Etherisc Weekly Update
Friday, December 31st, 2022
📣 Dear Etherisc Community,
🚀 Welcome to the Etherisc Weekly Community Update!
We conclude the year and look back. What was going on this year, what did we accomplish, and where are we?
As you all know, this year was hardcore for the whole blockchain space: Stablecoin de-pegs, DeFi projects implodes.
S(ca)ms, Billion$ Frauds and hacks as far as the eye can see. The crypto market is in deep crisis. Nevertheless, we are in good spirits at Etherisc and will get through this crypto winter, which seems like it will turn into an ice age. So what, one more bear market under the belt? No, all this does not pass us by without a trace. We need to keep our resources in-house and manage them well. We will soon celebrate Etherisc’s sixth birthday, and many more years will come!
Etherisc 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮
Flight Delay Protection went live at the beginning of the year: From now on, you can insure yourself against things going wrong in IATA air traffic: delays, cancellations, flight cancellations due to strikes or volcanic eruptions; we got you: Fully automated processing from booking the coverage to payout makes for one less travel planning headache. The first version of the protection served as a showcase to demonstrate that the travel industry can be brought together with blockchain. To make the product available to a broader audience and achieve mass adoption, we still have a few nuts to crack: Extraordinary events anticipated by smart individuals at a very early stage can lead to an abuse of the System and thus to a financial loss for risk capital providers (people who invested in Risk Pools). Wisdom of the Crowd CAN be ONE approach to risk mitigation, but the vector for clever attacks is still significant.
Flight Delay is a heart project; we know the product's strength. In a revised version and adapted to the post-audit GIF, Flight Delay Protection 2.0 will be released by us.
In March, we became a Founding Member of the Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition or LCCC for short. Together with the Lemonade Foundation, Avalanche, Chainlink, Pula Advisors, Hannover Re, DAOstack and tomorrow.io, we have set ourselves the goal of helping smallholder farmers in Kenya, Africa🇰🇪 to protect themselves against crop failures caused by climate change. Etherisc has, among other things, created the blockchain infrastructure utilising the GIF to automate the off-chain/on-chain project. Avalanche Mainnet serves as the home for this unique project, where so many different components merge to create something great. We are incredibly proud to be able to compensate farmers affected by climate change BEFORE the end of the current season: no fine print, no discussion. No intermediaries and no complicated bureaucracy.
The Lemonade Foundation and all of its strong partners are looking to expand and scale this project further, with more countries and markets in focus for our coordinated efforts. And the first season proved us right: we exceeded our goal in November: With more than 1,600 farmers onboard and on-chain, we are happy to see we hit a nerve. Season 2 starts soon, and we expect a five-digit number of farmers insured.
The infrastructure provided for the LCCC serves as a blueprint for other projects: Once developed and proven in practice, it can now easily be licensed for different use cases, and after only a few adjustments to the desired parameters, the roll-out can take place.
April was all about D1Conf in Amsterdam. The entire team came together in the Netherlands to co-host a meetup with Nexus Mutual that attracted many attendees and speakers from a wide range of fields around Insurance, Finance, Crypto & Blockchain. The full stream.
An entire day was centred around Decentralized Insurance and questions such as, ‘How do we connect TradFi to what we’re trying to do’ or ‘How can we bring insurance business models to the Blockchain and the GIF and achieve mass adoption’.
Speakers from traditional and long-established companies such as Munich RE (Re-Insurance) joined with pioneer Blockchain Companies such as Chainlink Labs. Nexus Mutual and Etherisc are together on the front lines for Blockchain-powered Insurance and will continue to fight until we have ported the insurance market holistically to Blockchain😎
See you all @ the next D1Conf!
🧰 Audits from June to October.
In June, we started preparing for code audits. As part of the LCCC project, we started staking in a closed risk pool, and an audit became necessary because we wanted to have an independent guarantee of the security of our code. The audits continued into October and produced several findings.
Now we can gradually open Risk Pools and all other features of the GIF framework to other projects. With the De-Peg Protection, there will be a Public Risk pool for the first time. Risk pools were previously “closed-shop” which were only accessible to the respective instance owners.
The SmartCon at the end of September in New York City, annually hosted by Chainlink Labs, was an extraordinary event for us. Christoph presented Etherisc’s mission to a tech-savvy audience as a speaker.
SmartCon is one of the main events in the blockchain space and, accordingly, attracts attention. Crypto Twitter forgets for a second what it’s supposed to be arguing about ;)
The times are stormy; Chainlink, known for on-chain/off-chain data verification, price feeds, and oracles, comes here to the role of hopeful and lighthouse to navigate the crypto space safely out of the crisis. Christoph presented Etherisc’s mission to a tech-savvy audience as a speaker.
SmartCon is one of the main events in the blockchain space and, accordingly, attracts attention. Crypto Twitter forgets for a second what it’s supposed to be arguing about ;)
The times are stormy; Chainlink, known for on-chain/off-chain data verification, price feeds, and Oracles, comes here as a beacon of hope to navigate the crypto space safely out of the crisis. Insurance on the blockchain is still a huge topic. Chainlink is our partner to help us achieve our goal of positioning a platform for any decentralised insurance and protection on the market.
👉🏻 Superexciting: Christoph’s SmartCon presentation, November ’22.
👉🏻 Worth a look: The Weekly Update accompanying the presentation.
🇺🇳 COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh
In November, the world looked to Egypt for this year’s UN World Climate Conference COP 27. Etherisc’s Jan Stockhausen grabbed the microphone in Cairo to raise awareness for the issues that matter to us. Hosted by The Lab and titled “Catalyzing Investments for Resilient Smallholder Agriculture”, it brought together activists for a wind of change: we all feel the various impacts of climate change on our lives, some more, some less. But some effects of climate change are so life-impacting that we must act where people have the fewest resources to defend against them effectively. We must de-risk emerging economies and encourage financial innovation to pave the way for more direct investments. This is necessary to ensure smallholder farmers are provided with an affordable solution to protect themselves against the effects of climate change. Etherisc is already embedded in several projects, provides the infrastructure blockchain-side, or is the umbrella company. Our message to the world is clear: “We can make a difference to help people fight for survival. If we use blockchain technology, we can save costs and make processes much more efficient and feasible. Climate change is real; there is no more time to waste.”
Our message will not be lost in the endless corridors of the climate conference, but will fall on the ears of many participants.
WFP ACCELERATOR
November was a busy month for us: Etherisc got accepted to the WFP Innovations Accelerator! Hui Lin, Michiel, Jan & Matthias represented Etherisc; they competed with other startups for a six-month acceleration programme to reach proof-of-concept and develop a prototype ready for implementation.
While the first part of the Accelerator Programme was online, Etherisc Impact Project Lead Hui Lin pitched in the second part in Munich our vision of a blockchain-backed crop protection to improve the situation for farmers in crisis-ridden Burkina Faso🇧🇫. The World Food Programme and Etherisc are a good match as we can draw from our experience with the LCCC or Acre Africa to map the solutions we need on the blockchain quickly.
🔐 With De-Peg Insurance, we are launching a product early next year to generate revenue and show how versatile the GIF is with a DeFi product. Established as a demo on Mumbai Testnet, the product will launch on Ethereum Mainnet.
Stablecoin de-pegs are now a sad reality and no longer an abstract threat. With Etherisc’s De-peg Protection, you can now participate in this product both as a protected party and venture capitalist. We are not the first to offer such protection, but we are the only ones to handle it in a decentralised way: WE provide the infrastructure, and ANYONE can protect themselves or invest and create a Risk Bundle. You want it; you got it! Completely transparent, and the code is open source.
Etherisc goes live! What are you waiting for? Insurance 2.0 is finally here.
Außerdem:
🔹 Whitepaper update
🔹 CSI image film
📑 A new version of the whitepaper v2.0 is out: LINK.
More updates and changes to the document will follow; this is not the final form yet.
🚂 Community Supported Insurance’s project, the Train Delay Protection (working title), an Etherisc x University of Mittweida collaboration, goes into the next round: An image film was produced to introduce the future GIF instance for protection against delays in train traffic in Germany to a wide audience. Watch it here (In German). The project is taking shape and will soon go into a trial run to reach market maturity. Germany is predestined for such a safeguard: With high-tech but chronically delayed national rail traffic, it is attractive for many commuters and long-distance travellers to activate such a product on their smartphone with just a few clicks.
🪅 We thank the community for your contributions, input, and, most of all, your support. As mentioned at the beginning, we will soon be celebrating our sixth anniversary; you have played a huge part in ensuring we exist and keep going in this highly competitive shark tank called Crypto. Cheers to you, the Etherisc Community! Happy new year, everybody! 🤝🧨🎇
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Re-activating our subreddit r/etherisc
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