Update on Ethergem Project:

5 min readMar 1, 2022

Rebranding:

Ethergem have rebranded to EGEM — The website https://egem.io has been revamped for cleaner and more professional look. We have integrated a softer color scheme with a smoother logo.

General update:

The EGEM community has been busy since launch bringing as many features to the blockchain as possible.

As always you can interface with the EGEM blockchain via Metamask and now via Brave browser as well. To connect to either of these you can follow the instructions at https://wiki.egem.io/egemwallet

EGEM is due for another halving in approximately 2 weeks. As such release of supply will reduce by 50%.

EGEM has adopted TrueUSD as it’s USD token. More information on this is further down this update

The community has increased exponentially since our launch in 2018. We have brought on more devs to help with the task of adding functionality to the chain. We have also seen a large influx of developers hosting and developing their dApps on EGEM, thanks to our outreach and the low cost of transacting on-chain.

EGEM Devs have been working closely with these teams and helping out wherever possible, but what is most exciting to see is developers of these projects working closely with each other and integrating their projects with each other where possible. We see developers creating DeFi applications, bridges, NFTs and marketplaces and games. As such this is a very exciting time for EGEM as we continue moving forward and grow.

Block Explorer:

EGEM block explorer has been updated and now resides at https://blockscout.egem.io

With Blockscout EGEM is able to offer more functionality and information for users. You can now view completed blocks and uncles and the Accounts page automatically sorts as a rich list. Blockscout has the option to show all ERC tokens currently available on EGEM with their total supply and total number of holders of those tokens and finally you can view the current APIs to connect your applications to the blockchain in real time.

Mining:

EGEM is primarily a Proof-of-Work chain and currently has no plans to move to Proof of Stake. Our reasoning is that PoW is a tried and tested method of blockchain security and with PirlGuard implemented we have successfully fought off bad actors attacking the blockchain.

Throughout development mining EGEM has been profitable for all miners, including those using graphics cards from as far back as 2016. Unlike Ethereum, EGEM also supports 4gb cards.

Nodes:

Quarrynodes (Masternodes) remain active requiring 10,000 EGEM for a tier 1 node and 30,000 for an additional tier 2 node. Collateral for nodes is cold-staked and not at risk.

Quarrynode rewards are paid for every block and balances are updated and withdrawable every 15 minutes by the discord bot (https://discord.egem.io). The Community has come together to make setting up a node inside a docker container as easy as running a single command. Requirements and instructions on setting up your Quarrynode is available at https://wiki.egem.io/qnregister and https://wiki.egem.io/qnsetup respectively.

Currently there is an average over 450 Quarrynodes running on EGEM

DeFi:

EGEM now supports De-Fi through Rubyswap. This is available via https://rubyswap.finance and connects directly with Metamask. Rubyswap has its own token, Ruby with contract address 0xB6094af67bf43779ab704455c5DF02AD9141871B

Rubswap offers several pairs for Yield farming when staking LP tokens, but users can create liquidity pools and trade any pair they wish. Rubyswap As more pairs become popular, further farms will be added. Credit here goes to the Rubyswap team for the work that they have put in. In development they worked closely with EGEM core devs to ensure a successful launch and continue to do so for smooth operation of their platform.

Bridging:

Users can wrap and bridge tokens across to and from Binance smart chain using https://bridge.egem.io Our development of a bridge necessitated the requirement to adopt a USD token for value transfer and we settled on TUSD as our medium for this purpose.

The current list of supported tokens and their contract addresses:

EGEM Chain:

WEGEM (0xE5fca20e55811D461800A853f444FBC6f5B72Bea)

RUBY (0xB6094af67bf43779ab704455c5DF02AD9141871B)

TUSD (0x33F4999ee298CAa16265E87f00e7A8671c01D870)

WBNB (0x97271a78C9778F226C1c4eFe63876c04f8cD8F40)

BSC/BNB Chain

WEGEM: (0xF6AD9a164a0f1CfE5C3e7bc5c2B9E684de4aC9c5)

WRUBY: (0x4d6eEaC6912608529114Cc72b3fB6C27Fd812942)

TUSD: (0x14016e85a25aeb13065688cafb43044c2ef86784)

WBNB: (0xbb4CdB9CBd36B01bD1cBaEBF2De08d9173bc095c)

There are independent development teams also building their own bridges for multiple bridging options to EGEM and the devs are working closely with them.

NFTs:

The Devs have been working closely with several NFT developers who have launched, or are in the process of launching NFTs and NFT marketplaces on EGEM. These include:

ToePunks

Owls

Gempunks

Rubyswap (Powered by Bidify)

Faucet:

For those interested in EGEM, whether it be for development or usage, there is a faucet available on our discord to allow you to explore the many features of the chain. Instructions can be found here: https://medium.com/@egemofficial/egem-faucet-released-a265ebf5cb73