02 Feb Symbol blockchain news update โ 02/02/24
Good morning world! I hope that you had a good week. I am getting in a quick Symbol Blog update to keep my current unbroken run for 2024 ๐ I will be in a different time zone next week as I decided to up sticks and work remotely from Tokyo for a couple of weeks. If anyone is around and fancies meeting up for a drink next Friday then let me know! ๐
Feedback needed
Symbol community, we need your feedback! Jag has posted multiple polls in the last week to get an idea of what you use Symbol for and what features you would like to see.
There has been a lot of discussion about stablecoins recently and both Hatchet and Jag are asking for feedback. Do you currently own/use stablecoins? What would you use a hypothetical Yen-backed stablecoin for? Trading? Payments? It would be great to get some feedback here as if this does end up happening then I guess we need to understand the market and requirements first ๐
Voting nodes
For those of you who run voting nodes please check that they are still online and functioning correctly ๐ We regular folk need you guys ๐ I think that there has been discussion about lowering requirements for voting nodes and/or changing to a pooled node stake model to increase the number of voting nodes. I hope that this does happen as I am sure that many of us would like to contribute and bolster the numbers.
NEM Supernode Enrolment
It’s (past) that time of the month again! If you are running a NEM Supernode then you will need to enrol for February. If you haven’t done this already then you have already lost two days of payouts so make sure that you go away and do it after reading this post! ๐
Future plans
To be honest I also don’t know anything about general future plans for the Syndicate so it is not just the community that is not up to speed on this and other things. I guess it is our policy not to promise and announce things before they happen in case there are hiccups and we can’t deliver. It does look like Lingua Franca is on the cards to come into existence in the coming months though and a “Japanese organisation” sometime this year. I am looking forward to hearing more about this in due course.
Symbol for storage?
So, I was thinking about this a couple of years ago and was told that it wasn’t a good idea ๐ I am with you though NFTDrive! ๐ช It looks like they have created a hybrid system where on-chain data can be stored on Symbol and linked on an Ethereum NFT rather than the traditional “link to a JPEG” hosted somewhere out there which could disappear in the future. We all know that the Ethereum NFT market is well-established (and during its peak was insane). Having a link to data stored on a blockchain should overcome some of the worries of data availability and hopefully, this will take off in the future and generate some regular juicy transactions (and fees). Of course, it would be better to see Symbol being used more widely and major NFT marketplaces supporting us but, in the meantime, Symbol seems to be becoming the blockchain of storage so get ready to add a few extra hard drives to your nodes ๐
NEMEME
What to do with NEM? I think we are all wondering about this! Tresto poses a thought experiment here and wonders whether we ditch maintaining the NEM chain and issue XEM tokens on Symbol (those who want to keep the NEM chain running can but without centralised maintenance). NEM could become a meme coin, I guess it wouldn’t have any true functionality but it would mean that we could concentrate development and maintenance solely on one chain. I guess the potential issue here is that it would be a big update for exchanges (but great if they have to all support Symbol to trade XEM ๐). I am not sure about the mechanics as I think that they may have been lost in automatic translation(!) my concern with issuing XEM on Symbol, as with the Symbol token distribution, we could have issues with token claims, lack of awareness, confusion about what is happening, loss of value etc, etc. I don’t know what the solution to the NEM issue is and I am not sure that anyone really does but it is a good discussion point and perhaps we should all be talking more about this. It is crazy that a more feature-rich, newer (and dare I say it, better) blockchain Symbol still is living in NEM’s shadow. I think that we, as a community, made the wrong decision not to just migrate NEM to Symbol and to keep two chains but it is easy to say this in hindsight!
Update – I don’t think my explanation was very good so Tresto has helped me out with this tweet! Thank you ๐
Annual report ๐คซ
Ahem. Sooooo the annual report. I can assure you that the 2022 Annual Report is real ๐ Some of you have even seen a draft and can back me up on this ๐ I can also say that I would be happy to publish it as an unofficial document if I am allowed to and the community want to see it. I hope that you guys do make an unofficial document for 2023, I would be happy to contribute! ๐
Thanks!
Thanks for reading, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I hope to see some of you next Friday for an evening beer! ๐ป
I’m a Symbol and NEM enthusiast and run this blog to try to grow awareness of the platform in the English-speaking world. If you have any Symbol news you would like me to report on or you have an article that you would like to publish then please let me know!
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