Opacity —Mid-2020 Update, Token Swap Coming

Jason Coppola
Opacity Storage
Published in
5 min readJul 3, 2020

Action Required: What’s in store for the second half of 2020?

2020 will go down in historic terms for the events that we have experienced already this year. Businesses that survive this economic downturn will likely come out stronger as they prove their ability to sustain operations and potentially gain market share from other businesses that might not weather the storm.

Without really knowing what yet remains in store for 2020 and beyond, we are focused on remaining well positioned to continue our efforts at maintaining and growing the Opacity platform. Opacity’s operational capacity has no concerns for the foreseeable future and we are actively working on strengthening and expanding the platform while keeping an eye on expenditures and resources to make sure we are well situated as global economic uncertainties unfold.

We have been able to deliver some major features this year and continue to plan more. As always, the community continues to surprise us with their tremendous support! Check out the ‘In the Community’ section below for some highlights on community led application development and social engagement.

Most importantly, we are announcing a token swap that will be coming very soon. Read below for these important details and what you need to do to be ready!

Roadmap Updates

Released: Upgrades and Renewals, May 2020

We recently launched these features in May prior to the 1 year expiration mark for early account holders. If you’ve been waiting to upgrade, now’s the time! Log in to your account and you’ll see the renew and upgrade options in the top right of your dashboard.

NOTE: DUE TO THE PRIVATE NATURE OF OUR PLATFORM, YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY EXTERNAL NOTICES FROM OPACITY REGARDING YOUR EXPIRATION DATE. BE SURE TO LOGIN TO CHECK YOUR EXPIRATION DATE IN THE APPLICATION AND MARK YOUR CALENDAR AS A REMINDER TO RENEW.

In Progress: Galaxy Whitepaper

The Galaxy whitepaper will provide a summary and outline of the future state of the decentralized storage network topology and operational methodology, along with other platform capabilities yet to come in the future. The paper is in draft form since we want to make sure it includes some of the items that are in progress, which will require less documentation rework later.

TBD: Public File Sharing and Preview

No progress to report. However, directly posting and sharing images, videos, and music to social media sites like Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram remains a top priority.

TBD: Mobile Application

We have begun the research and prototypes for our approach to a mobile application that will allow us to maintain the privacy features of Opacity. While it will be a challenge, nothing appears to be a showstopper at this time and we will continue to prototype on the way to building a native iOS and Android mobile application.

OPQ Token Swap: Enabling Decentralized Exchanges

IMPORTANT: ACTION REQUIRED

When Opacity discussed listing with the decentralized exchange Idex in June 2019, it was found that there was an issue in the OPQ ERC-20 contract that was launched by the original team in November 2018 which would prevent the listing. More recently, one of our community members attempted to setup a liquidity pool in Uniswap and again encountered the same issue. Since creating more token liquidity with decentralized exchanges, including Idex, Uniswap, and Kyber, is an essential part of our roadmap, this issue has become too much of an obstacle to ignore any longer.

Unfortunately, directly changing the contract is not possible since it is locked and replacing it with a token swap is the only viable option. Replacing old code via forks, airdrops, and swaps has become a common occurrence in crypto, so we are preparing to make this happen. You can read more about the basics of token swaps here.

The new contract and token swap code is in development and we are actively testing in Ropsten Ethereum Testnet before finalizing the entire process. We will provide plenty of time to prepare for the swap and will keep you informed as to the timeline and any instructions required to make sure the swap goes smoothly. We’re certain everyone will have questions regarding the swap — please be patient as we work out the details and make sure all questions and concerns are addressed.

ERC-20 Contract Bug Summary

The contract bug is in the token transfer function. As stated by the Uniswap support team: “the token returns a boolean from transferFrom but not transfer, meaning it’s possible for smart contracts to pull tokens but not return them”

You can see this in the contract code on the blockchain. Line 281 contains the issue regarding the transfer function:

function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) public {
_transfer(msg.sender, _to, _value);
}

“So what is the Action Required?”

At this time, there is nothing you need to do other than prepare for the swap. This means monitoring all communications for detailed instructions and dates that will be important to keep in mind for the swap. We are purposely announcing this now to give everyone plenty of advance notice and we will continue to publish regular updates as we make progress so we can answer everyone’s questions about how to navigate the process, both on exchanges and off.

Our primary means of notifying the community will continue to be here on Medium, on the Opacity Telegram and the Opacity Announcement Channel, as well as Twitter and Reddit. Follow us to keep yourself informed!

In The Community

There are some exciting community activities in the works.

Our Telegram member Martin (@MartinValen) previously built a python version of a desktop GUI used to connect to Opacity accounts. He is currently working on a much improved version using electron. He expects to release a public version of the new electron app this weekend, so check it out when it’s ready!

Another Telegram long time member Gustav (@goodstuffpastreno) has been working on a Korean Telegram group edition of Opacity. We are very excited for this to get started and see what the Korean community thinks about Opacity! Stay tuned for progress on this as well, coming next week.

Keep an eye out in the Opacity Announcements channel and you’ll always be up-to-date!

That wraps up this month!

Opacity contact

About Opacity

Founded in 2018, Opacity Storage is a cloud storage provider dedicated to data privacy and security. Online data breaches continue to be a major consumer risk. Opacity is reducing this risk by removing the need to provide personal payment data and by decentralizing files stored online. For more information, visit opacity.io.

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Jason Coppola
Opacity Storage

CEO at Opacity. Bringing the right to privacy to SaaS.