RightMesh 2018: Year in Review
By: Amber Mclennan
Tags: Blockchain, Wireless Mesh Network, Mesh Networks, Rmweeklyupdate, Bitcoin

2018 was a year of tremendous growth for the RightMesh team!

We wanted to take a moment to summarize some of our highlights over the past 12 months. Let’s take a look at what we accomplished together:

January

Successful Early Allocation Round: In January, we were thrilled to announce the successful completion of our Early Allocation round of the TGE in which $18M USD was filled in under a week.

ConsenSys: RightMesh was accepted into the ConsenSys-led Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition.

Tech Demo — Decentralized Clock Synchronization: As new applications are developed on RightMesh it will be necessary for some of the apps to coordinate their actions in the time domain, such as an app that tracks events in time. The demo below shows devices using a time synchronization algorithm to sync clocks of peers connected to our mesh network, without GPS or another 3rd party.

Clock synchronization demo with RightMesh

Our team of mentors and support at nwHacks 2018

nwHacks: 24 hours, 666 hackers and 114 projects submitted… needless to say that nwHacks 2018 was an utter success. The weekend kicked off with RightMesh CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst, teaching a workshop on ‘How to Build a Mesh Networking App Using RightMesh’. We saw a quick uptake of 49 developers performing 2,000 RightMesh compiles on our library. This was a great testing opportunity for the platform and a great event to be part of.

February

RightMesh Acquires Piperchain: Piperchain was the first decentralized application for World Villages, a stealth startup created by Lucien Loiseau and former Open Garden Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Micha Benoliel. With the acquisition, Dr. Loiseau, who holds a Ph.D. in the field of wireless mesh networks, joined the RightMesh team as our Lead Mesh Networking Scientist. At the same time, Micha Benoliel joined the company as an Advisor to the RightMesh project.

Tech Demo — ERC20 tokens exchanged for data: Dr. David Wang demoed how when a phone joins the mesh, it automatically creates an outgoing micropayment channel to the superpeer and an incoming channel from the superpeer. This means it could operate as either a buyer or a seller of data.

ERC20 Token Exchanged for Tokens Demo

Successful Pre-Allocation Round: Our pre-allocation round of our TGE was successfully subscribed in just 8 minutes and 4 seconds.

meshIM: We announced the launch of the Alpha meshIM, a peer-to-peer app for users to message one another within a local mesh network when there is no access to cell service or data available.

Universal Connectivity Alliance: We partnered with Althea and BlockMesh to form the Universal Connectivity Alliance. Through the combination of hardware and software solutions, and working towards interoperability of connectivity solutions, our three companies aim to provide universal internet access through innovative mesh networking technology and other technological innovations.

March

Melissa and Brianna at the Impact Hub in Johannesburg

Africa Blockchain Week: Director of Corporate Strategy, Melissa Quinn, and Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, attended Africa Blockchain Week in South Africa. While there, they attended multiple conferences and events and made great connections with a number of companies, holding productive meeting with Wala, Yes Bank, BlockMesh (to discuss next steps for the Universal Connectivity Alliance), FluffyPony aka Riccardo Spagni, ConsenSys, and IXO Foundation.

White Paper V.5: Our dev team published the most recent technical white paper. Read it here.

Tech Demo — Live uRaiden Channel Updates on RM Wallet Between Two Distinct Mobile MeshNets: This time we wanted to go a couple of steps forward and show you how the token balances are adjusted live on the devices after a transaction. In the demo, you can see that when a mobile phone purchases data, the channel balance adjusts, and the UI on the wallet is updated to correspond to this so users of RightMesh apps can see in real-time how many tokens they have spent purchasing data.

Live uRaiden Channel Updates on RM Wallet Between Two Distinct Mobile MeshNets

TokenFest: Our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, attended TokenFest in San Francisco. The two-day networking event focused on the business and technology of tokenization. Brianna spoke on ‘Overcoming Blockchain Connectivity and Usability Issues.’

TokenFest 2018

Superpeer Testing: The Superpeer was successfully tested on 15 devices at the same time. Every phone was able to see all other devices, as shown in the photo below.

Superpeer Demo

Women of Silicon Valley: Our Director of Corporate Strategy, Melissa Quinn spoke on ‘Global Connectivity, Equality and Technology’ at the Women of Silicon Valley conference. She was joined by Rachel Cheng, Senior Software Developer for the RightMesh project.

World Blockchain Summit: Across the globe, RightMesh project Co-Founder and COO, Chris Jensen, attended the World Blockchain Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. He met with our Community Manager, Obiefuna Chima Ezenwugo (Obi) and made him an official Nodebody!

While in Kenya, Chris also met with Zack Matere, the inventor of the Leo Network of Community Notice Boards — spoiler, he became our first Ambassador later in the year!

Left: Melissa and Rachel at Women in Tech Series (San Francisco), Right: Obi and Chris in Nairobi

April

Cryptopalooza: Dr. Jason Ernst, CTO of the RightMesh project, spoke to a sold out crowd in San Francisco at Cryptopalooza — A Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Summit. Jason discussed the technical aspects of mesh networking and RightMesh.

Dr. Jason Ernst Presenting at Cryptopalooza

CryptoChicks Conference and Hackathon: Our team had an excellent time at CryptoChicks in Toronto, a conference with the mission to grow the economic, professional and leadership potential of women in blockchain technologies. Brianna MacNeil spoke on a panel on ‘Building a Blockchain Business: Idea to Enterprise’ and RightMesh Developers, Rachel and Sri, presented a workshop on ‘Building Mesh Applications’.

The team coming together to discuss app development in Dhaka

Global Collaboration: The tech teams from Singapore, Canada and Bangladesh came together in the Dhaka, Bangladesh office to discuss the RightMesh project development. RightMesh project CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst held a workshop on mesh networking followed by a tutorial and discussion on payment channels for the team. Our Lead Mesh Networking Scientist, Dr. Lucien Loiseau delivered a great presentation on DTN’s that also sparked a lively discussion.

Dana, Nir and Brea in Geneva

UN eCommerce Week: RightMesh project CCO, Dana Harvey and Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, joined discussions in Geneva on the development opportunities and challenges associated with the evolving digital economy. Dana and Brea had the opportunity to meet up with our advisor, Nir Kshetri and with Michael Hanley, head of Digital Communications at the World Economic Forum to discuss connectivity as a first step for global economic inclusion.

Global Inclusion Blockchain Conference: Further south in Singapore, John Lyotier, RightMesh project CEO, spoke on a panel about ‘Inclusive Blockchain and Fintech’ alongside Mr. Steve Leonard from SGInnovate, Mr. Duscan Stojanovic from True Global Ventures and Debbie Watkins from Fern Software. This two-day bilingual conference also covered macroeconomics, finance & investment, regulation, and technical matters related to blockchain.

May

Tech Demo — Superpeer: Our team conducted a Superpeer demo, showing how we can connect multiple local meshes into one giant mesh to connect different parts of the world. The demo showed two local meshes, one in Bangladesh and one in Canada, connected to a Superpeer and transmitting messages in real time across the globe. The demo only illustrated two local meshes connecting, but with the Superpeer, we will be able to connect multiple meshes across the globe.

Blockchain Week New York: RightMesh project Co-Founders, John Lyotier and Chris Jensen, joined Brianna MacNeil in New York to attend New York Blockchain Week — including Ethereal Summit and Consensus 2018. With over 250 speakers and 8000 attendees, the conferences brought the entire blockchain community together. Our team had an amazing time meeting some of our early contributors, advisors, and other passionate entrepreneurs from around the globe.

AiDecentralized: RightMesh project CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst and Marketing and Events Manager, Amber McLennan, attended AiDecentralized in Toronto, Canada. AiDecentralized is an ACM Global Initiative that brings 870,000 AI Practitioners from across the world together with 280,000 Blockchainers and Cryptographers. Dr. Jason Ernst spoke on a technical panel on alongside Ben Goertzel from SingularityNET.io (who would become our future partner), Barry Rowe of WhoKnows Inc, Russell Verteeten of ConsenSys Canada and Adam Gravitis of TodaQ.

Adam Gravitis, Ben Goertzel, Jason Ernst, Barry Rowe and Rusell Verteeten.

Successful Completion of TGE: We were beyond excited to announce the successful completion of our Crowd Contribution, the final round of the TGE!

The round was structured into two days. During the first 24 hours, to allow maximum participation, RightMesh imposed a low individual cap per contributor. This ensured that all whitelisted participants who desired to participate were assured of receiving tokens on this date. After 24 hours, the cap was lifted to allow for larger contributions.

Tech Demo — RightMesh Offline Multi-Hop: This demo showcases offline communication between five mobile devices using mesh networking technology. In the video, a RightMesh-enabled Android app called Ripple demonstrates data transferring from a source device to a destination device by changing the colour on the screen of each device the data passes through. The demo shows Sachin, our Mobile API/ SDK Developer, sending a message from one end of the mesh to the other.

RightMesh Offline Multi-hop Demo

June

Social Impact Tour: Our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, attended BSIC Conference, The Impact Summit, and the Inaugural Blockchain for Impact Summit at the UN. Between the three, Brea was a speaker and hackathon judge. While at BSIC she met up with RightMesh advisor, Micha Benoliel.

Advisor Mohamed Elkasstawi: Our team was thrilled to announce that Mohamed Elkasstawi, the founding partner of zk Capital, joined the RightMesh team as an advisor.

Corporate Retreat: Our team in Canada attended a corporate retreat at Loon Lake. While there, the team did a deep dive into our process, people, product, platform, place, performance and purpose. We also set corporate and team goals that would guide us through rapid growth.

From Left: Dr. Jason Ernst, Dr. Jeronimo Castrillon, Dr. Donald Knuth and Dr. Julie Williamson

ACM Reception: RightMesh project CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst, attended the ACM Council Meeting and Reception in San Francisco over the weekend. With over 100,000 members, the ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.

Dr. Ernst was recognized by the practitioners board for his talk and panel spot at AiDecentralized which has received more than 20 million unique views world-wide! Dr. Ernst also received appreciation from the ACM Sig Governing board and a letter from the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for the ACM-FCA initiative he helped craft on “Including Negative Side Effects in Research”.

Dogecon: RightMesh was excited to participate in Dogecon in Vancouver, Canada. The event was truly a celebration of the social layer of crypto culture, filled with dance parties, embracing memes and tweetstorms, rap shows, and of course Doges. John Lyotier, spoke on a panel on Values within Crypto Currency, while our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, spoke on the ‘State of Global Connectivity’.

Brianna speaking at the State of the Doge Address

July

Token Economics Model: We had a great session reviewing the token economics model with the RightMesh project Advisor on Economics, Data Science & Algorithms, Rogayeh Tabrizi in July. We analyzed the different decisions users can take on role, price, and effort to maximize utility from the network which set us up well for future planning.

Released our Lessons Learned on ICO Governance: The filing of the “exempt distribution reports” with the BCSC officially concluded the RightMesh TGE process, meaning we had emerged from an intense period of regulatory uncertainty. Because of this regulatory uncertainty, we had to ensure we fully complied with Canadian securities law to give the RightMesh TGE a better chance at being successful and withstanding regulatory scrutiny at a later date.

Completing this process also meant we are finally at liberty to provide greater clarity on the pausing of the RightMesh TGE as first announced on March 26, 2018 and its subsequent restarting with the public distribution on May 30/31, 2018 and the unlocking of the tokens on June 29, 2018.

Simon and Melissa at Korea Blockchain Week

Korea Blockchain Week: Our Director of Corporate Strategy, Melissa and CFO, Simon, traveled to Seoul to attend Korea Blockchain Week. They attended multiple events while there, but the stand out was the Beyond Blocks Conference. At the conference, it became clear that the community in Asia is keen to build relationships and collaborate on scaling the industry. People were most interested in use cases of technology and how the tokens flow.

August

Technical Roadmap Released: Our team recognized the need for faster mainnet deployment and released a detailed technical roadmap for the next 6–8 months.

Dr. Jason Ernst Accepted into Forbes Technology Council: We were very proud to announce that Dr. Jason Ernst, RightMesh Co-founder and CTO, had been accepted into Forbes Technology Council — an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives.

Indigenous Mapping Workshop: Our SDK Developer, Keefer Rourke, alongside Dr. Dan Gillis spoke at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop in Montreal. The four-day conference discussed a variety of geospatial tools and networking solutions, including RightMesh and their current work with the community of Rigolet on the eNuk app. Keefer and Dan hosted a successful workshop on ‘Identifying Problems RightMesh can Solve’ and spoke on ‘eNuk: using mesh technology to support climate change monitoring’.

September

Decent Documentary: The RightMesh team partnered with the Refugium Foundation to participate in their upcoming documentary, “Decent — How Blockchain Can Change the World.” The film plans to feature real-life use cases of Distributed Ledger Technology which offer solutions to societal issues ranging from a lack of internet connectivity to aiding refugees. Decent will be one of the first documentaries to explore how blockchain companies like RightMesh can have a massive social impact and benefit real people every day.

OSLO Freedom Forum: RightMesh CPO, Saju Abraham, and Marketing and Events Specialist, Amber McLennan, traveled to New York to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum. This event brought together the world’s bravest activists and dissidents to meet with leaders from technology, business, fashion, philanthropy, music, and art.

Saju and Amber with the team from ConsenSys at the OSLO Freedom Forum

RightMesh exhibited at the interactive expo alongside the team at ConsenSys, Hala, and Truepic. With over 1,200 attendees the expo was an excellent opportunity to meet with other social impact projects, activists, and influencers who are interested in use cases for our platform.

Annual Hackathon: Our office in Khulna, Bangladesh hosted their annual Hackathon for 2018. Cross-departmental teams of five worked to tackle challenges faced in the transportation, education or healthcare sectors — or challenges faced by global refugees — over a 24 hour period.

October

CEBIT ASEAN: Operations Manager, Ayesha Siddika, was selected by ITC SheTrades to be a delegate at CEBIT ASEAN in Thailand. Hosted by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand, CEBIT ASEAN brings together technology and business leaders from diverse industries to discuss collaboration and innovation.

Ayesha at CEBIT ASEAN

SXSW: Out of thousands of submissions, RightMesh CEO, John Lyotier, along with Senior Advisor of MIT Media Lab, Michael Casey, CEO of Mattereum, Vinay Gupta, and a representative from Colendi, will be speaking on ‘Combating Global Poverty on the Blockchain.’

Tenta Partnership: We announced a new integration partnership with Tenta. Tenta is a private and secure crypto browser project that is joining us in our mission to get more individuals online, especially in areas that are underserved or lacking proper infrastructure.

November

MITACS: In November, RightMesh’s parent company, Left, and the School of Computer Science at the University of Guelph, announced a $2.13M collaboration with Mitacs to support the development of RightMesh.

The project, the largest-ever in partnership with the School of Computer Science, has been recognized by the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and the Honourable Navdeep Singh Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development in Canada.

Press Conference to announce $2.13M Mitacs partnership: Chris Jensen (Co-founder), Mike Morden (Mayor-Elect, Maple Ridge), Dr. Jason Ernst (CTO), Katzie Nation Representative, Dan Ruimy (Member of Parliament), John Lyotier (Co-founder), Nic Durish (student), Dr. Dan Gillis (Primary Investigator, University of Guelph), Jennifer Wilkie (CTO, Mitacs), Dana Harvey (CCO)

Canada’s Top 100: RightMesh parent company, Left, was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers on Mediacorp Canada Inc.’s 2019 list.

Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 and 500: Left, the parent company of RightMesh, ranked 16th on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ list in Canada and 101st on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list in North America.

Bluzelle Partnership: We announced that RightMesh’s mobile mesh networking and Bluzelle’s swarm storage will combine to seamlessly provide a decentralized platform providing connectivity and database storage for Dapps. As a proof of concept, RightMesh will be integrating Bluzelle’s swarm storage into some in-house developed apps.

Asia Roadshow: Our team went on a roadshow through Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, and Singapore for Asia Blockchain Week. The purpose of the trip was to expand our network in Asia, conduct partnership meetings, and grow our existing communities there.

Our team hosting a meetup in Vietnam

December

Ambassador Program: We announced the launch of the RightMesh Ambassador program to help spread RightMesh’s mission and grow our ecosystem all around the world.

Our first RightMesh Ambassador is Zack Matere. Zack is driven by his personal mission to connect local populations in Africa with the internet. In 2009, as a rural farmer, Zack made the audacious decision to bring relevant information, news, and connectivity to his community by riding into the nearest town each week, accessing the internet, printing off as much relevant information as possible, and posting it on a network of wooden noticeboards in his village market centre.

LaBitConf: RightMesh CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst, and Community Development Manager, Jose Ortega, ventured down to Santiago, Chile to attend LaBitConf 2019, the biggest blockchain conference in Latin America.

Africa eCommerce Week: RightMesh Ambassador, zack matere, attended the Africa eCommerce Week in Nairobi, Kenya. Jointly organized by the African and European Union, and hosted by the government of Kenya. The event had over 2000 attendees and was a fantastic opportunity to meet with Ministers, senior government representatives, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.

IITA: We signed an MoU with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for the design, development, and testing of a mobile application that will allow smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to capture and share data about crop disease without using Internet or mobile data.

Partnerships

Featured Press

We’ve had a lot of great press coverage this year with features in over 90 articles.