ARK Monthly Newsletter — November 2019 Edition

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

REMARKS

“November 2019 has both the team and community hard at work on Core v2.6 devnet testing, with the end finally in sight. According to a recent blog post, there have been 15 contributors to Core with 96 issues discovered during testing, and 90 of those issues have been resolved. The special ARK bounty campaign for developers is ending soon, but there is still time to earn extra bonuses for helping test Core v2.6. This month, the Bilaxy Exchange listed ARK, and ARK integrated into the ABRA cryptocurrency investment portfolio app. The ARK Crypto Podcast is also back after a brief hiatus. Additionally, we are also pleased to welcome 553 new subscribers to our YouTube channel this month, which is nearly a 20% increase.”
Justin Renken, ARK.io Senior Brand Manager

TOP TWEET

https://twitter.com/ArkEcosystem/status/1194729466037075968

https://twitter.com/ArkEcosystem/status/1195171172226387968

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 this past month:

• ARK is Now Integrated with Mobile Version of Exodus Wallet

• ARK Announces Relaunch of ARK Crypto Podcast with Integration into ARK.io Website

• ARK Releases Mobile Wallet v1.6.2

• ARK Reports on Core v2.6 Devnet Testing and Progress Update

• ARK Highlights Crypto Trivia Night Episode 2 Release

• ARK Highlights Lynx Art Collection Now Accepting ARK Through CryptocurrencyCheckout

• ARK Explores Delegate Resignation Transaction Type in Upcoming Core v2.6

• ARK Highlights In-Game Footage of ARK32 NASCAR in NASCAR Heat Video Game

• ARK Highlights Delegate Launching New PVP Game Powered by ARK

• ARK Announces Listing on ABRA Cryptocurrency Investment Portfolio App

• ARK Highlights ARK32 NASCAR Skin Now Available in NASCAR Heat Video Game

• ARK Ecosystem Retweets CoinCodeCap’s Analysis on ARK’s GitHub Using Different Development Metrics.

• ARK Announces Listing at Bilaxy Exchange with ARK / BTC Pair

• ARK Ecosystem Highlights Users to Catch Justin Renken and Bad Crypto Podcast Using VR Headset

• ARK Ecosystem Releases ARK Core Series: Hash Time-Locked Contracts

• ARK Ecosystem Announces New ARK Tier 0 Project on New Transactions & Multisignature SDKs Crypto Implementation

• ARK Ecosystem is Seeking an Experienced Back-End Developer

• ARK Ecosystem Highlights Successful Whitepaper Crunch Quiz Sponsored by Delegate Jarunik

• ARK Ecosystem Announces GitHub Development Bounty Winners for October 2019

• ARK Ecosystem Retweets Video of Crypto Mashup at World Crypto Con: Part 1

• ARK Ecosystem Retweets Blockfolio Signal of the Week for ARK

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

ARK ADVENTURES

This month I made my way back to the crypto community center that recently became the location of the new game show event Crypto Trivia Night. I wanted to share the story behind the Crypto Blockchain Plug and show that there are real people out there working to bring blockchain technology to people in their local community. This episode features Najah Roberts, Chief Visionary Officer of the Crypto Blockchain Plug, along with a tour of the space. If you missed it, check it out below:

FRANCE ACTIVITIES

ARK is incorporated as an SCIC in France(ARK Ecosystem SCIC), giving ARK a leg up when interfacing with the legacy financial system. This SCIC is the first of its kind for crypto in France.

• Last month, ARK Ecosystem president FX Thoorens participated in a press lunch with journalists from major French media. These person-to-person contacts allow FX to become a reliable source on blockchain concepts and news for the French media. The theme of this luncheon was “the future of French cryptocurrencies in light of Facebook’s Libra.”

• FX was also recently on a panel at a business school in Paris, with the theme of the day being blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He was on stage with a panel of fellow experts in the field.

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 recent quote from Dean van Dugteren, nOS Founder and CEO:

“The ARK framework has helped us a lot because it makes my life so much easier to build things… I love building with ARK, and also enjoy working with the ARK Team and making Core contributions as well, improving the framework, and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking into building a blockchain… The most important thing to take away is that building with ARK is fun… I find working with ARK to be a joy, I think it’s really fun to try things and see it working in action… to be like oh, I actually built something that I envisioned and now it’s working, and I can see that you can make a transaction and use it in wallets… It brings back the fun in development.”
Dean van Dugteren, nOS Founder and CEO

This quote came from the Developer Roundtable video, which you can watch further down in this newsletter. You can track nOS’s progress via their **blog by clicking here**.

AMAs

Ask-Me-Anythings were conducted during this month featuring ARK team members answering questions by the community on Slack.ARK.io. AMA Transcripts are now available on the ARK.io resource ARK Answers. Here’s the list for this past month:

• ARK Core AMA with Joshua

• ARK Deployer AMA with Vini

• ARK Desktop Wallet AMA with Alex

• ARK Mobile Wallet AMA with Lucio

• ARK IoT AMA with Simon

• ARK Explorer AMA with Michel

Follow ARK on Twitter for invitations to join future AMAs.

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.

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 November’s report here).**

NETWORK REPORT

This network report summarizes network activity on the ARK Public Network for the recent month.

Total Network Transactions

**Total: **176,430
**Avg per block: **0.5464
***Per type:
*Transfers: **176,106 (99.82%)
**Second Signatures: **4 (0.00%)
**Votes: **314 (0.18%)
Delegate Registrations: 6 (0.00%)

1,364 unique wallets sent an outgoing transaction.

Total Blocks

Full: 765 (0.24%)
**Empty: **314,393 (97.36%)
**Non-empty: **7,744 (2.40%)
**Total: **322,902
**Missed: **1,098

Total Network Fees

Total: 3,342.12526434 Ѧ
Per type:
Transfers: 3,082.78623153 Ѧ
**Second Signatures: **5.31488751 Ѧ
**Votes: **173.1241453 Ѧ
**Delegate Registrations: **80.9 Ѧ

Total Network Votes

**Voting Wallets: **41,838
Voting Wallets > 1 ARK: 18,978
**Total ARK Voting: **82,407,823.42728297 Ѧ

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://the-ark-crypto-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ark-crypto-podcast-054-bcdiploma-building-on-ark-interview

The podcast has returned with weekly episodes as detailed in this recent blog post.

WHAT’S NEXT

Current Core v2.6 beta testing is scheduled to end on the 19th of December 2019 (subject to change based on bug reporting). This will also mark the end of our special bounty period. We will announce winners shortly after the end of the beta period so if you would like to be considered and have a chance at earning a considerable bonus, you still have time.

Once the beta period is concluded, we will enter the “Release Candidate” (RC) phase. This means we believe that the current build of Core v2.6 is a production-ready release. The RC phase will last approximately 2 weeks. Due to the extended beta testing period and the upcoming holidays, our current projection is that Core v2.6 will release at the beginning of January. We do not believe it is in the best interest of the team, the delegates, or the community to make a major release during the holiday season and have adjusted our dates accordingly.

Our current plan is to move Core v2.6 onto Mainnet in the second week of January (6th-10th January 2020, subject to change of course).

Additionally, according to Roadmap.ARK.io, the Desktop Wallet Plugin Manager is nearing completion. This upgrade will make it easier than ever to discover, publish, download, and update wallet plugins. We are still handling final tasks with our first group of ARK Advocates, five talented ARK enthusiasts who will become certified to speak about ARK in their local area according to the ARK Advocate Program. Core v2.6 and associated product upgrades are quite a large upgrade to the network, and the team and community are very focused on successful testing.

FEEDBACK SURVEY

Take a short three-minute feedback survey so we can learn more about your opinions on how we’re doing. We review and track this feedback and use it to further improve our efforts.

**Take the three-minute feedback survey here**.

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

Looking forward to December!

Read our new 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.