ArcBlock August Monthly Report: A great product and well-attended hackathons bring out the best in each other
2018-08-31
Summary
In August, the ArcBlock team continued to advance, making improvements to front-end products such as OCAP Playground and Playbook, and continuously optimizing OCAP online data services. Two successful beta hackathon events not only produced high-quality DApp inspiration, but also complemented each other with product iterations. The marketing and public relations team firmly built a foundation for content dissemination to spread the word about ArcBlock’s products. Robert Mao, founder and CEO of ArcBlock, stated that when the market is bad, that’s the time to spend all your energy on the product, which is what he’s been doing.
Product Updates
Since June, updates on ArcBlock’s technical engineering progress have been published weekly in GitHub ( https://github.com/ArcBlock/weekly-digest ) for your reference. The engineering also has its own monthly digest (https://ocap.arcblock.io/playbooks/41ad110c-358e-424f-adc6-e03fbe2d4d2b), similar to the overall progress report you’re reading right now.
In the past month, we have pushed 718 commits to the project's main chain, created 373 pull requests (merged a total of 367), solved and closed 413 problems, and produced and deployed 248 internal versions.
Front end: OCAP Playground increases Bitcoin and Ethereum's subscription support
OCAP Playground lets developers intuitively understand what real-time data OCAP can provide, and develop applications based on this data, which can perform such functions as monitoring large transactions, monitoring contract creation, and so on.
In addition, Playground has also done several optimizations to improve stability and user experience. OCAP Playbook supports Swift code generation and switching between data sources.
Front end: OCAP Widget adds three interface components: account, transaction, and block
The OCAP Widget can provide summary information of common data entities in blockchains in a compact card-sized display, which is also embeddable on third party web pages.
Front end: OCAP Javascript SDK refactoring is released and used in hackathons
The OCAP Javascript SDK (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@arcblock/ocap-js) is a collection of tools provided by ArcBlock to Javascript developers. It is currently open source in GitHub, and covers operations such as constructing query statements, sending query requests, and data page flipping. It is very good, at a low cost and high level of flexibility. You can use the Shortcut Method to obtain the query results directly, or you can construct your own flexible queries. Even if developers do not understand blockchains and have not used GraphQL, they can quickly get started, and SDK can run in almost all Javascript operating environments, including a web browser, Node.js, and React National.Most of the projects in the second hackathon use the SDK. Developer documents can be found here:https://ocap.arcblock.io/playbooks/67df3512-c575-4751-8052-e3dcae3f3e1a
Front end: ArcBlock Analytics SDK development testing and integration
To better understand how users use OCAP services, we encapsulated the Analytics SDK (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@arcblock/analytics-js) and integrated it into Playground, Playbook, and Widget services. Because of the consistency of our underlying design and technology, all of ArcBlock's SDKs share a common logic, making it easier to use and maintain multiple SDK codes.
Backend: OCAP services continue to increase real-time data subscription support
Subscribable Ethereum real-time data interfaces include:
- contractExecuted
- newContractCreated
- bigTransactionExecuted
- newBlockMined
Subscribable Bitcoin real-time data interfaces include:
- bigTransactionExecuted
- coinReceived
- coinSent
- newBlockMined
Backend: Data completeness and accuracy of OCAP services continue to improve
- Bitcoin data supports full synchronization with the main chain data
- Block Listener services support publishing and multiple iterations
- Ethereum supports index Smart Contract and Internal Transactions
- Real-time coin price fields for Bitcoin and Ethereum have been added
- Ethereum query speed has been improved significantly
Backend: ArcBlock infrastructure and services developing
- Data collection, processing, analysis pipeline construction and testing, and data related code are all enabled using GitHub management
- API service was released, and will serve as a cross-end infrastructure (currently supports the data acquisition interface)
- Launch Scraper repository will manage all capture tasks and scripts
- Upcoming open source project Goldorin and OCAP RPC is in preparatory stages
ArcBlock Official Hackathon Website Beta Release
Along with the launch of the ArcBlock two beta hackathons, the official hackathon website (https://hackathon.arcblock.io) beta version quietly launched. Developers can register for future “HackBlock” events on this site.
ArcBlock adds nine open source code repositories in GitHub
In August, ArcBlock added nine open source code warehouses to the software hosting site GitHub. This includes three development tools: OCAP Javascript SDK, iOS SDK, and Android SDK; three demonstration examples of React, VUE, and React-Nature; DApp code developed by three hackathons. As a result, ArcBlock's total number of open source projects in GitHub reached 19, laying the foundation for OCAP to reach RC1 to implement open source.
Operations Updates
ArcBlock successfully held two beta hackathons
On August 4th and 25th, ArcBlock’s first and second in-house beta hackathons were successfully held at the Seattle headquarters office (USA). Nearly 30 programmers and engineers from Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google signed up to participate in the marathon, generating eight high-quality applications, from browsers to mobile apps, data visualization to subscription robots. These events helped demonstrate the infinite possibilities of developing DApps by reading Bitcoin and Ethereum data from OCAP, and provided excellent feedback for iterative optimization of ArcBlock product services.
The details of the first hackathon:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ZeRPnYx-ykxdUKSSAX9Abw
The details of the second hackathon:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/drycXyKdAM4Lsdj87YPY0Q
ArcBlock technology team created a blog to decrypt OCAP
To help users understand the technical details of ArcBlock's open chain access protocol, each engineer of the ArcBlock technical team will regularly write a technical blog or give an interview to "decrypt" the design and implementation idea behind OCAP. It is hoped that this blog will foster a discussion that will in turn improve the product.
July 30 | Getting Started with OCAP Playgroundhttps
August 10 | What changes have OCAP Playground undergone in 21 versions in 30 days?
August 16 | How to Parse Bitcoin Data
August 20 | Why OCAP Adopted GraphQL
August 27| Discussion on the importance of data for the development of the Blockchain industry
Robert attends Blockchain Collaboration Forum in Seattle
On August 9th, Robert Mao, founder and CEO of ArcBlock, attended the Block Chain Collaboration Forum, organized by Token Forum in Seattle, USA. He met face to face with more than 30 guests from the US blockchain field to discuss the development of the blockchain industry in depth. Robert opened up about some of ArcBlock's exploratory practices and shared his views with participants on when to use tokens to vitalize app development.
Robert met with Dragonchain twice to explore opportunities for cooperation
On August 1 and 15, Dragonchain CEO Joe Roets met with Robert Mao, CEO, and Chen Tian, vice president of research and development, to discuss a possible between Dragonchain and ArcBlock.
Media Coverage
August 2nd | Huobi Interview with ArcBlock: We expect the Huobi public chain to effectively integrate the developer ecosystem
Robert was interviewed by Huobi Information. He expected the Huobi public chain to integrate developer ecosystem more effectively, and ArcBlock to form a strong cooperative relationship with the Huobi chain.
Link：https://t.cj.sina.com.cn/articles/view/6401501049/17d8f277900100cc5q
August 3rd and 10 | WaLian Video Interview
Robert was interviewed by WaChain Video at his headquarters in Seattle, USA. WaChain specially recorded two interview programs. He stated that he wants to take blockchain from the realm of “geeks” into the mainstream.
Technical Q&As
Q: How do you pay for ArcBlock? Since ArcBlock runs in the cloud, does it mean one must use ABT to pay for cloud computing services?
A: ABT is used to pay for ArcBlock and related services. Developers can decide to run the ArcBlock node on their own cloud service and launch the application there, or run their applications directly through the ArcBlock public service. If developers use their own cloud service resources, they only need to pay ABT for the use of ArcBlock itself, otherwise (if they use public services) the cost of additional cloud services will be incurred, which are paid using ABT.
Q: Can other projects release their token on the ArcBlock platform?
A: Yes. On the ArcBlock platform, developers can also create their own application Token and directly integrate all the features of our native Token. ABT's Token service includes a set of APIs and an SDK, allowing developers to use it in their own applications in different ways. The ABT token service will include all basic Token-related services, such as accounts, wallets, transactions, authentication, etc. In the near future, once developers have developed and deployed applications on the ArcBlock platform, they can use ArcBlock’s Token service to perform their own Token presale.
Insights
On August 15th, in view of the sharp fall in the price of Ethereum, Robert published his views and forecasts: "Eth's price recovery will not take long, and it will become even more valuable as competitors such as EOS burst their bubbles."
At the end of August, Robert traveled to Malta to praise the Mediterranean island nation for embracing blockchain technology and taking the lead in developing a blockchain friendly legal framework. He said ArcBlock would return to Malta.
Community
ArcBlock technology Q&A is reduced in frequency to once a month
On August 1, 8, and 22, ArcBlock held community technical Q&A sessions, as usual. However, in light of the tech support website release, community users are asking far fewer tech questions than in past months. The community technical question and answer session will now be held monthly, starting in September. The 13th tech Q&A will be held on September 22.
原文链接：https://www.arcblock.io/ch/categories/events/
Data
Social Platforms
- Telegram followers: 45,301（-7.3%）
- Facebook followers: 10,067（-0.6%）
- Twitter followers: 40,288（-0.2%）
- Reddit followers: 2,191（+1.9%）
- LinkedIn followers: 1,037（+3.1%）
- WeChat followers: 7,979（-0.5%）
- Weibo followers: 2,596（+2.9%）
Token Holders
Token holders: 17,607 （+1.0%）
*(Statistics as of August 31, 2018)
