The bear market is all about development.
This is the time that separates the speculation from the #buidling, as crypto-land puts it. 2019 has been a great year so far for development. A number of different projects have released betas, pushed new code, and implemented upgrades.
The continuation of this trend will hopefully increase the likelihood of mainstream adoption as users and developers will have products and platforms they can interact with on a daily basis.
Let’s look at a few notable crypto releases so far in 2019.
Ethereum
Ethereum set the trend for 2019 with the Constantinople hard fork and the St. Petersburg upgrade.
Constantinople was the first of many steps to prepare the Ethereum ecosystem for Proof-of-Stake. One of the features of the hard fork is to reduce the block reward by ⅓ which immediately reduces the inflation rate as less Ethereum is released into circulation on a daily basis.
One benefit of this is that it should reduce sell pressure from miners in the short to mid-term future.
The St.Petersburg Upgrade was implemented to delete EIP1283 from Ethereum’s code base. EIPs 145, 1014, 1052, were all implemented with Constantinople, and should enhance functionalities within the Ethereum ecosystem.
It’s safe to say the Ethereum development community is hard at work.
Sapien
Sapien kicked off 2019 with the release of their highly-anticipated Polaris update. The purpose of the update was to enhance the user experience on the platform.
Sapien CEO, Ankit Bhatia, has been on the record multiple times discussing the importance of “keeping the blockchain magic in the background” and Polaris is another step in the right direction towards making that a reality.
With Polaris, users can experience a complete rebrand, a new interface, an updated token management system, and more.
The team also released a short-term roadmap so the community can easily track continuous developments on the platform.
Currently, on the Beta, users can stake tokens and receive tokenized rewards for social activity. This means users are receiving cryptocurrency for creating content, leaving comments, and voting on posts.
Get involved in the action by signing up for Sapien here.
ETHLend
The team behind ETHLend, Aave, has just released their latest product Pay. This new release is designed to bridge the gap between the cryptocurrency community and the outside world.
With Pay, cryptocurrency users can send payments globally to friends who prefer to take cash instead of crypto. As one user sends cryptocurrency, the other receives cash directly into their bank account.
Pay makes cross-border payments easier and more accessible. LEND, Dai, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, ZCash, Dash, Lumen, Ripple and Tether are all accepted cryptocurrencies on the Pay platform.
Euros, Great British Pounds, Swiss Francs, U.S. Dollars, Australian Dollars, and Indian Rupees are accepted fiat currencies on the platform.
SingularityNET
SingularityNET just released their decentralized AI beta last week. Now, individuals all over the world can access AI services. The timing is perfect, as the AI sector is expected to see a global GDP increase by 14% by 2030.
Currently, most of the services offered have been uploaded by members of the SingularityNET team — however, enhanced AI services are on the way. These AI algorithms can be used in the growing AI services space, particularly by businesses looking to adopt new technologies to provide more efficient services to their customers.
SingularityNET understands this market can be massive and they are trying to create a democratic base for the entire AI economy.
The SingularityNET beta enhances the creative potential for AI developers, which in turn, can lead to better AI services. This release will be the foundation to build upon and the future looks bright.
