Richardson, TX, Sunday, April 18th, 2021 — The Montreal Blockchain Lab (MBL) will be evaluating the Shardus software. As the Shardus Association nears the release of the first version of Shardus, an academic review of the Shardus consensus algorithm and sharding protocol will help ensure a greater level of security and correctness. The partnership will help to ensure a safe and secure experience for early developers building decentralized applications with Shardus.

Known as one of the first teams in the world to demonstrate a state-sharded decentralized network, Shardus provides software used to build custom decentralized networks with linear scaling capabilities.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Montreal Blockchain Lab and bring their teams experience from organizations such as Bellcore, Intel, United Nations, IBM, Mizuho Securities USA and Goldman Sachs into securing the Shardus code.” said Gregory Hemmer, Partnership Manager at Shardus. “Our partnership with MBL provides developers with confidence that Shardus has been thoroughly audited.”

This partnership will advance the development of Shardus and enable decentralized applications to scale, providing the same UX society is accustomed to with modern centralized applications.

About Shardus

Formed in 2018, the Shardus Association is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with team members distributed globally who are contributing to the development of Shardus. Shardus is software developers can use to easily build their own linearly scalable decentralized network that can process extreme data throughput so they can focus on building their application layer.

About Montreal Blockchain Lab

Montreal Blockchain Lab (MBL) was founded in 2018 with the objective to advance current blockchain technology and support organizations to stay at the forefront of global business innovation. One of the main roles of MBL is the investigation of key blockchain issues, such as scalability and security, via research and the publication of the results in the form of journal and conference papers. MBL also provides Blockchain training/education services and helps organizations in designing/implementing Blockchain applications via collaboration/consulting.

The Shardus project has an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network. We have been worried for a while now that during the upcoming bull market of 2021 the traffic on the Ethereum network will reach max capacity and transaction fees for a simple token transfer may get into hundreds of dollars. We have been looking at other networks that can provide a bridge and offload the traffic. After looking at various networks we have decided to go with Binance Smart Chain since it is 100% compatible with Ethereum, has a high TPS [1], low fees [2] and has the potential to grow faster than other compatible chains. We wanted to create a two way bridge so that our Shardus token could be easily moved between the two networks. We expected this might take a significant amount of effort to setup. But after doing some research we found that a project on the Bincance Smart Chain called BurgerSwap has already created such a bridge. BurgerSwap is basically like Uniswap on the Binance Smart Chain. It allows tokens on the Binance Smart Chain to be added to liquidity pools so they can be swapped with each other. It makes total sense that this project would have an interest in making it easy for ERC20 tokens to move between the Ethererum and Binance chains, since it would help increase the tokens available on BurgerSwap. So how do you set up this bridge? It’s very easy.

Any user of an ERC20 token can do it and it does not require involvement from the token team or contract owner.

1. You need to have the MetaMask wallet setup and the tokens on the Ethereum network which you want to create the bridge for moved to that wallet.
2. Setup your MetaMask wallet to also recognize the Binance Smart Chain as explained here. The same Ethereum addresses will also be used on the Binance Smart Chain.
3. Make sure you have some BNB in your address on the Binance side and some ETH in the same address on the Ethereum side. You should also have the ERC20 token in the same address on the Ethereum side.
4. Now you just need to create the bridge as explained here. In step 2 be sure to click the Approve button before clicking the Create button.

That’s it. You can now use the bridge at BurgerSwap.org to move your token between the Ethereum and Binance chain. You will just need to keep the contract address handy; or you can always search for it by token name using the BSCscan.com explorer.

If you would also like to add your token to the BurgerSwap DEX just follow the steps here.

[1] Max throughput of over 450 TPS.
[2] Transaction fees are 35x lower.

The Shardus project has an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network which we give to developers, advisers, promoter, bounty hunters and others who contribute to the project. We did not have an ICO or sell the token to investors. Our token is currently traded on Uniswap. It used to be traded on Bancor. This article explains why we chose Uniswap over Bancor.

In August 2018, as part of rebranding the project name from Unblocked Ledger to Shardus, we needed to deploy a new ERC-20 contract and move our tokens over to it, just so the name and symbol on the contract can be changed. Since transaction fees on the Ethereum network were becoming very sporadic we also wanted to move off the Ethereum network. We evaluated other platforms such as EOS, Waves, Stellar and Tron. Although we liked Waves quite a bit, we felt that it was not quite ready at the time. Also there was no service on Waves similar to Bancor where we could list the token. We decided to stay on Ethereum mainly for the Bancor service. But in the evaluation processes we also stumbled upon Uniswap which was just getting started and offering a service similar to Bancor.

What we found most interesting about Uniswap was the simple equation it used to do the conversion. TOK_new * ETH_new = TOK_old * ETH_old. Compare this to the complex formula used by Bancor given in this paper. The simple formula used by Uniswap translates into much lower fees to do a swap on Uniswap compared to Bancor. The Uniswap transaction fees for a swap are about 5x less than Bancor.

Our token was listed on Bancor for several months before we switched to Uniswap. The process for listing a token on Bancor required us to contact the Bancor team and work with them to transfer ETH and equivalent amount of our token to addresses provided by the Bancor team. The Bancor team also required us transfer no less then $60,000 USD of ETH during the setup to be used to provide liquidity. The process took a day or two of going back and forth with the Bancor team from the time we decided to list to the time to our token appeared on the Bancor site. In contrast the process for creating a Uniswap contract was as simple as filling out a short form and clicking a button. The process for add liquidity to the contract was just as easy. The process took a minute or two and we did not need to contact the Uniswap team. Nor was there any requirements for how much liquidity to add to the contract.

If the process for getting listed on Bancor was a bit difficult the process for removing liquidity and getting delisted was even more difficult. The process required going backing and forth with the Bancor team for a few days to execute the steps and make sure we did it right. Also it was a good thing that the liquidity was provided by a group of people who knew each other, because the full amount stored in the Bancor contract was returned on just one address. We had to then distribute it ourselves based on who added how much liquidity. This would never be possible if many people who did not know each other had added liquidity. With the Uniswap contract the process of removing liquidity was again as simple as filling out a form and clicking a button.

One nice feature of Bancor that we missed is having real-time price and volume information along with charts which made Bancor feel like an exchange. The Uniswap interface is quite basic and does not provide such features.

The one thing that we did not like about Uniswap was the decision by the team to display only the tokens they added to a curated list. To use any other token with their interface requires entering the token contract address. Many projects have been asking for a change to this policy, but the Uniswap team insists it’s for the safety of the users and suggests to fork the project and provide your own curated list.

The Shardus team has gone ahead and created a new interface to the Uniswap contracts and made it available at UniswapDEX.com. Our interface lists every token which has a Uniswap contract with at least 1 ETH of liquidity and provides an option to include even the tokens with very low or zero liquidity. In addition our interface collects real-time data from the Ethereum network and displays the current price, volume, change and liquidity for each token as well as a price and volume graph. This gives our interface the same exchange like features provided by Bancor.

On August 1st, 2020 the Shardus team hosted its quarterly update event virtually to present development progress the team made during the second quarter amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The DAO has held itself accountable to its milestones as it has continued to execute in alignment with the Shardus Project Roadmap. From 2017 to Q2 2020 the Shardus Software has progressed from being capable of supporting a static decentralized network with TPS constraints to supporting a state sharded decentralized network where TPS increases as nodes are added to a network. Shardus’ 2020 Q2 update included an overview of progress in the software, marketing updates and a demonstration of Shardus’ snapshot feature.

Omar Syed, Shardus Chief Architect, introduced Shardus with its new ethos, “Enabling a Decentralized World.”. When you look at what the blockchain industry is attempting to achieve at a macro level you see a global community of developers building software to decentralize many aspects of society. Although developers’ ambitions in the DLT space are currently limited by the scalability constraints of the decentralized networks they build applications on top of. For example, many DeFi applications are built on Ethereum yet Ethereum can currently only handle a maximum of 15 TPS. How can you disrupt centralized applications in modern society when you aren’t able to handle the throughput global adoption will bring? The mission behind Shardus is to enable developers with software capable of building decentralized networks that can handle infinite transaction throughput. Shardus Association members are eager to enable the paradigm shift the global adoption of DLT will produce. As you can see below the Shardus Association is only a few quarters away from completing the Shardus software.

The Shardus Association is making its first impression on the world with Liberdus. Liberdus is the first decentralized application developed on a network built with Shardus. Liberdus is a key project for the Shardus Association because it will set the reputation of the Shardus software. If successful, Liberdus will instill confidence in developers interested in developing their own dApp’s with Shardus. In Q2 the Shardus Association launched the public test net for Liberdus which you can try out here. Liberdus includes features such as a decentralized wallet, the ability to map a username to a wallet address, to link a verified email address to the account, decentralized messaging, friending, funding proposals, network parameter change proposals and staking. Funding proposals and network parameter change proposals are two key features that enable Liberdus to function as a DAO. Funding proposals allow LBD holders to vote on and fund projects that will support the growth of Liberdus and Shardus. Network parameter change proposals allow LBD holders to vote on network fees and usage tolls. Throughout Q3 the Shardus team is committed to completing Liberdus’ parameter and funding proposal features as well as improving its UX. Community members are invited to provide feedback on the economic model as well as features of Liberdus before the launch of the main net.

After reviewing what’s next for Liberdus the presentation transitioned to a demonstration of Shardus’ snapshot feature. When reviewing new technology most will consider the stability of it. As Shardus aims to enable the development of many new decentralized applications there is a high likelihood some of the applications will need to be taken offline. Ensuring decentralized networks can recover from an outage and retain user data is important to the long term viability of decentralized applications. In a sharded network this is much more difficult since nodes hold only a small fraction of the complete network state. During the Q2 2020 Event Shardus Developer, Aamir Syed, demonstrated Shardus’ snapshot feature which allows networks built with Shardus to recover from a complete outage even when only a fraction of the original nodes return to the network. During the demonstration, Aamir fully took down the Liberdus network and restarted 50% of nodes with all data still accessible on the Liberdus client. Outages with any application can happen due to numerous reasons and the snapshot feature gives developers and users a sense of security that their data will never be lost.

During Q2 2020 the Shardus community reached some exciting milestones! The Shardus token, ULT, was listed on its first centralized exchange, Probit. Probit is an exchange based in South Korea which provides Shardus distribution to Southeast Asia. The Probit listing led to Shardus trading volume data being tracked on CoinMarketCap. Finally, Shardus was invited to present at the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede event. Being invited to speak at the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede event is a great honor as many US politicians, prominent investors and entrepreneurs will be on the panel. Shardus is positioned for continued development progress and ecosystem growth in Q3!

Summary

• Shardus snapshot feature completed.
• The Liberdus test net is up at https://test.liberdus.com
• Shardus listed on Probit Exchange.
• Shardus was invited to speak at the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede event.
• State sharding model change and rewrite.

Shardus 2020 Q2 Presentation Recording: https://youtu.be/2Z9W_JsSSPY

Follow Shardus!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShardusLedger, https://twitter.com/Liberdus

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-DQu61lxOvicMi0VsSIAtA

Telegram: https://t.me/shardus

Discord: https://discord.gg/UBYEcu

Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/Shardus

In a world where there is a constant fight for power and data, as well as a lack of trust, the internet is ready to be decentralized. Developers and enterprises are racing to build distributed ledger technology that will serve as the infrastructure of our future decentralized world. Exactly what type of infrastructure will support the decentralization process is unknown, but one thing is certain: a private entity shouldn’t own that infrastructure.

Shardus is on track to solve the challenges holding distributed ledger technology (DLT) back from global adoption and is a candidate for the foundation that society’s decentralized applications will live on. There is no private entity behind Shardus. Like Bitcoin, Shardus is being developed by an unincorporated association of highly talented developers. These developers are rewarded for their contributions with ULT, the token used to license Shardus.

Shardus is not a decentralized network. Instead, it is software used as the foundation for developers to launch their own application-specific or industry-specific decentralized networks. First, there was Bitcoin, a static decentralized network where miners can add nodes to the Bitcoin network and token holders can trade BTC among themselves. Next, there was Ethereum, a smart contract platform where developers could issue their own smart contracts and develop a dApp on the Ethereum network. Now there is Shardus, software developers can use to easily launch their own app-specific or industry-specific decentralized networks so all they have to focus on is writing their dApp’s code, not the decentralized infrastructure underneath it, and they don’t have to share their network’s compute resources with other applications.

Shardus solves several challenges that smart contract platforms and decentralized networks face. First, scalability: most networks have a TPS limit, so if the adoption of applications built on Ethereum or similar decentralized networks scale, the applications become inefficient and provide a poor UX due to high wait times for TXs to process. Shardus is one of the first projects to implement state sharding into a decentralized network. State sharding allows for linear scalability, which means Shardus networks have TPS per node. As you add nodes to a Shardus network, the TPS limit increases. Linear scaling, the scaling of TPS aligned with the growth of the network, allows for global adoption of decentralized applications and a UX you’d expect with any centralized application. Shardus demonstrated linear scaling in a live network at its Q3 event at the University of Texas Dallas in 2019 (one of the first known demonstrations of linear scaling in a decentralized network in the world). Shardus Q3 ’19 Event on YouTube

Next, increasing node requirements are causing centralization issues in many “decentralized” networks. Ethereum, Bitcoin and other popular networks require each node to be a full node storing 100% of the ledger’s data. This means as the popularity of a network grows, the barriers to entry for a node operator increase as well due to the growing memory requirements. As a result, networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin are becoming centralized as it is extremely expensive to run a full node, and only a few corporations own a majority of each network’s hashing power. With Shardus, sharding state data and a proprietary consensus algorithm allow for any off the shelf computer or even a raspberry PI to run a node on a network, which means anyone anywhere will be able to add a node to a network built with Shardus network allowing for true decentralization.

Another challenge smart contract platforms face is gas fees. As dApps on smart contract platforms are sharing the network’s resources with other applications, gas fees can be volatile and affect the UX. One day you may be using a DeFi app where the gas fee is $0.01, and the next day it could be $1 per TPS. Developers can launch their own app-specific network with Shardus and not have to share node resources with other applications, allowing for a better UX.

New distributed ledger technology does not have to mean new programming languages. We’re not trying to build a rocket ship here. It is wise to reduce the learning curve so as many developers as possible can turn their decentralized ideas to reality. Shardus is written in TypeScript, a developer-friendly programming language that is popular amongst developers; this reduces the learning curve for developing decentralized applications with Shardus.

ULT is used by developers to obtain a license token for Shardus. Developers building a public application obtain a license and are required to distribute 1% of their network’s tokens to ULT holders. Corporations developing private applications are required to send X amount of ULT to a smart contract. From there, the ULT is burned and an enterprise license is issued to the corporation by the smart contract. Currently, developers who contribute to the development of the Shardus project are rewarded with ULT at $0.10 per token for completing bounties. The developers can sell ULT OTC to individuals who want to support the project. They can also swap ULT on UniSwap. A legal opinion written by US law firm Bull Blockchain Law LLC states that ULT passes the Howey test and is not a security.

The Shardus Association is a highly skilled team of developers. Shardus co-founder Omar Syed has 30 years of experience building distributed systems for organizations such as NASA, Raytheon, Yahoo and Zynga. Patents Yahoo filed for distributed systems that Omar architected can be found here. Omar is also a co-founder of Arimaa, a well-known board game that challenged developers to build an AI bot that could beat humans. AI didn’t win the competition until 2015. Shardus developer Andrew Foster has over twenty-five years of experience as a developer and has worked on projects such as Halo Wars, Castleville, and Age of Empires III.

Shardus has held itself accountable to its project roadmap by presenting a quarterly update each quarter to its community in Dallas, Texas, showing the advancements it has made in the Shardus software. All Shardus quarterly updates are recorded and can be found on YouTube here. The Shardus software is expected to be complete by the end of 2020.

While there are currently several prototype applications being developed by teams with Shardus software, the first public Shardus based dApp will be Liberdus. You can check out the Liberdus test-net here. Keep your eyes on Shardus as it progresses towards supporting decentralized applications that improve our quality of life and replace many of the centralized applications we use today.

Connect with Shardus:
Website: www.shardus.com
Telegram: https://t.me/shardus
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@ShardusLedger
Medium: https://medium.com/@shardus
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Shardus/
Github: https://github.com/shardus
YouTube: Click here.

On May 30th, 2020 the Shardus Association hosted its quarterly update event virtually to present development progress the team made during the first quarter amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The DAO has held itself accountable to its milestones as it has continued to execute in alignment with the Shardus Project Roadmap. From 2017 to Q1 2020 the Shardus Software has progressed from being capable of supporting a static decentralized network with TPS constraints to supporting a state sharded decentralized network where TPS increases as nodes are added to a network. Shardus’ 2020 Q1 update included an overview of progress in the software, marketing updates, a demonstration of the first dApp testnet built with Shardus called Liberdus and a demonstration of how to add a node to the Liberdus network.

Omar Syed, Shardus Architect and distributed systems expert, kicked off the virtual presentation with a definition of Shardus for newcomers. “Shardus is software to create blockchains that have unlimited scaling, are highly decentralized, energy efficient and easy to build and deploy.”, said Syed. Unlike most projects today, Shardus is not a blockchain network itself, but software for developers to easily launch their own linearly scalable network. Below is a visual Omar presented depicting what the Shardus ecosystem might look like in the future and how licensing Shardus works.

Liberdus is the first dApp being built with Shardus by the Shardus team. Shardus developer, Kyle Shifflett, presented a demonstration of the Liberdus test net interface. Liberdus is positioned to be an individual’s “home base” in the digital decentralized world. The dApp contains a combination of popular features including messaging similar to WhatsApp, a username handle and friending feature like Twitter, QR code scanner, email verification, cryptocurrency wallet for LBD tokens and its own unique governance features. Liberdus holders are able to propose and vote on changes to the Liberdus network as well as proposing investment funds for projects that will benefit the network. Another exciting aspect of Liberdus is it’s open-source so the interface can be re-used by developers for other dApp’s in the future. The Shardus team announced that the Liberdus testnet is now live for the public. You can use Liberdus yourself here, https://test.liberdus.com/.

Next, the presentation shifted focus to the back end of a Shardus network demonstrating the limited computing resources required to run a full node on the Liberdus network. Aamir Syed successfully demonstrated installing a Liberdus node on his desktop computer as well as on a Raspberry Pi. The presentation was eye opening as to the energy consumption inefficiencies, high node costs and lack of decentralization most blockchain networks face today. Aamir’s demonstration displayed how Shardus networks will be truly decentralized as almost anyone with a computer and wifi connection will be able to run a full node on Shardus networks.

Omar discussed plans to harden the Liberdus testnet, keep the testnet live 24/7 for users to try, experiment with the Liberdus network and economic parameters, and adding features to the Shardus archive server as well as hardening the code. The Shardus Association is on track to complete the Shardus software in 2020, launch the Liberdus Main Net and is beginning to gain traction on the marketing front as well.

Shardus has been listed on CoinMarketCap and transaction data will be added once trading volume limits are met. In addition Shardus has been invited to present at the upcoming Algorithm Conference in Dallas. Finally, organizations such as Casper Labs have met with the Shardus team to discuss licensing their sharding feature. Shardus has its sails set high and is on track to complete the foundation needed for the DLT industry to take the next step in global disruption. Stay tuned for more progress and updates in Q2!

Summary

• Shardus code base improvements
• The Liberdus test net is up at https://test.liberdus.com
• Validators can join the network using inexpensive computers; download from https://liberdus.com/
• The Liberdus main net is expected by the end of 2020.
• API added to UniswapDEX.com
• Listed on CoinMarketCap.com and CoinGecko.com
• Presenting at the Algorithms Conference.

Shardus 2020 Q1 Presentation Recording: https://youtu.be/X-LKOcnvneI

Follow Shardus!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShardusLedger, https://twitter.com/Liberdus

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-DQu61lxOvicMi0VsSIAtA

Telegram: https://t.me/shardusnews

Discord: https://discord.gg/UBYEcu

Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/Shardus

If you’re aware of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum you’ve likely heard of websites where you can buy them. Any exchange that allows you to purchase Bitcoin or Ethereum with fiat is currently operated by a central legal entity. While centralized exchanges offer a fiat on-ramp to cryptocurrency there are many downsides to working with a centralized exchange.

First, you have to trust a centralized exchange with properly storing your money and personal data. With one of blockchain’s core value propositions being decentralized trust, it’s tough for many people to swallow having to buy cryptocurrency through central entities. Do you want to give businesses a picture of your license? Do you trust them to protect your money? Not to mention there have been billions of dollars stolen from centralized exchanges by hackers.

Next, projects who want to list their tokens on centralized exchanges are commonly charged high listing fees to do so and that’s not all. Many exchanges require projects to maintain daily trading volumes or else they face delisting. Imagine paying an exchange 5–6 figures just for your digital asset to eventually be delisted for not meeting the trading volume requirements. Due to such problems with centralized exchanges, there has been a fast-growing movement towards decentralized finance and decentralized exchanges.

Why can’t decentralized exchanges provide fiat on-ramps to cryptocurrency? Well, a money transmitter license is required by regulators to transmit fiat for cryptocurrency. As the key focus of a decentralized exchange is to have no central entity operating the exchange, there is no entity to acquire a money transmitter license and meet regulations. Although traders are limited to swapping between cryptocurrencies on a decentralized exchange there are many benefits.

The core benefits of a decentralized exchange, or decentralization in general for that matter, include not having to trust a centralized entity with your data or currency. In addition, no account is needed to access decentralized exchanges, only a cryptocurrency wallet. Lastly, there is little risk of a decentralized exchange being taken down as its data is stored on the blockchain.

Although decentralized exchanges are a great idea they do have efficiency issues as each trade takes a long time to execute. Also, a network fee is required for every action such as canceling a trade so users can get frustrated. This has led to limited usage of decentralized exchanges and thus they don’t have much liquidity. However, a new type of exchange is changing the way people think of decentralized exchanges by allowing near-instant trades and liquidity on par with centralized exchanges. This exchange is actually a decentralized swap service called Uniswap.

Uniswap is an Ethereum-based protocol funded by an Ethereum Foundation Grant that automates liquidity provision and swapping of ETH and ERC-20 assets. UniswapDEX is the most user-friendly web interface available to interact with the Uniswap contracts. All of the features you’d expect on an exchange can be found on UniswapDEX.com. UniswapDEX’s features include token swaps, trading volume graphs, a wallet for your assets and even detailed insights into front-running statistics.

Finally, UniswapDEX is a great platform for new blockchain projects that don’t have the capital required to pay centralized exchanges high listing fees or the community to meet volume requirements. UniswapDEX has no listing fee, volume requirements or chance of delisting. Currently, only assets on the Ethereum blockchain can be swapped using Uniswap, but in the future, you can expect to be able to swap between different blockchains. Maybe one day you will even be able to directly purchase and sell cryptocurrencies on DEX’s with fiat.

Shardus is a framework written in Node JS to develop linearly scalable decentralized applications with state sharding. Blockchain development consultancies have partnered with Shardus to architect and develop Dapp’s for decentralized projects requiring scalability. This interview shines a spotlight on the entrepreneurs behind Shardus Development Partner, The Arcadia Group.

Tell us a little bit about The Arcadia Group and what you do.

Arcadia is a Blockchain software development company out of Dallas, our primary offerings are contract work with a specialized focus in privacy-preserving technology, scaling solutions, and P2P network communications. Our current flow of projects is mostly focused on peripheral technology and integrations onto existing decentralized and open-source software.

What were you doing before starting The Arcadia Group?

Rasikh: Prior to Arcadia I was a student, I operated three separate side ventures through various stages prior to 2017, Mad House Domains, Let’s Earn BTC & Stellar Export. MHD was a domain and hosting company that differentiated itself via its onboarding through it’s sponsoring of hackathons in the local DFW area. LBTC (letsearnbtc.com) was a news site that focused on how to earn Bitcoin in 2013 through 2015 and news from 2016 on. It’s main early content was guides focused on simple but at the time undocumented things such as chaining miners or pulling hash rate from sites selling cloud mining, with the most viewed article on-site garnering around 6M lifetime views. Stellar Export was focused on e-commerce products such as robot kits and other small offerings. I was also quite active in local hackathons and UTD-hosted events.

Kamish: Before creating Arcadia I was in several projects across 2017. I started off in the industry as a trader, and during that time operated in the local Dallas metroplex within my family company: K-Link which deals with payment processing and deploying hardware and software internationally for retail and hospitality industry. I continued managing some projects’ efforts and talking with co-founders eventually led to the fruition of creating The Arcadia Group.

How did you get started with blockchain and crypto?

Rasikh: I got introduced to Bitcoin a few different times, but the very first time was when a computer science teacher gave a lesson on bitcoin as a non-curriculum related introduction. This was around early-2013, I jumped in shortly after that lesson, I was quite enamored by the technology but I didn’t have an idea on how I could jump in. I ended up buying some Bitcoin off of Virwox using Eid money, which at the time was the second most respected cryptocurrency exchange, also coincidentally the only one that accepted Paypal. I ended up losing most of my coins through exchange hacks and the like, after which I left crypto for a while until late 2014, when I got active in a few different fork-chain projects, which all died, after which I left crypto again. I count 2014 as my real start year in crypto as even though I was active prior to it, I only really interacted with people in 2014 onwards. I stayed present but not super active in the crypto space buying small amounts with my remaining bitcoin. Eventually, at the time of the founding of Arcadia, I got back into the swing of things spending almost all of my time in crypto.

Kamish: I saw bitcoin at $800 and got started with Poloniex, I didn’t know what blockchain entailed until I realized all these coins are indifferent and have their own way of making transactions possible, after I started trading in 2017 I grew close to several projects and understood how they worked by talking with founders and other trading experts.

In what ways has your life changed since starting to work in blockchain?

Rasikh: Blockchain has led to me spending quite a bit of time outside of my comfort zone (and outside the house haha), I’ve done extensive travelling since Arcadia has started, and additionally I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some extraordinary people, which I will be forever thankful for.

Kamish: Certainly gave me incentive to cater towards startups and find people of value, which made me realize how to measure people’s expectations. A time like 2017 will never come again when we had uncontrollable attention towards blockchain projects. I learned a hard lesson while making some important relationships and starting the company up with Rasikh.

How does The Arcadia Group help its customers?

Arcadia works to build peripheral technology that will actually be used by the end-users, a significant amount of development in the blockchain space is left unused or is vaporware, building technology that is used and stays relevant is what we consider a measure of our success.

What projects are you working with at The Arcadia Group?

Currently, Arcadia has a few active projects, most of our projects follow the confidential until release model, but some of our previous and current public clients include Zcoin, Cryptodrilling, Whats2Doo, and RealFevr. We are partnered with a few companies, such as Pokt Network, Blockdynamics, CoinCentrix Capital, Muan, Fitzner Blockchain Consulting, The Global Hackathon, among a few others. We are also, of course, a development partner with Shardus, where we help projects who are looking to implement Shadrus.

What application of blockchain are you most interested in?

Rasikh: I am personally most interested in DeFi implementations competing with existing banking infrastructure, even if some of the implementations are not as user-friendly, the ingenuity that some projects in the space provide to reach their end goals is phenomenal. Outside of that, Flyclient, and other lightweight infrastructure such as Pokt, are some of my biggest interests in the blockchain space.

Kamish: I am interested to see the industry grow to provide services for not only individuals and their wallets, but also settlements, decentralized finance, and tracking and tracing for small businesses. Blockchain as a service with real use cases attracts me.

What types of applications do you want to see built with Shardus?

Rasikh: I would love to see lightweight loyalty and supply chain projects on Shardus as that seems like the ideal target demographic accounting for the licensing model.

How can other developers like you get started in blockchain?

Rasikh: There are a few schools of thought on this, something I’m quite certain of, is that ZKPs (Zero Knowledge Proofs), will become more and more relevant as time progresses in the blockchain space. I’d say depending on what part of the industry you are looking to work in, (i.e. layer 1 development vs. dApp development), focus on the available resources in that area. For example, ConsenSys has some really good training material on the side of solidity and application development. For getting started on UTXO based chains such as Bitcoin, there are some great programs for building some fundamental knowledge on C++ programming. While you are building out some basic knowledge, Bitcoin Core Reviews (https://bitcoincore.reviews/) is a great way to get familiar with code-style, implementation methodologies and design choices on in the bitcoin community.

Kamish: Just reach out to me on telegram @KamishR. Come with a goal in mind and it should not be hard to take initiative and dive into documentation…

What do you think the world will look like in 2050?

Rasikh: I’m a pessimist, I think that in 30 years, the right for privacy will have become more and more contested by large governments, corporations and perhaps even individuals. Any blockchain projects still around would have had to have not only had to have found ways to scale but also remain secure against whatever major vulnerabilities that would have been introduced or discovered in that timeframe. The idealist in me would want to believe that decentralized projects would become more decentralized as time progresses, but the more likely scenario is that through the sale of products and services that defeat the whole point of decentralization and self-governance such as “managed-blockchain as a service”, “hosted-chains”, and “hosted key services”, will have invalidated the main benefits brought by the technology. This is why my goal while working in the space is to ensure that any project I am contributing never becomes part of the problem, and instead ensures that any development I contribute to on any level accounts for users’ rights in both privacy, and self-sovereignty.

Kamish: Looking at the past 5 years along leading up to 2020 have been composed of a large breakout of decentralized applications alone, I think there has been some standards and limits as we have all seen with the case with Libra and the EU. In 2050 there should be more back-end implementations on centralized applications as well as a market still for the decentralized applications. Hopefully we see countries have a universal approach so that this industry can grow!

For More On Shardus: www.shardus.com
Follow Shardus: https://twitter.com/ShardusLedger

For More on The Arcadia Group: www.arcadiamgroup.com
Follow The Arcadia Group: https://twitter.com/TheArcadiaGroup

We host an event in Dallas every quarter to present updates in the Shardus software to our community.

Last Saturday 1/18/2020 we hosted our Q4 Progress Report Event at the Capital Factory in Dallas. Over 50 people attended the event and 54 people have watched the live stream on Twitter!

At our last event, we presented linear scalability in a distributed network built with Shardus. As we near the completion of the Shardus software we wanted to begin to show the types of applications that can be built with Shardus.

At our event we let users join a beta test of our MVP for www.liberdus.com, a decentralized messenger and payment network! It was so awesome to see the crowd’s excitement for Liberdus.

Everyone was on their phones using the app like crazy sending coins, looking at how they could message other people through a Dapp and even friend requesting others.

Liberdus is more user-friendly than most decentralized wallets so it was very cool to see the crowd recognize that. Most importantly we saw many familiar and new faces which means our community is growing! Back to work to continue shipping!

Watch The Event Here: https://youtu.be/Pnt4F_YIxJc

Dallas, TX, Thursday, January 2nd, 2019 — Olypsis Technologies has signed a contract with the Shardus Association to serve as a Shardus Development Partner. As businesses and entrepreneurs come to the Shardus Association seeking support in building decentralized applications with Shardus, Shardus Development Partners will be there to support them.

In their current state, most decentralized public applications today are not built for global adoption. Many decentralized applications are limited to a POC due to the scalability constraints of the blockchain networks they’re built on. Shardus is an SDK to create application-specific decentralized networks capable of linear scalability. With Shardus, developers can build public DApps that are scalable, require little resources to operate a node and provide instant finality.

“The Shardus Association is excited to partner with Olypsis to help organizations develop their own decentralized applications and application specific networks with Shardus,” said Omar Syed, Co-Founder & Lead Developer of the Shardus Association. “Olypsis is an experienced team based in Dallas, TX. As projects come to Shardus seeking developer support they will serve as a great partner to help the ecosystem scale.”

Olypsis Technologies is an innovative research and development company specializing in the fields of trustless systems and distributed ledger technology. The two pillars that make up the foundation of Olypsis organization are Olypsis Services and Olypsis Labs.

“We are excited to be working with Shardus, one of the most scalable blockchains in the world. The Shardus team has created a breakthrough in transaction throughput that far outscales any technology currently in the market. We are confident that this increase in throughput will open up a new frontier of DLT applications. We look forward to being one of the first companies to work on production-level projects in this new ecosystem.” said Ali Agha, Founder & CEO of Olypsis Technologies.

About Shardus

Shardus makes it easy for developers to create and launch their own decentralized network that is dedicated to their application. A decentralized application that expects to have a large number of transactions flowing through it needs it’s own network and cannot share the same network with other applications. Shardus uses state sharding and auto scaling to allow networks to linearly scale to accommodate any amount of future load just by adding more nodes to the network.

About Olypsis Technologies

Olypsis Services provides in-depth strategy and advisory, research, DLT solution development, smart contract audits, and Dapp development so that enterprises have the best tools and approaches at their disposal. Olypsis has had the pleasure to work with a wide variety of startups, hedge funds and fortune 500’s including Thomson Reuters and IBM.

Olypsis Labs utilizes the skills, experience and knowledge obtained from the variety of projects on the services side in order to create cutting edge products and deliver them to market. One such product is a decentralized key orchestration platform called BlockNKey.