Hydra & LockTrip Ecosystem Update | January 2022
Today we are happy to share the January Ecosystem Update. So many things are going on and we can’t wait to present the progress to you.
Be prepared for a long read and maybe grab a cup of coffee (or tea)!
1. Delegated Staking & Superstaking
This month our team completed the development of the Delegated Staking and Superstaker features, including a range of supporting functionality that was introduced to the staking client:
- Upgrading your client to a superstaker node
- Setting the minimum fee accepted
- Delegating your HYDRA to a superstaker of your choice
- Auto-split UTXOs for a quick optimization process
- Setting a commission fee as a superstaker
In the last week of January the code was merged with the internal devnet and is now being put to test extensively. Key aspects to be observed will be the stability and performance of superstaker nodes relative to their standard level counterparts.
2. EVM Upgrade & Block Time Reduction
Last month we announced that the merge of the block time reduction feature with the devnet went through successfully. Since then we conducted a series of tests, which showed a stable performance of the network. So far we don’t track any notable issues.
A stronger testing sprint is scheduled for February & March, with the newly added superstaking feature going into effect as well (being a key feature for staking behaviour). Among other items, the tests will include burst-transactions and performance of the network under very high stress.
Core focus points will be the search for potential instabilities, mini-forks as well as orphan blocks. We expect their frequency and occurance to be similar to the current mainnet.
With this feature, the average block time of the chain will drop from its current 128 seconds down to 32 seconds — thus improving by a factor of four.
The reduction of the block time will improve the entire experience and strengthen the impact of all applications that are being executed on-chain. Including but not limited to: Defi, DEX Swaps, Bridge Swaps, Token transfers, Hydra transfers, Staking, Games, as well as exchange deposit and withdrawal times.
3. Hydra DeFi & Decentralized Exchange
In the month of January, we made minor improvements to the newly deployed analytics section (launched on December 22nd).
One of the improvements we are working on is about the 24 hours trading volume reporting system. Currently it restarts at the volume of 0 at 0:00 time. With the upgrade it will turn into a trailing 24 hours system.
3.1 Single-Sided Liquidity Feature (Newly Moved)
Since this feature is now under development, we will start reporting progress on it as part of the DEX section (was previously part of the “prototype projects” section).
In December we had announced that the team started with the active development work on the single sided liquidity feature. As of the end of January, the following tasks made progress:
- Completed the architecture with interdependencies across the smart contracts
- Started with the coding work of the finalized smart contracts
- Some design details are being discussed with the development team, regarding certain trade-offs between feature richness and complexity
3.2 Liquidity Mining Feature (NEW!)
This is the first time we are including the liquidity mining feature in our monthly progress updates.
The feature is being designed as an extension to the single-sided liquidity provision feature elaborated above. Therefore it is currently in the architectural build-up stage.
We expect this stage to be completed in the month of February.
What are the benefits?
Liquidity mining is an effective strategy to attract liquidity into the DEX pools and accelerate the growth phase of the ecosystem. Depending on the strategy, certain pools can be prioritized and boosted. Liquidity mining budgets can be adjusted based on the market responses and needs.
4. Cross-chain Bridge
The Hydra cross-chain bridge will allow for the free movement of capital between Hydra and Ethereum. This is a critical component to the ecosystem, as it gives Hydra the opportunity to capture capital from external chains and grow the TVL (total value locked) of its DEX.
Last month we shared with you that the bridge is ready for deployment and that we were planning to initiate two security audits. In the meantime we upped our game and decided for the following setup:
- 3 external audits (Certik, Knownsec Blockchain Labs & Lianantech Security)
- 1 internal audit
All of the audits were initiated in January and we are happy to announce that the internal and the first external audit both concluded with good results.
We are now awaiting the results of the remaining two audits, which we expect to receive by the end of February. If all is good, we will be ready to launch soon after.
5. Social Media DAO (Live!)
This project aims to concentrate the community force behind Hydra chain and amplify it through the power of social media platforms. The community will be able to self-govern all marketing activities around Hydra and leverage on financial capital, economic inventives and the power of algorithms designed to scale.
In December we had launched the first version of the social media DAO. The feedback from the community was great and our team made a number of improvements based on it.
- Leaderboard updates in real-time as opposed to once a day
- Participants wallet addresses are fetched every 24 hours instead of every 30 days, thus unlocking higher flexibility
- Some minor tweaks were made to the scoring algorithm, based on corner cases raised by the community
Data Analytics
Twitter Events will soon get an upgrade with a new data analytics section. We will track performance metrics related to the tweets, interacting accounts and impact. The dashboard is expected to go live by the first half of February!
January Event
The first full-scale event was launched in January, with a prize pool of 200 HYDRA.
For the first time, extra points were awarded for including one of the four bonus-links in the tweet content. The feature was well-perceived and many participants took advantage of the opportunity.
More than 1,000 tweets were posted by the participants in only 1 week.
The top performer secured a reward of almost 25 HYDRA! We want to congratulate all participants for their achievements.
The next round will be launched soon, so be prepared!
6. NFT Marketplace
In the month of January we completed the research and team building processes for the NFT Marketplace.
For the month of February the main focus points will be to finalize the architecture development in accordance to the general NFT and Travel NFT Matrix needs, as well as to turn the results into a technical mini-roadmap to be followed.
7. Hydra Explorer Redesign
One of the major projects being worked on as we speak is the explorer redesign with an improved information structure.
The UTXO model of the Hydra chain makes it more difficult to understand transactions, especially when there are multiple wallets involved. When smart contracts are involved, then the two methods of UTXO (coming from Bitcoin) and the account model (coming from Ethereum) get mixed up, for an even more confusing appearance.
To simplify this and convey information in a more intuitive way, the explorer is being tweaked on all ends and corners, with quite a few creative solutions coming together.
One of the new features being introduced includes a display of net fees paid, after accounting for refunds of unspent gas.
An estimated 40% of the work has been completed by the end of January, up from 10% in December.
8. Token Projects
What is happening on the token projects side?
8.1 GoMeat
The GoMeat project advanced on their crypto integration roadmap and is working on increasing the number of wallet holders. Through the wallets, GoMeat aims towards converting their customers into GOMT holders.
At the same time their team continues to onboard additional stores to their marketplace.
8.2 LockTrip Announces Record Bookings!
LockTrip announced a record number of bookings for Q4 2021, with year-over-year rates growing by a whopping 898%.
This is despite a temporary slowdown in the travel industry owed to the Omicron wave, which affected all booking sites.
On average, LockTrip.com customers saved 20% on their bookings.
8.3 ChangeX is Coming to Hydra Chain!
On January 31 we proudly announced the latest project launching on the Hydra chain. The project was initially named “Project-X”, since the brand name was not decided yet.
As part of the announcement, we asked the community to participate in a poll where four brand options were listed. The results of the poll are shared below:
ChangeX won the race with 34% of the total votes received, in part due to the meaningful CHANGE token ticker that comes as a perk with it.
The project is backed with a $100,000 seed investment by the HYDRA team through the LockTrip Ltd entity, which is a member of the ASX traded Webjet Limited Group. In return, LockTrip will own a 25% minority-stake in equity.
You can join the community through the link below:
👉 Join the ChangeX Community 👈
Why is this Project Different?
Changex will have a strategic importance for the Hydra ecosystem. Among others, the key benefits will be:
- Introducing another trusted staking pool option, thus making Hydra more resilient and less dependent on a single exchange
- Introducing a “leveraged staking” feature, which will allow users to boost their APR depending on their risk appetite
- Deploying DeFi related smart contracts on the Hydra chain, where possible — open and accessible to the entire ecosystem
- Gathering new communities around the project through external chains and staking products — thus placing Hydra in a strategically advantageous position regarding community growth
- Introducing a Hydra-based Visa credit card, which can be used for daily expenses — deducted from your crypto holdings
You can join the Changex community and engage with the project team through the link below:
👉 Changex Official Group
The ICO is expected to start by the end of February and have a hard cap of $2.4M.
8.4 Evedo
Evedo will likely be the next project migrating from Ethereum to Hydra chain, as it started preparing for the swapping event.
The migration is planned to happen after the launch of the cross-chain bridge, which will simplify the process significantly. EVED holders will be able to swap their funds to Hydra chain and move them more freely due to the much lower transaction fees.
Evedo is a blockchain based platform, consisting of B2B & B2C Marketplaces. It unifies all businesses and participants involved in organizing events. Their aim is to build a marketplace and a true ecosystem that will help the $850+ Billion event industry grow by connecting all parties without unnecessary middlemen.
9. Liquidity Fund & Seed Program
9.1 Liquidity Mining Fund
💎 The liquidity mining fund has reached a total size of ~$16M since the program was introduced in November. Thus growing by 60% compared to the month of December.
You can track its growth trajectory directonly on the chain:
https://explorer.hydrachain.org/address/HSgusTFKSRphA9nmqeFrWESGCkDiQY9tb6/balance
The fund will be used during the first few years of operation to elevate the Hydra DEX into the top league and boost the TVL (Total Value Locked) considerably.
9.2 Seed Council Program
The inclusion criteria for participating in the Hydra DAO council are currently being worked on and will be announced in Fabruary. They were previously scheduled for January, but moved by one month for strategic reasons.
Details for the limited edition seed NFTs will be shared on the same date.
10. Hydraverse Bot
In this monthly update we want to take the opportunity to share some of the valuable work done by our community members.
In this month’s episode we will focus on the newly launched Hydraverse Bot, which allows users to track their wallet addresses regarding balance changes and other cool features.
Below we will showcase the functionalities through a sample address. Upon adding your address to the tracking list, it immediately gets assigned an auto-generated label (in this case “Kalanda”), which is very useful for quickly identifying addresses in case of multiple ones being tracked.
Notice how the bot provides you additional information including a breakdown of the size and amount of UTXOs involved with the block mining event.
It also gives you information about the HYDRA price at the time of mining and an overview of the time it took to mine the block.
Credits to @Halospaced for developing this bot. You can start using the bot through the link below:
👉 @HydraverseBot
11. LockTrip Marketplace
Now that we have covered the Hydra ecosystem as a whole, we will proceed with the LockTrip.com marketplace in greater detail.
11.1 Integration with Webjet OTAs
Both of our teams are communicating and maintaining a relatively good pace of work. Unfortunately, we can not share much detail on this item, due to the non-disclosure preference of our partner which our team is committed to.
➡️ The integration is about integrating the LOC Economy into the following two marketplaces:
Australia OTA: www.webjet.com.au
New Zealand OTA: www.webjet.co.nz
More details can be obtained from the below announcement:
11.2 Expanding with 2 Wholesale Suppliers
Previously we had announced that the certification process with the new suppliers was completed and that the integration work is in full swing. Our developers report that the integration work is now complete. Back in December the progress rate was estimated to be at roughly 70%.
The focus in February will therefore shift towards testing and quality assessment work. Part of the tests are scheduled to take place in collaboration with the suppliers.
We have a policy of not mentioning brands, but we can confidently say that signing these two was harder than usual as those are among the biggest companies in the travel industry.
11.3 Customer Support Scaling
As a result of the increased booking demand, the need for a bigger customer support team emerged. In order to respond to these needs, we had expanded the support coverage from 12/7 towards 24/7.
This month we added one more support staff, for a new total of seven agents in our customer support team. Our goal is to scale to 8 support staff in the short term.
11.4 Room Content, Taxes and Fees
In December we had announced a new development cycle to improve the room content quality on our marketplace. Items that fall into this category:
- Higher quality room pictures
- More information on the room details and what customers can expect
- Exploring a feature that would allow for the taxes and fees to be displayed separately (where applicable)
Last month these features were in exploration stage and mostly uncertain in outcome.
In January we completed the research phase and finalized a mini-roadmap to achieve them. We have also started the integration of the content provider and worked on the backend to support a number of features related to it (such as a set of rules for the display logic of taxes and fees).
11.5 New Email Templates
Last month we initiated a complete re-design of email templates. The focus lies on a modern, clean and information-centric design.
Below is an example template for a booking confirmation:
In January all templates were finalized and are now undergoing QA and testing.
11.6 New Mobile App Version
The next version of the LockTrip mobile Apps are on their way, expected to land on the stores in the first half of February!
The following improvements are coming to the mobile apps:
- Fixed help page link
- Fixed “Prices and availability have expired” issue
- Improved the performance of horizontal scrolling for hotel images
- Introducing intelligent search algorithm for the “filter by hotel name” functionality on the search results page. Previously special characters and typos in the search field resulted in “no results found”. With the new algorithm, this will no longer be the case.
- Fixed “missing prices” issue on the search result map view (happened in certain corner cases with old mobile devices)
- Performance upgrade for the price filter slider
- Fixed app crashes when choosing a hotel from the map (affecting some devices)
- Improvements regarding readability and consistency in search result items and the hotel page
11.7 Other Marketplace Improvements
Expected to be deployed soon:
- Slight redesign of the search results for better visibility and a stronger focus on the important information
- Introducing “popular filters” to the search results
- Refundability information coming to the search results
- Meal type information coming to the search results
- Taxes and fees information will be added to vouchers
- Account deletion feature
Fixes:
- Distance slider was non-responsive
- “More details” button not showing up for hotel descriptions under certain conditions
- Desktop map issue with “more details” button being non-responsive in some cases
Hint: Some of the fixes and improvements may be pending deployment at the time of reading
We want to thank our entire community for their continuous support and feedback — and we can’t wait to see what the future holds!
👉 Join the Hydra Community
HYDRA is a proof-of-stake blockchain optimized for real-world businesses. It tackles some of the most profound and challenging issues with existing blockchain economies and introduces a truly shared economy with fair treatment to all network participants. Some of the more notable features:
🔥 100% Burn of all Transaction Fees
💎 50% Royalty on Gas for Smart Contract Creators → More Info
📌 Fixed Coin Transaction Fees of $0.20 → More Info
📌 Fixed Token Transaction Fees of $0.50 → More Info
💰 20% Minimum APR Staking Income → Staking Calculator
📈 Up to 540 TPS Elastic Capacity
🔏 EVM Compatible Smart Contract Platform
⚙️ Wallet-Level Scalability → More Info
🗳 Unique Decentralized Governance Protocol
