On Monday we began and completed a network and protocol upgrade for Perkle. This was a planned hard fork to enable several important new features, patches and performance improvements.

Blockchain is becoming mainstream. For many in the crypto community, this acceptance is long overdue. However, as with any new emerging technology or industry (e.g. artificial intelligence or marijuana legalization) there remains a fair share of skeptics; those who are comfortable with the status quo and are quick to point out flaws in the system, opportunities for misuse, and the potential for the already disenfranchised to be further taken advantage of. For those of you who are cautiously optimistic and want to learn more about blockchain, we want to debunk some of the popular myths for you.

By now, you’d be hard pressed to name an industry that hasn’t begun exploring the potential of blockchain technology. Increased transparency, reduced transaction costs, faster settlements, user control over data and true network decentralization — the benefits could revolutionize many industries. With cryptocurrency being the most mainstream application of blockchain technology, it may not come as a surprise that the banking and finance industry seems to be leading the way in adoption.

One of our primary goals at Esprezzo is to create tools that make it less complex and time-consuming to create and manage modern web and decentralized apps. For developers, this often means getting common boilerplate code and services out of the way by relying on tested and proven implementations of things like authentication, user accounts, application structure, compiler/transpiler pipelines etc. There are tools attempting to solve these problems to various degrees by offering web frameworks with plugins, or completely serverless backend solutions that replace the database and server-side app layer with a REST API.

Update: PRKL was listed on STEX April 4! Since then, it's also been added to portfolio trackers Blockfolio and Delta.

As we continue building out our product suite for developers and organizations, demand for Perkle is growing, as it is an important component of the Esprezzo ecosystem. As such, we want to increase the security of the platform and make it as easy as possible for developers to build on. Not every developer is able to mine the coins needed to deploy a smart contract, and miners who help secure the network need a quick and easy way to liquidate their holdings. The obvious solution to both those problems is an exchange listing. Providing liquidity to the network will attract new miners and as a result make Perkle a more robust and safe network to build and transact on. And so we’re pleased to announce an exchange listing for Perkle! Starting April 4, you will be able to trade PRKL on STEX.

If you’re in the New England area, come learn about blockchain technology and Esprezzo at these upcoming events:

While working on the Esprezzo platform and rapid application development tools for building blockchain-integrated apps, we saw an opportunity to provide developers a performant, cost-efficient, egalitarian blockchain and smart contract platform to build and test on — one that’s less congested and focused on fostering development rather than a speculative trading instrument. And so, we built Perkle: a mineable Proof-of-Work, fairly released Ethereum-compatible blockchain and smart contract platform.

The Esprezzo team will be in Portsmouth, New Hampshire next Wednesday, October 10 for the Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference! This conference will bring together researchers, financial innovators, digital currency executives and blockchain enthusiasts to explore the future of tokenized assets, and we’ll be there with a booth.

We’re excited to announce today the partnership between Esprezzo and General Assembly (GA), a global leader in digital skills training, to provide blockchain technology education and training through a series of events. We’re kicking off this partnership with a free Blockchain 101 panel at the Boston General Assembly campus on October 11.

If you’re interested in blockchain technology and are in the Boston area, we’d love for you to join Esprezzo and General Assembly for a free Blockchain 101 panel on October 11 at the General Assembly Boston campus.