Update on the Development Status of Proof Products
As many of the attentive followers of Proof Suite are aware, we have experienced a few delays in expected product releases this year. Last year at this time, we had an active community of about 20,000 users leveraging our Proof Dashboard Beta product to tokenize real world assets and exchange them via blockchain technology. The Proof Dashboard started in 2016 as a proof-of-concept (no pun intended) for companies looking to experiment with blockchain-based smart contracts. It then spun into its own retail product, however, out of simply a proof-of-concept. As this unfolded, we realized there were quite a few regulatory hurdles to expansion. For this reason, we closed down the Proof Dashboard in order to make way for a decentralized platform that did similar things… and better: AMP. Let’s start the development updates there. From AMP, we will discuss our crypto data project which supports data on tokenized assets and other cryptos on AMP: Avocado. Then, let’s move into Togen, a platform integral to helping companies tokenize their assets for trade on AMP.
AMP
AMP has been in development since December of last year after our token sale concluded. Around this time our development team was bogged down with a few issues: hiring more developers, building out our open-source community, and gradually sunsetting the previous beta product (for reasons previously mentioned, while still supporting an active userbase, all the while). From there, we had the realization that the “open-source” projects (other decentralized exchanges, or “DEXs”, like IDEX and EtherDelta) we had originally made plans on modeling our DEX after (while improving) were not as open-sourced as advertised. This wasn’t entirely a surprise. We’d delved into many of their codebases previously, but with newer DEXs launching at the end of last year, we were confident certain transparencies would happen… that did not happen. More specifically: matching engines (the heart of an exchange) were and remained centralized and closed-source, even as newer versions and newer entrants pushed platforms into the market. Our original plan had been building on-top of these heralded “open source” projects. Their client-side (front-end) code mostly had obfuscated javascript libraries, meaning even the user interface functionality was not transparent at all. If you’re considering using a decentralized exchange today, please keep this in mind. This meant we had to essentially begin from an almost zero-code-reference point regarding projects that actually had adoption (as limited as that was/is). We had this mostly mapped out by early February of this year.
From there was actual development of the platform. As many new developments in the blockchain space developed, from 0x to Casper proposals to the hold-up on the Raiden Network we had planned to work with, we transitioned our product strategy as this very early industry continued to evolve in many more ways that just mentioned above. We decided to make our platform agnostic, to the point where it can be flexible in how people integrate it into different chains, as our space continues to evolve. This is also so it can become very much a standard. This obviously (maybe more to some more than others) has caused delays. However, we finally have a solid date for the “official” release of the AMP Beta: December 1st. We never before assigned a release date for this project, but defined a target month or season target in the past. With this date, we feel that we are close enough that we can reliably get users a valuable tool by then, based on our testing and other progress.
Regarding adoption of AMP, that is another story entirely. We are focusing on deploying a first-grade tool that solves the problem of a fully-transparent exchange mechanism and then focusing on partnerships with businesses who are creating their projects today on our Togen product, which we will get to shortly. We have a calendar where you can meet with us to discuss this via video chat here. We also welcome you to our new Discord chat here.
You can also follow the AMP project status using this roadmap interface we developed: here.
Avocado
Avocado is our institutional-grade cryptocurrency market analysis tool. You can learn more about it: here if you haven’t already delved into it. Asset-backed and game-backed tokens are a new kind of asset class. We knew early on that as more of these kinds of products made their way onto our decentralized exchange, people would need tools for fully analyzing these assets. Therefore, we developed a freemium, subscription-based data product into our business plan at the beginning of this year. This essentially was Avocado. Avocado leverages clustered databases for near-guaranteed redundancy, Influx for a powerful infrastructure, and React Redux for a collaborative, standardized framework for continious integrations and updates as the space evolves. As we’re working with best-in-class, albeit new, technologies, we are writing a lot of the rules on implementing these these technologies in-the-wild.
We originally launched Avocado to a select group of 100 asset managers around the world on August 1st of this year. The broader rollout has taken time as we have received much product feedback from early users that will take time to develop given the robust nature of our infrastructure. We are currently developing ways to balance the flexibility of the platform to meet customer demands with highly-demanding frameworks like React Redux that grows in complexity a bit faster than application complexity after a certain point. Our CTO has written a wonderful post in the Dev Blog about this and also the trials (and tribulations) of hiring the right people to work on projects like this.
We do not yet have a set date for the next Avocado version and broader rollout; however, we are working to deliver this value as soon as possible. We are confident, however, that by the time tokenized assets become “a thing”, our Avocado platform will be positioned to be the #1 data product in this area.
Togen
Proof Suite started in 2016 by tokenizing assets via smart contract generation. Back then and throughout 2017 a lot of the standards in the Ethereum and Solidity space evolved. Furthermore, new security standards emerged from crisis such as the Parity hack and other fumbles. In all, things have gotten more complex in the tokenized asset space, yet we keep learning the same lessons: smart contracts HAVE to be simple. Otherwise, bad things will happen give the immutability of the code, evolving nature of infrastructure, and value-bearing nature of this space. We have taken that into consideration along with the demands we have received from customers over the years to release an all-new token generator that can be leveraged by enterprises looking to tokenize their assets.
The biggest concern that larger institutions have, aside from regulatory concerns, are around the lack of scalability in the Ethereum space and variable cost of transactions. For this reason, we are working on sidechain solutions as the rest of our industry moves into this same scaling solutions paradigm, to add “Layer 2” functionality to Togen by the launch of AMP on December 1st. So, as users get more flexibility with smart contract generation for tokens, crowdsales and organization management, they will also get easy-to-use tool sets to integrate blockchain technology into existing ecosystems in a way that is scalable, more secure, more private, and with non-variable cost. This is exciting news for the industry as a whole, and we are excited to solve these problems along with our exists Togen users.
Summary
We hope that by the end of this year our users, followers, and internal team will be proud what were able to accomplish through value-add solutions, albeit the wait-times.
We are excited about the release of AMP and next version of Avocado, along with updates to Togen.
These products, the “suite” of products in Proof Suite, have almost a feedback-loop nature in adding value to each individual project.
Lastly, may the Proof be with you.
