ADD.XYZ 2020 Year in Review

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ADD.xyz

8 min readJan 4, 2021

2020 has been a tumultuous year for all.

We marked the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 with news that our V2 platform was now live on Main Net, complete with lending across 5 protocols and very own privacy mixer integration with tornado.cash.

After 6 months of painstaking efforts by the executive, design and development teams at ADD since our token launch. We have undergone a thorough audit of 18 of our smart contracts and security practises to get us to the final stretch with the help of Peckshield, the leading auditor of DeFi protocols. (See their github report here)

This is a great start for the new year as we have finished weeks ahead of our intended launch date in January 2021. We are happy to also announce that several other DeFi solutions currently baking in the oven will also be launched very shortly.

Changes to be implemented before 2021 includes Curve protocol and Yearn Data Feeds to be completed (currently waiting on DIA.Data to complete this build), and our own Bl3nd3r ETH/DAI mixer pool to be launched on main-net before the end of 2020.

Year in Review

January 2020 — June 2020

The year started well. In January 2020, we started to develop our lending platform MVP and launched our beta version of the platform by February. We participated in a Ethereum meet-up event and really sparked interested within the ETH community. By March we were adding support for USDC and over 10 different wallet providers.

Things were shaping up well. The market had begun to tick upwards, with the remaining crypto community now focusing it’s gaze on the DeFi space, something which had been brewing since 2018 with early protocols such as Compound, Dharma and lesser known projects like Aave.

In June we completed our Token Sale, and carried out a private, bonding curve and uniswap launch simultaneously within the space of 5 minutes, alongside the launch of CEX listings across 9 exchanges. One could say stress within the team was an understatement with so many moving variables. Throughout May to June, our small team worked 18–20 hours a day continuously on calls with providers, partners, exchanges, advisors, investors.. With our developers, candidates… we spent hundreds of hours changing and tweaking modelling on numbers. There were times where food was not eaten, baths not taken, and sun light not seen for two weeks or more.

After endless days of calls across PST, UTC, CST and every other imaginable time zone, one part of our journey was finally over. There was a short 2 hour celebration over coffee for our CEO and COO at an italian cafe tucked away in the city. With such a burden lifted from our shoulders, minds now clear with space for perspective; we immediately began strategizing and planning our next action points. Increasing our developer capacity aggressively, hiring the best UI/UX candidates we could find with a passion for our plan.

Multiple Complexities

While this kind of building curve is usual for start-ups, the added complexity is that of that content. From March to June, a hard lockdown was implemented, with strict rules on only being allowed to go outside for 1 hour a day. It was not just a challenging time for us, but the entire country, and with that also came adjustments that needed to be made for team members with families or other commitments. It made usual and regular tasks become somewhat more challenging over time.

With lockdowns ending just as the entire market was resurging, and our TGE event taking place, our entire summer was consumed and disappeared within a blink, only to receive a second lockdown, totalling what has felt like a 9 month lockdown in conclusion

Relocation Relocation Relocation

It was decided it was better for the team to move east, with better climates and some of our team operating out of the eastern continents, we have opted to move there for some time until the conditions in the west are resolved.

July 2020 — December 2020

In July, we began a radical shift in our approach with additional capital secured, and planned to re-architect our entire lending platform, not just into a lending aggregator, but a full solution DeFi aggregator to include privacy, governance, insurance, swaps, lending and much more. The vision was clear, we needed to be the best service provider we could which had a mutually beneficial relationship to the leading protocols in the space. This would allow us to add, adjust and pivot over time according to the crypto space, as many remaining blockchain projects have already done since 2017 to now, barely a handful still focus on their original idea of a competing blockchain against Ethereum.

For the first year across 2019 and into half of 2020, we opted for a conservative strategy of building / burn rate as the market was in a free-fall, no one would be able to tell when it would have a resurgence. With the winds shifting, it was time to step on the gas. Designs were ideated for several of our new platforms which have been revealed over the past year within AMA’s, monthly updates and also hidden within our Gitbook at times for the more religious ADD supporters.

Tech Team Flourishes

Since the beginning of 2020, our Tech Team has grown from 4 core developers to 11 full time developers which are across Front-End, Back-End, Full-Stack, Solidity, QA and Project Managers.

With the addition of our mobile app build, a platform we see as integral as the way in which web3 accessibility is improving on mobile is at an astonishing rate, it will not be very long until most of the crypto/defi space is able to operate on very smooth UI/UX on mobile. Our web platform and mobile app will have sync-ability and mirror each other, allowing users to switch between the two simultaneously. Metamask’s mobile app update to include decentralised exchanges, including Uniswap access is really revolutionary and marks the beginning of creative ideas in which DeFi solutions should work their way into native mobile form.

Tech Progress

We will discuss our roadmap progress and tech updates since the last October Roadmap Update

Onto the roadmap progress! — You can find the roadmap here.

Privacy Mixer

Originally, our privacy research, architecture and build was planned to be completed by the end of Q3 2020 with audits and deployment at the end of Q4, we’re happy to announce that all of the planning, development and building has been completed within the specified time on the roadmap. Audits have now been carried out and the Privacy Solution is now live

Mobile Money

Our DeFi mobile money solution is a way for any citizens across African nations to enter Crypto and DeFi without a bank account, just by using their MTN or equivalent mobile wallet accounts. All via the power of a text message or click of a button, individuals across the continent can participate and will be able to enter lending protocols to earn APY%

According to our October Roadmap, which was also updated to move all development deadlines toward, we are once again moving forward our timelines and with some changes.

We have enabled Kenya, as a country with $billions of MTN payments annually to be able to use DeFi Mobile Money. Beta Testing will start some months away in March.

Mobile Wallet App

We started researching in September 2020 the best DeFi mobile apps, portfolio apps and banking apps in the space. With this research, the team looked into pushing the feature limitations of these apps with our own integrations already on our web platform.

The original roadmap for our research and design phase was due to take place in Q1/Q2 2020

[Research] Add.xyz Mobile App — Manage multiple wallets, assets & protocols — originally planned for Q1 2021 completed in Q3 2020

2. [Design & Architecture] Add.xyz Mobile App — Manage multiple wallets, assets & protocols — originally planned for Q2 2021 completed in Q3 2020

3. [Build, Test & Deploy] Add.xyz Mobile App — Manage multiple wallets, assets & protocols — originally planned for Q2 2021 — to be completed in Q1 2021

We are on track for a deployment of by end of Q1 2021 for our mobile app.

Staking Platform

Our Native $ADD staking solution is currently building, and should be completed within 4 weeks.

Peckshield completes full V2 Platform Audit

We have engaged with Peckshield over the past few months in anticipation of our V2 platform launch, which will be home to our lending, aggregated governance, staking, swap, mobile money and privacy solution.

Peckshield’s auditing process was the key reason in which the team decided to engage with Peckshield as a partner after having identified and liaised with many auditing companies within the space. In particular, Peckshield performed the audit according to the following procedure:

• Basic Coding Bugs: We first statically analyze given smart contracts with our proprietary static code analyzer for known coding bugs, and then manually verify (reject or confirm) all the issues found by our tool.

• Semantic Consistency Checks: We then manually check the logic of implemented smart contracts and compare with the description in the white paper.

• Advanced DeFi Scrutiny: We further review business logics, examine system operations, and place DeFi-related aspects under scrutiny to uncover possible pitfalls and/or bugs.

• Additional Recommendations: We also provide additional suggestions regarding the coding and development of smart contracts from the perspective of proven programming practices.

Over 18 smart contracts were audited by Peckshield’s highly professional auditing team with great proficiency, working alongside ADD’s dedicated smart contract development team. Changes needing to be made were identified to produce a fantastic result for the project moving forward.

Approximately 10 low to informational issues were raised and all were resolved during the audit and re-auditing process.

As part of Peckshield’s conclusion they state, “In this audit, we thoroughly analyzed the ADD.xyz V2 design and implementation. The system is a full-stack DeFi aggregator, plugging in multiple products and DeFi applications into one single platform, focusing on User experience, design, privacy and anonymity. During the audit, we notice that the current code base is well structured and neatly organized, and those identified issues are promptly confirmed and fixed.

Furthermore, we need to emphasize that smart contracts as a whole are still in an early, but exciting stage of development. To improve this report, we greatly appreciate any constructive feedbacks or suggestions, on our methodology, audit findings, or potential gaps in scope/coverage.”

We are now satisfied that ADD’s smart contracts, that will act as the base technology for our community and the platform over the coming months, have all of the necessary security provisions and auditing to ensure a secure environment for decentralised finance. We will continue to re-audit additional code submissions with our auditing partners over time in order to keep our platform secure