July was rich in happenings for the Keep team! Here's a short recap for you:


- Staking providers are now successfully up and running on our private testnet! Stay tuned for more announcements as we progress.

- We are pleased to announce that Keep has partnered with Summa to establish a blockchain interoperability working group, called Cross-Chain Group.

- Keep is contributing to the ecosystem and is supporting Zcash interoperability together with Electric Coin Co, Ethereum Foundation and Iqlusion.

- Great to see that the EIP-1108, initially put together by our team, was accepted into Istanbul, which means significantly reduced gas costs.

- Keep is headed to the Berlin Blockchain Week, where on Monday, 19th August, together with Fabric Ventures, we are organizing the Interoperability Summit.

- This month Keep team is also sending out some swag for those community members who won contests and have been awesome in so many ways!


To see the detailed summary of July happenings, as well as the Tech Updates section, click here

👉https://blog.keep.network/july-roundup-1a1d71e22575

Exciting news!

Today, Keep has joined the Messari Disclosures Registry

By joining the Registry projects commit to bringing a higher level of transparency to the cryptoasset space through ongoing disclosures. There are now more than 50 projects adhering to the same values and standards.

"The effort is intended to be a collective action to push standards of basic disclosures that should be expected of projects with numerous global stakeholders. We want to allow for honest projects to have a platform to differentiate themselves and build trust with their communities and anyone looking to better understand their project.”

Read more here:

https://www.coindesk.com/messari-disclosures-registry-tops-50-cryptocurrencies-with-10-new-additions?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=coindesk&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Organic%20

https://messari.io/article/announcement-messari-adds-11-new-disclosures-registry-participants-surpassing-50-members

Hey folks, the new blog post is out!

In it, our Tech Lead Piotr Dyraga talks about how Keep is closing the interoperability gap between public blockchains with a critical component of our protocol: t-ECDSA keeps.

This post is for technical and non-technical audiences to learn more about how we’re building and using the Keep Network.

Enjoy!

https://blog.keep.network/building-bridges-between-blockchains-with-t-ecdsa-keeps-e58d6debb8fd

Meet tBTC, a decentralized, redeemable, BTC-backed ERC-20 token that gives Bitcoin users access to financial services on other chains.

"In this Wyre podcast, Matt Luongo and James Prestwich explain the technical and economic guarantees of tBTC and offer a high-level overview of the system’s functionality, including how tBTC is minted and redeemed.

They go on to cover how tBTC signing groups are selected and how the system ensures they are behaving honestly, discussing how the network handles aborts versus fraud and its backup auction mechanism for sourcing liquidity when slashing conditions happen. They also explain their decision to launch with an authority-based price feed mechanism and later transition to a federation-based one. Listen in for insight around what the success of tBTC might mean for Ethereum and learn how Cross-Chain Group is working to further interoperability via collaboration and development in the crypto space."

Enjoy this great discussion, and come ask us questions in Slack! https://bit.ly/2FMkV6T

https://wyre-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-47-announcing-tbtc-with-james-prestwich-and-matt-luongo-of-cross-chain-group

In this new blog post, Matt Luongo announces tBTC and expands on what does it mean for Keep.

tBTC is a trust-minimized bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum, which will be the first major DApp launched on the Keep Network.

We love your feedback, comments in the post are highly appreciated!

https://blog.keep.network/bridging-bitcoin-and-ethereum-b2f9923630a7

Great news - EIP-152 and EIP-1108, both of which the Keep team has been working on, were now accepted into Istanbul, the next Ethereum hard fork!

In this blog post our Engineering Lead Antonio expands on the benefits of those for the ecosystem.

"One of the most prohibitive aspects with respect to privacy on Ethereum is the high cost of certain encryption operations, and both EIPs took direct aim at reducing this cost. With these changes, Ethereum will unlock new possibilities around random beacons, private token transfers, private computations, and cross-chain interoperability with Zcash, the foremost privacy-protecting digital currency."

Give it a read and let us know what you think!

https://blog.keep.network/privacy-and-scaling-focused-eips-accepted-for-ethereum-istanbul-hard-fork-1a75fe0c4e4a

Fresh monthly roundup, folks!
Read about all our latest efforts here:
https://blog.keep.network/keep-network-august-roundup-dbed7dcbca49

New blog post is out! All about Keep’s Berlin adventures!

Interoperability Summit, tBTC presentation, panel at dAppcon, oracle design session, ChorusOne podcast, hackathon, afterparty cruise and more! First blog post from Jarrell James, our Ecosystem Growth Lead!


https://blog.keep.network/a-look-back-at-berlin-blockchain-week-fc41400847af

We are continuing to discuss tBTC, and over the past month we’ve held several formal and informal price oracle design sessions, which has been a great collaborative community effort and fun times.

We're working diligently on getting the random beacon to public testnet. We also attended a number of key events in September, including Eth Boston and Crypto Springs. This week we’re at DevCon5, and later in October you can meet us at San Francisco Blockchain Week.

Read our monthly update here!

https://blog.keep.network/keep-network-september-roundup-161d728b273f

Thrilled to see our Head of Business Strategy Carolyn Reckhow amongst "11 most influential women in crypto”

https://decrypt.co/6418/the-11-most-influential-women-in-crypto

Latest updates from the Keep team!
Busy November, wrapping things up before the public testnet. Read on! https://blog.keep.network/november-roundup-83d189e17695

Matt was recently interviewed by David Nage on the Base Layer podcast! Matt discusses several projects and approaches to getting BTC into DeFi, and the goal of tBTC to retain as many of bitcoin’s properties as possible. Check it out at either of the links below:

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/sx7jlul

Stitcher: https://tinyurl.com/ulm2n39

And in case you missed it, Matt wrote a thing!

"Finance is a human right. And like free speech, it is an individual right that must be protected against collectivist forces."

This and other gems of wisdom were dropped in Matt Luongo’s crypto thesis “Reflections of a Monetary Maximalist”. The post covers Matt’s journey from Bitcoin to the development of tBTC. What was your favorite quote from the piece?

http://thesis.co/reflections-of-a-monetary-maximalist.html

Great news! @mhluongo’s episode on Pomp is now available. Matt and @APompliano discuss the upcoming launch of #tBTC, shipping during the time of #Covid_19, and letting $BTC holders start earning trustlessly with #DeFi.

Listen here: https://t.co/r9RfEJ7Uvu?amp=1

Hellloooooo Bloomberg! 👀👀

Check out what they had to say about the tBTC project and what it might mean for the future of both the bitcoin and ethereum blockchains and their communities. 👇

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/bitcoin-s-ethereum-rivalry-could-be-assuaged-with-tbtc-bridge

Thank you @Forbes for writing about the @keep_network token sale and the journey toward #tBTC 🙇 It was wonderful speaking with @justinofconnell 🎤🎧 looking forward to the podcast dropping soon as well!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinoconnell/2020/04/03/coinbase-co-founder-invests-in-project-to-bridge-bitcoin-and-ethereum/#5a3e79c27df4

📣 We've got news! 📣
Starting June 8th, you can stake ETH and get KEEP! The stakedrop will run for 6 months and means the only requirement to become a tBTC signer is to have ETH.
🙌 Help us bring BTC to DeFi🤝

👉 Sign up here to participate

Plus, starting today until the stakedrop, we'll also be running an incentivized testnet called
🏰Playing for Keeps🗡
It’s a chance to learn to stake before the stakedrop, and win KEEP by contributing to the community.

Read more about it on the Keep blog 👀

Make sure to join the conversation and get your testnet node running in #staking in Discord - Join here!

👩‍💻We know you’ve been wanting more details on our incentivized testnet game *Playing for Keeps.* 👀👀

Today we’re giving you that in a blog post where we go over timelines, contributions we’d like to see, and the amount of KEEP you could earn! 🏰
👉Read more here👈

📣The @StakingHub <> Keep AMA is starting *NOW*! 📣

Join here: http://t.me/StakingHub

It’s no surprise that the DeFi space is making a big move to support tBTC, and we’ve now announced the partners supporting tBTC at launch: *over 40 industry leaders representing 75% of Ethereum’s DeFi space.*

We’re pretty proud of the partner community we’ve built up ☺️

Check out the full details here!