July 19 2018

July Livestream Recap

Shannon Wu

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the official July Bloom Livestream. This is one of our most significant livestreams yet as we shared a ton of never-before-seen development and product updates.

This recap will share the major highlights of our new developer ecosystem, iPhone dApp updates, improvements to product and UX, the latest from BERD, the community, and insights into the growing Bloom team.

Check out the livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1-dUwm-f2A

Keep reading to get the latest.

Announcing the Bloom Development Ecosystem

For dapps to succeed, it is important to produce documentation and support for a robust developer ecosystem. It’s will challenging for a protocol to get widespread adoption without a true development ecosystem. This is why we are incredibly excited to announce the first rollouts to support the growing Bloom developer community.

Bloom’s APIs enable a variety of capabilities; from simply requesting BloomID data to building something that’s never been done before.

Capabilities in this release include:

Associating multiple addresses with a BloomID
Interact with the Bloom protocol without paying transaction fees
Securely associate identity information with a BloomID
Sending and receiving BLT micropayments on the network
Reading and cast votes on the protocol. Even if BLT is stored in an offline wallet.

Developer Documentation

We’re excited to announce the first developer documentation release. With clear documentation and streamlined features, it’s now simple to begin building your business, dapp, or feature on Bloom’s infrastructure. This documentation gives context on how to be an attester on the Bloom network, build solutions that require BloomIDs, and even make your own Bloom client for handling customer operations.

This documentation includes many new developer friendly enhancements:

An easy two column interface
Getting Started Guide
Overview of platform contracts
UI improvements such as a dark mode

Attestation Network — Docker API

In addition to documentation, we want to make it easy for new projects to integrate. The development of a Docker Attestation API makes it easy to deploy a Bloom network node.

We’re open sourcing a tool which lets other groups make their own attestations or attestation requests. This allows any third party to set up their own system to easily do attestations and attestation requests as well. With the Bloom Docker Attestation API, external teams can easily deploy and start integrating Bloom with their own businesses.

Our mission for the API is to lay down the foundation for the protocol to easily be used by the public.

Status Page

Our Status Page is live, which displays real-time and historical data on system performance. This page allows you to view uptime of the Bloom dApp, the Bloom website, as well as auxiliary modules over the last 90 days.

Announcing Staking

Bloom’s staking provides the technology for the future of a global inclusive credit system.

A big part of this mission is to create a technology that can make a fairer credit system for the 3 billion people do not have credit today. These people are often are stateless, lack government identity systems, or they exist in markets where data may not exist.

The first type of staking is Peer Staking. Peer staking is part of Bloom’s attestation logic.

Similar to cosigning on a loan, a “peer-stake” provides a simple reference to a BloomID. This kind of staking is unique because it signals that a friend indicates that they believe you would not take out a loan that you couldn’t pay back. Staking is the start of a system that offers new ways of redefining the strategies for the globalized future.

Mobile Dapp Updates

Bloom’s UX design continues to maintain the simplicity and ease of use of a mainstream app. The most recent updates include an option to invite your friends. By entering a friend’s email address, you can eliminate the need to send complicated requests.

Our mobile dApp has more information on building up your BloomID reputation. You will encounter your first attestations — a starter set for phone email and social. In the future, there will be the financial set which can be used for financial institutions that require a high level of identity assurance.

Web Dapp Improvements

We have also made a significant web dapp developments by simplifying phone and email attestations. Now, there is only one MetaMask interaction instead of three, reducing the amount of time our users need to interact with MetaMask.

Our Livestream includes a full walk-through of this process.

Bloom Payment Channels Enabled By Ethereum Whisper

The Bloom payment channels are enabled by Ethereum’s Whisper. Bloom’s smart contracts and Whisper power a decentralized identity verification marketplace that puts the user at the center of all decisions concerning their personal information. Essentially, we are using Whisper so that businesses using the Bloom network can find other businesses and get them to do work.

By leveraging cryptographic signatures, we’re able to consolidate the whole process down to one blockchain transaction which updates the user’s Bloom ID, publishes the decision, and pays the vendor. Whisper signatures create a great user experience while holding strong to our core commitment to decentralization and privacy.

The process of finding and paying an attester takes only seconds.

Find an accredited attester who will do the job
Authorization: user approves of who gets to see their data
Attestation: verifier reviews data, makes a decision and gets paid

Upgrading Phase 2 Contracts

The upgrades to Phase 2 contracts allow Bloom users to interact with the protocol without paying transaction fees. The new contracts make it easier to upgrade our application and add support for new wallet features.

To give you guys some more insight into what we’ve been up to. Currently, we are working on contracts:

For a payment channel to enable fee-less transactions
Accreditation to whitelist data providers
For peer staking: attaching BLT stakes to attestions. This will be used for peer staking to bootstrap creditworthiness

Lending Marketplace

The lending marketplace brings lenders directly to the platform so users can apply directly for various loans products. The goal is to create a fast, efficient and seamless way for people to apply for loans. Some of these lenders are now in the process of integrating BloomIDs, BloomIQ and BloomScore into their pre-qualification criteria and underwriting process.

To be featured, lenders can apply to be on the marketplace.

BERD Updates: Credit Conversations and Recent News

Our latest Credit Conversations is the story of Arjun, a college student who reflects on a consumer driven lifestyle.

Read Arjun’s story here: https://blog.hellobloom.io/credit-conversations-arjun-recent- college- graduate-d27efdb3af24

There has been a lot of news in the world of consumer data protection. In one of our recent posts, we share the latest news on Equifax Insider Trading, Another Massive Leak, and more.

In other news, a security researcher found that Exactis, a Florida-based data broker had exposed a database that contained close to 340 million individual records on a publicly accessible server. This exposed the most private information and habits of millions of individuals.

The Marketwatch chart demonstrates the surge in the number of data breaches.

Bloom Trivia Nights

Visit our Telegram or Slack community to get all the details, including which platform we’ll be using for this new, unified trivia night!

Fireside Chats

Fireside Chats is an on-going YouTube series lead by our Community Manager, Derek Silva. He interviews our partners and keeps us up to date on their latest news. All of the current, and upcoming, Fireside episodes are available on our YouTube channel!

Since the last community livestream, we have featured our partners Ripio and Fintrux. In the upcoming weeks, we will feature the latest interviews with District0x and Access Network.

In addition, we started publishing our Fireside series in video format on LBRY.io, a decentralized video distribution network. LBRY is a protocol that allows anyone to build apps that interact with digital content on the LBRY network.

Team + Community Updates

Over the past few weeks, we have welcomed seven new folks to the team, including our Head of Partnerships, Anne Ching.

As our team continues to grow, we will post the job listings as positions become available. And for those of you who might be curious about what it’s like to work at Bloom, watch the livestream to see parts of our Bloom Summit in San Francisco.