From the CEO’s desk: Second Innings for COSS
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Hello, everyone!
July was a great month for COSS and we are already looking forward to delivering more features and products. As I write this, the node updates go live as well starting first with BCH as promised. Horizen will be next soon, hopefully within days and all of them thereafter one after another. More about that below.
Thank You
Since we started our new journey for COSS, I realize that we have one of the most active and supportive communities around. And that is our strength. A lot of personal motivating messages over the last couple of months, feedback, criticism of some features, some bugs, some past endeavours, new suggestions, etc. Overall, it is evident that everyone wishes best for COSS and is trying to help in their own unique way. So. Thank You for keeping us motivated and on our toes. Every message and every feedback means a lot to me personally. Obviously, sometimes our hands are tied due to resources or other tasks at hand, but every concern and feedback is noted seriously and prioritised.
Secondly, there is another set of people who I did not get time to Thank in all this hustle over the last two months: The COSS Team. Our tech (Old Coss and Old LALA/ARAX = New COSS) teams, marketing, operations, HR, Finance, everyone. Rome was not built in a day, but this progress and delivery has been amazing. My thanks goes to all of you for your hard work, your perseverance, your creativity, and dedication. Your desire to make something truly great even if it means long hours and many iterations before perfection is achieved. I am grateful I can be on the team with you.
Settled In
July was an excellent month for COSS; we delivered beyond what we promised and achieved a whole lot more behind the scenes. The best part is that now that processes are set, and teams are in place, our new hires are settling in well, clarity of goals and tasks is there. Like any new merger, it was a confusing situation in the beginning, but things are all settled now and the pace of delivery should be much quicker from hereon.
When we started this journey, there were many unknowns. No one had attempted to bring together tokens like this before between two very different projects, but yet very complementary. We had a strong vision, a great community in you but coming together was never going to be easy. Now that we have successfully come together, it’s time to start realizing our vision in smaller steps. The best part is that we might be part of the 5% of the best exchanges out there, but at the same time, there is so much more room for improvement, product, and token wise. And we are very excited about the future prospects.
Not everything went great though over the last 18 months. I have made mistakes. I have mis-hired, asked my team to build features that we’d scrap or redo later, changed focus a little more than I’d like to, mis-read the crypto mass adoption cycle and market timing. But we have never given up. This made us stronger and more determined to deliver. In this new journey, all I request of the community is a little more patience as we continue to deliver daily. We will not leave any stone unturned. Unlike several other 2017 ICOs, we stand by you with the best of intentions. I hope you stand by us in our collective desire to make COSS the absolute number one exchange of choice.
August & Rest of 2019
August is on track as well for deliverables that we set for ourselves. Some highlights that we are working on are detailed below. The remainder of 2019 is going to be a defining period for all of us. We are well aware that we need to continue to make amazing progress with the best user experience. We need to continue investing in scalability, flexibility, security, and our ability to learn incredibly fast.
We will still be a startup but a slightly more mature one. We will need to grow the team, learn how to get more organised while staying focused, dedicated, hungry, and nimble. It will require great leadership, brilliant execution, and a can-do attitude. It will be hard, but we know how to do it, and I am hopeful we will do great.
Now, as we move forward and start planning for the months ahead, here are some critical points that will help us with our mission:
- Keep things simple
- Clarity of short term and long term objectives, which we shall share with you in time. For now, our short term objective is to make a secure and smooth running exchange in the next few months, increase volumes, bring in more users and increase the FSA for everyone
- Community first, COS HODLers first. Every product, every design, every new and old feature has to be thought through in a way which focuses on Users and their journey within the ecosystem
- Safety & Security is paramount and has to be as secure as humanly possible
- Customer data will never be sold or compromised
We are on track for August to complete more of what we have planned in July. Some of what we do aren’t visible. For example, backend fixes and stability measures aren’t really ‘sexy’, newsworthy things to shout about, but they are critical initiatives that have to be done. Priorities are already set for what has to be done. Let me give you an outline on what to expect in August:
Simplified FSA and fee structures. Making the decision to alter one of our unique features was not an easy one. But this was based upon feedback from the community, as well as our desire to simplify and give you a more value-added experience in being part of our ecosystem. When you receive a greater quantity of a reduced number of cryptocurrencies, you can make better decisions on how to make use of your FSA.
The fee structure naturally has to go hand in hand with the changes to the FSA. Such a change will streamline the number of quote pairs, helping to declutter the system. One more piece of the complete picture in becoming a better COSS ecosystem for all. This includes less quote pairs, simple fees, less overall pairs, FSA in ETH and COS, etc. we shall announce all details closer to launch.
Blockchain upgrades are almost done. We have re-established our BCH node just as I finish writing this. Horizen will be up next. Other nodes, including new blockchains are also in the pipeline. Upgraded nodes and new blockchains mean new tokens for you to trade with. New traders will come, and that will be a boost for our liquidity and volume.
Liquidity Programs: Speaking of liquidity, I’d like to just put in a quick word about this topic. We are carefully planning some new programmes to build up liquidity on our exchange. We shall announce this and implement this in August starting with campaigns but the actual programme will start in September. This is something I’m personally very excited about, and we will get the details out to you as soon as we can finalise arrangements.
Fiat to Crypto: We are in the final stages of agreements with two solutions. Technical and legal documentation has been studied and we finalised. Technical integrations between both teams will start in August. While this is a priority task for us, we are also dependent on the other side to provide technical and other help. We intend to complete this in August but could spill over to September if there are any delays from the vendors’ side.
Other smaller tasks that we are working on include:
- Complete IEO platform integration and testing before rollout
- Fingerprint authentication for COSS Wallet
- Improve marketing analytics to fuel decisions
- NEO GAS implementation after ZEN node upgrade
- Fixing 100% market order once and forever
- USDT node update to ERC20
- Simplified fee structure
We are working tirelessly with defined goals. Our task lists have been set, and make no mistake, it’s a long task list. In the coming months, 2 or 3 months, give or take, we will be rolling out improvements continuously. Some of those, like I’ve mentioned, won’t be visible, but some features/improvements will be, and we hope you’ll like them.
We are not like other exchanges. I don’t think there is an exchange that gives out such frequent communications to its community and listens so much to you. I might be biased, but I do not think there is another exchange out there that gives away so much of what we make. We believe in growing together, prospering together, bringing you along with us. You, the COSS community have the most to gain if we succeed together, so please spread the word (and love) and bring on the positivity to build a stronger community.
From all of us at COSS, stay tuned for more updates and a better COSS!
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