October 2022

Participants in the Web3 space realize that it is currently in its infancy. As was the case after the infamous Dotcom bubble, companies had to pick up the pieces and start building networks and platforms in order to gain more acceptance, and adoption followed. Elastos and Cyber Republic are fully immersed in laying the building blocks of a true Web3 platform for everyone to utilize. 

One of the newest pieces of the Elastos journey is to take advantage of DRM (Digital Rights Management). There have been a few catalysts that transpired in the month of October to further this important initiative. The long awaited lego piece in the Elastos suite of code is Carrier, a network that allows peer-to-peer communication across the Elastos platform. 

Recently, the Elastos developers have brought Carrier 2.0 close to readiness, and Elacity DRM seeks to integrate this improved Carrier in the future. In fact, Elacity marketplace has already committed to incorporating this important P2P technology into its dApp as an exemplar for the whole Elastos tech stack. Elacity have also welcomed a special advisor, a technical leader in this field, in order to give advice and wisdom regarding DRM and its potential use cases within Elastos and for a wider audience.

Elavation, the CR Business and Development arm, had a series of discussions with the Elastos core teams, CR Council and Elastos Guardians/key contributors. These are to align developer communications, unify the communication strategy to the community and other potential interested parties, as well as identifying and alleviating pain points for future participants in the network. The meetings were essential to guide Elastos towards being more approachable for those interested in building in Web3.

This month also saw the CR Council conduct an AMA in efforts to respond to questions from the community. In the background, the Elastos code base is still actively improving for the sole purpose of building the best Web3 one-stop-shop in the land.

Carrier 2.0

In late October, breaking news came out about the upgrade to one of Elastos’ crown jewels, Carrier 2.0. There have been some significant adjustments made to the original Carrier framework.

Carrier 2.0 will have two layers, one layer is a decentralized DHT network as it was first constructed, as well as a second layer that will be supported by a trio of different nodes within the network. In order to ensure decentralization and sustainability, Carrier 2.0 will have its own business plan, economics and incentives. For further information, please refer to this article.

Proposal 91: Elacity Digital Rights Management (DRM), unlocking a DRM powered NFT Video Sharing Platform and beyond

In addition to the new framework brought by Carrier, DRM is one of the major components that will be tied into the infrastructure. Elacity is one of CRC’s funded projects looking to incorporate the new Carrier 2.0 technology into its DRM enabled marketplace. Specifically, Elacity plans on leveraging Carrier 2.0 to fully enable peer-to-peer file sharing between personal user Data Vaults and the platform itself. 

As stated in Elastos.info’s article, DRM is one of CR’s avenues for creating digital asset ownership and revenue generation for its users. Elacity has taken advantage of the dearth of DRM opportunities in Web3 and garnered interest from many people and entities within the CR community. CR funding is helping Elacity apply most of Elastos’ core technologies into its dApp. Rong Chen, Elastos’ founder, has also provided advisory help with the project.

Dr. Xin Wang is a reputable professional in the DRM space. In the past, he has built a plethora of DRM systems that are currently used by governments and prominent Web2 organizations. Dr. Wang has made a commitment to contribute his knowledge and expertise towards the DRM Biweekly Strategy calls.

Dr. Wang recently attended a meeting hosted by The Moving Picture Expert Group (MPEG). As Sash, Elacity founder, said: “MPEG is a an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data, and also transmission and file formats for various applications.” Dr Wang’s presence at the event was as a representative of MPEG alongside his advisory role with Elacity. 

As the final of four meetings for MPEG, Dr. Wang showcased the Elacity DRM demo to high level attendees. Some of the major players represented at the event included Sony, Apple, and Comcast. The team is awaiting feedback and will look to apply the information they gather to improve the Elacity DRM solution. Sash and Dr. Wang hope to inspire others to join the team in order to complement the core competencies within Elacity. 

Proposal 79: Elacity Web3 Data Exchange CRC Proposal

In early November, Elacity will be launching a brand new District in its innovative marketplace dApp. This district is called Flint AI. This is an arena in which users and artists can use a specialized AI studio to buy processing time to run generative AI models and create data. The first model available in the Flint AI district is called Stable Diffusion. This model can be used to generate unique outputs from text input in around 7 seconds! Users can purchase 16 minutes of processing time for $10 with Bella NFT holders benefitting from a 28% discount. 

With Elastos Hive storage technology fully integrated into Ela.city, users can sign in with Essentials Wallet and connect their decentralized Hive service, allowing data storage in their personal vault. Check out the easy to follow walk-through video of Elacity on Youtube.

Proposal 80: Contract Kairon Labs to Perform Market Making Services for Elastos

Kairon Labs continue to fulfill their market-making services for ELA and produced the following report:

Proposal #97-#100 Elastos Elavation: A new growth team providing dedicated Business Development, Ecosystem Strategy and Marketing

In late September, the Elavation Team submitted four proposals (97, 98, 99, 100) dedicated to building a new Growth Team focusing on Development, Ecosystem Strategy and Marketing. The group’s initial goal was to interview and speak with members of the Elastos Foundation and Cyber Republic who have worked on the project for the last five years. Specific areas Elavation wants to tackle and understand further are: Go-to Market Strategy, Competition Analysis, Technical Roadmap, Development Priority, Marketing, PR, Brand, Vision, Team Health, Motivation, and Goals.

The Elavation team completed thorough deep dive discussions with Elastos Founder Rong Chen and teams including: DRM, Elastos Info, Trinity Tech, Gelaxy, Elastos Foundation, Elaphant, Essentials, Feeds, Pasar, Carrier, Elastos Herald, and the Developer Portal. 

Elavation has only a couple of remaining sessions to conduct. Sunny Feng Han, and the Elastos Community comprise the final deep dives. 

After reflecting on all of these meetings, Elavation are preparing the following actions: forming internal workshops, creation of a strategic go-to market plan, designing brand positioning and visual language, development of Elastos Narrative and Messaging framework, as well as other initiatives. 

The most important and next milestone for Elavation to achieve is presenting a series of targets and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to work towards. Once this step is completed, Elavation expects to have all the tools necessary to make the biggest impact possible on Elastos’ market success. 

CR Council AMA

Zach from Elastos Info Team hosted a CR Council AMA in October. Members of the current CR Council joined the AMA to give updates and answered questions from the community. Those who attended the Twitter Spaces AMA include: Fakhul from Elation Studios, Sash from Elacity, John from Elabox Team, MButcho from the Elastos Guardians, Alain from Bunny Punk, and Ryan from Glide Finance.

Elavation BD Proposal

Fakhul provided details regarding the BD proposal (Elavation) as discussed above. Funding has now been unlocked for the first quarter. Fakhul was very enthusiastic about meeting with everyone involved with the project. He is very optimistic that the Elastos tech will be ready for use by the end of the year, therefore there is a sense of urgency to ensure that the technology is ready for deployment.

Elacity and DRM Proposal

Sash followed, and explained that CRC has enjoyed the most engaging council yet, with twenty proposals passed and only one missed vote to date. As compared to previous years, this is an outstanding turnout with a lot more participation. He went on to describe DRM as a way to protect digital rights online. If you’re a content creator you are in danger of having your work pirated and it can’t be efficiently monetized. Sash and his team are trying to incorporate DRM to NFTs. Having rights within these tokens will allow protection of assets and seamless monetization. There are lots of different use cases that DRM can tackle. 

Elabox

John gave an update on the Elabox project he’s leading. He explained that Elabox can run nodes and dApps in the Elastos ecosystem. And that the team is currently working on the landing page and website. The home page should be finalized by the end of the month.

Development of the ElaboxOS is still ongoing. The goal is to have ElaboxOS become open source in order to publicize your own dApps across Web3. The team wants Elabox to be available to people in the Elastos community, and in other blockchain ecosystems. Therefore the ElaboxOS dApp Store is blockchain-agnostic, yet embraces Elastos Technology and serves as an Elastos portal for those interested in Web3. The next version of ElaboxOS will be powered by Hive and DID.

Furthermore, the Elabox team provided an update for Proposal 50. Currently they are waiting for the remaining boards needed to assemble the remaining Elabox hardware devices. These orders are projected to be shipped by the end of the year.

Guardians

MButcho was the next CR Council member to give updates to the community. He mentioned there are a lot of bright minds in the current Council and thanked Cassie for all her contributions as the CR Secretariat. CR Consensus has been a lot more efficient this term. 

CRC also expects some changes at the code level this term. One example of the proposed upcoming changes is the veto period will now align with the voting period from the community, saving seven days over the entire process. Another change proposed will be that, in the event of an emergency like a hack, the CRC will have 24 hours to vote on an action in order to act quickly. Community voting and a pool is also under consideration for implementation via the Essentials wallet to manage voting towards funding community initiatives. 

Bunny Punks

Alain from Bunny Punk joined the AMA next. He spoke about his gratitude towards the community for making the Bunny Punk NFT project a success. Increasing floor prices on their NFTs along with enthusiastic staking has been the story for Bunny Punk so far. There are two developers on the team and FoxFortyTwo also helps as an Advisor. The team is busy building the bridge right now, and there are a number of bugs that need to be ironed out before launching. Stay tuned for more updates in the future.

Glide Finance

Ryan from Glide Finance talked about a Liquid Staking module in development. This will be fully live once the new DPoS mechanism is ready. Liquid staking is currently on the testnet and expects it to be live by the end of the year.

An Elastos Developer Wiki, developed and written by Ryan and others to showcase an easy entry point for developers using simple examples, nears completion. There should be a live version of this wiki in November. Ryan is collaborating with the Elavation team to make sure the documentation is up to date.

Questions from the floor

1) What’s the best way to uniquely showcase the Elastos technology?

Sash replied saying that multiple technology pieces combine to create operationally mature digital assets, a la Bitcoin, using cryptography, Merkle trees, etc. Elastos needs to blend all its Web3 Legos together to disrupt the prevalent multi-trillion dollar data industry. Specifically, CR and Elastos must showcase every component of the entire tech suite in order to prove its worth and functionality.

2) What are the biggest challenges facing the CRC DAO?”

MButcho says there’s a difference between the East and West mindset. Getting consensus prior to voting is a key part of getting solid proposals passed.

3) What is going to be the best strategy and where are we heading as an ecosystem? How can Elastos be uniquely positioned in space?”

Fakhul said the key thing helping Elastos separate itself is that it is an open-source platform with fully functional web3 components, supported by a dedicated community of developers and web3 enthusiasts. The project will be able to offer a truly decentralized tech stack that you can approach in a modular fashion; blockchains, side-chains, DIDs, Storage, P2P carriers and an innovative, mature on-chain DOA.

Whilst Elastos may not currently be as popular as other Web3 projects due to the EF focusing on building over the past 5 years, it has been battle tested and can already support use cases of all sizes, from small indie teams to institutions and governments. With the creation of the new Elavation team, Elastos is ready to go to the mass market and focus on adoption.

The initial go-to-market strategy is critical. The team plans to focus on utilizing existing networks and picking spots to take advantage of opportunities that allow the ecosystem to grow. The initial targets will be niche, innovative, up and coming projects that demonstrate high potential alongside specific educational and government contracts that will utilize a network that’s protected by the Bitcoin blockchain.

Conclusion

The Elastos suite of technology is finding a position to change the narrative of Web3 and get dApps further infused with the masses. Its core components, like Carrier, Hive and the fledgling DRM, allow users to be able to transact peer-to-peer while having the digital rights to secure their work from thieves and pirates. Projects like Elacity are getting very close to incorporating all that Elastos has to offer, allowing people to take advantage of cutting edge technology. 

Elastos has never before had a fully functioning Business and Development team working on the project’s behalf. With Fakhul at the helm of the Elavation BD team, there will be many metrics drawn up in order to best facilitate a strategy to elevate Elastos and CR into the top tier of Web3 platforms. 

A number of Council members reiterated the fact that the CRC has never been as smooth and efficient as evidenced this third term. With only one vote missed and twenty proposals passed, CRC is fully functioning with healthy and productive dialogue between all members.

Based on the technology, consensus, and dedicated members of the community, Cyber Republic is continuing to make strides towards greatness in Web3 – the industry of the future.