HelloGold Foundation Update #7–6th January 2018
Business
HelloGold finished 2017 with strong momentum, on the back of the “Get to the next gram and we’ll give you RM5 worth of gold” end of year campaign and some further PR. Customer acquisition continued at a pace of 1,000 new registered customers per week. AUM and active customer base increased by nearly 10% in the last 10 days leading to the new year — the best result so far.
As we start the new year our focus will be on developing the brand with proprietary content, kicking off offline PR & advertising and a much more proactive approach to social media. To that end we’ve started work with Dolphin (digital comms), Litmus (PR), Maven (website) and a set of niche publishers, influencers and writers. All this while ramping up digital marketing and preparing the Gold Token (more details on that below) and Chinese New Year 2018 campaigns. Expect to see much more of HelloGold in 2018!
With the addition of interns coming in this week, the team now stands at 30 and the HelloGold office has been bustling with activity since the new year.
Technical
The following are updates to workstreams currently worked on by Tech:
1. KYC v2. Development of KYCv2 Phase 2.1 has finished and Tech is now on track to start functional tests by the first week of January. The target is to be ready for security tests by the middle of January 2018. KYCv2 is a major revamp of the HelloGold app to facilitate a better customer on-boarding experience.
2. Wallet Integration. Work with Axiata has started where HelloGold will integrate their Boost e-wallet as another payment option for customers to top up their HelloGold cash to buy gold. This is an exciting development that gives customers more options to fund their gold purchase, and is only the first step in the partnership.
3. Enhancing HelloGold’s in-house blockchain capability. Tech is developing the required multi-sig smart contracts to be used in the product blockchain and also developing the API for integration by HelloGold’s Core CWS system. Additionally, Dave the blockchain lead is conducting on-going in-house training to build up Tech’s in-house blockchain capability.
4. Preparing the core systems for regional expansion. This vital piece of work involves designing an architecture that has the flexibility to support the rich variety of regional profiles and the ability to scale to support more customers in the upcoming market expansion push. Tech has drafted a high-level architecture and is starting the required analysis/design work prior to the actual work of refactoring the code.
Tokens
Gold Token
We are excited at the impending launch of the new Gold Token. The launch involves a rebrand of the GBT into a new ticker and logo. With the second audit of the smart contract expected to be complete soon, we will be posting more detail on the launch shortly.
As described in the last update, both the HGT and GBT contracts will be frozen while the GBT contract is being updated. Once the update is finished, the old GBT contract will remain frozen and make way for the new Gold Token.
Website makeover
Also part of the launch is a makeover to the hellogold.org website! The new website will be up on the weekend and involves more of a focus on buying the new Gold Token.
HGT exchange listing
HGT has been listed on the Hong Kong Shang Ya exchange! For those who are interested to trade HKD or RMB for HGT, Shang Ya now provides that opportunity.
Meetup
Robin will be travelling for the bulk of January and will be in London, Dubai, and Miami. If you would like to speak with him at a local meetup, drop us a note at foundation@hellogold.org.
Gold Token reward distribution
The rewards for the month of December 2017 will be distributed on 11th January 2018. The total allocation will be 0.711 Gold Tokens, up by a massive 68% from the previous month!
We will continue to provide updates regularly. Please do get in touch with us in between updates if you have any thoughts, suggestions or recommendations.
The HelloGold Foundation Team
