In 2019’s second quarter, Jibrel saw a significant overall improvement in its tech — including the launch of a major update to Jwallet Android, as well as various adjustments to Jwallet iOS and Jwallet Web.
Additionally, the business development team was able to establish several key relationships and obtain approvals, which will be utilized towards building exciting new tokenization projects in the second half of this year (Q3 & Q4).
1. Organizational Build-Out
Non-Technical Dimensions: A Refresher on Jibrel’s Vision
At Jibrel, we are committed to delivering future-proof products that we believe will be essential in the evolution of decentralized finance. Since we started working on Jibrel, the blockchain space (as well as its interaction with the regulatory landscape) has evolved tremendously. That said, our vision and mission — as outlined in the Jibrel whitepaper — have remained the same:
We believe in a digital future and an open financial system, powered by emerging technologies.
Our core values include enabling:
- Instant settlement of global transfers
- Digitization of traditional financial assets
- Interlinkage between the cryptocurrency space and the real regulated world
To fulfill this mission, we have been spending time on building infrastructure products that are proving to be essential prerequisites, based on our ongoing conversations with banks, regulators, and other financial institutions. These products include:
- Jwallet
- Jsearch
- Jcash
Those allow us, our users, and our clients to connect to the Ethereum blockchain in various ways. For example, the offerings enable self-custody of funds, user-friendly access to blockchain data, and connection to APIs and backend features of the network — without being exposed to the volatility of the cryptocurrency market. Such core infrastructure products have been crucial prerequisites when approaching regulators who are generally more open to our technologies now, but who nonetheless prefer to see that the whole infrastructure and overall offering can be under their control. This has been particularly useful with our most recent interactions with the Central Bank of Jordan, where we are about to launch an initiative that will be discussed in this update, as well as in more detail throughout the rest of the year.
While our infrastructural components (such as Jwallet, Jsearch, and Jcash) are crucial technical and regulatory prerequisites to fulfill our vision, their marketability as standalone products is limited in their current states.
In addition to the above-mentioned infrastructural products, we have been fleshing out our approach towards a unified asset tokenization platform — Jibrel — that is borderless, asset-class agnostic, and customizable for different use cases. These use cases include, but are not limited to:
- Debt (bonds and sukuk)
- Equities
- Real estate
Speccing out these use cases was only possible after intensive work with regulators, legal advisors, and banks — all of which have assisted us in setting up a framework for proposing previously unimaginable protocols, products, and services that we are very excited to be pushing out in the coming years. We are currently working with a diverse network of partners, which includes, to name a few:
- GBSA (Gulf Bond and Sukuk Association)
- DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre) Fintech Hive
- CBJ (Central Bank of Jordan) Fintech Sandbox
We continue to work with a number of partners and regulators, to actualize various projects including our goal of creating a unified asset tokenization platform.
Each of our partners specializes in a different domain, which diversifies Jibrel’s approach while maintaining a focus on asset tokenization. This also brings us closer to realizing the vision of creating a frictionless ecosystem, powered by our smart contracts and network architecture- which brings us to the role of the most crucial stakeholder in this matrix: you, the participant in the ecosystem.
Promoting and incentivizing participation in a non-traditional ecosystem is not an easy task, as it requires a set of changes on a personal and on a communal level to realize the full potential of the regulated-yet-decentralized system that we are offering.
All transactions within the Jibrel ecosystem will either contribute directly to, or depend on, the sound economics, distribution, and demand of the network and the token. Fees on the network will be recycled towards the expansion and further utilization of the network, by incentivizing new and existing users to participate, generating demand for the token.
That said, we are excited to get the ecosystem up and running as soon as we have all the required approvals and technical assurances that the system will run as smoothly as possible and without any interruption.
A. People & Capabilities
Organization, Manpower & Talent
Over the course of Q2, Jibrel made a number of strategic hires based on identified pain points. Given several performance-related departures, the Jibrel team remains at roughly the same size as previously.
- Marketing: We have hired a marketing team lead to spearhead Jibrel’s marketing efforts in the New York City office. Additionally, we now have a bilingual summer marketing intern (English and Chinese), to focus on interactions with our Chinese market.
- Tech: This quarter, a product manager and several engineers joined to focus on Jibrel’s expanding technical and infrastructural needs.
B. Marketing, PR & Community Management
Outward Facing Deliverables & Work
We are hosting an AMA program with Yazan (CEO), Victor (CTO), and Talal (COO) in Q3.
Community: In the past, we have hosted AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions, with questions posted and a recording released (click on hyperlinks for past example). In keeping with past precedent, we are happy to announce that we will be carrying out a similar procedure in Q3 of 2019. Yazan (CEO), Victor (CTO), and Talal (COO) will be answering posted questions. Stay tuned for additional details and instructions!
Events: As part of increasing its brand presence, Jibrel has been active at Blockchain, Fintech, and Finance events. Over the quarter, Jibrel attended and participated in the following:
- April, 2–3: Future Blockchain Summit. (Hosted by Smart Dubai, the Future Blockchain Summit is the world’s largest Blockchain festival attracting up to 10000 participants annually.)
- April, 10–11: Seamless Conference, Middle East. (Seamless is comprised of 6 events under one platform. Seamless Fintech assesses disrupting technology for all verticals of the financial ecosystem.)
- April 19–20: MIT Arab SciTech. Yazan Barghuthi (Jibrel’s CEO) spoke at the Digital Infrastructure Panel of the MIT Arab SciTech Conference.
- April 29: Smart Contracts, Architecture, Applications and Future Trends (A Continuing Legal Professional Development Program (CLPD) accredited by Dubai Government Legal Affairs Department).
- May 9: “Best of the US” Primary Token Listing 2019 Competition, NYC. Jibrel’s CEO, Yazan Barghuthi, was a guest panelist and competition judge at this event.
- May 10–11: Ethereal Summit New York.
- May 13–15: Consensus New York.
- May 14: Jibrel and MAMA Meetup co-hosted at Trust Square, Zug, Switzerland on the topic of asset tokenization and blockchain in the Middle East.
- June 3–5: Money 20/20 Europe.
- July 23rd (upcoming): Jibrel Speaking at GBSA Workshop. Alongside such established international companies as Euroclear, Norton Rose Fulbright, Acreditus, and S&P Global, Jibrel will be speaking about opportunities and challenges in the bonds and sukuk market of the Gulf region.
Team Members in the Media:
- Yazan at MIT Arab SciTech. Jibrel’s CEO, Yazan Barghuthi, spoke at the Digital Infrastructure Panel of the MIT Arab SciTech Conference.
- Talal at Business Live ME: Jibrel’s COO, Talal Tabbaa, was interviewed by Business Live Middle East regarding Jibrel’s blockchain implementations, Smart Sukuk, and more.
- Yazan at Slingshot: Yazan was a guest panelist. Check out the following hyperlinks for video highlights, including comments on ICOs vs. IPOs and emerging IEO trends.
- Sewar with Rise Up: Sewar Nowwar of Jibrel’s business development team was specially selected to take part in Money 2020’s Rise Up program. Among a hand-chosen cohort of 30 women, she took part in an exclusive Money20/20 curated agenda, and will be completing a series of bespoke content sessions with unique networking opportunities.
Digital Marketing Stats: Although we continue to work on strategies to improve — especially in the areas of customer acquisition and community engagement — below is an overview of the state of the Jibrel brand to date:
2. Asset Tokenization
Putting Traditional Assets on Ethereum
This quarter, we’re especially excited to announce our approval from the Central Bank of Jordan to use Jcash in a test for a blockchain-based remittances program under the CBJ’s Fintech Sandbox.
Jibrel’s core mandate is to provide traditional financial assets, such as currencies, commodities and debt instruments, as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. This section of the update focuses on the progress made against Jibrel’s core mandate.
Equities:
Overview:
- Held discussions with ecosystem stakeholders including some of MENA’s top VCs and startups, to iron out a strategy on equities tokenization
- Tech/Business team working on platform specifications, mock-ups, design
- Completing all required legal processes and documents
- Onboarded Eversheds Sutherland as Jibrel’s advisor for equities projects
- In the process of conducting early stage development of a private financing platform focused on equities
Deep Dive:
At Jibrel, we are most excited about unleashing the potential of blockchain and smart contract technology in redefining equity ownership. The overarching question that we set out to answer is: how can we compliantly maximize the value that can be unlocked by programmable tokenized equity. A solution that best embodies our vision in this context is a private financing platform that is managed by smart contracts and powered by tokenized equity.
The concept of tokenization is still not widely understood nor accepted by participants outside of the crypto-space. This pushed us to look for industries where leaders are open to new technologies, supportive of change, and willing to bet on ‘the next big thing.’ An obvious choice was the Venture Capital (VC) industry, which provides the means of financing that is most in line with the needs of early and growth-stage tech startups.
Following considerable research and conversations with regulators and VCs in the MENA region, we decided to work on a test proposal that entails the representation of SME equity in the form of self-regulating tokens in a process that mimics and improves upon the traditional VC financing model. Upon the completion of the test, we anticipate that we will be able to launch the full platform, which brings retail and institutional investors together in creating globally relevant, stronger, more efficient, and future-proof organizations. This is only possible due to the transparent and efficient nature of the underlying protocol.
Debt:
- Joined the Gulf Bond and Sukuk Association (GBSA)
- DFSA (Dubai Financial Services Authority) Innovation Testing License cohort still in progress for issuing tokenized debt
- Conducted discussions with banks in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on issuing debt on-chain
Real Estate:
- Real-estate tokenization will only really work when the regulator approves tokens as means of ownership
- Maintaining ongoing discussions with the regulator (Dubai Land Department /ERES)
- Despite gaining brokerage approvals, progress has been slow as tokenizing real estate is not possible without the regulator’s buy-in
- ERES (Emirates Real Estate Solutions) is planning to open up API access for blockchain startups towards the end of the year, which would allow proper tokenization of real-estate assets
Commodities:
- As it stands, the traditional (non-tokenized) commodity trading market is one of the more efficient markets, when compared to other conventional trading markets in terms of information symmetry, price discovery and reduced friction
- Regardless, Jibrel continues to explore opportunities in this area
- Jibrel is conducting a feasibility analysis for one of the regions’ largest commodity refineries focused on using commodity-backed tokens for futures trading
Jcash:
Overview:
- Received approval from the CBJ to test out international remittances using Jcash
- Additional details on scope, participants, and pilot rollout will be published at a later date
- Jcash will power crypto-fiat transactions for tokenized assets
Deep Dive:
One of our main goals at Jibrel is bridging the gap between governments, central banks, regulators, and blockchain technology. To this very day, there are still some misconceptions about the power of this technology and how it can be appropriately utilized in different applications. One of our wins over this last quarter was our latest agreement with the Central Bank of Jordan. We received approvals to test Jcash on a permissioned network — governed and regulated by the Central Bank of Jordan with the collaboration of two banks, one located in the United Arab Emirates and the other in Jordan.
This sets the stage for future projects with the Central Bank, where with more trust of our solutions, and some experience with utilizing and tinkering with the blockchain, testing and trying more radical solutions should be more efficient. Our latest meetings with the Central Bank of Jordan is proof of the extent to which the space has developed over the past couple of years.
3. Technical Development
Product Development
Q2 was eventful for the development team. We pushed out the second version of Jwallet Android, are putting the finishing touches on the accompanying next generations of Jwallet iOS and Web, and have been working on technical and product needs for several tokenization tests.
Jwallet
In May, the tech team released the 2.0 version of the Android Jwallet, which focuses on user interface and user experience. This full re-design includes improved transaction functionalities, support for seven different languages, and ultimately a heavily overhauled and improved UX/UI.
Following the 2.0 launch, the team released additional minor updates focused on addressing bug fixes and enhancing performance for the 2.X series. The team has managed to maintain high-quality app performance metrics, including a very low crash rate. All of these factors have been leading to a positive feedback loop within the Google Play store, placing us in a strong position to continue growing our Android user base. Given the overall stagnation of the crypto wallet market, these steps are all the more essential to maintain steady growth in our Jwallet user base.
Finally, the team continues to make progress on Jwallet web and Jwallet iOS 2.0, which are planned to be released in Q3 of 2019.
Tokenization
Additionally, the tech and product team have been collaborating more than ever with the business development team, as multiple requests for tokenizing traditional assets have been received. Each requires its own approach from user experience, technical, legal, and operational perspectives. Over the last month, the business development team submitted four different proposals to clients requesting we tokenize: commodities, Islamic finance instruments, and equity ownership. These various proposals each required efforts from the technical team to determine feasibility, resourcing, and timelines.
What’s Next
In anticipation of rolling out new features and linking our existing products with the customizable asset tokenization solutions that will contribute to the Jibrel ecosystem, here is what our development team will be focusing on in parallel to asset tokenization, product development, and other infrastructural products:
- Jwallet iOS and Web: These will both be released this quarter (Q3 2019). The main goal here is to bring these versions to parity with Jwallet Android in terms of UI/UX, since our Android offering currently leads the pack in terms of quality in those regards. Improved iOS and Web experiences for Jwallet will allow us to focus all the more on the adoption of Jwallet across all platforms.
- Jsearch: Unfortunately, not everything has been going as expected with the development of Jsearch. The development team has been experiencing some delays on the backend side over the past few months, but we are on a path to recovery in those regards while continuing our work on the frontend part of the service.
- Jwallet Android: We are working on integrating our own native price feed and block explorer into the app. Integrating the price feed will allow us to introduce many useful features, such as portfolio analysis, as well as price graphs. Furthermore, integrating the block explorer API will make the app even faster, and will unlock new functionalities: proper support for ICO transfers, management of multiple wallets in parallel, and more. Our experience in the industry — combined with significant research and customer development — shows that these offerings will all provide a great deal of value to new and existing end users — improving and speeding up our ability to acquire, engage, and ultimately retain an active user base. Once we have implemented these features, we will be at parity with the leading crypto wallet apps on the market. This will increase the marketability of the apps — and this is when competition for higher ranks and more significant market share will begin in earnest.
Jibrel provides traditional financial assets such as currencies, commodities, and equities, as standard ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
