08 Aug Symbol blockchain news update – 08/08/23

It’s been a whole month since my last post! I have a massive amount of catching up to do so this might be a longer-than-usual post. I will get writing and see what happens 😊

Shoestring

Shoestring will be the replacement for Symbol-bootstrap and the team is looking for testers. If you want to set up your own testnet node then please give it a go and provide feedback. I set up a node on my home desktop Mac in both CLI and wizard mode but had a few issues with Docker Desktop. If you have problems with the lock file then go to the config section and change the “file sharing implementation” from VirtioFS to gRPC FUSE and everything should work fine 😊

Please try it out and provide your feedback! 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♀️

We recommend using it to deploy testnet (sai) nodes. We would like to have some people try it out before officially releasing it. Upon release, it will replace symbol-bootstrap as the recommended deployment tool.

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) July 14, 2023

The latest version 0.0.5 is now available as a Python package that you can find here – just install with pip and you are good to go!

With the help of @NCOSIGIMCITYNRE, symbol-shoestring 0.0.5 has been published! https://t.co/wlGSXPtuDp

Please try it and share your feedback! 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♂️

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) August 1, 2023

Mobile Wallet

This is super cool. If you haven’t tried it already then please check out the latest Symbol mobile wallet. Oleg has done an amazing job and it looks fantastic!

Greetings! The new #Symbol Mobile Wallet v2.0.0 is now available for beta testing! Join the program to try a fresh design and new features. Feel free to share your feedback!

Join on Android:https://t.co/PBdMR8JWN8

Join on iOS: https://t.co/Dw9sT6syi2 pic.twitter.com/qmFZIvu3NP

— Oleg Makarenko 🇺🇦 (@oleh_mk) July 19, 2023

New SDK releases

There has been an update to the Python and JavaScript SDKs. I am yet to upgrade but I will be checking this out shortly to see what the changes are. Apparently, it now supports TypeScript so go check it out! It seems that this tweet may now be out of date as it looks as if 3.1.0 is the latest version! 😁

We've just published both python and js SDKs 3.0.11.

Thanks to heavy lifting @Jaguar0625 did, js npm package also contains TS type definitions, so now you can use sdk from typescript as well.

Simple sample:https://t.co/v7nkSpGAzU

Enjoy 👋

— gimre (parody) #NAFO 🏵️ 🇺🇦 (@NCOSIGIMCITYNRE) July 28, 2023

I am not sure whether this applies here but it may also be useful to update Python to v3.9+ too.

We have increased the minimum python version for most of our python libraries to 3.9 to match a restriction imposed by one of our dependencies.

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) August 7, 2023

NEM Supernode enrollment

OK, sorry I know that this is a bit late and it is already the 8th of August but if you are running a NEM Supernode and haven’t done this already then you will need to re-enrol for this month to be eligible for a reward.

Hello, #NEM #Supernode Program participants! August enrollment address: NASNGU7OXLUWDG77WP6TC5TKOOF5DSJDTDF3EF5I

If you still want to participate in August, you must re-enroll your node! You can do it now! Enrollment for August is open.

— Cryptobeliever@cryptobeliever.symbol (@cryptoBeliever_) July 28, 2023

Visualisations

I was busy pre-absence working on some more visualisation views for Symbol transactions. I have a video below showing a calendar overview of funds sent and received on an interactive calendar. I am thinking I will do something similar and create some new plots for harvesting income – that’s my goal for this week.

Still messing around with prototyping #Symbol analytics and visualisation tools. This tool displays an overview of transactions sent and received by an account plotted on a calendar.https://t.co/isWeyJ6Jfq

— NineLives @ninelives.symbol 🏴‍☠️ (@ninelivessymbol) July 15, 2023

Drink and be merry

CryptoBarP2P is the latest establishment to accept Symbol payment! 👏 It looks like they are located in the (fancy) Ginza region of Tokyo and that it is a members-only club where you need to purchase a membership NFT to gain access. Very cool!

@CryptoBarP2P さんに遊びに来させてもらいました✨Symbol決済対応感謝です🙇‍♂️Symbol決済させて頂いて思ったのは、USDベースでの決済だったため、USDの金額入力→XYMの数量算出→Symbol決済用のQRコード表示が可能な受取用のアプリ or Webアプリがあるとお店側での決済フローが楽になりそうでした😊 pic.twitter.com/J4UaDWI4Am

— 松岡靖典@matsuoka.yasunori.symbol (@salaryman_tousi) July 17, 2023

Application rewards

I like this idea and it is something that I have been talking to Hatchet about in the past. I hope that we follow this up in Symbol (or NEM) 2.0. There are a lot of things to iron out in the implementation but it would be a novel idea that hopefully would encourage people to build applications.

Having the ability to allow applications to earn a part of the block rewards based on active users (independent of fees) or % of network activity generated etc. is something we’ve been looking at.

It has implications on the economic security of a chain, but also has some… https://t.co/wpZZRnTBGT

— Hatchet (@0x6861746366574) July 27, 2023

Symbol hits the streets of Tokyo

I am not sure who paid for this but I love it! You see these advertisement vans a lot on the streets of Tokyo and I guess puts a lot of eyes on whatever you are trying to promote. In this case, it was Symbol! I love it and nembear had a front-row seat – check out the video below.

僕は運がいい子。
Symbol アドトラック完璧にGET。
まじでカッコ良かったよ🐻#Symbol $Symbol #XYM $XYM https://t.co/olpBVqq8N3 pic.twitter.com/ZA48yJEgCs

— ★ねむぐま★３０★ (@nembear) July 11, 2023

Global reach

It’s really great to see that Symbol Community Web is growing, it looks like they have a diverse readership from across the globe, although (like Symbol Blog) Japan dominates in terms of readers. Good job! 👏

#Symbol Community Web の直近30 日間のアクセス傾向をレポート致します。これまでと違い、Google/Yahoo 検索周りのアクセス数が増加傾向です。

PV 数も伸びており、去年10月の開始から順調に成長しています。

まぁつまり…
いつもありがとうございます。 pic.twitter.com/lfEWXrI78t

— ふぁー@NCZQM2TT6V7QET26NMW2I6ZNKB4PDWZJHUJSK3Q (@faunsu19000) August 5, 2023

A note on decentralisation

Just a reminder. It’s always best to set up your own node and with Shoestring I think that we will see this happening more and more. I have a Raspberry Pi node and also set one up on my Mac at home, as well as running two on professional hosting solutions. You can never have too many nodes, well actually I don’t think that’s true but we should aim to have more diversity in hosting providers and geographical locations. I won’t mention any names AllNodes but having a lot of eggs in one basket can spell trouble if something goes wrong and we have seen this happen before.

This is important to consider for all networks, including NEM and Symbol. Perhaps especially Symbol due to its finalization logic.

Remember: it's always better to run your own node if you can. https://t.co/ZtYxzp0ooe

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) July 18, 2023

Thanks!

Thanks again for reading. Apologies as usual for the gap and for only covering a fraction of what has happened over the last week. I will be back again soon with a new post and maybe a new demo depending on how long it takes me to get it working 😁