Balance Community Update · January
App updates, working with MakerDAO & a trip to California
We have had a really great start to 2019. Everyone is together in the studio and we are focused on shipping our app as soon as possible. One experiment I ran was to ask our community if they had any questions for me in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) format. You can check it out here.
A big update to the beta for iOS
Mike, Jin and Christian have been working hard to get the iOS app ready for release. The last 10% of the tweaks always take a lot longer than expected.
We are aiming to submit it in February and hope that Apple will approve it in March. You can join the beta here: testflight.apple.com/join/QXCgM6bu
Work begins with MakerDAO
The organization behind the stablecoin, Dai, is called MakerDAO. They have built a system which ingests Ether and produces a useful token that tracks the dollar. I highly recommend reading more about the system here:
The core problem that we want to fix is CDP management. The term CDP refers to Collateralized Debt Position. These are instruments for generating Dai by locking up Ether.
Today, all of this happens in a web-based desktop dapp. We are planning to add support for viewing CDPs and adding collateral right within Balance’s mobile app.
We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Rich and Greg at MakerDAO. They have been incredibly supportive of our work. We hosted Greg at the Balance Studio in Williamsburg. You can check out a video of the evening here.
The MakerDAO team are going to release a lot of new products over the next couple of years. We are really excited to work closely with them as they are growing really fast.
A valuable trip to California
I flew over to San Francisco to support the team behind the Graph Protocol. They put on an event to showcase all of their incredible work to make Ethereum easier to develop on. We plan to use their developer APIs and systems within Balance so we spend a lot of time talking to the team.
Then I spent some time talking to angels and venture capitalists in the Bay Area about Balance. The process was really interesting and we got some excellent feedback. One of my favorite investors said that “we like to go through the windshield with our founders when things go wrong”—I love that phrase.
I also went along to the Stanford Blockchain Conference for a couple of days. The quality of people there was second to none. It was full of bright and dedicated people who wanted to push this ecosystem forward. I learnt a lot and met some really interesting people.
How you can help
The number one way people can help is by referring smart engineers who are familiar with React to us. We are actively hiring and would love any referrals.
You can send folks along to: angel.co/balance-io/jobs
You can also help by testing out these parts of the app:
Thanks so much for all of your support. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment here or send me a direct message on Twitter @ricburton.
Cheers,
Richard
