Counterparty Update 08/03/16

Ecosystem NewsThe mobile app company known as MandelDuck recently added support for Counterparty tokens within the popular Bitcoin geocaching app known as Takara. This is not the first time MandelDuck has integrated Counterparty tokens within one of their games, another recent example is the game known as Sarutobi. “At MandelDuck we are passionate about using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to bridge the gap between the digital and physical. We love to develop games and apps that let users easily interact with Bitcoin and other currencies with limited technical knowledge and a low barrier to entry.” MandelDuck and Spells of Genesis utilized Counterparty to create the first in-game assets that can be used across multiple games. This is a notable achievement that may be looked back on years from now as the beginning of a seismic shift in video game development. MandelDuck was also the first app creators to make use of IndieSquare’s API tools which makes it easier to integrate Counterparty assets into other games in the future! The prominent Japanese Bitcoin exchange, Zaif Exchange, started trading XCP and Counterparty assets recently, including the exchange's Counterparty asset ZAIF. This is a great accomplishment for Counterparty’s goal of global adoption. IndieSquare released an update on this event that can be read here. More information about Zaif Exchange will be forthcoming. “The Storj Team reports that we are nearing one month since the release of the Test Group C open beta. Storj devs are continuously releasing new version with improvements and bug fixes of both the Storj Share CLI and GUI which farmers use to offer their extra hard drive space for rent. People who want to participate can download the beta from here. Also people can start trying out how to upload files to the Storj decentralized cloud bridge, quickstart instructions are here. We have a very active community slack where testers can ask for assistance and follow the project progress. Work continues on integrating micropayment channels. The first monthly rewards payout to participating farmers is being processed now and will be distributed shortly. In a future beta version micropayments will be automatically streamed to the farmers in near real-time. Last week, the Storj team presented the project at the Node Summit event in San Francisco and showed off the decentralized storage network in action with a raspberry pi farming rig seen here.” - The Storj Team Building on the recent popularity of in-game assets and PokemonGo, Josh Jones has launched a Pokemon trading site that makes use of the Counterparty asset Topcoin. The site is not yet fully operational but the concept is promising and the first mover advantage seized will likely end up being valuable in the future. Check out the site here. The next Foldingcoin monthly public meeting will be held on Sunday August 7th at 3pm EDT on google hangouts. Shaban Shaame of Spells of Genesis will be in attendance and anyone who wants to ask questions or attend should follow @Foldingcoin on twitter for further information.

Counterparty ContentWhat is Storj? Part 3 of 3 Willie Fleming, Director of the Scotcoin Project, was interviewed on RT to discuss Brexit, cryptocurrency and Scotcoin. It’s a sign of progress to see Counterparty projects increasingly in the news and Willie did a wonderful job explaining cryptocurrency for those unfamiliar with Bitcoin. Watch the interview here. Spells of Genesis is having a video tutorial contest! View details for the contest here.

Counterparty NewsJon Southurst of Bitcoin.com wrote a piece following Counterparty’s recent milestone of 50k named assets created and 500k transactions completed. The article was a review of Counterparty’s progress over the years, detailing nine of the top Counterparty projects. This article has a long tail and will be of great use going forward to new users researching Counterparty on the web. Read the article here. Takara was featured in the news recently due to Counterparty token integration. The news is fresh and more coverage is likely to come but some of the top articles so far are from Bitcoinist.net, CCN, Econotimes and The Merkle. Counterparty and Spells of Genesis were mentioned in a brief video by Renegade Gaming discussing the recent Takara news.

Developer Updates Ruben is close to a first alpha release of the EVM with partial asset support. Some more time needs to be spend on documentation and tools to get people started first though. Ruben also wrote a CIP on a new data encoding schema to support the increase in data that we'll need to store in the blockchain. More can be read here. Join the Counterparty XCP group on Telegram for breaking news and real-time Counterparty conversation.