Author: David Canellis

Vice Industry Token, Inc. (VIT) has partnered with the official website of infamous and politically relevant Stormy Daniels.

Users of her website can generate VIT tokens by liking, commenting and sharing Stormy Daniels videos, as well as simply streaming her content. VIT tokens can then be spent across any of the Darkreach Communications network, which includes official websites for stars such as Kortney Kane and Jayden James.

Rob Murray, President of Darkreach Communications, said:

Deciding to incorporate cryptocurrency into my clients’ adult sites was a no brainer for me,  With VIT, everyone is going to make money – from the users on my sites, to myself and the performers.  The way the VIT blockchain works, we all get a piece of the token, and the guaranteed genuine data is the icing in the cake.”

The adoption of cryptocurrencies by the adult industry has been a focal point of late following Verge’s partnership with Mindgeek and its associated integration with their flagship portal, Pornhub.

The VIT blockchain seeks to act as an ecosystem that allows producers to efficiently monetize their content, as well as create an environment that rewards interaction.

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Airbloc Protocol is to be the chosen decentralized advertising data marketplace of the ICON Foundation and its associated blockchain accelerator Deblock.

The partnership was revealed by Airbloc Protocol today, in which the ICON platform is to be used to develop the Aero Network, the data validation network that powers Airbloc designed specifically for the processing of data.

A fully operational Airbloc Protocol would give users complete personal control of their data, including tracking and even selling their data to advertisers. The end result would be a completely improved targeted advertising system that fairly distributes profits to both users and advertisers.

Interestingly, Airbloc will become a ‘hybrid-chain’ that uses both the ICON blockchain and Ethereum.

A release reads:

Since cleansing and processing of the large amount of data cannot be done on Ethereum, the tasks will be processed on Aero Network that uses ICON. By using the two chain together, we expect to be able to solve the Ethereum’s performance limitation problem by ICON’s high performance.”

The partnership will also see both the ICON Foundation and Deblock participate in Airbloc Protocol’s token sales and key members will be acting as advisors for the project.

The competition in the decentralized advertising data marketplaces is quite stiff, most notably the Brave browser and its associated BAT token, developed by the co-founder of Mozilla and the creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich.

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Fresh from signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) just weeks ago, both NEO and Ontology Foundations are wasting no time by co-funding a joint task force with a combined RMB$4million (approx. US$620,0000).

The team will will be made up mostly of core developers of the Ontology platform and Neo Global Development (NGD). Notable names include Onchain core developers Weng Junjie, Tan Yuan and NEO core developer Peter Lin. Key community members will also be part of the ten-person team.

The first incarnation of the taskforce will run for six months. It appears that it will mostly be dedicated to making both ecosystems completely symbiotic. What will eventuate seems to be a completely shared mega-blockchain.

Standardized network protocols and data APIs across both NEO and Ontology protocol layers will be created. The sharing of SDKs and development tools between teams will also occur which should boost ease-of-use for both teams.

As hinted at in the MoU, a key function of the task force will be to ensure that smart contracts will be able to be run on either blockchain independent of which it was developed on.

The details revealed today also seem to suggest that the NeoVM platform is to be the chosen smart contract platform for both Ontology and NEO. In support of the move, a GO compiler and its associated development environment will be built over the next six months, signalling a complete adoption of the NeoVM smart contract system.

The task force will reportedly be run on a regular basis as development progresses.

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The IOTA Foundation has launched a new testnet and officially renamed the current testing network to ‘Devnet’. They are also preparing to launch at least two additional testnets.

An official blog post details just how quickly their original testnet has been adopted by blockchain developers  and it appears the overall input has become too big to be housed within just one test network. The blog post reads:

As the testnet became more widely used — by exchanges for on-boarding to IOTA, by the Data Marketplace, and by other participants and collaborators developing IOTA related software — it became less and less operationally tenable to break it on a whim.”

‘Devnet’ will take over the main testnet – where developers will be free to work on their dApps using the latest stable version of the IOTA Reference Implementation (IRI). The IOTA Foundation has plans to introduce at least three more testnets in the near future: Spamnet, Canarynet and Testnet1.

Spamnet appears to be a Tangle dedicated to network testing, and as the name implies, especially under heavy load. There is reportedly 7 nodes currently operating and the community is welcome to contribute by spamming the network. Here is a neat visualizer of the Spamnet.

Canarynet will be reserved for testing of new versions of the IRI before new versions are integrating into the Mainnet. Testnet1, the expected Testnet2 and so on are to cover everything else that may arise that developers may need their own testnet to hash things out.

Just days ago, the IOTA Foundation revealed that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations Office for Project Services to explore how their Tangle technology can contribute. The collaboration will mainly concern supply chains, document handling and cross-border payments.

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Leading eSports and gaming betting exchange PVP.ME has revealed that it has plans to integrate NANO into its platform.

Founded in 2015, PVP.ME has grown to over 150,000 users and reportedly processes over 4 million bets per month on a regular basis. Their support of NANO could spur on a new wave of registrations from blockchain enthusiasts, but perhaps more importantly for NANO, PVP.ME users may be attracted to begin using their token.

A Medium post from PVP.ME even featured a glowing review of NANO’s technology:

The biggest issue we had was finding the most optimal payment method that would enable users to deposit the quickest way possible & be able to place their bet instantly. Anything else would be detrimental to the users experience, you can’t have delays while wanting to place a live bet at a specific moment of the game. Today that is possible thanks to NANO.”

PVP.ME users can place bets on eSports, traditional sports, cryptocurrency prices and it even supports live markets on Twitch streams, something which various Bitcoin and cryptocurrency gambling sites have been looking to emulate. 

Such a development is nothing but welcome news for investors following a recent class action lawsuit filed against lead NANO developers. Claimants will allege that the developers are responsible for pushing them towards Bigrail, notorious Italian exchange at the centre of a theft of 17 million XRB/NANO tokens.

Bitgrail re-opened briefly at the beginning of May, but was shut-down by authorities almost immediately.

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