This week's spicy topics:
- xNation: EOS & ETH Tokens and Liquidity Pools
- Missed Blocks Update
- EOSIO Tools
- BOS 1st Anniversary
- WAX: Koloboks, Turorials
- BlockBase Test Network
- WIZZ.network Beta
- NewDex: Annual Report, Danchor
- Token Pocket Exchange
- EOS Discussions 2
- EOSDT Dashboard
- BountyBlok & Asana
- MYKEY & MakerDAO
- Virginia Tech Blockchain Boot Camp
Sauce in every format:
EOS Nation’s EOS Hot Sauce is also available in video and audio formats shortly after the article is published.
xNation: EOS & ETH Tokens and Liquidity Pools
In order to be more aligned with our multi-chain vision for the future of blockchain, we have relocated our bancor.eosnation.io portal to xnation.io. In addition to our rebrand, the xNation Bancor platform now offers more functionally than before! In addition to doing EOS token conversions, xNation now also supports Ethereum token conversions and makes it easy to add and remove liquidity to Bancor liquidity pools on the Ethereum network!
Micro Forks and Missed Blocks Update
We’ve seen many people asking questions about what’s going on with the EOS Mainnet in the last few days. Why are there so many forks and missed blocks?
First, we want to provide a bit of background. Every transaction on the EOS Mainnet takes CPU to process, and the total amount of CPU consumed for all transactions has been steadily increasing. This increase in the total amount of CPU consumption comes from higher usage of network resources.
As the CPU need increases, block producing infrastructure providers need to make changes to accommodate accordingly. For EOS Nation, that means buying more hardware and then splitting the workload across more machines. Usually our users don’t notice anything – we just balance the increased load across more servers.
Although it’s unclear at this time what exactly triggered the problem, it’s safe to say that the seemingly ever increasing CPU usage was a contributor. Not all of the infrastructure was fast enough to deal with the changes, and some block producers couldn’t keep up with the load.
Server CPU is consumed every time a node exchanges blocks with another node. The more nodes you exchange blocks with, the more CPU it takes. If you peer with fewer nodes, you save on CPU. This seems like a straightforward fix.
However, as an active block producer, when you produce a block you want to get it to everyone else who needs it as quickly as possible. So you want to peer with at least the 3 block producers in the schedule before you and the 3 after you. This also includes peering your API nodes needed to service your applications as well as peering the P2P endpoint you provide to the public.
The solution has mostly been optimizing connections between block producers to be as efficient as possible. Each block producer is adjusting to their own unique situation: for example, some have modified various EOSIO settings, others have upgraded their EOSIO binaries to the latest 1.8.9 release and some have done both.
A block producer cannot simply optimize their own infrastructure and be done with it. All block producers need to work together to come to a common solution. Over the last week or so, block producers from around the world have been working together to improve the situation. Block.one has also been very responsive, communicating with us on a daily basis and looking over our logs in order to hopefully gain valuable insights from the data.
Significant progress has been made to reduce the number of micro-forks and missed blocks and block producers continue to work to improve things.
EOSIO Tools: New Test Network, EOSJS, WebAuthn
Block.one continues to deliver consistent improvements to the EOSIO ecosystem. And in the week following the release of EOSIO 2, they bring us EOSJS 21 and a shiny new test network for developers!
Read the official EOSJS 21 press release to get all the details of the new features, as well as their impact on users and developers. EOSJS Version 21.0.0-rc1 includes:
- WebAuthn support
- Elliptic Crytpography
- Context-Free Action Support
- And More!
Block.one has also announced that their new test network is now live making it easier than ever before for developers to start building on EOSIO. This test network lets developers test confidently and with ease, allowing them to get set up and start building right away. Developers are invited to take advantage of these useful features designed to help developers engineer their EOSIO projects:
- Multi-Node Testnet
- EOSIO Testnet Monitor
- Real World Testing
- Snapshots
- Built by Block.one
Tried out the test network? Send some feedback to Block.one, they want to hear from you!
EOSIO Networks
This week was the 1st Anniversary of the BOS network and there are many goodies flying around. Make sure to get your hands on some BOS tokens by participating in the following activities:
- Win 150 BOS by participating in BOSCore twitter giveaway.
- Get up to 20,000 BOS by participating in the Swap and Win Event on the TokenPocket app.
BOSCore is also starting their “3 Months of CPU” grants program to offer free CPU to qualifying dApps. On top of that, the grant also includes free accounts for all dApp users during these 3 months. This program is open to both new teams looking for the best blockchain platform to launch on as well as established teams facing CPU shortages on other EOSIO networks. Apply here.
BOSCore was also present at the recent #Dacathon2020 as they introduced the Borda Count voting mechanism to the entire DAC community that showed up for the hackathon.
Congratulations to the BOS network for a successful first year and we look forward to more BOS innovation in 2020!
WAX continues to tear down barriers to mass adoption and this week they bring us a new game to try out along with an excellent interactive guide. Built by leading WAX Guild Pink.Network, this guide offers different educational paths that users can take depending on their level of knowledge. From new users to power users, and even developers, this interactive guide contains something for everyone!
Koloboks is a demo game that was created by the CryptoLions team and is powered by the Simple-Assets NFT standard. In this game you can breed, trade and collect Koloboks. Make sure to send your Koloboks on adventures in order to win additional NFT prizes!
The WAX Office of the Inspector General was also busy recently, spending approximately 40 hours compiling and releasing the January rankings. Congrats to all the Guilds who made it into the Top 21 and especially WAX Sweden, EOS Brazil and Pink.Network for finishing in the top 3!
EOS Nation became a Guild on WAX because we believe in the product-market-fit of the network. We believe in their blockchain gaming vision and also believe in the team executing on that vision. Learn more about WAX Co-Founder William Quigley on today’s Everything EOS episode. William’s extensive knowledge of the blockchain space and savvy business sense makes this an excellent episode you won’t want to miss!
BlockBase network is now running on a test network and producing sidechains. Users can download the software and try it for themselves. The team is currently focused on testing the sidechains consensus mechanism.
People can visit the BlockBase Explorer, where you can find all the documentation they’re building and also the BlockBase Network Tracker, where you can monitor all the nodes and sidechains currently running on the test network.
Remember, the BlockBase Airgrab is still on-going on a monthly basis. Each EOS account can claim one of the 24 monthly airgrabs, so make sure to claim for all your accounts! Accounts need to have been created for at least 1 month and contain at least 1 EOS. Happy airgrabbing!
Want to learn more about the power of blockchain applied to databases? Hop on over to YouTube and watch the BlockBase interview with mBlu Crypto!
WIZZ was created to bridge the gap for content creators, and social users of all kinds. WIZZ features currently include: encrypted text, audio, and video chat with token transfer, encrypted data storage, secured wallet, and a decentralized exchange.
Originally deployed on the EOS Mainnet, WIZZ decided to launch their own network in order to reduce cost of resources. This week marks the release of their Beta Front End and Back End Console.
Decentralized Blockchain Applications
Newdex is definitely one of the success stories in the EOSIO ecosystem and beyond! They recently added features that allow users of other blockchains to enjoy all the benefits of a DEX powered by EOS smart contracts. The team also presented an impressive annual report, and we’d like to congratulate the team on:
- 40M page views
- 10K average DAU
- 1st place in user & trading volume among all blockchain exchanges
There are many more impressive numbers to be found in the full report and it’s hard to imagine what the EOS ecosystem would be without such a quality platform that provides many EOS projects with their first exposure to the open market.
And the Newdex innovation keeps on coming! They recently announced their very own stable coin project, named Danchor. It enables users to generate USN tokens, which are pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar through staking EOS. The team already confirmed that USN Tokens will be supported by many wallet partners. You’ll find a list of those along with other details in Newdex’ official announcement and the Danchor Beginners Guide.
TokenPocket, a leading EOSIO wallet, keeps expanding its services, and the newest release of TokenPocket Pro came with an integrated exchange! Users can now switch to TP Exchange and enjoy the liquidity and prices of some of the top exchanges, including Huobi, Binance and Okex. Registration requires either an email or a phone number and new accounts are gifted $10 in USDT and further rewards for referrals. Note that these rewards remain frozen, until certain requirements are met.
With EOS Discussions, Novusphere has brought a platform for anonymous and on-chain communications to the EOS Ecosystem. On the 27th of January, the team will launch the updated version Discussions 2.0, which brings many new features that focus on user-friendliness. While the previous version depended a lot on Scatter, the update will come with a UnifiedID for simple login and account creation that’s also integrated into the WebWallet.
Other new features include a search function, more transparency regarding the platform’s moderation process, the ability to add multiple attachments to a post, user profiles, and more.
If this all sparked your interest, join their mailing list to get notified when the update is live.
We’re big fans of Equilibrium. And if you’re wondering why, we can point you to a recent Reddit post that lists 7 good reasons.
Want to take a look under the hood to see how it all works? No problem.
The team recently introduced a beautifully designed dashboard monitor, which displays all the relevant stats regarding EOSDT and NUT. With all the important complexity that DeFi products naturally come with, we believe that a comprehensive user experience is crucial.
We’re happy to see the Equilibrium team hard at work and actively developing in this direction.
Collaborations, Partnerships and Interoperability
Asana is a practical tool for organizing, tracking and managing teamwork. Through a new partnership with Bountyblok, activities happening in Asana will be recorded on the EOS Blockchain and gamified through fun features such as bonuses, prizes and leaderboards.
Find a detailed explanation of how it works in the official partnership announcement. It’s great how Bountyblok demonstrates innovative use cases for blockchain to the wider public and we congratulate both teams on their successful efforts to create synergies. If you’re working in a team or leading a project, check out the new opportunities and consider organizing your work with Asana and Bountyblok.
The MYKEY wallet is a very popular wallet in China with its own token running on EOS. Soon, their services will be also available for non-Chinese EOS users. Some might remember MYKEY’s presentation at the ECC in Rio, where we could learn about the KEY ID protocol and how MYKEY improves the user experience, by removing concepts like CPU and NET, replacing it with the simple idea of “network credits.” And to celebrate the recent integration of MakerDAO into MYKEY those “networks credits” were used to purchase DAI at a discount of 20%.
A concept like “network credits” as a unified fee system within MYKEY avoids much friction for users, so they can be moving between several blockchain protocols and the dApps built on top of them.
The Vibrant EOSIO Community
On Saturday January 18th, the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech hosted the 2nd Blockchain Bootcamp in cooperation with engineers from Block.one.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for Virginia Tech students to propose and develop innovative solutions to pressing global challenges, such as secure, trustworthy voting systems,” said Kirk Cameron, professor of computer science in the College of Engineering and associate department head for research and engagement. “We believe the local availability of Block.one engineering expertise combined with the energy and creativity of Virginia Tech students will lead to novel and important uses of blockchain technology.”
We’re happy to see the continued efforts of Block.one to educate the next generation of blockchain developers.
EOS Nation is a top 21 Block Producer on the EOS public network. We earn inflation rewards based on the percentage of tokens staked towards us. Those rewards are reinvested into EOSIO community, tools, and infrastructure. Help grow the ecosystem by staking your vote to eosnationftw for BP or proxying to proxy4nation.
Remember, we never accept compensation in exchange for featuring projects in the EOS Hot Sauce. That means if a project is included in the EOS Hot Sauce it’s because we believe that project brings value to the EOSIO ecosystem and we want our community to know about it!
Are you building an interesting project on EOSIO? We want to hear from you! Reach out to us on social media or email info@eosnation.io.
Thanks for supporting EOS Nation and for reading this week’s edition of EOS Hot Sauce! Want more spicy updates? Check out some of our recent EOS Hot Sauce episodes!
Ocean Defenders NFT Launch
In the spirit of the emerging SOLARPUNK movement, The Ocean Defenders are determined to build a platform for a synergistic lifestyle. Here we come together to use our individual powers to preserve the cradle of life, our oceans.
Everyone can become an Ocean Defender, each in their own individual way. We welcome you.
EOS Nation’s April 2022 WAX Report
EOS Nation and .gems have been working on a bunch of WAX-related activities this month and we’re happy to give you a little overview.
Heidi Taillefert presents: Vintage Valentines
The Vintage Valentine series was conceived to mimic turn of the century valentine’s day cards, reflecting an era when society pretended to hide the more salacious habits of so many people during that time. On top of the physical pieces, this collection also features digital copies, published as Vintage Valentine Card NFTs on the carbon-neutral WAX blockchain.
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