News from the Bunker - February 2019
It’s been an action packed month at PBSA! A Peerplays hardfork took place earlier this week and our plans for 2019 became a little bit clearer in more ways than one. The PPY token was listed on a couple new exchanges, and we attended three conferences.
Read on for the full story.
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Peerplays Hardfork on February 18th was a Success
Early last week PBSA released hardfork code for the blockchain, including BookiePro, to Peerplays Witnesses for immediate integration. We’re pleased to announce that the fork of Peerplays mainnet went off without a hitch on February 18 - the day it was scheduled to go.
It took the hard work and cooperation of all 17 Witnesses - plus an additional surprise Witness (!) - to make this happen, and we couldn’t be happier with how it all went. Great work, everyone.
With the Peerplays blockchain now set up to run BookiePro, as was mentioned in last month’s update - it’s just a matter of time before the DApp is up and running. Look for it to launch with a play token as we did during the BookiePro.fun beta/testing phase.
Exciting things are coming!
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PBSA Announces Mutual Termination of Agreement with eXeBlock
ExeBlock made the initial announcement on February 15th, which you can read here.
Shortly afterwards, PBSA President Jonathan Baha’i released a statement on Steemit, which you can read here.
We look forward to moving on and starting the next chapter at PBSA.
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The Next Chapter at PBSA
Where to start? In no particular order:
1. In light of the eXeBlock announcement above, PBSA has some big developments in the pipeline. Perhaps most intriguing is starting the review of Bitcoin Sidechain, which will allow the use and movement of Bitcoin (BTC) within the Peerplays ecosystem. The uses for sidechain are plentiful and documented (look no farther than the Peerplays Telegram channel) and we’re excited to share more after we’ve had some time to review the code ourselves and have a proper look around.
2. Another project we’re looking forward to reviewing is the Sweeps DApp, sometimes referred to as 5050Labs. Perfect for lottery and charity organizations - or between periods at a hockey game, for all the Canadians reading this - we’re just as excited for this DApp to find its way into the world!
3. One more area to mention here is esports. As many who follow our Twitter and Telegram channels know, PBSA has spent considerable efforts investigating opportunities in the esports/streaming world. We are not in a place to announce anything just yet, but we’ve been very pleased with our research and development in this area and can’t wait to get started!
This is just a sampling of what’s to come at PBSA and we’ll share more when the time is right.
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Peerplays Core Token - PPY - Listed on New Exchanges
Over the past month, PPY has been added to two new cryptocurrency exchanges, making it easier than ever to buy and sell the Peerplays core token. The new exchanges are IDAX and Exrates.
IDAX consistently ranks among the top 15 exchanges by traded volume, according to CoinMarketCap, and has been designed for ease of use. Exrates, a newer and actively growing platform, usually places in the top 40 exchanges globally.
To read our full press release on the new exchanges, click here.
In one more piece of exchange news it appears that, as of this writing, LiveCoin trading is back up and running. If you weren’t aware, they had been undertaking a big upgrade on their end, which put a halt to PPY trading for a longer period than anticipated.
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Recap of February Conferences Attended
The first two weeks of February were busy and productive ones, to be sure. The month started with some familiar topics - sports betting, gambling, blockchain - then moved into new territory with esports and streaming.
ICE London
Having recently attended ICE in New York, which was a relatively small event, we were blown away by the sheer magnitude of London’s conference! Hundreds of booths covered the massive floor areas, and an estimated 30,000 people walked through at one point or another.
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Armed with the BookiePro white label opportunity, we spoke with several companies who had “sports betting exchange” or similar on their roadmap and there are lots of follow-ups to be made and conversations to be had.
We also know that Peerplays is a gaming blockchain fit for any number of igaming and esports projects, and we were able to have dozens more conversations outside of just BookiePro. It was clear, though, that there’s a need for more education around blockchain in this industry as many appear happy to keep the status quo.
London Blockchain Week
This was a smaller event with fewer exhibitors - maybe a couple dozen in total - which allowed us to sit in on more presentations and panel discussions. Not surprisingly, many of the featured organizations were Ethereum based. Perhaps more surprising was that many had plans to move from Ethereum at some point.
There was lots of talk surrounding regulation, and one of the big buzzwords of the day was “STO” aka Security Token Offering, which seems to be very hot in Europe as opposed to other regions.
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Lots of interesting takeaways throughout the day, about the state of blockchain and where it might go, but alas our time was cut short in order to make a flight to the next destination.
Esports BAR
The most intriguing event of the trip was fittingly saved for last. Three full days learning about esports and video game streaming. What a blast!
Let’s begin with your obvious first question: Wait, you guys are involved with video games now? Well, sort of. We’ve got some great ideas brewing that we can’t wait to share with everyone! Just... not today. But trust us when we say it’ll be worth the wait.
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What we can say, is that blockchain hasn’t really made a major impact in esports and streaming. Yet. But over the course of the conference, a couple companies that were singled out by organizers to pitch to the masses were both building products on blockchain! If you read up on Esports BAR you can definitely find out more about them.
By the end of the first day we were approaching organizations - and being approached in some instances - because word had gotten around that we’re involved in blockchain. This led to finding even more companies combining esports and blockchain. Needless to say it was great validation that we’re onto something really cool in an industry that has blown up in recent years but still has so much room to grow.
This will be an especially exciting new leaf for PBSA and the Peerplays blockchain. Time to POWER UP!
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