Posts Tagged ‘ShapeShift’

Latest Development Update for Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Board Game

28, Sep 2017

We have recently told you about the Cryptum ICO that is currently running with one of the goals of the project being to Crowdfund the First Crypto Mining Board Game and now we are going to be sharing some of the latest developments surrounding the project that our team is also helping develop. Our focus of course is the development of Blockchain: The Board Game as we are actively taking part in that side of the whole idea and since it can also use some community feedback and help you can chime in as well. The current plan for the game is to include 85 actual crypto currencies, there are 85 slots available for coins and although they are already filled you can still get a coin in. You can get into the free voting in this Bitcointalk thread where you can vote for coins to stay or to be swapped with another one. Alternatively, if you want to secure a place for a specific coin you can do so with paid voting here. Do have in mind though that you are not just paying for the coin listing, but you are essentially purchasing a certain amount of CRTM tokens and get the listing as a free extra, so you will be supporting the project development and get the coin you want listed. You can also visit https://originstamp.com/blog/how-blockchain-technology-can-be-applied-to-track-and-trace/ to lean how blockchain technology can be applied to track and trace.

Another interesting development is the announcement of the plan to have the two main crypto currencies inside the game (Bitcoin and Ethereum) represented with their own real metal coins. The 3D models of the coins have already been made by the designer Francesco Orrù and you can already see 3D renders on how they will look, though the actual production of the metal coins has not started yet. During the game development 3D printed plastic tokens will be used some of which have already been printed to test out designs and such. There are more elements form the game currently being worked on as it is an ongoing project and will take some time, precisely why the work has been ongoing even before the actual start of the funding via an ICO.

The latest interesting announcement for now is the name of the first crypto currency exchange to officially be featured in the crypto mining board game and that one is ShapeShift. Other exchanges have been contacted and more names will probably be announced soon, but for now ShapeShift is the first one. Getting in touch with exchanges is not as easy thing as you might expect, especially the bigger they are, so this could take some time. Then there is also an expansion for the game planned to be released after the game that will offer expanded gameplay and more exchange mechanics.

– For more about the Cryptum ICO and Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Board Game…

New and Improved Ethereum Wallet 0.3.9 (Beta 6) Released

30, Jan 2016

ethereum-wallet-latest-beta-shapeshift

The official Ethereum graphical wallet is improving and getting more user friendly with each new beta release, making it easier for people that are not very happy with the console only clients such as geth and eth. The wallet relies on geth (by default) or eth as a backend and provides a user friendly interface with the most important information and functions available to the user without requiring him to type console commands to execute them. The latest Beta 6 release makes it easier to backup your wallet by adding a menu command that takes you directly tot he folder where your wallet is being stored, so the only thing you need to do is to copy the file in a safe location. The new wallet comes with a button called Deposit using Bitcoin that invokes integrated support for ShapeShift allowing you to easily and quickly buy Ether coins and have them easily transferred to your Ethereum wallet. Although the button is called Deposit with Bitcoin you can actually use other altcoins supported by ShapeShift to purchase Ethereum with the needed support built-in right into the wallet. Another useful new addition is that the wallet will now show historical prices from the time of the transaction thanks to integration with the CryptoCompare service, so you will know what was the exact fiat value of the Ethereum transaction at the moment you have made it.

– To download an try out the latest official Ethereum GUI Wallet 0.3.9 (Beta 6)…

Trying Out the Latest Version of Storj DriveShare GUI

12, Jan 2016

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Storj, the Blockchain-based cloud storage service, has released a new version 0.5 of their DriveShare GUI and we have decided to give it a try after keeping an eye on the development of Storj and their StorjcoinX (SJCX) crypto currency tokens. The DriverShare GUI is still an alpha build and the company is still testing it with the help of users by rewarding the participants with SJCX coins, though there is a catch – you need to have and use a wallet with at least 10000 SJCX coins in it in order to be eligible to receive any rewards for this test. So started from scratch by making a SJCX wallet, going through exchanges to buy at least 10000 StorjcoinX coins and installing and running the latest DriveShare GUI and below you can find our not so pleasant experience as well as details of what you actually need to do, how and where if you want to follow in our footsteps. You need to start by downloading the latest DriveShare GUI, it is available as binaries compiled for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as well as a source code. This is the software you need to install and run on your computer to share some space in order to participate in the current test run of the service. The DriveShare GUI software is actually the easiest part, but as you will see after installing and running the software you will also need to create a Payout Address where you will need to also store at least 10000 SJCX coins in order to get rewards for your time and resources spent in helping test the service.

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The official website recommends that you create a wallet address for SJCX at Counterwallet – the official web-based Counterparty Counterwallet server. It is recommended that you do not use a wallet address for SJCX that has been generated in an exchange as there you do not have control over the address and do not posses the private key for your wallet and that can cause you all kinds of trouble. As soon as yo register at the Counterwallet you will get a unique wallet address and this address is universal and will work for Bitcoin (BTC) and Counterparty (XCP) as you will see in your wallet dashboard, but what about SJCX?

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What is not very clearly stated however is that the address you get is also for StorjcoinX (SJCX) as well and as soon as you transfer some coins to it you will see another box added for SJCX. This can cause a bit of a confusion for users that are using the Counterwallet and are not very familiar with it as well as the SJCX and unfortunately it is not very clearly explained on the StorjcoinX website, they do point you to an user video that actually explains this with not official more detailed explanation. Still once you get your wallet and do send some small amount of coins to try things out you will pretty much understand how things work with Counterwallet and StorjcoinX. Do note however that if you want to send out SJCX coins from your web-based wallet there will be a fee of 0.0005 BTC to perform the action or roughly about $0.225 USD. This is the standard fee and you cannot pay the fee in SJCX, only in BTC, so you will also need to have a small amount of Bitcoins in the wallet in order to be able to cover the fees. Also make sure that you use the Show Private Key option in the wallet and save the wallet address and the private key for it in a secure place in case you need to recover it at a later time.

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The next step is to buy some StorjcoinX from one of the exchanges that does have SJCX markets, since the service backed by the tokens is still in testing period it is to be expected that there are not many exchanges supporting it. You can buy from two of the biggest altcoin exchanges – Bittrex and Poloniex as well as from services such as ShapeShift or even from the Counterwallet. Unfortunately the market at Counterwallet is not very active and the pair SJCX/XBTC (StorjcoinX/Bitcoin) does not have any buy or sell offers at the moment, so it is not very usable. ShapeShift is a convenient service that allows you to exchange between multiple crypto currency pairs without even having to register, but the exchange rate there is usually not the best. So you need to go to an exchange and buy the 10000 SJCX coins from there, leaving you the two options currently available – Bittrex and Poloniex. We have started with Bittrex, however we soon found out that the SJCX volume there is too low and buying 10000 StorjcoinX from there would mean that we would have to spend much more than the average price. So we just bought a few hundred coins to try the Counterwallet and the transfer was quick and problem free from Bittrex to the Counterwallet.

Then we have moved to Poloniex to buy more coins as apparently the exchange of choice and with the largest volume for SJCX is precisely this one, we have bought a little over 13000 SJCX with an average price of about 3600 satoshi per SJCX and then tried to withdraw them in a single transaction to the Counterwallet. Unfortunately the withdraw did not complete successfully, we got an error message, so we’ve written to the support at Poloniex and a few hours later we’ve had the SJCX coins available back in the account. We have initiated another withdraw request, but unfortunately it did not go through either, so we are waiting again for the support to resolve the issue. If we get back the coins back in our account we are going to try to withdraw them at smaller portions again and if these do not go through again, then it would seem that Poloniex might have some issue with SJCX at the moment which will not be very good at all. The issue with Poloniex withdraws of SJCX was resolved by the support and the coins are now in our wallet.

All in all, even though the things are still in testing period, there is still much work needed to be done to make everything more clear and user friendly to new users as the goal of such a service is to become mainstream in order to be successful. Storj has a great idea and they are doing the software implementation quite well already, but they also need to work on other parts of the ecosystem such as the wallets and the exchanges as apparently these are farm from what they should be in terms of ease of use and being problem free for the users. Hopefully by the time everything is ready for an official launch things will be improved further and they will be easy for everyone that wants to take advantage from the ideas behind this Blockchain-based cloud storage service.


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