AppCoins News Update, or ANU for short, is a regular bi-weekly update by the AppCoins team. As usual we are going to cover dev updates, market reports, team members and other news. This week’s focus is on AppCoins Protocol (smart contracts), ASF Wallet, ASF SDK, Creation of Advertising Campaigns and the ASF Membership. You may expect the next ANU on the 9th May.
**Quicklinks**Dev UpdateCreate Campaign APPC ReportsFeatured MemberASF Membership
The last two weeks have been spent preparing everything for the Alpha 3 release on the 2nd of May. This major release will include one of the biggest flows of the AppCoins Protocol: the Advertising use case. As we’ve explained in previous articles, this functionality enables users to earn APPC from using apps with associated advertising campaigns.
All of the major components of the AppCoins project are involved in the release: the Blockchain (via smart contracts), the SDK, the Wallet and the Website.
AppCoins Protocol
The Blockchain part of Alpha 3 is composed by a smart contract that enables the creation and storage of advertising campaigns in the blockchain, as well as knowing which are the current active campaigns, submitting and validating Proofs of Attention (PoAs), and rewarding users for giving attention to apps from campaigns.
At the time of the release of the last ANU, the smart contract was able to perform the first two actions. In these two weeks, we’ve been able to implement the remaining functionalities. Users can submit PoAs, which are validated by checking if the PoA contains correctly computed nonces, and registed in the Blockchain via an event (please check ANU #7 for clarification). The PoA is verified to check if it was computed for at least two minutes of attention from the user and not less. After validating the correctness of the PoA, the smart contract can validate if the user already converted the given campaign. Lastly, if the PoA is validated and if the user didn’t convert the campaign yet, the smart contracts splits the attribution and transfers each of its parts to the user (85%), the app store (10%) and the OEM (5%).
We’ve also released the IAB and Advertising (at its current status) in the main net. This means that the SDK and Wallet can already integrate the flows using the main net and users and developers can already earn and monetise with real APPC, respectively. This is an important milestone for the AppCoins project!
You can see the latest developments in the smart contracts’ GitHub repo and check the deployed contracts for IAB and Advertising in the main net using Etherscan.io.
ASF SDK
The SDK is responsible for triggering the Wallet for the computation of the PoA components, as well as to be able to work with several networks (test and main nets) for all the AppCoins project flows: IAB and Advertising.
As of today, the SDK is able to perform just that. It can work in the main and Ropsten networks, depending on the integration done by developers. If developers want to monetise their apps, they can integrate the SDK to use the main net. On the other hand, if the app is supposed to be used for testing, developers can integrate the SDK in debug mode and use the Ropsten network, where ETH and APPC don’t have real monetary value.
You can check the current status of the project and the integration documentation in the SDK GitHub repo.
ASF Wallet
The Wallet is responsible for computing the PoA and for handling the transactions coming from the IAB and Advertising flows, which are triggered by the SDK.
Just like the SDK, the Wallet can already work with both flows in the main network, as well as the Ropsten network. We’ve deployed its current version in Google Play and Aptoide.
Next steps for the Alpha 3 release include a redesign of the Transactions screen, as well as improving the navigation through the app. It will enable users to better understand transactions done through the Wallet, since users will be able to not only take normal “send tokens” transactions, but also transactions regarding in-app purchases and earning coins from apps. Below is a mockup of the new Transactions screen and the bottom nav bar.
Transactions screen redesign mock
Feel free to follow our work and give us feedback through the Wallet’s GitHub repo.
In these two weeks we’ve been working in two pages that enable the creation of Advertising campaigns and show active campaigns for users, respectively.
The flow of creating campaigns starts with the Create Campaign page, where developers can specify the details of a campaign and submit it to our smart contract.
Developers need to specify:
- Package name
- Start and end dates of the campaign
- The attribution value in APPC that is paid every time a user converts the campaign
- The budget in APPC the developer wants to spend in the campaign
- The vercodes of the app for which campaign is valid
- The countries where the campaign should appear
Create Campaign page
After creating a campaign, the developer and users can go to the Offer Wall page and check the active campaigns. Users can directly download the apps from the Offer Wall.
It is divided between Available and Unavailable campaigns, where the latter means that the APK isn’t yet available in Aptoide. Once it becomes available, the campaign will change its status in the Offer Wall.
Users can also check available campaigns in both the main and the Ropsten networks.
Offer Wall page
The current market cap is close to $56 Million USD, with $6,76 Million in volume in the last 24 hours across these exchanges: Binance (61,88%), Huobi (38,09%) and Lykke (0,03%).
AppCoins continues to be tied to Bitcoin. During the past two weeks, AppCoins value has seen an increase in price, having reached a high of $0,645 USD on the 24th of April. Since ANU#7 Appcoins value has witnessed a surge of around 86%. You can see more info about APPC markets at Coinmarketcap.
Name: Christopher FerreiraRole: Quality Assurance ManagerBio: Christopher has been working at Aptoide for about two years and is currently developing tests within the smart contracts used in the AppCoins protocol along with the usability tests of the delivered products. He’s driven by the goal of ensuring high quality products before they are delivered to the final user.
To ensure the independence and sustainability of AppCoins protocol, a foundation will be created as a non-profit organisation: The App Store Foundation (ASF). The mission of the ASF is to assure the open governance of the AppCoins ecosystem, to support its development (after the initial implementation performed by Aptoide) and the continuous innovation of the technology.
As a member of the ASF, market players will collaborate with industry leaders in the pursuit of ethereum-based technology best practices, open standards, and open-source reference architectures for the apps industry. The ASF members base will represent a wide variety of blockchain business sectors from every region of the world, to promote the global AppCoins adoption. This will allow direct stakeholders, app stores, developers, and key strategic entities to scale up the ecosystem user base.
We invite you to go to the ASF website, and click on join membership to apply for the Early Adopter membership plan, so you can start being a part of the ecosystem. All registered members can access all public WGs: App Advertisement, In-app Purchases and Developers Reputation, as mentioned in the previous ANU. Members will also be included on the WG mailing list.
Application Form
In November, when the ASF is officially launched, all Early and Founding members will have a chance to meet at the Launching event.
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