October Hydra & LockTrip Ecosystem Update
Today we are happy to share the October 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. Hydra Chain Protocol Update
Earlier this month, our team has successfully launched the Hydra devnet for the purpose of testing the planned protocol updates. As part of the process, we have recently merged the EVM version upgrade into the dev chain and are now conducting a series of tests regarding smart contract functionalities and economic compatibility.
Once they are complete, we will proceed with merging the block time reduction code into the dev chain as a next step. This upgrade aims to reduce the average block time of the chain from its current 128 seconds down to 32 seconds — thus improving by a factor of four.
To achieve this, there will be multiple modifications and the deployment will be rolled out via a planned well-synchronized hard-fork in a certain block ahead in the future. The reduction of the block time will improve the entire experience and would 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 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 600 HYDRA” could be reduced to “minimum 150 HYDRA” for setting up your own node. Thus significantly reducing the entry barrier.
2. Hydra DeFi & Decentralized Exchange
The Hydra DEX is one of the most important elements of the ecosystem and is rolled out in multiple stages. Version 0.9 is live already and everyone is free to trade without prior registration or KYC.
As per the DEX roadmap, 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:
Our developers made great progress on this matter and we are now ready to share some preliminary sneak-peeks:
Please note that the numbers shown are meant to demonstrate the functionality and the visual representation of important DEX data.
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.
The team is now conducting quality assessment and will soon be ready to deploy DEX version 1.0. In the meantime, we are happy to see that the number of downloads for the browser-based Hydra extension wallet, which is needed to interact with the DEX, surpassed 300!
Cross-chain Bridge
Version 1.1 as per the roadmap shared above, constitutes the Ethereum-Hydra cross-chain bridge, which will allow for the free movement of capital between the two chains. 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.
We are happy to announce that our devs completed the coding of the smart contracts as well as overall infrastructure to support the bridge. The first cross-chain swap was successfully completed as well.
This means that the deployment of the bridge should follow the deployment of DEX version 1.0 closely.
3. 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 completely 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 completely alter how the global travel industry works and become the new standard for hotels and online travel agents. Note that the industry size is estimated to reach $1 trillion in the coming years.
This month we have made good progress regarding the architectural design of the Travel NFT matrix. This includes:
- Extensive research and analysis on the smart contract standard to be used
- Concept design including the technical allocation of various parameters on the NFT as well as supporting smart contracts
- Development of competing solutions for topics such as room-specific options including flexibility of cancellation or meal inclusions
- 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 is currently one of the key items in development and is starting to take shape rapidly. In the screen below you will see an early example of how the mechanics will work. Tweets about Hydra are imported in real-time and processed according to a certain set of rules.
Each tweet will be rated for its quality and impact, and the resulting score will be credited to the tweet owner. Thus Twitter users get to achieve certain scores based on their contribution and marketing impact, and will be rewarded accordingly by the social media DAO.
At a later stage, HYDRA owners will be able to contribute to the DAO by becoming validators. Validators can give tweets and accounts subjective ratings and help fight abusers in the process, as well as manage the marketing budgets of each sub-category (Twitter, Telegram, Facebook, Tik Tok, etc.). Through this, the Hydra community will eventually be able to self-govern and make its independent decisions.
We won’t provide too many details in this update report, in order to protect it from copy-cats. But we expect this tool to amplify the social media activity of Hydra by a factor of 100x.
Are you ready to spread the word and earn some HYDRA in the process?
DeFi v1.3: Single-Sided Liquidity
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.
Imagine a HYDRA/DAI liquidity pool where users can provide liquidity for HYDRA and DAI separately — with their individual APR rates. This would allow HYDRA holders to stake their HYDRA in the liquidity pool without the need of staking DAI, while at the same time DAI holders don’t need to acquire HYDRA.
Imagine both sides yielding separate APR rates so that the market can more efficiently balance out between risk and reward.
This is what we are aiming for, along with powerful economic perks added on top. Since it is a radically new concept that hasn’t been tried by anyone else, we are putting a lot of effort into simulating it through all of its detail while the devs are busy with the DEX version 1.1 and the cross-chain bridge.
The simulations on the economy teached us a lot, based on which we made several improvements over the past 3 weeks. The next step will be to discuss the design with our developer team to come up with a technical road-map for the implementation.
4. Hydra Mobile Wallet (BIG SURPRISE)
This may come as a surprise to our community, since we never mentioned it in any of our previous articles. Today we are happy to announce that we have “secretly” been working on a mobile app for Hydra, which can be used as a fully-functional wallet (excluding staking).
The wallet is capable of holding multiple wallet addresses, which can either be created directly inside the app or imported via the Seed Phrase or Private Key.
In addition to the regular features such as sending and receiving funds (HYDRA and Tokens), there is also a very cool feature we are specifically excited about:
Trading from inside the wallet app!
For this, you simply need to click on the “swap” button and the app will directly connect with the Hydra DEX.
There you can swap any supported assets as usual, with the convience of staying inside the app throughout the process.
The app is ready for the most part and we expect to release it by late November.
5. Ledger Wallet Integration
Hardware wallets serve an important role when it comes to storing funds in a safe environment, especially passively held assets that are neither staked, nor traded or put into liquidity pools.
The advantage of hardware wallets is that they allow you to interact and submit transactions to the blockchain without having to expose your private key. The transaction is signed inside the hardware wallet and never leaves its secure environment.
Realizing the benefits of hardware wallets, our team started working on a native app for Ledger hardware devices, which are among the most popular. Today we are happy to share with our community that the development of the app is complete and that it was submitted to the Ledger team for review and integration.
It is now up to the Ledger team to approve the app and integrate it on their end.
6. Token Projects
What is happening on the token projects side?
First ICO with $1M+ Raised
GoMeat, the first project to conduct an ICO on Hydra chain, raised more than $1M for its GOMT token and is on track to sell out for all of the tokens offered. We are glad to see this new project to succeed in one of its most important stages.
The ICO is scheduled to conclude on October 27, after which the next step will be the listing of GOMT on the Hydra DEX!
LockTrip Reaches New Records
Last week LockTrip announced its Q3 2021 booking report, with a staggering 421% growth rate compared to the same period last year. The platform also grew by 125% compared to the previous quarter.
Booking Smart Contract
LockTrip is also working on putting the LOC-Economy on the Hydra chain, for which the code was deployed on the staging server of LockTrip this week.
Once deployed on production, each booking made on the LockTrip.com marketplace will generate at least two transactions on Hydra chain — thus burning HYDRA in the process (in addition to the 3% burn ratio of LOC). At the same time, the blockchain-based system will allow for a transparent verification of all marketplace bookings.
7. Community Engagement
Last week we initiated a new community-program that rewards active members in the Hydra Telegram Communtiy with Badges.
The longer a community members is active in the group, the more XP will be gathered and the higher the level will become. Each level comes with its own title, which can be claimed together with the badge. Below are three examples:
As members apply them to their profile pictures, they not only get honored for the contributions they make by being part of the community, but also spread the word about Hydra when interacting in other groups and communities.
8. LockTrip Marketplace
Now that we have covered the Hydra ecosystem as a whole, we will proceed with the LockTrip.com marketplace in greater detail.
Affiliate League
Since the LockTrip Affiliate League is about to be launched, we want to share with you a sneak-peek:
In the screen above you will find lots of info, including:
- Information about the season (each season lasts for one month, followed by another month of cool-down)
- Information about your team
- Your league level and perks you unlocked through it
- Your ranking in the affiliate league
Below you will also find more details, such as an overview of the league level requirements as well as the perks incrementing with each level. In this example of league level 5, the affiliate …
… increases his level 2 revenue from 0.1% to 0.35%
… gets a 7.5% discount when purchasing gift cards
… increases the duration of his referral cookie from 30 days to 35 days
Depending on the Covid-19 situation, the rollout will be planned in phases. For example, we are considering to hold a three month trial phase that would be used for debugging and identifying opportunities for improvement — before proceeding with the full-scale program.
Integration with Webjet
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).
Expanding with 2 very strong Wholesale Suppliers
Last week we completed the certification process with the new suppliers and have since commenced the integration work. As part of the process we have set up a sandbox environment to work on the inventory mapping as well as to identify any specific booking flows required.
We have a policy of not mentioning brands, but we can confidently say that signing these two was harder than usual.
Search experience improvement
One of the most notable upgrades being deployed on staging this month is the improvement of the search experience. It mainly consists of two building blocks:
- Improved search method that cuts down the response time by roughly 40% (pending deployment)
→ This has consistently been one of our weak spots and we expect this upgrade to signigicantly improve the experience for marketplace users
- Quickened calculation of discount scores (deployed)
→ Up until now the discount scores took additional time to be calculated, which resulted in the hotel cards to re-shuffle and confuse the user
New Sorting Algorithm
We get plenty of feedback from our community, which helps a lot to identify gaps in the product. One of the most mentioned feedback was that the sorting for discount scores resulted in all types of hotels to show up on the first page, including ones that are far away from the city centre.
Although these may have the highest discounts, it offers little value to the user if it is 20 km away from the desired location. Hence why we developed a new sorting algorithm that would combine various metrics of each hotel to end up with the most relevant ones to be shown first.
In the example below you will see that although the first results still offer high discounts, they are also near the search point and come with a good customer rating.
We expect this to turn it much more useful for our users and perhaps even help them discover completely new options they weren’t aware of before.
Automatically Generated Invoices
Another much-requested feature is the auto-generation of invoices. From now on all bookings come with such an invoice, which not only offers the user a better experience, but also reduces the work-load on our support team.
This feature was deployed on the marketplace last week and is active as we speak.
Taking down Flights
After a careful examination of the flights section regarding community feedback, booking performance, search result quality and other factors — we came to the conclusion that taking down this section will turn out positive for the LockTrip.com marketplace as a whole.
The reasons for this are multiple. Let’s start with community feedback:
The reason for these comments and the underperformance of the product is that the suppliers for our flights inventory are not at the same level with the hotels & homes sections. This makes it very difficult and time-consuming to develop techniques on our end to complement the short-comings. In some cases it is even impossible (for example due to missing data).
This results in a bad experience for marketplace users and drags down the overall impression of it, even though the hotels section is perceived very well on its own.
Therefore it makes sense for us to take down the flights section, which has always been a secondary product (due to lower saving rates) and which generated very few bookings in comparison.
That being said, we will keep the technology and try to make a come-back at some point with a much better experience. Or in other words, we will conserve the resources and time spent on it — putting it to use at the right moment.
Customer Support Scaling
As a result of the increased booking demand, the need for a bigger customer support team emerged. As mentioned in our September update, we expanded the support coverage from 12/7 towards 24/7.
This month we added one more support staff, for a new total of four agents.
Homepage Redesign
Our design team worked on the next version of the LockTrip.com homepage. Below you will find a sneak-peek of the top section:
Aside from improving the design, we are also taking out the dominant mention of crypto currencies, which resulted in some of our potential users to mistakingly think that it is a crypto-only platform.
At the same time we are strengthening the position of affiliate-owned landing pages. These will take an increasingly important role in the future of LockTrip.
Booking Confirmation System
This month the LockTrip.com marketplace got a very important quality-upgrade when it comes to pro-actively identifying potential issues with the bookings of our customers.
Our biggest priority is to always ensure a pleasent experience for our customers, which starts at the homepage and ends with the check-in at the hotel. Due to the wide variety of partners we work with, it is not always possible to guarantee a 100% success rate on bookings, especially since issues can arise from third parties.
At least this was the case until now! Thanks to a sophisticated system we built into the marketplace, our backend is now pro-actively seeking confirmation on various levels of the supply chain in order to eliminate the risk of unnoticed issues.
Thanks to this major leap forward, we are bypassing various sources of error that arise from the industry — and proactively identify and resolve potential issues without the customer even noticing it.
This new system has been deployed two weeks ago and the first results are very positive.
LOC Economy Community Vote — The Result
As you know, we had launched a community vote regarding the “elimination of the 3% lockup component from the LOC economy”. As of today a total of 136 community members casted their votes, with an astonishing 98.5% approval rate.
Hence we are happy to announce that the change will be in effect from the very first day the LOC economy is deployed to Hydra.
We hope that you enjoyed this update article and are looking forward to what the next months will bring!
👉 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
