Tag: Rust

OpenBazaar Set for a Comeback

by Blockchain News

After being shut down over two years ago due to financial issues and poor user growth, OpenBazaar, a decentralized marketplace, appears set for a comeback. Recent updates on social media and GitHub indicate that progress is being made on building a new version of the marketplace, which was shut down in 2020.

According to a GitHub repository, there has been progress as recent as April 12 on building a new version of the marketplace. Former project lead at OpenBazaar and CEO of OB1, Brian Hoffman, tweeted on April 9 of the progress made on a “new” version of the marketplace, stating that it is “getting more interesting by the day.”

Hoffman has also hinted at the marketplace’s return, citing “freedom of exploration” as a key factor in its revival. In a reply to a tweet asking how the marketplace would be different this time, Hoffman inferred that outside influence had contributed to its initial downfall.

The first hints that OpenBazaar would be launching a comeback came in a tweet from Hoffman on March 28, where he linked OpenBazaar’s GitHub page that showed he had been working on a new version of the marketplace using the programming language Rust. Just hours later, OpenBazaar’s official account also posted a tweet saying that “it is now time to grow again from the ashes,” and that “work has begun.”

Adding to the evidence that the marketplace appears likely to relaunch, the OpenBazaar website currently bears the message “OpenBazaar 3.0 – Coming Soon.”

Hailed as a decentralized eBay alternative, OpenBazaar was first launched back in 2014. It allowed users to interact directly with each other to make transactions using Bitcoin (BTC). The marketplace initially had the name “DarkMarket,” but changed it to OpenBazaar following community input in an attempt to improve its public image.

After the exchange had shut down in 2020, Hoffman tweeted that a future iteration of OpenBazaar would require more independence from OB1, but provided no more information about how this might work.

In summary, OpenBazaar, a decentralized marketplace, is set for a comeback after it was shut down in 2020. Recent updates on social media and GitHub indicate progress on building a new version of the marketplace using the programming language Rust. Brian Hoffman, the former project lead at OpenBazaar, has hinted at the marketplace’s return, citing “freedom of exploration” as a key factor in its revival. The marketplace initially had the name “DarkMarket,” but changed it to OpenBazaar following community input in an attempt to improve its public image. The return of OpenBazaar would be a welcome development for those looking for a decentralized eBay alternative.

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Iota releases Smart Contracts Protocol alpha ahead of Coordicide rollout

by Cointelegraph

The Iota protocol (MIOTA) is continuing its pivot toward implementing smart contracts with an alpha release of IOTA Smart Contracts Protocol, or ISCP.

As announced on Thursday, the project has released a more stable iteration of its smart contracts platform, which was previously in the pre-alpha stage. The new version signals a higher readiness of the technology, allowing developers to compile and test smart contracts for the first time. The smart contracts are based on Rust and the WebAssembly framework, putting it in a similar development environment as some of the more recent smart contract platforms like Polkadot and Near Protocol.

The overall architecture of the ISCP is also somewhat similar to existing sharding-based projects. The smart contract-enabled chains would act as layer-two environments, validated by Iota’s Tangle, a ledger based on a Directed Acyclic Graph. The validators do not need to verify all chains at once, as the creators of the smart contract chain will directly choose the mechanism for assigning validators. This allows creating both open networks and permissioned enterprise chains, which is a major focus of the Iota project.

The Iota team expects that the alpha release will attract developers who want to build applications in decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens, thus hoping to hitch a ride on recent trends in blockchain. For Iota developers, building new projects won’t be as easy as taking the code of some popular project on Ethereum, a strategy commonly seen on many current Ethereum competitors. Due to the WebAssembly environment, there are few ready-made projects to implement. Still, the Iota project plans to have an environment-agnostic presence, with support for the Ethereum Virtual Machine and its smart contracts being in the immediate roadmap.

The smart contracts alpha is being rolled out in parallel to the GoShimmer testnet, an environment without the Coordinator. A “Mana” module to be released this month would allow to integrate the ISCP chains directly into this Coordinator-free testnet, though in the meantime developers can deploy isolated testnets to develop DApps in an Iota-based environment.

An Iota spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the smart contracts will be an integral part of the upcoming Coordicide completion, which would signal the launch of Iota 2.0:

“The vision of ISCP is to run in production on the fully decentralized IOTA protocol without a Coordinator. That is what we are building for with GoShimmer and we are very confident that we will be able to achieve that this year.”

The alpha smart contracts release signals that the Iota project feels confident about its plans and is looking to grow a developer community around its project. Still, the team will need to work double-time to compensate for the late start in an extremely competitive and somewhat crowded smart contract chain landscape.