EOS Nairobi Community Progress Report
With EOS having marked a year since its launch, the community has numerous successes to look back on and a promising future with the technology and the innovation around it. As many developers appreciate the internal workings and features of the most performant blockchain software, entrepreneurs are finding new ways to deliver value to the marketplace.
In this year’s community progress report, EOS Nairobi shall highlight some of the successes we look back on from our community as well as the things that make us excited about the future.
Education
From the launch of our community and candidacy on the EOS main net, we have had sessions to expose both developers and entrepreneurs to EOSIO and EOS based range of technologies. Looking back at where we started with the class of 2018–2019, we are impressed with the success some of the individuals from our inaugural program have achieved. Despite minor setbacks faced in the year, we are happy to present some notable Alumni who have moved on to establish careers that rely on the knowledge they acquired, with some establishing new blockchain technology departments in some of the leading companies in Kenya while others have founded companies and are striving to create relevant projects within the industry. The following are the individuals and their current organizations and/or positions;
Roselyne Wanjiru — Kesho Labs, a blockchain lab in Nairobi Kenya.
Kefa Mutuma — Afro Credit, a microcredit finance startup looking to build on EOSIO. Afrocredit was a runners up for the 2018 EOS Africa Virtual Hackathon.
Brian Kimotho — Developer Ubuntu Energy Ledger, the winners of the 2018 EOS Africa Virtual Hackathon. Ubuntu looks to build on EOSIO as well.
Victor Amwolo — Developer Ubuntu Energy Ledger
David Kimolo — Head of blockchain Development at Techno Brain, a technology multinational located in Nairobi.
Kevin Kinyua — Blockchain Developer Techno Brain
Eddie Kago — Lead Developer Vibranium Ventures, a blockchain startup in Nairobi.
Mitch Kelonya — Front-end Lead Developer Teamweek
Alpha Ng’anga — Developer Andela famous for technology training and receiving investment from the Mark and Chan Zuckerberg foundation.
Joel Machango — Developer Kuza labs, a technology company.
As we look forward to highlight the class of 2019–2020, we would like to acknowledge several elements that came in place to make our work more effective.
OCI partnership
Object Computing Incorporated has been our primary education partner with Phil Mesnier serving as the lead instructor and mentor. Several members of the OCI team (including Kevin Heifner, and Brian) have always been available for developers who would wish to engage them.
With OCI running online webinars, students within the university blockchain clubs formed under our community can access a full end-to-end development program that allows them to start learning how to build on EOSIO.
Within this partnership OCI held an online webinar targeted at entry level developers using EOS Studio.The initial cohort worked through the training at Strathmore University and will continue advancing their skills and capabilities as the club grows.
A follow up training will be held for developers in Nigeria and Kenya, but is open to all in August.
EOS Nairobi held the 2019 Developer workshop at the Ibiz Lab Strathmore University on the 25th of June. Twenty developers including university students and EOS Nairobi developer community members were trained on the use of the EOS studio development environment via an online webinar hosted by OCI’s Phil Mesnier. The students also learned the basics of EOSIO and had an interactive Q&A session on EOS and the EOSIO ecosystem. We look forward to seeing this new cohort of students reaching their full potential and continuing to contribute value in the ecosystem just like the 2018 cohort.
LearnEOS
The LearnEOS book is the primary course book that we use to guide students through the education program. With its detailed examples and succinct explanations, the book aids our work significantly.We made our initial commitment of support to the learneos book by joining others as sponsors with the goal of having a great book that the community can use to learn from.
University Blockchain Clubs
Having seen the impact of education on the community and the ecosystem, we have doubled down on our strategy of working with university students through their school IT clubs.
As the year progresses, we plan to have more students joining our developer cohorts and working through two tracks : Development and Research.
All students will be expected to go through the Coinbase earn program and thereafter can select to build a product or to contribute to knowledge and information through research.
The students who complete the tracks successfully will have an opportunity to join ongoing projects, advance their own projects, or join the Africa Digital Assets Foundation in creating standards and open source blockchain software for Africa.
Community, Governance & Technical
Cassandra API
Through a partnership with EOS ZA, we submitted a proposal through the Cooperative Voting Infrastructure Bounties (CVIB) initiative. Our joint proposal was to develop a history solution through Cassandra.
We are glad that several solutions from amazing teams were built and the community elected to support Hyperion, developed by EOSRIO.
Delphi Oracle Support
With many applications relying on a trusted source of price information, the Delphi Oracle developed by EOS Titan and supported by several block producers provides the best solution.
EOS Nairobi is participating in providing trusted information to users on the network who will be using the service. A direct consumer of this information is the Vigor Project for which credible price feeds are essential to the workings of the stable coin.
Governance stance
As the community grows and experiences changes, we recognize that one of the most important facets to its health and the health of the network is Governance.For a closer view at the proposals we have voted for, the EOS Titan heatmap is a great tool to see how governance is working on chain.https://eostitan.com/producers?name=eosnairobike
Infrastructure Report
Having maintained a robust and secure infrastructure set up for one year, serving the EOS main net, we have made significant upgrades to ensure we are continually offering the best possible service to the EOS community.
To keep with the current requirements, we have upgraded our bare metal infrastructure.:
EOS Mainnet Server:
Our infrastructure includes a Block Proucer node, a peer node and an API node
We have upgraded the hardware as follows:
Spec
Previous Setup
New Setup
Processor
Intel Xeon Hexa-Core E5–1650 v4 3.6GHz:
(8 cores total)
2 x Intel Xeon
E5 2620v2 or v3
2 x (6 x 2.10 GHz)
(24 cores total)
RAM
96GB
128GB
Storage
500 GB SSD
2 TB SSD
Software:
We’re currently running version 1.7.3 of the EOSIO software
We’re currently implementing the hyperion history plugin on our api node to enable full history service
Telos Server:
Our infrastructure includes a Block Proucer node, a peer node and an API node
We have upgraded the hardware as follows:
Spec
Previous Setup
New Setup
Processor
Intel Xeon Hexa-Core E5–1650 v4 3.6GHz:
(8 cores total)
2 x Intel Xeon
E5 2620v2 or v3
2 x (6 x 2.10 GHz)
(24 cores total)
RAM
96GB
128GB
Storage
500 GB SSD
2 TB SSD
Software:
We’re currently running version 1.7.3 of the EOSIO software
We’re currently implementing the hyperion history plugin on our api node to enable full history service
Pints and Blocks Nairobi
We held a community event in Nairobi that hosted token holders, entrepreneurs, researchers, developers and a team member from Grassroots economics. The event focused on topics such as Initial Exchange Offerings, Stable coins and Local community currencies.
San Francisco BP Summit
As part of the community, we were offered an opportunity to speak on global use cases and the different ways that EOSIO was being used around the world. Our team member, Daniel Kimotho, gave an address on the different use cases, with a focus on local community currencies, data management and decentralized Finance.
Ubuntu Energy Ledger was represented by Trang, who highlighted the significant milestones achieved since the start of the project including special renewable energy contracts from the government of Benin.
EOS San Francisco BP Summit After Party
We were excited to co-sponsor the EOS San Francisco BP Summit After Party alongside ShEOS , EOS Blocksmith, EOS Cannon and YOLO.
The event offered a great opportunity for teams from around the world to meet and engage in a relaxed and genial environment.
From right to left: Steve (EOS Nairobi), Phillip (EOS Detroit) and Autumn (Sheos)
EOS SUMMIT
We successfully hosted the EOS Summit 2018 in November, bringing together some of the best teams on EOS. During the virtual event, we were able to attract notable teams such as Chintai, Lumeos, Meet.One, and Parsl, among others. We had an average of about 200 attendees for each of the sessions, and showcased over 30 DApps and teams.
We plan to have the EOS Summit grow into the future and shall be having it as an annual event dedicated to highlighting the powerhouses in the EOS ecosystem.
Projects and Dapps
Our 2019 focus on Dapps will be centered around Decentralized finance and Social impact. With this criterion, we are closely working with 3 projects supporting various roles.These projects are Vigor Stable Coin Project, Bitcademy and Drife.
Vigor
The Vigor project is an innovative idea in the decentralized finance industry.The mission of the project is to develop stable coin infrastructure to support decentralized finance.The project is structured as a DAC with 21 custodians and is currently in its second phase where it is attracting its initial users who will participate as insurers and borrowers once it goes onto the main net.
We have deployed a DAC UI for Vigor under vigstack.io. Our goal is to grow the platform and allows members of the community and different users to benefit from decentralized insurance, borrowing , lending, leverage and financial governance.
The Vigor project is currently growing its community; to participate as a user, community member, custodian , developer or supporter, please visit:
The project will not issue a token sale.
Bitcademy
Bitcademy is a talent management platform focused on facilitating solidarity payments to soccer players in Africa, Asia and South America. The project is led by a talented group of individuals with previous experience working with soccer governing bodies such as Fifa and local and regional bodies.
The team is currently developing its beta version of the software and will be launching the initial phase of the project towards the end of the year.
The project is seeking to recruit smart contract and front end developers who will accelerate development while the management team handles partnerships and investor relations.
We are supporting the initial development and launch of the project.
Drife
Drife is a decentralized ride-hailing application built on EOS that will be a platform that profits and incentivizes both riders and drivers. On Drife, our role is to expose the platform to market opportunities in the East African Region through advisory services. You can read more about the partnership here
Conclusion
As we rally through 2019 and into the new decade of the 2020’s, we look forward to performing meaningful work that will have long term benefit in line with the vision of EOSIO.
Our commitment to learning and growth will be the strong pillar on which we continue to improve our service delivery to the community.
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