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Makoto's Big MoveOf course the big news of late, if anybody has missed it, is Makoto’s announcement that he is quitting his job and going to work for full time on a project being built on NEM. The exact details of this project and the funding are still not open. As a part of the VC funding process Makoto has signed an agreement not to speak about it. As time goes by, there might be more information concerning this project that is released, but expect it to still be limited.
NEM 0.6.42
The NEM devevlopers have been working hard behind the scenes. The last mainnet version 0.6.31 was released on May 26th and since then they have made up 11 more testnet versions, and luckily today they have released 0.6.42. It has lots of nice improvements including editable M of N. To my knowledge (but not confirmed) NEM is the first blockchain that has made this happen on a live net. This means that you can now change your M at any point, you can add signers, or you can remove signers. This is a big step up from what the crypto world has been used to where they have one chance to make a multisig account and any changes mean making a new one and transferring all the funds. This is another first for NEM in blockchain technology, a pretty big one at that, and with many more planned to come!
Stay tuned for more developments and announcements about NEM’s asset program named Mosiacs. It will be called Mosiacs as it will allow collections of smart tiles (assets). And along with it we will see Namespaces being integrated. Namespaces will be the naming system in NEM.
There are a other little improvements and bug fixes in this version. Exporting and then importing wallets should work now. And some of you might have already found that your NEM clients have had a message pushed to them telling them an update is available. This version of NEM also includes a new ability to sign using a token; a feature where you can enter a string of data and get a hash that can then be used to sign. This is useful in a proof-of-existence use case proving that a certain account was in control of a certain string of data/document at a moment time stamped on the blockchain. Activating and Deactivating Delegated Harvesting via multisig is now also up and working.
Updates for 0.6.42 can be found here and feedback is welcomed if you have suggestions.
Because new features were added to NEM in this release, NEM will be undergoing its first hard fork starting at block 199,800. It is important to update your NIS nodes before then. That will be in approximately 4 weeks so you will have plenty of time.
Distribution FinishedGreat news about sock puppets and late redemptions. They are all processed and the last batch is being sent out. After that it is the NEM team’s plan to move forward with dividing up the remainder of the Sustainability Fund into its sub funds of NIS Node Rewards, Silver Coins, Community Fund, Mobile Application and NCC Development, NEM Sustainable Ecosystem Loop Fund (NEMSELF), Unconventional Marketing, and Operational Costs Fund II. Which will bring us closer to a new and exciting phase of NEM development. Priorities will need to be set, budgets made, and the processes for moving forward in each of these funds finalized.
Mobile App UpdateFor the last three weeks, the NEM team has been working on making a report to the mobile app devs for a UI upgrade for our iOS mobile app. It had its basic features and functions working but wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing. We have sent the report and are waiting for upgrades before we start the public testing of the app on the testnet. In the mean time here are a few screenshots of the app as it was pre-redesign.
Xtester has decided to take a break from crypto for a while. We appreciate his work and hope that he does well in his future endeavors.
Lastly, as always, we need lots of help. If you can help make NEM a better platform and would like to be a part of our team, this is your chance. If you would like to join our Slack, please go here.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://blog.nem.io/0-6-42-released-and-other-recent-news/