A Year-End Letter to the Function X Community
Dear Function X Community,
What a year it has been. The crypto community has, it appears, finally bounced back from the tribulations of the collapse of Terra Luna, 3AC, and FTX. From the lows of $16K late last year, Bitcoin has roared back to $44K on the tailwinds of numerous Bitcoin ETFs set to be approved next year, settling around $41K at time of writing. In July, we celebrated our second annivarsary. We have come a long way, but there’s still much to do and we have been hard at work. Here’s some of what we have accomplished this year.
f(x)Core Upgrades
In February, we released the f(x)Core v3 upgrade and in August, we released the f(x)Core v5 upgrade. Part of the v3 upgrade included support for cross-chain interoperability with Avalanche’s C-Chain, support for more cross-chain tokens and support for standard IBC transfer transactions. The v5 upgrade mainly comprises replacing the consensus public key and transferring validator permissions, thereby fortifying the network further against potential threats and vulnerabilities.
At time of writing, the proposal for f(x)Core v6 Upgrade is live, which comprises feature upgrades such as support for precompile staking redelegation, conversion of one-to-one token to many-to-one token which allows for tokens to be transferable cross-chain across many layer 1s, and integration with Pundi X’s upcoming Layer 2 zkEVM.
We’re also glad to report that total transactions on f(x)Core have risen from 309,794 in 2022 to 577,444 in 2023 at time of writing, while the number of wallet addresses has risen from 54,089 at the start of 2023 to 127,403 at time of writing.
Technical Contributions and Innovations
We’re also excited to share some of our technical contributions we have made to the space.
Consensus Public Key Replacement
In the event of a server breach or consensus public key leakage, we’ve implemented a solution using the edit-consensus-pubkey transaction to replace the validator’s consensus public key.
Authority Transfer for Private Key Compromise
To mitigate the risks associated with a validator’s wallet private key being compromised, we’ve set up a mechanism for transferring validator authority to another address using the grant-privilege transaction. In this setup, the compromised private key cannot send transactions on the chain, while an authorized address can perform transactions on behalf of the validator’s address.
Precompile Staking Redelegation
The precompile staking redelegation function allows users to efficiently and cost-effectively redelegate their staked assets from one validator to another.
One of the first few EVM chains in Cosmos
We’re one of the first few layer 1s to build out an EVM chain — f(x)EVM — in Cosmos back in mid-2022. We officially launched f(x)EVM in July 2022, earlier than Cronos which launched its mainnet in November 2022.
New Integrations and Partnerships
Leading Web3 wallets Rabby and Leap Wallet have integrated f(x)Core, as has portfolio tracker Debank. IBC DEX aggregator TFM has integrated f(x)Core into both its IBC Swap and IBC Transfer features. Osmosis, Cosmos’ largest DEX, has also listed $FX. Recently, Cosmos DEX aggregator Coinhall listed the $FX/$OSMO pair, allowing the pair to be traded on Hallswap.
In the offchain world, we were invited to attend and contribute to a regulatory roundtable in Indonesia with key government agencies to discuss blockchain and crypto’s role in Indonesia’s digital economy.
Validators
In 2023, we welcomed several new validators into our validator community. They are ContributionDAO, Polkachu, Blockchain at Yonsei, and Node101. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank our existing validators for their continuous support — Litecoin Foundation, European University Cyprus, Asosiasi Blockchain Indonesia, Blockchain Collaborative Consortium, ClaudioXBarros, DAOverse, FrenchXCore-1, and Dapp.com.
We have also retired several of the Foundation’s validators. Decentralization being one of our core values, we retired our own validators to make way for third party validators in order to further decentralize the Function X network.
f(x)Wallet
We launched f(x)Wallet v3 in June and are currently at v3.6. The updated version came with new features and significant enhancements. We refreshed the “My Wallet” page, giving it a new look. We added the f(x) Ecosystem page, allowing users to easily access Function X’s growing ecosystem of use cases and dapps. We also added support for Solana, allowing users to access Solana dapps via f(x)Wallet. Since June, we have continuously updated f(x)Wallet: we added support for Cosmos and Osmosis and added the NFT blacklist feature to allow users to hide scam NFTs.
Launch of FXcast Podcast
Last but definitely not least, we launched the FXcast Twitter Space podcast. We’ve completed 5 episodes since we launched it in October. We invited and spoke with some of the top builders in the Cosmos ecosystem, such as Zaki Manian, Jack Zampolin, Carter Woetzel, Stargaze Zone, Badkids, and ContributionDAO. In 2024, we will continue to invite the leading builders in the Cosmos ecosystem to FXcast and grow FXcast to be one of the top Cosmos podcasts.
All in all, we had an eventful and productive 2023.
Here’s to an even more prosperous 2024!
Best regards,
David
President, Function X Foundation
