Project Hydro Developer Update: 22nd January 2020
We have lots of updates to discuss with the Hydro ecosystem since our last developer update so let’s dig right in.
The Protocols:
First off, some big news with the dApp Store. If you missed our official announcement, we pushed the dApp store to mainnet! This means the Hydro dApp Store is live for all to use. Not only that, but any developer can start building their dApps and monetize them from day one.
What does this mean? It means that a developer can choose to apply a price in HYDRO before a user gets to utilize the dApp. Once a user on the other end sees a dApp they like, it will cost them HYDRO to use it. For instance, a developer can decide their dApp costs 10 Hydro, or even a 1,000,000. At the current time, 100% of dApp revenue goes to the developer. That’s a good incentive to get building as most current traditional marketplaces take a decent chunk of developers hard earned revenue (as much as 40–50%!).
In other dApp news, the Hydro Events Marketplace dApp is coming along quite nicely as well. Some good news here also, it’s currently on testnet with the ability to purchase event tickets in HYDRO. Our plan is to get the dApp up and live for you all to play around with while it is still a work in progress. This way we can gather some feedback and get a MVP (or in development and product terms — a version of a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development) live and out the door.
Currently, we are sharing a code base between two developers — so we are working independently on our local machines on opposite ends of the globe, sharing a codebase but having independent local datasets. Now that it is online, we can compile and migrate the smart contracts on to the Ethereum Rinkeby network and have a persistent data store and interact with its unique features on testnet.
Built into the Hydro smart contract itself is a nice function called getTokens, which will deposit 10,000 test tokens into an ETH address. We are building this into the dApp so on testnet you can get some free test Hydro and once live, real Hydro can be purchased.
Most recently, A domain has been purchased and we are in the process of connecting Github to Netlify to move it to the next step of development.
This is a good thing, because it means a link for you all is not far off. In the meantime we will continue to button a few things up and chip away at the backlog — so please stay tuned.
Request for Comments
A new Hydro Request for Comments (HRC) for a collateralized assets protocol has been added to the Hydro Blockchain GitHub.
Ecosystem News
The Hydro ecosystem is bigger than the protocols with multiple ecosystem developers who are building platforms that utilize Hydro. We asked them for an update.
Hydrogen:
The Hydrogen team tell us that they are working on two white labelable/configurable apps — a tokenization app and a wallet/payments app
There should be more information direct from Hydrogen later this week.
Hydro Labs:
Hydro Labs (current managers of Project Hydro) have kicked off the new year running with their new partner Republic. They are standing alongside Hydro Labs in many capacities, including development. Here are some updates direct from the Hydro Labs team.
Hydro Pay:
We are getting deliverables multiple times a week now from the Hydro Pay dev team. We received an APK this week introducing USDC capabilities and Biometrics. This includes some new UI. Regarding biometrics, Face ID/Thumb ID or its equivalent will be available on each device platform. In cases where you might be on an older software version or phone, it will fall back to a PIN code. Each one addresses an important aspect of bringing adoption to the product — a layer of security and utility.
Hydro Pay Top Up USDC and Biometrics
We have a separate APK we have been testing the OmiseGo Network (on their Lumphini network) and are coordinating our app release. In the meantime we have been asked if we wanted to gain access to their private plasma mainnet, which we are flipping over to in the coming days.
Two other things to note: The Hydro Pay splash screen also has the updated OmiseGo branding and we implemented encrypted message capabilities as part of your transaction.
We will have further information on when updates for Android and iOS will be available.
Hydro Vault:
Most recently, the Vault devs have been getting into the weeds of a users Vault settings. This is the heart of it all. There are features being worked on here that sets Vault apart from other wallets, with regards to giving the user full control of their assets and its security mechanisms.
In addition to global site blockchain based 2FA (secured with Raindrop), there are features like rate limiters, limiting max amounts of transactions per day.
The above picture describes adding a new Vault to your account. Allowing a user to name it, determine its asset type, and if it is a single or shared Vault.
Hydro Drive:
Drive is currently under development and once it is determined the time is right, we will share more.
Hopefully this gives you a glimpse of what we have going on at Project Hydro and with the broader ecosystem. If you are building anything on Hydro please let us know and, as always, please feel free to reach out to us on Telegram or Discord. We are always happy to chat.
Timothy Allard
CTO Hydro Labs
