19 Apr Symbol blockchain news update – 19/04/22
Good morning everyone! I didn’t want to make yesterday’s update too long so I am back again to report on the stories that I couldn’t fit in last time. There were a lot of Q&As happening yesterday so I am posting some highlights along with links to the full text for you to catch up on! I realise I am a bit text-heavy today so I apologise in advance! 😁
MEXC partnership
You may have seen that there was a press release published on CoinTelegraph Japan about the new partnership announced between MEXC and Symbol, obviously, it is in Japanese but as usual, Google Translate or DeepL are your friends here! Details are still light on the ground about what this partnership actually entails but it is good to see that an up and coming top 20 exchange will be doing something(!) with Symbol and that a listing will be coming soon.
There was also a live AMA with John Chen, the CEO of MEXC on Discord yesterday – you can read through the entire discussion here. Highlights for me were:
- MEXC has earmarked a proportion of their native token supply to support the development of crypto projects which may enable financial support for the development of Symbol ecosystem projects.
- There are still no announcements on what the Symbol x MEXC partnership actually involves! 😁 However, apparently there is a “special event” being planned which apparently will “put the Symbol community in the spotlight”. Looking forward to finding out what this is all about!
- The MEXC exchange is not regulated in Japan which is seen by the Japanese community as a negative given that the majority of our userbase resides there. They are however exploring regulatory compliance in Japan, I am guessing that this is not a simple issue though and will take time.
So that was about it from the AMA with John Chen, other than finding out more about the exchange and its business model. We are still none the wiser about the collaboration or what it will bring 😆 I guess it is a case of watch this space.
There was a reciprocal AMA with Hatchet (the pirate formally known as Hatchet?) on the MEXC Telegram channel too. Hatchet’s responses (and the questions) are provided in English and Japanese so go give this a read. There were some teasers for the future of Symbol in there:
What are your future plans for Symbol? What is your current roadmap?
Our focus right now is on research and design of “Symbol 2.0”. I know we need a better name! This is our next major protocol update that will enable subChains – our own unique version of sharding. subChain’s allow a cryptocurrency to keep its own independence, allow validators to get paid out in that coin’s native token, but allow any developer to access the features of the subChain when they’re building an application. For instance, I could have a Bitcoin or Ethereum subChain and access Bitcoin or Ethereum features when I was building my application on Symbol.
We’ve had seven other cryptocurrency protocols reach out wanting to collaborate on the design and development of this. My recent experience is in hardware acceleration and zero-knowledge proofs – both of which are the key to unlocking this innovation – so we’re quite confident that as a team we’re able to pull this off!
We have some other unique plans for Symbol, but nothing we have shared publicly yet.
It’s very important to our team that we have a proof of concept of something before we announce it!
You recently announced plans for a Symbol conference next year in Tokyo. Congratulations! Can you tell us a little bit more about what we can expect from this event?
It’s very early! So, we don’t have a lot to announce yet… We have plans to bring some sort of AR (alternate-reality) event to Japan to complete tasks and quests to ‘unlock’ your ticket for the 2023 conference.
We really want to create a big event that showcases the creativity of Symbol and the identity of our community, and brings in the next generation of cryptocurrency users.
The team is internally working on their own projects for announcement at the conference, too. And I intend to invite guests from other protocol teams to come see the innovation that is happening in Japan.
And for our Korean community, I haven’t forgotten about you, either! We intend to do something in Korea next year, too. Stay tuned.
Why are you focused on working on Symbol, instead of another L1 or L2 project? What keeps you motivated?
The community is strong – as strong as the early days of Ethereum – and the energy that I’ve seen and felt is unlike anything else in this space. And the community is working right alongside us to grow Symbol. It feels like we are all building this together.
Community is everything. If you have a strong community, your project will be successful even if you don’t have product market fit or your technology isn’t the best. Everything will catch up – but community is something you can’t buy. It is a moat.
Community questions to the captains
The Japanese community had prepared a list of questions for the captains that Jaguar replied to on Discord yesterday. Again go read them yourselves but for those of you that aren’t on Discord (why not!) I have pasted some screenshots below.
Take-home messages:
- New announcement this month regarding an updated vision/plan – will let you know as soon as this is out and cover it in a future blog post.
- Hiring is ongoing and by the sounds of it when complete we will start to see some projects that are currently on the back burner being reignited.
- A completely new “official” wallet is in the pipeline but no further details at present.
- Funding for community projects will be available but an established proof of concept is required before it will even be considered (quite rightly too).
- SubChain details are still not finalised and no news on this until research is complete and a plan is ready to be shared.
Food NFT on TV
I wrote a little about the Food NFT Consortium in a previous post so won’t repeat what little I know about it here! 😁 I think, however, they are getting some exposure in Japan and were featured on a TV segment on morning television in Japan today! Good to see more things being built on Symbol and that these projects are being recognised and reported on.
Secret news 🤫
Also, I spotted something interesting in the social media thread in the design channel on Discord but I think it is meant as a surprise so I don’t want to report on it. It looks like the first Lingua Franca award will be issued soon but don’t tell anyone! 🙊
Thanks!
Thanks for reading! I will be back again soon with another update for you!
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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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