State of the Sndbox is a weekly newsletter that provides the latest in Sndbox activities, projects, and provides the best resources in creative empowerment for the Steemit community. To get up-to-date on all of our development throughout the week, be sure to follow us @sndbox.

Image by contest winner @ninjace

This Week in the Sndbox

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Welcome to the 43rd State of the Sndbox newsletter!

This past week, we packed in a great deal of both online and offline updates including the involvement of Sndbox at the Ethereal Summit, a live shot at the NYC BlockAsia Conference, and hanging out with the @dlive crew in New York. On Creative Crypto, we talked about the NRVE whitepaper, explored the Rize App, and added to our vocabulary through more chapters in the Basics of Blockchain Encyclopedia. We also awarded the winners of the Stellar Crypto Design and Art Challenge and launched our ninth logo competition centering on IOTA.

For a more thorough breakdown of what our members have been up to, be sure to go through our weekly Sndbox Selections of the Week and Project Updates posts that we publish each Monday.

NRVE Whitepaper : Narrative Review

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Narrative is an upcoming social network platform leveraging on a more upright and sustainable Content Economy. Built on the NEO blockchain, it incentivizes "Niches", determining moderators that manage a specific niche, curating and managing content with a governing body. NRVE, an NEP-5 token, will be distributed as rewards and will also be used buy into the Niche selection process.

We're seeing Steemit, being the successful precedent and Narrative's most viable competitor with 1 million accounts, paving the way for more decentralized content creation on the blockchain.

Read more about the steps on the proposition of Niches in the full post about the NRVE/Narrative whitepaper here.

Ethereal Summit with @mintvilla

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Read this photo coverage of the Ethereal Conference we attended with one of our incubator members, @mintvilla. She won an Ethereal Art Grant and had the chance to showcase Steem and Steem Park as one of the main creative projects discussing the impact of decentralized systems on non-profit foundations and public spaces. Brooklyn's BRIC TV with Brian Vines engaged us in a conversation about Steem which we hope will transform into some airtime and exciting publicity for Steemit!

Documentation of the work and panels for the event are detailed in the Scape Shift Project Website. To see more photos of the event and of our engagement with BRIC TV, click on the photo journal here.

Asia Blockchain Conference and DLive Meetup

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We conversed live with the Crypto community at the NYC BlockAsia Conference in Manhattan as we livestreamed and worked with MOB RULE NEWS to shoot a special edition of Blockchain and Bourbon. On the same eventful day, we went to the anticipated DLive meetup to chill with some Steemit community influencers and @DLive vloggers.

Check out the details here.

Blockchain & Bourbon

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Blockchain and Bourbon is a weekly webisode by the makers of The Creative Crypto Magazine streamed LIVE on multiple social media apps such as Rize and Facebook.

Watch the latest episode here as we talk about the Ethereal Conference and the necessity of "Physical Crypto Projects" that serve as openings into the topics of cryptocurrency and how cryptocurrencies impact real world things like journalism, art, design, finance, or development in general.

Our next episode takes us mainstream as we'll be discussing the appearances of cryptocurrency and the manner in which its representation is accelerating blockchain's impact.

Stellar Art and Design Challenge Winners

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Who knew that the iconic rocket image of the Stellar logo could be easily merged with a myriad of styles?

The challenge was to revamp the Stellar logo in the style of a famous artist and we received diversified submissions such as @tkdesignís Galactic Miro, @aaronhongís Astro Boy, @ryh0505ís Walker, and @crittercratsí Pictograms.

Click here to view the complete list of winners.

Project Spotlight: 4,000 Steem for Non-Profit in Philadelphia

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The "Sndbox Project Series" brings you the latest updates on all Steem-powered projects led by current cohort members.

Temple University's graduate seminar, @phillyhistory, was able to raise close to 4,000 STEEM for the Wagner Free Institute of Science's Fellowship Program. The program enables opportunities for Temple faculty and graduate students to work with the Wagner Free Institute of Science and its collections.

@urban-thinktank, a research and development studio out of the ETH architecture school in Zurich, discussed how they utilize digital planning tools in their project, Empower Housing , that will fund ongoing development of housing in Khayelitsha, South Africa. @kr-marketing released new material for their Blockchain Encyclopedia and @mrblinddraw's Whisper Gallery completed week XV with a final submission by @dunsky. Lastly, @blockmountain showed us the structure of artists in Steemit's first community powered music album.

Read more about these projects in this post.

Iota Art & Design Challenge

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We're now on our 9th Crypto Art & Design Challenge! Since The Creative Crypto Magazine (@creativecrypto) is now launched, this one will be visible through thecreativecrypto.com! Get your crafty thinking hats on and take on the IOTA challenge by re-inventing the IOTA logo in the likes of Picasso, Van Gogh, David Hockney, Michelangelo or any style you so desire.

Rize App - Video Sharing Decentralization

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The Creative Crypto and its weekly livestream are regulars on the Rize App by the YouNow streaming platform. The PROPS token ICO was finalized a while back and are finalizing improvements on their first mobile application that facilitates peer-to-peer streaming, the Rize app. The @sndbox team continuously explores new ways of streaming content in addition to @dlive and @dtube and looks forwards to more features on these resources, making them integral in our regular programming.

Learn more about Rize and decentralized video sharing here.

Basics of Blockchain Encyclopedia

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Our creative collaboration with the @kr-marketing and @keepit team on the Resources page of thecreativecrypto.com can now be viewed in English and Korean. This "Encyclopedia" is a repository of keywords that will help you become fluent in the terminologies of the crypto world. This week, we cover a series of key terms and complex concepts such as Proof of Work, a Nonce, a Network, and Block Rewards.

Visit the Resources Page and read the flash cards individually here.

An Unlikely Crypto Creative Interview with Mark Bern

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A tech-savvy pioneer in exploring the synergies of cryptocurrency and art, Mark Bern happily sold his digital art in 2012 for Bitcoin and realized early on the huge impact crypto assets will have on economy and society. His artwork emphasizes the basic form of the digital world, the pixel. Integrating that with cryptocurrency logos symbolizes the coming together of the nature of art and cryptocurrency world, through blockchain-powered projects that make the imprint of crypto become a lasting impression in the art industry.

Read the full interview here.

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A warm thanks to @sndbox's SoTS guest author; @luvabi. Abi is a member of Sndbox's first Cohort. [Guest Authors receive 20% of the SBD rewards, and an opportunity to showcase projects developing within the incubator / broader Steemit community.]

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Want to support Steemit authors like these? Consider joining our curation trail! You can learn more about the @sndbox incubator mission and 2018 program here.

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