Greetings to all OmiseGo followers! It’s rainy season in Thailand, but that’s not slowing the OmiseGo team down! These weeks, they worked on improving Plasma’s resource usage, stability and availability. Additionally, they made progress on the abstract layer contracts implementation. They’ve almost reached feature parity with the existing contracts. They’re now able to receive ETH and ERC-20 deposits, store block hashes, and support standard MVP exits for payment transactions. Once the team reaches their minimum viable feature set, they’ll be ready to begin audits. On the child chain side, they’ve been cleaning up some of the production monitoring tooling and are digging into supporting new transaction types. For the Integration Team these weeks were focused on Ethereum integration. A major update which will allow the OmiseGO eWallet to come closer to its primary goal of being an easy-to-use integration point for any kind of system that would want to integrate with a blockchain. They have also been working on implementing Shamir’s Secret Sharding, a scheme for splitting private keys into multiple parts where at least a specific number of parts are required to compose the original key. Additionally, these weeks the integration team worked on integrating Potterhat with the eWallet to improve the resiliency of the overall program. Omise Holdings, the parent company of Omise, OmiseGO and GO.Exchange, announced it has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Nomura Holdings. This strategic round of funding will be used towards the expansion of Omise Holdings’ subsidiaries as they continue to scale their operations across various jurisdictions in the areas of payments, blockchain technology and digital assets exchange industries. As for upcoming events, the team will be at Devcon 5 in Osaka. And finally, last week marked the end of Ari, OmiseGo first public alpha testnet. In its 168 days of up-time, it produced 52,829 blocks, which included 1.64MM transactions. There were 360 deposits and 2207 exits, which amounted to ETH and 59 ERC-20 tokens. This marked the end of their first full Network Upgrade. OmiseGo fans, keep track of updates! We’ll show you more stuff along the way of social activity and development in the Public Alpha of Samrong!
Development
GitHub metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Technical Update
Integration Team Update 30: the “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” edition
eWallet
In the past two weeks, the team has continued working on the Ethereum integration. The ERC-20 tokens features have been merged and they are now writing up some integration tests where their codebase will interact with Geth during tests.
The team has also made some great progress on receiving blockchain transactions and updating the relevant local balances using their HD wallet system. They had to refactor and improve things here and there, but they’re nearing the finalization of this feature.
They have also been working on implementing Shamir’s Secret Sharding, a scheme for splitting private keys into multiple parts where at least a specific number of parts are required to compose the original key. Shamir’s Secret Sharding, in combination with a technique called Key Wrapping, can be used to improve the security of private key storage.
Completed
Here are the main items the team has knocked out since the last update:
v2.0
- Update tokens to integrate Ethereum compatibility (#1081)
- Add endpoint to create cold wallet references (#1111)
- Add ERC20 token generation from the eWallet (#1116)
In progress
These tasks are currently being worked on or are pending review by the OmiseGO Integration Team members:
v2.0
As always, you can follow their progress on the eWallet GitHub project page and on their GitHub Milestones page. If contributing code is your thing, the team has a list of issues suitable for first-time contributors. Be sure to check it out!
Potterhat
Completed
Next steps
As they now have a minimal working version of Potterhat with Ethereum’s JSON-RPC support, the next step is to integrate it with the eWallet for real-world testing. Once done, the team will explore Ethereum’s Pub/Sub to support integration with omisego/elixir-omg.
You can track Potterhat milestone and progress on the Potterhat repository and read more about it (or add some ideas and suggestions) on OIP-15.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.
- eWallet Suite More Resources:
- OmiseGO eWallet GitHub repository
- Initial public demonstration of the eWallet
- Chat to the eWallet team
Plasma
Plasma Production Update 25
The biggest production milestone for the team in the past iteration was actually shutting something down. Last week marked the end of Ari, their first public alpha testnet. It ran for 168 days with minimal downtime, producing 52,829 blocks, which included 1.64MM transactions. There were 360 deposits and 2207 exits, which amounted to ETH and 59 ERC-20 tokens. This marked the end of their first full Network Upgrade. The team learned a lot from the process, which they will share in an upcoming blog post.
As mentioned before, since this is plasma, users can still exit their funds by performing exits against the root chain contract — provided that they have the exit information from a fully synced watcher. However, the team is no longer be monitoring the Ari root chain contract for invalid exits and leave that up to anyone in the community that may choose to keep the Rinkeby testnet funds safe.
On the development side, since they’re deep in the middle of milestones it’s been heads down to deliver their abstract contracts. The team has completed processing standard exits and are working on in-flight exits. On the child chain and watcher side, they’ve been cleaning up some of production monitoring tooling and digging into supporting new transaction types as they are deployed with the abstract contract design.
Plasma Updates:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
- For more on Plasma, see these community-produced resources:
- Learn Plasma, a community-led education initiative
- What is Plasma? Plasma Cash? by Jinglan Wang
- This primer from Consensys
- This nifty chart comparing different plasma designs
- Plasma Tesuji Github repository
- How OmiseGO will bring Plasma in everyone’s daily life by u/pwolf88
- An introduction to Plasma by Alexander Butler
- Towards A General Purpose Plasma by Plasma Group
Social encounters
The art of UI/UX at OmiseGO:
“A blockchain or decentralized application can exist on its own, but without proper UX design, user research, and trust, the product cannot succeed in the market.” — Noei, UI/UX Designer at OmiseGO
The team sits down with Tayanee Sriyotha, also known as Noei, UI/UX designer at OmiseGO to learn more about how she uses design thinking principles and models to create a meaningful experience for OmiseGO users.
Noei first learned about OmiseGO and the world of blockchain from a friend who works for a fin-tech company. As a designer, she quickly saw potential challenges those who are not used to the technology could face.
It’s why she joined OmiseGO, knowing it was the perfect place to experiment with design solutions she hopes to see people adopt. As Noei learned the ropes she became captivated by OmiseGO’s openness, its willingness for trial and error, and an open mind.
Upcoming events:
October 08th-11th, 2019: Devcon 5 in Osaka .
Jun tweeted on May 11th, 2019:
Reddit:
Responses to previous OmiseGO AMAs: AMA #1, AMA #2, AMA #3, AMA #4, AMA #5, AMA #6, AMA #7, AMA #8, AMA #9, AMA #10, AMA #11, AMA #12, AMA #13, AMA #14, AMA #15, AMA #16, AMA #17, AMA #18, AMA #19, AMA #20, AMA #21, AMA #22, AMA #23 with Hoard Exchange.
Finance
Token holders and the number of transactions dynamics (from Etherscan.io):
There is a slight increase in the number of token holders these weeks.
Information from Coinmarketcap.com:
Go.Exchange sign up open.
Click here to read further on how the team plans to become an exchange used and trusted by people all around the world, please continue reading. They are discussing these main focus areas but please keep in mind that business strategy may change over time:
- Transparency and Trust
- Regulation and Compliance
- Community Burns
Go.Exchange will:
- As mentioned before, they will use the OmiseGO Network to improve user security when it is ready to be integrated with.
- OMG will be used as a discount token on GO.Exchange for 3 months as a launch promotion. Starting on June 25th, 2019, any trader with a balance of at least 500 OMG on their account will have their trading fees reduced by 50%.
- Go.Exchange will set aside 100% of the transaction revenues to burn OMG tokens for 3 months as their inaugural community burn. This is a temporary token burn as part of their launch promotion.
- After the launch promotional period, the tokens burned in community burns will be selected by voting with their native reward token, GO.Exchange Token (GOT), which can be acquired through transacting to GO.Exchange much like a loyalty reward point. In the future, community burns will use 50% of GO.Exchange trading fees, instead of the 100% that they are using for the 3 months OMG burn as part of the launch promotion. You can read more about GOT here.
- As part of the launch, they’re also giving away 20,000 OMG. The first 2,000 users to transact on the exchange for $500 USD equivalent or greater on the exchange will receive 10 OMG. Users from the soft launch are also qualified for this promotion.
Feel free to follow the progress through these channels:
You can also view their open positions here.
And the trading fees are now live. You can read here for more details.
Roadmap
OmiseGo Newsletter:
From the OMG project tracker (August 5th, 2019):
In progress
- eWallet v1.3
- Ethereum integration. (v2.0)
- Plasma Mainnet
- Synthetic Minds audit (Tesuji)
- Support Omise Payment (Aji)
- Proof of Stake Design
- Support fiat (Aji)
- Support debit/credit cards (Aji)
- Support top-up/cash-out (Aji)
Partnerships and team members
Omise, leading Southeast Asia fintech company raises undisclosed amount from Nomura Holdings:
Bangkok, 24 July 2019 — Omise Holdings, Southeast Asia’s leading financial technology service provider today announced it has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Nomura Holdings.
Omise Holdings is the parent company of Omise (Payment Gateway), OmiseGO and GO.Exchange. This strategic round of funding will be used towards the expansion of Omise Holdings’ subsidiaries as they continue to scale their operations across various jurisdictions in the areas of payments, blockchain technology and digital assets exchange industries.
“The fact that a key player in the regulated finance world is embracing the financial services, open infrastructure and disruptive technology we’re developing is an extremely positive indication for us. The speed of blockchain regulation, policy and compliance continue to impact our industry, but we can’t allow that to stifle our growth. As I’ve said before, in expanding our operations, we’re seeking jurisdictions with stable and transparent regulatory frameworks and forward-thinking governments,” said Jun Hasegawa, Group CEO, Omise Holdings.
Nomura is one of the few companies working on digital asset custody and have since begun to explore blockchain technology. The Asia-headquartered financial services group has a global network spanning over 30 countries. As an integrated financial group, Nomura offers a variety of financial services and advisory solutions both to institutional and individual clients.
Omise Holdings is leading the charge of the next wave of financial innovation. The company recognizes the opportunities its financial ecosystem brings to the market and is laying the foundation for its growth. The company also sees the rapid growth of the asset tokenization market and is ready to support businesses seeking to enter this industry. The open financial infrastructure and exchange services their companies offer can lead to a more inclusive financial system that the world needs.
About Nomura
Nomura is an Asia-headquartered financial services group with an integrated global network spanning over 30 countries. By connecting markets East & West, Nomura services the needs of individuals, institutions, corporates and governments through its four business divisions: Retail, Asset Management, Wholesale (Global Markets and Investment Banking), and Merchant Banking. Founded in 1925, the firm is built on a tradition of disciplined entrepreneurship, serving clients with creative solutions and considered thought leadership. For further information about Nomura click here.
Welcoming OmiseGO new advisor
The team welcomes Tipsuda Thavaramara who joins OmiseGO as Regulations and Compliance Advisor.
Ms. Tipsuda has 26 years of experience at the Thai Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). She was in charge of Policy, Markets and Intermediaries, and Investment Management. She also has extensive experience in capital market development.
You can catch her on video with Vansa here as she talks about how regulators approach decentralized platforms.
Rumors
OmiseGO Survey: Usage of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins:
As the team further develop their understanding of the payments and crypto market, OmiseGO is curious to learn more about usage of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins for payments.
The aim of this survey is to collect the views of survey participants. This survey should take between 10–15 minutes.
OmiseGO Survey: Block Explorers:
The team would like to learn more about your usage of blockchain explorers.
Twitter:
Active Reddit discussions:
Summary of Plasma Implementer’s Call 23.
OMG team, will we see a “hard-coded minimum validator fee”? See Cosmos’ struggles.
Other:
Japanese Finance Giant Nomura Invests In Omise on Crypto Briefing.
The State of Layer-2 Protocol Development #3: Consensys’s review on Plasma projects.
Omisego Mentioned (Page 49) in Harnessing Fintech for Financial Inclusion in the Thailand Economic Article (July 2019):
Netflix’s Altcoin Documentary Could Push Bitcoin To $25,000+: Netflix doc with OmiseGo.
OMG Network Guide by OMGPool:
This guide is an extensive non-technical introduction to the OMG Network, and is maintained by OMGPool and the community. It’s their goal to keep this collection up to date to reflect the current status of the OMG Network. Therefore, they also want to welcome contributions from the community and made the repository available on Github for everyone to help!
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
OmiseGo community continues to grow, there is a slight fluctuation in the number of subscribers of OmiseGo social media channels these weeks.
Twitter — Average number of retweets is 35–75 for one post.
Facebook — 60–90 likes per publication, 5–10 shares.
Reddit — Daily discussions with 100–250 comments.
Bitcointalk.org: since July 15th, 2017. Discussions on latest updates, price.
OmiseGo Chat channels: Announcements; Jobs; OmiseGO — Trading channel for speculation and trading; Random; Rules; Staking; Trading; Wallets; Japanese.
Official China community channel on WeChat (ID: omisego_china).
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of OmiseGo Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
