Development Update — 001
A look back at the previous month & the month ahead.
It has been a busy month for the Ethfinex team.
The past 30 days has seen us successfully launch the Nectar (NEC) token, welcome a number of new colleagues to the team, start (and finish) development on our Nectar governance & voting platform. In addition to this we’ve seen our active user numbers rocket, and made a number of platform updates essential for the long term scalability of Ethfinex.
In the following update we will discuss our development progress and subsequent vision pertaining to the following areas:
- Nectar Governance Platform
- Ethfinex Platform Upgrades
- Support Capabilities
- Community Development
- Future Token Listings
Nectar Governance Platform
The Ethfinex Nectar token launched on February 13th, in an initiative designed to reward traders and facilitate the continuous decentralisation of the Ethfinex platform. The Nectar token is an instrumental step towards creating a community-owned Ethereum trading platform, where rewards are shared evenly between contributors and governance decisions are made by those that own the platform.
Nectar tokens are earned in proportion to monthly trading volume, and half of all fees earned on Ethfinex are pledged to Nectar holders.
Nectar deposits and withdrawals will be enabled for verified users within the next few days. The Nectar token is ERC20 compatible and can be withdrawn to any whitelisted Ethereum address. The first distribution to traders will happen on the 15th March, with a report analysing all trading fees and activity throughout the first 30 day period.
We are currently working on nectar.community — an open-source platform integrating redeem and voting functionality for NEC holders. This will allow Ethfinex community members to evaluate current and future value from acquiring NEC, voting on platform governance decisions (e.g. fee structures, token listings) and redeeming their share of pledged fees.
Nectar.community is a huge steps towards simplifying the Nectar governance & redemption experience and we are excited for the impact this will have on the operations of Ethfinex. We anticipate that the site will be completed in the next 2 weeks, in time for the first Nectar redemption round.
Platform Upgrades
Verification Improvements
A big step towards distributing Nectar, decentralising Ethfinex and improving the general trading experience revolves around improved identity verification for our users. Our current verification process takes 4–6 weeks to finish, much to the understandable frustration of our users, and a core aim for us as we approach the end of our beta revolves around decreasing this wait time by a factor of 100.
We’ve finished testing of an improved verification solution using several third-party tools to streamline our process without compromising the high standards we meet.
Non-custodial Trading Portal and API
Our decentralised trading portal, allowing for non-custodial, Ethereum-based trading via MetaMask and Ledger integration has stormed through testing and is currently undergoing engine integration. Pending successful integration, users will be able to trade without trusting Ethfinex, or another third party, with their information or funds. This is a huge step towards the decentralisation of the exchange system and we are eager to get this ball rolling.
The Ethfinex gateway API will allow users to submit orders in the 0x format, and allow anyone to create their own UI (e.g. a ShapeShift style interface) to interact with the order books, without needing to deposit and withdraw.
‘Platform Switch’ Mechanism
Another reported frustration is the inability for users to switch seamlessly between Bitfinex and Ethfinex when trading both Ethereum and non-Ethereum pairs. We are working to remove this complexity through the integration of a ‘one-click switch’, allowing users to effortlessly switch between Ethfinex and Bitfinex at the click of a button, thus removing the delays associated with switching. This feature may take some time to get right because of the security and data protection challenges involved in the integration.
Discussion Platform Improvements
A number of improvements have been made to our Discussion platform to smoothen the experience for our users. These include:
- The preview for the markdown editor has an improved layout and will be to the right of the editor.
- Added support for flag notifications and forum moderation tools.
- Support for automatically embedding videos when linked.
- Blank newlines in input are converted to a markdown format that will preserve them in the posted discussions.
- General bug fixes/maintenance.
Ethfinex Support & Vacancies
In February the Ethfinex team welcomed aboard Paul Gernon, our Director of Support. Paul is an experienced leader within the financial services and gambling industries with demonstrated experience heading complex support operations, fraud detection & compliance systems.
“With the rapid expansion which the industry has seen over the past year many, if not all, exchanges have found it difficult to recruit and train suitable support staff to keep up with demand. It is one of the major headaches facing the sector, but we are looking at it as an opportunity.
We are not planning on being simply a traditional support center but rather a proactive, community focused team who have our user’s best interests at the heart of everything we do.
We call ourselves customer advocates as we are just that. We are the voice of the user.
What drew me to this role was the opportunity to build a support community from the ground up. Ethfinex is and will continue to be, built upon it’s community and desire to listen to and deliver for our users.
We will not be a team of anonymous workers hiding in the background. We will be front and centre to engage with you and hear what you need for us to deliver a better level of support and a better service overall.“
- Paul Gernon, Ethfinex Director of Support
Paul has spent the past 30 days familiarising himself with the ins and outs of the Ethfinex platform and has now begun the process of growing a hard-working, agile support team. We are looking to expand our support team three-fold over the next month and would love to hear from you if you feel you’d be a helpful candidate.
We’re looking to grow our team in all directions over the next few months. If you’re a Javascript expert, a marketing wiz, designer or a blockchain enthusiast looking to catch a break, reach out to us here or here and help lay the foundation for a decentralised future.
The successful development of our support team will result in the removal of the minimum equity requirement currently in place, thereby allowing traders of all backgrounds to take advantage of our features.
Community Analysis
An integral part of Ethfinex is the community around it, and the cooperation and contributions of those around the project. Ethfinex is nothing without the community, and a large part of our focus is dedicated to building and nurturing a community of dedicated and interested supporters (and future owners).
Telegram
We set up a Telegram channel around a month ago to create a mechanism for actively engaging with our users. We have a number of platforms through which we share updates and interact with our users, but none have been as eye-opening and valuable as our Telegram. The interactions and discussions made possible through Telegram are unrivalled, and the amount of fantastic feedback we have received has been invaluable.
If you have any questions pertaining to Ethfinex, we encourage you to stop by and ask.
Our Twitter acts as the primary entry point for new community members. Started on August 2nd, our Twitter has seen substantial, organic, growth since then through providing timely updates on all things Ethfinex.
Blog
Blog.ethfinex.com is the official Ethfinex blog and is our platform for distributing updates on vision, technology, partnerships and more.
We’ve pushed forward with our general Ethereum interview series through which we aim to spread the message of thought-leaders and innovative projects throughout the space. We recently spoke to the Streamr team, and we’re excited to continue this series and spread the vision of Ethereum.
The Ethfinex subreddit acts as a discussion and distribution platform for Ethfinex & ERC20 related news, furthermore allowing users to provide suggestions and feedback on our beta development. In the last few months we’ve grown our community to 1,300 users and hope to continue this growth as Ethfinex matures.
Newsletter
Since our announcement late summer 2017 we have managed to set up an Ethereum & Ethfinex-centric newsletter which is sent out to over 10,000 enthusiasts. This newsletter covers Ethfinex development, a variety of announcements and general Ethereum-focused updates. Whilst somewhat inconsistent over the past few months, we have the foundation and structure in place to make this newsletter a weekly occurrence.
You can sign up to our newsletter on www.ethfinex.com to stay up to date with announcements as we progress towards full decentralisation.
In addition to the platforms above, you can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and AngelList, where we share development progress, career opportunities and conference visits.
Future Token Listings
The next month will see our focus return to adding support for groundbreaking Ethereum projects demanded by the Ethfinex community. This will go hand-in-hand with nectar.community, allowing NEC holders to vote on highly-rated Ethereum projects and have their say in which tokens should be listed.
If you are especially interested in the addition of a specific Ethereum project, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts on Reddit or Telegram.
If you a member of an Ethereum team interested in listing on Ethfinex, we encourage you to fill out the following form; in line with our community-centric background, all listing decisions are subject to customer consensus and user review. All projects, pending a successful application, will be listed on the Token Listing page and be subject to community review.
Given the upcoming release of nectar.community, potential listing decisions will be made by Nectar holders, putting the ultimate decision in the hands of our users.
The next few weeks will see the full launch of our non-custodial trading portal, the addition of a number of high-quality tokens and the gradual removal of our minimum equity requirements.
We’re excited to share our development efforts with you and we look forward to next months update!
