Sifchain Update Spring/Summer 2022
In this Medium post, we’ll give you an update of how 2022 has been so far, and a peek into what’s happening for the rest of the year.
We want to share a rough outline of the remainder of 2022 to shed light on what’s going on behind the scenes. These dates and details are moving targets & approximations of what’s possible, and may change based on technical requirements & market conditions. Please think of this as a guide rather than a precise timeline.
We’ve hidden top secret alpha near the end of this post. Make sure you read the entire thing to find that golden alpha…
Q1 2022 Wrap-Up
Q1 of 2022 was a busy one for Sifchain. Since the start of the year, we have:
- Launched Sif’s Acsension liquidity mining program
- Launched the Protocol Monetary Trade Policy (PMTP) with SifDAO control over policy-setting to SifDAO (which means you, reader)
- Forming numerous DAO councils, including Validator Delegation, Token Listing, and the PMTP council.
- Decentralizing the Sifchain Front-end. Six different front-end providers now host Sifchain DEX front-ends.
- Hired & grew the Sifchain team with hiring key personnel across engineering, business, and marketing.
- Launched the Sifchain Ambassador program, now with 11 Ambassadors
- Raised 35 on-chain proposals, including software upgrades, community pool funding initiatives, expansion of our validator set, policy parameter updates, and council member elections.
- Increased governance participation, with DAO votes consistently having over 60% of bonded tokens vote
- Issued our first how-to guide for Validators, for setup, delegation, and chain upgrades
- Expanded the list of community-owned and operated tools, which now includes three different dashboards, a ROWAN faucet, and a block-explorer. Thank you to the community members who have built and maintained these tools!
Plus, our engineering team has accomplished the following in the back-end that have resulted in process improvements for Sifchain:
- Sifchain.js
- Native Integration testing
- Admin module launch
- New IBC Connections & formed partnerships with several IBC relayers
- Migrated to non-Sifchain RPC endpoints to external vendors
- Implemented better ways of working, including Agile practices and a Support Ticket system to help improve the user experience with Sifchain
Finally, up until the recent market crash, Sifchain has been seeing incredible growth numbers. Post crash, the metrics declined. We see these pre-crash numbers as an example of what’s possible in a bullish market:
Major Project Developments & Upcoming Milestones
The Sifchain project team is hard at work. We see the current market conditions as an opportunity to do what we do best: build.
We’re focusing on these key areas over the coming months:
- Margin Trading
- Omni-EVM
- Sifchain DEX Upgrades
- Engineering Pipeline & Sifchain Back-End Optimizations
- Partnerships, Marketing, and PR
- Team Building
- Cryptoeconomic Updates
Margin Trading
Margin trading will give Sifchain participants an opportunity to gain additional exposure to their traded asset. Margin trading on Sifchain will be decentralized, permissionless, and it aims to leverage Sifchain’s architecture to offer faster trades & lower fees than non-Cosmos SDK platforms.
Engineering at Sifchain is hard at work on developing an MVP for the margin trading platform. We’re planning on testing an MVP without a front-end integration, and then later, an MVP with a front-end integration. This is because the front-end UI/UX work is in progress with a UI/UX agency to parallel path the code base development.
Many of our community have asked us for the opportunity to participate more in Sifchain. We’ll be offering two ways you can help us beta test the Margin Trading MVP:
- Join a beta test of the MVP prior to the front-end going live
- Join a beta test of the MVP after the front-end is live
The goal is to engage Sifchain’s community to help us test the product & have a voice in its stress testing in a closed environment.
This means that our community members can help shape and mold the end product that you, and many others, will be using.
We’ll announce details for applications for the beta in the coming weeks.
Timing: MVP without front-end on TestNet EOM June 2022
Omni-EVM
You might remember we were the first ETH to Cosmos bridge, and we’re on a mission to connect Cosmos to the world of blockchains built on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Over the past several months, our business development team has been hard at work building relationships with these other EVM chains. We have researched and analyzed 45 different EVM chains to identify best fit, and fostered 1:1 relationships with the top 15 chains.
Today, the list of top contenders has been narrowed to six possibilities for our next EVM connection, and we’ll be engaging the community to help us choose our next chain.
We’ll be sharing these top six contenders with you during a week-long discussion period, where representatives from the chains will be invited to join, and you’ll get a chance to meet them.
The DAO’s vote for the next chain will be a signaling proposal to help the Engineering team decide which chain to choose for the integration.
While BD has been hard at work on identifying the top six, Engineering has been working on Peggy 2.0. The Peggy 2.0 codebase is in the midst of migration of smart contracts and load testing. The code has undergone 3 audits already and has a 4th in process.
We’re glad to be transparent with you through this process, and encourage you to participate in evaluating the top six to help us choose the next EVM connection.
Timing: Peggy 2.0 release targeted for Q3 2022
Sifchain Front-end & Site Upgrades
The front-end and design team are in the process of updating the UI/UX for the Sifchain DEX & front end of the website. The goal will be to improve usability and refresh the look & feel to give users a better experience.
The data for this DEX & Site Upgrade come from the following data sources:
- Usage data gathered by our internal team
- Responses to the community survey issued last month
- A 550-datapoint study completed by an agency on community inquiries for Sifchain & its competitors.
Some major changes to the DEX will include:
- Emphasis on User Flow: The right information at the right time to enable users to move quickly.
- Cleaner & Consolidated: A revamped pools page and pool details page, new updates to token listings section, and an updated swap interface.
- UI Polish: Updated look & feel to improve the product experience for all users.
- Mobile Responsiveness: V3 will be our first mobile version.
- Improved Stability and Performance
We may be inviting users to test into a TestNet version of the DEX before officially released. We welcome feedback on possible design changes, so please feel free to make suggestions in the feedback channel in Discord.
Timeline: Targeting Q3 2022
Engineering Pipeline & Sifchain Back-End Optimizations
Our engineering team has a full pipeline of items they’re working on in addition to the features listed above. The team is targeting the following items for the rest of this year:
- Cosmos SDK 0.45 upgrade. This will bring proper support for ledger and AuthZ support and enable installation of CosmWasm
- Complete CLP Refactoring, which will make it easier for other external devs to work on core Sifcore functionality (and make it easier to build new products into Sifchain)
- Several DevOps Pipeline Optimizations and Monitoring Improvements
- Data integrity, monitoring & optimization strategy implementation
- Sifchain.js use cases led by both our team & the community
These upgrades will improve our product experience for our end users, and help improve stability and performance for our systems. Of course, as with all things development, these timelines may flex to adjust as new needs arise. We’ll provide other engineering pipeline updates as work progresses.
Finally, we’re excited to have our engineering team joining us at upcoming events in person. They’ll also be launching Bounties, so stay tuned for those.
Partnerships, Marketing, and PR
Partnerships
Since our major feature releases require deep liquidity, our Business Development team and Sifchain leadership are hard at work at building industry relationships to support these efforts. In addition, we are beginning new initiatives in marketing and PR to grow Sifchain’s profile throughout DeFi.
You may have seen Sifchain’s list of investors from our project’s initial stages. If you haven’t, here it is:
Our institutional partners were vital for our project’s health and continue to be today. We’re looking forward to expanding on these relationships where appropriate, and forging new ones to support Sifchain’s ongoing growth. We’ll be looking forward to sharing details with you when the time is right.
Marketing & PR
Marketing & PR are other areas of growth for Sifchain during this period. We hired a Marketing Manager, who started this week, and their first big projects will be working on the Margin Trading launch & the updates to Sifchain’s visual branding.
Furthermore, we’ve onboarded a PR agency to help raise Sifchain’s profile in the industry. We’ll share upcoming Sifchain media features as they are released.
Upcoming features for Sifchain Core Contributor Jazear Brooks include:
- A featured speaker at the upcoming Consensus conference in Austin, Texas on June 9–12, 2022.
- A featured speaker at the upcoming DCental Austin conference on June 7, 2022. Use our code ‘SIFCHAIN22’ for 30% off!
- Interview with Cryptocito on May 31 at 8:00pm UTC.
Timing: Ongoing throughout 2022
Team Building
Internal Sifchain Team
Sifchain’s internal business & engineering team is doubling-down to #BUIDL to position us to be a market leader. Since we have evolved past our launch phase and into growth, we’ve added highly skilled members to our team who will be crucial to fulfilling the greater vision of Sifchain.
During the first part of the year, we hired for the following roles:
- Data & Dev Rels Product Manager
- Two Front-end Engineers
- Cloud Engineer
- Four Sifnode Engineers
- Security Engineer Manager
- Head of Marketing
- DAO Growth Facilitator
- Communications Manager
These team members will be responsible for helping us innovate better & faster, and assist us in finding solutions to any challenge with ease. They’re all fantastic additions to an already incredible team.
We’re looking to expand the team further by hiring for additional roles! Check out the job listing and refer your contacts: https://apply.workable.com/sifchain-finance/?lng=en
Timing: Ongoing throughout 2022
Sifchain’s DAO
Another vital aspect of team building is defining the roles of the internal Sifchain team and the Sifchain DAO, or SifDAO, the community-led DAO responsible for protocol governance.
SifDAO does a great job of facilitating & directing Sifchain’s day-to-day & long-term development. They approve new token listings, set inflation rates for ROWAN for rewards programs, set PMTP rates, decide on validator delegations, and make other important decisions.
DAO councils are active in the following areas:
- Token Listing Council
- Validator Delegation Council
- PMTP Policy Council
Anyone who has ROWAN can participate in SifDAO.
All you need to do is head over to the #DAO-Chat channel on Discord to get involved in proposal suggestions & discussions, or head directly to https://www.mintscan.io/sifchain/proposals to see active proposals ready for voting.
The future SifDAO roadmap will focus on increasing autonomy, communications with the wider community, compensation structures for DAO members, and creating a SifDAO support & mechanism design council.
You can learn more about the future of the DAO on our DAO Notion: https://www.notion.so/sifchain/SifDAO-Retro-Q2-Q3-Roadmap-52b6e113cdd74a2a8b3d4e3f68b1ddc8
Dive deep into the DAO on the DAO Wiki: https://www.notion.so/sifchain/SifDAO-df77e2764e60473d832ce8cba246b762
Timing: Ongoing throughout 2022
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There’s More Coming…
The Sifchain Engineering team has been tweaking the design of even more new features. One removes ROWAN from the effective circulating supply and gives value back to holders, and the second one will enable Sifchain’s dex to retain external liquidity over time, even during bearish market conditions.
Our marketing team said we had to get this Roadmap out before those details were ready to share, but we had to drop this alpha on what’s coming.
You can be assured that we’ll publish news on those two updates soon.
Get Involved
This is a snipped of the next few weeks, and we’re planning on giving detailed bi-weekly updates via Medium & Discord to keep you in the know.
Plus, here are three simple things you can do to get involved in Sifchain right now:
✅ View & vote on DAO proposals at https://wallet.keplr.app/#/sifchain/governance
✅ Provide liquidity on the dex at https://sifchain.network/
✅ Tell your friends about the upcoming Beta Test for Margin Trading & join in!
Stay up to date in Discord in the #announcements channel and by following us on Medium.
Discord: https://discord.gg/sifchain
Website: http://sifchain.finance/
Medium: https://medium.com/sifchain-finance
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sifchain
