinco Dias, the second largest economics-focused newspaper in Spain.
Nxt in a Box – How to Set Up a Nxt Node on a Raspberry Pi 2
One of the multiple advantages of the 100% Proof-of-Stake algorithm used in Nxt is the possibility of taking part in the block forging (Nxt’s version of mining) process using basic equipment as a simple Raspberry Pi, thus only needing a minimum investment in terms of hardware for a node up as well as minimal energy consumption when it is operating with just a few watts per hour.
This low energy consumption was a key factor in the creation of a prototype of the self sustainable Nxt node by zuqka, a member of the Nxt community, which constitutes a complete Nxt node completely powered by solar energy.
Coretechs, also a well known member of the Nxt community who is in charge of nxtportal, has updated and added new explanations to his step-by-step tutorial to set up a Nxt node on a Raspberry Pi 2.
I updated the instructions to create a separate startup script for screen rather than modifying run.sh. The links to the JDK and NRS downloads have been updated to the latest versions as well.
You’ll need the following materials in order to build your Nxt node this way:
Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 (model B)
8GB+ microSDHC card (Class 6 or higher recommended)
Micro USB cable for power
Cat 5 network cable or USB wifi adapter
USB keyboard, monitor + HDMI cable (initial setup only)
Once you’ve set up your node, you’ll have to modify the config file as shown in this article in order to participate in Megalodon’s campaign to further reward forgers.
Jelurida – Using Nxt and Ardor Without Installing the Core Clients
Jelurida added some direct links on its website for people to try the official Nxt client (mainnet),Ardor client (testnet), as well as a Nxt client for the testnet, without needing to download or install anything. This way, users can check out the features and functionalities of Ardor and Nxt and experience the technology in an easy and safe way, because these are open nodes managed by trustwhorthy people, that use an https connection to establish a safe connection.
However, for maximum security, we always recommend running the official client in your own computer (or your local network), and either wait for the the full blockchain to download or run the Nxt client in light mode.
We now implemented live blockchain access directly from the Jelurida web site for NXT mainnet and testnet and to the Ardor testnet.The good thing is that it’s using Https on port 443 so that you can also access it from inside your corporate network for demo purposes or just when your boss in not watching.Disclaimer: the mainnet node is running on a VPS and secure by our sys-admin, however, do not treat it as a fully secure online wallet. There is always a (very small imo) risk that this node will get hacked and a malicious JavaScript injected into it to try to steal your passphrase. We take absolutely no responsibility over this.
On the 18th of May at 13:00h CEST, there will be a Questions and Answers session at the #janusproject channel on NxtChat on Slack, where a new and, according to rumors, remarkable member of the Janus team who will be introduced to the community. Travin Keith, Marketing Director and Blockchain Advisor at the Nxt Foundation, will be organizing this event and confirm the identity of this mysterious new Janus team member after they are revealed.
This individual brings with him over 20+ years of experience and contacts within various industry, primarily entertainment. He has personally met world leaders, and celebrity alike that are well known in pop culture past and present. His experience will be vital to our team and company success now and long into the future.
To avoid making extravagant claims we will have the Nxt Foundation confirm publicly his identity, followed up with LinkedIn and other factors that cannot be faked. I have also met him under circumstances that are impossible to fabricate his roles in the past.
Please mark the date and time down if you plan to attend this Q&A and thank you in advance for joining the event!
Moreover, the Janus team has also launched their new website, EtcBets.com, an online casino with the Ethereum Classic (ETC) community in mind, in order to provide a fun and safe place to play and bet, which generates an extra source of income for the owners of Janus and JanusXT assets.
I’m very proud as a Janus team member to provide this site for the Ethereum Classic community. It comes at a turning point in our careers where we will be soon shifting into mainstream industry. While we cannot predict the future I can foresee huge potential in our concepts and direction. If you haven’t researched our work, I invite you now to come take a look.”
We´re proud to announce the launch of our new website EtcBets.com, a centric Provably Fair igaming for Ethereum Classic.
Janus holders can expect an addition to the monthly NXT profit share ( 90% of the NXT profit * from BetterBets.io), .
an extra revenue stream to Janus and JanusXT holders from this centric ETC blockchain business:
10% to Janus holders, 10% to JanusXT holders, 10% to the Ethereum Classic development teams, and 70% to the Janus Team
* Please keep in mind, that not always the profits will be equal due to the nature of BetterBets.io and EtcBets.com . Sometimes the house wins and sometimes it loses, although we´ve a standard house edge of 1%.
Adel, the blockchain project incubator that uses Nxt technology as a base to build its ecosystem, has recently published its 10th Whitepaper titled ‘Designing a Blockchain Incubator‘, together with a detailed road map showing the upcoming milestones in its project development and execution.
Gabriel Dusil, co-founder & board member of Adel, states:
We are passionate about Adel, and have great plans for the ecosystem, so we will present a compelling roadmap to the participants of the ICO,
Feb 2016 ▲Adel is founded
Jun 2016 ▲Phase 1▲ Ecosystem Architecture
Dec 6th 2016 ▲ Website is launched
March 17th 2017 ▲ Adel Ecosystem Limited is registered in the Isle of Man
May 1st 2017 ▲ ICO, round 1 begins
Jun/Jul 2017 ▲ Adelphoi, ADL is listed on exchanges
Jun 2017 ▲ Community module development begins
Jun 2017 ▲Phase 2▲ Legal & Investment structure development begins
Jun 2017 ▲ Idea to Project Supply Chain begins
Q3 2017 ▲ Ardor is released
Q4 2017 ▲ Adel becomes child-chain of Ardor
Q1 2018 ▲ Investment entity established
Q1 2018 ▲ Adelshare, ADS equity token is established
Q2 2018 ▲ First projects are funded & launched
Q2 2018 ▲Phase 3▲ Project Execution
Whatever the result of the ICO we plan to plow forward with Adel, because the seed capital already raised is enough to establish momentum to build the second phase of our ecosystem (see WP#10).
Adel’s ICO has already collected over 200BTC. However it’s far from the minimum of 900 BTC required to be collected by the end of the ICO process. Despite this, it is possible that the the aforementioned road map, together with the translation of the website and ICO landing page to Spanish and Russian, boosts this ICO.
19800, an exchange based in China, now allows users to trade ARDR straight with CNY (Chinese Yuans). The announcement of the inclusion of this new pair will hopefully include an increase in Ardor technology as it seems to have created big expectations for traders.
While other exchanges, such as HitBTC, Changelly, Poloniex, and Bittrex, allow users to trade ARDR with BTC. This inclusion makes 19800.com one of the few exchanges, together with Litebit, that allows you to use fiat money to buy ARDR.
CoinTelegraph has recently published a string of articles analyzing and talking about Adel and its community-based ecosystem, which will rely on the features and advantages that the Nxt & Ardor platform are able to offer for administrative purposes, whilst adopting the best business procedures to manage the projects. The articles include a lot of information about Adel and the ICO that is currently going on:
Among Adel’s features are:
The Board, comprised of several people, who are experts in various aspects of business. The proclaimed purpose of the Board is to direct the development of the community and provide guidance to the Blockchain-powered projects whose development will be facilitated by Adel;
A thoroughly developed and described process, which Adel will use to help the new Blockchain-based companies throughout their early existence, from the stage of an idea to a fully functioning use case;
Adelphoi, a cryptocurrency token which will be used to power the inner workings of Adel’s ecosystem. It provides an easy and transparent way to exchange value between the participants.
Three planned projects, whose implementation is set to begin right after the end of the three rounds of funding of Adel. Their descriptions and implementation plans are available on Adel’s home page as project 01, project 02 and project 03.
As these texts explain, Adel intends to build a community composed of enthusiast innovators who will be the base to build new business, starting from an idea and steering, funding and boosting all the process with the participation of the community.
Gabriel Dusil, co-founder & board member of Adel, states:
After researching the digital currency market, Adel chose Nxt’s Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform due to the features it presents that Adel can employ for its community. Adel will also use Nxt’s Ardor, which has further features that Adel will use for its project portfolio.
The following graphic shows the NXT / BTC exchange trends at Poloniex over this past week:The following graphic shows the ARDR / BTC exchange trends at Poloniex over this past week:
Nxt’s Slack is one of the places for the Nxt community to discuss and share news about Nxt. Since its inception in January 2016, it’s now reached over 1,500 users and 31 dedicated channels for various purposes. Among them, alongside the main #general channel, we can find channels for specific projects such as #adel and #janusproject, or channels for specific purposes such as #developers and #helpdesk.
Once again, the features provided by the Nxt and Ardor 100% PoS platforms are attracting more and more people both familiar with blockchain technology as well as newcomers. If you haven’t already joined the Nxt community, come and join us! We are waiting for you!
Alongside Slack, Nxt and Ardor are officially present on the following platforms:
At Nxter.org, we’ll continue spreading the word as we’ve been doing since the beginning to try to help more people learn about both Nxt and Ardor, together with the full ecosystem around it. If you’re interested in giving us a hand to achieve this objective, please visit nxter.org/get-published-get-paid-nxtp
How To – Initialize a Nxt/Ardor Account without Issuing an Outgoing Transaction
When creating a new Nxt account, first thing we must do is to choose a passphrase as strong as possible as that will be our private key. Then, the public key for the generated account is computed using the supplied secret passphrase.
There are 1077 account numbers available in Nxt, but there are a much larger number of possible passwords, so an obvious question is whether or not it’s possible for more than one password to open the same account.The answer is no – as long as you have issued one transaction from your account. Here’s why: until a transaction is sent from your account, it is not secured by a public key. Once the first transaction is issued, a 256-bit public key for your account is generated.
Once this is done, your account number is secured. In the very rare case that someone enters a passphrase that would generate the same 64-bit account number as an existing account, the software will deny the use of the passphrase and ask you to choose another one. When you issue an outgoing transaction, your 256bit public key (with the first 64 being your visible account number) is transmitted to the network and incorporated into the blockchain.
In order to make thing easier, Lior Yaffe, Nxt and Ardor core developer and member of Jelurida, has shown us a new way to fully secure our Nxt account without having to send an outgoing transaction and without needing to download the blockchain:
The procedure works as follows:
1. Install NXT on an offline computer
2. Start your node and connect to it using the desktop wallet or web wallet (http://localhost:7876)
3. Create an account to generate a new passphrase and store it in a safe place
4. Login using your newly created passphrase
5. From the dashboard locate your public key displayed below the “Dashboard” header or click the “More Info” link on the “Account Balance” tile and on the resulting “Account Details” modal locate the “Public Key” field and copy the 64 characters value
7. Provide your newly created NXT address and your 64 characters public key to an account owner who already poses NXT and has a fully synchronized blockchain, some exchanges also support this process
8. The online account owner should now click on the “Send NXT” button in his wallet (or the Ardor equivalent) and specify your account address in the Recipient field. The dialog will display in response the “Recipient Public Key” field below. Enter the 64 chars public key into this field. Complete the rest of the data and submit the transaction.
9. Once the incoming transaction is confirmed, your account is funded and secured by a 256 public key
The Nxt cryptoplatform has been nominated to the Crypto Awards (TCA), which intends to reward ideas and efforts of the best crypto projects in the world, based on the project’s originality, tech, functionality, usability, and ideas. These awards give a great deal of visibility to cryptocurrency projects, with experienced judges that are fair and have solid reputations in the world of crypto.
Being nominated on TCA comes with great potential benefits for participants. They receive scores and feedback from an international judging panel of experts, which even if they don’t win, could help fine-tune some projects so they can improve and become stronger.
Winners will be rewarded with official certificates and big mentions on the platform and social media channels to thousands of traders.
Annual winners of the project of the year are awarded and shipped their very own shiny coin trophy!
The Crypto world does expands rapidly, and almost daily new coins and projects launch, so it takes a lot of time for investors and traders to get a good overview of what’s happened on the market, TCA will help highlight the very best projects making it easier for them to determine risks.
The official Nxt thread on Bitcointalk has been updated. The new design is cleaner, elegant and simple, thus bringing visibility to the most important links while providing a general and structured vision of the platform and some of its most significant details.
Despite the fact that the members of the Nxt community have many possibilities to discuss and share information about the platform, Bitcointalk’s popularity in the cryptoworld is huge because it was one of the pioneer forums in this field. Because of this, the importance of taking care of all details so that new people put their eyes on this platform are correctly informed is important.
Get involved with Nxt today and join a growing crypto community!
Nxt is about decentralization. Create your own concepts and businesses on top of the Nxt blockchain without the need for permissions. The future is Nxt
Nxt’s Alias System is one of the biggest features included in Nxt’s core. In simple terms, the alias feature allows one piece of text to be substituted for another, so that keywords or key phrases can be used to represent other things – names, telephone numbers, physical addresses, websites, account numbers, email addresses, product SKU codes, and almost anything else you can think of. Aliases can be registered right on the Nxt client itself. You can search existing Aliases and acquire unused ones. Aliases can be mapped to an account, a URI or other data, and can be bought, sold, and transferred to other users. You can also change the function of an Alias once you have registered it.
The possibilities are almost endless! When you update the NRS, the client checks the downloaded file against an alias with the sha256 string. For each new release, the core developers update the alias with the new sha256 string. By the way, did you know what was the only transaction included in the block 1,000,000? Yes, it was an alias named ImReady, which was registered in that block.
One of the multiple applications that the Alias feature allows is the implementation of a decentralized DNS system, an objective that is easily achievable by means of these free plugins for your Chrome and Opera web browsers (Firefox version will be available as soon as the changes in the Firefox API are implemented) offered by Peername. With aliases, users can be pointed to the site they want to visit in a decentralized manner. If a website is hacked or taken down, the alias can be set to redirect users to the right place anyway, no matter what the new URL would be.
NXT alias redirection works via the “omnibox” feature. Once installed, you just need to type “nxt (space or tab) alias_name” in the address bar. For example “nxt (space) nxt” will redirect you to nxtforum.com. Some other Aliases already registered that you can use to try out this plugin are:
Adel’s ICO has already begun, as we announced in our previous newsletters. Shortly after the start of the ICO of this blockchain incubator that will make use of many features provided by Nxt, there have been a few people who have shared their opinions and reviews about Adel.
Coradan is one of them. He is a member of the Nxt community who is in charge of a blog in Spanish where he presents many uses cases that make use of the Nxt platform. He has recently published his tenth edition in this series titled: Adel – Casos de Uso con Blockchain. The articles includes a brief introduction to Adel and focuses on key concepts and aspects of this ecosystem, its projects, and the ICO process going on. The author mentions the potential of such a great idea and reminds us that Adel incubator will be built on Nxt, and will move to Ardor when necessary.
TheWireMaster, also a member of the Nxt community, has published on The Wiring a small review of Adel as well. Together with a general overview about the operation of this blokchain incubator, TheWireMaster also offered his personal opinion about the most exciting details:
Ideas are not only coming from the Innovators. Ideas are also provided by the Adel R&D team… Adel is not exclusively working on blockchain projects… The project is proactive when it comes to compliance to regulations. Participants to the ICO will have to comply to the AML (Anti-Money Laundering), CTF (Counter-Terrorism Financing) and KYC (Know Your Customer)…
Adel, in my opinion, is potentially the foundation of entrepreneurship and future work models as conventional employment is heavily changing due to digital transformation….
For his part, Paul H. Madore published a detailed article at Hacked.com which analyzes the Adel platform as well. The text discusses in detail this initiative, starting with some basic concepts, then going over all the whitepapers and documents that they have made publicly available for investors, the first tentative projects, the team members, a comparison with some other incubators or centralized options, ICO details, etc.
The author also discusses some other questions about this ICO that, in his opinion, should be improved or explained better to the investor. Finally, to summarize all this vast article, Paul brings us his personal verdict with good and not such good points about this new blockchain incubator based on Nxt.
Travin Keith, Marketing Director and Blockchain Consultant of the Nxt Foundation, was one of the experts asked by CCGroup for this article on CoinTelegraph. Travin explains why, in his view, massive adoption hasn’t come yet:
Misunderstandings of the true technical abilities of Blockchain technology, coupled with the lack of general awareness about Blockchain technology, currently forms some of the most significant barriers to mainstream adoption. Many people still don’t really understand what Blockchain is, or what it can do. Though they may have heard about Bitcoin, and even use it, they might not necessarily understand how it works, much less what else the technology is capable of doing. It’s not surprising though, as people use currencies regularly throughout their lives but are largely not exposed to backend systems, which Blockchain essentially is, though quite a revolutionary one.
However, even if more people are aware of Blockchain and its capabilities, the resistance to changing existing systems due to the costs to utilize this new technology is another one of the significant barriers to mainstream adoption. It’s even harder for larger corporations which are less agile and thus have higher costs when making such changes. The benefits of adopting Blockchain technology will thus have to greatly outweigh the costs of this shift in order to justify going through such difficulties.
Travin Keith, Marketing Director and Blockchain Consultant of the Nxt Foundation, is the subject of this brief biography built by Koles Coin News. In this video, an overview of some of the task developed by Travin in many different projects, such as Nxt, Ardor, the Hiperledger Project, Adel, and many more are given.
Some members of the community, such as abctc, Arthur Penzl, CryptKeeper, Eddie Willers, Farl,Lior Yaffe,lolik, Martin Rönnebeck, Robin, Savandra, Sazan, Sebastiaan, Wilhelm, among multiple others, have also joined this initiative as Annual Supporters in order to increase the sustainability of the Nxt Foundation.
The Supporter Program was launched in early 2017 with the purpose of creating a source of regular funding for the activities of the Foundation to promote the use of Nxt and Ardor blockchain technology. Becoming a supporter also comes with many benefits, such as being listed on this page and having your own @nxtcommunity.io or @ardorcommunity.io email address. Please note, however, that while the Foundation is grateful to its supporters, being one is not a sign of endorsement from the Foundation.
All members and supporters of the community, both individuals, and corporations, are invited to support the Nxt Foundation as much as they can. The Foundation has been doing a terrific job for the Nxt community for years, achieving remarkable results thanks to the efforts of its members, despite not having a lot of funding when it was launched.
Blockchain Forum by El Pais – Lior Yaffe Will Be a Speaker
Lior Yaffe, Nxt and Ardor core developer, has confirmed his attendance to the Retina technological forum that will take place on the 9th of May in Madrid (Spain), organized by both EL PAIS, the largest circulation newspaper in Spain, and Accenture. A lot of executives from many different Spanish and Latin American corporations will come together at the Palacio Municipal de Congresos de Madrid to attend to this meeting.
Throughout the day, visitors will be able to learn about the business opportunities and some new applications that blockchain technology has to offer to many different industries to transform business, and how innovative companies can use this technology.
RETINA and ACCENTURE would like to invite you to BLOCKCHAIN, the forum created for better understanding the challenges and opportunities of the technology that is changing financing, business and the concept of trust itself.
We’d like to tell you about the exciting times that we are facing in this digital transformation. Come join us!
During the forum, many different round-table discussions will take place and lectures will be given acclaimed experts. Lior will be giving a presentation about a real-life use case and how it could benefit from blockchain technology:
Riker at a blockchain hackathon organized by Intel in Israel
The event was a complete success and many people came to visit the festival, which attracted innovative start-up projects to the interesting conference schedule offered during the two days. Tomislav also had the opportunity to give a brief presentation to some of the attendees at the start-up pavilion about Nxt and Ardor features.
Kristina, once the two hectic workdays for Jelurida at Webit were over, stated:
We were the first to arrive at 7:30… It was a great day, we talked to tons of people and gave out more than 1500 brochures. Even the president of Bulgaria got one… Quite an educational campaign we did today… but many knew about Nxt and asked about Ardor, too…
I’m very happy with the attention that Nxt and Ardor got from people who are now discovering blockchain but also from these who want to use blockchain technology for their projects.
Today, May the 1st, 2017, begins Adel‘s Initial Coin Offering (ICO). After many months of preparation, users can now take part in the first ICO round of this blockchain incubator that will rely on Nxt for its operations.
Adel is a global cryptocurrency community that is self-sustained and offers its own economic ecosystem with the Adelphoi token. Our community focuses on creating, developing and implementing use cases involving blockchain technology that covers a wide range of digital and physical industries. Supported projects are developed, discussed and decided by community members.
Adel will have three rounds of ICO to ensure a controlled deployment of funds as various projects are introduced to the community. There will be a total of 100 million non-mineable Adelphoi units available in the Adel ecosystem, with 33,333,333 released in the first round…
In the first White Paper we can find all the details of this ICO process:
There will be five stages for stakeholders to earn different bonus percentages for their BTC and tokens converted by ShapeShift. This bonus refers to the amount of Adelphoi the stakeholder will receive, and is directly proportional to their voting power within the community.
20% bonus in ADL ▲First 3 days ▲ 12:00 noon UTC on May 1st till 23:59 UTC on May 3rd
15% bonus in ADL ▲ Next seven days ▲ 00:00 UTC on May 4th till 23:59 UTC on May 10th
10% bonus in ADL ▲ Next seven days ▲ 00:00 UTC on May 11th till 23:59 UTC on May 17th
5% bonus in ADL ▲ Next seven days ▲ 00:00 UTC on May 18th till 23:59 UTC on May 24th
0% bonus ▲ Last seven days ▲ 00:00 UTC on May 25th till 23:59 UTC on May 31st
15% bonus in ADL ▲Special bonus for contributions of over 20 BTC ▲ Stakeholders who exceed this minimum will receive an automatic bonus of 15% no matter when they
submitted their first contribution
The first ICO round will be open for four weeks. The ICO will be open to most of the available cryptocurrencies via ShapeShift and Changelly. After the first round of ICO, the total amount will be proportionally calculated and exchanged for 28,333,333 units of Adelphoi. Five million Adelphoi will then be allocated to the Adel team.
During the past few months, the Adel team has presented a lot of documents explaining the operation of this new ecosystem. On the official website you can find a number of White Papers, some detailed project’s proposals, Frequently Asked Questions, and much more information. With this, anyone interested can easily access as much information as they need to take an informed decision.
Adel’s ICO will be the first to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF) and Know your Customer (KYC) regulations.
TheWireMaster, a member of the Nxt community and admin at NxtFolks, has given all nxters a nice surprise by releasing a new musical hit inspired by Ardor. It’s a catchy song that would have gone to the top of the charts, if TheWiremaster hadn’t decided to release it for free, but now anybody can enjoy it. You can now listen to it for free at Soundcloud.
I had Linda on my mind
thinking that she was so nice
but I knew that she was in love
with an Ethereum Classic guy
That was no go
that was so bad
and I was feeling down
She was going always home
passing at 2 by my house
she was stopping by my window
but NXT was going high
Damn it, just now!
Common go out!
But I cannot right now
Then I met her once around
at the store behind my home
Spoke about NXT
but she didn’t seem electrified
I could not know
what was wrong
but I just don’t mind
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
She looked at me
she was lovely
and I was freaking out
then I asked her why she was
getting in love with a guy like me
she then told me that she wanted
a man with Ardor
how did she know
that was just me
and we are happy now
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
It’s not the first time that TheWireMaster offered us one of his songs. In 2014 he already composed a song for Come-From-Beyond, one of Nxt’s first core developers, which you can buy at Nxt’s Marketplace.
Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor core developer and a member of Jelurida, started a new thread at nxtforum to discuss and propose some solutions to some of the problems that public open source blockchains are facing. Blockchains are usually covered by copyleft GPL licenses which, in certain cases, aren’t enough to protect the stakeholders against copycats, thus hurting the ecosystem and users.
Jelurida is working on a new “coinleft” license model for its upcoming Ardor platform, better suited for open source cryptocurrency projects, which would make sure that not only the value of the source code is protected when the code of a blockchain project is used in another blockchain
In order to achieve that, Jelurida is proposing the following solution:
The new Jelurida Public License (JPL) under which our Ardor platform is planned to be released, will have the following requirement, as an addition to the current GPLv2 clauses. Anyone can use the Ardor source code in another blockchain platform, provided that:
The Ignis holders from the original Ardor platform are allocated at least 10% of the forging tokens in that new blockchain, proportional to their Ignis holdings,
OR
The Ardor holders from the original Ardor platform, or the forging token holders from a blockchain that has already satisfied the JPL requirements, are allocated 100% of the forging tokens in that new blockchain, proportional to their forging token holdings.
All of this intends to protect the community and boost the development of the platform, thus avoiding situations such as the one we talked about in a previous newsletter, where a large institution cloned the code of Nxt to develop another solution, without making the new code available to the public, thus violating the GPL and avoiding this potential improvements to be incorporated to the original platform.
Under the JPL, any Ignis holder could sue a license violator, because they are given rights under this license…
…if any clone does an ICO and makes it big while violating the license, either Jelurida, or any Ignis holder can initiate a claim, and complying with the license after such a clone is launched would be harder then just allocating the sharedrop from the beginning…
…this also gives some unique value to Ignis tokens, that no other child chain can have
Beeridiculous is the author of this Steem Nation newsletter, which is published at the Steemit.com platform. This time, he has decided to talk about the second generation blockchains Nxt and Ardor. In the article, he gives a brief description of the two of them:
Nxt revolutionises the financial technology, crowdfunding and governance industries by providing not only the groundbreaking NXT crypto-currency, but also a powerful, modular toolset to build with in any way Nxt users can imagine. Nxt gives users complete freedom to create their own applications.
Ardor is a blockchain-as-a-service platform that will allow people to utilize the blockchain technology of Nxt through the use of child chains. Since all processing will be done on the Ardor main chain, child chain creators won’t need to worry about common issues when creating a blockchain as well as securing it with enough nodes. Child chains will be able to utilize features currently seen in Nxt such as decentralized phasing, voting, and trading, as well as be able to interact with other child chains on the platform, including IGNIS, the first child chain to be launched.
Neocash Radio is a weekly radio program driven by JJ, Darren, Randy and Pedro, where they discuss different trends about cryptocurrencies. This channel started their operation 4 years ago, a considerable amount of time dedicated to talk about news and the evolution of the crypto ecosystem.
In this week’s program, they deal with several subjects. Among them (min 2:30) is a brief presentation to Nxt (and Ardor), it’s history, from BCNext to Jelurida, technical details of the Proof of Stake system, and some details of the coin, such as the block time, block generating method, and the usage of brainwallets. Also mentioned is the Nxt client itself and all the functionalities incorporated in the core of this blockchain, such as is the case with the Asset Exchange, the Decentralized Marketplace, and the Data Cloud. They also made sure to mention the upcoming Ardor launch, which will bring even more features and allow for the creation of child chains, among others.
Here below are more details about each of these topics:
NXT COMMUNITY
Poloniex Tutorial – How to Transfer Assets to the Official Nxt Client
A few days ago, Poloniex made an unexpected announcement via Twitter stating that on the 2nd of May, they will be delisting 17 coins. Among these is Unity/Supernet, a well-known project among nxters, because, in the beginning, it was closely connected with the Nxt platform and community.
On May 2, 2017, the following will be delisted: BBR, BITS, C2, CURE, HZ, IOC, MYR, NOBL, NSR, QBK, QORA, QTL, RBY, SDC, UNITY, VOX, XMG
Up to now, the Supernet/Unity asset could be traded both on Poloniex and on Nxt’s Asset Exchange. Upon Poloniex’s decision, those investors who don’t want to lose their investment must transfer their asset to their Nxt account, where, by means of this core feature of Nxt, it’s impossible for any entity to stop the trading of any asset.
In the following video tutorial, Arthur Penzl shows us how to create an account on Nxt and how to transfer your assets from Poloniex to your account using the official Nxt client (Next Reference Software – NRS)
The audio quotes are taken from the book ‘SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions‘, a full guide to the history, the features, the community, and the evolution of the Nxt cryptocurrency platform. The book can be bought in our online store or from other shops such as Amazon, iBooks, etc.
The author also explains the big amount of different operations and menus that you can find in your Nxt Wallet, thus making possible for users to easily make use of all the available capabilities of this platform. As Carl outlines, this cryptocurrency has many functionalities integrated, thus allowing a lot of use cases.
The video also remarks that all the cryptocurrencies have the ability to work as a currency, but Nxt is one of the few cryptoplatforms that has more features integrated, thus opening up a new range of possibilities.
Webit Festival Europe – Jelurida Confirms its Attendance
Jean-Luc, lead core developer of Nxt and Ardor, has confirmed the attendance of Jelurida members Kristina Kalcheva and Tomislav Gountchev to the 8th edition of Webit Festival Europe, the European edition of the Global Webit Series, which will take place on the 25th and 26th of April at Sofia Tech Park. This event will be attended by large Bulgarian and European institutions and the huge attendee list includes global thought leaders, 5000+ attendees from Fortune 500 companies, major brands, policy makers, scientists, and the hottest startups.
There will be several in interesting activities that will take place during the event, related to things such as digital economy leadership, Fintech and blockchain, security and privacy, smart cities, big data and cloud, and many more.
Jean-Luc says:
Jelurida will be presented by Kristina and Tomi at the Webit Festival in Sofia next week, Apr 25-26.
If any Nxt and Ardor fans are visiting this event, should be able to meet them in the startup exhibition.
All the tickets for the event are already sold out, but if you want you can sign up for the waiting list and, in case of availability, you’ll be able to buy your ticket.
Larson Digital – Blockchain Hackaton that Relies on Nxt Tech
In Huckletree Shoreditch, London, a blockchain hackaton organized by Larson Digital with $35,000 in prizes was held. Tasks were focused around developing blockchain-based architecture, security, transaction management, and other solutions underpinning the company’s platform. The participants were required to have skills in: Java, blockchain, mobile apps, crypto wallets, encryption, digital content, bio identity, regtech…
The tasks will cover:
– Integrating Blockchain and DLTs technologies with eCommerce markets
– Handling Proofs of Identity and cryptographic Passwords
– Reporting across multiple native assets as Tokens
– Securing digital content specifically encryption/keys
– Blockchain regulatory reporting
The hackathon challenges related to blockchain will rely on NXT open-source code (GPL 2). More information for developers can be found on https://nxt.org/get-started/developers/
Please note, this is not sponsored or affiliated with Jelurida. All are welcome to join. All entries that are accepted for deployment will be open-sourced for benefit of community.
As this hackaton is about cloning Nxt’s blockchain and not using the current public blockchain, Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor core developer stated:
There is a good reason why Jelurida is not willing to endorse or support this event, and it is because it is not about the public Nxt blockchain but a clone, which the Nxt core developers do not support.
In our previous newsletter, we talked about the latest news about the asset distribution plan that the Janus team has announced for this quarter, which included the transfer of 800 000 JNS tokens that were for sale on the Nxt Asset Exchange to C-CEX, where they were made available at a price of 3 000 satoshis each. The team is also planning to reduce the total supply to 37 000 000 JNS, in an asset-burning process that would take place in the beginning of July.
The plan has been really successful, and, thanks to the community support and feedback, the team has refined its original strategy once again. By opening itself to the BTC market which has a larger trading volume and number of users, together with the announcement of the incorporation of a new and recognized member to the team, as well as the announcement of the introduction to the ETC community and the launch of some new web projects, it was then possible to sell the originally-available 800 000 assets in addition to the 400 000 assets transferred from the Asset Exchange. With this, the JNS distribution is finally over. Current asset holders will benefit from bigger dividends due to the asset supply shrinkage, thus promoting long term investment.
We have completed the final distribution for our team, this was a small but needed part of our project to help us offset internal marketing costs. With this sale ending it is time for our team to begin the process of supply reduction.
Transaction: 11120319234261742538
We started the token count at 99,999,999 JNS current total supply since burn was initiated is now: 25,201,489 JNS
This leaves 16,201,489 in circulation, assuming none of the JanusXT holders leave the Project
Moreover, a road map with the objectives for the following 4-5 months has been set up:
Launch of Ethereum Classic community business
Q&A session with our new team member and community. His focus will be on marketing our mainstream sites
Media based site for JanusXT holders and our team
Social Trading/Fintech beta launch prior to the full launch.
Farl4bit, a very well-known and active member of the Nxt community, has announced the launch of his new asset called Linkbuild. The linkbuilding management tool helps companies and website-owners manage their linkbuilding campaigns (linkbuilding is part of search engine optimization).
Farl4bit explains:
Linkbuilding for everyone
Linkbuilding.io has come up with a great and easy way to manage your linkbuilding all at one place. Integrate your portfolio and start managing your linkbuilding campaigns and partnerships. The robot ‘io’ will monitor the status of the links for you. Linkbuilding is part of SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing your website to rank high in search engines like Google. Linkbuilding.io is an administration tool and does not cheat Google… LINKBUILDING asset information
To raise funds for the development and promotion of Linkbuilding.io we are using the Nxt Asset Exchange. Linkbuilding.io is now in beta-fase and we want our asset holders to be part of the tool too. We are curious how you experience the tool and how we can improve it. The tool will be ready in a few months.
Asset name: LINKBUILD
Asset account: NXT-FTJF-Q6DM-47XC-54EC2
Asset ID: 11240133193452178590
Decimals: 4
Price: 10 NXT
Total assets: 570 000
Assets for sale: 85 500 assets (15%)
Rewards and dividend
When you support us with this crowdfunding campaign you will be rewarded with part of the profit. When you own for example 1% of the assets, you will get 1% of the profit, paid monthly in NXT with the dividend function in the Nxt Asset Exchange. Plus there are extra rewards:
If you buy >1000 assets during ICO, you’ll get a linkbuilding account worth about $165 per year.
If you introduce a new paying user you’ll get 200 assets (50000 assets reserved for this)
If you join the forum signature campaign you will get 70 assets (7000 assets reserved)
The Adel team has presented a document with Terms and Conditions that constitutes a contract between Adel Ecosystem Limited and any of its future subsidiaries or affiliates constituting the Adel ecosystem. This terms govern the use of the website, the only official and authorized website for Adel, the sale of Adelphoi (“ADL”) through its Initial Coin Offering (“ICO”), and the holding and use of Adelphoi.
Adel’s ICO is the first one to meet Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF), and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements. It aims to raise at least 900 BTC. If this figure isn’t met, then the Voting tool would be used to decide about the future of the project.
By acquiring Adelphoi coins, whether from another stakeholder or through the ICO, you represent and warrant that you:
Have a basic level of understanding of the usage and intricacies of cryptographic tokens, such as NXT, and other blockchain-based software systems
Are at least 18 years old or the age of contractual capacity
Are legally permitted to use NXT tokens in your jurisdiction
Waive your right to participate in a class action lawsuit or a class-wide arbitration against any member of Adel Services
Are not exchanging Adelphoi for any illegal purpose within your jurisdiction
Understand that there is no warranty whatsoever on Adelphoi, express or implied, to the extent permitted by law, and that Adelphoi are created on an “as is” basis
Further agree to accept sole risk for your participation in the Adel ecosystem
Are not a USA citizen.
This document, together with the FAQ and the wide variety of white papers, projects, and marketing materials published by the Adel team are giving the go-ahead signal to the ICO with more info available to the public to make their decision, which is expected to launch on the 1st of May, 2017.
Adel is a global cryptocurrency community that is self-sustained, and offers its own economic ecosystem with the Adelphoi token. Our community focuses on creating, developing, and implementing use cases involving blockchain technology that covers a wide range of digital and physical industries. Projects are chosen by the community and successful ventures are either re-invested in for further growth or issued as rewards to Adel’s stakeholders
The developers of Nxt recently shared a reminder that there is an easy way to properly shut down our Nxt node either from the User Interface or from the terminal. This way, we’ll avoid some minor issues that may come up, such as the blockchain file becoming corrupted thus having to download it from scratch. This wouldn’t mean, in any way, that the security of our Nxt account may get compromised for this reason, since all our accounts, balances, transactions, and so forth, are stored on the blockchain. Nevertheless, it could be a small setback that could easily be avoided.
The NXT node uses a Java mechanism called “Shutdown Hook” to close the database and perform necessary cleanup before shutting down the Java process. Killing the Java process without letting the shutdown hook execute may result in database corruption.
Therefore, when shutting down the NXT node, always use one of the following methods:
1. On GUI environment, use the “Shutdown” menu item from the system tray icon.
2. From the command line use the command
kill <pid>
If possible, never use the following methods for shutting down the node:
kill -9 <pid>
or kill the process from the Windows task manager or using Mac OS/X similar function
Jelurida, the corporation that joins together all the Nxt and Ardor core developers, has published a new document divided into 6 sections where they explain to the public the general design and functionalities of the Ardor platform.
In the first section, they give a brief Introduction to the Nxt Software and its features. All of them are implemented due to the good and flexible design of Nxt.
In the second section, they talk about the possible limitations of the Nxt platform that they’ve identified, such as the need to use the same NXT token for most transactions, or the blockchain bloat problem, which is common for all other blockchain platforms due to the fact that every full node needs to store all transactions ever created since the blockchain was started, as well as re-process all of them when it downloads the blockchain for the first time. This creates a bottleneck that can only get worse when the size of the blockchain increases.
In the third section, they present a solution for the problem mentioned above. It consists of splitting between the “forging token” and the “transactional token”. In Ardor, a separation of these two functions is used to achieve much greater scalability by reducing blockchain bloat, and flexibility, by allowing multiple other transactional tokens to be used, which, in effect, allows custom “child chains” to exist and run on the same network of nodes.
In the fourth section, implementation details are given. Each node running the Ardor blockchain validates the transactions from all child chains, before they are pruned. A node downloading the blockchain from scratch will no longer be able to fully validate child chain transactions that have already been pruned. (it will only verify their hashes and ChildChainBlock transaction signature) However, this does not lower the overall blockchain security as it can still verify that the accounts who forged the blocks containing them were eligible to forge at that time, and therefore those transactions must have been validated by all up-to-date nodes while their data was still available. Child chain transactions will be pruned, but archival nodes can opt to be stored one or more child chains longer, or indefinitely. Periodically, each node will calculate a snapshot of the state of all derived objects, and a hash of this snapshot will be included in the current block by its forger. All nodes that are up-to-date and on the same fork already have exactly the same state, and thus will be able to verify this hash (and reject the block if invalid). A protocol will be defined by scanning which nodes are out-of-date, or are downloading the blockchain from scratch, then request the latest snapshot from up-to-date nodes, then validate it based on its hash being included in the blockchain, and finally download it in a decentralized manner. In this way, such nodes will catch up with the latest system state, thus bypassing the need to re-process all old transactions that are already pruned.
In the fifth section, gains and benefits are analyzed. Among them, we find the ability for the blockchain to scalae and the possibility to create our own personlized child chains, secured by the main chain, that will use their native token.
In the last section, the document explains the different implementation phases for Ardor that will start with its initial launch in the third quarter of 2017.
You can have a look at the full document to learn more details to learn more about Ardor.
Taha Tawfik has announced his new development: an extension for Google Chrome that shows the price of Ardor, among some other functionalities, in this popular web browser. These are the features provided by this extension:
Notify you if price goes higher or lower
Handle over 33 currency as such (USD/JPY/INR/EUR/GBP)
Handle high precision
Quick-Links (Slack, ardorplatform.org, able to monitor the fiat equivalent of your wealth in Ardor instead of the price (1000 ARDR = $30)
Allow you to select the refresh rate from 10s to once every 4 hours.
Gate of Bitcoin – NXT Coin, the Second Generation Cryptocurrency
This article written in German by KriptoGate, published on the platform Gate of Bitcoin, summarizes some of the many features of the pioneer 2.0 blockchain: Nxt. The text states some important milestones about the development of Nxt and explains some of the most popular features (such as the brain wallet, PoS, forging…) and explains why Nxt is a complete ecosystem for businesses and is much more that just a simple payment system.
The author also exposes some of the arguments used against Nxt (and PoS coins in general), such as the Nothing at Stake (NAS) attack. We’d like to point out here that there are some research into this field, such as the one carried out by Kushti and the Consensus Research team, that deemed this attack as unfeasible against the Nxt platform.
Note: The Jay wallet, which is referenced in the article, is not updated anymore. The Supernet wallet isn’t currently compatible with the Nxt API.
Steem It – The DAO Incident, Ardor (or NXT) and the Whole Confusion
Nivesh, writer of this article published at SteemIt, talks about the rise in price of cryptocurrencies such as Dash, Monero, Ripple, and even ETH, after going through the DAO incident. In the midst of this, NXT and Ardor have been quietly adapting and evolving.
The author offers a clear explanation about the features included in these two platforms:
NXT offers asset exchange so the ability to create tokens or trade in existing ones, it is also a data could which is protected by the blockchain; exclusive only to the owner of the address and there is a voting system as well… The Ardor main chain will be where transaction processing for all child chains, including Ignis, will happen. The reason why transactions on the main chain will be minimized is to deal with the blockchain bloat issue. This issue is also addressed in the feature that child chain transactions will be pruned after a snapshot every 1440 blocks (~24 hours). However, child chains can choose to have all transaction details recorded through the use of an archival node…
Ardor and Ignis will be launched during the third quarter of this year. Ardor’s testnet has created a lot of expectation, making the price of both NXT and ARDR go up. What will happen once the mainnet is launched? Only time will tell…
Aaron AG has his own YouTube channel with over 2200 followers. There, he performs some technical analysis of different cryptocurrencies in a clear and easy-to-understand didactic teaching style. This time he talked about NXT:
Aaron gives a short explanation about his videos:
Learn step by step as if you were watching directly over my shoulder and get ready to enter a fun and exciting world of Technical Analysis that puts you right into the drivers seat or right beside me to watch first hand how to trade the market and learn its patterns and movements. Teaching investing and sharing helpful information with others in these uncertain times. All videos are for educational purposes only and are my personal investment choices. If you choose to invest using any of my recommendations or strategies you do so at your own risk.
We’d like to point out that we are just echoing the opinion of an analyst because it’s referring to NXT. However, that doesn’t mean that Nxter approves nor disapproves this opinion. Investors are always responsible for doing the proper research and analyzing the risks when investing in volatile markets such as cryptocurrencies.
Lumbridgecity – Time to Invest in NXT and/or ARDR?
LumbridgeCity is a platform that aims to teach users how to trade cryptocurrencies on Poloniex. It includes Bitcoin Trading and CryptoCurrency Guides as well as Video Tutorials. It features updates covering Poloniex Margin Trading and Margin Lending markets and tutorials on basic technical analysis and live Poloniex Trading reports.
This week, they’ve introduced a new video analyzing the price of NXT and trying to foresee (always in their personal opinion) its future movements:
They’ve also release another video concerning ARDR’s price evolution:
We’d once again like to point out that we are just echoing the opinion of an analyst because it’s referring to NXT. However, that doesn’t mean that Nxter approves nor disapproves this opinion. Investors are always responsible for doing the proper research and analyzing the risks when investing in volatile markets such as cryptocurrencies.
560 attendees, 26 exhibitors, and 26 speakers joined together in Munich to make it the largest international Blockchain-related event ever organized in Europe. Among the conference speakers were experts, businesses, and practitioners of the global Blockchain industry.
The Nxt Foundation attended as exhibitors and represented Nxt and Ardor with a booth in the main exhibition space. Some members of Jelurida also showed up during the event:
Dave Pearce, board member of the Nxt Foundation, stated when the event was over:
BlockShow 2017 was excellent, the Nxt Foundation team networked a lot. And, as often happens, we ran into lots of serious business/crypto people who’ve been quietly following Nxt (and now Ardor) with interest over the last few years, so we got plenty of love in Munich.
Moldova ICT Summit 2017 – Blockchain Innovations in Government
Lee Gibson Grant, founder of the Drachmae project and early member of the Nxt community, gave a presentation at the 2017 Moldova ICT Summit, where he talked about DT X, a new project, which seems to build on top of his earlier blockchain experiments – a cryptocurrency that pays dividends, a bunch of partnerships, and a proposed complete blockchain infrastructure to “make it possible for non-government entities, or governments themselves, to establish and run a national, parallel, paperless monetary system, Viability of Blockchain for E-Governance and Smart Cities”.
Lee states in his presentation:
Nxt is a decentralized blockchain, which has been around since 2013. It’s been very generous to me because all the projects I’ve done with it have been very successful… We struggled with many other blockchains…
The Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. DT X aims to outline various use cases for individuals, private associations, regional, municipal, and central government entities to achieve acceptance or disapproval of its technology and find out whether it has a role to play in solving real world problems, or if it should remain a theoretical experiment left to be debated by economists.
Adel, the upcoming blockchain incubator that will be built on top of the Nxt blockchain, has just published a comprehensive FAQ with 40 of these questions to address concerns that potential investors may have. This FAQ further explains existing information given in a set of whitepapers and projects that Adel has already shared with the community. The Adel ICO will begin on the 1st of May, 2017.
Why did Adel choose Nxt as their blockchain platform?
Adel chose Nxt because they are a better Blockchain as a Service (BaaS). For this main reason, Adel established a strategic relationship with Nxt, since they offered the best platform with a set of integrated features to achieve our goals. Our partnership with Nxt is to enable our platform for maximum success with streamlined development and the shortest time to market…
Adel Ecosystem Ltd. will utilize the Nxt blockchain for voting, accounting, and its core infrastructure. In addition, public, private, or child chains on Ardor will be utilized in projects where the benefit of this technology can be utilized
Why did Adel choose Nxt over Ethereum?
Adel chose Nxt because it was the ideal option for the needs of Adel in the use of blockchain technology. With Nxt, a lot of the features required by Adel, such asset creation (a feature used to create the ADL coin), were easily available. In addition:
– Nxt is a platform that has multiple features integrated into its core, which Adel required.
– Nxt is better for Adel because of the need for frequently repeated common transactions on the blockchain.
Adel did not need Ethereum’s customizable smart contracts for its blockchain. Ethereum is more of a platform for smart contracts that require potentially intensive development.
– Adel plans to use phased transactions is progressing efficiently and effectively in the future – one of the most valued features of the Nxt platform.
– Adel needed the ability to create assets on Nxt and utilize its asset exchange. Ethereum has freely issued tokens, but does not have a decentralized exchange at a core level.
– Adel will capitalize on Nxt’s voting to establish a community consensus on approving projects or agreeing on other important decisions.
– Adel will capitalize on Nxt’s dividends feature, built into its core for distribution of funds and project rewards.
– Adel will take advantage of Ardor, once it is deemed suitable, in order to take advantage of the marketplace feature for startup licenses and trading of the ADL currency on an Adel child chain.
The Janus team has announced changes in the way the distribution of the Janus asset:
800 000 Janus assets that were initially planned to be sold during this quarter in the Nxt Asset Exchange have been moved to the C-Cex exchange for sale. This way, investors will have more opportunities to buy Janus straight with BTC, without having to get rid of their NXT.
The current distribution, ending on the 3rd of July, will be the last token distribution Janus is going to offer. Furthermore, on 3rd of July, the total supply of Janus will decrease from 97 million to 37 million.
We will be moving 800,000 Janus tokens of this quarterly distribution from the asset exchange to C-Cex to allow those holding NXT for Ignis conversion more options for larger buys via BTC set at 0.00003 sats. This will be the last token distribution we do, afterwards expect the total supply of Janus to decrease from 97 million to 37 million early July. This notice gives all traders time to plan accordingly in the business sites we are delivering. Currently less than 14 million Janus are in circulation…
Those who wondered you can use BTC/NXT/etc/Ardor if you are interested in getting a token discount for the 2 mil Janus required to get access to JanusXT tier… 1 JanusXT spot remains available.
An updated detailed Ardor roadmap has been published by Jelurida, the corporation of core developers working on Nxt and Ardor. In this roadmap, we can see how the developers have managed up to now to meet all the deadlines so far with no delays. Everything is going as planned, and Ardor’s main launch is getting closer.
Q1 2017 (done)
Testnet launch, parent chain with multiple child chains architecture fully implemented, including UI support
Riker, Nxt and Ardor core developer and member of Jelurida, made a post on Nxtforum announcing the release of a new version of the software to evaluate the operation of private blockchains, which a modified version of Nxt 1.11.5. By using the “Private Blockchain Evaluation Kit”, users are able to rapidly prototype, develop, and test Nxt-based applications on a private, local testnet, without having to join the public testnet or the production blockchain.
We expect this evaluation release to be useful for the following purposes:
1. Application developers who plan to eventually deploy their application to public Nxt blockchain.
2. Businesses evaluating the suitability of the Nxt platform for their own private blockchain use case.
3. Academic research and experimentation with proof of stake blockchain technology.
4. Users who want to learn how the Nxt blockchain works, without having to purchase NXT or ask for testnet coins.
Any company can use this to setup a private network, the limitation of this kit, is that the Genesis account with a well known passphrase can submit transactions. We believe that this by itself prevents the usage of this private blockchain for production and that whomever wants to use it for production will need to license a fully functional version from Jelurida.
Several online news platforms have covered the recent release of the Ardor development roadmap by Jelurida. Such is the case withAlex Hamilton, who has written an article at IBS Intelligence about it, as well as Bitcoin Agile, which has also discussed this announcement.
Both reports explain some of the functionalities that Ardor child chains will have, such as the ability for users to create their own assets and have them traded on a decentralised asset exchange. They will be able to set up their own child chain that will include pre-installed features from Nxt. Moreover, it will be possible to exchange tokens from one child chain to another. In other words, a cross-chain coin exchange.
Ardor will be designed and tested during this quarter. In the second half of 2017, we will see the launch of the Ardor mainnet. The full launch of Ardor will not mean that Nxt will lose support, because both platforms will exist and get support even once Ardor is launched.
The community is very proud of the progress that has been made since we announced the launch of the Ardor Platform… The team of software engineers and expert coders at Jelurida are working on creating a platform that can be applied to any number of industries
CryptoWatch is a real-time market visualization tool that allows users to customize its interface around their trades.
Some of the features included with this tool are:
– Standard OHLC candle chart
– RSI and MACD indicators
– Keltner Channel, Parabolic SAR, and EMA overlays
– Multiple dark and light background themes
– Ability to zoom in
– Live ticker navigation which shows real-time price of the coin you are viewing
– Option to convert all fiat prices into USD, EUR, CNY, or CAD
– Fullscreen mode
– Overlay of your trades on the price chart
– Calculation and comparison of your last trade vs. the current market price
Recently, this platform has added NXT/USD and NXT/BTC pairs, based on the data provided by Poloniex. From now on, all nxters can see how the price of NXT evolves using this tool. Moreover, it is possible to connect to your Poloniex account using an API key and visualize how you are doing in real time and enabling you to execute trades from within the same interface.
Here below are more details about each of these topics:
NXT COMMUNITY
Hyperledger – Vendor Members List
Hyperledger, a Linux Foundation project, intends to create an advance cross-industry blockchain technology through a collaborative effort and has been doing so since 2015. Hyperledger has recently set up a special section on its website to let the public know about Hyperledger members that offer a variety of products and services around and based on various business blockchain technologies. The Nxt Foundation is included in this section.
Travin Keith, the Marketing Director and a Blockchain Consultant of the Nxt Foundation, is the person in charge of representing the Nxt Foundation at Hyperledger, where numerous well-known players in the finance and tech industries are members of, such as: Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Grupo Deutsche Börse, J.P. Morgan, etc.
The Nxt Foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of Nxt and Ardor blockchain technology. Since 2014, we have been a point-of-contact for businesses and organizations interested in using this technology and have since expanded our operations to further support the broader community.
Blockchain Products/Services Offered: Businesses and organizations can consult with us regarding the use of the open source feature-filled Nxt and Ardor blockchain technologies that we support, whether on the public chain or a private one, for various blockchain-based solutions spanning a wide range of industries. Existing blockchain features include Arbitrary Messaging, Polling, Phased Transactions, Asset Creation, and an Asset Exchange, as well as a Plugin system, to name a few. The Nxt Foundation can also connect interested parties with the developers of both blockchain platforms for customization.
Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands Active Geographies: Worldwide Industries: Any industry with blockchain technology needs. Email Address: travin@nxtfoundation.io
Intel & The Floor – International Blockchain Hackaton
In some previous newsletters, we announced that Lior Yaffe, a Nxt and Ardor core developer, will be attending to the International Blockchain Hackaton in Tel Aviv on the 29th and 30th of March, 2017. Nxter.org covered this story by releasing two articles that include all the details about Lior’s participation at this event and the event itself.
The challenge set by the organizers was to establish a digital, one-stop-shop solution to register shares, handle corporate actions, and allow for updates of company capital structure. This could sound like a tough job, but it isn’t really a problem for Nxt, because most of the features needed are already included in the Nxt core, as Lior explained:
The “problem” is, that the functionality we provide out of the box with data cloud, phasing, messages, account ledger, encrypted file attachment, shared key is enough to implement this.
I don’t have anything real to develop.
The mentor told me “you better work on a presentation.”
Now you can buy NXT via instant online bank transfer in the United Kingdom thanks to Cryptomate, a service that offers an easy and fast way to purchase cryptocurrencies. It benefits from the Faster Payment Service, which lets you complete your purchase really fast (however, still very far behind the confirmation speeds in blockchain technology).
Simply choose the cryptocurrency you want to buy, enter your email address and crypto wallet details, and make your payment through online banking. Once your order has been paid you will receive your coins in your wallet.
CryptoMate puts a strong focus on security. Nothing is more important to us than keeping our customers safe and secure while using our service. Using our peer-to-peer Trusted Vendor system means that we do not store any cryptocoins or customers’ money. We use SSL for point-to-point encrypted communications, and store all customer information in a secure database.
Non-verified users have a total order limit of £250. If you verify your identity your daily limit is set to £1,000.
A new version of the Nxt Reference Software has been published. The changelog includes the addition of firstIndex and lastIndex to the getUnconfirmedTransactions and API getUnconfirmedTransactionIds, in order to support pagination. Moreover, minor performance optimizations and UI improvements have been made. H2 has also been updated to version 1.4.194 and jetty has been updated to version 9.3.17.
You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Bitbucket. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same as the hash of the file. You can check it using your NRS wallet, online third party services, or locally-run third party software, so that you are absolutely sure that you are receiving the original file.
Android Wallet
The Nxt client application for the Android platform has also been updated with the latest version of Node (v7.8.0), NPM (4.4.4) and Apache Cordova 6.5.0.
Keep in mind that the mobile wallet that this version brings us works much as the Light Wallet. It connects to an aleatory public node every time you run the app while being able to use almost all the features of the full client. You can download it for your Android phone from here.
Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor lead core developer and member of Jelurida, has released the last version of the Ardor testnet – v2.0.3.e. This version brings improvements such as how unconfirmed transactions are processed and in the Coin Exchange UI. Additionally, Jetty has been updated to version 9.3.17. As with the previous versions, the source code isn’t provided.
You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Bitbucket. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same as the hash of that file.
The Ardor packages uploaded to the Jelurida repository will be signed with the official Jelurida software releases signing key, 0xC654D7FCFF18FD55, already used for signing the Private Blockchain Evaluation Kit packages.
The latest release 2.0.3e has already been uploaded to the new location.
In a few days, the old repository will be deleted, with a notice directing users to the new one.
The Nxt Foundation has created a new section on its website that makes it possible to see the appearances of the Nxt Foundation in the media with direct coverage, article assistance, quote contributions, interviews, or even full articles as contributors.
After many years of hard work, Nxter.org is playing a prominent role here, since it’s the informational media that provides more coverage of Nxt, Ardor, the Nxt Foundation and the whole ecosystem around it, than any other organization.
If you would like to collaborate with the Nxt Foundation, please reach out to us at info@nxtfoundation.io.
TradingView is an advanced financial visualization platform that is easy and intuitive to use, with many users around the world making use of it. The service provides all the charting tools you need to share and view your trading strategies.
Recently, a technical analysis of the NXT price has been carried out by Altcoinanalytics. This user has given a personal impression of the path NXT’s price is going to follow.
We will see great movements “UP” on the NXT … chart in the next few weeks, be excited and don’t miss the train again!
We’d like to point out that we are just echoing the opinion of an analyst because it’s referring to NXT. However, that doesn’t mean that Nxter approves nor disapproves this opinion. Investors are always responsible for doing the proper research and analyzing the risks when investing in volatile markets such as cryptocurrencies.
Here below are more details about each of these topics:
NXT COMMUNITY
Gartner – Blockchain: How Real is the Market?
Gartner is one of the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company oriented towards businesses. It operates in more than 90 countries and has about 9,000 associates who assist thousands of companies around the world.
Recently, Gartner hosted a special webinar by Rajesh Kandaswamy, Research Director of Gartner, which analyzes some facts and trends of blockchain technology, starting with a brief explanation about how a blockchain works, then moving on to it’s evolution, how blockchain activity can benefit most industries, and the large capatalization that this technology is achieving.
Rajesh reminds us that this technology has a lot of potential, but hasn’t matured yet. There are also many notions about blockchain that aren’t true, either because they are just plain myths or because they haven’t been developed yet. Moreover, the ecosystem is still a little blurry, with many different platforms solving different problems, as is the case with Nxt, which is included in this report which can be considered to the detriment of other blockchain platforms that the crypto market considers more appealing.
Nxtchat – Now Connected to the Slack Shared Network
Last February, Coinbar launched a joint project to increase communication, awareness, and education among different crypto platforms, as well as the promotion and expansion of the user-base of each project.
That’s the reason why they decided to connect the chats of all of these projects on Slack in a single unified channel called #slack-shared-network.
Nxt and Ardor have recently joined this SSN, where other projects where already integrated, such as Aurovine/AudioCoin, Coinbar & Coinbar Plus, Synergy, SaluS, BlockPool, Project Radón, Bitswift, BlackCoin, SuperNET, LBRY, Silk Network, VertCoin, ZCoin, Intellisys, Rubies…
Betterbets – Huge Amount of NXT Wagered in This Platform
Betterbets.io, launched by members of the Janus team, is one of the most popular casinos with the highest volume among provably fair and secure bitcoin gambling sites. It’s also where you can use NXT to place your bets. Stats since the integration of NXT have been recently shared with the community.
Since January 21st stats on NXT use for betting on betterbets.io Total Bets: 23,436,483 Wagered: 128,010,206 NXT
Considering it was a gamble to add NXT as it’s not usually something a business showcases for gambling these statistics are very good and higher than I’d anticipated. Very cool, I haven’t checked this for over 3 weeks it’s solid
1/8th of the entire NXT supply wagered on Betterbets!
The Janus ICO is still going on and 90% of the profits coming from NXT betting at Betterbets will be given away to the holders of the Janus token. The team, according to the predefined strategy, will raise the price every three months, thus benefiting early investors while giving the opportunity to current doubters to join later, though at a higher price, when more news comes. You can buy your JNS assets on Nxt’s Asset Exchange. Moreover, at the beginning of every month, (though on the 28th of March this time for April) dividends are given away among owners of the JNS asset.
Zuqka, a member of the Nxt community and booster of the solar forging device for Nxt, has been assisted by Vanbreuk to launch the public a live demo of the Ardor Testnet. This way, anyone who wants to try out the functionalities of Ardor without having to download or needing to configure the client, as well as without having to wait to the launching of the Ardor main net, expected to happen in the third quarter of 2017.
You no longer have an excuse! You just have to type the following address on your web browser https://demo.ardorplatform.org/index.html and create a new account to start experiencing the future Ardor platform.
Click on the image to open Ardor’s Live Demo
Keep in mind that this is an experimental version that runs on testnet, so, for security reasons, you shouldn’t use your Nxt account and passphrase to try it out.
If you want to make one more step, you can download and launch locally your own Ardor wallet for the testnet. You only need to download the latest version of Ardor for the testnet and ask for some Ardor and Ignis tokens for the testnet in this thread.
Lior Yaffe, Nxt and Ardor core developer and member of Jelurida, states:
There will be no hallmarks in Ardor. Hallmark while being an innovative feature 3 years ago did not prove itself as adding protection to the network and its awkward design made it difficult to refactor the peer communication. In Ardor we are launching completely new and much more efficient peer communication network developed by ScripterRon which will render hallmarks obsolete.
In Ardor all nodes will have same trust level. Same as any other blockchain.
In nxt 1.x we do not observe significant security increase when using hallmark nodes, my understanding is that large stake holders don’t want to hallmark their nodes in order not to reveal their online identity. This defeats the purpose of hallmarking.
Node owners that do hallmark their nodes attract larger traffic which just adds to centralization not to security.
When asked whether these changes could somehow mean an increase of uncertainty for those who set up a node for the first time, Lior answered:
Hallmarks does not offer protection against this, anyone can set a hallmark. The blockchain download is always performed from several nodes in parallel so one malicious node will be identified and black listed.
Light and roaming client are in danger of connecting to a remote malicious nodes. This is not a concern with submitting transactions since they are signed and validated locally but it is a concern in a case a malicious node feeds the client with false data. To mitigate this we implemented the client status icon and hallmarks doesn’t help against this anyway.
In addition to the foregoing of hallmark nodes, Lior has also clarified what will happen to the current ARDR assets on Nxt, once the Ardor blockchain is launched:
When launching the Ardor mainnet with balances based on the NXT Ardor asset, we’ll have to make the Ardor asset disappear from NXT so that users are not confused or scammed to continue trading it as NXT asset. This would be another hard fork for NXT.
TheWireMaster, an active member of the Nxt community, recently published an article on the NxtFolks platform with some comments and clarifications about Nxt and Ardor, in order to make things easier for newcomers.
As explained in the text, there currently isn’t an Ardor client for the main net – it’s just available on testnet. The only wallet that runs on the main net at the moment is the Nxt wallet.
The final launch of Ardor’s network will take place in the third quarter of this year. Until then, it will only run on test net. In the meantime, you can buy/sell the ARDR asset on the Nxt Asset Exchange, just like any other asset. When Ardor is released, you’ll be able to use the passphrase you currently use to log into your Nxt account to log to your Ardor account, where your Ardor tokens will have been credited according to the amount of ARDR assets you hold in your Nxt account.
Furthermore,the article also mentions that the ARDR token will be erased from Nxt once Ardor is launched, by means of a hardfork, as we’ve already mentioned earlier in this newsletter
TheWireMaster also launched a special promotion for those of you who may be interested in signing up at NxtFolks:
Just to remind you that if you subscribe to nxtfolks.com and add you NXT address you get 10000 Folks (MS)…
The blockchain news platform NewsBTC, founded in October 2013, publishes useful news, interviews, and other bits of information related to the most popular cryptocurrencies.
In the second episode of NewsBTC TV, they focused on the Nxt blockchain. This time, Bas Wisselink, advisory board member of the Nxt Foundation, and Co-Founder of Blockchain Workspace, appears in an interview where he gets the opportunity to show the working space that the Foundation has at A Lab Amsterdam, Lab.208. Bas also makes a brief introduction explaining how Nxt works, its origins, its functionalities, some differences with other platforms, etc.
Beyond the central topic of the article, older Nxters may fell some nostalgia when remembering some landmarks in the history of Nxt, which are included in Bas’ explanation, which can help us visualize the exemplary behavior of the members and developers of the Nxt community when they faced adversities, and how they’ve managed to emerge stronger from them:
Bas Wisselink: …we were the first non-bitcoin platform that allowed people to issue Assets. So we had our shares of weird propositions that still managed to scam a lot of money out of people and we as a community were continuously forced to think about how to handle them (and whether we should do something in the first place).
We also had our mini-version of the DAO debacle, when an exchange was robbed of 5% of the complete supply of Nxt tokens. To roll back, or not to roll back? Our community decided overwhelmingly not to, and instead we helped the exchange to do negotiate a rebuy from the actual robber. The exchange, who had very vocally (and understandably!) was for a rollback, took this option and bought back what they had lost.
(Bas) represented NXT … and assisted in negotiating the return of 45 million stolen NXT’s from the BTER exchange alongside Lawyer-of-NXT, DomP, and Amadeus.
LaVoieDuBitcoin.info – Snapshots and Metaphors of a Decentralized Dream
Jacques Favier, the person in charge of La Voie Du Bitcoin, is also the owner of one of the copies of the collectors edition of “SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions”. Now, after reading the book, he is making his personal opinion about it public on their blog.
Jacques, known for being an articulated writer with an elaborate rhetoric, has analyzed the book, which includes the most relevant events related to this platform that have taken place over the past 3 years: the ICO process carried out by BCNext, the anonymous creator of Nxt, the disruptive features of the platform, the decentralized community, the BTER hack, the Nxt Foundation… and many other aspects, all until reaching the Ardor chapter.
Some interesting quotes that we can find in the blog (in French) are:
The book shows a kaleidoscopic version of the Nxt ecosystem…
A good portion of the book can be read as a type of political manifesto about decentralizacion….
Nxt is presented as a revolutionary tool for businesses, in a business world where the word blokchain became fashionable but was still devoid of content…
When you read the anecdotes included in this book, is surprising to see that just a few wise bankers use Nxt instead of Bitcoin…
Remember that you can buy a copy of “SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions” at the Nxter.org shop. You can also choose to download the digital edition for your electronic devices, or a paper edition, thanks to the Print-On-Demand service by Lulu.
The following graphic shows the NXT / Bitcoin exchange price changes on Poloniex over this past week:The following graphic shows the ARDR / Bitcoin exchange price changes on Poloniex over this past week:
Below are more details about each of these topics:
NXT COMMUNITY
Nxt Foundation – Supporter Program
Travin Keith has announced the launch of the Nxt Foundation Supporter Program. The final objective is to raise enough funds to allow the Foundation perform its operations well, as well as to strengthen the bonds of the community.
There are several forms of support included in this program, each of them with different benefits and rates. In every case, you can make your contribution with EUR, NXT, ARDR or BTC:
Organizational Supporters – This category is targeted towards large businesses and organizations that wish to support the Nxt Foundation. The benefactor, who will donate €2500 every year, will be publicly acknowledged as a Nxt Foundation Organizational Supporter on the Nxt Foundation website with a dedicated page to the organization, as well as many other benefits.
Annual Supporter – This category is for both community members and projects that wish to support the Nxt Foundation in its activities. It’s subdivided into two tiers, depending on the donation level, which will bring benefits such as the appearance of the name or username on the Supporter Page, a personalized @nxtcommunity.io email or @ardorcommunity.io email, link to a personal/project website, and a few other benefits.
Travin Keith states:
If you would like to be a supporter, please send me a private message on nxtforum, on Slack, or to travin@nxtfoundation.io, with your desired amount to contribute, your preferred method, and other relevant details to your desired tier
Janus and Sigwo Technologies have been the very first ones to give support to the Foundation through the Organizational Supportersplan mentioned above.
Tipper – The Service Will Be Shut Down on the 1st of April
Daniel, aka NxtSwe, is an active member of the Nxt community, with which he was always willing to help and participate in its discussions. His aptitude as a developer are evident in many open source contributions to the Nxt ecosystem, such as the NxtLib library, the Tipper bot for Slack, some plugins for Nxt, (Asset Feeds or Plugin Dividend, for example) as well as a lot of valuable inputs and technical feedback, all while always keeping a constructive and kind tone.
Daniel has announced that, for personal reasons, he is forced to close down all these services that the has offered to the community which he was sustaining by himself:
Important
I will be shutting down tipper service on april 1st.
I am very sorry for this, but I urge everyone to withdraw their funds from tipper until then using the withdraw command, for example:
_”withdraw NXT-YOUR-PERSONAL-NXT-ADDRESS 100 NXT”_
If you have assets, withdraw them first so you have enough to cover the transaction fees.
Again, I am very sorry for this.
NxtSwe, displaying once more his exceptional personality, warned users in advance of the closing of this service so that not a single nxter is adversely affected by this decision. The source code of the app will remain freely available at Github for anyone who wants to keep benefiting from NxtSwe’s contributions.
From Nxter, on behalf of the whole Nxt community, we’d like to thank you very much, Daniel. Thank you for being a part of Nxt’s history!
Intel & The Floor – International Banking Blockchain Hackaton
In our previous newsletter, we mentioned that Lior Yaffe, Nxt and Ardor core developer and a member of Jelurida, announced his participation in the International Banking Blockchain Hackathon that will take place in Tel-Aviv on the 29th and 30th of March, 2017.
Lior is especially excited with this hackathon and recently stated:
I’m assembling an NXT dream team for this event. I spoke with the organizer today and they welcome Jelurida/NXT/Ardor solutions. They are looking for a team of 5-6 people not necessarily all technical. Great opportunity to promote NXT. First prize is 5K$ paid in BTC. If someone wants to join me in Tel Aviv for this event I can help with travel arrangement and show you around before or after the event.
There are less than 10 days left before the event, so, if you are willing to be a part of this dream team and help promote Nxt for 36 hours during this hackathon, all while you learn new insights and forge new bonds in this field, don’t hesitate to contact Lior.
Whatis, originally a comprehensive knowledge base launched in 2008, has shifted its focus entirely to insights that help people understand the concepts of cryptocurrency.
“Whatis” will enlighten you about various aspects of best cryptocoins to invest in, it will describe how to get coins into your wallets, how to create your own coins, how to trade various assets and many, many of HowTos that may change our whole life.
Recently, ARDR has been added to this database, just like Nxt, which was added some time ago. Here, we can find a basic description of Ardor’s features, such as the creation of child chains, transaction pruning to avoid blockchain bloat, as well as a few other details such as the way the ARDR distribution took place, when IGNIS will be released, etc.
NXT and ARDR have been included on the Alt19 website, the oldest altcoin market index, where you can see the volume, capitalization, and exchange prices of altcoins, plus many other interesting data related to buying and selling coins and assets.
The detailed information provided by this site will come in handy for those traders who intend to make as much profit as possible when trading altcoins. Moreover, you can download the data from this website in CSV format, so that you can use it to draw your own graphs and perform your own technical analysis.
Chocolatey.org – Nxt Repository for Windows (Unofficial)
Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. It was designed to be a decentralized framework for quickly installing applications and tools that you may need.
Chocolatey packages encapsulate everything required to manage a particular piece of software into one deployment artifact by wrapping installers, executables, zips, and scripts, all into a compiled package file.
Chocolatey.org is a feed of packages provided and maintained by the community.
To install the Nxt Client, run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
C:\> choco install nxt
To upgrade Nxt Client, run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
C:\> choco upgrade nxt
Chocolatey is a practical an easy way to install Nxt in a Windows system for users who want to keep it simple. However, keep in mind that this isn’t the original NRS software provided by the Nxt core developers, but rather an amplified project that another user has created by themselves to make it easier to install. By using Chocolatey, we are forced to trust the good intentions of the package creator so, in the end, we are run into a level of risk when installing software using chocolatey, one that must be taken into consideration when dealing with a sensitive software such as your Nxt wallet where you keep your money.
The only way to be completely sure that our Nxt wallet hasn’t been maliciously altered at all is by downloading the latest release from the official thread for new versions of the NRS at Nxtforum, or use the update function inside the Nxt client itself. Once downloaded, you must check that the sha256 hash is the same that Jean-Luc, Nxt core developer, announced on that thread.
Hyperledger Blog – Blockchains for Business: Why Decentralization is Still a Factor
This article by Travin Keith, Marketing Director and Blockchain Consultant of the Nxt Foundation, recently published an article on Hyperledger’s blog, which details some of the benefits that blockchain’s decentralized technology, such as the one with Nxt, can bring to business and organizations:
Security: …there is always a high level of availability for the data. So, even if a large number of nodes fail or are shut down by an attack, the data is still available for people to access
Distributed Processing: …the system can also continue to process additional data and add more blocks into the blockchain… the system can continue operating as long as there are active nodes in the system…
Partnerships and Consortiums: …trust is not needed in terms of processing data as well as storing it… Verifying that one has the same information that another party has is relatively easy to do…
The Jupiter eSyslog platform is based on the NXT world leading blockchain technology developed by Jelurida B.V. the company behind the NXT and Ardor blockchain technology.
This new platform intends to be a boundless way to ensure that the server logs are securely stored in recoverable, encrypted, and immutable databases, all with the highest grade of security so that the logs are always available. All the data is massively replicated across dozens of nodes, which makes Jupiter very resilient against attacks, even insider attacks.
Lior Yaffe, Nxt core developer and co-founder of Jelurida B.V., says:
The un-matched reliability, security and scalability provided by the NXT blockchain provides the Jupiter eSyslog platform the necessary tools to provide a world leading blockchain as service platform. We are delighted to work together with Sigwo Technologies to make eSyslog a de-facto standard in storage and maintenance of system log information.
Nxt Folks – Value of Blockchain Technology is Exponentially Growing in the Past Months
In this article at NxtFolks, The Wire Master goes over how BTC has managed to keep its price high, even after the SEC voted against the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF. However, after the result of this vote, it seems as though a considerable amount of money is moving from BTC towards some other cryptos, which is a clear sign that blockchain technology still arouses interest and people will continue to trust this tech despite the rejection.
The price of Dash, ETH, and Monero have risen significantly due to this movement of capital, although it’s worth noting that the price of NXT has experienced the same, though to a lower degree, as well. There is a tense situation in the BTC community at the moment, which looks to be there for some time, so it would be no surprise if this trend keeps up.
Maybe is the right timing for the Ardor launching, which will take place in the third quarter of 2017…
BLK Chain – Blockchain and Trust in Online Advertising
This article in French by Baptiste Lac, published on the BLKchain, speaks about some challenges and difficulties that the online advertising industry is facing and how blockchain technology could help to overcome these challenges. It’s expected that advertisers will demand more and more transparency in the contracts signed with advertising agencies. Here is where using smart contracts or Smart Transactions, which Nxt has built in its core, together with the use of assets, seems to be the right solution for this problem.
Smart Transactions will ensure that the rules signed regarding the visibility of ads are fulfilled, allowing businesses to make precise measurements to better evaluate the efficacy of the advertising campaign. According to the author, it’s also possible to carry out complete monitoring and audit of the views through analyzing the metadata associated with the received token.
The following graphic shows the NXT / Bitcoin exchange price changes on Poloniex over this past week:The following graphic shows the ARDR / Bitcoin exchange price changes on Poloniex over this past week:
Below are more details about each of these topics:
NXT COMMUNITY
Nxt Foundation – 2017 Marketing Strategy
The Nxt Foundation published a document with the general guidelines of its marketing strategy for 2017. The Foundation was created in 2014 to be a contact point for business and organizations and to link them with the decentralized open source of Nxt. Moreover, it has taken on some additional task such as community building and support, marketing, public relations, and education. Unlike what has happened with the other coins, BCNext, the anonymous creator of the platform, didn’t seek to make a killing with the ICO, but did so primarily for the token distribution of this PoS cryptoplatform. Because of the lack of resources after its creation, a lot of work done by the wider community was done voluntarily or by bounties set up by other community members. That’s the reason why assistance and participation from the community is still needed in order for Nxt and Ardor to truly flourish, hence the publication of this document.
As open source decentralized projects, Nxt and Ardor can only thrive when there is a community behind them. The Foundation will thus dedicate the necessary resources to support the existing community as well as to make it easier for new members to join the community
It has to be noted that this document isn’t mandatory, but rather intends to serve as a guide should members of the community wish to keep their efforts in sync with that of the Foundation.
CRYPT070 #6 – Blockchain Meetup Where Nxt and Ardor will be Present
The 6th CRYPT070 blockchain meetup will be held on the 23rd of March at The Hague. Nxt will be present at the event at 20:00 when Robert Reinder Nederhoed will introduce the future Ardor platform with his presentation titled “Colored Coins: What are the differences? What are the similarities? What are the perspectives?”
It should be noted that one of the first real implementations of the coloured coin concept was the Nxt Asset Exchange. Nxt was designed and built to leverage this coloured coins idea. Nxt coins can be designated (‘coloured’) to represent other crypto coins, stocks/bonds, property, commodities, or even ideas. As a result, the Nxt network can be used to trade almost anything.
If you are interested in launching your own virtual server to run your own Nxt node (or your own Ardor node for testnet) you can now pay using NXT thanks to CoinsHost, a company created by a group of professionals and cryptocurrency enthusiasts who focus on DDoS protection and secure hosting services.
We have developed a powerful proprietary DDoS mitigation solution that is capable of mitigating massive and sophisticated attacks, leaving a targeted website or service unaffected.
CoinsHost designed its infrastructure with redundancy in mind – enterprise-class Supermicro® and Cisco® hardware, multiple TIER-1 upstream providers, dual power source with UPS, diesel generators and automatic switchover, multilayer IP packet filtering solution allow us to provide unmatched DDoS protected hosting with highest availability at a very reasonable price. We treat decentralized currencies based on encryption as completely legit payment methods and encourage our clients to pay with them. Besides Bitcoin, Litecoin and Nextcoin P2P currencies, we accept a wide range of other payment methods…
You can choose among many different sizes of servers, with Linux or Windows as your operating system. Since Nxt is a PoS coin, it doesn’t require powerful servers to run, thus the most simple and cheap server offered by this company is more than enough to create your Nxt or Ardor node (or even both simultaneously) and start forging. Set up your node and start collaborating with the Nxt network by forging blocks and you’ll also be entitled to participate in Megalodon’s campaign to earn even more NXT!
Riker, Nxt and Ardor core developer and member of Jelurida, made a post on Nxtforum announcing the release of the first version of the software to evaluate the operation of private blockchains, which a modified version of Nxt 1.11.4. Using the “Private Blockchain Evaluation Kit”, users will now be able to rapidly prototype, develop, and test Nxt-based applications on a private, local testnet, without having to join the public testnet or the production blockchain.
We expect this evaluation release to be useful for the following purposes:
1. Application developers who plan to eventually deploy their application to public Nxt blockchain.
2. Businesses evaluating the suitability of the Nxt platform for their own private blockchain use case.
3. Academic research and experimentation with proof of stake blockchain technology.
4. Users who want to learn how the Nxt blockchain works, without having to purchase NXT or ask for testnet coins.
Any company can use this to setup a private network, the limitation of this kit, is that the Genesis account with a well known passphrase can submit transactions. We believe that this by itself prevents the usage of this private blockchain for production and that whomever wants to use it for production will need to license a fully functional version from Jelurida.
On the 11th of March, Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor lead core developer and member of Jelurida, released the last version of Ardor for the tesnet v2.0.2, and it’s a mandatory update due to its incompatible changes.
This release introduces an incompatible networking change in bundler rates propagation and is therefore a mandatory update for all Ardor testnet nodes.
This version brings some improvements in bundler rate handling and APIs. Among theses changes include: the Bundler rates changed to being broadcasted every 30 min instead of an hour, the added Bundle action for child chain transactions in the UI, some bug fixes, and many more(see the full changelog here)
The Merkle – Top 5 Cryptocurrencies That Can’t be Mined
Most people involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem are aware of the Proof of Work algorithm that Bitcoin uses. People often talk about the big mining farms with plenty of powerful computers that waste an incredible amount of energy and other resources, as they need to compete against each other in a race to generate the next block in the Bitcoin blockchain. This can lead to a certain level centralization in the hands of miners.
JP Buntinx, writer of this article for The Merkle, goes over this issue and enumerates some coins that can’t be mined, i.e. ones that don’t use Proof of Work to run. Nxt is listed among them since it is the first 100% Proof of Stake cryptoplatform:
NXT is a popular altcoin that cannot be mined in the traditional sense. It is possible for users to forge new coins, but it doesn’t require dedicated hardware to do so. Instead, users need to leave their wallet open – assuming it contains a balance – and they will earn small amounts of interest in the process. NXT runs a proof-of-stake algorithm, which makes mining in the traditional way obsolete.
Fintech Finance – Nxt Development Team Releases Private Blockchain Evaluation Kit
Fintech.Finance wrote about the launch of the Private Blockchain Evaluation Kit by Jelurida BV to make it possible for people to perform private and local tests of private blockchains based on Nxt, which will allow developers to test their apps in a secure and safe environment, as we have previously mentioned in this same newsletter.Lior Yaffe, member of Jelurida, states in the article:
The Nxt Private Blockchain Evaluation Kit we have designed creates a safe, ready-made environment for businesses and developers to test how Nxt can be applied to their needs. It provides a comprehensive kit to answer any questions potential users might have regarding the efficacy of Nxt Blockchain technology.
This article by Jimmy Nicholls at Payments Compliance explains how the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), with the support of big banks such as HSBC, JP Morgan, and other financial groups, are ready to begin testing whether cross-border payments could be carried out using distributed ledger technology, following a successful pilot for carrying out interbank payments which will work together with the country’s electronic payment system, thus becoming a concrete use case for the distributed ledger technology.
The text reveals some details about the procedure and also offers some opinions from relevant people in the blockchain environment, such as Travin Keith, a board member of the Nxt Foundation:
…both banks and consumers could gain from lower costs associated with the project. While the banks themselves will definitely benefit due to the lower costs of transferring funds from one bank to the other, these savings could be passed on to their customers as well… The distributed ledger technology industry as a whole will benefit given the initial steps of the adoption of the technology not requiring an overhaul of the current system.
I think other jurisdictions with a similar infrastructure in place can adopt systems like these especially given Singapore’s overall positive reputation in banking.
First Report Economic News – Nxt Foundation Leads the Way with Blockchain Technology
Matt Cesare and Andrew Stiles wrote this article at First Report Economics where they go over the role and objectives of the Nxt Foundation. The text explains how blockchain technology has a great future ahead because of the great versatility and security it brings to the world of finance.
Instead of transferring information linearly from base A to base B to base C, information is updated through all parts of the chain.
An example may clarify this: when sending a legal document via email, the receiver must sign that document, save the changes, and then send back the new version of the document. In contrast, blockchain technology is more similar to editing a document on Google’s live document editing tool; editors can change the document simultaneously, and all changes are updated and saved real-time, all while the record of the changes are kept.
Blockchain allows everybody involved in a transaction to see what is happening with the transaction when it is happening. There are no delays and no uncertainties.
The article also mentions some of the third party projects that benefit from Nxt technology, such as Janus, Digital Billions,SuperNET, and others.
The Nxt Foundation is the primary point of contact for companies who intend to build something on Nxt. It’s composed by well-known members among the blockchain industry, such as Damelon, founder of the Nxt Foundation, who has recently become an advisor of the Internet of Coins board, and Travin Keith, a board member of the Foundation, who is in charge of (among many other things) representing the Nxt Foundation as it collaborates with Hyperledger. Definitely a great team to achieve great results!
The following graphic shows the NXT / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:The following graphic shows the ARDR / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:
Below are more details about each of these topics:
NXT COMMUNITY
Intel & The Floor – International Banking Blockchain Hackaton
Lior Yaffe, a Nxt and Ardor core developer and member of Jelurida, has announced that he is going to participate in the International Blockchain Hackaton that will take place in Tel Aviv on the 29th and 30th of March, 2017.
The end goal is for each team to develop a working prototype of a banking and financial services industry solution that is based on pre-defined usages. The hackathon banking partners will provide a list of issues for which they would like to see solutions.
Who will participate?
We are inviting corporates, startup companies, University students, and independent developers.
Do I have to be a blockchain expert?
As this event is oriented to blockchain based application, background in the technology (including coding) is highly recommended.
The event will consist of 36 hours of coding with non-stop action and networking with other coders and blockchain market leaders who are willing to showcase what this technology can do.
Our vision is to create a software and services company which utilizes a common technology platform to rapidly implement distinctly branded projects targeting a number of carefully selected markets. We believe that this approach will allow us to decrease development costs and increase product quality which will enable us to establish successful businesses and generate substantial profits which will then be shared with the Janus token holders.
During this four month period, which will last until the 3rd of July, 2017, 10.5 millions of Janus tokens will be put on sale at a price of 3 NXT per JANUS, which is twice as expensive for the same tokens sold in the first round of the ICO. Users can buy these tokens on the Nxt Asset Exchange or through the C-cex.com exchange, where users can buy the tokens using BTC or USD. Additionally, if you are planning to become a big investor, the Janus team has some discounts for large Janus purchases. Furthermore, the asset issuer has burnt 2.5 million Janus tokens from buybacks, so the remaining assets held by asset holders have recently become more valuable.
We will release 10,500,000 Janus (JNS) every 4 months. 31,500,000 yearly.
Price per Janus each distribution will be change every 4 months no matter what the current price it’s trading at, it will be posted 50-100% higher.
This strategy will be live starting March 4th, 2017- July 3rd, 2017 until the next distribution set for July 4th, 2017.
You can check all the details about this second ICO round at Nxter.org or on the document that the Janus team has issued for this round.
At Nxter.org, users can find a dedicated section about the Nxt Asset Exchange where you’ll be able to find the latest news, details, price evolution, and much more about AE asset. More assets will follow soon, so stay tuned!
February has ended and it has left us 836 new users at Nxtforum.org, which makes for an average of almost 30 new registrations per day. This considerable new arrival of Nxters will require a larger effort from the community to cover all the needs and help solving any questions that newcomers may have.
This is especially important given that the features provided by the robust Nxt PoS platform is attracting more and more people both familiar with blockchain technology as well as newcomers. This is also because last month, 1,000 new users joined the forum. There are now over 9,200 registered users.
We’d like to encourage our readers to sign up and become a member of this growing community. Or, if you prefer, you can also join the Nxt community through the following platforms:
At Nxter.org, we’ll continue spreading the word as we’ve been doing since the beginning to try to help more people learn about both Nxt and Ardor, together with the full ecosystem around it. If you’re interested in giving us a hand to achieve this objective, please visit nxter.org/get-published-get-paid-nxtp
After the launch and warm welcome of Snapshot, the first book about the Nxt/Ardor platform, Nxter.org has started an affiliate program which will allow you to earn 40% (NXT, BTC or fiat) of the book sales you generate.
The procedure is very simple: create an account, get your affiliate code, and watch your account balance grow as your visitors become our customers. When a potential customer clicks on your affiliate link, the visitor’s IP is logged and a cookie is placed in their browser for tracking purposes. Then, whenever the visitor browses our site and decides to order, it gets registered as a sale for you for your commission.
If you don’t have a copy of SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions, you might also want to consider a digital version for your e-reader, which is available on all major platforms such as Amazon, iBooks, GoogleBooks, etc., in addition to Nxter.org, where you can also buy it with BTC. You can also buy it as a printed book with the Print on Demand service by Lulu.com.
A new version of the Nxt Reference Software has been released. The changelog includes the addition of a Node JavaScript module, a new “About” dialog, and minor User Interface and desktop application bugfixes ported from Ardor.
The mobile app (just for Android at the moment), has also been updated with this version. It has been upgraded to Apache Cordova 6.5.0 and Cordova Android tools 6.1.2. Additionally, the API peer list has been refreshed as well.You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Github. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same as the hash of the file. You can check it using your NRS wallet, online third party services, or locally-run third party software, so that you are absolutely sure that you are receiving the original file.
Nxtwiki.org – API Modifications Needed to Port Your Nxt Apps to Ardor
Lior Yaffe, a Nxt and Ardor core developer, has written a new page on the Nxt Wiki that will come in handy for those developers who are currently using the Nxt API and are planning to jump to Ardor in the future.
Riker says:
… I wrote this Wiki page about migrating existing applications from Nxt to Ardor
Despite the fact that the changes needed to adapt your Nxt aplication to run on Ardor aren’t traumatizing, some changes in the code have to be done to make it compatible with the latest versions. The document published by Riker is quite detailed and is broken down in multiple sections to make it easier to reference.
So, if you are developer who is thinking about migrating to Ardor, this tutorial launched many months before the main launch of Ardor will help you prepare for it. Don’t put it off and encounter last minute problems!
Forklog – Russian Farm to Issue Crypto-tokens Backed by Ducks, Geese, and Goats
This article published on Forklog.net goes over a peculiar local economy that benefits from the advantages that blockchain technology can offer. Eduard Surkov’s club farm Mashkino in Central Russia has announced its plans to issue cryptocurrency tokens backed by the farm’s products, i.e. chickens, ducks, geese, lambs, and goatlings. The Nxt blockchain is noted as one of the best to build it on since it already has implemented, at core-level, all the necessary functionalities.
Yaroslav Loginov, project’s developer, says:
…tokens are comparable to coupons entitling their holders to receive the products once they’ve grown up. The tokens also certify ownership of the products, i.e. a token holder is the owner of a particular chicken, goose, duck, lamb, or goatling, while the farmers render the service of breeding them.
10 million tokens will be created at an initial price of 1 token = 1 ruble. Loginov explains how the relationship between buyer and seller is completely legal:
• The buyer contacts the farmer to buy and receive a token. • The farmer undertakes to breed the products by the date stipulated. • Reception of the ready products is arranged individually (at Mashkino or elsewhere). There is an option of delivery to the cities of Tver, Zelenograd, and Moscow.
The following graphic shows the NXT / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:The following graphic shows the ARDR / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:(Back to the Index)
Adel’s team, the community-powered startup incubator that focuses on blockchain technology, has recently announced that it is going to create a Limited Liability Company to meet all of the legal and tax issues stemming from the Anti-Money Laundering and the Countering the Financing of Terrorism Code (2015). As a direct consequence of setting up this complex legal structure, the start of the ICO process is going to be delayed for 2 months.
Nxter.org was one of the first media outlets to cover this piece of news in this article where Arthur Penzl gave us his opinion about this change:
To me, as potential investor, this is good news, worth a 2 months delay.
Others may disagree and can air their counter opinions in the comments field.
But, we all know it. If cryptocurrency technologies and blockchain ICO’s are to ever gain mainstream adoption, there’s no other way but to leave the grey zone behind, legally register, and comply with all regulatory and legal requirements including KYC/AML policies. I wish Adel good luck with that – many eyes will undoubtedly be on them.
Creating an LLC will further allow Adel to have the necessary legal structure to protect the brand, investors, and the whole ecosystem. The team also hopes that this step they are taking will set an example for future ICOs.
There are just a few tickets left for the BlockShow Europe 2017, which will take place in Munich on the 6th of April this year. If you want to take part in one of the most important events in the blockchain ecosystem and meet some recognized members of the Nxt community, you should hurry up and buy your tickets before they are gone!
Remember that you can get a 20% off the price when buying your ticket by entering the promotional code NXTMUNICH.
There are only 6 tickets left with the 20% rebate for Nxt attendees and only 10 tickets left in total, according to CoinTelegraph, so do NOT hesitate if you want to attend this great event!
In our previous newsletter, Dave Pearce, board member of the Nxt Foundation, who is going to represent the Foundation at this event, asked for some community members to help create some promotional materials about Nxt and Ardor for distribution among the attendants or for display at the booth itself. So, now you know, if you have some time and energy to help the Nxt community, this is a good time for you to contribute some of your time.
This event is one of the most important in its field and aims to have a variety of important audience members such as: financial institutions, multilateral development banks & export credit agencies, government organizations, independent financiers, insurance brokers and underwriters, lawyers and consultants, Fintech companies, service providers, etc.
‘Trade Finance and Blockchain’ presented by Roberto Capodieci, CEO at OTDocs.com, and CTO at Digital Billions
Steven Grove, aka Sigwo, founder of the Darcrus platform, has announced the future launch of the Jupiter platform, a new customized blockchain created with the support of Jelurida, the corporation that brings together the developers of both the Nxt and Ardor platforms. Jupiter is going to be the new private blockchain that will sustain Sigwo Technologies LLC, an ambitious project that will create a secure, decentralized, and effective system to store and encrypt your data.
This is what Steven says about Jupiter’s features and the reasons why they want to use a private blockchain based on Nxt:
I’ve been testing on NXT’s testnet for 2 months, validating my design of decentrally storing and encrypting syslog/authorization messages from my Linux servers. In my testing, I found increased fees were needed to be paid due to the complex nature and size of my messages. After consulting with the NXT Core Devs, Sigwo Technologies will be securing it’s own blockchain for building the future platform…
..The reason behind creating Jupiter is simple… Using any other blockchain would not be economically feasible. One example of my encrypted syslog application would create 29 million messages daily. In NXT terms and today’s prices, that would cost this particular business $1,238,300.00 per day to store messages..
…Jelurida is the company building Jupiter and have a proposed delivery date of March 10th, 2017. In this time I will be starting plugins (dappsheets) to showcase the flexibility of Jupiter while I wait. I still test on the Nxt testnet for now. Jupiter will have non-tradable tokens that are included in software packages to create transactions and store the data on the blockchain. After a time period, tokens are recycled to the businesses to continue their use of Jupiter and it’s plugins. Data is always theirs, as simply having the passphrase will unlock all the data stored. The recycling period is akin to a subscription and support package.
Decentralized Revolution – Blockchain Applications That Are Not Bitcoin
The concept of colored coins in Bitcoin has been the catalyst for new crypto platforms that go beyond just money transfers. In this article published on Decentralized Revolution, Kareem Audi gives a short overview of three blockchain platforms that, in his view, have big advantages over Bitcoin, such as Nxt.
Nxt… packs powerful developer tools to create your own decentralized apps, it also has an internal marketplace, much like eBay… it has its own decentralized voting system, and it’s own decentralized storage with more features being rolled out constantly… ARDOR is just one
Gabriel Dusil, co-founder of Adel, runs his own blog where he publishes some of the latest news about the Adel ecosystem. One of the latest entries includes a reference to the 6th white paper published by the Adel team titled Maintaining Integrity, where some of the basic principles of this community-based ecosystem are described, and how it can use cryptocurrencies in a sustainable and profitable way to fund projects.
The State is the People & the People are the State
With this premise in mind, and after extensive research and evaluation, this white paper goes over the reasons why they chose Nxt and Ardor technology to support its infrastructure.
Adel decided to build on the Nxt platform – a blockchain with features that expand the functionality of pioneering cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. These features include Shuffling, Voting, Aliases, and Phasing. The source code for Nxt has also been publicly disclosed, optimized, and perfected using (among other techniques) the Error Propagation Method, where the investigation and awarded discovery of deliberately inserted errors serves to help audit the source code itself.
Adel will move to Ardor, the multi-chain development of Nxt, in late 2017. Like Nxt, Ardor will have features that enhance the functionality of blockchain technology, making it an ideal platform for future projects. The Ardor child chain architecture will allow for the easy creation of a dependent blockchain that will be connected to and secured by the main Ardor blockchain. Ardor also solves scalability issues with a pruning feature so that future nodes will only download and keep transaction records on the main chain, as well as child chain transactions from the past 24 hours. However, it is still possible for child chain transactions to be kept, if so desired, with the use of an archival node that keeps all of the transaction records. This scalability is one of the ‘Holy Grails’ of cryptocurrency and blockchain development.
Nxt has already revolutionized the world of blockchain technology platforms by providing groundbreaking cryptocurrency features, as well as a powerful, modular toolset to build innovative business opportunities. All of Nxt’s functionality will be present in the Ardor platform, in addition to the advanced features (such as global scalability) that the Ardor multi-chain architecture will provide.
The Nxt platform has all the tools needed to successfully manage an asset. Moreover, Ardor lets you have your own personalized blockchain (child chain), which is secured by the Ardor decentralized network. Adel knows all these advantages, and that’s the reason why they intend to be one of the first to benefit from Ardor:
Adel will move to Ardor… Ardor will have features that enhance the functionality of blockchain technology, making it an ideal platform for future projects. The Ardor child chain architecture will allow for the easy creation of a dependent blockchain that will be connected to and secured by the main Ardor blockchain. Ardor also solves scalability issues with a pruning feature so that future nodes will only download and keep transaction records on the main chain, as well as child chain transactions from the past 24 hours. However, it is still possible for child chain transactions to be kept, if so desired, with the use of an archival node that keeps all of the transaction records. This scalability is one of the ‘Holy Grails’ of cryptocurrency and blockchain development.
SteemIt – Exponential Data Growth Could Push Any Blockchain Into Centralization
Oaldamster, author of this article on SteemIt, strongly believes that blockchain technology will become mainstream this year. More and more events related to this technology is taking place, such as the recent blockchain hackaton organized at Groningen, where 50 teams from 11 different countries showed their projects.
Doing some mathematical calculations, the author explains that the block size problem in Bitcoin and how, in his opinion, increasing the size of the block is far from being an ideal solution. The article also talks about Nxt’s Monetary System and how easy it is to launch your own asset on this platform. The author also mentions how Ardor is going to try to solve the problem of blockchain bloat using data pruning to keep the size of the blockchain controlled.
At its current state and the exponential data growth speed it seems almost inevitable that most mainstream accepted blockchains will become more or less centralized
Ardor will be the first fully decentralized platform that will use data pruning to reduce the blockchain bloat problem, thus allowing improved scalability with the child chain infrastructure.
This article published at Crypto Compare goes over the resources necessary to run a Proof-of-Work blockchain system, such as: buying expensive mining equipment, extensive hardware knowledge, and hours of dedicated work and patience. The author then explains the differences with Proof-of-Stake platforms like Nxt, the first one to use this algorithm entirely.
Below, you can also find a step-by-step tutorial with images where any user can learn how to start forging Nxt by themselves.
In order to accommodate users that want to participate in the mining consensus, but don’t want to fill their house with hot and loud equipment or bet in a Cloud mining contract, we are going to show you how to mine (forge) NXT. Let’s call this a guide for miners who don’t want to get their hands dirty!
We’d also like to remind advanced users with additional skills that we also previously published a tutorial about setting up a Nxt node on a Raspberry Pi 2. In addition, Megalodon’s campaign, The Forging Bounty Lottery, is still running. So, whenever you generate a block, you won’t only receive the forging fees, but also some extra NXT coming from this campaign.
Due – Blockchain Keeps Moving Forward as More Innovators Jump In
Miranda Marquit explains, in this blog post published at Due, some of the reasons why blockchain technology is growing in popularity and how more and more entrepreneurs are focusing their attention on blockchain projects such as Nxt.
The author goes over some of the current features of Nxt and how Ardor will add more to it to make it even easier and safer for everyone to make blockchain even more widely used:
Nxt has a… multi-step functionality built in, requiring parties to agree to certain conditions before completing transactions. That way, it’s possible to verify work before sending payment. On top of that, Ardor also allows automatic transactions, making it easier to set up recurring payments.
As we mentioned in our previous newsletter, the Nxt Foundation will attend Blockshow Europe 2017, an event organized by CoinTelegraph that will take place in Munich in just a few weeks. It’s expected to become the most important blockchain-related event in Europe this year.
Dave Pearce, board member of the Nxt Foundation, who is going to represent the Foundation in this event, asked for some community members to help make this event a success:
I’m working on a promo item for Nxt/Ardor to go into the goody bag that each attendee will receive, but we do need a couple of banners and a flier or brochure to give away, and I’m looking for volunteers to help with creating either of these:
Banners need to be approximately 2m high by 1m wide, in a standard roll-up banner style. I’d like to have one for Nxt and one for Ardor,or maybe one for the Foundation plus one for Ardor. They need to be eye-catching and informative, but not too complex. Anyone want to help out by providing a design ? I can get the printing done in NL and take them with me to Munich, so that’s under control.
There will be a bounty for any designs that we use…
We also need a flier or brochure to give away, just to explain in very clear English exactly wtf Nxt, Ardor and the Nxt Foundation are all about. Again: eyecatching and informative, please. Any text writers who’d like to have ago at this, get in touch. A designer would also be welcome.
So now you know, if you have some time and energy to help the Nxt community, this is the right time to do your bit.
Wolffang, an active member of the Nxt community, has made a public call asking for more help to promote the benefits of Nxt and Ardor. As you probably already know, a decentralized community like this doesn’t have a stable source of income, but rather is composed of a lot of volunteers who work tirelessly and mostly in an altruistic way not only to promote these platforms, but also to inform current users about these developments and other day-to-day matters.
Wolffang has said:
As most know Nxt and Ardor have a great community which is really helpful towards others. The Tech is also one of the best around today in crypto.
NXT and Ardor are way underrated compared to the rest of crypto projects.
Besides the great things the Nxt team is doing we can give them a help with promoting, showing and telling people about Nxt and Ardor.
It will help your own investment too.
I Hope you will help out with sharing the tweets, discuss on subjects, help people out, upvote reddit posts, maybe help in polo trollbox to let traders know the good things etcetera.
The latest news is in the #swarms channel on slack.
Twitter: @NxtCommunity @ArdorPlatform
At Nxter.org, we’ll continue spreading the word as we’ve been doing since the beginning, to try to make more people learn about both Nxt and Ardor platforms, together with the full ecosystem around it. If you’re interested in giving us a hand to achieve this objective, please visit https://nxter.org/get-published-get-paid-nxtp
Roberto, who has a great knowledge of blockchain technology and the solutions it can offer, didn’t hesitate to add his personal touch and his usual sense of humour to this event, as we can see in the preview of his introductory speech that he shared with all the Nxters, before delivering it in front of his audience:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this blockchain workshop.
It is gonna be a great workshop. It is gonna be absolutely fantastic.
Believe me. I know all about workshops. It is gonna be the best workshop.
Today workshop is about blockchain based platforms for trade and supply chain…
Capodieci also didn’t lose his chance to mention Nxt in this speech:
…We use Nxt for our blockchain solutions. It is huge, it is tremendous. Very important people uses Nxt. It is so… it is terrific. You could be one of them, because I know how to make tremendous Blockchain. Chose OTDocs, and it is gonna be: “Blockchain First”. Welcome to the workshop! Let’s make Blockchain great again. With OTDocs…
Nxtswe keeps bringing new functionalities to his tipper bot, the tipping monkey of Nxtchat on Slack. With this new update, you can now tip other users just by attaching emoticons to comments of other users on Slack.
Tipper already has a good handful of functionalities built-in and more functionalities are regularly added in. To use this functionality, start a private conversation with the bot Tipper by typing “help” to know all the characteristics and get some help using it.
At nxter.org, due the positive reaction from the members of the Nxt community welcoming the first printed edition of the book “Snapshot”, the first book about the Nxt platform, and also thanks to the numerous photographs with clear evidences of happiness for getting their book which many owners have published publicly to show their little treasure (which they don’t hesitate to pose with), we’ve decided to start a new section on our website called the Hall of Fame.
The newest addition to the Nxter Hall of Fame features the Snapshot book that has traveled (Thanks Travin Keith!) to the northernmost public library in the world, in the town called Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago. In the picture, we can see the happy librarian in charge of this establishment showing us their newest acquisition. Congratulations!
Svalbard’s library already has the book about Nxt
Some other members of the Nxt communty are already present in our Hall of Fame. Click here to check it out!
If you don’t have a copy of SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions, we’d like to remind you that the book is already available in a digital version for your reader in many specialized online platforms, (Amazon, iBooks, GoogleBooks, etc, in addition to Nxter.org, where you can also buy it with BTC) or as a printed book under the Print On Demand service by Lulu.com
Moreover, if you buy the digital edition of the book from Nxter.org you’ll also receive a FREE BONUS of a code to redeem 100 NXTP assets, the pdf version of the Nxt 2nd Anniversary e-book, all together with the SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions ebook package (.mobi, .epub and .pdf)
Ardor is only going to be in testnet for about 5-7 months until mainnet launches, which is expected to happen sometime in the third quarter of 2017. To participate in the Ardor testnet, you have to download the latest Ardor client here and ask for some tokens for the testnet here (ARDR, IGNIS) in order to start testing the new platform by yourself.
On the other hand, if you don’t have time or aren’t interested in helping with the test and just want to feel the experience of surfing through Ardor’s GUI, then you can use some of the open nodes that let you access this testnet, such as the one set up by Riker http://107.170.3.62:26876/index.html or any other node listed here and create a new account (for security reasons, never use your real Nxt account here) to explore everything that Ardor can offer you.
You can stay updated about the latest progress of the testnet by visiting the #developers channel on Nxtchat on Slack
A new version of the Ardor testnet has been has been released. The changelog for this version includes some minor bug fixing and improvements to the client UI, as well as peer networking, and improved blockchain download. A Node JS module has also been added. This is an experimental release for testing only, so the source code is not provided with it.
You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Bitbucket. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same as the hash of that file.
A Mac installer has also been included with this version. You you can download it here and start testing Ardor right away with your Mac computer!
One of the great improvements that the latest testnet version of Ardor brings us is the addition of Node.js, an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment for developing a diverse variety of server tools and applications, based on the ECMAScript language, capable of asynchronous I/O in event-driven programming and the V8 engine by Google.
This is what Riker, a core developer of Nxt, says about this new addition:
Earlier attempts to develop robust client API library for NXT and subsequently Ardor were faced with several challenges:
1. The API library had to send the passphrase directly to a remote node in order to sign transactions, this meant that the remote node had to be trusted, this severely limited the usability of the API library.
2. Some client libraries did implement local transaction signing but still were unable to validate unsigned bytes data returned from a random remote node thus still making it somewhat insecure to submit transactions to a random remote node.
3. Client API libraries were developed by 3rd party developers which sometimes couldn’t keep up with the protocol changes.
In order to address these problems, in release 2.0.1e we introduced for the first time a Node JS module which can be used for JavaScript application development using the Ardor platform APIs. This node JS module is now integral part of the core and in fact is just a thin layer of Node JS wrapper on top of the existing Ardor Wallet JavaScript code.
Being so this node module has several advantages:
1. The Node JS module is able to work securely against any random Ardor node
2. Transaction data submitted to a remote node is validated against the returned unsigned bytes
3. Transactions are signed locally so that the account passphrase is never submitted to a remote node
4. Message encrytption can be performed client side
5. API calls work at a higher level compared to the APIs provided by the existing test page, so that for example, complex numeric conversions and various formatting functions are alreayd implemented by the API library
6. Updates to this API library will follow the standard Ardor release process and will be maintained by core developers
To quickly get started using the node JS module, see instructions in the ./html/www/js/README file which is part of the 2.0.1e release.
The ./html/www/js/sample folder contains several code examples to get you started quickly and provide a reference implementation.
Chevdor has uploaded the latest NRS in a Docker open source container using version 1.11.3
Docker is a tool that can package an application and its dependencies in a virtual container that can run on any Linux server. This helps enable flexibility and portability regarding where the application can run, whether on-premises, a public cloud, a private cloud, bare metal, etc.
As we mentioned in previous newsletters, running NRS in a Docker container can be even easier than running it “the normal way”. It’s especially useful when running Nxt on a VPS: No java required, no download, no specific configuration… In addition to this, in spite of being a type of “virtual machine”, it does not decrease performance.
A novel multiple blockchain architecture that allows users to create their own, customized subsidiary blockchains, secured by the main chain.
Transactions from these blockchains, known as child chains, are removed from the main transaction ledger approximately every 24 hours, though special dedicated nodes, known as archival nodes, can keep all information if so desired. This approach enables Ardor to scale up to global transaction loads.
Ardor solves the blockchain bloat issue with this prunable child chain infrastructure, which side chains do not solve.
Blockchain technology is increasingly entering the mainstream consciousness. The developers at Jelurida BV have created a platform that makes blockchain technology more accessible and delivers scalable solutions for retail and institutional participants. Its potential applications extend to a number of industries burdened with legacy issues and antiquated transaction processing systems
Antony Peyton also gives a brief overview over at Banking Technology about the launch of testnet. The text enumerates some of the new features in Ardor, which has use cases that go beyond financial transactions. The author gives emphasis in the PoS model in which both Nxt and Ardor are based on, and the benefits this model provides:
Ardor and Nxt operate on a proof-of-stake model that can handle higher transaction volumes at a fraction of the energy cost and at ten times the speed
Fortunately, Pablo Lamela, one of the authors of the article, took the time to chat with Lior Yaffe to clarify some of these issues. Just a few days latter, Pablo announced some amendments to their research. Lior and the Nxt community were very glad and thanked the authors for their interest in clarifying all the details about Nxt.
We have modified the paper in https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1156.pdf to improve the description of Nxt. Thank you @riker, for helping us solve our doubts about Nxt and Ardor. Let us know if there are any other problems with it.
SNAPSHOT – Digital and PoD edition of the Book Now For Sale
After the successful sale of the printed collector’s edition of “SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions”, where 200 numbered units were sold in record time, Nxter.org has finally made this book available in digital and PoD (Print on Demand) editions. Now, anyone who’s interested in owning a piece of Nxt history can buy it. You can buy the book straight from Nxter.org or through many other popular distribution platforms.
The book is a collection of articles, which, after a short introduction to the concept of blockchain technology, looks into the history of Nxt, the world’s first 100% PoS blockchain 2.0 platform that’s oriented to both users and businesses. From its tumultuous launch in 2013, the pros and cons of its distribution model, and the anonymous inventor, BCNext, who handed over the source code to the community and gave them the responsibility to enhance the tech and ecosystem, the book takes the reader on a journey through ups and downs, features, use cases, business projects, and organizational adoption of the technology.
– A collection of articles, which, after a short introduction to the concept of blockchain technology, looks deep into Nxt.
The multi-million dollar fintech and blockchain industries have been advancing at a rapid pace over the past few years, so why is Nxt, an underfunded open source project, still the most advanced? In 228 pages, the articles found in this book tell the story of how a group of mostly anonymous people, investors, cryptographers, economists, and, certainly not least, software developers, as well as businesses, set out to change the world.
If you buy the digital edition of the book from NXTER.ORG you’ll also receive a FREE BONUS of a code to redeem 100 NXTP assets, the pdf version of the Nxt 2nd Anniversary e-book, all together with the “SNAPSHOT – Nxt, Unsurpassable Blockchain Solutions” ebook package (.mobi, .epub and .pdf)
After a few weeks completing the necessary work and sharing some of the images, on the 11th of February, Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor lead core developer, has finally announced the launch of Ardor’s testnet. After some previous testing done by some members of the Nxt community who were very knowledgeable about the platform, the Ardor testnet is finally ready
From this moment on, much more testing on the features that this platform offers is needed to be done before the launch of mainnet in the third quarter of this year. Thus, this period of time is not only meant to let people have a glimpse into the capabilities of Ardor, but will also let the developers make sure that the platform works properly and make the necessary minor adjustments.
This is an experimental release for testing only. Source code is not provided.
Come on and join us to test the new platform! You can download the software from Github and start experiencing Ardor right now!
This new version of the NRS has been released just one day before the launch of Ardor’s testnet. The changelog for this version includes some minor bug fixing, small changes in the way the media files are dealt with in the Data cloud, as well as updates to the Jetty version.
You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Github. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same as the hash of that file. You can check this using your NRS wallet or other online third party services that allow you to do so, so that you are absolutely sure that you are receiving the legitimate file.
NSD – A Project Based on Nxt is Nominated for the Futures Options World Award
In April 2016, Russia’s National Settlement Depository announced that they have successfully developed a decentralized voting system, based on Nxt’s Voting System, that was able to process 80 votes per second. Since then, we’ve recently heard that this project was nominated for the Futures Options World Award,which took place last December. This project was announced with the following statement:
The prototype is based on the NXT distributed cryptographic platform, and uses ISO 20022 international standard for messaging. NSD has been working on the project together with DSX Technologies. The project’s open-source code is available on GitHub.
As we mentioned in a previous newsletter, the NSD has ignored the GPLv2 license conditions, and still hasn’t released the code of their new development. The repository they previously used (https://github.com/dsx-tech/e-voting/tree/master/sources/e-voting) only shows a CLOSED SOURCE “nxt.jar” file under the “libs” folder, and the client-side code, which is used to interface with that modified Nxt server code. Therefore, the NSD is clearly breaching the conditions of the license.
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
…if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program’s users, under the GPL.
We’d like to remind businesses, financial entities, governments, or any person interested in using the Nxt code, that they must respect the license agreement.
Decentralize Today – Massive Business Opportunities Hidden in the Nxt Blockchain
Websioux, admin at scriba.io, among others, and member of the Nxt community, has published an interesting article on the news platform Decentralize Today about the Nxt blockchain and the future Ardor platform. The text talks about the new usage possibilities that this technology offers to entrepreneurs and how it can be profitable for their traditional business.
The author accounts for some features included in the Nxt blockchain and explains some practical use cases for businesses, such as: open ledger, which allows you to see all the transactions from/to an account; the data cloud, which allows you to publish small files on the blockchain; private messaging, which allows you to issue contracts that can be verified by consulting the blockchain; account control, which can be used to organize governance in a transparent way, and many more.
The internet is available 24/7 for a party to sign any contract and for outsiders to verify contracts integrity!
The initiative for starting a nuclear regulatory commission using Nxt, which we mentioned in a previous newsletter as well, is one of the innovative examples that the author, already a member of that club, sets as an example of what can be achieved with Nxt.
Deep Dot Web – An Overview Of Smart Contract Scripting For Cryptocurrency Blockchains
In this article by Tamer Sameeh published on Deep Dot Web, the author talks about Smart Contracts, a concept that was coined by the cryptographer Nick Szabo aiming at revolutionizing contract law and formal business practices via the innovation of electronic commerce protocols among trustless parties across the internet
The author explains the evolution that this concept has experienced, its practical applications, and how this concept is applied in different blockchains. Among these, he includes Nxt, though inadequately in our opinion, because Nxt lacks this specific feature of Smart Contracts
Riker, a Nxt and Ardor core developer, clarified some time ago this subject:
“Rather than providing smart contracts, NXT is focused on implementing important use cases and functions directly into the core of both Nxt and Ardor. This approach has proven to be scalable and secure and will become more so when Ardor is released”
However, the text is correct when mentioning that Nxt has a comprehensive API that allows users, together with the Smart Transactions that are implemented in Nxt, a great versatility when developing something close to a Smart Contract.
A portion of the article is based on the results of a research paper published here, a document that has some inaccuracies about the Nxt platform. Fortunately, Pablo Lamela, one of the authors of the article, had the opportunity to chat with Lior Yaffe, to clarify some of these questions. This is what Riker stated after that talk:
Had a good call with @palas and explained a few things about NXT (and ETH), I hope they’ll incorporate my feedback into a more accurate paper
Have a look at the Developers Section to learn about all the features that Nxt has.
Blockshow Europe 2017 – Bringing the Best Projects in Blockchain to a Public Forum
In our December newsletter we mentioned the announcement of Dave Pearce, board member of the Nxt Foundation, about the biggest event related to blockchain technology in Europe this year, “BlockShow Europe 2017“, which will take place on the 6th of April. The date is fast approaching and many representatives of fintech and blockchain companies are confirming their attendance
The Nxt Foundation is very proud to announce that the Nxt and Ardor community will be represented at the CoinTelegraph BlockShow Europe. We’ve got a booth/table in the main exhibition space, and will be organizing an Nxt/Ardor presence at the show.
We’d like to get as many Nxters as possible to Munich for this show, so reserve your ticket now, via Eventbrite, using our referral code NXTMUNICH
The article presents a novel institutional perspective on the distributed consensus and ledger technology known as blockchain. The text talks about the tools that blockchain technology brings to push Distributed Autonomous Institutions and the benefits they would bring, such as facilitating global interactions, contracts, and value transfers, all of which are achieved without the need for the human-based third party.
The author also explains how the technology offered by Nxt/Ardor allows us, even today, to achieve this objective:
A proposed solution to this problem is the use of child chains to coordinate asset-based transactions as implemented in the new blockchain alternative Ardor… In contrast to Ethereum’s support for general-purpose code, Ardor will concentrate on specific asset-based transactions… The security model is further strengthened by supporting complex preconditions for the execution of transactions… The concept furthermore includes built-in mechanisms to manage governance and decision-making processes in a reliable and anonymous fashion.
The following graphic shows the NXT / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week: The following graphic shows the ARDR / Bitcoin exchange price at Poloniex over this past week:
Ardor – Advanced Users of Nxt Give a Hand in Tuning it Up
Riker, one of the Nxt and Ardor core developers, has invited users on NxtChat on Slack for some volunteers who have a solid knowledge of Nxt to test the new Ardor software on the testnet, in order to speed up the opening of the testnet to general users, which is expected to happen in the near future.
Lior says:
As we are wrapping up the Ardor testnet release, and before we release it publicly, we are looking for power users who know NXT 1.x well to join us in testing the platform. This would be a volunteer base work (unless some whale would like to put an NXT or Ardor bounty for this). You have to be very technical, not easily frustrated and if you have prior background in software development and testing that’s a big plus.
What you will get is:
Access to an Ardor testnet public node first, then access to a binary distribution, and the chance to work with folks like JL, myself and other core devs side by side, who knows, perhaps this would also develop into an employment opportunity in the future.
Most important is UI testing. API testing is important as well. We need someone to test processes like create a poll, vote, check the results. Create an asset, send multiple ask/bid orders and verify that the trade results are correct etc. No need for coding but if know how to place a breakpoint in JavaScript code and check some variables values that’s a big plus.
It seems that things are running smoothly and this pre-release test will help refine some minor details to make Ardor, at least, as stable as Nxt has been throughout all these years. Ardor is on its way.
We are to be excited! Throughout January, a thousand new members have joined Nxtforum. This is the second month in a row that this membership growth figure has been achieved. This large amount of newcomers, which is starting to become a regular occurrence, is a good sign of the interest that blockchain enthusiasts have put in Nxt and Ardor, which also seems to reflect on the price rise that Ardor has experienced during the past few weeks.
[easy-tweet tweet=”I am also a member of the Nxt community” user=”https://twitter.com/nxtcommunity” hashtags=”#Nxt #Ardor #Nxter” url=”https://nxtforum.org/”]
We’d like to encourage our readers to sign up and become a member of this growing community. Or, if you prefer, you can also join the Nxt community using the following platforms:
The Janus team has distributed the first dividend payment coming from Betterbets.io, the betting platform that belongs to Janus, among its investors. The recent successful integration of ShapeShift in this platform allows the players to buy NXT using other cryptos and place their bets straight on this platform with NXT.
Moreover, the volume of bets that were placed using NXT has been quite remarkable. Bjorn, member of the Janus team, explained:
Just to give a recap for stats sake, it’s been about 11 days since NXT on Betterbets.io went live without downtime. Total: Bets: 965,920 Wagered: 2,255,526 NXT.
NXT stats at almost 1 million bets isn’t too bad really. Over 2 million in volume wagered, also solid. I don’t yet have the numbers for number of shapeshift.io purchases on site but will monitor this as well…
The LQD asset, managed by LibertyNow, has had a dividend distribution for the month of January with the equivalent of 3.4 BTC distributed among investors, in the form of NXT and ARDR. Each investor received, in their respective Nxt accounts, 0.64 NXT plus 0.21 ARDR for every unit of LQD they own. This has been a good month for investors, with an ROI of 10.88%
It seems as if the tune up that LibertyNow performed on his bot in order to achieve the maximum profit (while reducing loses when markets don’t behave rationally) is starting to bear fruit. Liquid Technologies is well-known for its transparency. You can check, in real time, all operations of the fund at http://www.liquidtech.info/trades
LibertyNow commented:
After running a couple polls, I decided to split the dividend payment between ARDR and NXT. Everyone should see two dividend transactions in their accounts…one as a NXT payment and one as an asset transfer (the ARDR). The dividends totaled about 3.4BTC and new software updates seem to be chugging along quite nicely.
This has been the forth week in a row where we get to see some previews regarding new Ardor functionalities. Damelon, of the Nxt Foundation, has shared some screenshots where we can see the new Dividend Payment feature that will be included in Ardor.
These images let us know that, when using Ardor, any business or project owner will able to perform dividend distributions to their investors with any asset or coin integrated on Ardor, or using the child chain coin.
In our previous newsletter, we mentioned a list of pending tasks that Riker shared with a thread at Nxtforum. These tasks help give indication on the upcoming release of Ardor’s testnet, which will happen soon after all of them are fulfilled. The server code is almost completed and the APIs are stable, so there isn’t much left.
Riker says:
Things are looking good overall. One thing for sure, we are going to confuse you a bit with the fee structure from bundlers to forgers so be patient. Still hesitant if to open the testing to more people since currently it is much quicker to find bugs than to fix them. Whoever already has access is welcome to continue testing and if all goes well I’ll open this up for more testers in the next couple of days.
TO-DO list (updated as of February the 6th, 2017)
– More work on the Coin Exchange page and tables (Needs more testing)
– Prefix each MS currency name with the name of the chain to which it belongs (Needs more testing)
– Ability to link from a child chain transaction to the ChildChainBlock transaction in which it was bundled (Done)
– Improve the entity properties modal to support entities like orders and offers (Done)
– Format amounts and links in the entity properties modal (Done)
– Test and fix currency reserve/claim tables and modals (Done)
– Remove child chain specific widgets from the Ardor UI (Done)
– Remove Ardor specific widgets from the child chain UI (Done)
– UI for the new “by holding” dividend modal (Done)
– UI for the “by holding” dividend history (Done)
In addition we also need to double check the UI of the following modules for problems caused by the mode to per chain entities:
– AE – still needs more testing
– MS – still needs more testing
– Messages – Donefew open issues
– DGS
– Voting
– Cloud Data – Done
– Aliases – Done
– Phasing
– Account Control – some problems
– Leasing – Done
– Account Properties – Done
– Account Monitor – Done,needs testing
– Shuffling – Done
Nxt platform strives to knock out traditional messengers by its new service. Company have decided to replace the traditional email systems with blockchain, allowing mail to be sent through a decentralized network such as CryptaMail. CryptaMail requires one NXT per message. With prices set for each message, we might have to pay for privacy in the future.
A few weeksago, we mentioned the announcement of Adel, a new cryptocurrency ecosystem that benefits from the technology of Nxt to create, develop, and implement use cases involving blockchain technology that covers a wide-range of digital and physical industries. The platform itself will have DAO-like qualities backed by a global cryptocurrency, the Adelphoi token, which will be released after the first round of the ICO.
Adel has recently been mentioned at Invest It In. Travin Keith, Marketing Manager of Adel and Board Member of the Nxt Foundation, explains in this interview titled “The Kickstarter for ICO’s” about both of Adel’s objectives and the benefits that the Nxt platform brings, as well as the role that the community will play.
Travin explains in the interview:
Adel is trying to solve the lack of a platform for blockchain projects that doesn’t just help with launching the project with funds, but also provides support and guidance throughout the whole life of a project. Adel also aims to actively engage its community members in the projects and can also connect the projects with VCs for further funding if necessary… Is Adel a decentralised organisation? – Yes, absolutely. While the Adel Board and staff will be providing guidance and support to the projects launched on Adel, major decisions… are decided with a vote by the community members…
…Smart Transactions… will be used for voting…
…it was deemed to be more ideal to use the Nxt blockchain… as well as the upcoming Ardor blockchain…smart transactions…phased transactions… One of the other features that Adel will utilize is the decentralized voting system for the polls that will be run for the community regarding major decisions
…The R&D team will release a few more projects before the ICO that will be proposed to the community.
…The DAO and Wings would probably be the most similar system in the crypto community… Compared with The DAO, Adel will have a more stable structure around it with guidance from the Adel Board, as well as support from the staff before projects are introduced to the community… The smart contract scenario that ruined The DAO will not be possible with Adel… unlike Wings, projects on Adel will not be limited to blockchain projects that support Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) functionality… While the Nxt and Ardor platforms will have the first right of refusal, if other blockchain solutions are needed for projects, then it will be possible to use other blockchain solutions…
Recently, as a sneak preview, Adel’s R&D team has shared their very first project to be proposed to the community, a P2P ATM which will allow users to find people nearby who are willing to exchange coins and cash on-demand.
Fintech Finance – Creating Value With Cryptocurrencies
The online magazine Fintech Finance has syndicated the fourth whitepaper of Adel, which has been recently published. The article called Creating Value with Cryptocurrency goes over the possibilities that blockchain 2.0 brings to both financial and administrative sectors (mobility, resilience, privacy, cryptographic proof, improved financial system, lower transaction fees…) and the advantages that the 100% decentralized and revolutionary technologies that Nxt and Ardor platforms can offer, to build up a project as big as Adel. These traits include: PoS decentralized blockchain, phased transactions, monetary system, decentralized voting, decentralized marketplace, shuffling, and a decentralized asset exchange.
The article explains that the value of Adel is in leveraging a state-of-the-art blockchain such as Nxt and Ardor, as well as the Adel ecosystem, and then combining these technologies with best-in-class business practices. Some of the advantages of the Adel ecosystem enumerated in the whitepaper are:
Project Approvals: The establishment of a Project Review Committee which not only ensures that Adel will launch profitable businesses, but also represents legitimate, legal and ethical projects… Successful projects will prove sustainable, long-term growth, as well as global monetization potential for blockchain technologies. Decision Leadership: …utilizing expert decision makers to guide decisions in the community. Once a decision has been authorized by the leadership, it is then submitted to the community for consensus, enhancement and further decisions… Open & Transparent: … auditable financial transactions for all projects and provides the foundation for a self-regulated community capable of making important economic decisions. The voting system establishes the opinion of the majority… Social forums allow for open and constructive communications between community members… Integrity: … Adel’s integrity is the foundation of our success and for the sustainability of a profitable ecosystem… Support : After a project has been launched on Adel… the project manager will be adequately supported by the Adel staff, as well as community members participating throughout the lifetime of the project… in the form of expert advisory services, finding employees, and assistance with securing external funding, such as with venture capitalists.
Search Engine Journal – Transforming Technology With Raspberry Pi
In this article at Search Engine Journal, Travin Keith, Board Member of the Nxt Foundation, goes over the revolution that the Raspberry Pi has caused in the tech world since its launch. The wide adoption of this small device, together with the communities that has emerged support this open-source project has allowed it.
All together, the Raspberry Pi has enabled the development of thousands of projects that rely on this inexpensive device. The article goes over some of them, but what stands out among the projects mentioned is the inclusion of the RasPi in the blockchain world, specifically with the Nxt blockchain. With Nxt being the first and most evolved PoS platform, which has showed its security and resilience by running smoothly over the past three years, it still doesn’t require a network of super computers (that consume as much energy that a nuclear power plant can generate) to run.
By setting up a Nxt node on a Raspberry Pi, you can easily participate in the Nxt ecosystem and help the block generation process in this feature-filled blockchain (called forging in Nxt), with an energy consumption of just a few watts per hour, which is probably less than the standby mode of your microwave. Such is an unimaginable achievement for PoW coins like Bitcoin. Additionally, as we mentioned in our previous newsletter, there are prototypes of solar-powered Nxt nodes built using a Raspberry Pi, such as the one made by Zuqka.
MyNXT.info Wallet – How to View and Transfer Assets
It’s become common that some users of the MyNXT.info online wallet, the popular service brought to you by some members of the Nxt community (a service which isn’t a part of the official Nxt Reference Software), ask some questions to the Nxt community about how they can check their asset balance, more specially, their ARDR balance as this option is disabled by default.
In October last year, CryptKeeper shared a small step-by-step guide that shows you how to install the free plugin which is necessary in order to view and transfer your Nxt assets on this web wallet.
CryptKeeper explains:
A short description for installing the Asset Plugin on wallet.mynxt.info to see your Ardor
Log into your account at wallet.mynxt.info
On the left there is the dashboard with a “+ Plugins” button, click on it:
Chose the basic asset plugin:
Confirm the disclaimer and your plugin will be installed
Back at the dashboard, click on the plugin button:
You will see your Ardor balance under “My Assets” and you can send them out by clicking on the asset name and choosing the second tab “Transfer”!
The Asset plugins in MyNxt do not have currently the option to attach a message to an asset transfer, as required by Bittrex. This is as far as I’ve seen an unusual requirement for an exchange deposit, but I have reported this to the MyNxt website developer so this modification can be added to development list.
With this brief statement, BTC38, the popular exchange based in China, and one of the most utilized to trade NXT, announced that ARDR was included into its platform, thus allowing users to exchange it for BTC and vice-versa:
In just a short amount of time, the exchange climbed up to the third position by volume among all the exchanges that allow you to trade ARDR. We should also point out that on BTC38, the NXT/CNY pair is also the 4th-most traded cryptocurrency on the platform. Also ARDR/BTC has become, in record time, the 9th-most traded token there. A brilliant start.
Some Nxt users with programming abilities have shown some interest on how use the Account Monitor feature, by means of the fully-featured API that the Nxt platform has. Some well-known developers of the Nxt community have come up with some solutions to this end, including websioux or ScripterRon, Nxt Core Developer:
If you have that many to check or more, yes, you’d better check the transactions when they appear on your node. But remember blockchain reorgs do occur and in that case you should detect it, and check if it has a consequence for your treatment or not. Otherwise, it’s probably not going to take that much to check the transactions of 1000 address, I’d bet for something between 1 and 10 sec.
One possibility is to use the EventWait API. You can be notified when blocks are pushed and popped. For a rollback, you will get a block popped event for the old block followed by a block pushed event for the new block.
Additionally, “regular” users can also benefit from this through a service that some third parties are offering. With this, you will receive an email every time something happens in the account you are monitoring, as we mentioned in our November newsletter:
Nxt Alerts: This is an utility inside the MyNxt portal which sends you an email everytime
Jean-Luc, Nxt and Ardor core developer, announced the inclusion of two new features to the future Ardor platform in addition toCoin Exchange, a feature that will let you trade one child chain token for another child chain token, or for ARDR. The latest features included are:
A017. 2015-07-28. Allow AE issuer use Asset to make dividends payment in another Asset.
A006. 2015-06-16. Allow AE issuer use MS to dividends payment.
Those two are already implemented in Ardor
Jean-Luc has also published a chart on nxtforum.org that compares the major differences in the functionalities between Nxt and Ardor:
Blockchains
Single chain
One parent chain with multiple child chains
Transaction tokens
The same token (NXT) is used for establishing the consensus and providing the security of the blockchain, as well as for the basic unit of value in all transactions
Only the parent chain token (ARDR) is used in the proof-of-stake consensus, and thus provides security for all child chains. Child chain tokens are used as transactional units of value only.
Transaction fees
Transaction fees are paid in NXT only, requiring users to always have NXT in their accounts.
On each chain transaction fees are paid in the native token (coin) of that chain. End users do not need to own ARDR tokens.
Features
Asset Exchange, Monetary System, Aliases, Messaging, Digital Goods Store, Voting System, Shuffling, Data Cloud, Phasing, Account Control, Account Properties
All these features are preserved in Ardor, and are available on each child chain. A child chain can optionally be restricted not to enable some features. The parent chain supports a limited subset of features, as it is intended to be used for consensus establishing only and not for everyday transactions.
Accounts
Each passphrase maps to a single account. Passphrases can’t be changed, and there is no wallet file to store.
The same mapping of passphrases to account numbers is used as in Nxt. Accounts are global across all child chains, and an account can have balances in each of the existing child chain coins, as well as in ARDR.
Holdings
There is a single coin (NXT), and unlimited user-issued Assets and Monetary System currencies.
Each chain has its own coin. Assets and MS currencies can be issued on any child chain, and are available for trading globally. Assets or MS currencies can optionally be restricted* to some child chains only.
Trading
Assets and MS currencies can be traded for NXT only.
Assets and MS currencies can be traded on any child chain, with price denominated in the corresponding child chain coin.
Coin Exchange
N/A
A new feature, Coin Exchange, allows trading of child chain coins to each other, and also to the parent chain coin (ARDR).
Dividends
Asset dividends can be paid in NXT only.
Asset dividends can be paid in any of the child chain coins, by simply issuing the payment transaction on the corresponding chain. Additionally, paying dividends in another Asset or in MS currency has been implemented.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding feature is available in the Monetary System, but the funds must be collected in NXT only.
Crowdfunding feature is available on all child chains, and on each child chain the funds are collected in the corresponding child chain coin.
Shuffling
Shuffling of NXT, Assets, and MS currencies is available.
On each child chain, shuffling of the corresponding coin, or any Asset or MS Currency, is supported.
Aliases
Alias names are globally unique.
Alias names are unique within each child chain only.
MS Currencies
Currency codes and names are globally unique.
Currency codes and names are unique within a child chain only.
Pruning
Pruning is available for plain and encrypted messages, and for tagged data (data cloud feature). Pruned data are retrieved automatically on demand from designated archival nodes.
Pruning and retrieving of all prunable data is available as in Nxt. In addition, the child chain transactions themselves are designed to be prunable and will not need to be stored permanently or re-downloaded by every new node. The actual pruning of transactions will be implemented later.*
Transaction identifiers
Transaction IDs are 64-bit longs, and are globally unique.
The 64-bit transaction IDs are no longer guaranteed to be globally unique for child chains. 256-bit transaction hashes (sha256 digests) are used instead as transaction identifiers.
Block generation
A “forging” process is used to create new blocks, with the probability of block creation dependent on the account NXT balance (stake).
The same forging algorithm is used as in Nxt, dependent on ARDR account balances only.
Bundling
N/A
A new process, “bundling”, is used to group child chain transactions into a parent chain transaction (“child chain block”), which is then included in the parent chain. Any account can play the role of a bundler. The bundling process also performs the exchange of fees paid by users in child chain tokens into ARDR fees accepted by the block forgers.
Phasing
Transaction execution can be made conditional, subject to approval using various voting models.
Same voting models as in Nxt, but phasing is possible on child chains only. Approval transactions can be on a different child chain from the phased transaction, and the by-transaction voting model also supports linking to a transaction hash on a different child chain.
Account control
Accounts can be restricted to use phasing only (mandatory approval).
Same as in Nxt, but accounts under phasing-only restriction cannot submit transactions on the parent chain, as those cannot be phased.
Peer networking
HTTP based, also with WebSocket support, transmitting JSON formatted data between peers.
Completely re-written and optimized, using native Java sockets and binary messages between peers. Block and transaction propagation has been significantly improved, by exchanging and caching information about currently available blocks and transactions between peers and only propagating the missing data pieces.
Mostly unchanged, except:
1. A “chain” parameter has been added to each API that is child chain specific.
2. 64-bit long transaction IDs have been replaced with 256-bit hashes.
3. All prices and rates that were previously defined relative to the smallest indivisible holding amount (“QNT”) are now defined relative to a unit of the holding (share).
Scalability
Transactions are stored in the blockchain permanently, and need to be re-downloaded and re-processed by every new node, which after months and years of operation becomes a significant bottleneck.
All child chain transactions will be possible to prune completely, without affecting blockchain security, thus allowing the blockchain size to be kept much smaller. A new node joining the network only needs to download the parent chain transactions, followed by the latest snapshot of the current system state.*
* Functionallity marked with asterisk is planned to be implemented in a future Ardor release. All other functionallity is already implemented and currently being tested on a testnet blockchain.
Riker, Nxt and Ardor core developer, published a list of all the remaining tasks that have to be completed before the Ardor Testnet goes live. There isn’t an exact date when the the launch of the testnet will take place yet, but it will happen in this first quarter of 2017. It’s important to note that after some previous leaked images, the market capitalization of Nxt and Ardor went up, which shows how many people are keeping and eye on these projects. Obviously, there is a lot to be expected.
Getting closer to the Ardor testnet release but still some way to go.The server code is nearly complete and the APIs are mostly stable… Most of the work will now focus on getting the client UI ready for release
Here is a list of remaining tasks which we would like to complete before the official release:
– More work on the Coin Exchange page and tables
– Prefix each MS currency name with the name of the chain to which it belongs – partially implemented
– Ability to link from a child chain transaction to the ChildChainBlock transaction in which it was bundled – done
– Improve the entity properties modal to support entities like orders and offers – done
– Format amounts and links in the entity properties modal
– Test and fix currency reserve/claim tables and modals
– Remove child chain specific widgets from the Ardor UI
– Reomve Ardor specific widgets from the child chain UI
– UI for the new “by holding” dividend modal
– UI for the “by holding” dividend history
The Percept – Nxt is the New Generation of Bitcoin
Irem Sokullu, of The Percept platform, conducted an interview with Bas Wisselink and Dave Pearce, both members of the Nxt Foundation. Bas and Dave answered questions concerning basic concepts of the blockchain, its philosophy, new possibilitie, advantages of decentralization, and the key differences between PoW (Bitcoin) and PoS (Nxt), among other questions.
Here is a snippet of some of the questions that you can find in the full article:
Irem (interviewer): Bitcoin is using Proof of Work and NXT uses the Proof of Stake. Please tell me more about the difference. .
Bas: PoW can be characterized as a contest. The strongest computer assaults the cryptographical puzzle fastest. So, the more powerful equipment you have, the more Bitcoin you will mine. That leads to a large hardware race and a lot of power consumption. Proof of Stake is more like a lottery in which each coin in the system can be seen as a ticket to the lottery. The more ticket you have, the more chance you get to generate a new block. You don’t spend hardware and power on that lottery. It is an energy efficient system.
Dave: Participants put their stakes into the system, software choices in a semi-randomized way who gets the reward next. NXT has 1 billion tokens. That is the way Proof of Stake works to ensure the trust in the system.
The Percept also recorded a video interview with Bas:
Recently, there were some Nxt users who have shown some interest in offline transaction signing, which consists of operating a device that isn’t connected to the internet when using the Nxt wallet in order to achieve a higher level of security against viruses and trojans.
ScripterRon, a Nxt core developer and member of Jelurida, has shared some instructions to developers who are interested in using the Nxt API to achieve this objective:
…Take a look at https://github.com/ScripterRon/NxtCore to see how to sign a transaction. The Transaction() class creates a signed or unsigned transaction…
…I took a different approach for Ardor which might be simpler to understand. Take a look at https://github.com/ScripterRon/Nxt2API. Look at Nxt.broadcastTransaction() which takes the unsigned bytes returned by the server, signs the transaction, and then broadcasts the transaction…
Moreover, with the recent release of the NRS mobile app, it’s now easier for all Nxt users to sign the transactions while being offline. Riker, also a Nxt core developer and member of Jelurida, commented on this when he introduced the latest NRS version:
One interesting use case for the mobile app is to use an old phone or tablet completely offline only for signing transactions. This way you never have to expose your passphrase to online computer. See https://nxtwiki.org/wiki/Offline_Transaction_Signing
…When the mobile device is offline, the device settings modal allows signing transactions and generating tokens to support cold storage functionality.
For those of you who are interested in this feature, we’d like to remind you that there is a step-by-step tutorial at the Nxt Wiki in order to achieve this.
As we announced in previous newsletters, BetterBets.io, the platform that was created in the past by some members of the Janus team, has successfully implemented ShapeShift on its system, which allows anyone who is interested, from this moment on, to exchange any cryptocoin accepted by ShapeShift for NXT and be able to place bets on this platform.
Bjorn_bb has been the one in charge to make this announcement on Janus’ channel on Slack, and has shared an image with us to show the results:
Damelon, of the Nxt Foundation, has shared some details about the future ways child chains on Ardor will operate, as well as information of the bundlers that will bundle these chains with the Ardor main chain. Anyone who meets the requirements can be a bundler. The child chain issuer and the bundler don’t have to be the same person.
– Block submission is paid for in Ardor on the main chain. If you want your transaction to be validated, they will need to be sent to a bundler who will then offer them to the main chain…
– Payment to the bundler is in the child chain token. Bundlers will exchange child chain tokens to Ardor. That’s where their economic incentive is…
– …But a child chain without a bundler cannot exist. It needs a bundler for transactions to get into the main chain…To start a complete child chain, you need a bundler…
– Bundlers handle two tokens. Users on a child chain will only need one.
– If the business model is correct, though, you can bet you can find a bundler who would see value in bundling it.
– Here are multiple hierarchical tokens: Top token is Ardor, then come the child chain main tokens. One each child chain, you also can have tokens specific to that child chain, like MS currencies which are tied to the specific child chain. Assets are global on the Ardor system and can be traded across chains…
– Ardor does the forging, the child chains do the pooling of transactions. Bundlers pool the transaction and then submit them to a block, but in order to be included in the ledger, you will need the main chain.
The child chain fees are determined by the bundlers for that chain. For example, an IGNIS bundler could accept transactions with a fee rate of 0.01 IGNIS. That means a transaction which costs 1 ARDR will cost 0.01 IGNIS. So a transaction costing 40 ARDR would cost you 0.4 IGNIS and the bundler would pay 40 ARDR. Obviously, the bundler wants to also be a forger or have some way to recover the 40 ARDR cost…
Damelon, of the Nxt Foundation, has again shared some previews with us regarding the Ardor platform, of which its testnet is expected to be launched during this first quarter of 2017. This time, Bas has showed us a screenshot of the Coin Exchange, which allows us to exchange tokens in one child chain against tokens in another child chain, or against Ardor. Here it is:
A preview of the dialog window for bundlers has also been shared. You can find more information in this same newsletter:
User EmoneyRu has announced an update to his useful application to manage Nxt nodes on VPS servers.
EmoneyRu says:
With the latest commit, I’ve migrated to ‘chain-original-conf.ZIP’. It means that from now we can use snapshots from peerexplorer.com (or, of course, we can pack the similar archive).
This open source software, is an easy way to deploy or update Nxt on any of your VPS or Dedicated Servers that run Linux (Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, etc). Among its features include easy Hallmarked nodes deployment (it changes its config to make the node public), malfunction detection, and automatic client restart (when needed). Moreover, it lets you download the blockchain straight from peerexplorer.com, thus speeding up this part of the set up process of your node.
User chevdor has uploaded the latest NRS in a Docker open source container with version version 1.11.2
Docker is a tool that can package an application and its dependencies in a virtual container that can run on any Linux server. This helps enable flexibility and portability regarding where the application can run, whether on-premises, a public cloud, a private cloud, bare metal, etc.
As we mentioned in previous newsletters, running NRS in a Docker container can be even easier than running it “the normal way”. It’s especially useful when running Nxt on a VPS: No java required, no download, no specific configuration… In addition to this, in spite of being a type of “virtual machine”, it does not decrease performance.
The… Moldova’s first Blockchain Laboratory… will study the possible benefits and use cases of the technology, and will afford opportunities to students and non students for internships where they will gain knowledge and work experience in this exciting new field….
With… our partnership and Officially Moldova’s First Blockchain Lab “Drachmae Project Lab 2.0” hosted at ASEM, Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova…Hopefully EvilDave can attend 23rd to 24th…
The panel discussion: “Innovative and Creative Economies: how Blockchain creates microeconomics start-ups”
What has not been announced publicly but the First Three projects in the Lab by Three different companies, are based on NXT:
We have reasons to be happy! The Nxt Community has reached 1,000 users on its Slack team in less than one year. This Slack team was originally launched by Damelon, of the Nxt Foundation, on the 19th of January, 2016, and has been steadily receiving new users throughout this period.
For its part, stats on Nxtforum also look nice. During December and January, over 1 900 new members joined the forum. Nxt has the technology, the team, and the best community. Come on and join us!
The Janus team has announced the launch of a new token on the Nxt platform. JanusEX, an asset, was created to reward those Janus investors with over 2 000 000 tokens, who will receive this new asset in addition to the Janus tokens they already hold. Owners of JanusEX will receive 40% of all the income from the online casino betterbets.io, which will be added to the current dividends of the asset. This revenues will start on March 2018, and will take place on the first day of every month.
We are now adding value to Janus tokens through multiple sites and businesses, there is also the option for larger holders to acquire some income exclusive to them as well.We will be adding more dividends to both Janus and JanusEX as development progresses through the years.
Expect some surprises to boost token value and options to increase passive income for people who are interested.
Betterbets.io – Betting with NXT will Improve Dividends to Janus Token Holders
The day has come to include the use of NXT at Betterbets.io. The Janus team has issued a press release, addressed to both investors and players, which explains the details about the inclusion of NXT in this betting platform. They state that 90% of the profits coming from NXT betting will be given away to the owners of the Janus token.
Bjorn says:
This update will be adding the option to bet with NXT, we are sure most of you have heard of it. The reason we felt this currency was a valid addition for BetterBets, was because of the great community and developers that Nxt has built since it’s launch in 2013. Our staff have become a part of the community as well, and we are learning very quickly that their blockchain and wallet software is an incredibily powerful business tool.
The Janus team seems to be in constant evolution, always trying to evolve the conventional business and combine it with the blockchain technology, which will bring short and long term revenues to the owners of their token.
This past week marked the end of the sale of the first 250 000 assets for sale by DeBuNe, thus ending the first phase of the funding campaign launched last August, which included special prices for those nxters who bought the asset through the Nxt Asset Exchange. It has been a long and silent process, due to non-disclosure agreements that don’t allow the team to publish much news about what they are doing. With this, the initial phase of funding ended and, soon, the following phase of the ICO will begin.
…I am so excited that we are getting close to launching the ICO. Guys, you have no idea what a crazy amount of things launching an ICO requires… with DeBuNe we have TONS to show everyone with the efforts already done. It should go great, and if all is as I hope, then those of you who got some in the AE will have quite a treat when exchanging them in the future. Thanks for all the support from everyone
DeBuNe will have an ICO toward the end of the year, beginning of next year. A lot of news will be released, and there will be a distribution of the coins. 250000 will be sold in the ICO, and 250000 will be given to the asset holders with an average holding calculated in a period that will be announced (something similar to the ardor distribution). I have put some DeBuNe assets at 19 NXT each in the AE, and 15k more will be made available in the next weeks at a higher price until a total of 250000 assets are circulating in the Nxt AE.
The ICO will sell for definitely more than 20NXT per coin, so this is an soft offer for NXT holders.
…
Despite Capodieci’s discretion, as a logical consequence of NDAs, which are very common in these type of business, user Amalgamus, a member of the Nxt community, warned us about a web page where DeBuNe and Roberto are listed as members of a remarkable business initiative which offer collaborative solutions to important investors all around the world, which include banks and other big corporations.
As we announced in our previous newsletter, the design of Ardor will allow business that are interested to build an exchange on this platform by means of a child chain on Ardor.
The new feature that will be added to Ardor in order to allow this functionality is called Coin Exchange. This will allow trading one child chain token for another or to Ardor tokens.
Bit by bit, the core developers are making significant progress in this aspect and they are showing us these new functionalities that will be included. This time Damelon, member of the Nxt Foundation, has shared some images regarding potential BTC-USD trades on Ardor.
ScripterRon and Riker, Nxt Developers and members of Jelurida, have answered some questions over at Nxtforum.org concerning fiat gateways, bundlers, a global Asset Exchange, etc. on Ardor
About the global Asset Exchange:
Assets are defined globally, they are not on a particular chain. You can buy and sell an asset on any chain. The prices are in the units for that chain. That means the same asset can have different prices depending on the chain. Which makes sense since the coins will have different values.You may be thinking about exchanging coins from chain A for coins from chain B. When you do this, you specify the number of chain A coins that you want to exchange and the maximum price you will pay for chain B coins. For example, if exchanging USD for EUR, you could exchange 10.00 USD at a price of 2.00 USD/EUR. You would be able to buy at least 5 EUR and possibly more depending on the exchange prices.
Your order would be matched with an order that wants to exchange EUR for USD. Say that an existing order wanted to exchange 2.00 EUR at a price of 0.80 EUR/USD. Which translates to 1.25 USD/EUR. The exchange uses the price from the oldest order, so the exchange price is 1.25 USD/EUR. You receive 2.00 EUR since that is all that the seller had available. In return, the seller receives 2.50 USD. His order is complete but yours is still open since you still have 7.50 USD available to exchange.
About child chains bundlers:
Anybody can bundle child transactions. But you must have ARDR. When you bundle child transactions, you create a child block transaction which is included in the next block. You receive fees from the child transactions and you pay ARDR for the child block transaction. You can use the child coins to create your own transactions or exchange them for another coin (including ARDR if somebody has ARDR they want to get rid of). There is a Coin Exchange similar to the Asset Exchange and the Currency Exchange where users can trade child coins with each other.
About the fiat gateways:
Nxt 2.x will contain a Coin Exchange where users can trade child coins with each other. So the value of a particular coin will depend on what people are willing to pay for it using one of the other coins.The value of a child coin measured in an external coin such as Bitcoin will depend on whatever gateway is used to exchange the child coin for Bitcoins. If the gateway used a 1:1 ratio, then that would indirectly value all of the other child coins since they could then be measured against Bitcoins using the exchangeable coin as a proxy.
About the chain where a coin transaction will be:
The transaction is in the chain for the coin you want to exchange. The exception is that any exchange involving ARDR will be in the main (FXT) chain since ARDR exchanges affect forging and cannot be pruned.
You can issue a coin exchange from any chain coin to any other chain coin.
You specify amount and price.
Amount – the number of your coins that you want to exchange.
Price – is the number of your coins that you want to pay for one of the exchange coins.
For example, if you are exchanging USD chain coins for BTC chain coins, the price would be the value of 1 BTC in dollars.
Order matching works the same way as order matching of the current asset exchange.
In addition, each chain can now use different number of decimals, for example 8 decimals for BTC and Ardor, 2 for USD chain.
About the coin in which the fees will be payed:
When exchanging USD for EUR, the transaction is sent to the USD chain and the fee is paid in USD. When exchanging EUR for USD, the transaction is sent to the EUR chain and the fee is paid in EUR. It takes 2 transactions for an exchange and both parties pay transaction fees in their respective coins. The coin exchange is similar to the asset exchange except there are 2 prices involved. One way to look at it is that each exchange order contains a buy price and an ask price. If you are exchanging 5 USD at a price of 2.00 USD, then your bid price is 2.00 USD per EUR. Your order has an implicit ask price of 0.50 EUR per USD. That is, you won’t pay more than 2 USD for one EUR and you won’t accept less than 0.50 EUR for one USD.
This article at E-Forex Magazine, written by William Essex, explains what changes such a disruptive technology as blockchain can bring us by opening up a new range of possibilities. In fact, current players in this field are already changing the way they think and are trying to use the power of this technology for a wide-range of solutions.
The text includes opinions from entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business and community representatives who are starting to explore and use blockchain technology. Among them is Dave Pearce, of the Nxt Foundation, who talks about FX operating on the blockchain, in a very different way than it is done today.
Blockchain can offer fintech systems, banks, FX, everybody a way to replace all of their legacy systems in one relatively easy step. It can not only replace legacy systems, but offer them extra economies – for example, by throwing away the entire concept of needing a back-up strategy. Every single node on a blockchain is an entire back-up system.
Cryptocentral – Basic Information about the Features of Nxt
Cryptocentral is a cryptocommunity space where you can find the latest information regarding various cryptocurrencies, mining, exchanges, various services, and more. It has several features and tools, such as a voting system, subscription capabilities, quick activity notification, and a chat system.
Recently, this website has added a new section devoted to Nxt, where you can find some basic information about the platform, a description of the main features, some guidelines for newcomers, and links. It holds quite a good compendium of information that is worth visiting if you are new to the platform or want to refresh on some concepts.
In our previous newsletter, the Janus team announced the first use case for Nxt at the BetterBets.io online casino. Moreover, they recently stated that their first monthly dividend issuance to holders of the Janus token, in a series of monthly dividends, will be on the 15th of January. They also announced some other news:
There are currently 8,430,863 Janus tokens left to purchase until the next distribution in March. Each Janus token is 1.5 NXT to purchase; for the next distribution the very lowest it will cost per token is 2.25 NXT. Please plan accordingly if you wish to take advantage of Q1 developments and the easiest entry point for cost is now.
bjorn_bb: January 15th will happen on time, keep this in mind for those who want to grab more % stake in this first benefit for Janus holders
ascendus: Just for holding janus right now , you will receive dividends in NXT from BetterBets.io. Each month calculate the 90% of the NXT earned (some months won’t always be profit). We will try and keep the dividends sent around the same time [each month]. To receive dividends from the upcoming feature on BetterBets.io you just need the Nxt client.
ascendus: In the future though, to received dividends from our mainstream business, we will rebrand our site Janustoken.com (holders will have to place a BTC address and a NXT address), in order to snapshot the balances of janus holders. Dividends will be paid in BTC.
Moneypot.com – Rubies V2 is Released on the Nxt Blockchain
Moneypot, together with the Janus team, launched the second version of Rubies, a coin that was originally created to give people a new way of betting and has the potential to give players, investors, and speculators the opportunity to be a part of a community of digital currency enthusiasts. This second version of the coin (that will replace the first one) will be call R2B2, and will be based on the Nxt blockchain:
bjorn_bb: for those who do not realize this yet, I spent some time with the Moneypot.com team. He’s converting from a traditional bitcoind blockchain to NXT. They will be offering many options for the Rubies V2. It was our project they have now stepped in to take over.
Dogedigital: Both v1 and v2 will exist at same time. The only way a R2B2 coin is created is if a matching Rubie is destroyed. The plan is to fully transition over from Rubies to R2B2 within a year. Rubies will still allow for proof of staking rewards, but will not be eligible for dividend payments. R2B2 will be eligible for dividend payments, but will not allow for proof of staking rewards. edit; The NXT asset is public and transparent. For each R2B2 going out, you will see a transaction of Rubies being sent to a burn address.
Betterbets: Awesome news from the Moneypot team, this marks the beginning of new health for Rubies V2 with R2B2. My team and theirs worked on a very good strategy for long term health and benefits for all holders. There will be no more blockchain issues as it runs on Nxt and this will tie in as well to the upcoming BetterBets.io launch of NXT betting. 2017 is going to be a very great year for both teams, and this post is our way of handing over the entirety of the Rubies project in the great care of the Moneypot team. From this point we will remain here for them as advisers if they need, but this is the transition from our team to Moneypot of the destiny of Rubies.
Jelurida, the recently created corporation that is in charge of developing and supporting Nxt and Ardor, has released the first version of its new website. Damelon, member of both the Nxt Foundation and Jelurida, made the public announcement and introduced some of the team members.
For those of you who are big fans of gossips and conspiracy theories, we already know that one of the members of Jelurida is Jean-Luc, a Nxt core developer who, since the beginning, has chosen to stay anonymous. But… who is actually behind that alias? Will he really be one of these public faces which have now be presented? Or perhaps, should we be using “she”? Does Jean-Luc really exist as a person? Is Jean-Luc actually an Artificial-Intelligence super-computer descendant of Deep-Blue who is looking for new challenges beyond chess? Only time will tell (or maybe not).
The new version of the Next Reference Software has been released. The changelog includes some library updates, bug fixes, and improvements. Among them stands out the new NRS mobile app (just for Android at the moment), which was previously included for testing in the experimentalversions, as we mentioned in previousnewsletters.
You can download the NRS update straight from your current Nxt client or from Github. Always make sure that the given SHA256 signature is exactly the same that the hash of the file. You can check it using your NRS wallet, online third party services that allows you to, or third party software, so that you are absolutely sure that you receive the original file.
Android Wallet
The mobile wallet that this version brings us works much as the LIGHT wallet. It connects to an aleatory public node every time you run the app while being able to use almost all the features of the full client. You can download it for your Android phone from here: https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/downloads/nxt-mobile-client-android-1.11.2.0.apk
Damelon, a member of the Nxt Foundation, has shared some screenshots taken by Riker, a Nxt Core Developer, so we can see a sneak preview of what the current Ardor Graphical User Interface (GUI) looks like. It won’t be long until this software is made public for testing on testnet (expected to be released in this first quarter of 2017).
At the moment, we know that the developers are happy with the progress. In the image we can see that beyond ARDR (the main chain) and IGNIS (the first child chain), the devs are already testing the future of having other childchains, some of which could be run by businesses to run fiat exchanges straight on the wallet.
It is also possible for a business to set up a fiat exchange. I did one for Nxt 1.x (TokenExchange) as a consulting project which exchanged a Nxt currency with Bitcoins. I’ve started adapting this project for Nxt 2.x (CoinExchange) to exchange a child coin (not necessarily BTC) with Bitcoins. Going directly to fiat currency gets you involved in a lot of monetary regulations (AML, KYC, etc), so it is easier to use Bitcoins as an intermediate step.
…Nxt 2.x will contain a Coin Exchange where users can trade child coins with each other. So the value of a particular coin will depend on what people are willing to pay for it using one of the other coins.
…Set up is the same but the ports have been changed to avoid conflicts with Nxt 1.x. This means you can run both Nxt 1.x and Nxt 2.x on the same system (as long as you install them in different directories)…
We’ve also gotten screen shots of a child chain block and the Bundler screen. Step-by-step Ardor is coming!
Le Monde Informatique – BNP Paribas Tests the Nxt Blockchain
Le monde informatique is the first to publish that BNP Paribas is testing multi-currency transfers between their subsidiaries in Germany, Netherlands and the UK, based on Nxt blockchain tech, as Jacques Levet, Head of Transaction Banking, explains. The bank is trying to benefit from the features that blockchain technology can offer, and no doubt that Nxt can provide a bunch of possibilities that others cryptos can only imagine, so it’s no wonder that this big entity has placed its eyes on Nxt.
Traditional operations and communications in banking organizations require a lot of resources and dealing with a bunch of intermediaries, which makes the process tedious, slow and more expensive. To try to solve this, BNP Paribas is searching for new solutions, like Nxt.
Cointelegraph and Coindesk have also echoed about this great piece of news but, unfortunately, it completely slipped their minds to recall that it’s not any blokchain but the Nxt blockchain specifically that BNP Paribas is testing.
I’ve published that “math of nxt forging” paper in an academic journal
With this words Serguei Popov, with the alias mthcl, announced that the first academic journal on blockchain technology, which is called Ledger Journal, published by the University of Pittsburgh, will include an in-depth article about the Nxt Forging Algorithm that he has written.
Popov has been doing a great and thorough job in this field for many years, as he’s been studying and analyzing how the block generation in Nxt (aka forging) works, probabilities of forging blocks by an account, concurrent blockchains, some possible attack vectors, and how Nxt deals with it. All of this is gone over in this great article.
Cointelegraph – Private Messaging: Swiftcoin vs Cryptamail
This article published on Cointelegraph by Angus Leung talks about the initiative started by John McAfee to set up an anonymous email system using blockchain technology and how this project compares to Cryptamail, a project that uses the Nxt blockchain that has some advantages against John McAfee’s Swiftcoin.
Cryptamail is a 100% decentralized and email system built on top of the Nxt protocol that makes use of the Nxt Arbitrary Messages feature to achieve this objective. There is no central central server, so there is no third party to trust. There is also no central point that stores your messages, so there is nowhere to steal or even submit a request for your private data. It’s completely secure.
Coinpedia – Nxt Listed in this CryptoCurrency Encyclopedia
Coinpedia is an independent and free online information hub that provides a platform for cryptocurrencies to introduce and update their information to the public. Coinpedia is an open and comprehensive general reference work on the Internet and has positioned itself to make a useful difference. Coinpedia is owned by nonprofit firm.
This week this CrytpoCurrency Encyclopedia has finally listed Nxt. There, the general public can get a brief introduction about Nxt, a listing of some of its features, such as the Monetary System and the Alias System, and some other basic information that will come in handy for newcomers to the cryptoworld and to this platform.
TheWireMaster wrote this interesting article published at Nxt Folks. The author is glad to see the Bitcoin rally that took place last week because, in spite of the reason behind this price raise is unknown and could just be due to speculative moments, it draws people’s attention to blockchain technology. These are people who probably would never have heard of this technology if it hadn’t been for this exceptional exposure.
As he states in his article, not only Bitcoin but all the good cryptos like Nxt will benefit from this scenario, because once people has learned about this technology, it feels natural to search for cryptos other than Bitcoin that can offer a wider variety of features, such is the case with Nxt and Ardor, which the author reminds us.
May 2017 (IV)
It did not take long before 
This week, 
Nxter is a community driven initiative, so we encourage you to keep giving us your support and sharing our news and articles to achieve wider visibility. Remember that you can also publish your own articles, subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on social networks, in order to always stay on top of everything that happens around Nxt and Ardor.
Keep in mind that the mobile wallet that this version brings us works much as the Light Wallet. It connects to an aleatory public node every time you run the app while being able to use almost all the features of the full client. You can download it for your Android phone from 
10 million tokens will be created at an initial price of 1 token = 1 ruble. Loginov explains how the relationship between buyer and seller is completely legal:
(Back to the Index)
Source and more information: 
Source and more information: 
The State is the People & the People are the State
Travin Keith
