ArcBlock October Report: Product development is accelerating, and we are now collaborating with governments and corporations

Summary

In October, the ArcBlock engineering team’s pace of progress was significantly accelerated, with the release of the beta version of the Developer Console, the Token Flow proof-of-concept version, a top-to-bottom reconstruction of OCAP’s Ethereum data, and the completion of the framework for the construction of the future ABT chain, which will be built on Forge.

ArcBlock was invited to participate in a US government blockchain project, formally became a global technology partner of Amazon Web Services, announced cooperation with LifeID and QuarkChain, participated in important activities organized by the Hyperledger Foundation and the Huazhou Technology Industry Association (WTIA), and developed in conjunction with the Nuggets community.

ArcBlock continues to accumulate substantial cooperation and expansion in the corporate and government markets, and is continuously expanding its influence in the developer community, laying a solid foundation for the ArcBlock platform and blockchain 3.0 ecosystem.

This monthly report is the first to publish a chart generated by the ArcBlock data team which shows ABT-related data analysis on Ethereum, and more data charts which demonstrate analysis through Open Chain Access Protocol will be shared in the future.

Product

Since June, ArcBlock's weekly technical engineering progress has been documented on [GitHub]（https://github.com/ArcBlock/weekly-digest）. A monthly engineering digest can also be found [here]（https://ocap.arcblock.io/playbooks/6314438b-4238-4823-bc28-3cab8483a1b7）.

Front end: Developer Console internal beta release

Developer Console is the prototype of ArcBlock’s developer service console. The functions implemented in the initial version mainly include managing developer identity information, account security settings, ABT ownership certificate, etc.

The Developer Console also contains links to various SDKs, the Starter Project, development tools, code samples and other contents provided by ArcBlock for developers to find what they need and start developing their applications quickly.

We have released universal login and registration pages for all ArcBlock website products, encapsulated reusable user authentication SDKs, and integrated login functions in Playground, Playbook, Developer Console and other applications.

Front-end: POC version of blockchain capital flow analysis tool

ArcBlock’s team released the proof-of-concept version of tools for capital flow analysis and account feature analysis based on public blockchain data, which will be continuously updated in the future.

Front end: Tools for convenient wallet management and message signing below command line

Because the Developer Console supports Metamask and offline signing when verifying a wallet, we have developed, and fully open sourced command line tools for managing wallets and signing messages below the command line: @arcblock/ocap-cli。

Front end: Android and iOS SDK add HMAC request signature support

Developers who register an account in Developer Console, verify ABT ownership, and pass the authentication parameters when requesting OCAP service can enjoy greater QPS and paging quota, and the modification function is supported in the SDK on each side.

Back end: Auth service is connected with web, iOS, Android and SDK

The registration and login of users on the web, iOS and Android terminals, and user authentication, including SDK of each language, are completed through the Auth service. In addition, the Auth service also implements the account quota mechanism based on ABT holdings.

Back end: OCAP service refactoring underlying Ethereum data

In the previous version, we only dealt with ERC20-compatible Ethereum contract transactions. As we gradually build a contract function signature database, we can handle tens of thousands of known signature contract transactions. In October, our main focus at OCAP was on proper data processing and refactoring.

Back end: Forge framework

In October we launched the development of Forge framework with the goal of providing a framework for creating blockchain projects for developers to use. Developers can easily develop a chain of applications by simply focusing on transaction and state processing. The Forge framework is still under development and is expected to be open source by the end of the year. Forge is born out of our proof-of-concept on the ABT chain. Forge and the ABT chain are under synchronous development; the ABT chain will be built on Forge.

Data: ERC20 token product metrics

After supporting ABT's major product metrics (DAU, MAU, retention, holder, price), we extend this support to other ERC20 tokens.

Operations

ArcBlock was invited to participate in a U.S. government blockchain project, expanding the possibilities for blockchain in government

In October, ArcBlock, on behalf of the blockchain industry, was invited to participate in a blockchain research project for the United States government, and submitted a project proposal. This is an important first step toward the expansion of blockchain in business and government sectors. This, after ArcBlock was invited to join US Navy's HACKtheMACHINE event in September to introduce ArcBlock’s platform features.

This month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published an overview of blockchain technology, laying an important foundation for the implementation of blockchain technology in the United States government.

ArcBlock attends the Hyperledger Member Summit

From October 1-2, Robert Mao, ArcBlock’s CEO, attended the Hyperledger Member Summit in Montreal, Canada, along with members of the Linux foundation, to participate in the discussion on blockchain governance and share his views on governance at the application platform level. Mao said ArcBlock has recently made progress in devising applications for businesses and governments, and looks forward to creating contributing key components for the Hyperledger open source community.

ArcBlock attends the VestLink Founders Camp mentor event

On October 11, Mao attended the first Founders Camp (an entrepreneurial training camp), hosted by Sino-American venture capital incubator VestLInk. As a mentor, he shared ArcBlock entrepreneurship experience and growth experience with the founders of sixteen Seattle startups.

ArcBlock co-hosts technology lecture with QuarkChain

On October 15, ArcBlock and QuarkChain, a high-performance point-to-point trading network, jointly hosted a lecture titled “Unlocking Blockchain Technology: Expansion Solutions with Decentralized Applications.” The two founders discussedthe underlying blockchain, how to promote decentralization through cloud computing service platform application development, and deployment of DApps. This exciting event attracted nearly eighty Seattle area techies. The success of this event also laid a good foundation for bilateral cooperation.

Details: ARCBLOCK PARTICIPATES IN CRYPTO SEATTLE'S MEETUP IN SEATTLE, WA

On October 17, ArcBlock announced a strategic partnership with LifeID

On October 17, ArcBlock and LifeID, the creator of the world's leading open source license agreement for sovereign identity, announced a new technical cooperation, aimed at introducing LifeID's blockchain-based digital identity protocol and development tools into the ArcBlock “blockchain 3.0” developer ecosystem, accelerating the realization of the goal of creating "dignified digital identity" for the world.

Details: ARCBLOCK ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH LIFEID

On October 20, ArcBlock attended the first event of the Washington State Technology Industry Association (WTIA) Founder Cohort Program

ArcBlock was selected in September by the WTIA for its inaugural Founder Cohort Program. As a semi-official association of state commerce, WTIA, with its 800+ corporate members, has been home to big companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Boeing. This year, for the first time, they’ve invited startups to join their ranks. ArcBlock also joined the WTIA's blockchain board of directors.

On October 20, Robert Mao spent an unforgettable day with twenty-three other founders. VCs all over the city lined up to introduce themselves to startups. While there were some celebrity showcases like Photonic Sentry, the laser shot mosquito project, WTIA aims to create a community of entrepreneurs like the PayPal Mafia.

On October 24, Hyperledger interviewed Chen Tian, VP of Research and Development for ArcBlock

Chen Tian, VP of Research and Development for ArcBlock, was interviewed by Hyperledger's official blog on October 24 as part of their Developer Showcase Series to answer questions about the prospects of blockchain technology.

Details: Developer Showcase Series: Tian Chen, ArcBlock

On October 25, ArcBlock announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services partnership program

On October 25, ArcBlock officially announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services partnership program (AWS Partner Network, or APN). AWS is the world's number one cloud computing platform, and ArcBlock is one of the few blockchain companies to gain access to, and benefit from APN since it opened its arms to blockchain innovation in 2016.

As a global technical partner of APN, ArcBlock will provide blockchain technology training, blockchain customization solutions, and introduce the original OCAP (Open Chain Access Protocol) platform as well as an application development platform integrating blockchain technology with cloud computing and micro-service architecture.

Details: ARCBLOCK JOINS AMAZON WEB SERVICES PARTNER NETWORK

On October 27, ArcBlock's fourth hackathon was announced, to take place in Shenzhen

On October 27, ArcBlock announced it will hold hold its fourth hackathon - its second in China - jointly with technode.com, the country's most internationally influential technology innovation platform, from November 17-18 at the 2018 TechCrunch International Innovation Summit in Shenzhen.

At each hackathon, ArcBlock provides hackers with challenging tasks and rich prizes, encourages developers to create innovative blockchain applications based on OCAP (open chain access protocol), and promotes the popularization of blockchain technology.

Details: ArcBlock × TC 黑客马拉松 | 11 月 17-18 日，深圳见！

The ArcBlock blockchain technology training lecture series launched on October 30

On October 30, ArcBlock announced the official launch of its ArcBlock Technical Learning Series. ArcBlock enabled community "Nuggets," where users can sign up for lectures on the Nuggets activity page, and watch video and text in the Nuggets column.

In October, the ArcBlock Technical Learning Series released four lectures total:

October 17 | Intro to AWS Athena

October 18 | What is AWS Kinesis

October 24 | Decypher Multi-Factor Authentication

October 31 | CQRS & Commanded

ArcBlock attended Japan Seattle AI Innovation Meetup on October

October 31, ArcBlock was invited, along with nine other Washington State tech enterprises, to attend the Seattle AI Innovation Meetup in Seattle, presented jointly with the Japanese Ministry of Commerce. ArcBlock was given the opportunity to present on blockchain technology to major Japanese companies, including Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, and NTT DoCoMo. This event presents the opportunity for transnational collaboration and investment in these technologies.

On October 31, Robert Mao wrote an article commemorating the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Bitcoin white paper

On October 31, the Bitcoin white paper turned 10 years old. Robert commemorated the evolution of this technology and the years of the Bitcoin “gold rush.” He shared his experiences as a geek and blockchain entrepreneur, and the cognitive evolution he underwent, from suspicion to full belief. He revealed that he, along with his team, is writing a book that provides an overview of blockchain, and won’t require any knowledge of computer science to understand. This book will cover the past, present, and future of blockchain, explaining key events and eliminating the “mystery” of this technology. Entrepreneurs from across all disciplines will gain an understanding of how to apply blockchain to their industries.

The full text:纪念比特币 10 周年 | 未来已来，只是分布不均

Data

ArcBlock has been committed to conducting a deeper and more comprehensive analysis of the data on the blockchain, constantly exploring how to maximize its value. At present, we have set up our own Ethereum node to analyze the data on the chain, including smart contracts, account status, and contract information in the transaction. We’re cleaning up the data, and performing aggregate calculations to input to the cloud database, while backing up on Amazon S3 at the same time. Parsed data can be used for other more systematic analysis, in addition to being queried by users through the OCAP API and GraphQL.

Considering the large amount of data generated on the blockchain and the high speed, we adopted Spark as our main computing tool and demonstrated the analysis results with Python drawing tools. Spark is a generic cluster computing framework that can call multiple machines to perform memory calculations, which greatly improves the efficiency of data analysis. Python's extensive mapping tools give us the flexibility to arrange the various charts because of the complexity of the data types. Below are four charts that we analyzed from ABT-related data on Ethereum, and we will share more in-depth data in the future.

Above is a line chart with ABT prices, number of transactions, and number of participants. Where the blue line represents the price change of ABT, and the green line is the number of daily ABT transactions. It can be seen from the data analysis results that the trading volume of ABT has maintained a relatively stable range.

Through the aggregate calculations, we analyzed the trend chart of the number of ABT holders and superimposed it one the price chart. The orange line shows the number of holders, that is, how many accounts have more than zero ABT. While ABT prices have fluctuated with the market, the overall number of currency holders has remained stable to date.

These two charts are a pie chart analysis of the main holders of ABT currently circulating in the secondary market. The first picture contains exchanges, and the second does not. It can be seen that the largest individual shareholder is address 0 xffbe389a8059aafdf6c88ed1f540e06cca1d8444 account. Its holdings of ABT accounted for 29.8% of all personal holdings.

Media Coverage

On October 25, dozens of media outlets reported on ArcBlock’s partnership with Amazon Web Services.

On October 25, dozens of media, including Sharing Finance, Planet Daily, Chain News, Ear Finance, Deep Chain Finance, CoinVoice, Gyro Finance, Fulcrum Community, Singularity Finance and Gronghui reported that ArcBlock joined the Amazon Web Services Partnership Program, becoming a global technology partner.

Links to some of these reports here: https://www.chainnews.com/news/830074688330.htm https://www.shenliancaijing.com/portal/activity/activedetail.html?id=2187 http://www.iterduo.com/posts/102884 http://www.coinvoice.cn/16619.html http://www.sfgroup.hk/app/web/index.php?r=api/v1/share/render&id=100011122&page=news&from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0 https://m.gelonghui.com/article/215709 https://www.itread01.com/lhkehkl.html

Insights

On October 12, Rober Mao said, in a retweet of a media article, "Platforms and middleware are driving the maturity of the underlying technology and upper applications. The database age, the Internet age, and the mobile Internet age all had their process... Now it's blockchain's turn. "

As for the launch of the main network, Mao expressed his opinion on October 29 by forwarding a blog post by Chen Tian, Vice President of Research and Development: for ArcBlock, the goal is not only to launch the main network, but to make the main network of any application easier and faster. Many misconceptions and outdated ideas linger in the blockchain community today, such as "mainline online", a very misleading term.

"We have reason to believe that blockchain technology, along with digital currency technology, will become the infrastructure of the whole society in the next 10 years, bringing about radical changes and bringing benefits to all mankind," Mao said on October 31, the 10th anniversary of Mr. Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper.

Chen Tian also published his own feelings on joining the blockchain movement when retweeting Mao’s commemorative article

Community

The ArcBlock community tech Q&A took place on October 18

Chen Tian communicated with the community for the first time about the technology products during the fourteenth ArcBlock community tech Q&A in the Telegram group on October 18.

A transcript of the interview is available at:ARCBLOCK: WE ARE BEGINNING TO SHARE OUR TECH TRAINING WITH A BROADER AUDIENCE

Telegram group followers: 40,581（-3.6%） Facebook followers: 9,925（-0.45%） Twitter followers: 39,540（-2.2%） Reddit followers: 2,234（+0.86%） Linkedin followers: 1,073（+1.5%） WeChat Account followers: 8,009（-0.21%） Weibo followers: 2,714（+0.44%）

*(statistics as of October 31, 2018)