06 Oct Symbol blockchain news update – 06/10/21
Hi guys, it’s Wednesday and I am back with another Symbol Blog update. We have a few stories to cover today so I will get straight on with it!
Discord polls
You may have seen my post “The votes they are a-changin’” yesterday which highlighted some of the issues with vote manipulation on Twitter. It is a real pain and meant that one individual could spoil everything for the entire community by distorting the results of the poll. I had a simple suggestion of linking votes to a NEM/Symbol account in the article which I thought might be relatively easy to implement but I don’t have time to do it (mostly as I think I would have quite a steep learning curve). I think it would be fun to try, maybe if I find myself with some spare time (unlikely) I will give it a go.
Anyway, perhaps in response to the Twitter issues Hatchet has implemented Discord polls. I assume that if you can buy Twitter poll votes then it probably goes for Discord too(?) but perhaps there are some additional features in Discord that would prevent this from happening 🤔 I think if there is a future poll to gather community sentiment then we should make damn sure that we don’t see a repeat of the vote manipulation we saw on Twitter.
Bitbank pumps up the volume
You may have noticed something strange happening yesterday. XYM actually gained significantly in value 😆 As we reported previously, Bitbank announced that they would list XYM on October 5th and true to their word trading went live yesterday. It is always good to see a new exchange listing and it seems that Bitbank did XYM proud and instantly became the number 1 exchange in terms of trading volume for XYM.
You can see what happened to trading volume and price below (notice the spike when trading went live):
Let’s hope that this volume will continue to increase and maybe this will make other exchanges sit up and take notice.
In related news it seems that XYM became LunarCRUSH coin of the day due to the buzz on social media (as well as the price increase).
I wondered why they tagged me in their post so had a look at their website and saw that @blog_symbol was in their influencer list and ranked at number 8 for engagement! 😆 I just went to take a screenshot and it seems that I have dropped out of the weekly top 10. Ah well, it was fun to be a top 10 Symbol influencer for the day 😁 My wife thought it was hilarious as she works in comms and does a lot of writing and social media. She knows that I am completely hopeless at non-technical writing so it was a great source of amusement that I was listed as a “sosh meeds” influencer (and that I ran a blog!) 😂
Symbol in the news
Great to see that Symbol is getting coverage! I am sure as news continues to get out the community will grow which is what we need right now.
Coincheck XYM distribution planned
I saw this crop up a few times today and actually received an email about it from Coincheck (apparently I must have an account with them). Better late than never and good news for anyone holding XEM on Coincheck at the time of snapshot as they will be crediting users with XYM in the near future. There is no firm date for distribution but they say that it will be in this financial year (before March 2022). Not long to wait guys, then you can get harvesting!
Coffee (or cocktails) anyone?
Thanks @RadioRa26841511 for this translation. It’s a bit of a long trip for me but 22 Café will be accepting XYM payment from October 9th. If you live in the Tokyo area then it is definitely worth the trip and I am sure that 22 Café will appreciate your support!
As a follow up there is also a cool video from @HANABATA_KE showcasing some of the venues that accept XYM payment in Japan. Next time I am in Japan (and I am looking for an excuse to go back) I am definitely going to go find a restaurant or bar where I can spend some of my XYM harvest 😊
Required reading
Finally, if you are looking for an interesting five minute read then @Jaguar0625 has the perfect article for you. I just had a look and it discusses the concepts of “code is law” versus “cultural code” and how this works in practice in blockchain.
It is an interesting philosophical question and covers the ethics of what happens if faulty code leads to funds being incorrectly distributed to users. If code is law then the users should be entitled to keep it, however the cultural code would say that for the good of the ecosystem those funds should be returned as a gesture of goodwill.
In a perfect world code should be law but if something goes horribly wrong (and it does) then how the community responds is critical. Writing perfect code at first attempt is almost impossible, we see patches, fixes and updates for software released all the time, mistakes happen and we can’t account for every eventuality. This has always been my biggest worry in crypto, if I lose a few emails or my video game glitches it is a mild annoyance. If I lose thousands of dollars then it has a huge impact on my life and code is law goes out of the window, I will be upset and angry.
By having a strong community that believes in a project and acts in the right way means that the code is law philosophy can survive in times of crisis. However, a selfish few acting in their own self interest may necessitate the code is law ideology being broken and some kind of rollback to before the event to be implemented. In either case confidence will take a hit, but for many a centralised group deciding the fate of the project for everyone would be unforgivable.
As for how this relates to the trust situation, @TrendStream puts it very eloquently (especially considering he is not an English speaker!):
Community is our greatest strength, and it is obviously a problem when the selfishness of a few puts a ceiling on the possibilities for all of us.
My views relating to the Trust situation? Without the full facts I can’t really give much of an opinion. What I will say is that whoever holds the funds should adhere to the cultural code. The best interests of the project and the community should be their primary only goal. I also think that the people to make the choice of what is in the best interests of the project (at least in its early stages) should be those that are most qualified to do so, in this case the people actually developing it and not those making business deals behind closed doors that never seem to come to fruition.
Is it time that we as a community take the power back? It would be good to get some clarity on what is actually happening and then we can make that decision on how to support Symbol and NEM going forward. I guess a fork would be the nuclear option but I am sure that the community would support the developers over the Trust. Then they would be left sitting with big bags of NEM and Symbol “Classic” and no developers or community whilst we got on with what needs to be done for the good of the projects. I think everyone is sick and tired of this now so maybe it is time for us to stand up and fight. Without all of the information we can’t make an informed decision but once we know more about the situation we will be ready to act accordingly.
Anyway, I went a bit off topic, I urge you to give it a read the article for yourselves and let me know what you think by replying to the tweet or in the comments section here 😊
Thanks
Thanks again for reading, we will be back again soon with another update!
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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