Protocol Weekly — Issue #3
Protocol Weekly is a newsletter to exclusively showcase the progress of Ethereum layer-2 protocols.
This week is a massive week for our beloved ETH protocols! My personal highlights include Engima, Dharma and {Set} launching on private & public test-nets! On an aside, while speculators are worrying that crypto is dead, the amount of infrastructure being built in the background is tremendous. We’re also seeing the rise in importance of UX in the crypto space — something that’s really needed in order to increase adoption. ENS is a good move in the right direction although still has a few hurdles to get over. Gas-less transactions also play a part in enabling a more seamless user experience. But the questions of how do you pay for ETH/gas when you don’t have any ETH is still unanswered. Tokenised fiat and crypto banks could be the answer but there’s a greater adoption and regulation piece that needs to be covered. In case you haven’t heard about tokenised fiat, here’s a good primer: C.R. https://blog.lamden.io/as-much-as-businesses-need-blockchains-the-mass-market-of-everyday-users-are-just-as-much-in-need-4b4d8eb52328
On a finishing note, we hope you enjoy this edition of Protocol Weekly! Feel free to reach out to me @kermankohli if you have any suggestions or feedback!
From TN Lee (Head of Business):
- There are 4 new entries into the growing list of decentralized projects in the Kyber ecosystem: Betoken, MoatFund, Easwap, and Galion. These projects have integrated with Kyber by using the public documentation guides and our smart contracts.
- With over 30 members, our Vietnamese developer team is an important hub of activity and now they can look forward to a brand new office that provides the required tools to support their daily tasks.
- We’ve launched our official Japanese Twitter account to provide our growing Japanese community with updates in their native language. Taisuke was involved in a workshop in Tokyo that was attended by 40 participants ranging from mainstream crypto investors to developers and influencers. This is just the start of many more events and activities planned to grow the community and ecosystem in Japan.
One thing we need help with:
Integrate with Kyber! We are looking for teams integrate Kyber’s liquidity network into their project and provide us with feedback.
Documentation can be found here: https://developer.kyber.network/docs/Start
From Janine Videva (Head of Marketing):
- Our Liquidity App can now be experienced on iOS under https://liquidity-network-ios-beta.herokuapp.com/
- This week’s exercises available at Achievement.Network are about hints update and arrays.
- Our first community competition Canvas.Liquidity.Network is entering its second week. Due to the high level of participation, we have enlarged the board and reduced the maximum number of pixels per checkout to 1500px. Go and have some fun over https://canvas.liquidity.network/ For more information about participation. https://medium.com/@liquidity.network/1-community-competition-5a69c5e3c2d8
One thing we need help with:
We are looking for demo video maker for our app!
From Titus Capilnean (Director of Marketing):
- Identity.com is live! Formerly known as the Civic Marketplace, Identity is the official new home of the decentralized identity verification ecosystem.
- We announced several new partners: Block66, The Gimli Project, and HireHopping. We’ve got lots more in the coming weeks.
- We’re proud to have been recognized as a top blockchain company by One World Identity in their latest report, “Blockchain and Identity in 2018: A Year of Promise and Pilots.” Learn more on our blog.
One thing we need help with:
We’re hiring! Take a look at our Careers page and send any talent our way that you think might be a good fit for Civic.
From Jay Kurahashi-Sofue (Marketing):
- We launched part two of our Developer Series on our blog last Thursday (8.2). In this week’s post, we cover how to setup an Order Server which will allow us to signal intent to trade as a Maker on the network. If you’re an engineer and are interested in joining a focused discussion around blockchain development, we welcome everyone to join our Developers Telegram.
- Similar to last week’s update, we want to continue to spread awareness around the AirSwap Widget; examples include Bounty0x, AdChain, and more! If you’re an organization looking to provide direct access to a token trading network, please reach out to jay@airswap.io.
- Tomorrow (8.8), we will be hosting a Facebook livestream at 4:30PM EST. Our discussion will revolve around new tools for trade. We welcome everyone to tune in!
One thing we need help with:
We’re continuing our search for a Technical Product Manager to join the AirSwap team! If you’re interested in the TPM role or want to submit a general application, please submit your application in the “Careers” section here.
From Inje Yeo (CPO):
- Private TestNet Launch- We’re gearing up for a private TestNet release this week. Our contracts and Javascript dev tools allow you to create Sets, make orders for Sets, and bundle/unbundle Sets. If you’re interested in developing a Set relayer or any other project using Sets, contact me at inje@setprotocol.com.
- Software Engineer Job Listing — We recently posted a new job listing for a software engineer. Are you a talented software engineer looking to create the next generation of finance? We’d love to hear from you: https://angel.co/setprotocol/jobs
- Developer Portal — We’re building out our developer portal and docs to onboard developers who want to build on Set. This’ll be your one stop shop for API docs and examples of projects you can build.
One thing we need help with:
Want to be a part of the decentralized finance movement? We’re looking for developers to build projects on top of our protocol. Be the first developer to build on Set Protocol by getting in touch with me at inje@setprotocol.com
From Aaron Mayer (Community):
- Enigma’s testnet is now available in simulation mode! Try it out for yourself!
- We’ll be hosting an AMA on our Developer Forum next Tuesday — ask your burning questions directly to the founders and team members!
One thing we need help with:
Always looking for ambassadors to join the community!
From Brendan Dharma (Head of Growth Operations):
- Released the Dharma Relayer Kit. Relayer Kit gives you everything you need to start building a Dharma debt relayer — React front-end, database & demo blockchain, customizable UI, and Dharma integration. Link: https://relayer.dharma.io
- Launched our Developer Portal. At launch, Dev Portal includes a high-level primer on Dharma Protocol, refreshed API documentation, starter kits and tutorials, and an extensive FAQ. We’ll be adding additional features to Dev Portal over the next few weeks. Link: https://developer.dharma.io
- Most of our team is in Beijing and Bangalore this week. If you live in one of those cities and can meet up, reach out to Brendan and we’ll set it up
One thing we need help with:
We are hiring a marketing manager on Angelist.
From Adrienne Burke-Moran (Content and Community):
- Codex Protocol Partners with Bluethumb, Australia’s largest Art Marketplace https://medium.com/me/stories/public
- Coffee Break Q&A with Codex Protocol Head of Product — Dan Grachanin https://medium.com/codexprotocol/coffee-break-q-a-with-codex-protocol-head-of-product-dan-grachanin-91607a7aa81f
- Codex received NFT Validation at the Nifty Conference, the world’s first dedicated conference and hackathon on Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Blockchain Gaming + Collectibles. No errors were found for Codex Protocol https://twitter.com/JessyBlock/status/1023859361251254272
From Daniel Wang (Founder of Loopring Foundation):
- The Loopring Foundation has hired two full-time engineers on board, both focusing on the back-end development team as well as progressing relay development.
- Progress on the DEX backend, improving Relay 1.0’s performance while Relay 2.0 (Labelled Lightcone) is being designed ~ approximately two more weeks to finalise designs.
- Updates on the DEX front-end included the launch of 18 tokens on Loopr and Circulr for trading.
- Loopring.js sdk has been updated to a 1.0.4 version.
- Loopr-iOS development in progress with a focus on UI — examples of features to be shown are: redesigned swipeable menu ViewController, improved UX for sending tokens and submitting an order,
optimized the SocketIO connection for better performance.
One thing we need help with:
We need contributors for content writing, preferred bilinguist.
From Kevin Lu (Product):
- This week we have been on full force with the product. Near the end of last week we had finished our high-level user flow sketch showing the main steps that a user should be taken through during the payment process.
- We have made more progress by sketching out low-fi screens to ensure that the MVP conveys the right messages to users. While the low-fi screens focus mainly on providing a template to our designs the next steps would be creating the hi-fi versions of the screens that focus more on UI/UX.
- The executor contract contains the majority of the logic of interacting with the various contracts in the 8x architecture. This is a big milestone as we’ve been working hard to develop all the other necessary components before finalising the executor. All code is thoroughly tested through our commitment to using test-driven-development practices. For those of you who aren’t technical, what it means is that our tests are written first and then the code to ensure they all pass.
- “Why does 8x Protocol need a token/coin?” This article takes a closer look into how the 8x system operates as well as introducing some economics concepts that will be apparent in the 8x Protocol ecosystem.
One thing we need help with:
Looking for businesses and services to integrate our MVP when it is released, if you or anyone you know would be interested please contact us (even if you are not a business or service and would love to contribute and experience the consumer end please get in touch) at hello@8xprotocol.com
Participating Projects:
Kyber Network, Liquidity Network, Civic, AirSwap, Set Protocol, Enigma, Dharma Protocol, Codex Protocol, Loopring, 8x Protocol.
Updates Not Included This Week:
Origin Protocol.
Know a protocol that should be part of this list? Drop us an email at hello@8xprotocol.com.
08/08/2018
