Dear OmiseGo followers, time sure flies when you’re busy BUIDLing!
For the past two weeks, the Integration team has been working on features for Ethereum integration. They recently merged the support for transferring funds from a local ledger wallet to a blockchain address, and work is being done on deposit wallet funds pooling, front end interface, token minting, etc. As most planned features for transacting with Ethereum and OmiseGO Network are almost done, the team will be focusing on code refactoring and covering edge cases to make sure those features are stable and maintainable.
The Blockchain team continues to head down on their Abstract Layer Design work and will continue to be over the coming weeks. The plasma contracts are approaching feature complete, with the last big chunk of work being in-flight exits. They are starting up the audit readiness and security review processes. The team is continuing with the child chain and watcher integration with the new contracts. On the infrastructure side, they have been improving their cluster design, deployment processes, and key management. Most of the upcoming work will be integrating all the parts of the system, which will make for some short but exciting updates.
As for the social side, last month, Kasima, OmiseGo CTO was invited to the Bank of Thailand Fintech Fair. There, he gave a talk on Plasma, and was on a panel that discussed decentralized exchanges, taxes, and compliance regulations around the blockchain industry. This week, the team published transcribed highlights from the event. Also, an interview and AMA featuring recent OmiseGo updates and developments with Kasima is now out. OmiseGO’s compliance and regulations advisor, Tipsuda Thavaramara, featured in this month’s community spotlight. Hear her thoughts on the evolving blockchain ecosystem and OmiseGO’s role in its development in our report below.
And last, but not least, Omise announced a partnership with Citibank Thailand to launch Pay with Points as a new payment option to e-commerce businesses across Thailand. This initiative will help broaden consumer payment choices by enabling Citi cardholders to use Citi Rewards points to pay for their purchases when shopping online at thousands of Omise merchant stores. Pay with Points will allow e-commerce businesses to accept payments through the instant redemption of credit card reward points, making Omise the first payment gateway in Thailand to offer this service.
Development
GitHub metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Find the Network:
- OmiseGO Developer Portal
- OmiseGO Developer Program (ODP) Application
Technical Update
Integration Team Update 33:
eWallet
For the past 2 weeks, the team has been working on features for Ethereum integration. They recently merged the support for transferring funds from a local ledger wallet to a blockchain address, and work is being done on deposit wallet funds pooling, front end interface, token minting, etc. As most planned features for transacting with Ethereum and OmiseGO Network are almost done, the team will be focusing on code refactoring and covering edge cases to make sure those features are stable and maintainable.
Completed
Here are the main items the team has knocked out since the last update:
v2.0
- Supporting internal -> external transactions #1143
In progress
These tasks are currently being worked on or are pending review by the OmiseGO Integration Team members:
v2.0
- OmiseGO Network deposits and transactions #1128
- Frontend Ethereum integration for admin panel #1145
- Moving funds to hot wallet after a deposit #1147
- Blockchain token minting #1155
- Refactor EthBlockchain Adapter #1159
- Handle blockchain addresses mixed-case checksum #1161
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 a list of issues suitable for first-time contributors. Be sure to check it out!
Potterhat
Currently no new work is being done on Potterhat since the team is focusing on getting the eWallet’s Ethereum integration out. Once that is complete, they will get back to integrating Potterhat with the eWallet’s staging environment, so that they have a staging eWallet that can talk to Ethereum and can talk reliably.
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.
Integration Team 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, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32.
eWallet Suite More Resources:
- OmiseGO eWallet GitHub repository
- Initial public demonstration of the eWallet
- Chat to the eWallet team
Plasma
Blockchain Team Update 28:
The team continues to head down on their Abstract Layer Design work and will continue to be over the coming weeks. The plasma contracts are approaching feature complete, with the last big chunk of work being in-flight exits. They are starting up the audit readiness and security review processes. The team is continuing with the child chain and watcher integration with the new contracts. On the infrastructure side, they have been improving their cluster design, deployment processes, and key management. Most of the upcoming work will be integrating all the parts of the system, which will make for some short but exciting updates.
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, 25, 26, 27.
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
OmiseGO Interview with CTO Kasima
Q’s Timestamped:
0:25 For someone who has never heard of cryptocurrency at all, how would you explain OmiseGo? Who in the world is benefiting from this, and how are they benefiting?
2:20 What would be a consumer side or a business side example of when someone is going to be using OmiseGo in their daily lives?
3:16 I see four main categories that a project strives to achieve: security, decentralization, speed and cost. With these four in mind, how is plasma competing, or one-upping what these other projects are doing?
4:46 Ethereum is moving to a new consensus model, how does that impact OmiseGo?
5:01 In terms of ease of use, would you say OmiseGo is “grandma proof? What is the process for using the service?
8:43 Within these last couple years, there’s been a lot of new competitors in the the payment processing space that do daily transactions such as the Coinbase Card or Crypterium. How is Omisego differentiating itself, apart from those, and what your competitive edges over these solutions that are potentially very easy to use?
10:05 What is the status on Plasma?
13:45 What is the status of the DEX?
15:35 What is the status of the Wallet?
17:08 To the people who are concerned about the development roadmap and delivery, what would you say to “put their heart at ease”?
21:08 Is it possible for OmiseGo to “not work”?
25:01 What are you most excited to be working on right now?
27:01 What would you want somebody to build in your developer program?
Blockchain in Depth: Panel Highlights BOT Fintech Fair 2019
Panel Highlights from Bank of Thailand Fintech Fair 2019 — A panel on Decentralized Exchanges, Taxes, and Regulations in the Blockchain Industry
Last month, Kasima, OmiseGo CTO was invited to the Bank of Thailand Fintech Fair. There, he gave a talk on Plasma, and was on a panel that discussed decentralized exchanges, taxes, and compliance regulations around the blockchain industry.
Kasima was joined by Anthony Lewis of R3, Billy Rennekamp of Tendermint, Sagar Sarbhai of Ripple, and panel moderator Paul Sim from Deloitte.
If you’re interested in the full discussion, you can watch the video below. There are also transcribed highlights from the event:
Billy: Digitizing and tokenizing assets is the future, but where will the liquidity come from? Am I correct in assuming that projects are trying to address this issue by creating Decentralized Exchanges? If so, what’s so exciting about these DEXs?
Kasima: You’re right, it’s why OmiseGO is building a DEX too. At this point it’s about creating an exchange that can fulfill the needs of the market, as well as cultivate a healthy market structure.
The exciting part is seeing how DEXs have evolved. It initially started by putting all order books online, and so EtherDelta was a thing. Then, we saw tactics like centralizing order matching and then clearing everything at the settlement layer — which is what was decentralized.
Now, with user swapping, a DEX basically processes exchanges asynchronously. We’re finally at a place where it’s not just theoretical. But we’re answering questions like what it means to be a market-maker and create liquidity.
Paul: I also want to add that just because an asset is tokenized or listed does not mean it’s liquid — liquidity comes from buyers and sellers.
Paul: Is it right to believe that private markets will adopt DEXs first because they’re more controllable and customizable? As compared to public markets which are large and chaotic?
Sagar: It comes down to regulations and the fact that we need institutional investors, who only come in once the market is liquid and perceived as ‘safe.’
To bridge the gap between safety and liquidity, some markets have come up with passive exchanges. For example, the Thai, Philippines, and the Abu Dhabi Global Market are great examples of markets with a framework of ongoing investments.
Even though the entire premise of blockchain is anti-regulation, being regulated is necessary. Because as more markets get regulated, more businesses invest, which creates more transaction volume, and so on.
Billy: Market making isn’t new, but there are all sorts of rules in traditional finance. So I often wonder how everything can be transferred to a system when money is a primitive in a programming language. What remains public or private? How does a transparent exchange work and can it keep up with transaction speeds?
Kasima: That’s a good point. Privacy and intent-hiding are important when it comes to making markets function. There might be ways to deploy zero-knowledge codes and secret algorithms so market-making remains hidden on-chain.
As for speed, the exchange being asynchronous can solve that problem.
Paul: Plus, a Swiss Digital Stock Exchange Deloitte works with has decided that whatever happens before the trade doesn’t need to be on-chain.
Kasima: So in simpler terms they take the execution off the blockchain and just put the clearing and settlement on it?
Paul: Yes, people want centralized orders books so they can set bids, split them, or cancel them without having things confirmed on the chain. Once there’s a match, then the blockchain gets involved.
Billy: But that’s how 0X works and we haven’t gotten the response or liquidity we expected?
Kasima: 0X doesn’t exactly play towards the market-maker role, there’s product work that seems to be missing.
For example it takes money to cancel an order on 0x, and a lot of market-making algorithms involve cancelling orders. Small things like these is what I call product work. In the end it’s all about unlocking the general public’s participation in these services.
Anthony: This conversation was a great way to highlight the differences between a traditional and modern financial ones. In the ‘new’ market more privacy will enable liquidity. In a traditional market, as long as people back the asset and trust it, there will be liquidity.
Anthony: But when you keep things private, doesn’t that make it a challenge for regulators?
Kasima: We look at regulations like an unblocker, something that will add liquidity to our products. But we don’t make statements about regulations on the technology we’ve built, we put that on the application-level. We just know that regulatory compliance will bring more usage to our network.
Anthony: Sagar, you’re an expert with regulations, how do you get your point through to so many different countries?
Sagar: Times have changed, nowadays central banks want to keep up with developments and are quite welcoming. Great examples are Bank of Thailand, NAS, Phillipine VSP, all are inviting and love collaboration.
We just have to make sure that we listen to what they’re saying and tailor our products to comply with the regulations.
Paul: Any final thoughts
Sagar: I just wanted to add that if someone believes that there’ll be one blockchain that’s going to rule the world, it’s not going to happen. The need of the hour is how to connect different blockchains using interoperable protocols!
Kasima: I also think it comes down to the kind of thing you want to interoperate. The frontier is how you start interoperating other forms of stake and execution. And even though we haven’t figured it out yet, I know it’s going to be fun.
Community Spotlight — Tipsuda Thavaramara:
This month, we get to know a bit more about OmiseGO’s compliance and regulations advisor Tipsuda Thavaramara — who the team first featured in their AMA bonus question on regulations. With over 20 years of experience in the field of regulations and compliance in Thailand and South East Asia, let’s hear what she has to say about OmiseGO and the highspeed ecosystem of blockchain and the fintech.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Thailand and how all this has brought you to OmiseGO?
I was at the SEC for 26 years. My last position was Deputy Secretary-General in charge of policy, markets and intermediaries, and investment management. My most important contributions at the SEC have always been in capital market development. I spent the first ten years at the SEC creating new institutions and legal infrastructure such as the Bond Dealers Club (now Thai Bond Market Association), enabling rules for short selling, securities lending, derivatives law, and the non-voting depository receipt (NVDR) scheme as a solution to the problems related to foreign ownership. The subsequent ten years, I worked on several areas of market liberalization such as brokerage commission, licensing, overseas investment, and cross-border offerings. Then the policy issues in the last four years shifted to disruptive technology and what regulators needed to do to allow the industry to transform in response to change. I led the team that drafted the digital asset law in 2018 and the securities law amendment in 2019 that would allow digital securities issuance through a central securities depository.
I first got to know OmiseGO in 2017 when the company did an ICO (initial coin offering). The activity did not fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction but I invited Donnie and Vansa to come educate my team at the SEC anyway. We kept in touch and in 2018 Jun and Donnie introduced us to Vitalik Buterin. This was at a time when the SEC was in the middle of exploring regulatory options for crypto assets, so that was very helpful. How did all this bring me to OmiseGO? I would like to think that the OmiseGO team feels they can benefit from my policy making and regulatory experience as they move into a regulated market space. For me, joining OmiseGO gives me a fresh experience in an exciting new area.
Q: Can you tell us more about your role here at OmiseGO?
At OmiseGO, I am the compliance and regulations advisor. I help the OmiseGO business development team understand the relevant regulatory principles, standards, expectations, and issues of concerns. This ensures they design products and services that comply with regulations.
Q: You’ve worked with the Thai SEC for over 20 years, what do you see as the biggest changes that technology has brought about in the way individuals, businesses and even countries are doing business?
In my earlier years at the SEC, the securities industry in Thailand operated in a somewhat protected environment. There were fixed commissions and restrictions in the number of licenses and the types of eligible products. The brokerage business needed a large troop of marketing staff. So, competition then meant a race to cut commission rates while trying to steal your competitor’s salespeople. Today, technology allows businesses to have greater and faster access to data and market insight, to offer customer-centric solutions, to reduce reliance on people and to improve the ability to scale. All kinds of functions that can be offered “as-a-service” help lower the barrier to entry for new players. The game has changed almost entirely.
Q: A lot of the technology we deal with today weren’t even available maybe five years ago, so how are regulatory bodies coping with the increasingly digitalized world?
Regulators are always under pressure to promote an efficient and inclusive financial market, while ensuring market integrity, consumer protections and public confidence. The challenges that come with an increasingly digitalized world are manyfold: the borderless nature of internet transactions, the shift from humans to algorithms, the increasing decentralization of markets, the blurring of lines of product or activity classification, and the speed at which all this is happening. Regulators are not used to the idea of not being in control, so the most common response given time constraints would be to try to fit what they see with existing rules, even though those may not always fit. Even if they accept that what they see needs a new type of treatment, it is difficult to step out of the existing boundary, and some may end up with the new rule being an offshoot or clone of the existing rule. At the same time regulators will cooperate and share information and experience, and a new standard might soon emerge. They will also rely more on education and information transparency as a tool for investor protection, rather than relying primarily on themselves to grant permission for everything.
Q: What do you think are the biggest hurdles blockchain and crypto projects face when vying for mainstream adoption and how do you think they can overcome them?
I think one big hurdle is that consumers, businesses, and regulators are not entirely comfortable with the idea of not knowing who to hold accountable should something go wrong. Therefore we see all kinds of intermediaries being reintroduced into what is supposed to be a scheme without intermediaries. Crypto projects need to identify where and how they can address this trust and accountability question. During the earlier phases of mainstream adoption, permissioned or consortium blockchains will probably find it easier to break into the mass market.
I see OmiseGO succeeding in this area through proper regulation compliance on the network level, replicating traditional finance market structures within blockchain. This move will allow for institutional players to enter the space –triggering the next stage towards mass adoption.
Q: Where do you see blockchain and crypto heading in the next five years in Thailand and Asia?
In the next five years, I think there will be a lot of progress in mainstream adoption, but mostly with permissioned blockchains. We should see more traditional assets becoming tokenized, allowing peer-to-peer trading and real time settlement. And that will change the future of exchanges and clearinghouses.
Q: What role do you think OmiseGO could fill when it comes to regulations and the blockchain ecosystem?
With more and more mainstream adoption of blockchain and crypto technology, OmiseGO’s financial services will likely fall into a regulated space eventually. If its products and services are deemed to be not only compliant but also at the forefront of trust mechanism design, that would be a strategic advantage. The question of trust and accountability will remain central to the future of blockchain, and to the objective and design of regulations. OmiseGO is adding value here through cheaper transactions, a fast and scalable network, and through proper regulatory compliance — as I’ve mentioned above.
Upcoming events:
October 08th-11th, 2019: Devcon 5 in Osaka.
Reddit:
OmiseGO AMA 27: This month OmiseGO team leads to respond to community questions about the P2P payments function of the OmiseGO Network as detailed in the recent post Meet our P2P Payment Network. 3 out of the top 5 upvoted comments will receive a response via the OmiseGO blog before the end of the month.
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, AMA 26 with Integration Team.
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
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 (September 16th, 2019):
In progress
Partnerships and team members
Omise announces partnership with Citibank Thailand to be the first payment gateway to launch “Pay with Points”:
Omise announced a partnership with Citibank Thailand to launch Pay with Points as a new payment option to e-commerce businesses across Thailand. This initiative will help broaden consumer payment choices by enabling Citi cardholders to use Citi Rewards points to pay for their purchases when shopping online at thousands of Omise merchant stores.
Pay with Points will allow e-commerce businesses to accept payments through the instant redemption of credit card reward points, making Omise the first payment gateway in Thailand to offer this service.
This partnership will allow both companies to benefit from each other’s respective strengths. The new point redemption payment acceptance will contribute to providing merchants with more channels to accept payments without handling cash or credit. It will also add another payment option for Citi credit cardholders to have more platforms in various business categories to redeem their outstanding Citi rewards points.
With over 1 million Citibank cardholders present in Thailand, Citibank’s quality customers contribute to a good 10% of market share for total card spending with transactions that are 144% higher than the market average. Omise’s partnership with Citibank Thailand announces this new payment method to be launched into its payment suite today. Both Omise and Citibank believe that this new feature will help bridge the connection between 1 million Citi cardholders with thousands of Omise merchants and will contribute to a high potential for revenue among Thai ecommerce merchants in addition to a step closer towards a cashless society.
“Omise provides an API that allows Pay with Points to be quickly integrated into any e-commerce store; creating a seamless connection for both the merchant and cardholders. Pay with Points on Omise removes the burden of the usual rewards program by allowing cardholders to make instant redemption at the moment of transaction. This eliminates the need for businesses to issue coupon codes or cash rebates,”
Mr. Visit Yindisiriwong, Country Manager at Omise (Thailand) said.
“Consumers today enjoy personalized, relevant, and seamless payment options that give them full control and flexibility over the way they use their loyalty points. This is a great opportunity for merchants who want to ride the digital wave.”
Mr. Warote Nguitragool, Cards Customer Experience and Loyalty Rewards Head, Citi Thailand said:
“A partnership with Omise will help enhance the customer experience on the rewards points conversion journey” .
While Citi continues to focus on customer needs and offer alternative ways to convert rewards points through a new digital channel, Citi cardholders can now further use their points to spend on online shopping and experience premium services from Omise’s authorized partners with a seamless process.
Rumors
The team has launched their new website:
The updated site includes changes to design and navigation. The team has also improved how they’ve laid out the content, so you’ll get more from a quick scroll.
OmiseGO Survey: Block Explorers:
The team would like to learn more about your usage of blockchain explorers.
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.
Check out Stablecoin Survey first results. Based on the survey results, a majority of crypto users have exposure to stablecoins and a demonstrated interest in this asset class. Stablecoins are an attractive cryptoasset for volatility resistance as well as capital gains and dividend return. However, regulatory and technical concerns still exist. The team believes there is a large area for improvement, especially in the regulatory landscape as was shared during their recent AMA on regulations.
Twitter:
Active Reddit discussions:
Other:
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, however, there is a slight fluctuation in the number of subscribers of OmiseGo social media channels.
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.
