Composable Finance H1 2022
Building and composing infrastructures enabling our vision for DeFi mass adoption
Disclaimer: Information as of Jul 28. For the most recent updates, dive into our comprehensive documentation here.
At Composable Finance we continue to lay the groundwork for DeFi’s mass adoption. In order to achieve our vision of DeFi generalizability and mass adoption, we are building and orchestrating the infrastructure needed. While Composable was founded in 2021, the first half of 2022 has already proved pivotal as we have consolidated our vision and built and acquired the necessary tools, capital, and infrastructure to continue pushing the boundaries of cross-chain innovation.
Now, more than ever, we are enabling a DeFi future that is developed for the end-user through design thinking and building. Throughout this journey, we are grateful to all of our supporters, backers, users, and team members. After a successful first half of 2022, we would like to provide a brief overview of some of our more notable milestone successes and accomplishments:
Securing and building the necessary tools and infrastructure to realize our vision
⛓ Realizing a Polkadot parachain ⛓
Composable started 2022 by securing the 8th slot of the 7th Polkadot parachain auction by raising a total of 6,075,485 DOT valued at over $163 million. This was a crucial milestone accomplishment as it enabled us to truly start building the future that we envision.
💰 Securing Series A 💰
In March of 2022, some of the most notable DeFi supporters came together to close out our Series A token sale round. We were able to sell $32 million dollars in tokens to expand our team and continue building our products and strategies to drive DeFi towards mass adoption.
🤝 Partnerships 🤝
Driving DeFi for ultimate mass adoption means collaborating with ecosystem partners and extending our infrastructures for seamless usage and deployment by innovators.
As part of our collaboration with the Interchain Foundation, we are expanding the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol beyond Cosmos. We facilitate cross-chain transfers and seamless liquidity movement from previously disconnected ecosystems resulting in new and more accessible earning opportunities. Partnerships and collaborations such as this one enable us to push for a broader user base and a more sustainable DeFi environment. We additionally foresee that our efforts will encourage more developers to build on IBC-enabled chains.
As part of our strategy, we are also building trustless bridges to ecosystems such as NEAR. In our first step to connect DotSama to NEAR, our team has worked closely with NEAR’s core team to initiate a proposal for the NEAR protocol’s runtime. This proposal would enable us to run a Polkadot light client according to IBC standards.
Composable also engaged in a number of partnerships, integrations, and collaborations during the first half of the year including Moonbeam, RMRK, IndexZoo, Hop, CrocSwap, Connext, Multichain, and Acala.
🎨Designing and building a product suite for developers and users alike 🎨
We continue to expand our product suite by developing and deploying the necessary infrastructure, primitives, and DeFi pallets into our ecosystem. Aside from development, our team has increased its strategy efforts to optimize the various modules, infrastructures, and products that are available in our ecosystem and in the broader DeFi landscape. Among the recent strategies, we have released is our dual-parachain approach.
As our product suite continues to grow, we have expanded our product ownership strategy in order to better manage it. MarmiteToast now leads Composable’s product strategy, leading a team of seasoned product owners. As a result, we have realigned our efforts to give each product the attention it needs to be developed and deployed to its full potential.
Dev Logs
This year, as part of our commitment to increasing transparency we have started a series of bi-weekly dev logs where the community can track the progress of our various projects such as; the XCVM, Mosaic, Picasso, Pablo, our trustless bridging efforts, and much more. The most recent of these dev logs can be found here.
XCVM
As outlined at Polkadot Decoded and our own inaugural Unchained event, the XCVM is the pinnacle of our vision at Composable Finance. We have made great strides toward delivering our flagship product and look forward to putting it in your hands soon. For now, be sure to check out the unveiling of the XCVM as presented at the Unchained Conference. Here, a general overview of the XCVM was provided by 0xbrainjar, an architectural overview was provided by our CTO Karel, and finally, a live demo was given by our XCVM lead Hussein.
You can also get a sneak peek at the UX by going to: https://www.xcvm.dev/ and using the password “unchained”.
Composable Labs
Composable Labs was re-introduced this year with a new structure that positions the team as a collaborative, autonomous unit that drives innovation by building primitives and pushing the limits of DeFi. Composable Labs focuses on developing primitives that operate in Composable’s direct ecosystem while also launching new projects for the wider DeFi landscape. Furthermore, Composable Lab’s substrate primitives represent a pioneering advancement in DeFi innovation.
Composable Grants
In addition to the expansion of our Labs division, we are consistently providing support and guidance for innovators that are interested in developing, deploying, or learning about our infrastructure or about the technology that is being utilized within our ecosystem. Several grant programs are available this year to support this initiative. Most recently, we are offering grants of up to $100,000 to CosmWasm developers. Selected teams and projects will also receive strategic guidance, resources, and marketing support from Composable Finance and Labs. Get in touch with us under the get a grant section of the Composable Discord server if you have any questions.
Composable Research
Led by our Head of Research Antonio and supported by our CTO Karel, Composable Research’s primary focus is to identify core issues within DeFi while theorizing possible solutions. Having a dedicated research arm allows Composable to act as trailblazers for the cross-chain future we have envisioned. As such, Composable Research’s work will inform Composable’s own roadmap, allowing us to remain at the forefront of innovation.
Aligning the Composable Vision
At Composable Finance, we have always taken an interest in design thinking and building. In addition to the technology, we are intrigued by how the users experience the products we are architecting. We continue to consolidate our processes and values so that our vision becomes more concise with the ethos that drives us collectively to create practical and user-friendly solutions. 0xbrainjar provided a deep dive into this updated vision. He outlines three important components needed to achieve mass adoption while highlighting Composable’s role in making this a reality.
Speaking of Composable’s vision, many members of our community have noticed some recent changes. In tandem with the updated vision, we have been redefining and redesigning our brand to better reflect our value sets and represent our scalable and modular infrastructure. You can expect some exciting changes to follow, as was shared by our CMO, Zain, @zha_tweets recently.
Composable Finance seeks a home base to increase efficiency and team culture
As we expand our team, our products, and our goals as a collective group, we have continued our efforts in aligning the individuals of our organization in order to allow the culture of collaboration and efficiency to flourish as strongly as our vision. In light of that, we are glad to announce that many of our leads from across departments as well as key developers and other individuals from Composable Finance are seeking a home base. This decision was made following several strategy workshops intended to align the organization with a home-based vision. Ultimately, Composable plans to organize and run sprints to best develop and implement our products and solutions.
This move also allows us to further develop our culture as a rapidly growing DeFi company while giving us the chance to collaborate with local organizations in our efforts to increase DeFi education and development.
Educating and spreading the Composable Vision
Composable has been extremely active in DeFi events, attending conferences from around the world with teams and communities from several different ecosystems. In addition, we hosted our own inaugural event, Unchained, which fostered many discussions with industry leaders from the Polkadot, Cosmos, and Ethereum ecosystems. Our team is looking forward to continuing these discussions, but here is a summary of these events:
- ETH Amsterdam — A gathering of over 800 engineers, designers, and creators from the Ethereum ecosystem. Composable attended ETH Amsterdam from April 22 to April 23, where we introduced our vision to the Ethereum Community.
- Gateway to Cosmos — From May 16th to May 17th Composable had the pleasure of attending the Gateway Conference in Prague. Here our founder and CEO 0xbrainjar spoke about the IBC and how it enables our vision of a cross-chain future.
- DCENTRAL / Consensus 2022 — At DCENTRAL Austin, during Consensus 2022, 0xbrainjar delivered a keynote speech where he introduced Composable’s XCVM to a diverse crowd of Web3 enthusiasts.
- Polkadot Decoded — The biggest Polkadot event of the year. Consisting of keynote speeches, demos, and workshops — at Polkadot Decoded the team introduced the XCVM.
- Unchained Berlin — Our inaugural event, Unchained for the first time in DeFi’s history, gathered together in one location, key innovators from the DotSama, Cosmos, and EVM ecosystems where the key focus was Interoperability! The top highlights of the event included a live demoing of the Composable XCVM while also hosting various panels where DeFi’s brightest minds shared their insights on the cross-chain future of DeFi.
- ParisDOT — Our Founder and CEO, 0xbrainjar spoke about the Composable XCVM during a keynote speech on IBC-enabled parachains utilizing CosmWasm at ParisDOT. 0xbrainjar also joined a panel to discuss how to reach outside the Polkadot box and achieve mass adoption by building bridges in the Interchain and beyond.
- Cambridge University — The Composable team sponsored and supported student entrepreneurship and blockchain initiatives at the university. We aim to release some more exciting collaborations in H2.
C-level updates
0xbrainjar steps in as CEO
0xbrainjar, our founder and former Head of Product, has assumed the role of CEO at Composable Finance. In addition to his previous responsibilities, 0xbrainjar is now responsible for overseeing Composable’s innovation and strategic alignment at large. Some of the additional responsibilities include:
- Defining the vision of various projects within the Composable ecosystem
- Prioritizing the needs of these projects
- Overseeing the development of these projects
- Communicating the status of projects both internally and with the community
- Overseeing, communicating, and aligning the vision and goals with the various departments, projects, and their respective management teams
Jeffrey Smith joins as Composable’s General Counsel
Jeffrey has joined the team as our global General Counsel (GC) and Chief Compliance and Risk Officer (CCRO). Having previously served as head of legal and compliance for various leading companies in the finance and digital assets space, he accumulated more than 23 years of experience. We are fortunate to have Jeffrey fill this role at Composable Finance. We feel that Jeffrey’s experience will be incredibly valuable as we seek to bridge the gap between DeFi and traditional finance.
Looking forward to H2
The first half of the year has been very exciting and wildly successful for us as a team. Throughout our journey, we have been able to acquire the tools to realize our vision thanks to the support of our community, backers, and growing team. We are all very excited about the next few months as they will be critical, especially as we prepare to bring part of our team together as we seek a new home for Composable Finance.
Additionally, Composable’s involvement in various ecosystems highlights our continued commitment to cross-chain innovation. The idea of cross-ecosystem collaboration is fundamental to our vision, and we will continue to foster collaborative conversations within the space in the coming months and years. We look forward to continuing to share our updates and progress with the community, be sure to follow us across our social media platforms.
For more information about Composable and how it is architecting the unified DeFi landscape of the future, check out our socials:
Twitter | Telegram | Discord | Website | GitHub | LinkedIn | Youtube
