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In this material, Giant tells about the most noteworthy events of Sprint #5 (13 August — 24 August 2018). Learn about our biggest achievement of the last two weeks, see what’s happening to the team and what our developers were doing throughout this time period.

The move to PoS

We have successfully moved to the Proof-of-Stake from the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm after receiving more than 50% votes of masternode owners on our Discord server. The early move will give us more time to adjust to the new conditions and set up Giant.Exchange. The model of stake rewards or staking is still a theme open for discussion. This event led to a short pause in Giant Coin (GIC) withdrawals on the crypto exchanges, but it was not a glitch of any kind: the exchange owners simply wanted to make sure everything is alright with our blockchain.As for the measure itself, now mining whales will not be able to get huge amounts of Giant Coin and swiftly ‘dump’ it afterwards, hurting the financial well-being of the whole system including the rewards of masternode owners. Other benefits of PoS are described in the article mentioned below.

Human resources

We have finally found a good JavaScript programmer. Our regular readers may remember that we have promised this addition to the team in the Sprint #5 backlog and even in some materials before it. As stated by other programmers, the newcomer quickly understood our work process. This addition will accelerate the speed of Giant.Exchange development, as well as the further outlining of the Giant Coin blockchain enhancements.However, we are always open to suggestions: if you think you have what it takes to upgrade our project, contact us through the social media.

Development progress

Giant developers continue to work with the internal structure of Giant blockchain and work on Giant.Exchange Beta, as well as implementing Chrome V8 engine. This smart contracts execution environment was chosen due to its swift work and widely acknowledged.The Giant.Exchange API is actively being developed, namely, its internal mechanism which is responsible for the users’ ability to provide data on underlying assets. The GiantConnect library was being upgraded during this sprint, too. GiantConnect provides data on Giant blockchain by calling RPC giant-cli methods, allows smart contracts creation (‘Binary option’ and ‘Oracle’ contracts) and creates conditions for options purchases, votes and other important activities. To understand the previous sentence better, you can read more about the connection of ‘Binary option’ and ‘Oracle’ smart contracts in a separate material.GiantSigner is another element of the binary options platform — it mainly ensures the proper authorization of the user and prevents identity theft. For all the aforementioned elements, mock objects were created to test how they work in practice.

Design

The website of Giant.Exchange needs to be user-friendly, and this is exactly what our designers have been trying to achieve during this sprint. Giant members are actively working on this issue. We want to be fully satisfied with the interface and ensure that it adheres with our technical specifications. Our platform will be understandable even for the people who never traded binary options before. Sensible colors, fonts and links require more attention than you may presume and sometimes no easier than the actual programming of the exchange.

Educational materials

Two new articles have been published — the explanation of the main principles of Proof-Of-Stakeand a basic guide on how to make money on the upcoming Giant.Exchange. The conclusion of the article is that the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, while being promising itself, is also a beneficial change for Giant Coin and related decentralized applications (DApps). The second article is focused on the work of oracles and brokers and how these groups engage with each other, while also containing hints on what users may perceive as an interesting binary option. More materials are yet to be published in the next sprint.

Social media

At the beginning of this sprint, we have introduced the new user reputation system on our main social media hub on Discord. The most active users will be rewarded with new roles which directly depend on the user activity.Additionally, there are now several special roles not depending on post count — Investors and Advisors. The former role is for masternode owners. The latter role is for those who have provided valuable insights in our project development.As for our social media bounty programs, the news are not as good: turns out that many participants do not follow the rules to the letter which ultimately led to the revision of our reward distribution system.The Giant team will soon establish the main objectives for the next sprint, post a public backlog and compose a report on the results at its end — just as it happened with Sprint #5.

Stay tuned for updates and new articles in the News section on our website, follow the immediate announcements on Discord and let us know what you think in the comments below!

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