IRISnet Annual Review and Outlook on the New Year

Today (UTC+, 8Jan 24th, 2020) is Chinese New Year’s Eve and we are about to embrace the Chinese Lunar New Year. Looking back, it was a year of ups and downs for the blockchain industry, but it was also an extraordinary year for IRISnet. 2019 March 1st, we were excited to witness the genesis block of IRISnet generated. The mainnet IRIS Hub has launched. It opened a new chapter in the IRISnet and the Cosmos cross-chain ecosystem as a whole.

First and foremost, let’s take a look at the highlight moments of IRISnet in the past year !

✨Annual Milestone Review

Thanks to validators’ support, IRIS Hub launched successfully and runned smoothly and securely over the past 11 months. We are happy to see that the validator set of 58 members from the start has grown into a stable set of around 93. They are diversified in terms of geographic distribution and business model. Most of them are validators who provide staking services as their core business, others have a background in private equity funds, mining pools, exchanges, wallets, and other blockchain projects.

As a team focusing on technology and products, IRISnet achieved a total of 6998 code commits, 2216 file changed, 2515514 lines addition, and 72314 lines deletion. Talk is cheap. Let’s show the code. Here is a review of the visualized Github repository:

In August, IRISnet completed the first mainnet upgrade. It is the first time for an incompatible version in BPoS network to complete a smooth upgrade without hard fork and data purge. More importantly, many exciting new features that support DeFi applications have been introduced since the upgrade, namely multi-asset management, random number generator, multi-sig accounts and multi-sig transactions, etc.

In October, IRIS Hub also has completed a gateway development connecting Binance Chain. IRIS Hub and Binance Chain are both built on Cosmos SDK, the former being an interchain service hub and the latter, a decentralized exchange (DEX). We are convinced that DEXes play a very important role in interchain ecosystems. The gateway being launched is the first step for IRIS Hub to support Binance’s DEX before Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) is ready.

In November, The IRISnet core developer team completed the IBC ICS 20 to support cross-chain transfer in IBC, built a MVP, provided a demo on Rainbow to let users get a first hand on IBC transfer at the San Francisco Blockchain Week.

Meanwhile in November, IRISnet mainnet IRIS Hub has completed its second smooth upgrade. IRIS Hub has been updated to v0.16. DeFi application support has been improved with new modules added to IRIS Hub, namely Atomic Swap (HTLC) and Coinswap. Also, we were glad to hear from our technical community that they like the snapshot, a new functionality to help nodes save local storage resources. All in all, IRIS Hub NÜWA stage is LIVE!

In 2019, there were 56 online and offline activities organized or participated by IRISnet, including Cosmos & IRISnet Launch Party, the 5th Global Blockchain Summit, BUIDL ASIA 2019 in Korea, San Fransisco Blockchain Week, Osaka Blockchain Weem, etc. We have met a lot of excellent teams and smart people on these events, and got a lot of opportunities to explorer blockchain technology together and to discuss on the future collaboration.

🎊New Year Plan

In the past year, IRISnet has successfully realized the plan on the roadmap in the white paper, and the upcoming year looks even more promising.

For 2020 start, IRISnet core team will not miss the fun of participating in the Cosmos “Game of Zones” incentivized testnet. Also as Cosmos open-source code developer in China, for GOZ, we will provide operational and technical support to the Cosmos community in China. Also during the GoZ, we will look for opportunities to contribute new ideas and even help to code it to realize the interchain vision.

We would like to work hard to realize the connection between Cosmos Hub and IRIS Hub to verify the multi-hub design of Cosmos. We will also make full preparation for supporting many application-specific blockchains’ connection to IRIS Hub through IBC.

Meanwhile, we plan to upgrade IRISnet mobile client to support the applications. The third stage will also focus on incremental upgrades to the IRIS Network in order to support our planned advanced IRIS Service features.

Next, IRISnet will concentrate on the development in Houyi Stage according to the roadmap. The fourth stage will focus on further technology innovations to the IRIS network, SDK and mobile client, as well as developer engagement.

We would also like to open source an enterprise permissioned blockchain to the Cosmos ecosystem. It is based on our past work together with business partners such as Nanjing Digital Finance Industry Research Institute and Fuxing in the financial industry and healthcare domain.

Moreover, Rainbow wallet, the earliest Chinese-English wallet that supports both IRIS Hub and Cosmos Hub, currently not only supports both IRIS and Atom tokens, but also allows users to vote for IRIS Hub and Cosmos Hub on-chain proposals.

In 2020, the Rainbow Wallet will implement the following exciting updates:

• Improving the user experience when sending and receiving Hongbao (a.k.a. red packet) through Rainbow;
• Providing user-friendly experience for IBC and providing convenient, safe cross-chain token transfer functionality;
• Users will be able to use a multi-chain unified identity for wallet management.

🥰A Thank You Letter

Running a startup is full of challenges, especially in this ever-changing blockchain industry. However, we still have a lot fun. Besides being motivateg by the technical ambitions, we also cherish every community member and partner who contributes to our development. As a bottom layer project, we believe that you are an inseparable part of IRISnet.

Thanks to the continuous support on technology and ecosystem development from our community members, IRISnet can make today’s achievement.

Thanks to the IRIS wallets developed by the community, including MathWallet, Wetez, Cosmostation, etc. As for the blockchain explorers that supports IRIS Hub, in addition to IRISplorer, the Big-Dipper, Hubble, Mintscan, and LOOK supported by the community also provide a very good user experience. What’s more, thanks to Hashkey Hub, Math Wallet, 01node, Cosmostation for providing the staking tools. Thanks to the team led by volunteer Jack Lin, for launching COIRFAN website and Unicoins Dapp.

Thanks to our partners, including Cosmos/Tendermint team, PlatON, Axonomy, and GDEX. Thanks to Nodeasy, Cypher Core, Paradigm, Melea, hey.fish, Real Satoshi, First.vip and other ecosystem partners for writing reports and translations for IRISnet.

What’s past is prologue.

—— William Shakespeare

We look forward to embarking on a new chapter in the next decade starting from 2020 and entering the new era of the Internet of Blockchains!

💫PS: 2019 IRISnet Big Events

Jan.2019

PlatON and IRISnet jointly announced the establishment of a strategic partnership. The two parties will collaborate in the areas of blockchain, big data analysis, distributed systems, and privacy computing.

Mar.2019

IRISnet launched its mainnet IRIS Hub, together with Cosmos Hub. Cosmos & IRISnet Launch Party is held.

Jul.2019

IRIS foundation incentivized the developers who made contributions to the ecosystem through Bug Bounty Programm.

Aug.2019

IRISnet completed its first mainnet upgrade, the first time of a smooth upgrade in BPoS network history.

Sep.2019

Rainbow supports on-chain governance on IRIS Hub.

Sep.2019

IRISnet participated in the 5th Global Blockchain Summit and a series of activities during ShanghaiBlockchainWeek.

Oct.2019

IRISnet realized the interoperability with Binance Chain. The 2-way token transfer between IRIS Hub and Binance chain is supported.

Nov.2019

The IRISnet core developer team completed the ICS 20 cross-chain transfer in IBC.

Nov.2019

IRIS Hub has completed its second smooth upgrade