We Know Nodes.

In anticipation of the upcoming St. Patricks Day celebration, we wanted to share some good luck, good cheer and of course good news in our latest Blockdaemon newsletter!

Want to hear more about how Blockdaemon can help you with your Blockchain journey? Contact us today to chat more about our blockchain solutions, or read on to get a closer look at what’s new.

Let's get right into the latest bits of news from the past month which include Cecily Mak joining our team as COO, opening up our multi-chain API Ubiquity to try out for free and access multiple protocols using one API, the interview with our CEO on the DIVI Crypto Podcast focused on staking, and more!

_____________________________________

Company Updates

Cecily Mak Joins Blockdaemon as COO

As we head towards the end of an already exciting and eventful Q1 2021, Blockdaemon is thrilled to welcome Cecily Mak as our new Chief Operating Officer. Cecily is a deeply experienced operator, investor, and advisor to a number of start-ups and organisations across tech, blockchain, media, and wellbeing.

Cecily joins us from her former role as a partner at the Ethereum product development and investment firm ConsenSys. There she drove strategy, operations, and served as portfolio manager for 25+ early stage companies in the emergent blockchain ecosystem. At ConsenSys Cecily was responsible for incubator strategy and oversight, founder coaching, capitalization strategies, and operational excellence for projects throughout the portfolio, all while being a champion for DEI across all efforts.

Cecily is also a founding LP of How Women Invest, an early stage venture capital firm that leverages a network of female led investors to identify high potential women-led companies.  Read the full announcement on our blog here.

Ubiquity Gets A Facelift &A Brand New Sandbox To Play In

We now have a page dedicated to our Ubiquity API, the multi-blockchian API. We're excited to be rolling out integrations as we work with new protocols. As it’s already available for free for a limited time and we want to get as many people testing and giving feedback on it as possible.

We also created a sandbox demo page which allows you to get an idea of how to best run some simple terminal commands using Ubiquity.

If you have any questions about Ubiquity or need support utilizing Ubiquity's API please don't hesitate to reach out to [email protected].

Important Network Updates

Our engineering team has been hard at work this past month with several important upgrades to the networks we support. Our customers should always expect to be operating on the latest stable networks of every blockchain we support. Some of the updates we completed this past month were:

• Cosmos nodes updated to Gaia v4.1.x
• Tezos nodes updated to Edo
• Ethereum nodes updated to Geth v1.10.1
• Graph nodes updated to v0.22.0
• Solana nodes updated to v1.5.14
• Near nodes updated to v1.18.0

Blockdaemon Open Application Network (OAN/AION) and Harmony Validators Shutting Down

The Blockdaemon operated validators on the OAN and Harmony networks will both be shutdown on March 31st. We have shared two separate re-delegation guides which will enable delegators currently staking their tokens to us to switch without interruption. Please refer to these guides for assistance:

• OAN/AION Redelegation Guide
• Harmony/ONE Redelegation Guide

________________________________________

Interesting Reading & Listening

• Korea IT Times: Privacy Centered Platforms: Interview with Demetrios Skalkotos of Blockdaemon
• InfoQ: Blockchain Node Providers and How They Work
• The DIVI Crypto Podcast: Staking Interview with Konstantin Richter CEO of Blockdaemo‪n
• Messari: Report: Asia's Cryptocurrency Landscape the Most Active, Most Populous Region 'Has an Outsize Role'

We are also hiring so come join us! And as always, get the latest on new releases and product updates: Check the Blockdaemon Blog, follow the discussion on Twitter and Linkedin, and feel free to reach out to us with any questions you have at [email protected].