STORE Community Update - April & May 2024

Greetings, STORE community! As we welcome the warmth of summer, the STORE team is excited to share the incredible progress we've made over the past two months. From the enhancements in NFT Publisher to the drafting of the STORE Constitution and the upcoming technical demo, our project has flourished across Engineering, Operations, and Governance. Join us as we explore the exciting developments that have taken place at STORE, and discover how we're laying the groundwork for a decentralized and democratic future. 

Engineering

Over the past two months, the STORE Engineering team has made significant strides in developing and refining our decentralized infrastructure, with a focus on enhancing the STORE Oracle, expanding our cloud services, and integrating AI attribution within our NFT Publisher.

The STORE Oracle has undergone major improvements, including data structure and format optimizations for better performance and the successful testing of new algorithms within the API. Alongside these advancements, we have introduced 33 new decentralized cloud services to the Store VM, with their pricing information flowing seamlessly through the Oracle. Additionally, we have implemented guardrails on the Oracle's pricing APIs to algorithmically validate the provided data against other sources, ensuring data quality and threat notification for network participants.

Our NFT Publisher has taken a significant leap forward with the incorporation of AI and human attribution for data. This groundbreaking system identifies content creators, individuals featured in the content, their Ethereum addresses, and determines ownership and royalty rights for the data itself. By merging economic property rights and IP rights, and building upon a governance model that gives equal weight to machines and humans, we are laying the foundation for a new type of economy.

The Engineering team has also been diligently working on enhancing the user experience for our upcoming technical demo. This includes front-end improvements to our UI for minting NFT assets, streamlining the checkout flow, and refining other blockchain explorer functionality. In parallel, we have begun the recording and editing process for the demo, ensuring that the final product showcases our platform's capabilities in the best possible light.

In addition to our work on the STORE Oracle and NFT Publisher, we have made significant progress in refining our Dynamic Proof-of-Stake (DyPoS) economic consensus algorithm. DyPoS represents a groundbreaking approach to incentivizing and securing both blockspace and computing infrastructure. Our team has been diligently working on defining the mathematical models that underpin these incentives and encoding them into programmable APIs. By creating a modular and accessible system, our goal is to empower any protocol or developer to seamlessly integrate DyPoS and its democratic principles into their computing and economic environments, fostering a more inclusive and decentralized ecosystem.

Behind the scenes, our technical research team has made significant progress in developing the STORE Security algorithms, which balance security and inflationary rewards, and creating endpoints for our security notification service. We are also nearing the completion of the design phase for our latest version of cloud checkout and BFT ID, and are working on an upgraded architecture that utilizes new middleware for payment processing, including the ability for users to pay with an external wallet across multiple currencies.This is a difficult challenge few platforms have successfully integrated. To be applied properly, the payment is first confirmed by STORE Treasury and then articulated to the user through the STORE UI that the funds have been received. 

As we continue to push the boundaries of decentralized technology, the STORE Engineering team remains committed to delivering a robust, secure, and user-friendly platform that empowers both humans and machines to collaborate, create, and thrive within a transparent and equitable ecosystem. These aims will be shown in the upcoming release of our new technical demo with CoinTelegraph.

Looking forward, future sprints include work on adding a new pricing API to the Store Oracle, honing the Dynamic Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, and updating the API endpoint for the STORE Democracy threat level system for network security.

‍Operations

We are thrilled to announce that we have officially received trademarks for terms STORE Cloud and STORE Chain, with the trademark for $STORE expected to follow soon. These legal protections will further empower our marketing efforts and solidify our brand identity within the industry.

In addition to our trademark successes, we are excited to share that we may be on the verge of securing a second patent for our BlockfinBFT consensus algorithm. This secondary application focuses on the processing of transaction batches by "MessageNodes," a key component of our innovative consensus mechanism. These legal achievements underscore our commitment to innovation and our dedication to establishing STORE as a leader in the decentralized technology space.

As we look ahead to the next round of fundraising, the Operations team has been diligently preparing updated materials, including a comprehensive comparison chart that highlights STORE's unique advantages over major incumbent networks. We are also working on updating our website to showcase these materials and provide interested parties with a clear and compelling overview of our project.

To further engage with our audience, we have collaborated with an outside firm to create a streamlined presentation deck, which has recently entered the peer review phase. This new approach will allow us to interact with our community in fresh and exciting ways, fostering deeper connections and understanding.

Finally, we would like to invite you to watch the recent discussion STORE CEO Chris McCoy had with David Attermann and other notable leads in the Web3 space. David is a longtime friend of Chris’ and an angel investor in STORE. In this in-depth conversation, Chris is able to share his thoughts on the philosophy behind STORE and our plans for the future. We highly value your feedback and questions, so please feel free to ask them in the comments section. I will be dedicating time next week to respond and engage with our community.

Listen to the conversation here.

‍Governance

Over the past two months, the STORE team has made significant progress in establishing the foundation for our decentralized governance model. Central to this effort is the development of the STORE Constitution, which will serve not only as the basis for our governance structure but also as our whitepaper. The Constitution is the most ambitious publication we have embarked on to date, and we are dedicating significant resources to ensure its completeness and adherence to our core principles.

One of the key aspects of the STORE Constitution is the incorporation of a legal framework, enshrining STORE Democracy (previously referred to as STORE Governance) in Swiss law. In parallel, we have developed a "Bill of Rights" to clearly communicate and establish the rights of users on the STORE protocol. As we move forward, we will be working closely with our legal team to ensure compliance with both Swiss and U.S. laws, including engaging in regulatory and FINRA sessions.

The establishment of the STORE Association in Switzerland is a crucial step in the launch of STORE. Our team has been diligently researching and writing the Constitution, drawing inspiration from the Bitcoin white paper and incorporating STORE's philosophy on computing, AI, governance, and democracy.

As we near the completion of the first draft (version 0.1) of the Constitution, we are preparing to share it with a select group of peer reviewers from the STORE community. We are currently finalizing this group and establishing a process for the review. Once the Constitution is close to being finalized, we will re-accelerate our efforts with the legal team in Switzerland to formally establish the STORE Association, which will serve as the focal point for STORE Democracy.

Within the Constitution, we are working on integrating monetary policy into our governance model. This includes allocating resources to the various branches of governance and establishing compensation for the entities that will manage these branches. We are also adding articles and by-laws to the Constitution that cover the operation and management of the STORE Treasury and the STORE A.I. Oracle under STORE Democracy.

Wrap-up

‍As always, we thank the community for your continued support.

We encourage you to learn more by reading the STORE deck or our brief one-pager.

If you have questions, please send them to team@storecloud.org