2020 Hyperion Annual Report

Hi all, it’s now time to round-up for 2020. Coronavirus whacked the world since the beginning of the year, waking everyone up from the usual hope for another good year. We all knew what happened afterward.

Not just the pandemic, 2020 condemned us to a year of unexpected, including the Australian bushfire, Kobe Bryant’s accident, Black Lives Matter protests, and the contentious U.S election… Not even a disaster movie director would create an intensive plot like this.

Covid-19 hit hard on a multitude of industries that closely relate to our daily life, including airlines, restaurants, and leisure facilities. It forced a radical shift in consumer and retailer behaviors under social distancing and travel restrictions. Citizens, esp. those in the UK and U.S, have to spend most of the time working or studying at home as the pandemic continues its spread.

However, the silver lining was expecting us at the end of the tunnel. This year marks a tipping point for the blockchain industry as we’ve witnessed a growing adoption and declining suspicion around the crypto-space.

Remarkable things did happen in the blockchain industry this year, both in the crypto-asset market and application fields. Let’s review these rejoice in this article, and quickly flashback on what the Hyperion team has achieved in 2020.

2020 Blockchain Review

During 2020, the market value of the cryptocurrency has risen by about 170%. The total market cap of Bitcoin has reached $335 billion, and BTC price touched $24228.83 as an all-time high on the 21st of December. ETH market cap has amounted to $40.6 billion and made its top price on the 17th of December at $662.68. When price surged, the number of developers into blockchain projects soared.

Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polkadot, Tezos, Cardano and EOS are listed as the largest crypto networks so far, each with an average of 100 monthly developers. Among which the most phenomenal application has been decentralized finance (DeFi), a type of widely adopted financial applications built based on Ethereum.

Developers and liquidity providers are the key driving force behind DeFi. While developers write code for various smart contracts to enable borrowing and lending, and very rapidly an enormous amount of assets moved into it; liquidity providers inject tokens to enrich the trading pool. As Bitcoin reduces global payments and being more accessible, Defi takes one step further by making liquidity providers gain with interest rates.

By the time of writing, over 6.8 billion worth of crypto has been locked into Defi and is expected to grow in the following months to come.

Facebook claimed the rebirth of Libra and renamed it, Diem. The cryptocurrency developed by Facebook was originally announced in June of 2019. However, due to the U.S regulatory restrictions, in July of 2019, Facebook claimed to postpone its launch until all regulatory requests are met. In December 2020, Diem was brought up. The new U.S dollar-pegged currency is projected to launch in January 2021.

Hyperion Achievements in 2020

February & March

Since the regional outbreak of Covid-19, our team has been working on the pandemic tracking map with decentralized features. The crowd-source and crowd-built pandemic map aimed to be an alternative source for everyone to efficiently track the nearby virus updates for early detection purposes.

The map marks to differentiate an authorized data source with open-source data by colors. Red PoIs are collected from the National and Provincial Health Committee, while the yellow POIs are uploaded by global contributors.

In the meantime, we have been developing more APIs for developers to easily create their map apps.

April

In April, we launched Map3 cloud node (v0.8) staking contract. It allows HYN holders to contribute map services by deploying ERC-20 Map3 nodes by staking. In return, node operators and participants can withdraw HYN rewards when the node is due. To increase the network level of decentralization, the delegation threshold for a node participant is set low.

This month, Hyperion project implemented a comprehensive security audit of the Map3 smart contract code by the SlowMist security team, which includes but not limited to overflow audit, conditional competition audit, authorization control audit, design logic audit, security design audit, etc.

SlowMist focuses on blockchain ecosystem security. They were created by a team of founders with extensive experience in the frontlines of offensive and defensive cybersecurity. They have shared security expertise with such companies and government bodies as Google, Microsoft, W3C, Huobi the China Ministry of Public Security, Tencent, and Alibaba.

May

In May, Hyperion held an online-streaming Map3 initiation conference. The co-founders of Hyperion CEO Kai Law, CTO Guangxian Zou, and Chief Architect Dr. Isaac Zhang delivered project updates from the community, product, and technological aspects to the audience. The conference was joined by Hyperion business partners, community members investors.

June

In June, Hyperion launched Economic Model 2.0. The model elaborates on the engagement requirement on each of the three layers with embedded static and dynamic structures, to encourage HYN holders to become node operators. It also aims to scale-up decentralized map communities as the ecosystem value escalates overtime.

Meanwhile, the new model integrates the internal and external burning mechanism to maintain the token value. As a growing number of business users join to request map services, the ecosystem will gradually transit from a token model-driven growth to a service-driven self-reinforcing growth.

Hyperion aims to integrate global map data service on-chain and apply it to smart facilities such as AI, unmanned drive, and IoT that heavily rely on long-tail, accurate, and real-time location data.

The decentralized map app Titan is updated this month with the newly added feature of cross-chain asset management. It offers to securely manage cross-chain crypto assets including BTC, ETH, HYN while maintaining user privacy.

July

Titan wallet address (public key) is since then used as the unique ID to access Hyperion dApps, such as the private location share function. By enabling access to dmaps with the public key, increase the number of participants in the decentralized map ecosystem aim to stimulate the amount of token demand, to continually improve the value of the map ecosystem.

August

This month, we shift the scaling cycle in economic model to 3 months earlier, to match with the launch time of mainnet. Therefore, the staking threshold will immediately reduce by half on the day of mainnet launch, to encourage a wider level of participation.

September

In September, we were happy to announce the launch of mainnet. Mainnet launch means a new start for us and for the community throughout the previous two years.

With Hyperion mainnet, HYN transaction fee will be reduced, which saves HYN holders from paying a high gas fee based on the Ethereum network. Next, we will enrich mainnet functions in Titan, by integrating HYN swap, staking contract migration, and HSWAP (Titan built-in exchange function) function.

Hswap enables crypto asset management and transaction in Titan app with more secure and low-cost features, since users can manage private keys on local devices, to avoid intrusive access from third-party exchanges.

In addition, HSWAP offers easier access for developers with little token issuance fee and a simplified process. We aim to build a rich decentralized map network with various location-based dApps.

October

Since 21.00 (GMT+8) 27th Oct Oct, users can start to swap from ERC20-HYN to mainnet Atlas-HYN. Mainnet tokens will be used to access mainnet functions.

November

In November, we launched blockchain explorer, the hynscan. It is designed for HYN holders to access real-time mainnet block updates and transaction details of each mainnet address.

November has completed two rounds of token burning. The first burning amount is calculated based on ERC20 Map3 node staking amount, while from the second burning, that will be calculated based on mainnet node staking amount.

After the mainnet migration, each burning will initiate every 30 epochs. The previous two rounds have totally burnt 934.249337 million HYNs. Token burning mechanism (TBM) permanently removes a number of tokens from circulation against token staking amount, as a deflationary technique to stabilize and increase the value of token with a limited amount of supply.

Hyperion burning interval is every 30 epochs pegged against Map3 node details.

December

In December, we completed the first round of the RP airdrops and the third burning. Approx. 426,914,804 HYNs were burnt in December. By far, the three rounds of burning is over 1.26 billion HYNs in total. By adjusting the supply-demand of token amount，the continual HYN burning would stabilize and appreciate the HRC 30 ecosystem’s token value.

In the next stage, as we walk towards the new beginning of 2021, Hyperion will focus more on exploring the applications of HRC30 standard. We’ll develop location-based rigs for miners to contribute decentralized map services to our ecosystem. In the meantime, we’ll continue upgrading the Hswap exchange to offer more Atlas-based trading functions.

Thank you all for supporting us in 2020!