Stakin Bi-Weekly Newsletter Vol. 3

Our 3rd Bi-Weekly Newsletter With All The Details About ICON Developments, Game of Zones and Amazing Testnet Launches.

Hey Readers,

Key Highlights:

• Cosmos Game of Zones Restart Phase 1b
• ICON Europe Webinar
• P-Rep Delegation Program and ICON CPS 2.0 Paper
• ICON P-Rep Community Meeting Six — Daily ICX Going Global!!
• Westend — New Testnet for Polkadot and Kusama
• Darwinia Node Launching
• Wenchang 2 Testnet Launching on Band Protocol

🚀 Cosmos Game of Zones Restart Phase 1B

On May 10, 2020, at 00:01 UTC Phase 1a of the Cosmos Game of Zones ended. During the first phase, 103 Zone were connected to the GoZ Hub, despite the connection difficulties. After the first phase, the top four consisted of Responsible, Sentinel, IRIShub, and Kugs (see image below). For the complete results, you can click here.

After the many hiccups during the first phase, Cosmos announced that they would be pausing the competition to achieve code and network stability for teams to reach their full potential while stress-testing IBC. And, on Monday, May 18, 2020, Phase 1b was launched! It will end on and will end on Thursday, May 21, at 6:59 am UTC. These are the objectives for the all-new Phase 1b:

• Every team needs to append -1b to its chain ID. An official roster was created and published on May 14, 2020, at 7 pm UTC.
• Trust periods are unrestricted on the software.
• According to Cosmos, all players will have a restriction of 1.25 million doubloons; this amount should provide enough tokens for a minimum trust period of 10 minutes.
• Gas prices are fixed at 0.0025 doubloons/gas, and client updates cost around 2500 doubloons.

The winning team of Phase 1b will have the smallest trust period on their client while also maintaining the most extended liveness period.

These are the dates for the following phases:

• Phase 2 starts Monday, May 25, at 7:00 am UTC and will end on Friday, May 29, at 6:59 am UTC.
• Phase 3 starts on Monday, June 1, at 7:00 am UTC and will end on Friday, June 5, at 6:59 am UTC.

🇪🇺 ICON Europe Webinar

We thank the ICON Europe community as well as Everstake, Block42, Icon Solidation, and HelloIconWorld for the successful Webinar on Wednesday, May 20, 2020. During the webinar, we discussed the following topics:

• An Introduction to ICON for all our new community members.
• Advantages of the ICON Blockchain Network.
• ICON Europe Initiative
• Development on ICON
• DApps that are currently on ICON and those that are being built. If you’d like to see a complete list on this subject, click here.

🧑‍🚀 ICON Pilot Delegation Program and CPS 2.0

We’re happy to share that Stakin has been selected in the first batch of the ICON P-Rep Delegation pilot. We’re proud to be among the 26 teams that received a delegation from the ICON Foundation. 🎉

The Second ICON Community Proposal System Paper has recently been shared and can be found here. Some highlights of CPS 2.0 are:

• All Main P-Reps will be responsible for evaluating and voting on Contribution Proposals and re-evaluating Active Contribution Proposals.
• Main P-Reps will also have to vote and invest funds in the Contribution Proposal Fund.
• Pending Contribution Proposals pass, with the same requirements as Network Proposals, at least 67% of Main P-Reps must vote to approve, and at least 67% of the stake-weighted vote (of Main P-Reps) must consent.
• All approved Contribution Proposals need to submit monthly Progress Reports. In case they fail to do so, they will automatically be disqualified, with all consequences for the Sponsoring P-Rep coming with that.
• Proposals can be paused when the progress report is unsatisfactory. Pausing will stop the funding for the request until the next voting period, Main P-reps are responsible for this.
• Proposers request an adjustment of the Contribution Proposal’s budget, for example, to change the project’s scope over time or account for ICX price changes

For a complete article on CPS 2.0 and our opinion about it, click here.

🎉 ICON P-Rep Meeting 6 — Daily ICX Going Global!!

The Sixth ICON P-Rep Meeting was held on May 16, 2020. You can find the complete meeting here. These are the highlights:

• The ICON Daily ICX is going global!! The Daily News on the ICON Network, in multiple languages, will be shared daily here!!
• IISS 3.0 — ICON needs to provide a detailed roadmap about all the new implementations. A detailed roadmap will allow all teams to plan for the bond requirements and will put less pressure to hoard rewards now instead of spending them on things that can help develop the ecosystem further.
• The need to vote to update virtual step rewards. Currently, there is still a limit of 1 month for the deposit period. However, voting to change up to 24 months for increased rewards is possible. Moreover, the max ICX that can be deposited is 100k. Multiple parties in the ICON ecosystem are worried that this is not enough to cover transactions, so they want to vote to raise the limit.

🐤 New Testnet For Polkadot and Kusama

On May 20, 2020, the Web3 Foundation Team announced the launch of Westend a new Testnet for Polkadot and Kusama.

Westend is a Polkadot Testnet that will be replacing the previous Alexander Testnet. Most important changes in this Testnet are:

• Westend resembles interactions with Kusama, a Polkadot more accurately, allowing teams and developers to build and deploy a parachain and try out Polkadot’s governance, staking, etc.
• Validators can test their deployments in the active validator set.
• Exchanges and wallets can test their transaction submissions.
• Everything you can do on Polkadot, you will be able to do it on Westend!

So, why Westend instead of Polkadot or Kusama? There is no need for KSM or DOT to interact with Westend. That makes it an excellent testbed for validators to test active validator sets without fear of slashing. The same goes for parachain testing before deploying on Polkadot or Kusama.

🦀 Darwinia Node Launching

The Darwinia Network has launched its Crab Network on May 12, 2020. Furthermore, on May 18, the network announced that the Crab Node Grand Prix was about to start. Here is a short recap about the Crab Network Testnet.

The Crab Network will be a permanent network. Its function will be similar to Kusama. All new features related to deployment will be tested first on the Crab Network, and the data and its state won’t be erased. The Darwinia Foundation will allocate 2% of RING’s initial supply to the Crab Network. The native digital asset cRING of the Crab Network will be distributed proportionally. For more information, check here.

We are excited that Stakin is now operational on the Darwinia Crab Network. See below for our wallet address.

5CRABiMaLC9v4PpRGxQVsQfYAo7aEbz1oZeZJSfXtC1k9r68

🥳 Wenchang 2 Testnet Launching on Band Protocol

The Band Protocol has launched its Wenchang 2 Testnet; the first genesis block was successfully minted at 2 pm UTC on April 14, 2020. The Protocol’s Testnet has been running with over 40+ validators. So far, 80% of the group maintains 100% uptime. The community-run nodes have produced over 1,500,000 blocks with zero downtime at an average block time of 1.9 seconds. Click here for more information.

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking, delegation, and cryptocurrencies involve a high degree of risk, and there is always the possibility of loss, including the loss of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some protocols. We advise you to do your due diligence before choosing a validator.