Blockchain

Elk: Blockchain- IoT Development Board; Exclusive Interview with the CTO Islam Mustafa

Elk: Blockchain- IoT Development Board

Elk helps you start building decentralized blockchain-connected devices and hardware projects. The Co-founder and CTO, Islam Mustafa will be sharing more details with us in this interview.

Please tell us your name and about yourself?

I’m Islam Mustafa, co-founder and CTO of Elk, where we are developing a hardware development board for building blockchain-connected devices. .

I was also co-founder and CTO of Integreight, a company that builds products in the electronics education and makers market.

My main expertise is in developing embedded systems and controlling them using web, mobile and desktop applications.

What is Elk?

Elk is a hardware development board for building blockchain-connected devices. You can use it to build hardware that interfaces with Ethereum, Bitcoin, IPFS, and more. It is plug-and-play just like an Arduino, offers over-the-air upgrades, and includes a mobile app that allows you to communicate with your hardware privately through decentralized technologies.

Why ELK, What problems are you solving in the blockchain market?

We believe current blockchain development is subpar, let alone blockchain development for embedded devices. There’s room to make a 10x improvement in its UX, and that’s what we’re set out to do. With Elk, you won’t have to deal with wallet and keys management, fuss over setting up nodes, tune their parameters to run well on an embedded device, handle crashes, etc. We are delivering the Arduino-like experience to blockchain development, with all the libraries that Arduino already supports.

What features and services make the Elk hardware unique?

Elk is fully open-source and supports a multitude of decentralized technologies including Ethereum, Bitcoin, IPFS, IOTA, Whisper, and more. You can use it to build devices and sensors that interact with smart contracts, accept crypto payments, and communicate privately with no central servers. Here are a few examples in the video below.

What is the technology behind Elk and what kind of devices can you build on it?

Elk is a development board that houses both a microprocessor and a microcontroller. The microcontroller is to provide the seamless Arduino experience, and the microprocessor is for running nodes. By default and when possible, Elk runs a light node and communicates directly with the blockchain and not through a hosted service. Elk pushes decentralization all the way to the embedded device itself.

Elk lets you start building the devices of tomorrow. Build an electric socket that people can rent with Ethereum, or lock Bitcoin into a treadmill that you can only get back when you work out, or build a serverless home automation system that respects your privacy using the Whisper messaging protocol. The possibilities are truly endless.

Is Elk ready to use, at what stage of development is the Elk project?

Elk will be available to pre-order next month (June 2019) on Kickstarter and will be shipped by the end of the year. You can sign up at elk.cc to get your early bird discount.

Are there any investment opportunities you will like to share with us from Elk?

Elk was part of Tachyon’s 2018 fall cohort, and before that raised investment from Endure capital, 500 Falcons, Flat6labs and other angel investors. Tachyon is a blockchain accelerator by Consensys ventures.

Could you tell us about your team and customer support?

We’re a team of 7 engineers whose experience vary between, hardware, software and tech

support. Our team previously supported tens of thousand of makers building hardware projects.

Do you have more information for our readers?

We are on a mission to bring blockchain and decentralization into the physical world. Our product is open source and offers true decentralization. We’re very excited to put it in the hands of developers soon.

For more information, visit: https://elk.cc/

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