ARK Monthly Newsletter — August 2019 Edition

August is in the box! This blog post will cover last months highlights, activities, achievements, and unique content. Let’s take a look at what the team has been up to.

AUGUST’S TOP TWEET

https://twitter.com/ArkEcosystem/status/1163460097089200130?s=20

AUGUST ARK TIMELINE

***ArkTimeline.com*** is a community resource built and maintained by the ARK Community Committee. The entire history of all ARK achievements and accomplishments are available there, and they are both sortable and filterable. Here’s a quick rundown for August:

• ARK Ecosystem Announces ARK Desktop Wallet v2.6 — Major Plugin Improvements and New Features

• ARK Ecosystem Introduces The ARK Advocate Program as a New Initiative to Increase Community Collaboration

• ARK Ecosystem Announces New ARK Tier 0 Project on ARK Core Mirage Server (Mock Server)

• ARK Ecosystem Releases An Introduction to Blockchain Application Development — Part 2/2

• ARK Ecosystem Announces New ARK Tier 0 Project on ARK Scooters

• ARK Ecosystem Introduces ARK Core GTI for Generic Transaction Interface

• ARK Ecosystem Announces New ARK Tier 0 Project on ARK Desktop Wallet Plugin Discovery

• ARK Announces New Exchange Listing on BW.com with ARK/BTC and ARK/USDT Pairs

• ARK Ecosystem Hires Vinicius Munich as Full-Stack Developer

• ARK Ecosystem Announces ARKTippr Can Tip Directly to Reddit and Twitter Users from ARK Wallet

• ARK Ecosystem Introduces Powered by ARK Program to Expand Support for the Bridgechain Community

• ARK Ecosystem Welcomes ARK’s New Strategic Partnership Manager — Ray Alvarez

• ARK Ecosystem Announces ARK Tier 0 Project Completed with Developer Earned USD750 for Completing Migration of E2E Explorer Test Suite to Cypress

• ARK Ecosystem Releases ARK Mobile Wallet v1.5.1 for Android and iOS

• ARK Ecosystem Highlights ARK Featured in a Hackernoon Article Discussing Interoperability and Blockchain Solutions

• ARK Ecosystem Highlights a Video from ARK Delegate — Cam’s Yellow Jacket Explaining ARK Bridgechains

• ARK Ecosystem Introduces ARK Tier 0 Program — Tackle Bigger Development Challenges and Earn

• ARK Highlights ARK’s CFO Lars Rensing Appeared on the Dutch Language RadioSatoshi Podcast Talking about All Things about ARK and nOS Platform

• ARK Announces GitHub Development Bounty Update Featuring Increased Bounties and Adding Competitions

• See what the future holds for ARK at Roadmap.ARK.io.

AUGUST ADVENTURES

This month, as suggested by ARK community member ‘Skeuo,’ I traveled to Cedar Rapids, IA to visit Mahalo Dog, home of the famous ARK crypto hot dog from Reddit. I also dished out ARK cryptocurrency and commemorative ARK gift coins courtesy of Delegate ARKMoon in collaboration with Delegate Jarunik. If you missed it, check it out below:

AUGUST POWERED BY ARK UPDATE

The **Powered by ARK Program** aims to help recognize, support and collaborate with projects building on ARK’s technology. The first accepted official partner is **nOS**, the virtual operating system for the Smart Economy. Here’s a brief update and remarks from Founder & CEO Dean van Dugteren:

“ Development is going fantastic! We’re blasting through milestones for both nOS Browser and the blockchain. September is a big month as we’re preparing to launch our public testnet. One thing I notice that’s quite common among many blockchain projects is that the available development tools (SDKs/APIs) are quite limited in functionality, or unnecessarily difficult to work with. I always saw this as a roadblock to developer adoption, which is currently far more important than user adoption. Web developers have Laravel, WordPress, and Shopify. Where are those solutions for blockchain? Well, they’re finally here and making the jobs of developers easier every day. ARK Core has been as accessible to me for blockchain development as modern web frameworks are for web development.”
Dean van Dugteren, nOS Founder & CEO

You can track nOS’s progress via their **blog by clicking here**.

AUGUST AMAs

Ask-Me-Anythings were conducted during this month featuring ARK team members answering questions by the community on Slack.ARK.io. Here’s the list:

• ARK Core AMA with Joshua

• ARK Explorer AMA with Michel

• ARK IoT AMA with Simon

• ARK Deployer AMA with Alex & Vini

• ARK Mobile Wallet AMA with Lucio

• ARK Desktop Wallet AMA with Alex

• ARK Strategy AMA with Matthew

Follow ARK on Twitter for invitations to join future AMAs.

AUGUST DEVELOPER ROUNDTABLE

The ARK Developer Roundtable is a monthly video call, conducted by ARK.io Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Kristjan Košič. These calls allow a unique opportunity to present information to the community and gain valuable insight from community developers. Here’s last month’s meeting:

Follow ARK on Twitter for invitations to join future roundtables.

AUGUST DEVELOPMENT REPORT

The ARK Monthly Development Report covers all pull requests (opened, closed, merged) as well as all issues opened and closed in every ARK Ecosystem public repository, the number of contributors during that month, the number of new stargazers, and total lines of GitHub code added or deleted (**check August’s report here).**

AUGUST PODCASTS

The ***ARK Crypto Podcast*** releases weekly episodes all about ARK, featuring interviews, monologues, tutorials, reports, presentations, and more. The show aims for a 30-minute runtime and releases new episodes every Friday. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Spotify, Castbox, and more. Check out the episodes released this month:

https://soundcloud.com/thearkcryptopodcast/ark-crypto-podcast-047-blockchain-legal-roundup-no-2-featuring-ray-alva

https://soundcloud.com/thearkcryptopodcast/ark-crypto-podcast-048-powered-by-ark-program-breakdown-and-implications

https://soundcloud.com/thearkcryptopodcast/ark-crypto-podcast-049-community-services-appreciation

https://soundcloud.com/thearkcryptopodcast/ark-crypto-podcast-50-whats-new-ark-advocate-program-details

WHAT’S NEXT

The following month for ARK will focus heavily on advancing Core v2.6 closer towards release. This is arguably the biggest Core iteration to date, and it will contain big functionality additions for developers. Check **Roadmap.ARK.io for status updates. Also, during this month we will be collecting submissions for the recently launched **ARK Advocate Program. We will also put the finishing touches on a training curriculum that will equip ARK enthusiasts around the world to spread awareness about ARK. **Submit your application here, before September 27.**

GET INVOLVED

Here’s a quick list of what your first steps might be to get involved with ARK:

• Join our community on Slack or Reddit

• Launch an ARK community service

• Contribute code and earn ARK

• Launch an ARK node and campaign for forging status

• Create a blockchain in three simple steps

• Become an ARK Advocate and speak about ARK

Looking forward to September!

Read our new 2019 whitepaper, follow us on social media (Twitter|Facebook | Reddit ), join our community ( Slack | Discord ) and stay tuned to our blog on Medium and on Steemit.