By Rijk Plasman:

Could you give us a progress update?
A question I hear people asking a lot, especially during these quiet periods. Although it might look that way to the outside world. For us these are incredibly busy times…

I am always very careful with answering these kind of questions, often consciously stay a bit vague and do not make promises or announcements. In the past I have done so and that created false expectations or a kind of wait-and-see attitude, which suits a company’s product announcements, but not a decentralized blockchain.

Although I think this caution is sensible, I don’t like it very much. I am very enthusiastic about what we are doing and would love to share it. From my chair all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and I am aware that this is not the case for the outside world. Whilst that outside world includes a hard-working community, a community that deserves this information. That’s why I’ll cautiously give some more information now.

Unity
This project has been chosen by the community. A platform for all applications, making development many times faster and more efficient. We are currently full into development, with results above expectations. For Android we almost have a working test version, that is although without the UI (User Interface, design and operation). iOS is also already in development. Now that we are working on it, we really appreciate this choice, realizing how important this is for Gulden. It is the perfect moment to implement it as it makes our basis even stronger.

Planting seeds
What do you do with The Dutch Public Prosecution Service? A question that many people have asked me and to which I have not given an answer yet. I’ll explain why: From Gulden.com BV we are very busy making connections with important organizations in society. In different areas. Legal and safe use of our blockchain is one of those areas and it is one of the projects we are working on. Blockchain is new and therefore these kinds of projects have no clear end, it is something that is growing. Normally I don’t tell anyone publicly about these kind of projects, because sometimes a project just end without clear results. Yet it is always valuable, because information is shared, a connection is made and we have presented ourselves. In the case of The Dutch Public Prosecution Service I did, a presentation has been given by Roel Boer (Nocks) and me, which has provided us with valuable information and we will see what the future holds in this area.

Gulden.com
What is Gulden actually? The answer to that question is not available on our website, we currently don’t tell you much more than that it is a payment system with a possible return. And with that we are doing ourselves a big deficit. The website dates back to a time when we were just that. It is great to be busy with the new site, because there is so much to tell. Great projects have emerged from the community, G-Dash (Cloud) for example. The results, but also the development directly in cooperation with the community. Is there a bug? Then it is fixed immediately. Those short lines, that’s unique. As is Dactual.com, a much more than a self-built blockchain explorer, more like an atlas for our blockchain. More and more useful and valuable information is added and it is very user-friendly. And it now seems almost evident, but all the new merchants who have been added, thanks to community members. Members who entered a restaurant, enthusiastically told about Gulden and made sure that we now have almost 20 places to pay in Groningen alone. Of course there is a lot more… and this is a story that the new Gulden.com website must tell, because this is the strength of the Gulden project. That cooperation between the different parts of the Gulden project, so that everyone contributes their bit to the growth, independently, without an central organisation.

The site must make clear what Gulden is, so that new users do not have to jump into the deep end, but are guided through this new technology, this new experience.

Next to that, the site has to tell a bit about the future too…

The future
Gulden is now a payment system, which is how everyone understands it, because that is still the only functionality on our blockchain. That will change! Gulden is a blockchain, being a payment system is just one of the possible functionalities. Payment is and remains of course very important and most likely also the primary functionality. But thanks to Witness and soon Unity our blockchain is suitable for much more. When adding new functionalities, it is important that they do not stand in the way of the current ones, but rather reinforce them. We have been thinking about this for a long time, taking into account a number of requirements (in random order):

It should not be at the expense of current functionality
It must actually be usable
It must solve a problem
There must be an application for it immediately
It should be easy to use
It should not be at the expense of the safety or efficiency of our blockchain

We came up with such a functionality and -unfortunately you probably already guessed it- I can’t tell you anything about it yet. It is still very early and we are still in the thinking phase. I am very enthusiastic about it and will give more clarity about it before the end of the year. In any case, the development will start next year.

Roadmap: https://dev.gulden.com

P.S.: The new Gulden.com website is scheduled for November.