ArcBlock July Monthly Report: ArcBlock product iteration takes only a day and a half to complete, and construction of the global developer community begins
2018-07-31
Summary
In July, the ArcBlock team entered the state of engineering development and marketing at full speed: in 30 days, ArcBlock's first application, the OCAP Playground, released 20 internal versions. The technical team submitted 206 Pull Requests to GitHub, and the OCAP-based product service was quickly iteratively optimized. Robert Mao, the founder of ArcBlock, along with the marketing team, attended eight events, numerous online sharing and offline roadshow forums, and participated in nine interviews. In the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, face-to-face in-depth communication with local developer communities and potential partners has been conducted, laying the foundation for ArcBlock to carry out hackathons and build an ecosystem of developers around the world.
Robert has said that no matter how volatile the market is, ArcBlock will promote the development of its platform according to the established timetable, and will not change the global route promotion plan. He said, "Ever since September of last year, we have been working hard to validate prototypes in the bleak market and write our own white papers over and over again. Good market opportunities are reserved for those who are ready. It is better to do something real than to complain."
Products
OCAP Playground: 20 internal versions in 30 days
ArcBlock's first app, "OCAP Playground", has released 20 internal versions since June 30. Interface interaction details have been optimized, and the Table view and Chart view of the result display area have been improved. The new Table view supports the presentation of nested data, and the format of the data fields is as user-friendly as possible. For example, the account balance can be shown in BTC. Block List and Transaction List have been added in the Chart view. The Transaction List uses the classic Sankey Diagram to visualize the flow of money in the blockchain network, so as to help developers make more valuable discoveries when previewing the query results.
Table views that support nested data
Chart views that support blockchain network fund flow visualization
In order to help developers successfully use OCAP Playground, Wang Shijun, an ArcBlock front-end architect, wrote an introduction guide:
The link can be found here: https://www.arcblock.io/ch/post/2018/07/30/ocap-playground-intro/
OCAP adds the Ethereum API to support data queries on the Ethereum chain
On July 30, OCAP added the Ethereum API to support data query on the Ethereum chain, such as all ERC20 Token transaction data (figs. 1 and 2), as well as filling in block height negative values to query block data in new and old order (fig. 3). At this point, the OCAP Playground can be used to query the most mature public chain data of bitcoin and Ethereum.
FIG. 1
FIG. 2
FIG. 3
The Ethereum support is still ongoing, and eventually we can resolve all the transactions for all the smart contracts. In the next two chains, we also plan to support transaction processing and event listening, to enable large transfers on the chain, for example.
ArcBlock project development progress report released automatically every week
The ArcBlock project is not yet open source. To improve the transparency of development work, as of July 15, the technical engineering team automatically generates weekly progress reports on project development at GitHub. Even if some of ArcBlock's projects are not ready for release and open source, the community can still see concrete progress.
The weekly project progress report can be found here: https://github.com/ArcBlock/weekly-digest
In July, the project development progress was summarized as follows:
- Pushed 100 commits, which are all merge commits
- Added 20409 lines of code, and deleted 26062
- Created 206 pull requests, merged 205
- Resolved and closed 216 issues
- Crafted and deployed 144 internal releases
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The project development progress report for July can be found here: https://github.com/ArcBlock/weekly-digest/wiki/Monthly-Digest-201807
Progress on other technical products
In July, the technical engineering team also made great progress on the following projects:
- OCAP Playbook, our second app, which allows developers to share code snippets and descriptions, and interactive documentation
- User authentication and authorization services for OCAP and Blocklet
- Bitcoin Block Listener
Operation
ArcBlock awarded the 2018 Blockchain Star award by People's Network
On July 21, the 2018 Blockchain Star annual award list was announced at the US Venture Summit blockchain forum jointly held by People's Network and Chain News. As an industry representative, ArcBlock won the 2018 Blockchain Star award. Robert went to the venue to receive the award.
This conference held the annual selection to encourage innovative technology and promote the application of blockchain. The selection was by popular vote, and the evaluation committee’s quantitative selection. By the time of the awards, 1,524,155 valid votes had been cast. A total of 563,201 people participated in the voting and nearly one million people attended the event.
The list of winners was finally determined by "data research institutions, industrial alliances, industry media, investment institutions and other members of the evaluation committee to quantify six aspects of the selected projects: information disclosure, project development, technological innovation, team strength, capital appreciation and industry mutual evaluation.”
The winners were: ArcBlock (represented by founder Robert), CarBlock (founder Li Jia), Jiguangchain (co-founder Zhang Bo) Bottos (founder Song Xin), Vechain (founder Lu Yang)
OCAP Global Tour officially launched
At the same time OCAP Playground was launched on June 30, ArcBlock’s OCAP Global Tour officially kicked off.
The three-month global speaking tour is being led by the founder and CEO of ArcBlock, Robert Mao. With online sharing and offline forum roadshow, we are dedicated to preaching the blockchain 3.0 concept worldwide. We are delivering on our initial intention of ArcBlock becoming a true developer's blockchain platform of "sharing, co-governance and sharing," and sharing the word about OCAP technology. We’re also cultivating ArcBlock's global developer community, expanding ArcBlock consensus, and laying a foundation for promoting the popularization of blockchain technology.
Here are some snapshots of the events on the tour so far:
June 29 | Silicon Valley Live: Lecture 50, China-U.S. Blockchain Evolution Evangelist
Robert was invited to give a video talk at Lecture 50, China-U.S. Blockchain Evolution Evangelist, a joint venture between Mi Tan and U ZAN. This lecture introduced OCAP Playground, to be released the next day. Robert covered the commercial value of ArcBlock’s protocol layer, which will help developers realize application cross-chain through open chain access protocol. These ideas were shared with the community honestly and warmly.
A video playback of the lecture can be found here: http://bit.ly/2MaiMBx
A text transcript can be found here: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA5NzkyODY0MA==&mid=2247486560&idx=2&sn=5df6aee9ff6f5ec38bcb0cd885a4a6f8&scene=21#wechat_redirect
July 1 | “Making the Impossible Possible” 2018 World Roadshow Tour, Korea station
At 10 a.m., the conference solemnly opened at the Conrad Hotel, Jiangnan International Financial District, Seoul, South Korea. More than 500 South Korean blockchain community users, investors, entrepreneurs (including Krypital group) provided ArcBlock, Cybermiles, Merculet, Egretia, Eloncity, Quoinblock and other star projects with market advisory services.
Robert officially launched ArcBlock's first application to global developers and community users: the open chain access protocol Playground (OCAP Playground), which makes blockchain application development so simple.
Activity video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtbcoIUFOFc&list=UUSdkAKyMwqSPaXqA_z02EmA
Speech video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v36RMmbeE9w
July 4 | TokenClub live online sharing
At 8 p.m., Robert went live on TokenClub to introduce OCAP Playground to their community of developers. Nearly 30,000 people watched the live broadcast.
July 5 | "Walian Show" online sharing
At 8 p.m., Robert was invited to the Wa Chain Show hosted by Walian.cn to explain how open chain access protocol can greatly reduce the threshold of blockchain application development. Robert argues that blockchains should be more developer friendly, freeing developers to focus on meaningful application development.
A link to the text transcript can be found here:
July 7 | “Making the Impossible Possible” 2018 World Roadshow, Vietnam station
Robert has always thanked the world's most enthusiastic Vietnamese community for its support for ArcBlock, whether he is speaking onstage or interacting offstage. At the GEM Conference Center in Hu Zhiming, Vietnam, he introduced them to OCAP Playground, and called on Vietnam's developers to develop excellent blockchain applications based on ArcBlock’s platform.
Activity Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvFQEcGJt78&feature=youtu.be
Speech video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwCZCY2I6Fw&t=293s
July 12 | "Qi Feng Finance" online sharing
At 1 p.m., Robert participated in the event "ZhiYong relativity of Qi Feng Finance,” and had a discussion with Luo ZhiYong, founder of Qi Feng Finance, on the topic of "how to be king in the era of blockchain 3.0, when multiple chains develop together.” Her shared that the value of introducing OCAP is threefold:
- Data on blockchain can be obtained openly through OCAP.
- The attributes of OCAP itself can support multiple different chains and make some cross-chain applications.
- OCAP will allow for the research and development of blockchain bookkeeping tools
Text Record:
July 18 | CoinVoice "VOICE Business" live
Robert attended the first live broadcast of CoinVoice’s "VOICE Business.” He shared how ArcBlock provides tools and creates value for gold prospectors in the blockchain world.
Here’s a link to the English translation of the interview https://www.arcblock.io/post/2018/07/20/coinvoice-interview-0720/
July 21| China-US Entrepreneur and Investment Summit Blockchain Forum
On July 21, Robert attended the China-US Entrepreneur and Investment Summit Blockchain Forum in Silicon Valley. This event was jointly organized by the financial technology professional information platforms Chain News and People's Net. This event introduced OCAP Playground, ArcBlock's first technology product, and shared with the founders of China-US Blockchain Project how to enter the blockchain 3.0 era.
Robert was invited to run for Huobi Chain leader, and served as a technical adviser to the BitForex exchange
The current centralized digital exchanges increasingly need strong, advanced underlying blockchain technology support. Robert ran for the leadership of the Huobi Chain on July 11. He also served as technical adviser at BitForex on July 13. This shows ArcBlock’s attitude of open cooperation, and also demonstrates the industry's recognition of ArcBlock’s technology products.
Eloncity announced it was joining the ArcBlock OCAP alliance
The Open Chain Access Protocol, or OCAP, helps the business world connect through underlying blockchain technology. It is a continuous online service, but also a growing ecosystem. On July 14, Eloncity, a micro-grid blockchain project, announced that it had joined the ArcBlock OCAP alliance as the first partner. Robert detailed the technology and business logic behind the deep cooperation between ArcBlock and Eloncity.
ArcBlock hired Alex Donn, an American genius hacker, as an adviser
On July 25, Robert met with American hackathon genius Alex Donn, who agreed to be an adviser. Donn will provide valuable experience and resources for the design and development of ArcBlock hackathons. ArcBlock plans to hold its first small-scale hackathons in Seattle in early August. It will lay the foundation for ArcBlock's subsequent hackathons around the world.
Media Coverage
With the debut of OCAP Playground, ArcBlock reached the climax of its second round of media communication, after the ICO. In July alone, eight in-depth interviews were released.
July 11 | High Finance: ArcBlock and Penta talked briefly about different ways of thinking about the direction of the common chain
Robert pointed out that "the blockchain status is like a database and there's no middle layer right now. We are groundbreaking, and this part is not so much about the blockchain itself. "
Here’s a link to the transcript of this discussion: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU4MzQ3ODczNQ==&mid=2247484192&idx=1&sn=8021814e88a77d8b49537a1a5a6f9e9d&scene=21#wechat_redirect
July 13 | Odaily Interview: Did Ethereum lead the public chain down the wrong path?
Robert believes that public chains should carry more value: "the public chain should focus more on tokens, and we want to make programmable tokens in the future, [but] only for token service, not Turing complete. This is a return to basics, like a database server, where someone also provides a web interface, but the database should do a good job of searching queries. Blockchain should do what it does best, not do general calculations.”
Link to text of interview: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU5MDU2MzIzOQ==&mid=2247484325&idx=1&sn=6029b838c23c200809c8a997caae61ff&scene=21#wechat_redirect
July 13 | Token Explorer Interview: OCAP Playground is released on schedule, making the development of blockchain more friendly
This is the second time that Robert was interviewed by Token Explorer. When Token Explorer asked whether he was satisfied with the development status of ArcBlock, he said, “I think we're still doing well, and there are some things that are exceeding our expectations, he said. The main challenge for us is to hire people. But in terms of the overall development of the product, I think we’re doing a very good job. We're not hiring as fast as we planned, but we're not behind in our product development, which means we have a high quality talent pool."
Link to text of interview: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzIxNjc4NzkyMA==&mid=2247485801&idx=1&sn=ba017806a2c9167273e71dd78ac17a73&scene=21#wechat_redirect
July 16 | Chain World Interview: Ethereum, EOS and other public chains are not friendly to developers
Robert pointed out that whether a public chain application is based on Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even EOS, its users and data are locked on its platform. If the application wants to migrate between platforms, the accumulated users, data, etc. will be lost. For example, although EOS has migrated from Ethereum, it protects the interests of EOS users in the form of mapping. The whole process is relatively complicated. By contrast, for example, the Internet is now mature, so whether an Internet app is based on Android or iOS, or Windows system, the application data will not be lost. Based on this idea, ArcBlock proposes to build the middle layer on the underlying technology and develop it, aka one-stop development services.
July 17 | Lei Feng Net Interview: Merging cloud computing is the future of blockchain.
Robert revealed that there will be a series of actions following the release of OCAP. First was the release of OCAP Playground, after which OCAP Playbook will be released. OCAP Playbook is an interactive document where users can exchange experiences in developing blockchain. Next comes the OCAP SDK, which uses OCAP for web and mobile applications. Playground will also launch the desktop version, which provides a complete set of tools for developers.
July 17 | KuaiMA Financial Interview: I'm "crazy" for blockchain technology!
Robert Mao saw blockchain’s transition out of the “geek circles” and into the mainstream. While many are just trying to make money, ArcBlock is focused on building ever-better technology.
July 20 | CoinVoice Interview: Most people only focus on the size of the current track, ignoring future possibilities
Robert thinks it's a good thing for a startup to choose a narrow path, because a narrow track is likely to widen. For entrepreneurs, it's especially good for them to choose a narrow focus. On the one hand, it means you don't have much competition and you can concentrate on the project. On the other hand, what looks like a narrow market today could actually become very large in the future. This is a business secret. Successful entrepreneurs always need to know the secrets that others do not know. These secrets seem obvious to them, but many people do not know them.
July 27 | Ear Finance Interview: From OCAP to Blocklet, ArcBlock opens the door to blockchain for traditional developers
"ArcBlock will ultimately be successful," Robert says, “upon the real establishment of a decentralized developer community. If you are a centralized cloud computing service, no matter how strong the technology is, you are unlikely to beat Alibaba or Tencent in the market. But if you create a consensus in the community, you have a much stronger competitive force, and with good technology, you will be able to achieve longer-term development.”
Technical Q&A
Q: What plans are in place to ensure that there are a large number of Decentralized Applications (DApps) and other projects using the ArcBlock platform after the ABT main line?
A: The first public beta of OCAP Playground has been released. There is still a long way to go before the platform is officially opened. At this stage of development, our main marketing strategy is to attract more and more developers to participate through hackathons. The hope is that every hackathon will produce tens of apps, at least a few of which are pretty good.
The public beta version of OCAP Playground is still in the testing stage, which allows developers to see what OCAP is and what they can explore and do. There is still a lot of work to be done by the formal product phase. Our ultimate goal is to launch the first developer conference in the first quarter of 2019.
Q: What are the advantages of using blocklet to build ArcBlock’s platform? A: The advantage of blocklet is that it's a framework for developing blockchain apps, which is our main focus, so it's OCAP-ready. Plus, with its serverless architecture, developers won’t have to worry about how to host blockchain nodes, how to host apps, or how to scale. We will ship OCAP first, then the blocklet.
Q: If ArcBlock is based on Ethereum, then TPS also depends on the speed of Ethereum? A: Yes and no. Yes, if you try to send transactions to it. No, if your application is mostly based on query, data visualization, etc. As you can see, the OCAP query is lighting fast in OCAP Playground, even though Bitcoin only supports 7 TPS.
Insights
On July 4, Robert, founder and CEO of ArcBlock, shared some reflections on his way to Japan:
Buddha said that our views on others reflect exactly what kind of people we are. Some people feel that their communities are all losers. We always feel that our community are the future developers and users. Because our ArcBlock vision is to make blockchain development easier, everyone can be a blockchain user, and each developer can develop blockchain applications.
No matter what the market is like, we will not change our plan of global preaching. Since before September 4th, 2017, we have been working hard to build the prototype in a bad market and write our own white again and again. Good market opportunities will be left to the prepared people. It's better to do something than to complain.
On July 31, Chen Tian, vice president of ArcBlock research and development, sent some pictures in WeChat's circle of friends to commemorate his leading technical team submitting 134 pull requests (code submission requests on the software hosting site GitHub) in July alone. This number exceeds any past month in the history of ArcBlock.Despite his busy schedule, Chen Tian posted two personal blogs in his spare time and shared his latest experiences with ArcBlock.
July 2: Thinking, Problems, and Methods: "Even if ArcBlock’s R&D team has grown to dozens of people, it's still very small. In the context of what we want to do, if we don't find a more effective way to develop, we will be very tired, and the progress of development will be slow. For example, with OCAP, to create a set of API for developers, API must have documentation, SDK, API interface definition, and support for interface. There's a lot of duplication: API docs and API interfaces, and SDKs are constantly duplicating similar content and code. When we change the definition of API, we often change a place, and several places need to be modified. So we are looking for ways to "reduce dimensions.”
July 9: How to Improve Code Quality: "The programmer's product is code, and the user of the code is other programmers -- so high quality code is code that other programmers can easily understand. Note that this level of understandability refers to ease of understanding in structure, principles, and interfaces, not in the details of the code.”
Community
ArcBlock community technology Q & A and weekly progress disclosure
On 7/11, 7/18 and 7/25, ArcBlock held its seventh, eighth and ninth community technical Q&As. In these interactions, Robert responds to a series of technical and operational questions about project progress, team building, product technology, function and application of ABT, asked by community users.
Link: https://www.arcblock.io/ch/categories/events/
Data
Social Media
Telegram followers: 48,876 (+29.6%)
Facebook followers: 10,129 (-0.03%)
Twitter followers: 40,385 (+11.7%)
Reddit followers: 2,151 (+1.6%)
Linkedin followers: 1006
WeChat Account followers: 8020
Weibo follwers: 2524
Token Holders
Token holders: 17,426（-12.1%）
*(Statistics as of July 31, 2018)
