26 Aug Symbol blockchain news update 27/08/21

Welcome to Friday’s edition of the Symbol Blog news update. It’s another short post as I have been writing all day for work and my brain needs a rest! 😊

QUEST updates are coming

Sounds like even more updates are coming to QUEST in the near future – keep your eyes peeled over the weekend to see what will be revealed by @QUESTofficial5. They are fast workers! We will be watching so I’ll also let you know as soon as I find out 😊

ひと段落して動きが止まった様に見えますが、次のアップデートを開発してます！週末に何か進展をご報告できるかと・・・。

We are now working on next update. Would like to report this weekend. Stay tuned !#QUEST

— QUEST official (@QUESTofficial5) August 26, 2021

Rosetta

So this was something that I was planning to write a short piece on in the context of NEM and Symbol. I am gathering interesting tidbits from Discord to add to my to do list and this was one of them (check out the #rosetta-impl channel). I should get my act together as I am being too slow and it seems that @xembook has already written an article about Rosetta in Japanese that you can find on NEMLOG.

Maybe I will still write up an English version in case Google Translate doesn’t do a good job 😊

Thank you for sharing! We are beginning to work on this for NEM and Symbol. https://t.co/dSVmQUAW1p

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) August 26, 2021

NFT discussion part 2

You may have seen @Jaguar0625‘s commentary on NFTs in yesterday’s news update. Here’s a continuation of this train of thought. Seems we agree on this wholeheartedly 😆

I think most generative NFTs are fads like beanie babies. They serve as cool status symbols right now, but I have a hard time believing they have lasting value. What happens when consumer preferences change or there's a bear market?

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) August 26, 2021

I think that this is an important point, preferences do change. Whilst the general crypto market has always bounced back in the past, will this hold true of NFTs that were so valuable in the previous bull run? Seems unlikely based on past experience.

CryptoPunks are a current darling. How have they performed? After laying dormant for years, sales rocketed this year in the current bull market.

What fundamentally makes punks more durable than kitties? I don't see it. pic.twitter.com/mmIyVUKozD

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) August 26, 2021

And what benefit do you get from owning a NFT other than telling other people that you own it?

Also, if I own a CryptoPunk, what rights do I actually have to it?

Unlike physical art, I don't need the owner's permission to view it. I can go to a site like https://t.co/BSr714cqVB and view them all. Heck, I could even buy a digital frame and rotate through them.

— Jaguar0625 (@Jaguar0625) August 26, 2021

I have a feeling that the technology here will move rapidly and the NFTs of today might end up as the floppy disks/VHS/[insert obsolete technology here] of the future.

Of course we could be completely wrong and these crazy expensive NFTs could be the best investments you ever make in your life. Seems unlikely though doesn’t it? 🤔

Choosing a node to delegate to

I am not going to copy and paste all of the tweets here as there are many but you may have seen that over the past week or so many of the Community Managers have been posting tweets about delegating to their nodes. It is a major shill-fest but there is a reason for it!

There is an argument that in our decentralised community, people should be able to reward those that are providing a valuable contribution to the ecosystem. The Community Managers (of which I think I am one as I am in the Discord group!) are providing their time and skills to help the community in some way. I write this blog, others provide translations, some moderate Telegram and Discord etc. We do all of this for free, because we believe in Symbol. I can tell you it can be quite a time commitment and many of us have too many of them already! 😁

The point that I am trying to make here is if you particularly like what a member of the community is doing (be they CMs or anyone else) please consider delegating to their node. If you harvest then the node owner will earn a small amount (25% of the reward) known as the beneficiary fee. All nodes will receive this income, some may give you back a small percentage of it as an incentive to harvest with them. This is all well and good for the individual harvester but could be a little short sighted. We should all be interested in the bigger picture – the desire to spread awareness of Symbol, grow the community, build new apps, provide useful services. If we can do these things and give back to those that are working for the good of the platform then you may find that your XYM is worth a lot more in the longer term than it would be if nobody contributed.

Of course if you think that a node owner is not performing (e.g. if I stopped writing this blog) then you might decide to vote with your XYM and move to another node (please don’t do this if you are harvesting with me! 😁). This is the beauty of the system, if you sacrifice your skills and time you get recognition from delegates. If that performance drops then delegates move on.

None of us are going to get rich from node beneficiary income but it does cover the cost of running a node and gives us an added incentive and a bit of encouragement to do what we do. I just type in front of a screen every day and have no idea if people enjoy what I am writing about! If you do think that it is entertaining or a valuable source of information then my node is xymharvesting.net if you don’t want to delegate to my node but do read the blog then at least give me some likes and retweets – then I know that somebody out there is reading this! 😂

Thanks

Thanks guys, I’ve been writing reports and proposals all day for my real job so I am all written out. I am going to take a break tonight and hopefully will be back again soon once I clear some things off my to do list!