Matrix enters alliance with Chinese civilian, military, tech producing giant

Jan 5

Perhaps it has gone largely unnoticed that Matrix has landed itself in one of the biggest alliances seen in the cryptocurrency space. The day was November 12th when Matrix became a founding member of the Advanced Telecommunication Chain Industry Alliance. Joining Matrix in this alliance was Tianjin University, Nankai University, UNISOC, as well as the Shenzhen based giant, ZTE. In addition to this list is a colossal Chinese enterprise that is largely unknown to westerners, that is of course Tianjin 712 Communication & Broadcasting Co.,Ltd.

What is Tianjin 712 Communication & Broadcasting Co.,Ltd. (天津七一二通信广播股份有限公)?

Tianjin 712 is one of the earliest large-scale comprehensive electronic leading enterprises in China. As the first-class national enterprise, Tianjin 712 has been committed to the development and production of military and civilian communications equipment. The company has always provided a robust foundation for both technology and development for the construction of national defense, railway construction, and the broad masses of customers at home and abroad.¹

In further detail, “Tianjin 712’s main products include air wireless communication terminals, ground wireless communication terminals, railway wireless communication terminals, system products and others. The Company’s products are mainly used in the areas of military, railway, urban rail transit and maritime. The Company distributes its products mainly in the domestic Chinese market.” ²

Brief facts about the alliance

The Advanced Telecommunication Chain Industry Alliance “aims to oversee, promote and accelerate the development of Tianjin’s telecommunications and blockchain industries. To do so, complementary entities from industry, academia and research have come together to pool resources in the spirit of collaboration and exchange. The Alliance’s projects will be guided by the technological innovation needs of Tianjin’s telecommunications and blockchain industries. The MATRIX AI Network is the only blockchain company in the alliance.” ³

“Matrix AI Network is a platform which incorporates blockchain and AI to enable the realization of the Intelligent Blockchain. The use of AI allows innovations such as natural-language smart contracts (Intelligent Contracts), continual network optimization, formal contract security verification, and much much more. — Matrix AI Network”

This segment’s purpose was to highlight the tech giant that is Tianjin 712. Overall, it is a colossal corporate entity that has extremely close ties with the Chinese government. Seeing how Matrix AI Network is a partner of this behemoth in the alliance is a promising testament to Matrix’s team, technology, and future.

Tune in next time for a brief review of all the Advanced Telecommunication Chain Industry Alliance partners!

Published at Sat, 05 Jan 2019 12:09:09 +0000

July 24, 2017

This New Tool Can Help Bitcoin Users Deal With Stuck Transactions

Samourai Wallet is becoming increasingly popular as a wallet that focuses on privacy and security for its users above all else, but a recent tool released by this wallet’s team of developers has a focus on user experience. The new app, called Bitcoin Afterburner, allows users of many different bitcoin wallets to boost transactions that have become stuck due to low fees.

The app works for transactions that have been sent or received, and it is compatible with all BIP 39 and BIP 44 wallets. Examples of compatible wallets include Mycelium, Blockchain.info, Airbitz and Electrum.

To get more details about bitcoin Afterburner and the concept of fee bumping in general, bitcoin Magazine reached out to the anonymous CEO of Samourai Wallet.

“Afterburner is one more example of how we are experimenting and developing ways of monetizing our business without resorting to accepting fiat or exposing our users to harmful KYC/AML collection,” said the CEO.

Samourai Wallet monetizes the bitcoin Afterburner app by adding a $5.99 fee for helping users with their stuck transactions. This fee is added to the child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) transaction that is used to bump the user’s bitcoin transaction fee. CPFP is a process by which the recipient of a transaction can spend the inputs of an unconfirmed transaction by using them in a new transaction that has a higher fee (and incentivizes miners to mine both transactions at once).

The full question and answer session with the CEO of Samourai Wallet can be read below.

bitcoin Magazine: Will fee bumping eventually become the norm on bitcoin?

Samourai Wallet: We believe that over time as legitimate transactions start to fill block space, and a fee market begins to mature, wallets that have implemented sophisticated fee management mechanisms such as fee bumping will provide their users with the most competitive transaction fees and confirmation times. The tech is there today, the challenge — and it isn’t a small challenge — is entirely UX. We’re working on this today while others are playing catch-up.

BM: Could you compare and contrast this app with the transaction accelerators offered by ViaBTC and BTC.com?

SW: The difference between the miner operated TX Accelerators is that Afterburner is not an off-chain 1-to-1 with a specific miner. Instead, Afterburner broadcasts a bitcoin transaction to all miners using the standard bitcoin p2p network. All the miners on the network compete for the new transaction with the higher fee, meaning it often works much quicker than the miner operated TX Accelerators. Afterburner was very much a defensive response to the miners who have been blocking SegWit activation and broadcasting empty blocks, some of those same miners are the ones who run the TX Accelerators.

BM: Is bitcoin Afterburner getting much use so far?

SW: Afterburner has a good number of installs, but not many paid ‘Boosts.’ A few days after we released Afterburner the transaction backlog that was driving up fees and confirmation times completely dried up. The fees required for next block confirmation dropped from 300 sat/b to 25 sat/b. Once the mempool gets saturated again, we will have a much better idea of the potential utility of the app.

BM: Why do you think more wallet providers don’t offer this sort of service?

SW: Many wallet providers — inexplicably the most well-funded ones are the most guilty — haven’t invested any time into proper fee estimation and management until very recently. A misguided industry-driven quest to make the bitcoin wallet for “grandma” resulted in an unusable bitcoin wallet for actual users. Samourai has focused from inception on actual bitcoin users first.

BM: Do you think this sort of fee bumping will eventually be free? Does Samourai Wallet offer fee bumping like this natively or do they need to use this separate app?

SW: Samourai Wallet provides the exact same functionality as Afterburner natively. Afterburner was designed to allow users of any other BIP 44 HD wallet to boost their stuck transaction using CPFP (Child-Pays-for-Parent) under the hood. Hopefully they move over to Samourai Wallet if they are satisfied with the service. In addition to CPFP-based boosting more advanced users may opt-in to RBF-based boosting which is also available in the wallet. Both options are available to Samourai Wallet users free of charge.

The post This New Tool Can Help Bitcoin Users Deal With Stuck Transactions appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.