Beam Africa Newsletter. — June Edition.
Bringing you monthly updates on Beam Africa activities in promoting the need for privacy, and the adoption of Beam as a driver for change across Africa.
Downloads: Beam Android Wallet | Beam iOS Wallet | Beam Desktop Wallet
Happy New Month, Beamer. Welcome to the newest edition of our monthly newsletter for Beam Africa. We are excited to give the community a brief, retrospective review of our activities and milestones for the past month.
The last weekend of June was an exciting one because the community achieved a milestone we’ve had coming for a while. Beam Hardfork Eager Electron, which included a lot of upgrades to the Beam network. We’ll be briefly sharing more details on that in this newsletter, as well as a lot of other things.
Here’s a brief summary of some important community events in the month of June.
Beam AMA with Amir Aaronson and Binance South Africa community.
Featured Blog: Why Beam is Focused on Financial Privacy in Digital Transactions.
Featured Blog: What You Should Know About Mobile wallets & Why You Should Choose Beam.
Featured Tweet thread: Niran on Lelantus-MW and the $ECO coin
Featured Thread: How To Receive Free Beams/List of Beam Exchanges.
Featured Thread: Groot on Financial Privacy. Past, Present and Future.
Beam Second Hardfork Eager Electron 5.0 Completed
We’d love to kick-off by starting with the most exciting event for last month: The second Hardfork for the community code-named Eager Electron which took place on June 28 2020 (at Block Height 777,777, to be technically specific).
The Hardfork brought about some important consensus changes as well as a lot of upgrades to the network, including the ability to create and issue confidential assets on the main chain, a new mining algorithm, One-sided payments, etc. You can read more about its success and the steps moving forward here: Beam Hardfork Completed.
Beam Africa Adds New Ambassador To The Community
As a part of our vision to educate and sensitize Africa on the importance of Privacy, and the awesome use cases of the Beam blockchain, we announced our call for new ambassadors from among the community residing in different regions in Africa.
On that note, we are pleased to have M. Aliyu join us from Nigeria and we are excited to have worked with him for the past few weeks.
Beam AMA Session: Amir Aarnson and Binance South Africa.
The Beam team led by Amir Aarnson, COO, Beam Foundation, interacted with the community for over an hour, on an array of subjects about Privacy, Beam and the important role that Africa plays on the road to mass adoption of cryptocurrency.
Amir took his audience on a tour on some of the current, limiting issues surrounding privacy cryptocurrencies today, and how Beam is created to be the most viable option for anyone who takes privacy seriously. Also, the community awarded $50 to the best and most engaging participants during the session. Click here to read the full transcript from the session.
Featured Blog: Why Beam is Focused on Financial Privacy in Digital Transactions.
Strap your boots and take your reading glasses as Beam Africa’s ambassador for Nigeria, Groot, takes you on an interesting journey on Why Beam is focused on Financial Privacy in Digital Transactions.
Groot shared important facts on how financial data today is treated as the commodity itself, why it is important to not entrust your financial privacy to a third party, and why public transparent blockchains cannot suffice. You can read the full article by clicking this link.
Beam Africa Sponsored SiBAN’s Annual Membership.
All thanks to sponsorship donations from Beam core team members, most notably Raskul, the Community Tech Support, as well another high profile member (who chose to remain anonymous), the Beam African community was able to pay the annual SiBAN membership fee for up to 10 members.
SiBAN (which stands for Stakeholders in Blockchain Technology Association of Nigeria), is an organization that play an important role in fostering conversations between the teeming crypto ecosystem in Nigeria, and the various arms of the government. SiBAN is also on a mission of educating men of the Police force about Crypto and protecting her members from the nefarious SARS that prey on innocent techies.
Featured Blog: What You Should Know About Mobile wallets & Why You Should Choose Beam.
Our Beam Lagos Ambassador, Scarlet, wrote an article on Mobile wallets and why you should choose Beam’s wallet every time.
Scarlet discussed some important features you should find in a good crypto wallet and relates that to why she thinks our wallet and blockchain is the best for user-friendly confidential transactions. Read about it here.
Featured Tweet thread: Niran on Lelantus-MW and the $ECO coin
Beam Lagos ambassador, Niran made a technical thread of how the new Beam core upgrade, Lelantus-Mimblewimble would work out of the box.
Lelantus-MW comes with a feature that allows transaction details to be completely shielded so that not only is it increasingly difficult for anyone to create transaction graphs to match transactions, they can no longer see spender and receiver as all transaction details are stripped by default.
Niran is also currently heading a social experiment on the Le-MW Testnet with his newly created confidential asset, $ECO. Here’s a short, practical thread on it.
Introducing Beam Hunt
So, we kicked off our new and hopefully recurring social activity titled Beam Hunt this month. We decided to use this approach to gamify the learning process for the community, in tandem with our vision of educating Africa on Financial Privacy and the Beam blockchain.
June’s edition was launched on the 21st, and it was anchored by our Lagos ambassador, Scarlet. Further, plans are in place to set an official recurring date for this activity. Suggestions and contributions will be noted/considered.
Beam Buddies Hangout on Telegram
BBH is our newly launched ‘water-cooler’ social activity for the community just for the fun of it. BBH offers a non-judgemental platform, where everyone can come talk about stuff that doesn’t have to do with crypto. There’s all shades of jokes and banters and deep stuff you can ponder on.
We’ll be holding it every Friday night by 8 PM WAT on Telegram. Swing by if you feel like joining in on the discussion.
Featured thread: How To Receive Free Beams/List of Beam Exchanges.
We’ve had a couple of community members who have never bought some beams or used the Beam wallet before. While we think that some members might consider it too much work to figure out on their own, some of us just do not have the resources or time to check.
Beam Lagos ambassador, Scarlet fixes that with a thread containing videos to show how to earn some free Beams, and instructions for finding your way around the wallet to buying your first Beams. Pretty simple to follow. Read the thread here.
Featured Thread: Groot on Financial Privacy. Past, Present and Future.
Surveillance by governmental institutions and s host of third-party agencies remain a threat to public rights to privacy as well as their overall civility.
In this thread, Beam Portharcourt ambassador, Groot, gives a concise yet insightful argument of where the future of Financial Privacy might be headed in the Crypto space. It does seem that public, permissionless blockchains may not be enough after all. Click on this link to see the full thread.
Beam Community Art Contest With Guy Corem.
We witnessed lots of creative vibes around the Hardfork Eager Electron event last month, as influential Beam core team/community member, Guy Corem, launched a creative art initiative for Beam.
The competition was brief and open to the entire community and sub-communities and we were more than elated to find that one of our active African community members, Otemzi, won the star prize. You can see all submissions here.
Be A Part Of Our Community.
We are a growing community of investors, students, founders, and professionals, who are learning about Privacy, Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies every day.
And we want you to be a part of our community if you aren’t already. We are inviting you to join us on our social media platforms, and on Telegram too. Check out some of our official links below.
Follow us on Twitter | Join us on Telegram | See our official website:
You can also download our mobile apps to start sending and receiving cryptocurrency in a more secure and private way.
Downloads: Beam Android Wallet | Beam iOS Wallet | Beam Desktop Wallet
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Go Beam Africa , go!