Original author: Laura Nori / Compiler: @Shilin

Foreword by @Terence:

Before entering the blockchain in 2017, my partner and I have been starting businesses in the Internet field for a total of 20 years, especially focusing on technology and design projects in network marketing and social media marketing. Our customers include a wide range of customers, from individuals to small and medium-sized enterprises. Micro-enterprises, to non-profit organizations, educational institutions and even government organizations. We help clients use social media and advertising to achieve the effect of publicity, becoming a typical middleman, sandwiched between customers, audiences and social media. We are particularly concerned about the domineering and corruption of mainstream social media, as well as the invasion of personal privacy, because we are also one of the accomplices of the tyranny.

Recognizing blockchain technology by chance in 2017, I immediately thought it would revolutionize the Internet. We were particularly concerned about how it would change the social media world we live in. At the time, we felt that it was not a matter of choice or not, but a must to join this decentralized revolution or we would be eliminated. What we want to do is a decentralized business referral social platform. We believe that the parameters related to integrity that can be derived from business social networking are very suitable as portable, traceable and quantifiable data, allowing us to more easily Do business or build a business.

Then we started to contact Cosmos , hoping to use its technical tools to develop business social networking, but slowly became a well-known validator and community contributor in Cosmos. The birth of@BigDipper has laid a solid foundation for us as a Check the image of the person. The validator's business provides us with income and increases our popularity, so that new blockchain projects will invite us to become their validators (such as Solana , which will be listed soon, Polkadot, which is about to be listed, etc., and the Cosmos ecosystem). more than ten blockchains). At the same time, as our knowledge grew, we began to realize that our concept of decentralized business social networking was too complicated to build an initial user base, so we paused after developing a simple testnet and user interface. Developed the business social project, focusing on the optimization of operating verification nodes and Big Dipper.

We participate in different blockchain events around the world, in Seoul, Taipei, Shenzhen , Singapore, Osaka , Berlin , some people will come over to ask us if we are Forbole, encourage our work, and even entrust atoms to us ( Note: atoms are the tokens used for the native staking of the Cosmos Hub ). Of course, there is more of this on Telegram. We started to wonder, how do we prove that they really have delegated atoms to us? Is there a way to communicate in an encrypted and anonymous way between atom holders and validators?

Around the middle of 2019, in the coffee shop of Eslite in Taipei, we chatted with an investor about the current situation. We mentioned that we wanted to add an information release function to Big Dipper, on the one hand, as a relationship between the delegator and the verifier. On the one hand, it allows validators to have channels to promote themselves. While we were talking, I suddenly patted the stage, "Isn't this a social network?"

This evolved into the Desmos project today. It is no longer a complex business social networking, but a micro blog. It will not start from scratch, but will first be combined with Big Dipper, hoping that Big Dipper's self-generated traffic from 140 countries around the world can drive Desmos' traffic. Compared to two years ago, we have stronger strength today, including financial resources, team members and the company's own exposure on nearly 20 blockchain projects, which will also increase Desmos' chances of success.

(Note: In fact, Desmos is a blockchain that provides the backend; the real decentralized microblog is Mooncake built on Desmos, see below.)

In July 2019, we first tried a small and medium-sized hackathon at the Cosmos HackAtom hackathon in Seoul and created a module as a communication method on Desmos. Since October 2019, we have gradually expanded our team to become a small but well-equipped team that is distributed on three continents (Asia, Europe, America).

This preface, I hope to help you understand the background of Desmos. Below is Desmos' first transcript.

Since the official launch of the Desmos project last October, we have made impressive progress. In this article, we take a look at the work of the Desmos team as of the end of February 2020.

background

Desmos Blockchain (Desmos for short) is an open source blockchain and tools designed for social networking applications. Desmos decentralizes the business model of social networks through game theory and on-chain governance, ensuring that the interests of users are prioritized. Desmos Token (DSM for short) is a native pledgeable token on the Desmos blockchain.

Origin of the name

"Desmos" comes from an ancient Greek word " δεσμός " which means bond, knot, relation, chain. This word is consistent with our state: Desmos is developed with Cosmos SDK and Tendermint as the consensus engine, and adopts the Bonded proof-of-stake mechanism, and Desmos is a project about social networks. These characteristics are related to "Ties" and "relationships" are closely related.

Morpheus: Testnet for Desmos

Morpheus is the testnet before the launch of the Desmos mainnet, and has undergone three rounds of upgrades since January 2020. The first version is called Morpheus-1000, the second is Morpheus-1001, and the latest version is Morpheus-3000. Currently, it allows users to: create new posts and replies, initiate and vote polls, create multimedia posts, become validator nodes, and perform upgrades.

The main purpose of the testnet is to test and expand the functionality of the blockchain with the help of validators. Desmos already has 32 validators: AndreyVelde, Apollo, Athena, Bambarello, Bi23 Labs, Bit Cat, Breader, CNazar , ChainodeTech, Cyberili, DESMOS-IW, Hermes, InchainWorks, JayB, Julia, KalpaTech, Masternode24, Mike Snowman Validator, Nodeasy, Poseidon, Simply Staking, UbikCapital, Virgo Staking, Wanderer, WeStaking, blockscape, desmosval, lixoy, novy, witval , Yun.

You can go to GitHub for more technical information.

Desmos Primer

Today, most projects are funded by VCs before being made available to the general public. But Desmos does the opposite. As a social networking project, we believe that we should invite the public to participate in order to validate our ideas. In this way, we can allow the early contributors of Desmos to enjoy a more favorable price than institutional investors who enter the market later to purchase DSM, thereby promoting a more decentralized distribution of DSM.

The purpose of launching Desmos Primer is to allow everyone to start using Desmos while the project is in development. Desmos Primer is based on the Morpheus testnet and is constantly being upgraded. We also set up different challenges, users can get DSM as a reward for completing the challenges, and more importantly, we can extensively collect user feedback in the process, and user feedback is a necessary element to make the project more perfect. Desmos will meet everyone's different requirements and will actively respond to users' expectations and needs. We hope that the social networking products developed on Desmos will be as popular as the current centralized products, and Desmos Primer is a tool that allows us to grow together.

Each phase of the Primer project is tied to a specific testnet. The first stage is connected to Morpheus-1000, the second stage is connected to Morpheus-1001, and the third stage is connected to Morpheus-3000.

At the end of Phase 2, we distributed a total of 22,000 DSMs. The third phase is still in progress, and the fourth phase will bring more features, such as creating a decentralized social profile, using hashtags ("#"), etc., and Fix bugs from previous versions with help.

You can check your reward status on the Primer scoreboard, and the number of tokens a user has earned will be automatically adjusted at the end of each challenge.

Mooncake

Mooncake is the first decentralized application (DApp) built on Desmos. This is a microblogging platform where users can turn their investment in the app into revenue without losing control over their personal data. You can publish information in a decentralized manner and decide whether to remain anonymous, use a nickname, or use your real name. Don’t forget that decentralization is completely censorship-resistant and transparent.

You can download a trial Mooncake here:

• iOS
• Android

Follow Desmos news

We hope that every user can use Desmos with confidence, and we will do our best to bring you a comfortable experience. Developers can find the technical documents they need at any time, and ordinary users can learn about blockchain, decentralized projects, and Mooncake. For the above purpose, we have also created Desmos social accounts on other platforms to report relevant information.

• Twitter : Immediate release of Desmos and Mooncake technology updates, as well as some of our thoughts.
• Instagram : Mainly for friends who have not yet been exposed to blockchain, explain the functions and goals of blockchain technology, in order to spread blockchain knowledge to more people.
• Telegram : There are validators, participants, and supporters in the telegram group. You can ask questions here, and the team will respond in a timely manner.
• Discord : This is where you can connect with the developers and they will be happy to answer all your questions. To create a good discussion environment, Discord channels have separate columns for each topic.

grateful

As a project supported almost entirely by internal resources, we have made satisfactory progress thanks to the help of every participant and supporter, thank you!

For the next few months, we will focus on the following areas:

1. Continue to personalize Tendermint Core to meet the needs of Desmos, and join the first version of the token economy model
2. Continue to improve Mooncake
3. Launch a reward testnet with longer duration and richer projects
4. Discuss the cooperation scheme based on DSM for compensation with various contributors. We need many partners, including programmers, community developers, etc.

Please keep following us!