The first three months of 2020 have been some of the most intense, challenging, and rewarding we’ve ever experienced.
We’ve had the opportunity to work on some fascinating projects for the ICON ecosystem, and we’ve also had to say no to many others. It’s never easy to say no, but as a team of two, we need to limit our focus.
Thanks to our voters for your support, and for being so patient with our infrequent updates. Social media competes with time that should be spent on our work, so we aim to publish a transparency report every quarter to keep you up to date.
Here’s what we’ve been up to since December.
ICONex
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: ICONex. After we published our redesign articles for the wallet and voting interfaces, our next step was to build a prototype. We planned to test this with the community, then work with the ICON Foundation to make it a reality. And that was still our intention until mid-January.
Within the first few weeks of 2020, we received requests to work on 7 different projects for ICON. So, we had to sit down and figure out what to prioritise. Which projects would give ICON an advantage over other blockchains?
We still had a lot of work to do for ICONex, and with ReliantNode building MyIconWallet, we didn’t want to duplicate efforts. When we talked to Mark, we saw that he’d taken our UX advice to heart and was eager for any feedback we could give. We were confident his team had the wallet under control, so we put ICONex on hold.
After getting so far into the project, this was an agonising but necessary decision. That said, we want every ICON interface to provide a great experience. If Velic needs it, we’re happy to help them improve ICONex as time allows.
Balanced
Balanced is our largest — and by far most fascinating — project for 2020. It’s a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform that uses ICX as collateral to create tokens pegged to real-world assets. The first token, ICON Dollars (ICD), will be the first crypto-backed stablecoin on the ICON Network.
Led by Scott Smiley (aka Benny Options) from ICX_Station, Balanced is a collaboration between the three of us, Dan Brehmer of iBriz-ICONOsphere, and Galen Danziger of Mousebelt.
After our first meeting on January 13, we worked for the next month to get Balanced ready to announce to the community. We created the brand, designed and built the website, and learnt the white paper inside and out.
We had a tight deadline, but we made it with time to spare. Our work had only just begun.
We’ve since released our high-level roadmap, with an expected Mainnet launch of Q1 2021. For this quarter, we’ll design the interface and build a prototype to test with the team and the community. We expect to design at least 100 variations of the interface to make sure we provide the optimal experience for our users.
We’re putting everything we have into Balanced, because it’s not enough to create a DeFi platform for ICON. We want to create a DeFi platform that outperforms every other alternative in the cryptocurrency space.
Many thanks to Velic for awarding the Balanced team first place for their 3-month grant. Thanks also to Scott, who applied for the grant and gave up his share so the rest of the team could receive a larger number of delegations. 🙏
ICON Vote
ICON Vote is a voting platform that helps P-Reps communicate with their voters. Daeki from ICX_Station asked for our help with the design, and we were happy to oblige. After all, the easier it is to use, the more effective it becomes.
We’ve made good progress with the branding and UX/UI design — for a sneak peak, take a look at our Notion document. For Q2, we’ll work with Daeki and others to update the website and improve the documentation.
Consensus 2020
In February, 13 P-Reps partnered up to sponsor the Consensus blockchain conference. We agreed to lend a hand with the design and create some infographics for the booth. Although our schedule was already full, we made some adjustments to fit it in.
The conference moved online due to COVID-19 before we could finish the infographics, so we don’t have much to show for our efforts. We did update the ICON logo and provide brand recommendations, which we’ll combine into a full branding pack when time allows.
Looking forward
Besides Balanced and ICON Vote, we have several other projects lined up for Q2 and beyond. We can’t talk about one of them yet, other than to say it will significantly improve the onboarding process for non-crypto users. 😎
The other project is one of our own: TwentyFour.
TwentyFour
TwentyFour is a photo competition app that resets every 24 hours. People vote for their favourite photos, and photographers can earn rewards based on the number of votes their photo receives.
We’re currently in the planning phase, working out the tokenomics in our spare moments. Progress is slow because we had to prioritise other projects first, but we plan to kick this up a notch around September-October.
A word about finances
All the work we’ve done for ICON is funded entirely by our P-Rep rewards, which we haven’t touched yet. For now, we’re living off the income Lisa makes as the lead writer for the 1Password Support website.
We will need to withdraw some of our rewards later in the year to cover costs leading up to the Balanced release. We plan to test with users, and pay them for their time with ReliantNode’s Marvelous gift cards. We’ll also pay for our share of the security audit, which is a costly but necessary expense to make sure Balanced is safe to use.
To compensate for our time and resources, we’ll receive a share of the Balance Tokens and the rewards they earn from network fees. The exact amount is still up for debate, but was originally set at 10%.
And that about covers it. To find out more, take a look at our ICON P-Rep projects.
Until next time.
