It was quite an exciting (but challenging) week with the Steem blockchain hard fork, @utopian-io finally getting in the top 20 witness list, but most importantly, Utopian is celebrating its 1st year on Steem!

In today’s weekly summary we bring you, in addition to our regular activity report, the much awaited announcement of Hackathon winners, as well as details on how they can claim their prizes.

Utopian Hackathon

Having the first Utopian Hackathon was extraordinarily exciting for us. It was an amazing experience, with most of the Utopian team together in Italy, and dozens of participants online. We had lots of fun and little sleep but it was totally worth it for the results!

More than 10 projects participated and were submitted to Utopian, and they were all awesome ideas. Even though only few could make it in the list of winners, we still want to thanks all the participants for submitting their creations and taking part.

• Dpoll by @emrebeyler. A decentralized poll app on the STEEM blockchain. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@emrebeyler/introducing-dpoll-a-poll-app-on-the-top-of-steem-blockchain

• CryptoTransactionTracker by @aimstan and @lovenfreedom. Specifically for tracking wallet transactions for anti-abuse but can be expanded to be used for keeping track of your wallet addresses across multiple cryptocurrencies. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@lovenfreedom/crypttracker-investigating-wallet-transfers-utopian-hackathon-entry

• Steem to File Upload by @dehenne and @mordark. This is the first real file upload client for the Steem Blockchain. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@dehenne/steem-to-file-upload-utopian-hackathon-submission

• Steem Wallet by @superoo7. A wallet for the Steem blockchain. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@superoo7/steem-web-wallet-sww-utopian-io-hackathon

• SteemKit by @genievot. A qr based steem app to do certain operations with qr, A website to create certain pattern of qr and app to read it. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@genievot/steem-kit-a-qr-based-steem-basic-operation-handler-and-byteball-steem-payments-integration-hack-a-thon-entry-utopian-io-1537567260589

• Git-Utopian-Contributor by @nothingismagick @drsensor @decebal2dac @tensor. G-U-C is an Electron App made with Quasar that allows devs to (more-or-less automatically) publish to steem using their git commits as the basis, thus reducing the cognitive load of documenting the work and instils best-practices of writing clear and good commit messages. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@nothingismagick/git-utopian-contributor

Winners

• 1st Place: Dpoll by @emrebeyler. Wins 100% upvote + 300 STEEM

• 2nd Place: Git-Utopian-Contributor by @nothingismagick @drsensor @decebal2dac. Wins 80% upvote + 150 STEEM + 200 STEEM (Quasar dedicated prize)

• 3rd Place: Steem to File Upload by @dehenne and @mordark. Wins upvote based on score + 50 STEEM

SteemKit by @genievot is the only submission using Byteball and may receive the Byteball dedicated prize.

The liquid STEEM prizes will be sent to the winners’ wallets. To receive the upvotes on the contributions, we ask the winner to write a follow up post for their projects on Monday 1st of October.

Thanks to everyone for participating and let’s hack together again at the next Utopian Hackathon!

Utopian Top 20 Witness

Just as Utopian reached its 1st birthday on the blockchain, we also became a top 20 witness on Steem. Just in time for HF20 to shake things up and make us focus even more on our activity as a Steem witness.

Currently, Utopian has both main and backup witnesses running Steem 0.20.5 (the latest patch released today) on 64GB DDR3 RAM dedicated machines.

You can read more about it in our first of (hopefully) many witness update posts as a top 20 witness. Thank again for bringing us there!

Radio Show Episode 15

This week’s Utopian Open Source Radio Show hosted @nothingismagic who told us about the Quasar Framework, his vision for it, and his how Utopian is helping the project realize it.

In addition, and due to the state of the blockchain during the HF20 upgrades, we hosted a number of prominent witnesses who were kind enough to join the conversation to help clarify the situation and discuss how the hard-forking process can be improved in the future. Our thanks to @themarkymark, @pharesim, @lukestokes, @reggaemuffin and @therealwolf for their insights!

The full show recording will be published shortly.

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After 364 days of hard work, @utopian-io is excited to announce to have reached the 19th position in the Steem witnesses rank. Thanks to your support and witness votes, we are in a position to continue contributing to the Steem ecosystem.

Utopian & HF20

While @utopian-io was jumping in and out the top 20 during the Hard Fork, we were paying more attention to the actual upgrade, following discussions with the other witnesses and challenging us making sure to be among the first ones applying the patches as they happened.

In addition to our involvement and engagement in the upgrade process, the Utopian Open Source Radio Show this week hosted a number of prominent witnesses who were kind enough to join the conversation to help clarify the state of things on the blockchain. Our thanks to @themarkymark, @pharesim, @lukestokes, @reggaemuffin and @therealwolf for their insights! The full show recording will be published in the following days.

Utopian Witness Setup & Full Node

Currently, Utopian has both main and backup witnesses running Steem 0.20.3 on 64GB DDR3 RAM dedicated machines.

The Utopian witness servers are managed by @helo, who also runs his own witness server, and is charged with maintaining and updating the witness server, and responding to emergencies or issues when needed. In coordination with Gregory , our CTO, and the whole development team in Utopian, the witness servers are professionally maintained to provide maximal uptime and reliability.

As Utopian stabilises its position in the top 20 witnesses, we are looking to setup a public full node and we are already in the process of gathering all the requirements.

What Utopian is doing for the Steem Ecosystem

Utopian has been empowering Open Source on the Steem blockchain, by utilizing its voting power to score and incentivise contributions to awesome projects and applications, many of which are based on the Steem blockchain.

One of our key roles on the blockchain has been to serve as a bridge between many open source developers and the Steem blockchain. We’ve done this not only by offering incentives, but also by making sure to guide newcomers through the journey, and providing them with the tools and exposure to help their open source projects thrive.

With the Steem blockchain being the birthplace of Utopian, it only makes sense that our support of open source projects is focused first and foremost on projects on the Steem blockchain. Many of the tools, applications and Steem initiatives you know (and use) are able to grow and thrive through the support of Utopian.

Among the initiatives and projects supported by Utopian:

• Quasar Framework https://steemit.com/@quasarframework. The stellar Node + Vue framework with over 7000 stars on Github.
• Byteball https://steemit.com/@byteball.org. A cryptocurrency platform for mass world adoption.
• EFTG by the Blockchain Competence Centre of the European Commission. A system that offers a single view of the information currently stored at different Member States’ infrastructures built with the Steem blockchain.
• Beem by @holger80. The python library to easily interact with the Steem blockchain, now used by hundreds of developers and widely accepted as the standard.
• SteemPress https://steemit.com/@steempress-io. SteemPress brings Steem to WordPress. Now at over 1M delegated voting power.
• D.tube https://steemit.com/@dtube. The most relevant decentralised platform for hosting and streaming video.
• eSteem https://steemit.com/@esteemapp. Mobile and Desktop app for the Steem blockchain.
• SteemSTEM https://steemit.com/@steemstem . The STEM community on the Steem blockchain. Utopian is proud to help such an ingenious initiative.
• SteemPlus https://steemit.com/@steem-plus. The browser extension which enriches the Steem frontends with necessary functionalities.
• ActiFit https://steemit.com/@actifit. A mobile application that rewards you with both STEEM & AFIT tokens for your fitness activities.
• Hede.io https://steemit.com/@hede-io. The knowledge sharing dictionary to replace Wikipedia on Steem.
• SteemHunt https://steemit.com/@steemhunt. The Steem application that rewards you for digging awesome products.
• Peer.query https://steemit.com/@peerquery. Peer to peer collaboration powered by Steem.

KnackSteem, SndBox, Busy.org, 1UP, SteemMakers, SteemConnect, Archipelago, Steeditor, SwapSteem, Steemia, MineColonies, Steemqa, Steemnova, Hapramp(1Ramp)… and many more through the past year.

We believe that by being a Steem witness in a prominent position, we can continue to grow our ability to further support these and other new projects born on the Steem blockchain every day.

Power in Numbers

The Utopian Discord server is currently a central meeting place for hundreds of contributors, collaborating and conversing daily, striving and working to create innovative Steem projects. With a professional core community of over 40 members, specializing in development, content, community management, translations and more, we’re quickly becoming the main force driving the open source development community to the Steem blockchain.

What is Utopian Up to Next?

The development team at Utopian is labouring tirelessly to prepare the new Utopian frontend, Utopian.io v2, for launch. Though development is taking longer than anticipated, we assure you that this is only because we’re constantly working to bring a more complete, sustainable and scalable solution for the growth of our community.

Currently, the base code for Utopian v2 is available on https://github.com/utopian-io/v2.utopian.io. The platform is being built using Vuejs and the Quasar Framework, and we will soon be allowing contributions to the repository, along with some tempting bounties for our awesome community of developers.

With the new Utopian.io we hope to revolutionize the open source collaboration ecosystem and economy, ultimately coming closer to the Utopian global vision - empowering open source.

It is our hope you will choose to join us on this journey, and support our activity on the Steem blockchain by casting one of your witness votes for utopian-io and helo.

A special thanks to all our Moderators, Community Managers, the DaVinci team, SteemSTEM and to all our supporters in this challenging and unique journey.

The Utopian Community

This page is synchronized from the post: Utopian Update as Top 20 Witness

With the Steem blockchain still catching up and normalizing after hardfork 20, we felt it’s important to update you on the state of Utopian during this time, and on our current plan of action. In addition, this post includes updates on the Utopian witness server, and a few upcoming events.

Pausing Operations

Due to the current technical situation, we are unable to review submissions made to Utopian or vote on the contributions scored. Unfortunately, this means we are forced to pause all operations until the Steem blockchain is once again accessible and usable for all community members and moderators.

According to estimates, the voting power of @utopian-io will reach 100% in roughly 100 hours. We will be sure to update you once submission scoring is resumed, and are sorry for this inconvenience.

To stay up-to-date and speak to the Utopian team, we invite you to join the conversation on our Discord server.

Witness Server Status

Coinciding with the hardfork is Utopian’s rise to the top 20 list of Steem witnesses.

We have been working closely with the other top 20 witnesses throughout the night to make sure the blockchain could resume normal operations. Both main Utopian witness server and backup witnesses have been upgraded to version 0.20.3 and are running properly.

We couldn’t be happier to make it into the list of top 20 witnesses, especially at this critical time, and we’ll make sure to publish a dedicated witness update post with all the exciting plans we have for it, as soon as the blockchain returns to normal operations.

Hackathon Winners & Meetup Summary - Coming Soon!

We are happy to have received so many awesome contributions for the first Utopian Hackathon. Despite the issues with the blockchain we were able to score and pick the winners! But we’re not quite ready to reveal them.

Due to the voting power recharge process, we won’t be able to release rewards for the winners just yet. We’ll make sure to publish the list of the winners shortly, and immediately release the liquid prizes. For the post upvotes on the winning submissions, we will ask the winners to publish a comment under their contributions in order for Utopian to give them the upvote value their submission is due.

Join Us Tonight on The Utopian Open Source Radio Show on MSP Waves

Tonight’s show comes at an interesting time! In addition to the regular dose of news and updates from Utopian, we’re scheduled to host @nothingismagic from the Quasar Framework, as well as a number of prominent Steem witnesses.

Be sure to tune in at 6 PM (UTC) to learn more about the Quasar development platform and hear what the Steem witnesses think and feel about the current state of the blockchain. Find out more in this post by our show host, @jedigeiss.

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This page is synchronized from the post: Utopian Status: HF20, Witness Servers & More

Despite the technical challenges presented by the Steem blockchain upgrade (HF20), and with many team members attending the Utopian and SteemSTEM meetup in Italy, this week did not lack remarkable contributions made to open source projects through Utopian. These contributions include entries from the Blog, Development and Video-Tutorials categories. In addition, we included one older gem from the Graphics category.

Be sure to check out these stellar contribution posts, and use them as an example to improve your own contribution submissions to Utopian.

Staff Picks

PHP Tutorial #05 Array Methods (Array_Chunk, Array_Combine, Array_Count_Values and Array_Product) by @alexendre-maxim [video-tutorials]

This week @alexendre-maxim presented us with part 5 of his PHP video tutorial series. He has spent a great deal of effort refining his video tutorial skills to improve his contributions and it is showing in his work. This tutorial has good video and audio quality, and is well planned and laid out for learners.

Total payout: 51.78 STU Number of votes: 29

Logo proposal to Fantasy Premier League API [Task Request] by @ggabogarcia [graphics]

A Python wrapper around the Fantasy Premier League API created by @amosbastian. It was build to help other developers call FPL API. Amos requested the community to make a cool logo and @ggabogarcia was the one hitting the nail on the head and delivering awesome work. He put a great effort into finding the correct way to draw both symbols - lion and python. He even recorded himself tracing the sketch into vectors.

Total payout: 69.65 STU Number of votes: 105

SteemQA (beta release) - 3rd Progress Report by @irelandscape [blog]

@irelandscape follows his previous updates about the Questions/Answers app that runs on top of the Steem blockchain. This time, we can see its third update filled with many important changes such as the new name of the app, which is now Quearn, and technical details that are on par with the top contributions we can witness in the development category.

The latest update includes several feature additions to improve the user experience. All of it is presented in a well-structured and fromated post that lets everyone read the news in comfort.

Total payout: 1.50 STU Number of votes: 43

Towards a reputation system suitable for SteemSTEM by @lemouth [development]

_{Credits: @hightouch}

We have seen a few attempts at creating new and more reliable reputation systems on the Steem blockchain. @lemouth presents another one, which could be used for future purposes of the SteemSTEM group and the STEM writers.

The aim of this new system is to equally consider the authorship component and the engagement component. Although the initial implementation has not satisfied all expectations of such a new system, community members have brought some of refreshing ideas to deal with a number of the issues.

Such contributions belong amongst the top, as it is also complemented with a detailed post and a lot of information describing the idea and implementation of the new reputation system.

Total payout: 51.06 STU Number of votes: 1304

Minecolonies & Epic Guard Rework! by @raycoms [development]

Minecolonies is a mod for the game Minecraft, adding many unique and interesting features to the game. Minecolonies is an actively developed game and there have been regular updates on its development through Utopian.

In this case, we got the latest updates from @raycoms, who worked on fixes and reworking of recent functionalities. His post is full of technical details regarding the implementation, with lots of excerpts of the relevant code passages. Thus, one can easily follow the development progress on top of checking the commit history of the project.

Total payout: 17.93 STU Number of votes: 99

Utopian.io Post Statistics

The staff picked contributions are only a small (but exceptional) example of the mass of contributions reviewed and rewarded by Utopian.io.

• Overall, the last week saw a total of 187 posts, with 180 of them rewarded through an upvote by @utopian-io.
• In total, Utopian.io distributed an approximate of 2613.99 STU to contributors.
• The highest payout seen on any Utopian.io contribution this week was 153.261 STU, with a total of 223 votes received from the community.
• The contribution that attracted the most engagement was Towards a reputation system suitable for SteemSTEM, with no less than 68 comments in its comment threads.
• The average vote given by Utopian.io was worth 55.62 STU.

Category Statistics

|Category|Reviewed|Rewarded|Total rewards|Top contributor| |:-|:-|:-|-:|:-| |ideas|4|2|3.93 STU|@muhammadarif| |iamutopian|7|7|0.00 STU|@tykee| |analysis|1|1|63.77 STU|@paulag| |development|25|24|234.26 STU|@miniature-tiger| |translations|96|96|1798.43 STU|@dedicatedguy| |graphics|13|13|260.31 STU|@camiloferrua| |tutorials|10|9|34.38 STU|@onepice| |video-tutorials|2|2|68.76 STU|@alexendre-maxim| |blog|19|17|82.34 STU|@actifit| |copywriting|1|1|67.80 STU|@hiremani| |bug-hunting|4|4|0.00 STU|@josephace135|

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This week, we present another collection of remarkable contributions made through Utopian. These contributions include entries from the Blog, Graphics, Analysis and Development categories. Consider checking them out and using them as an example to improve your own contributions to Utopian.

Staff Picks

Got upvotes but no payout? An overview of the situation around the minimum payout threshold by @crokkon [analysis]

Without exception, @crokkon creates amazing pieces of analytical work. In this post, his main point of interest was a payout threshold in the Steem blockchain, exploring why not all posts are paid out if they didn’t receive enough STUs. @crokkon explore the threshold that has been set at 0.02 STU for any post and comment to be paid out. He presents the count of posts and the time they were created, and has interesting observations.

Total payout: 100.28 STU Number of votes: 119

1UP News: Fundition Campaign, New Platform Account And UP Token Distribution Explained by @steem-1up [blog]

Steem-1up is the descendant of utopian-1up, following the idea of 1UP. Its aim is to create a hivemind curation system for different communities. Thus, in accordance with the new branding, the older Steem account has retired. New updates are going to be published with the new account. However, they still deliver the same type of comprehensive updates with beautiful custom images. The post is also a part of the Fundition campaign to support the development of the project.

Total payout: 100.28 STU Number of votes: 119

Logo for lightsteem by @oups [graphics]

@oups has participated in the task request for lightsteem, which is a lightweight Python library for Steem. @emrebeyler, the creator and developer of lightsteem has asked for a new logo to represent his project. We can see that the actual logo is clean and simple, and the presentation follows the idea of simplicity, too. You can read about the initial idea, the process of creating the logo, and the color ranges that were used to make the logo best possible.

Total payout: 2.02 STU (Not voted yet) Number of votes: 28

Announcing Finally Network - Turn your Steem blog into a website by @sambillingham [development]

@sambillingham has proved in the past that his projects have potential and are useful to the community. He has worked on Steem-based projects, and Finally Network is no different. Continuing to develop new projects that utilise the Steem blockchain will show that the blockchain can be used for different kinds of projects. Finally Network aims to provide a simple way to create a custom website for Steem users. The creator compares the idea to Squarespace, and at the moment has provided an MVP of the project, which may change according to received feedback.

Total payout: 20.45 STU (Not voted yet) Number of votes: 631

Steem Use-a-Thon by Byteball - Weekly Update 3 by @byteball.org [blog]

The folks at @byteball.org continue to updates about the use-a-thon, and these are some of the most extensive regular updates we could wish for. Byteball also brings up the topic of creating your own token, which you can use as you wish. Further, the post covers the regular updates from the participants and as always, announces a weekly prize for the winner of the week.

Total payout: 5.47 STU (Not voted yet) Number of votes: 147

Building an asyncsteem python web app with micro-transaction-based steem user authentication, Redis and Jinja2 by @mattockfs [tutorials]

Another great tutorial by @mattockfs. The author provides a quick comparison between Steemconnect and micro-transaction approaches for authentication. He bases the tutorial on building a micro transactions authentication system under a Python implementation, as an alternative and better approach to authenticate users instead of delegating authority via steemconnect.

Total payout: 1.40 STU (Not voted yet) Number of votes: 19

Utopian.io Post Statistics

The staff picked contributions are only a small (but exceptional) example of the mass of contributions reviewed and rewarded by Utopian.io.

• Overall, the last week saw a total of 189 posts, with 172 of them rewarded through an upvote by @utopian-io.
• In total, Utopian.io distributed an approximate of 1512.15 STU to contributors.
• The highest payout seen on any Utopian.io contribution this week was 125.752 STU, with a total of 94 votes received from the community.
• The contribution that attracted the most engagement was 1UP Airdrop For Communities: Steem Monsters Spotlight, with no less than 25 comments in its comment threads.
• The average vote given by Utopian.io was worth 44.40 STU.

Category Statistics

|Category|Reviewed|Rewarded|Total rewards|Top contributor| |:-|:-|:-|-:|:-| |translations|84|83|1433.08 STU|@acrywhif| |development|34|32|650.36 STU|@genievot| |graphics|10|8|56.39 STU|@mrgodby| |tutorials|14|11|102.58 STU|@yalzeee| |video-tutorials|3|3|86.69 STU|@alexendre-maxim| |analysis|1|1|87.37 STU|@crokkon| |blog|22|17|189.22 STU|@steem-1up| |ideas|2|0|0.00 STU|@muhammadarif| |social|2|2|34.98 STU|@jingis07|

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This page is synchronized from the post: Weekly Top of Utopian.io: September 12 - September 19

After arriving in the fantastic villa yesterday, and after having slept almost enough, we were up and hackathoning away at 8AM local time with all the participants locally and internationally.

If you somehow managed to miss the preperations and announcements of the bounties and Hackathon details, you can catch up here.

Internet? What Internet?

The morning was a bit of a challenge due to connectivity issues. The Internet in middle-of-nowhere Tuscany is unbearably slow and unreliable. Who would have thought? We tried a lot of tricks and tweaks but the Internet connection is simply too slow to allow anything resembling a Dtube or Dlive stream both on the local connection and our mobile broadband, that proved to be just as unstable.

We’re deeply sorry for this, as it was our plan to stream everything (excluding naps). We’ll continue to make efforts to bring you as much videos and photos from the Hackathon as possible, so stay tuned for updates!

Current Status

As the sun set over the beautiful hills of Tuscany, the guys are still hard at work. After taking a short “pool request” break, they got right back to work, energized and full of inspiration, fully focused on their respective projects.

The hackathon is far from over, and we’re all trying to conserve our strengths and coffee for the rest of the night.

Currently registered to take part in the Hackathon:

• Swapsteem iTradr by @aneilpatel, a companion application for Swapsteem.
• SteemGo by @kennybll, an advertising platform built on Steem.
• dPoll by @emrebeyler, a decentralized polling app for the Steem Blockchain.
• CryptoTransactionTracker by @lovenfreedom and iamstan, a wallet and transaction tracker for multiple currencies.
• SteemFileUpload by @dehenne and @mordark, the first true upload client for the Steem Blockchain.
• SteemWallet by @superoo7, a wallet for the Steem Blockchain.
• Steemkit by @genievot, a QR based steem app that allows certain operations.
• Git-Utopian-Contributor by @nothingismagick, @drsensor and @decebal2dac. An electron app providing an easy method to publish to Steem using Git commits as basis.
• steemlogs.info by @ecoinstant and @jackmiller, providing a new way accessing old data on the blockchain.
• Steem Event Publisher by @irelandscape, taking away heavy load from Steemd Nodes by providing an “on event” notification service for applications.

If you have a cool original idea of your own, it is not too late to register. Simply join our Hackathon Discord Channel and pitch your idea! If you’re lucky, you might still find a hacker or two that have yet to join a project team.

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