Monthly Ecosystem Call, 25 August 2022 — Recap

“Wikipedia on Swarm” prize — open only until 1 September

Constanza Gallo opened the August Monthly Ecosystem Call with a reminder that the “Wikipedia on Swarm” prize submissions are open only until 1 September. If you would like to participate for the 50,000 DAI prize, you can still go to Fair Data Society Discord or send an email to Wikiprize@ethswarm.org.

“I’m very excited about what is coming out of the Wikipedia prize. I think that what we’re building with Wikipedia on Swarm is very important. Not just for Swarm, but for the whole of Web3,” she added. After the deadline, the jury will decide on a winner in 30 days.

Etherna will introduce monetisation for creators this year

Following Constanza’s introduction, Mirko da Corte from the Etherna project joined the call. Etherna is one of the Swarm Foundation grantees and its alpha v1.0 has just been released. It’s a decentralised video platform that runs entirely on the Swarm network and aims to democratise the publishing process for creators.

It’s currently being tested with the help of 100 invited users and monetisation can be expected as early as this year, Mirko explained. He finished with an announcement that the Etherna team will also be at Devcon in Bogota to present the project and meet with the community.

FDS accounts are now easier to create

After Mirko’s brief update, Viktor Toth provided updates on the development of the Fair Data Protocol (FDP). According to Viktor, a new improvement allows for the detailing of a Fair Data Society (FDS) account. The team has also set up a webpage that facilitates the registration of an FDS account, which is paired with a desired Ethereum address.

They have also successfully merged the first feature of the Blossom framework so that it supports FDP storage out of the box without key handling for dApps, Viktor explained.

There’s also a new version of FDP Play. With it, you can set up the latest FairOS instance in your Docker network. In addition, the team has developed a new library.

Swarm Desktop dApp v1.0 is almost here

Next up was Bee Product Lead Attila Gazso. He presented the latest developments on Swarm Desktop (Beta). The dApp is moving closer to v1.0 release and the team has gathered a lot of community feedback. Based on this, they are improving the current experience, including first-time installation and issues with the installer.

The UI for the dApp (the Dashboard) will remain a standalone project that users can run without installing Swarm Desktop. This will allow the team to reuse it in other projects and simplify its maintenance, Attila added.

Before v1.0 is released, however, you can expect one additional release. It will contain the first of a series of changes to the Bee client caused by the introduction of storage incentives. This change also presented an opportunity to change the calculation of the overlay address. This means that you no longer have to make the initial transaction when you first install the client. “Which is good for both Swarm Desktop and the full node,” Attila explained.

This won’t affect the neighbourhood of your node and its peers, no data will be lost, and it will work with the existing postage stamps. According to Attila, the Swarm network is also technically prepared for the upcoming Ethereum “merge”. However, as this will be a big change for the Ethereum network, unforeseen events can always happen.

The core of storage incentives should be ready by Devcon

The final part of the call was reserved for updates regarding storage incentives. According to Chief Science Officer Daniel Nagy and Callum Toner, the first upcoming change will modify the postage stamp contract. Currently, the contract freezes all BZZ tokens that have been used to pay for postage stamps. With the change, these BZZs will first be unlocked and made available for redistribution.

The research team will then activate the staking and redistribution contract. The two contracts will redistribute the now locked BZZs to node operators that are storing content in Swarm.

This will be done as follows. A random sampling of content will take place. Everybody who wants to participate in the redistribution will have to stake a minimum of 1 BZZ and reveal the results of the calculation based on the content sampling.

This calculation can only be performed if the participants are actually storing the content they are supposed to. This means that only node operators who are storing the content and have staked BZZs can receive their share of the postage stamp payments. Participants who don’t make the random selection but have a proven stake will keep their staked BZZs.

Together with the reserve size sampler and the price oracle, this forms the core of storage incentives and should be ready by Devcon in October. “This will create a financial incentive for storing Swarm content. And we’re hoping that nodes which are operated with a profit motive will start joining the Swarm network by Devcon,” Daniel concluded.

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