Expanse is having an EXPEX contest! One lucky project will receive one year of listing on our decentralized exchange at no cost. That is a $10,000 USD value. Here’s how to participate and give your favorite project a boost: 

1. “Like” the contest tweet:  https://twitter.com/ExpanseOfficial/status/1150950804209250304
2. Type the name of the project/coin ticker in the comments below the tweet.
3. Retweet the contest tweet. 

One lucky project will be selected randomly for the free year of listing. The contest ends July 30. Watch for the announcement of the winner in our August 1 newsletter. Spread the word!

The United Nations, at its General Assembly in November 2014, declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day. Expanse is proud to be part of a global recognition program that promotes technical skills. We recognize the need to empower more young people to pursue technology careers, specifically blockchain.

Over the last two years, our Chief Technology Officer, Asim Ashfaq, has hired five interns fresh from college and taught them to code. He puts them through intensive training in his state-of-the-art training center, then assigns them to tasks working on Expanse projects. All of the interns have either stayed on as Expanse developers or were placed with other developments teams. 

”All of my interns came fresh to me,” said Asim. “Now they are all pros in their field.”

Many thanks to Asim for his dedication and commitment to teaching our youth how to code!

Asim reports that there is some work to be done on network stats and graphs. It should be complete and ready for release next week. All other enhancements are  ready!

Jitendra Rathod, newsletter contributing editor, interviewed Dania Ilmas, Expanse Project Manager. in regard to her new role with Expanse.

Dania Ilmas is the latest addition to Team Expanse. She is from Islamabad, Pakistan and works alongside Asim and his team from our Islamabad office.

Dania holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from COMSATS University, Islamabad, ranked amongst the top 10 universities in Pakistan.  

Thanks to her mother and uncle who both worked in the IT industry, growing up, technology was a big part of Dania’s life, ever since she was a little girl. “My family is very tech savvy and I had the opportunity to play around with computers from a very young age.” Dania regards her mother and uncle as the guiding light behind her interest in IT.

After finishing university, Dania started working as a .Net developer for a while and then shifted to Software Quality Assurance since she loved finding bugs and getting good quality software delivered to clients. Working in QA eventually exposed her to the crypto industry as she got involved in blockchain projects. She has been working in this field for the past one and a half years. 

Dania recently joined Expanse through a referral. “It’s been only a while but I am already enjoying my time here. The entire team is highly motivated and very encouraging.” She will be working for Expanse as a Project Manager and also in the quality assurance department. “My work is related to ensuring fixes, updates and newer versions/improvements in the project.” She also looks forward to getting involved with the community to understand its aspirations and deliver a better experience from her and her team’s end.

On being asked what excites her the most at Expanse, Dania says that it is the immense potential for growth. “It is always amazing to create new things and to add value to aspects that improve the existing project. Since Expanse is an Ethereum fork, I see a lot of potential there along with the ability to customize that can make this network unique.”

Dania says that she looks forward to start work and getting her hands dirty with some exciting projects. “I am up for the challenge and hopefully I can find solutions to the things that will come my way.”

Talking about her view of the crypto industry, Dania feels that the future of currency lies in crypto and blockchain. “Expanse can contribute greatly to this technology with the help of its dynamic community and will be able to innovate solutions that help us grow in the world of crypto.”

Dania looks forward to working with Expanse and she feels that this is a turning point in her yet nascent career. She believes that this is a big opportunity for her to be part of the Expanse community that will be growing in the future as well.

Here is a collection of compelling quotes posted over the last two weeks in our various Discord channels:

From Christopher Franko:
“I’ve just kind of come to realize that we HAVE to treat development and crypto in general as a marathon instead of a sprint. We can only sprint for so long; we have been sprinting as an industry for nine years. Now that we have the co-opting of crypto happening from big industries like facebook, the stress to sprint is even higher. But maybe it’s better to just go back to our origins and focus on what made crypto great originally. It seems like a lot of our early adopters forgot. Because they got all that money and just stopped caring about the mission.”.

From a Community Member:
“Agree with @frk. No one really cares about privacy and financial freedom in 2019. Most of crypto anarchists are gone.”

From a Community Member:
“…this is where you have no choice but to admit you’ve got at least a pocket of libertarian ideals, if you truly care about it. What happened with the ICO phenomenon and the previous “moon” phase is a conundrum―global access (virtually), yet individual free choice of participation.

All the ETH- and EXP-style stuff is still very young, and we really don’t know exactly where it’s going. Any route any of this takes, and its clash with government desire to impose regulations (unless it benefits them economically–as it may the institutions the technology is “intended” to “circumvent”), at all, would be hard to argue ethically about. This dilemma is the reason it came about. The fight over its intent is happening and will continue to happen at every stage.”