For the week ending 14-Aug-2018

This is a roundup of top stories from the EOS community, and from the greater blockchain industry in which EOS exists.

Curated weekly by Jeanene and brought to you by Thomas. 

Dan Larimer and Brendan Blumer have stated their intent to attend the London Hackathon event in September. (Link 1)

David Floyd at Coin Desk wrote on the different chains and forks of EOS, specifically covering Telos. (Link 2)

WORBLI posted a piece about five ways blockchain is effecting peoples lives on an every day level. (Link 3)

Kai Sedgwick at Bitcoin.com wrote about the future of decentralization. (Link 4) 

Iran

A day after the US restored sanctions against Iran, a high ranking Iranian official revealed that President Hassan Rouhani had ordered the country’s central bank to hold a meeting with other relevant authorities to finalize the project for a state-backed cryptocurrency. The Central Bank of Iran is still opposed to the idea of using digital currencies, as reflected in their April statement effectively banning financial institutions from dealing in crypto, but that attitude may be changing. (Link 5)

South Korea

The Korea Blockchain Enterprise Promotion Association has filed a demand with the government to regulate the new technology to benefit from its opportunities instead of focusing on its negative “short-term side effects.” (Link 6)

Ukraine

A group of deputies led by Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Mushak and two dozen representatives of the crypto business are working on draft legislation, introducing a 5% tax rate on profits from cryptocurrency trading and mining. It will be due only when the crypto funds are exchanged to fiat or in case of payments for goods and services, including property. Crypto-to-crypto transactions will not be taxed. (Link 7)

USA

All eyes were on the SEC to make a decision on the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin ETF based on the proposed rule change filed by Cboe BZX Exchange, but instead of a decision, the SEC decided to postpone, stating, “The Commission is extending this 45-day time period. The Commission finds that it is appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change. “ (Link 8)

At the state level, Ohio's amended version of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act has been signed into law. The amended version reads, "a record or contract that is secured through blockchain technology is considered to be in an electronic form and to be an electronic record." (Link 9)

EOSIO Usage

According to the infographic provided by Meet.One, (Link 10) the total number of DApps now developed on EOS to over 100, in 19 different categories. (Link 11) Everipedia, for example, has now gone live. (Link 12) At the EOS Hackathon in Sydney, Australia, Havven announced its decision to launch on EOS, and will airdrop half of its new HAV tokens on the EOS blockchain to existing HAV holders on Ethereum. (Link 13)

Banking / Finance

Coinatmradar.com announced a milestone for the ecosystem had been reached: more than 3,500 bitcoin ATM machines are now installed all over the world, with 74.07% of them in North America. (Link 14)

SALT has announced that it was adding 20 more US states to its services. CEO Bill Sinclair explained, “SALT loans are and will be structured within the laws, regulations, and guidelines provided by each jurisdiction in which the loan is offered. The first borrowers to get loans in the new system were those who previously applied in areas in which we were not approved to lend and were still interested in a SALT loan.” (Link 15)

Opera Ltd has decided to open up its desktop browser to its recently released mobile crypto wallet. “By adding a crypto wallet directly into the browser, we removed the need for complex extensions or separate apps,” said Charles Hamel, Product Lead of Opera Crypto. “Opening up the PC browser to crypto marks Opera’s second step towards making cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0 mainstream.” (Link 16)

General technology

Vitalik has come up with a new algorithm which requires just 1% of nodes to be “honest”. The new algorithm introduces a new kind of validator nodes called as the “independent observer nodes”. These nodes observe the chain in real-time and detect inconsistencies in when the message appears. (Link 17)

Shipping and Supply Chain

The shipping blockchain project between Maersk and IBM has grown to include 92 participants, and now has a name – TradeLens. the platform is emerging from its beta test and is now accepting early-adopter applications and announcing a new custom smart-contract service for executing complex shipping orders with fewer middlemen. (Link 18)

Social Media

Bitcoin cash fans have been using an onchain social media application Memo.cash, that allows anyone to create a profile, post uncensorable messages, and tip people natively in BCH. (Link 19) With the recent cries of censorship across social media, usage on platforms like Memo, Mastodon and Gab are increasing. (Link 20)

Issues

Concerns about cryptocurrencies are changing. According to the US DEA, the rate of criminal use has dropped considerably. (Link 21) The greater current concern is organized price manipulation. (Link 22)

Legal filings

Thai police have detained 27-year old actor Jiratpisit "Boom" Jaravijit as one of seven suspects for fraudulently luring foreigners into investing 797 million baht (nearly $24 million) worth of cryptocurrencies to purchase shares in companies that invested in DragonCoin. (Link 23)

Management Changes

David Marcus is stepping down from the board of directors at Coinbase due to his position as blockchain research lead at Facebook. (Link 24)

Mining

Bitmain has announced it’s offering a couple of Wi-Fi routers capable of minting digital coins while connecting you to the internet. The devices, Antrouter R3-DASH and Antrouter R3-SIA, are designed to mint dash (DASH) and siacoin (SC). (Link 25)

Patents

Intuit has been awarded a patent for processing BTC payments via SMS. According to the patent application, “The invention [...] includes receiving, by a payment service from a payer mobile device of a payer, a payment text message comprising a payment amount and an identifier of a payee mobile device of a payee, validating the payment text message based at least on a payer balance of a virtual payer account maintained by the payment service for the payer.” (Link 26)