Hydra & LockTrip Ecosystem Update | November 2021
Today we are happy to share the November 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
We begin this month’s update with some amazing news! This month, our team started working on the Delegated Staking & Superstaker features. What are these?
With these features, every node on the network can be upgraded to a superstaker-node. A superstaker-node can accept HYDRA from external wallets and stake them without having permission to do anything else with the funds. This way users can delegate their funds to others and no longer need to care about their own node setup.
The superstaker will take a percentage fee of the block rewards for this service, which can be set freely by the superstaker.
What are the Benefits?
- Introducing offline staking capabilities
- Unlocking the staking feature for mobile wallets and potentially integrating with mainstream wallet providers
- Making it possible for individuals or businesses to offer a staking pool service on-chain and in a trustless manner (leaving only the reward-distribution to the pool provider, which carries negligible risk)
- Improving security by delegating to yourself. Since delegated funds can not be withdrawn by the superstaker, the staked funds can no longer be attacked, even if the private key of the staking wallet was to be exposed.
Our team completed the research phase on this task and will soon be proceeding with the implementation.
2. EVM Upgrade & Block Time Reduction
Last month, our team had successfully launched the Hydra devnet for the purpose of testing the planned protocol updates. We also announced that the EVM version upgrade was merged with the devnet.
So far the tests on the smart contract functionalities and compatibility went through smoothly. Based on this we are now preparing for the block time reduction to be merged into the devnet, which we expect to complete in December.
With this, 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.
At the same time this will be a great catalyst towards more nodes being set up, as more frequent block times mean that the luck factor for small stakers will be cut down by a factor of four. Or in other words, the currently recommended “minimum 800 HYDRA” could be reduced to “minimum 200 HYDRA” for setting up your own node. Thus significantly reducing the entry barrier.
3. Hydra DeFi & Decentralized Exchange
As per the DEX roadmap, the upcoming version 1.0 constitutes of the following items:
Features all the rich data services that make it possible for a user-friendly interface with charting capability, sorting, APR context, as well as API endpoints for integration with data aggregators such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. This is an important background service that enables discoverability and also facilitates arbitrage trades.
You will find the full roadmap below:
We made great progress on this matter and want to share the latest sneak-peek:
We intentionally leaned on the widely adopted design standard of the industry, in order to reduce the friction for liquidity providers and traders as they join the ecosystem from external chains.
Our team is finalizing the work and will soon be ready for deployment.
In the meantime, we are happy to see that the browser-based Hydra extension wallet, which is used for interacting with the DEX, surpassed 450 downloads (up from 300 last month)!
Hydra DEX APIs
We are also happy to announce that the Hydra DEX API endpoints were finalized this week! The APIs were developed based on the guidelines of industry-leading third parties.
GOMT Lists on Hydra DEX
This month we were proud to welcome GOMT to the Hydra DEX, with the HYDRA/GOMT pair going live on November 16!
Within 24 hours of the listing, the price of GOMT increased from $1.15 to $1.60.
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 announced that our devs completed the coding of the smart contracts as well as overall infrastructure to support the bridge. This month we are ready to share with you the first sneak-peek of the bridge interface. What do you think? Let us know!
The bridge works by utilizing the two browser-based extensions MetaMask (for the Ethereum side) and Hydra Extension Wallet (for the Hydra side).
5. Prototype Projects
This section focuses on the developments made in the area of moonshot-projects, which can be classified as “high risk — high reward”. The risk in this context comes from the fact that the projects in this category aim to fundamentally change how things are done. On the other hand, if successful, each of these projects has the potential to levitate Hydra to the next level.
LockTrip NFT Travel Matrix
The LockTrip NFT Travel Matrix aims to fundamentally alter how the global travel industry works and become the new standard for hotels and online travel agents. The online travel industry is estimated to reach $1 trillion in the coming years.
We have made good progress regarding the architectural design of the Travel NFT matrix. This includes:
- Finalizing on the smart contract standards (completed this month)
- Concept design including the technical allocation of various parameters on the NFT as well as supporting smart contracts (ongoing, ground work complete)
- Development of competing solutions for topics such as room-specific options including flexibility of cancellation or meal inclusions (ongoing, in communication with industry parties)
- Research on required functionality for the NFT marketplace (started this month)
- Gathered valuable feedback and input from various players in the travel industry
→ Collaboration with stakeholders of the industry is an ongoing process and will continue to accompany the project throughout its phases
Social Media DAO
This project aims to concentrate the community force behind Hydra chain and amplify it through the power of social media platforms. If successful, the Hydra 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.
The social media DAO made a huge leap forward this month. We are ready to share a sneak-peek into the top 10 of the leaderboard! Do you spot yourself?
Twitter users who talk about Hydra will be rewarded based on their contributions and quality of tweets. The more regularly you post, and the better the quality & impact of your tweets is, the bigger your share of the prize pool will be!
At a later stage, HYDRA owners will be able to contribute to the tool by becoming validators. Validators can give tweets and accounts subjective ratings and help fight abusers in the process.
Single-Sided Liquidity | Hydra DEX
While the Hydra cross-chain Bridge is in development, we are taking the opportunity to further strengthen the design and mechanics of the single-sided liquidity feature.
If successful, this would mark one of the most important milestones not only for Hydra, but the entire DeFi sector. Right now the DeFi standard consists of dual-sided systems where liquidity providers are required to own both assets of the pool — thus forcing them to take on risks they don’t feel comfortable with; eventually being exposed to something called “impermanent loss”.
The bigger the price volatility of the two assets in the pool, the bigger the impermanent loss for liquidity providers — often surpassing the actual income generated through trading fees.
To tackle this problem, we are working on single-sided liquidity provision coupled with eliminating the impermanent loss problem.
This month we finalized the research phase of this project. Although we will continue to make simulations and analyze outcomes, we have confirmed a high-level technical roadmap with our DEX team. The team will start working on it as soon as the Hydra Bridge is deployed.
6. Hydra Mobile Wallet
Last week we successfully launched the Hydra Mobile Wallet App! In case you missed the news, you will find it linked below:
The Hydra wallet is packed with a long list of cool features, and also supports encryption through biometrics that makes it on par even with the top wallets in the industry (most of which operate as standalone businesses).
The feedback from our community has been amazing and we recorded hundreds of swaps from inside the wallet within the first week!
We also received a small amount of bug reports, of which 50% have been fixed already. The other half will be released with the next version.
We want to thank our community for more than 400 downloads in the first week! 💪
7. NFT Marketplace
This month our team started with the research work for a dedicated NFT marketplace on the Hydra chain.
The research goes beyond the usual NFT applications & requirements, since it also takes into account the specific needs in the context of the planned LockTrip Travel NFT Matrix.
We believe that the Travel NFTs represent an entirely new type of tokens, which could be classified as utility NTF applications and therefore will open the doors for similar projects joining the Hydra ecosystem in the future.
Utility NFTs have the unique ability to take on functional roles, thanks to their technical characteristics and the data they are capable of carrying.
8. Ledger Wallet Integration
We are waiting for the Ledger team to approve the Hydra Ledger App and integrate it on their end.
9. Token Projects
What is happening on the token projects side?
GoMeat Raises $1.5M in Funds
GoMeat completed their ICO in late October and sold out with 100% of their hard-cap being reached. The GOMT token distribution was completed in early November.
We can’t wait to see them grow as part of the Hydra ecosystem. Good luck from the Hydra team for a bright future!
LockTrip Deploys its LOC Economy
Earlier this month, LockTrip successfully deployed a much-anticipated milestone of integrating the LOC economy with the Hydra chain.
As a result of this integration, every booking made on the LockTrip.com travel marketplace now generates a minimum of two on-chain transactions.
Since Hydra chain is configured in a way that burns 100% of all transaction fees, this basically means that bookings on LockTrip.com not only burn 3% worth of LOC, but also 100% of the HYDRA transaction fees accrued in the process (after deducting the gas royalty for the LOC smart contract creator wallet).
10. Airdrop Update & Super-DAO Proposal
On November 3rd, we presented our concept for the Hydra Protocol-Level DAO in a major proposal.
Presenting the DAO Structure
Hydra protocol-level DAO will be a very unique asset putting the ecosystem ahead of most others. It would turn Hydra into the first blockchain to actually secure not only the infrastructure, but also critical decentralized activity such as Engineering, Community & Marketing, Business Development, and Liquidity.
In fact, we believe that any public blockchain has three pillars that are critical for its well-being. These pillars being:
- Infrastructure Security & Decentralization
- Community & Adoption
- Liquidity
Hydra’s DAO is a unique attempt in enabling the core protocol to stimulate and strengthen all three pillars.
We presented a high-level visualization of the planned structure, as shown below.
The structure is made up of the following elements:
- The DAO Council
- DAO Master Smart Contract
- Elected Program Managers
- Liquidity DAO Fund
- Community & Marketing DAO Fund
- Development DAO Fund
- Business Development DAO Fund
More information is available in the announcement article below:
Seed Council Program
We also hinted towards a seed council program, which will determine the initial composition of the DAO Council members. The program will take into account HYDRA holdings as a core metric.
In addition to the council position, loyal supporters will be awarded seed NFTs which will be minted in limited numbers based on the contribution of individual wallets. The observation period for it will start on January 1st 2022 with more details to be shared as part of the Council Snapshot Program announcement.
Seed NFTs will prove your contribution to the network in its early stages and will be unique items.
More details will be shared in December.
Economic Patch to the Airdrop Program
In addition to the above, we proposed an economic patch to the airdrop formula. The proposal got approved and therefore more strict rules were implemented for airdrop participants.
→ HYDRA liquidation gets stronger penalized
→ Liquidating more than 50% completely disqualifies participants
Deploying the Economic Powerhouse
The block reward minting rate was voted to be increased from its current 20% to 25% — with the 5% difference going into the DAO fund, to be used for liquidity mining rewards, marketing campaigns as well as technical and business development.
At current rates this change is estimated to generate a $23M investment budget annualy. In case part of it is not needed, the DAO will have the ability to burn the budget.
Staking Weight Reduction by 578,000 HYDRA
In early November, one of the core nodes supporting the network was discontinued for a minimum period of 6 months, in order to boost the on-chain APR by reducing the network weight by 578,000 HYDRA.#
This effectively translates to higher staking rewards for the community.
Securing $50M Budget to Kick-Start Liquidity Mining with a BANG
As part of the changes to the airdrop, the community voted for the airdrop-burns of the final 18 weeks to be repurposed towards a dedicated liquidity mining pool.
With the estimated $50M budget we are planning to kick-start the Hydra DEX by launching a powerful liquidity mining program, thus attracting capital from the Ethereum ecosystem onto Hydra chain.
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.
Disabling new Airdrop Enrollments for HYDRA
New submissions to the Hydra airdrop were disabled on November 3rd, thus partially closing the airdrop.
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.
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 regulatory reasons (Webjet being a listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange).
The integration is about deploying the LOC Economy into the following two marketplaces (for the hotels tab):
Australia OTA: www.webjet.com.au
New Zealand OTA: www.webjet.co.nz
More details can be obtained from the below announcement:
Expanding with 2 Wholesale Suppliers
Last month we completed the certification process with the new suppliers and have since commenced the integration work. Our developers estimate 50% of the integration work to be complete by now.
We have a policy of not mentioning brands, but we can confidently say that signing these two was harder than usual.
Search Experience Improvement
Two weeks ago we deployed a notable search speed improvement to the marketplace, which can be considered a “breakthrough update”. The changes allowed us to cut down the search time by a whopping 40%!
Early data shows that the speed improvements translated to a significant increase in searches performed per user.
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 recently expanded the support coverage from 12/7 towards 24/7.
This month we added one more support staff, for a new total of five agents in our customer support team.
Booking Confirmation System
The new booking confirmation system we deployed last month proved itself very effective. Thanks to it, we verified more than 100 bookings and proactively identified a small amount of bookings with communnication gaps along the supply chain, which were resolved without the customer even noticing.
Before the confirmation system went live, these cases could have resulted in a bad customer experience.
Improved Hotels Descriptions & Photos
Last week we deployed a new version of the marketplace with the following improvements:
- Removed duplicate photos on the hotel pages
- Improved hotel descriptions by removing low quality content
- Filtered out outdated content
This is the result of a strong push and new tools we deployed to the back-end. We will continue to refine them.
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
