Nothing caps the last two weeks better than USA Today writing about two of our very own Board members, Brock Pierce and David Johnston, at the Inside Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas with Ron Gross, Mastercoin Foundation’s Executive Director.  Now if I were a gambling man I would definitely place some bets using Mastercoin, of course.

It’s been a couple long, fruitful weeks with a lot of happening so this update is packed with information, and shows just how much progress and growth the community around Mastercoin has achieved since August.

We now have well over 20 Github repositories, various wallets being developed, multiple block explorers live.  Our PR firm Social Radius is doing a bang up job in getting the word out about Mastercoin resulting in interviews, press releases and articles hitting the street.  We have six confirmed Mastecoin chapter around the world with a few more in the works and Mastercoin meet ups popping up.  We also announced the formation of a Self-Regulatory Organization with Bitshares and ColoredCoins called the Consortium of Decentralized Applications (CoDA) aimed at mutual legal defense, education and advocacy of next-generation digital markets.

Most importantly we have a commitment from Peter Todd to come join the effort as the first full-time developer and scientists at Mastercoin Foundation.  More people are starting to get interested in Mastercoin.  We have seen new concepts like Mastercoin Daemon proposed and development of APIs which will allow the Mastercoin Protocol gain an even larger developer community.

Finally, mastercoin-faucet.com is live and give out MSC so that folks unfamiliar with Mastercoin can get an idea of how Mastercoin and Bitcoin work together.  Head over to try it out and don’t forget to share with your friends.

Press & Media Love

11.12.2013

At Bitcoin conference, two ‘gurus’ draw a crowd

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/12/11/the-bitcoin-world-has-its-own-brand-of-gurus/3987573/

11.12.2013

Mastercoin Foundation, Bitshares and ColoredCoins Form Self-Regulatory Organization to Ensure Continued Free Operation of New Bitcoin Applications and Protocols

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mastercoin-foundation-bitshares-coloredcoins-form-160000194.html

8.12.2013

Let’s Talk Bitcoins! Episode 64 – Millibits and Mastercoin

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/e64-millibits-and-mastercoin/

6.12.2013

Mastercoin Foundation Lets Virtual Currencies Use Bitcoin Protocol

http://www.coindesk.com/mastercoin-foundation-virtual-currencies-bitcoin-protocol/

4.12.2013

Backed by $5 Million in Funding (4,700 BTC), Mastercoin Is Building a Flexible, New Layer of Money on Bitcoin

http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/backed-5-million-funding-4700-btc-mastercoin-is-building-flexible-new-layer-money-on-1859067.htm

27.11.2013

Newfination: What Is Mastercoin? A Talk With Executive Director Ron Gross

http://www.newfination.com/2013/11/25/what-is-mastercoin-a-talk-with-executive-director-ron-gross/4982/

Foundation Staff Announcements

Last week we announced that Peter Todd will be join Mastercoin Foundation as of February 1, 2014 as a full-time scientist/developer.  If you would like to learn a bit more about Peter, here is his presentation at the Bitcoin 2013 conference earlier this year about off-chain transactions:

Some of the other staff were announced already but for the sake of clarity here is a quick list, click on each name to get an introduction of each staff member in our forum and take a moment to introduce yourself.

Nikos Bentenitis – Mastercoin Education Lead

Matt Elias – Legal / Regulatory Advisor Search Lead

Aric Fedida, IT Lead 

Colbert Lau, Project Manager (unofficial)

Taariq Lewis, Smart Property Lead

Michael Terpin, Media Lead

Dominik Zynis, Communication Lead

Open Bounties & Positions

As mentioned in the prior weekly post there are a multitude of bounties available to work on.  The specification for Role Based Bounties is now also part of the Mastercoin Protocol Spec on Github.

Most importantly the Foundation is looking to hire two full-time developers.

Distributed Exchange Contest

The DEX contest is progressing, however due to bitcointalk.org being down I can only say that the contest is estimated to wrap up in January and that testing is progressing.  There have been a lot of updates to the repo’s involved in this contest such as Mastercoin wallets which you can find further down in this post.

Perhaps it’s time to make a transition to talk.mastercoin.org 😉 😉

Documentation & Wiki

The $5000 documentation contest announced in November 2013 has come to an end.  A BIG thank you to everyone who participated.  When the contest began the Mastercoin Wiki had just a few pages; now we have well over 50 pages as well as over 50 questions in our FAQ.

We are tallying up the work this week and next week we should have everyone’s award amounts set.  If you participated please go to the contest Trello board and enter in your information.

If you would like to contribute to the wiki email Aric@mastercoin.org for an account.

Protocol & Proposals

Mastercoin Protocol

As always the Mastercoin Protocol Specification is on Github, recent commits are:

DAPcoin (Decentralized Applications and Protocols) Complete Specification

The DistributedAppscoin protocol uses the Mastercoin Protocol to create a user currency identifer and will financially benefit the entire user community, including those who don’t use the type III Decentralized Apps protocol layers.  For more information read the whitepaper, The Emerging Wave of Decentralized Applications, written by David Johnston, Steven Mason, Farzad Hashemi, Ron Gross, and Sam Yilmaz.  http://www.distributedapps.co/

Code Repositories

• maran/mastercoin-ruby Mastercoin library for Ruby

• grazcoin/mastercoin-tools

• mastercoineducation/mastercoineducation.github.io

• mastercoin-MSC/spec Specification of the Mastercoin protocol

• Bitoy88/MyMastercoinsWalletBeta

• Bitoy88/MyMastercoinsWallet

• dexX7/mastercoin-faucet A Mastercoin faucet

• PetervandenBerg/mastercoin-teampage Mastercoin-teampage

• rbdrbd/masterdaemon Mastercoin masterdaemon

• DavidJohnstonCEO/Mastercoin-Foundation-Legal-Repo Mastercoin Foundation Legal Repo

Mastercoin Market

MSC Price Chart as of 12-DEC-2013 :

(X-axis: time; Y-axis: Price of 1 MSC in BTC)

Note that trading is manual at this time, a list of contacts is in the Order Book spreadsheet.

Community & Chapters

There are six chapters:

• Mastercoin Israel – founded by Ofer Rotem, Stas Oskin and Amnon Gilboa.
• Mastercoin China – founded by Red Li and Zhen Li.
• Mastercoin UK – founded by Eric Benz.
• Mastercoin New York – founded by Jeffrey Parries.
• Mastercoin APAC – founded by Dmitry Avramenk.
• Mastercoin Louisiana – founded by Charles “Charlo” Mouton-Lanphier.

If you are interested in forming a chapter in your locale here is a quick guide. And if you already had a chapter check out the meeting notes from our Israeli chapter to give you some ideas for your next meeting.

There are a few meet ups already scheduled.  If you know of others please let us know so that we can broadcast them on the various social media channels and on this blog.

Foundation Financial

If you are curious about Mastercoin Foundation’s corporate set up you can head over to the github repo that contains the bylaws for Mastercoin Foundation, Inc.

Our spending policy is now on the wiki.

Mastercoin Fund Ledger (MSC)			10071.6150979
Exodus MSC	563162.35762218	End of Exodus	9/1/2013
Dev MSC	56316.235762218	Years since Exodus	0.27909901757422
Total MSC	619478.593384398	Available Dev MSC	9905.71491721944

Mastercoin Primary Fund Ledger (BTC)
Beginning Balance	4740.6200979
Current Balance	2411.09418432
Overall Balance	4433.13918989437

Source: Fund Ledger