HelloGold Foundation Update #17– 13th November 2018
Highlights:
- Performance marketing launched, ahead of on-ground advertising campaign in the Klang Valley.
- Chinese version of both app and website live
- Non-Fungible Token explored as a new way to digitize gold on the blockchain
Business
IFN Islamic Finance World Tour
HelloGold attended various Islamic Finance Forums organised by IFN in the Middle East and Asia to strengthen its position as a leading startup in the digital space of Shariah compliant finance. Before concluding the tour in Singapore, where the CEO, Robin was invited to speak about the future of gold as the ultimate wealth preservation asset, HelloGold had the opportunity to meet key industry leaders in London, Istanbul, Dubai, and Oman. Partnership opportunities have emerged from those events and are being worked on by the HelloGold team. More news about it in the coming updates!
Performance marketing set up. App downloads and KYCs increasing
HelloGold Marketing team has spent the summer working on a new marketing strategy. Prior to a full scale media campaign, which Malaysians might have already seen around the Klang Valley, the team rolled out a new performance marketing framework. October has been used to test various sets of visual ads online. As the campaign is being refined, traffic to the website and app installers has increased, leading to a surge in app downloads and customer KYCs. Though impact on AUM has so far been marginal, the team is optimistic about the coming weeks, as the performance marketing will now be combined with a large on-ground advertising campaign in Malaysia, starting with the Klang Valley. This new campaign has already started, and will be covered in greater detail in the next Monthly Update.
HelloGold awarded WIFA’s Wealth Management award
HelloGold was nominated for the World Islamic Finance Awards 2018, and won the award for the best wealth management app! Thanks to everyone who voted for the HelloGold app! The team is working hard on improving the app everyday and making it as smooth and easy to use as possible, and it is great to see recognition for the work being done!
Technical
Smart savers program feedback enquiry
The Smart Savers program within the HelloGold App has been released (internally to registered users only) for a month, and HelloGold’s tech team has been working on a feedback inquiry to engage with users trying out the new feature. The data collected from the feedback will be used to help further refine the product features.
New Product features
Meanwhile, improvement of the app continues. HelloGold has added support for Chinese language to the app and additional deep-linking capabilities that helps us reach out to a bigger customer base.
Website renovation
HelloGold.com has gone through a serious revamping. The layout and structure of the website have been modified to improve user experience. A new hosting solution was adopted to allow for a more reactive update of the content, and more work is being done to add new features and content on the website. Another significant improvement has been the launch of a Chinese version of the website, to better reach out to the Chinese Malaysian market.
Product Blockchain
The team is still working hard to integrate the core buy/sell smart contracts to the existing off-chain platform. There are still a few technical challenges to address but good progress is being made.
Regional Expansion
The Thai app is already deployed through the Beta for Android and the final touches are being made to the Thai website. These versions of the app and website will be used to get the eCommerce license which will enable HelloGold to start operating in Thailand. It has taken a lot of time and effort to get this far but HelloGold will be available in its first market outside of Malaysia soon.
Token
Smart-contract workshop organised at HelloGold office
Due to Devcon 4, there was no ETHKL meetup in October, but HelloGold’s lead blockchain developer Dave managed to set up a couple of smart-contract workshops to keep the Ethereum community busy and engaged. HelloGold remains determined to help build a vibrant Ethereum community in Kuala Lumpur, and will keep on doing what it can to help foster new talents and innovative ideas in this new and exciting space.
Non-fungible tokens, another way to tokenize gold
HelloGold’s Blockchain team is exploring new ideas to tokenize gold on the blockchain. Non-fungible tokens is one of them, offering the possibility to “mint” a token representing a specific bar of gold. Using the ERC-721 standard, this new way of tokenizing gold could help solve usability issues related to demurrage fees faced by the ERC-20 alternative (GOLDX) and help stimulate trading of tokenized gold on the blockchain. A detailed article about this will be posted soon on this blog, so stay tuned!
Devcon 4
HelloGold sent a delegation to attend Devcon 4 in Prague, and it’s been quite a week there! A full debrief of the conference will be posted on this blog, but here are some of the highlights:
- Ethereum 2.0 “Serenity” is coming sooner than later, and the whole community is really excited about what Ethereum will have to offer within the next 12 to 24 months.
- Stablecoin is a buzz word these days in the space, and HelloGold is known as one of the very few players actually offering a solution totally independent from the dollar.
- There are now various blockchain-powered solutions ready to be rolled out for the world at large, but there is a critical lack of adoption outside of blockchain enthusiast circles. Adoption and inclusion need critical real-world use-cases to showcase what the technology can do, and HelloGold is definitely in the race to deliver on this objective!
GOLDX distribution
We are distributing rewards on 13th November 2018! The total allocation will be 2.4824 GOLDX.
Please remember to keep HGT in your own wallet and not on any exchanges to receive the GOLDX.
We will continue to provide updates on a monthly basis. Please do get in touch with us in between updates if you have any thoughts, suggestions or recommendations.
The HelloGold Foundation Team
