A brief update from our CEO - Michael Smolenski @mikesmo

"Hey all! First of all, I need to apologise to the community for not being as active in this group answering questions as in the previous weeks.
The team has just returned from Blockchain Week in New York where we had many productive meetings and we are looking to make some great announcements soon!

One question we have had a few times is why is there no activity in our GitHub repository for the project.... We have a number of private GitHub repos as you can see here that the team are working on.

These repositories are private for now as we are not ready to open them up for other developers to begin making contributions to our codebase.

Let me be clear, the GitHub repository that is public is only for:
- Providing instructions to developer to run a node that connects to our Test Network.
- For developers to post bugs and other issues when running a node.

I was informed that someone in the community had done a "code review" on this public repo, which TBH, I found quite surprising as any developer with a little experience will know that the few files we have published there do not represent any kind of source code.

I understand the need for there to be transparency on the technology that we have been developing. So in this spirit, I will be publishing a video where I will take a technical audience through a deep dive of our current codebase and architecture.

There has also been some misinformation that we stopped developing for a year. In order to alleviate this concern, during the video I will present our GitHub logs during 2017 and you will be able to see the activity of development.
I hope this will be helpful 😄👍

I know that there has also been a many # questions about the timing of our token sale and the token sale conditions. Currently, a small private round is underway that is available to institutional funds and strategic partnerships. This will be closing soon. After which, we will open a whitelist for the community to register their interests in participating in the Token Sale.

We are really trying to be open and transparent as possible. We are happy to speak with any reviewer or influencer about any questions they have about the project. We have some excellent community managers. If I, or one of our project team members are not available to answer directly on this group then they will for sure notify us and we will do our very best to answer.

We heard many in the community request an ERC20 token to be published on the Ethereum network. As we have understood, the ERC20 interface is a standard that is compatible with many systems for token distribution, so this would make it easier for such systems to interface with an ERC20 token as opposed to our native PHT token.

As specified in the Lightstreams WP, the PHT token is a native token to the Lightstreams network and is necessary for the operation of key functionality, most notably the authorisation mechanism.

Therefore, a token such as an ERC20 contract published on another network, clearly wouldn't have any utility on the Lightstreams Network.

We are working with our legal counsel to understand what the regulatory issues are if we were to do the above. Apologies that I cannot give you are direct answer on this now. However, I think it is best that we make a detailed announcement on what option we will choose with the legal arguments either way.

Once thing I should add, since we are using the same Ethereum web3 API, it will actually not be that difficult for existing wallets to interface with our network. We expect only a simple configuration to point to a different chain id than the Ethereum mainnet. We will post detailed instructions about this later."

Check out the new interview by Tech Bullion with our CEO - Michael Smolenski🚀 https://www.techbullion.com/interview-with-michael-smolenski-the-ceo-lightstreams

If you have questions for our CEO Michael Smolenski - join us here for "Ask Me Anything" sessions every Tuesday 12:30-13:00 CET.

For links to other interviews, project reviews, and publications check out this excel sheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NR2ebWuc0KSfNxA95oeK9t3R7aSk1wnk8KrazxNBsdk/edit?usp=drivesdk

🚨⚠️SCAM ALERT⚠️🚨
This Medium blog and the Telegram user "Lightstreams Support" is a scam. Lightstreams whitelist is not open yet.

⚠️Again, this article, and it's author ARE NOT affiliated with Lightstreams!⚠️

https://medium.com/@LightStreams/lightstreams-community-token-sale-and-whitelist-is-live-f17842b10fc3

Do NOT send funds to the address in this article!

This type of announcement will ONLY be made through our OFFICIAL announcements channel @Lightstreamschannel and to those who are subscribed to our newsletter @ Lightstreams.network/#contact

⚠️Beware of anyone claiming to be related to the project who does not carry an admin tag by their name, or is not listed in our pinned post as an admin⚠️

Our Official admins are:

@mikesmo
@Crypto_marina
@Mrn9x
@Itsfitts
@vladdani55
@esteep

❗️Our admins will NEVER contact you first, ask to send money or approach for something else. BEWARE of scams ❗️

Unauthorised Pools. Please do not contribute to these pools that may be advertising an allocation in Lightstreams' Token Sale or any other that we will be adding to this list.

We strongly advise you to follow offical announcements for how to purchase PHT tokens. Currently, there has been no announcements.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jC3yGwEsZYgx0ea4gHpmgYbDKFx8Mkzw8BE3eCAMo7w/edit#gid=0

I am pleased to announce the following partners that are now part of our strategic partners program. We've been having some great conversations about how we work together and the resources and support that our partners can bring to the project. There are a couple of other exciting partners in the pipeline that we will be announcing in the coming weeks too!

https://medium.com/lightstreams/lightstreams-strategic-partners-6fb033cd3470

Proud to announce the collaboration of Lightstreams with the blockchain project Akropolis:
https://medium.com/lightstreams/partnership-lightstreams-akropolis-pension-savings-on-the-blockchain-15e7dd216ab3

Today we released the new design of our website. FAQ and Roadmap pages will be added shortly.
https://lightstreams.network/

Lightstreams was mentioned today in the following article about GDPR issues:
https://www.alvexo.com/blog/business/gdpr-data-protection-costs/

We are pleased today to release our latest roadmap and vision for Lightstreams:

https://medium.com/lightstreams/lightstreams-roadmap-1-0-75992962d5a8

Invictus Capital talks about their strategic partnership with Lightstreams:

https://ambcrypto.com/hyperion-fund-bolsters-new-blockchain-projects/

Lightstreams mentioned as strategic partner of Invictus Capital in Bitcoin Magazine:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ushering-new-future-cryptocurrency-investing-invictus/

We would like to say thanks to the team from "Under the Hood" who recently spent time with our team to review our codebase and infrastructure. This is their fantastic report:

https://medium.com/@drake.icoradar/under-the-hood-lightstreams-tech-review-by-two-blockchain-developers-bbd30ab60fbc

We are pleased to announce another all star advisor, Antony Lewis who has joined our team!
https://medium.com/lightstreams/lightstreams-welcomes-new-advisor-antony-lewis-a7af9bbf979b