Month: May 2014

The 1st Mastercoin Hackathon!

jjaquarius1 Comment

The first Mastercoin hackathon

We are happy to announce the finale of the 1st Mastercoin Hackathon ever – World Premiere!

It was an incredible weekend with lots of excitement and collaboration .

Dear Master Hackers , thank you for delivering  excellent results – Great Projects – We are all so very proud of you.

 

 

Here is a short summary of the winning projects:

 

1st place – Trust-Trade

Submitted by Master Hackers: Shaul Kfir – Bits of Gold, www.bitsofgold.co.il and Nadav Ivgi – Bitrated, www.bitrated.com

Description:

Trust-Trade is a centralized platform for High-Frequency off-chain trading of digital assets.

Trust-Trade allows peers to trade numerous times in a p2p manner without being bound by blockchain fees and and block creation time, while keeping the trading parties in control of their assets.

The proof-of-concept Trust-Trade implementation successfully conducted multiple rapid trades between the bitcoin-testnet and bitcoin (mainnet) blockchains.

Presentation:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TP7iQzrIUWC-zJdDQ7TWLHckRS3xn3JYcctaX99v0hs/edit#slide=id.p

Code can be found here:  www.trusttrade.info andhttps://github.com/shesek/trust-trade

Website:  www.trusttrade.info

 

2nd place – la’Zooz

Submitted by Master Hackers: Zeev Zohar, Oren Sokolovsky, Ilana Stein, Shai Zluf, Eitan Katchka, Hanoch Bar Nitzan, Ilan Doron, Matan Field, Yehonatan Natan, and Yehonatan Levi.

Description:

La’ZooZ is a decentralised, real-time ride-sharing app, that is using the cryptocurrency technology for establishing, coordinating and growing its community of users, developers, and promoters alike.

Presentation: http://lazooz.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/LaZooZ_Msc_Hackathon.pdf

Code can be found inhttps://github.com/iride/mastercoin-hackaton

Website:http://lazooz.org/

 

3rd place – ChessCoin

Submitted by Master Hacker: Zvika Rap

Description:

It is a distributed chess league which will allow both professional and hobbyist chess player to participate.

Players will play against each other or against a chess AI, and will earn chess coins, which are a dedicated crypto currency based on the Master protocol.

Additional future directions may be:

– Storing every game played on the blockchain,  which can be used as a distributed chess play history database.

– Developing a fully distributed chess protocol which doesn’t require a central server.

– Potential for various commercial, educational and entertainment directions.

 

Presentation/Site: http://chesscoins.com

Code can be found here:https://github.com/zvikara/chess-coins

Another interesting project :

BitBrother

Submitted by Master Hackers: Shabtai Dvir and Nitzan Raber

Description:

This project is a betting platform without a trusted third party, where users can watch their bets on the Mastercoin explorer.
Everything is exposed and there is no cheating and fraud.

 

Presentation: http://app.emaze.com/424056/untitled#slidenum=1
Website: http://alt.center

 

We would like to express our gratitude to our dear sponsors:

BitAngels, Crypto Currency Platform, eToro,Havelock Investments, Seedcoin  and Appcoin for making this event possible.

sponsors

The Mastercoin Team

The 1st Mastercoin Hackathon!

Factors Bringing About The Next Bitcoin Bubble

Nikki12 Comments

By Dominik Zynis, Head of Business Development, Mastercoin Foundation

The Mastercoin Foundation is heavily invested in the success of Bitcoin, as mjfk bitcoinost of our funds are denominated in bitcoin with the exception of the development Mastercoins which vest over eternity.  So we are generally concerned about the price of bitcoin and whether ecosystem is evolving in a way that will increase that price and therefore lower our burn rate.

It is difficult to attribute direct causal relationships to events like the rise of bitcoin price in 2013. However, factors such as the following would appear to be major factors contributing to the double bubble that happened in 2013:

  • the halving in late 2012
  • the emergence of ASICs which are predominately produced by Chinese manufacturers
  • an influx of interest by high net worth individuals,
  • continued merchant adoption coupled with consumer adoption

So this begs the question of why the stagnation in price over the last 6 months even though we are seeing even more investment activity in the space.

If one views this from the perspective that the market is a guiding force perhaps one can deduce some patterns that affect the price leading to boom and bust periods.

I propose that this is due to two particular patterns:

Continue reading “Factors Bringing About The Next Bitcoin Bubble” →

Factors Bringing About The Next Bitcoin Bubble

Master Protocol Dev Update Week of May 12, 2014

Nikki

 

Adoption of Agile Methods: Omni Wallet Sprints

Our development methodology in prior months revolved primarily around a generalized, broad milestone system; i.e., build block explorer, build wallet, build decentralized p2p trading functionality and so on.  As the Mastercoin Foundation team transitions toward role-based bounties with an incentive structure that is designed for longer-term working relationships, Adam Chamley reports that Omni team is transitioning to two week sprints with version 0.9 underway (2 week sprint is 50% complete) focusing on high value issues, for more insight into this process see the Omniwallet Development Themes document.

 

Masterxchange & MaidSafe Progress

The Maidsafe automated token distribution system for those who purchased MSAFE tokens with BTC was completed last week. Balances may be seen using Omniwallet  (test version)or at Masterchest.info.

Masterxchange.com is testing tools to send MSAFE, they should be announcing time frames for release soon.

Security Report

Our Head of Security has provided a great workflow chart for our security processes.workflow

Submissions come in via the security@mastercoin.org email address, the email is turned into a zendesk ticket and auto responded to with information about the bounty program. A user record is created that will be used to group submissions and save BTC and MSC address. The zendesk ticket is turned into a github issue in our private github. All details including a link to zendesk ticket are included. A blank issue with the submission title is also created in our public security github (this public issue is a placeholder and is created to track level, type, and expected award). Issues are managed internally by the security team classifying and validating the issues. Once patched issues are closed, copied over to the public github repo and closed in zendesk. The zendesk is part of the workflow to handle all the communication between the foundation and the researchers.

Master Protocol Dev Update Week of May 12, 2014

Mastercoin Foundation is Growing: Developer Evangelist, Product Manager and Regulatory Engagement Officer

Nikki

Mastercoin Foundation is growing and beyond hiring developers we have a need for two other people mastercoin_logowho will work to on-board new developers into the Master Protocol ecosystem as well as ensure that we are managing the feedback from stakeholders for the software that Mastercoin Foundation funds.  The roles of Developer Evangelist and Product Manager are critical for this.

Furthermore, it is clear that Master Protocol and Bitcoin can some day function as a transaction technology for regulated financial securities, so long as there is development and nurturing of the technology and service provider ecosystem which would enable complying with securities regulations.  Thus, in order to further engagement with businesses in the finance and banking sectors who are starting the process of integrating the recent crowd funding rules in the USA, and to ensure that we are able to engage with the regulatory officer counterparts at those businesses as well as regulatory bodies, we are seeking someone that can take on the role of Regulatory Engagement Officer. Continue reading “Mastercoin Foundation is Growing: Developer Evangelist, Product Manager and Regulatory Engagement Officer” →

Mastercoin Foundation is Growing: Developer Evangelist, Product Manager and Regulatory Engagement Officer

MaidSafecoin Case Study: Retrospective

Nikki, , , , , , 1 Comment

The retrospective on the MaidSafe crowd sale was completed yesterday. The retrospectiv notes, questions from the community and answers from Mastercoin Foundation staff, BitAngels members and MaidSafe staff are available online.

To join the MaidSafe community and discuss the latest developments head over to safecointalk.org

 

 

MaidSafecoin Case Study: Retrospective

Mastercoin Foundation Compensation

dacoinminster4 Comments

With our current hiring spree, it seems prudent to try to give a picture of our unusual, experimental pay structure.

Since our pay model is experimental, it is under constant revision, but it basically comes in three parts:

  1. For full-time employees, called “role-based bounties” (RBBs), we supply a minimum guaranteed monthly payment of at least $6000 per month.
  2. Anybody contributing to our development work (full time or not) is eligible for a share of $100k/month in milestone bounties. RBB salaries are deducted before payout (no double-dipping). These bounties are awarded by peer-review (everybody grades each other).
  3. An additional bonus of “dev mastercoins” (dev MSC) are paid in proportion to the bounties earned in #1 and #2

Here is what our compensation looked like for the Month of February for ten people who did the bulk of the dev work:

FebruaryCompensation

Continue reading “Mastercoin Foundation Compensation” →

Mastercoin Foundation Compensation