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ColdPay IndieGogo Campaign – Live Now!

As we mentioned in the previous communications, we are launching an IndieGogo campaign for the ColdPay card.

Why we’re doing this and why now?

In order for the network to gain the momentum as quickly as possible we need to create awareness and “pull” from both sides of the marketplace. What better way to reach the first potential users and influencers than a cool multicurrency cold wallet / payment card – something that they will initially use to make their cryptocurrency wallets safer and eventually use for payments.

With the campaign now and a first batch scheduled for late May / early June, we’re looking to create some good buzz in the marketplace shortly prior to, during, and shortly after RTA Mainnet launch (not to mention putting a useful product into people’s hands that reminds them of GRAFT).

Impact on RTA development timelines

ColdPay leverages the same development investment that we have to make for the mobile wallet and POS support, including web wallet and payment gateway, so from that standpoint we’re not incurring additional development overhead.

There’s a limited amount of specialized development both on the card and one the provisioning interface, but that work is confined to several part- time engineers who do not participate in core development. So overall impact on the critical path core development is minimal.

Participating in ColdPay IndieGogo campaign



The campaign is now OPEN! There’s a first 100 card Early Bird Secret perk we’re making available to the community.




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GRAFT Rebranding Contest

When the GRAFT project was originally named, we had envisioned a couple of clever conventions. First, that GRAFT stood for Global Real-Time Authorizations and Funds Transfers, signifying the core function of what the GRAFT protocol does. The second is how GRAFT functions in the market at large, “grafting” the established systems of payments with the new breed of cryptocurrencies. We still like these ideas – they have an impact once people get them.
Unfortunately, the term “graft” also comes with a negative connotation when dealing with money.

This creates potential challenges for the GRAFT brand that could otherwise be avoided.

While we are still fond of the old name, we see this as an opportunity to engage in meaningful collaboration with our community in looking for potential alternatives to rebrand. To this end, we would like to open up a contest for the new name and see where it takes us.

The name should be short and easy to pronounce (even for non-native English speakers), while attempting to convey as many of the following attributes as possible:

  • Secure / Private
  • Decentralized
  • Participation based
  • Cool and Innovative
  • Trustworthy

Optional criteria for the new name are direct or indirect associations with the payment industry, payment networks, and/or crypto.

The team will pare down the list to leave those that best reflect the original goals and principles of the project, check for availability, etc. The resulting names will then be put up for a vote by the community (including an option to keep the old name).

The award for the contest winner is 25,000 GRFT.

The contest will run for 2 weeks starting Feb1, but we may adjust that timeline based on the number of submissions. The timeframe for implementation (if new name is selected) will be established separately.

Please submit your entry(ies) HERE. If you have a logo design that accompanies the name, please attach it as well.
Checking for potential trademark issues and domain availability prior to submitting is appreciated (please don’t reserve the domain).

Best Regards,

GRAFT Team

** Similar rebranding efforts::
Dash Rebrand: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/official-statement-on-rebranding-to-dash.4297/
Nano Rebrand: https://hackernoon.com/nano-rebrand-announcement-9101528a7b76

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Pay-in Exchange Broker Alpha

We’re excited to publish the first version of the Exchange Broker that we’ve been working on for a while in parallel to the RTA in an effort to provide a complete second layer eco-system.

https://github.com/graft-project/exchange-broker

This is the first version of the exchange broker which aims to facilitate a scenario where the merchant or merchant service provider perform the accept, exchange and payout functions. (Future versions of the broker and other components will become further decentralized and separate those functions among other participants in the network)

The broker can run on the RTA Alpha testnet and comes with a nice demo application emulating a POS/terminal accepting testnet BTC and ETH for payment.

Join the Exchange Broker Telegram channel for community-based support and idea exchange.


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RTA Design Receives Major Privacy and Security Updates

https://github.com/graft-project/graft-ng/wiki/%5BRFC-003-RTVF%5D-RTA-Transaction-Validation-Flow

In the new revision we’ve been focused on privacy and security of RTA transactions. We shifted significant amount of the work, required for transaction verification, from POS Proxy to POS itself. POS Proxy doesn’t know a recipient wallet address anymore. We also introduced an end-to-end encryption of the payment data.

Thanks to @jagerman42 and others for contributing their critique and ideas!

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SuperNode RTA Alpha 4 Release


We’re happy to announce the Alpha 4 is ready to be tested! Alpha 4 is a big improvement in stability over Alpha 3.

Cryptonode (graftnode) v1.3.4 (alpha4) changelog:

  • fixed random segfault caused by copying p2p_connection_context
  • fixed “unexpected recv failed” error while cryptonode communicating with supernode (default HTTP timeout increased to 3 seconds)
  • added extra build target “release-static-linux-x86_64-debug-info” (release binary with debug info in separate files)
  • fixed memleak in case libwallet running in multithreaded mode
  • removed extra (duplicated) p2p-rta outgoing connections

Supernode v0.4.0 (alpha4) changelog:

  • fixed crash due to missing return values
  • fixed auth sample validates only RTA transactions
  • optimized auth sample selection code
  • added check if supernode is busy before applying announce
  • decreased amount of opened file descriptors by using shared io_service instance in libwallet
  • fixed “refresh from block height” parameter in the future which caused 0 balance for stake wallet
  • fixed random deadlock while processing supernode announces
  • refactored internal project structure

Alpha RTA Testnet install instructions:

https://github.com/graft-project/graft-ng/wiki/Alpha-RTA-Testnet-Install-&-Usage-Instruction


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Enterprise Perks and Rewards on GRAFT Blockchain

Paypal recently revealed that it was playing around with payment blockchain for its own internal “perk and rewards” purposes. Quoting the article,

“PayPal’s new blockchain platform rewards employees in crypto-tokens, but they only have value inside of PayPal and the platform. Staff can earn tokens by joining innovation programs and contributing ideas, they can also trade tokens. The token transactions will be recorded on the platform’s blockchain ledger and can be redeemed for over different 100 rewards, or experiences. These range from poker tournaments with PayPal vice presidents, a morning of martial arts with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman to borrowing the dog of the head of the investor relations.”

We at GRAFT have long seen this as one of the most viable early use cases for a payment blockchain adoption by the enterprise, and it (along with merchant loyalty programs) was the impetus behind GRAFT Network’s plans for secondary tokens and virtual private chains.

Going down this path what Paypal and others will likely discover the following:

  1. They will struggle with centralized vs decentralized approach to the blockchain. On one hand, yes, they can spin up a Hyperledger and do their own hosting, but they will be responsible for the security and the uptime – and the stakes are high as this is REAL money that can be traded for goods and services

  2. They will struggle with transaction speed and privacy Should this blockchain be public where everyone can see where their coworker is spending their perk dollars, or should it be private? The answer most likely is that privacy IS important, which rules out Ethereum token solutions. Speed wise, even though Hyperledger for instance provides a good TPS, it’s not a GUARANTEED TPS and is subject to bottlenecks.

  3. They will have to figure out how to store and accept the tokens, meaning that they will have to develop their own wallet and POS/Terminal applications and web plugins.

  4. They will face a question of portability Should these tokens be exchangeable for good and services outside of the immediate “walled garden” of perks (think cafeteria credits, child sitting credits, Uber credits, etc)?

  5. Finally, they will have to think about maintainability People inside corporations leave and move to other jobs, projects get deprioritized, the organizations goes through growth and cuts. Maintaining a in-house system is a big commitment for an organization.


A payment network like GRAFT makes for a good solution for this use case as it provides support for the company (aka merchant) tokens and private overlay networks while leveraging the robust features of the underlying POS-compatible permissionless blockchain network, ready made apps (POS/terminal and wallet) that can be customized by the commercial entity to their needs and branding, and an infrastructure of service brokers that can provide exchange capabilities and various other services and applications.

We invite Paypal and others who are considering offering a “perk money” program based on a blockchain designed for payments to explore GRAFT Network as a potential solution.