Melon Dev Update — August 2017

It’s official, summer is over and it’s about time to catch up with old friends. Luckily, the Melon dev team 👩🏽‍💻👨🏼‍💻👨🏻‍💻👨‍💻👨🏻‍💻 is here to update you on what happened in August on our end.

Brace yourselves: A LOT has been happening over here and we’ve been concocting some cool new feature that we’re just about ready for you to feast your eyes upon!

SMART CONTRACTS

• We released the v0.3.0 of the Melon protocol, which includes lots a major changes.
• We removed the Universe module, in favor of a Sphere module, that consists in an exchange/datafeed pairing.
• Internal accounting and initial investment are now done in Melon by default.
• We implemented an internal accounting system for Vaults, which gives the ability to prove fund embezzlement by a manager in the context of transfers to/from exchanges.
• We implemented a risk management module that uses staking to protect investors from fund embezzlement.
• Participation (subscribe/redeem) now operates under a request/execute paradigm in an effort to prevent subscribe/redeem arbitrage.
• We added an optional manager-controlled whitelisting of investors.
• We implemented the Vault decommissioning function in the Version contract.
• We made it easier to track/retrieve orders , trades and requests history.
• And finally … a lot of tests!

PORTAL

• We maintained the portal that was used during the last competition on melon.network (apparently some kept managing their funds while lying on white sand beaches… now over 300 funds 😱).
• We put a lot of thoughts into what the portal should look like in the future: team brainstorming, user persona, user journey, and wireframing. We want to favor simplicity and reliability.
• We decided to aim for a front-end only solution which would guarantee more security and more independence to our users (not necessarily having to rely on a specific database or server).
• We started moving towards our front-end only goal here, using exclusively React/Redux.
• We started looking into IPFS for future deployment of our new portal and into IPLD (more specifically Ethereum/IPFS bridge) that could come handy for a decentralized and user-very-friendly solution. Such solutions are very experimental so we are learning a lot everyday and this is great.

MELON.JS

• We kept iterating over our handy JS library to the Melon protocol, refactoring and improving code quality.
• We added some new functions (see whole list of functions here) in an effort to make it as easy as possible for others to build their own portal and/or trading bots.
• We worked on both unit tests and integration tests of all functions.

DESIGN

• We are currently working on the new website design for Melonport.
• We are working on the brand identity for Melon.

Next developments include linking up Melon.js with the Protocol v0.3.0, integrate those changes into the new Portal, and keep improving the protocol efficiency and security; basically putting everything together for next competition running on new protocol/new portal. Watch out for more competitions in the coming weeks, and keep in mind you can still train your asset management skills on the current portal.

If you have any feedback/suggestions for us -or just want to chat with us, please join our Gitter channel or Telegram channel.

Melon Dev Team ❤ 🍉