Author: Phillip Gibb

Husband, Father, Christian, Java Programmer and Trail Runner wanting to run a 100 miler Trail Challenge. I support the Sharks Rugby team and am an avid Springbok supporter.

This is ixo

Disclaimer: I am a developer at Trustlab working with Self-Sovereign identity and Smart Contracts. Needless to say; I am enjoying the blockchain development here, and I am completely buying into the impact projects that ixo is involved with.  It is not uncommon to find me picking up litter on Table Mountain when I go trail running. 

Table Mountain Cleanup for ixo

So it is with  great excitement that I can give you a peek into the stuff I have been working on. 

ixo – the blockchain for impact.

Blockchain technologies can be leveraged to transform how sustainable development projects get delivered, verified and funded.

Open-Source


ixo offers a new set of open-source protocols to verify impact claims and program capital towards optimising sustainable development outcomes. 
This is part of the data revolution that is needed, to achieve the sustainable development goals, by 2030.

Launch


ixo launches to the world in December, when we go live with our public beta. So we are all exited about this, especially because of all the work and talent that has been invested into ixo.

Invite

This is your chance to be a pioneer member of ixo.worldMembership!

It is free and provides a passport to this new world, where you can launch your own impact project, or become a stakeholder in projects you believe in.
This is also a great way for you to learn first-hand how converging information technologies could positively change the world.


Please take a few moments now to check out the video and sign up for membership by heading to https://ixo.world

ixo wants to reward you for doing good, so also sign up for the referral program and share your unique citizen code with your friends.
 


I would be so grateful if you can spread the word and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Excited about Self-Sovereign Identity

Recently I had the awesome privilege to write an article for OfferZen  about Why I’m excited about Self-Sovereign Identity. It was an opportunity to express my understanding about Self-Sovereign Identity and all the related aspects in the SSI space.

For about 6 months I have been working at Trustlab.tech, at first hoping to work with smart contracts and anything related to development around Ethereum and Tendermint. Little was I to know how much more there was.

There are so many aspects to Blockchain development that is not strictly blockchain, and this is so true for developing in the Self-Sovereign Identity space. Sure there are Smart Contract for many of the identity systems, but the one I am most interested in is Sovrin (Hyperledger Indy) there is even less so because there is not much that gets put onto the Ledger.

So here I am learning about credentials, claims, proofs, zero knowledge proofs, revocation, etc etc. Best of all is interacting in this space with all kinds of people all over the world. Hardly a week goes by where I have not had some zoom call with like minded people participating in the SSI space.

Just watch this space!

There are going to some really cool apps, use-cases and services coming.

Cableway Charity Challenge – Make a Difference

Hey there,
What’s up?

I have entered a REALLY Tough charity event called the Cableway Charity Challenge to raise money for charity. I am going to climb Table Mountain via Platteklip Gorge 6 times on the same day. Once at the top of Platteklip Gorge I will run across the table and catch a cable car ride down, refuel and start again. Each lap is 5.5km and will take me approximately 1.5hrs to 2hrs to complete. The event is on the 21st April 2018 and is an all day event. The charities that I am supporting are CoolPlay, Paedspal and Centre for Play and Learning. 10% of the amount sponsored will be given to Wilderness Search and Rescue who provide volunteer rescue services for people that find themselves in trouble on the mountains of the Western Cape. You can sponsor me per lap and your support would be greatly appreciated. Find my profile here: http://charitychallenge.co.za/sponsor-a-runner/sponsorship-form/?id=203

 

All donations are tax deductable and you can pay via EFT (Credit Card if you are overseas).

Sorry, no Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, LiteCoin, etc

Make me suffer and help support a worthy cause.

Udemy – Improving Lives Through Learning

Udemy, wow. Finding this institution at this time could not have been more fortuitousness. Right about the time that my research into blockchain stared, Udemy started to advertise massive discounts some of their courses, some of them free! Needless to say I took the plunge. First up was The Complete Ethereum Course: Get .001 Ether In Your Wallet – yes, true to the title, I did get the Ether! Since then I have enrolled in a number of development sources, mostly related to my interest in blockchain and I have to say that for the most part, I have been most satisfied. My only disappointment was with the Java course that was too basic for me, only because I was too experience with Java to benefit – still I will push on because I know there is always a gem hidden somewhere that I might have forgotten or not known about.

Continue reading Udemy – Improving Lives Through Learning

Ethereum mining in AWS

Ok, how on earth do I get Ethereum? It seems to be a difficult thing in my country, I can get BitCoin through luno but transfer it to an exchange and then trade for Ether seems to be stupid expensive for the amounts I want. Mining at home is not an option; not on my 2011 struggling iMac, so that leaves the great big cloud.
Fortunately there are a few tutorials out there with a step by step guide to mine Ether on AWS, the one that worked for me was Ethereum mining on AWS in 5mins.

The mining was ridiculously slow, and unless the Ether/USD rate shot through the roof and the Rand strengthened significantly, I was always going to be paying through my teeth.

Somethings I learned in this process:

1. When setting up the Security groups for access into the instance remember to set to your IP aaaaaaaand remember to make sure that if your IP address changes you do this again.
2. Use screen or a similar method when running the ethminer so that it continues to run even when the connection is lost to the ssh session or you close it down.
3. If you need to authorize anything on the pool like changing the payment threshold then you can get the ip address of your worker by performing a nslookup on the domain name you ssh’ed into.

Conclusion

Over the 3 days (the first 2 were a bit up and down) I mined ~ 0.006 ETH = ~ 1.8 USD = ~ 24.5 ZAR
The use of the AWS instance was 7.19 USD with a forecast of 219.53 USD if I ran it over the whole October
I would have be happy if I just broke even after paying the transfer fees, but alas.

[Image Credit: Ethereum]

BitCoin in South Africa

It has happened, PnP is now accepting BitCoin as payment, albeit for a limited time and not at all stores. I wonder what fees will be involved and how long it will take a transaction to take place. This is a good thing because having such a big retail company backing a CryptoCurrency means that access into this model will be all the more easier for us South Africans. I do not know why I would have a reason to purchase BitCoin and use it at PnP other than as a novelty or if I had been donated or earned some CryptoCurrency, beside it is such a volatile market that I could stand to loose a couple hundred bucks because I chose the wrong queue to pay at – or score, who knows.
Personally I think that everyone should at least get their foot in the door, be it for 0.005 or even 1 BitCoin, or any other CryptoCurrency.
I signed up with luno for a small number of satoshi (unit of bitcoin currency) and used some to buy into electroneum as a form of mobile mining.

Up until now, South Africans would have to convert Rands to Dollars or some currency accepted by Crypto Exchanges like CoinBase, Kraken or Gemini, but there are limits, fee and difficulty in setting up accounts to make the transfer. There is a claim that converting to Dollars to buy BitCoin will giving you more Rand value of BitCoin in the end, but I think that one would have to make big transfers to make this significant and the timing would need to be accurate i.e. watching the USD/ZAR exchange rate and BitCoin price very closely.

Now South Africa has luno, which is good because or the easy entry. Bear in mind that it might take a few days to verify you identity and make your first deposit before you can convert to BitCoin, also ready the fine print – there are fees. Just when you thought that the idea of decentralization would take out the middle man luno is the middle man, but one could very well make transactions using the wallet address without luno, anyway that is something I have yet to figure out.

 

First Steps into BitCoin

It is an interesting time that we live in. In some ways , not scratch that, in many ways I am way way behind.

But I am in.

First with Luno, then with BitMark and the possibility of winning a mining machine – imagine that!

Second with a kind of mobile mining solution called electroneum

Please feel free to click the link for electroneum and sign up; disclaimer is that I might get a referral fee, however small.

Electroneum Signup Offer

The next few posts will be about this avenue I have take.

It is going to be an awesome adventure.