Nexus Mutual: Newsletter #3

Open finance on Ethereum is gaining momentum and is probably going to become the first major vertical to gain serious main-stream traction. Right now the foundations are being built — stable coins like MakerDAO’s Dai, loans though Dharma, money markets with Compound, trading with 0x, security tokens with Polymath/Harbour, derivatives with dy/dx and much, much more. But guess what? Risk transfer solutions are also needed to enable this new financial ecosystem, just like in the existing economy. That’s what Nexus Mutual is aiming to be: an alternative to insurance for open finance on Ethereum.

Even though we’re still in the early stages. The smart contract economy is already large enough for us to have a sustainable business and we’re potentially on the footsteps of an exponential growth phase. Once these protocols start interacting with each other the flywheel will start turning fast, users will come and financial inclusion with follow. This is why we’re working hard to get our product out there. Our current plans are targeting launch in the latter part of Q1 2019.

But that’s what’s coming, here is what we’ve been up to:

1. Back-end development is nearing completion.
We’re closing in on completing the back-end code and starting audits over the next 6–8 weeks. You can see all our activity on Github, check out the “develop” branch for the latest updates.

2. Check out our Demo.
Got a few minutes? Then get yourself a sneak peak of our demo!

It is running on the Kovan testnet, so you’ll need testnet ETH which you can get from this faucet (with your github account). You’ll also need Chrome + the Metamask add-in.

Warning: please don’t send transactions on main-net, you will lose your ETH!!

We haven’t made this public yet, and some sections (like Governance) haven’t been hooked up, but please check it out and send us feedback!

3. Docs, docs and more docs
We’ve been busy putting together a lot of content on our docs pages to give everyone a fully transparent view of how everything will work. This is vital, as not everyone has the skills to get into the workings of our Solidity code. Some of it is still in progress, but we’d love your feedback on the content.

4. Token Model
We’re excited to be one of the first implementations of a continuous token model, or bonding curve. Insurance entities live or die based on their capital efficiency and this has been a limiting factor for scaling co-operative mutuals in the past. With that in mind, we’ve designed a system of tokenised membership rights, which:

• reflects the financial position and adoption of the platform in real time, and
• aims to encourage contributing or withdrawing as needed.

Check our our new token model explainer page to dive deeper. Right now we’re hitting it hard with the modelling hammer to make sure it works as expected and the parameters are spot on.

5. D1Conf and devcon iv

Hugh, Rei, Ish, Nitika and Charlie will all be in Prague for devcon iv. Come say ‘hi’ if you’re there! We are also sponsoring and presenting at D1Conf the day before devcon starts, tickets are still available if you want to understand more about decentralised insurance.

This was originally sent out to our newsletter subscribers on 23rd October 2018