Design Update
On Thursday, the design firm began work redesigning the ELIX app. They are finishing a preliminary design plan this week, and will then work on a wireframe version. We look forward to sharing their new designs in the near future.
Mobile Update
Our smart contracts are now successfully deployed to the Ropsten network, and we are able to interact with the different functionalities of the lending, payments, and crowdfunding platforms. With this transition, we’re able to provide ourselves with a mock simulation of what it would be like to use the application once we’re live on the main Ethereum network, and pay attention to the minute details that will help provide our users with the best possible experience while using the application. Our Alpha testing will be coming up soon on our schedule.
As we have discussed before, our users’ safety is our highest priority, and we’ve made some strides to ensure that users keep their information and access to the application as secure as possible. In our previous demos, we had demonstrated the process of creating a wallet by generating a mnemonic which would output a user’s unique wallet address. However, we have upgraded our mnemonic generation from random strings to the BIP39 protocol, which will generate mnemonics that are unique and can be validated according to their checksum. These mnemonics are similar in implementation to those used in the TREZOR or Ledger hardware wallets. Using this system, users can validate whether they had correctly entered their mnemonics when attempting to import their wallet into the mobile app. Soon, we will implement an additional security method of requiring users to enter a password/pin to open the app. This password/pin would be saved locally (not stored in any database outside of their device), and would be an optional protection to use.
Smart Contracts
Our crowdfunding automated testing is now complete. We’ve created many test cases for each crowdfunding function using the development framework Truffle. All test cases pass. We’ve also integrated additional flexibility to our crowdfunding contract, giving hosts and creators the ability to speed up the reimbursement process for failed campaigns by specifying groups of users for the contract to reimburse at a time. One possible setup in the long term could require creators to lock a certain amount of Ether in a second smart contract, and in the event of crowdfunding failure this ether could be used to run functions for redistributing tokens. This setup is still totally decentralized. These additional changes will make our smart contracts more efficient and flexible. Individual users can still reclaim tokens for failed campaigns using the reclaim function described in the crowdfunding documentation of our Github demo, and we may run Boost campaigns in this fashion until the company establishes traction. We anticipate this completed contract being the only Ethereum crowdfunding technology needed to launch Boost.
Additionally, with the added development contributions of AE.studio, we’ve converted our token manager to manage ELIX and produce Token P (the rewards token). We’ve also built a set of automated tests for the new token manager.
Below, we show a demo video of the crowdfunding and lending automated Truffle tests passing:
Volatility
We’ve implemented and tested a method for reducing volatility via an additional third party volatility reduction address. This optional address is authorized by the lender and borrower to alter the loan amount and interest based upon market volatility when the loan is requested or in progress. As mentioned in our past blog posts, this address can be another smart contract address or a third party trusted by the lender or borrower. This should add additional flexibility to our smart contracts moving forward.
This week, we’re finishing automated testing for the token manager, and testing options for more complicated mining functions for Token P. This could include adjusting the mining rate of Token P based upon the amount mined so far — potentially smoothing out changes in the ELIX non-circulating supply in the far future. We’ve implemented one version that does this already, which we’ll be testing over the next week.
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