We're pleased to introduce you to Gareth Mensah - our new Developer Evangelist.He has just joined our team to help us cultivate a rich ecosystem for our growing developer community.

Gareth brings over 10 years' experience in technology to Zilliqa, having held roles with both Fortune 500 companies like AOL, Nokia, Wells Fargo as well as start ups. Having worked in various capacities along the way - as a technical service manager, mobile app developer, technical consultant, and developer relations expert - Gareth has a strong understanding of software development life cycle and open collaboration, which he will bring to this role. He holds a BS in Computer Science from San Francisco State University. 

We're excited to work with him and see what he has in store. Please give him a warm welcome everyone!

#Welcome #buildOnZIL

Technical Update 16 July: Here’s your three-point brief on the latest technical update:

1. Zilliqa version 4.7.0 released - This version contains several improvements including lookup node fixes, P2P communication fixes, PoW mining improvements, and the addition of a missing check - among others.

2. Work underway to include inductive datatypes - Given that Scilla does not currently allow for general recursion, this datatype feature will allow for a recursion principle similar to fold.

3. Upcoming Articles - We offer sneak peaks into two upcoming articles - one studying the difference between Scilla and Move - and the other explaining the Scilla backend compiler. Stay tuned for these insightful pieces!

You can read the entire blog here: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-technical-update-16-july-2019-29fde5d35e44

The dawn of b-commerce is here! 🌐 Announcing the fourth wave of Zilliqa Ecosystem Grants programme awardees. Welcome to the Zilliqa family! 🎉🎉
https://blog.zilliqa.com/announcing-the-fourth-wave-of-zilliqa-ecosystem-grant-awardees-97684447ac3

We created a quick survey to gauge the dev community’s interest in a bi-weekly call. Please take a couple of minutes to fill out the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L63X9TW

Community Update 23 July - Here is a three-point brief on the latest updates:

1. Developer Relations: Our new Developer Evangelist Gareth Mensah recently shared a survey to understand our developers’ needs better. We share the survey findings and plan to aggressively increase outreach in a targeted and effective way through bi-weekly calls.

2. Ecosystem Grant - Wave 5 applications now open: Following the announcement of our 11 fourth wave grantees, applications for the next wave are now open for the three tracks - Infrastructure, Innovation and Research. Priority will be given to robust proposals that enable the DeFi ecosystem.

3. Twitter Contest Winners and Findings: Congratulations to all the winners of the #ZilliqaDay2019 twitter contest! We share details on the top 3 winning entries, which are both insightful and creative. We also share findings from our study of the participant pool and moving forward, will consider ways through which we can more effectively create a truly global and involved community.

You can read all the details here: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-community-update-23-july-2019-developer-outreach-twitter-contest-winners-latest-eeb7d0527467

Zilliqa AMA - 12 July Transcript : We are pleased to share the transcript of the recently held AMA  which was conducted on Reddit and then live on Telegram. We've done our best to make the responses comprehensive and hope it is useful for those who were unable to participate, and for everyone with queries. We enjoyed the AMA and will plan to make this a more regular activity for your benefit. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YC6UqT5TPdFY_lf9K0G3BbtZQ-xZAVhowbVqyxKte7I/edit?usp=sharing

Thrilled to announce that our first-ever Developer Community Call will take place Friday 26 July @ 9 AM SGT.
@DaoChemist
will be leading the initiative, discussing its objectives & answering app dev related queries. Some of our engineers and developers will also join the call to answer your questions and collect your feedback on developing on #Zilliqa $BuildOnZIL.

We look forward to hearing from participants, and developing this initiative over the coming months!

#StartBuildingonZIL $ZIL 🔥
Join In! 👉 https://meet.google.com/unsupported?meetingCode=eem-erwv-bua&ref=https://meet.google.com/eem-erwv-bua

Technical Update 30 July 2019: Hello all, here’s your three-point summary on our latest technical update:

Improvements in core tech and scilla underway: To enhance efficiency and robustness of the platform, the team is making modifications to the core C++ source code and  the internal scripts and utilities which are part of the infrastructure. The next version is likely to include several security and functional improvements. In order to mitigate I/O bottlenecks within the scilla interpreter, the team has been restructuring the infrastructure, and adding new folds and functions. 

Revamping wallet contract: the team is rewriting wallet contracts to include better security features. These will be added to a repository of contract templates which developers can use for inspiration. 

Development of Ledger support: We are reworking the ledger app code to support more features, based on initial feedback received from the ledger team.

For more, you can refer to: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-technical-blog-30-july-b2f44032adbf

TOKEN SWAP UPDATE 2 AUG: Please refer to this list for the token swap status across various exchanges who we're liaising with. In response to some of your queries, kindly note that there is currently no deadline for the swap. However, we encourage you to swap your ERC 20s for mainnet ZILs on the available exchanges as soon as possible. For details, refer to https://blog.zilliqa.com/a-guide-to-zilliqa-token-swap-5278ba32a2f3

Community Update 6 August - Here’s your three point summary on today’s update, which covers the latest in Zilliqa:

1. Five things you need to know about the Chainlink integration - Our recent integration with decentralised oracle network brings a huge value proposition to smart contracts. We outline some of the key points on who they are, why we’re working with them, and the benefits their solution brings to our blockchain

2. Aqilliz at a Glance - We remain committed to driving adoption of the Zilliqa platform now that we’re open for business. Part of this will be actioned through a strategic and exclusive collaboration with a new venture called Aqilliz, led by Gowthaman Ragothaman from WPP and Mindshare.

3. First Dev Call - This call looked into how Zilliqa could help the developer community more effectively and frequently via a call. The key findings and action points have been outlined.

For more, please read https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-community-update-6-august-2019-technology-integrations-exclusive-collaborations-and-9e4fc5c6b849

Technical Update 13 August: As promised, we’re sharing an in-depth report on recent developments within the mainnet, and solutions taken to strengthen the blockchain.

In this week’s blog, our core tech team explains what a smart contract state is and how it works. Given the recently experienced instability on the Unstoppable Domains smart contract, they also illustrate the effect of high volume smart contract transactions on the blockchain. Finally, they discuss the solutions that are already in place to address large transactions more efficiently, as well as upgrades in the pipeline that will help fortify our mainnet.

You can find the report here: https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-technical-update-13-august-2019-strengthening-our-mainnet-an-in-depth-report-95c0c306b95e

In addition to the above, our Developer Evangelist will be posting a more basic overview of the mainnet status and what’s being planned. We’ll share the link soon - stay tuned!

Mainnet Status Update, 14 August: Our Developer Evangelist, Gareth Mensah, breaks down yesterday's technical update into the key facts. He recaps what happened when Unstoppable Domains’ smart contracts saw unprecedented demand, and summarises the measures in place to manage and/or prevent such incidents in the future. 

We are pleased to announce that all outlined updates should be implemented by 15 September. 

More here: https://medium.com/@garymensah/zilliqa-mainnet-status-update-ae088ebfa401

Community Update 20 August: Here is your summary on today’s update. 

Upcoming Website Changes: We are thrilled to announce that the new website will be launched on 31 August, and includes some very exciting features. We outline some upcoming changes and will be sharing more next week!

Blockchain and Gaming: We introduce you to Nedrick Ngo, Project Manager of Ocean Rumble, a Zilliqa-powered blockchain game (which recently had an exciting pre-sale!). He tells us a bit more about the game’s objectives in a rapidly changing industry.

More here: https://blog.zilliqa.com/community-update-20-august-2019-meet-ocean-rumble-and-enjoy-a-glimpse-into-our-new-website-e999a12f584b

Technical Update 27 August 2019 - Here's a look into what the teams are working ahead of the next major upgrade, scheduled for September 15:

Version 4.8.0 includes migratory features which will help manage the mainnet during smart contract processing: These include exponential back-off for the gas limits and temporary backing up of processed transactions into each shard’s local storage. 

Rigorous testing on the Scilla IPC protocol underway: These include local-level and network-level testing in order to make sure smart contracts will be able to run as smoothly as possible. These also include a performance test to get a view of the post-upgrade network.

Ledger app second round of review begins:  This is going really well with the ledger team and Zilliqa team working closely together to address all feedback. We’ll be sharing an update as soon as this round wraps up.

For more, head to: https://blog.zilliqa.com/technical-update-27-august-2019-60d7746c3a8c

Hi all, our President Amrit Kumar will be at Tech in Asia's studio tomorrow to talk about Zilliqa's journey over the past two years, our current focus on growth and driving adoption, and current market trends. If you have any questions for him, you are welcome to contribute it through Tech In Asia's Instagram story post today. The post will also give you chance to test your basic Zilliqa knowledge :) https://www.instagram.com/stories/techinasia/

Dear Zilliqans,
We have both good and ‘bad’ news.

The good news:
Our new website is almost ready to be launched.

The ‘bad’ news:
We decided not to launch this Saturday (31 August).

The reason:
Since we started working on our new website - roughly 1.5 months ago - Zilliqa made good progress on many different levels. As a result of this, the content creation became quite intense, requiring inputs from various parties. Nevertheless, we’ve managed to stay on track with this.

However, now that the website is almost ready, we’ve had to make a choice: just push the ‘Publish’ button, close our eyes, and see what happens….or….. take some extra days to carefully manage detailed final reviews, pre-launch testing, and possible refinements based upon our findings. We have chosen the latter option, to ensure high quality and user experience.

The launch of the new website is rescheduled for Friday 6 September.

Not to leave you empty handed, we will be sharing a couple of previews later this week, such as the page about our Mindshare partnership and the Research and Development Roadmap Q3 2019 - Q2 2020. Both are good examples of what you can expect next week. We aim to share these as live pages, instead of screenshots, to give you the real user experience.We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope you’ll agree on our decision to prioritise quality over speed.

Regards,
The Zilliqa team