Dear all, we have just published project update #5 at https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-project-update-5-april-2-27ee7429c85b.

We have reached a major milestone with the release of our testnet v1.0 (codenamed Red Prawn). The Zilliqa testnet is the first public, permissionless blockchain to implement the technology of sharding and we are happy to announce that sharding is now live for testing. You can read more about it here: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-testnet-v1-0-release-codename-red-prawn-27974ca46ecb. We will progressively be adding more features and scaling up the testnet, so stay tuned!

We have received over 140 submissions for our infographic contest and will be selecting the 15 finalists together with our partner Mindshare. Amrit and Saiba were in Europe and held meetups in London, Berlin and Amsterdam. We are also adding to our ambassador team with Ray Chen joining as our ambassador in Taiwan. Ray and Ratul have been conducting Zilliqa workshops in Taiwan and India respectively. We are going to be in Seoul and Tokyo the first 2 weeks of April.

On the technical front, the dev team has been hard at work. We have been enhancing the core protocol and have also added tools like the web wallet and explorer — which will allow community members to get involved with the testnet. It has been a hectic two weeks since our last update and we look forward to bringing you more news about our progress!

Wish you all a good week ahead!

@everyone

Dear All, our Head of Technology @Yaoqi Jia will be speaking at the following events in Beijing this week:

1. 7 Apr 2018 1.30-5.30pm CSDN Blockchain Salon - High performance blockchains at Wangjin Soho Tower 3B 1906, Chaoyang, Beijing https://huiyi.csdn.net/activity/product/goods_list?project_id=3811&from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0

2. 8 Apr 2018 9.00am-12.00pm at Peking University School of Mathematical Sciences Science Block 1, 1365

3. 8 Apr 2018 1.30-5.00pm InForSec Blockchain Security and Privacy at Tsinghua University FIT Second Level, Livestream available at http://www.edu.cn/live/

Do join us if you are around.

Dear All,
1) CEO of Bluzelle Pavel Bains will be live on Zilliqa's Telegram channel next Monday 16 Apr SGT 8pm (UTC +8) to discuss the Zilliqa-Bluzelle partnership. Please join us at t.me/zilliqachat. We recommend you to submit your question beforehand through the following google form: https://goo.gl/forms/c9il4zZeHnlHL5Gg2.

2) Our CEO Xinshu Dong was interviewed on Cheddar which was broadcasted live from the New York Stock Exchange: https://twitter.com/cheddar/status/983743838413053953

3) We would like to announce that a new project named Noorcoin will be building their project on Zilliqa. Noorcoin aims to provide a decentralized payment and trust solution. The throughput requirement of Noorcoin is estimated to be high for which Zilliqa is a good fit due to its underlying sharding technology and horizontal scalability.

4) Test tokens (for trying out the testnet) have been distributed. We're upgrading our testnet with several new features currently. You will be able to test transactions once this is complete. Please stay tuned.

Dear All, we are happy to share that we will be holding a meetup in Singapore. We will be sharing more on our progress, which partners are coming onboard and a preview of our new smart contract language Scilla that enables unprecedented security for smart contracts. To register for the event, please proceed to: https://www.meetup.com/Ethereum-Singapore/events/249733843/?rv=ea1&_xtd=gatlbWFpbF9jbGlja9oAJGYxNWYwMjlmLTJiN2UtNDYxYy04YWNmLWU0ODJkZDE1ZjlmMg

And do save the date and time.
*Date:* 23 May 2018 (Wed)
*Time:* 6.45pm
*Venue:* The Metro @ The Bridge 2 Science Park Drive

Dear all, we have just released the biweekly update #6 at: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-project-update-6-testnet-developments-events-in-asia-6c7ef78e4b91.

Since the release of our testnet last month, we have been working hard on improving the stability of the system. We are happy to announce that the first round of test tokens have been distributed. You may now try out the testnet by sending transactions through the web wallet. For those who haven't yet registered for the testnet tokens but wish to participate in the next round, please fill out the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfg5dC3F6JbSQFGC-RYydhXnTrrhVFmX0JrLkD55nXRt1Y9Hg/viewform.

We also have updates on our outreach and community building events in Korea, Japan and China. In fact, we will be holding an AMA session with Pavel Bains — the CEO of Bluzelle *today at 8 PM SGT* on our Telegram channel. Join the AMA to know more about Zilliqa-Bluzelle partnership.

On the hiring front, we are delighted to announce that Clark Yang has joined the core development team. Clark has over 10 years of experience in software development. His experience will tremendously help the development of Zilliqa. Please join us in welcoming Clark to his new role at Zilliqa.

Cheers!

Hi all! The transcript of the AMA session with Pavel (CEO of Bluzelle) is now available in the form of a blog post: https://blog.zilliqa.com/transcript-of-ama-with-bluzelles-ceo-pavel-bains-c247e4f8b521 Do give it a read in case you missed the AMA.

Dear all, we’ve just announced the final results for the Zilliqa infographics contest through Saiba's Twitter account (https://twitter.com/SaibaKataruka).

1 top entry will receive 200,000 ZILs and a round trip ticket to Singapore plus a meeting and dinner with the Zilliqa team!

2 entries will receive 50,000 ZILs each

5 entries will receive 15,000 ZILs each

Also, because we received so many amazing entries, we have decided to award an additional 10 entries with a special mention and each of these will receive 7,500 ZILs each.(Disclaimer: Awards of ZILs are subject to acceptance of terms, KYC and jurisdiction constraints. We reserve the right to award the winners in corresponding USD or ETH under certain circumstances.)

Thanks to everybody who participated. Please feel free to go ahead and show your love and support to the top entries on Twitter by retweeting the winners. Cheers!

Dear All
An update on upcoming events in May. Do catch us if you are going to be in these cities on the dates below!
1) New York
Date: 15 May 6.30-9.30pm
We are going to be at Consensus 2018 and will be holding a meetup with Enigma
https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/enigma-and-zilliqa-meetup-tickets-45384014810
2) Singapore
Date: 16 May 1.30-2.00pm
Event: Tech in Asia Singapore 2018 Blockchain Stage https://www.techinasia.com/events/singapore/
Topic: Problems in the Blockchain Space: Scalability and Secure Smart Contracts by @amkuma
3) Singapore
Date: 17 May 6.30-8.30pm
Blockchain Technicals Fundamentals Reading Group https://blockchain-nus.github.io/
Topic: Scaling by @Jiayaoqi
4) Most importantly - our meetup in Singapore where we will be sharing more on our progress, which partners are coming onboard and a preview of our new smart contract language Scilla
Date: 23 May 6.30-8.45pm
Location: The Metro @ The Bridge, 2 Science Park Drive
Sign up here https://www.meetup.com/Ethereum-Singapore/events/249733843/?rv=ea1&_xtd=gatlbWFpbF9jbGlja9oAJGYxNWYwMjlmLTJiN2UtNDYxYy04YWNmLWU0ODJkZDE1ZjlmMg
5) Stockholm
Date: 17 May
Event: Bloxpo 2018 https://bloxpo.co/
Keynote by @amkuma

We are happy to announce that future DApp developers on Zilliqa will have the possibility to use Genaro as the backend distributed storage provider. With API support from Bluzelle and Genaro, DApp developers can now choose their preferred storage provider.

Security advisory
=============
Dear community members,

We are aware of ongoing scam attempt that involves the use of phishing website. The website in particular is asking for user's private key information in order to participate in Zilliqa airdrop. Please note that this is a scam and there is no airdrop. Stay safe.

Dear all, we have just released biweekly update #7 at: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-project-update-7-preparing-for-events-the-initial-release-of-scilla-e9d14a433152

We hosted our partner Bluzelle on our Telegram channel for an AMA session and have been working on further promotion in the Japan and Korea markets. We are also proud to be supporting the Blockchain Fundamentals Technical Reading Group initiative in conjunction with the National University of Singapore and have also announced a partnership with distributed storage provider Genaro.

May is going to be an event-packed month for us and we will be in various cities across the world. Do stay tuned for our meetup on 23 May in Singapore which will also be live-streamed. For those who will be in Singapore, you can register for the event here https://www.meetup.com/Ethereum-Singapore/events/249733843/

On the technical front, we have continued to deploy more recovery mechanisms to resolve stability issues and have been adding more features to improve the usability for developers. You can find our testnet explorer and wallet at https://explorer.zilliqa.com/ and https://wallet.zilliqa.com/

Cheers!

Dear All

We are happy to announce that Gopax will be the first Korean exchange to list ZILs https://www.gopax.co.kr/notice/158

Dear all, a new project named Inmediate.io announced today that they are going to build their new blockchain-based insurance ecosystem on Zilliqa. We are glad Zilliqa is chosen as the blockchain infrastructure to support this new initiative and we look forward to sharing with you more use cases for Zilliqa along the way.

Dear All,
For our community in Stockholm, we will be doing one more public event in the city.
You can either catch us at Bloxpo 2018 on 17 May or our Zilliqa meetup on 18 May.
Date: 18 May (Fri) 3-5pm
Venue: Foo Café, Hammarby Kaj 10D · Stockholm
Topic: Sharding and Smart contract security- Solving the major issues with blockchain
Please register here https://www.meetup.com/decentralized-camp/events/250381780/
Hope to see you there!

Dear All, we are pleased to announce that Zilliqa (ZIL) is now listed on OKEx. https://support.okex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003480951

Dear all, we will be speaking at Blockchain Conference in Sibiu, Romania on 20th May. Details of the event are given below:

Speaker: Amrit Kumar
Topic: Zilliqa — Sharding for Blockchain Scalability (And of course secure smart contracts)
Registration link: http://conference.impetus.one/

See you in Sibiu!

Dear All, we are pleased to announce that Zilliqa (ZIL) will now be available on UPbit and Bithumb.
https://upbit.com/service_center/notice?id=368
https://www.bithumb.com/event/e20180510_akwNMJ839

Dear all.

Our CEO, Xinshu Dong, recently had a sit down 15 minutes interview with Lee-On from CryptoSquare.

Topics discussed included:
-Sharding
-Scaling challenges
-Trilemma between decentralization, security and scaling
-Competition in the blockchain platform/protocol space
-How Zilliqa differentiates itself from other platforms
-Utility and use cases
-Roadmap ahead and vision

Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/EbY8HJ8mNyo

Dear All, Zilliqa Project Update #8 has been published. We have seen an increase in number of community members recently. Welcome to all.

On the community front we have been speaking at events including the World Digital Assets Summit in Singapore and at institutions of higher learning in Wuhan, China. And for the next 2 weeks we will be attending events all around the world and finishing the world tour back in Singapore on 23 May with our own event showcasing our progress updates as well as a preview of our smart contracts.

On the tech front, we have been working on enhancing the consensus protocol and testnet deployment using docker/Kubernetes, and revision of transaction / account format to support smart contracts.

We are also pleased to announce the addition of Jasmine Song who will be supporting us in the areas of Finance and Operations.

It is going to be an exciting 2 weeks ahead and we look forward to sharing that with you in our next update.

Cheers
https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-project-update-8-events-around-the-world-the-first-zilliqa-progress-update-event-881ea5ebe18e

Dear All,
Please note that the livestream link for the Zilliqa: Sharding in Action & Security by Design meetup on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 will be announced slightly before the event starts at 6.00 PM (UTC +8) and the event will start at 6.45 PM. You can use https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html to find out what time this will be locally for you. Thank you.

Hi All, our meetup Zilliqa: Sharding in Action & Security by Design is about to start soon. You can watch the livestream at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7Rv1Q5exbE . We are going to be live tweeting the event with #Zilliqa23May. If you are watching the stream, please use the hashtag #Zilliqa23May.