Dev Updates — 15 Nov

Nick

Published in

Digix Official Blog

9 min readNov 15, 2019

AMA with Fiona from HELLOBTC
Interview with Jill Malandrino from Nasdaq at Fintech Festival
Meet-up with Taiwan Fintech Association
Digital Assets as a Store of value: BlockShow
DigixDAO Updates
Wechat Promotion — Win a Dyson V7 fluffy vacuum cleaner

AMA with Fiona from HELLOBTC

Sunday, November 10 — Digix was invited to share more on DGX gold-backed token and DigixDAO with the community on HELLOBTC.com.

Fiona: Following the changes to monetary policy by European Central Bank (ECB) on September 12 and US Fed’s decision to further reduce the interest rate by 25 basis points, famous investors like Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones shared their views on using gold as the safe-haven for investment. On this note, how can we buy real gold from Digix? How is the gold from Digix different from the those we buy from banks?

Shaun: Our DGX token has the same intrinsic value as traditional gold. Every DGX token represents 1 gram of physical investment-grade gold that sits in our vault. If you own 100 DGX tokens, you can recast these tokens into the actual gold bar. This is one of the many difference between our gold and traditional gold bar from banks.

Fiona: Digix, the smart-asset company, implemented a dual-token system when it was established in 2014. Would you be able to give us a brief introduction to the 2 tokens, DGX and DGD, and how Digix ensures that every DGX is backed by 1 gram of gold?

Shaun: DGX a token backed by physical gold. DGD token, on the other hand, is a governance token used for voting on the DigixDAO platform. The value of DGD token is dependent on how the owner of DGD tokens uses them. Users today are using DGD token to create and vote for proposals on DigixDAO platform. The proposals are related to improving the operational aspects of DGX token, as well as, ideas and innovations to drive DGX token.

To ensure that every DGX token is backed with physical gold, we created a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain known as Proof of Provenance

This protocol will allow DGX token holders to review the actual gold and all its related documents. Making DGX token a currency that is fully transparent and auditable.

Fiona: The production of a gold bar involves many steps. From mining the gold ores to smelting them into gold bars and, eventually auditing the quality of the bars. How does Digix shortlist its gold suppliers and why do they, the suppliers, decide to work with Digix?

Shaun: When we first started, we decided to only work with partners who are reputable. This means that the gold bars are verified and certified to be investment-grade gold bars right from the start. Our customers who own a DGX will enjoy peace of mind knowing that they are, in fact, buying gold from reputable sources. Plus, Singapore is a good location to start a gold business given its stability and other economic factors. Giving them more reasons to work with us.

Fiona: According to the data on Digix’s marketplace, Digix has 122.7kg of investment-grade gold bars in the safehouse. Who is paying the administrative charges related to the storage of these physical gold bars and how often is the safehouse audited?

Shaun: Digix is absorbing all the fee related to storage and security to ensure our customers do not have to bear the unnecessary cost related to DGX token. This means Digix is our customers get to own gold without paying for its storage. Every quarter we will audit the gold bars to protect the interest of our company and customers.

Fiona: I am interested to get a DGX and recast it into gold. How can I do it? What is the minimal amount of DGX needed to recast my tokens into a gold bar?

Shaun: You will be able to perform a recast in our marketplace. The minimal amount of DGX tokens that can be recast is 101 DGX tokens. These tokens will be recast into a 100gram gold bar and a fee of 1% will be charged to perform the recast. Users can also recast for 1kilobars if they have the required amount of DGX tokens.

Fiona: So the minimal of gold I can recast is 100gram, which is worth more than 30,000 RMB.

Shaun: In the early part of 2020, we will offer the options to recast DGX into 1g, 10g and 50g gold card.

Fiona: The basic framework of DigixDAO was established at the start of 2016. According to Etherscan, the project gathered more than 460k of ETH then. As of today, it has a balance of about 385k ETH, which is worth approximately USD $70 mil. We understand that it is a platform for the community to submit and vote for proposals to improve DGX and Digix. Would you share more on DigixDAO?

Shaun: DigixDAO is a decentralised management platform developed to help grow Digix and DGX tokens. We have almost 20 ongoing projects on the platform and the project varies from marketing to market-making and even community management.

We encourage everyone to be on board this platform. You will only require 2 ETH and 10 DGD to start a proposal for funding that is up to 300 ETH. (If your project requires more than 300 ETH in funding, you are always welcome to approach Digix to launch and endorse a Digix Project on the platform.)

Fiona: Going back to 2018 September, the media reported a project to sell 70k of ETH for USD $20mil on DIgixDAO. Did the proposal go through on DigixDAO?

Shaun: The proposal went through. It was the carbon vote proposal 2 back in 2018 September. The proposal was to request for the fund to set up the core team that will build Digix and the DigixDAO platform into reality. The funds are actively being used in this manner.

Fiona: In DigixDAO 1.0, every proposal will be open for at least 14 weeks. May I ask how is Digix looking to balance issues on the efficiency and democracy within DigixDAO?

Shaun: The platform is still growing and I have to say that this is one of the topics we are looking at as we continue to fine-tune the processes. Eg. we have recently initiated a special project to review the reputation points to streamline efficiency.

Fiona: Digix is one of the earliest companies to tokenise gold on the chain. As the business of tokenising gold reaches maturity, we are seeing more projects that digitalise gold. How does Digix look at the increasingly competitive landscape?

Shaun: At Digix, we welcome competition. We see this as a good thing as this means the industry is growing. Digix is still the number 1 project in the ecosystem with the widest partnership network, highest coverage and most numbers of wallet addresses.

We want to make gold accessible to everyone. With our project, everyone will be able to own gold without having to pay high administrative and/or storage fee. In the near future, we look to provide the use cases for DGX tokens. The potential is huge.

Question from the floor

Q: We can buy gold from other traditional platforms. Why buy at Digix, besides the fact that DGX can be recast into gold bars.

Shaun: DGX token offers you a better ecosystem compared to traditional gold. Eg. You will not be able to trade gold with ETH or BTC without DGX. Plus, DGX token is portable. You will be able to carry DGX tokens on your mobile devices.

Interview with Jill Malandrino from Nasdaq at Fintech Festival

Wednesday, November 13 — Catch Shaun’s interview with Jill Malandrino at the Singapore FinTech Festival earlier this week. Here are the talking points.

Jill: Why is it important for the masses to own gold today?

Shaun: With the changing global political and economic landscape, we see a rise in the volatility and uncertainty across a range for industries. The world becomes increasingly concerned by the protracted US-Sino trade war, the shadow of Brexit, Hong Kong’s questionable future, as well as political change around the world.

More and more institutional and retail investors are seeking to diversify their wealth to hedge against market uncertainties. Gold is the port of call for almost any investor hoping to protect their wealth and has been for centuries, a safe-haven.

We believe that access to the gold market should not be the privilege of the few, but available to everyone with the ability to buy and sell gold. This is exactly what we are trying to do with Digix gold-backed token — DGX.

Jill: What is DIGIX?

Shaun: Digix is the world’s first smart-asset company using blockchain that accounts fro the authentication and provenance of 99.99 percent investment-grade gold bullions

Our native DGX token is the first gold-backed token on the Ethereum network — with each of its representing 1 gram of physical gold that has been approved by the London Bullion Maret Association.

Jill: What have been some of the priorities of Digix this year?

Shaun: DGX has been enabled as a medium exchange on the crypto payment platform and looking to be listed on several exchanges across the region. We are looking to promote the growth and interaction on our DigixDAO platform, which was launched this earlier. Doubling down on our marketing efforts on DIgixDAO to increase adoption of DGX in the current market.

Meet-up with Taiwan Fintech Association

Thursday, November 14 — Taiwan Fintech Association is in town this week and it was a privilege for us to share our business with them.

Thank you Tribe Accelerator for making this happen.

Digital assets as a store of value: BlockShow

Friday, 15 November — Our COO and Co-Founder, Shaun Djie had the pleasure of sharing this view on the topic of digital assets as a store of value at the Blockshow earlier today. Together with Alexandre Kech, CEO&Co-Founder at Onchain Custodian, Prof. David Lee from Singapore University of Social Sciences and Danish Chaudhary, COO of Bitcoin.com.

Thank you BlockShowfor having us.

DigixDAO Updates

Friday, November 15 — In our constant efforts to improve the operational efficiency of DigixDAO, we look to streamline its configurations as such we can nurture an active community to participate in the voting and a quicker decision-making process. These thoughts are translated into a proposal to call for:

Removal of the Quarter Point Reward for Proposers
Increase the Reputation Point per addition Quarter Point from 1:1 to 5:1
(for Participants)

The previous proposal ran into a deadlock situation even though it received 100% approval. Its quorum does not need the minimum requirement.

So cast your vote and help to make this proposal happen.

Interested in submitting a proposal on DigixDAO to bring your ideas to life? Click here.

To help you get started, we have created a guide to DigixDAO and FAQ too.

Win a Dyson V7 fluffy vacuum cleaner on our WeChat

Join this promotion and you may be the next winner to walk away with a Dyson V7 fluffy vacuum cleaner. You can participate as a new or existing Digix Marketplace user with WeChat