Rebranding and project updates
Dear X-CASH community,
It has now been 4 months that we launched the X-CASH project and it has been an incredible adventure from many perspectives.
A brief history
We have received an overall good feedback from the community and I wanted to recall the 3 major positive comments that have been brought to us lately:
- level of dedication of the team: we do work all day, 7 days a week on this project and I want to thank again all the team for this
- transparency & self-investment: we are a no-ICO project with a significant initial investment made from ourselves
- project potential and vision: we are addressing real-world issues with a blockchain technological answer
To be consistent and fair, we must also recall what has been the major critics and suggestions that have been brought to us:
- network technical issues in the early days: mostly due to potential threats from the Monero source code we inherited from and that we progressively solved
- wallet bugs and synchronization issues: partially solved thanks to the deployment of a worldwide network of remote nodes.
- lack of marketing and hype
On this last point, I want to highlight that this has been partly intentional (and mentioned from the start) as we needed time to structure the deep vision and roadmap we have for this project.
Through multiple iterations, discussions with the community, the writing of the whitepaper and several presentations, we have now come to the end of this process and we are both excited and thrilled to present you what will be the future of X-CASH.
X-CASH rebranding to x-network
As you have noticed, our goal has always been able to build a galaxy of products that interact and have a high level of synergies. To do this, we now need to put words on ideas and create a new line of 4 products that will fall under a global brand called x-network.
In practice, this will translate in a global rebranding of x-cash.org while adding 4 other websites along the products releases in the next month.
x-cash: a utility token to power the x-network (launched: July 30th, 2018)
In this new configuration, we are keeping the initial goal of our cryptocurrency which is to be a mean of peer-to-peer payment and a utility token to create sidechains/blockchain.
The roadmap for our cryptocurrency remains the same as we have already delivered the flexprivacy© feature that allows for transparency/privacy in the transfer at the discretion of the user’s choice.
The PoS switch, which is a similar challenge from a technical perspective as cryptonote does not initially incorporate it, is currently under development and we are targetting February for the release of the open alpha. We will be heavily counting on the community to assist us in the tests as this will be another innovation in the blockchain space. The PoS is very important for the project as this will be the ground base that will be later used for the creation of the sidechains protocol that will allow greater scalability in the x-cash network as well as the possibility for anyone to create their own blockchain according to specific features.
x-bank: crypto assets storage, transfer, and exchange (to be launched in December 2018)
The second product, x-bank, is a coherent path for us to follow from several perspectives. The first one is the need to onboard our users in a proper manner to facilitate the airdrop distribution. After many internal reflexions, we have decided to not carry extensive KYC to allow the users to receive the airdrop. Similarly to what has been done so far, we will ask for basic user information in order to allow the users to receive their shares of the 20-month airdrop program. Of course, in a global need and willingness to increase regulatory compliance, we will perform extensive KYC for the users requiring higher limits.
The second is our desire to launch a cryptocurrency exchange within x-bank in the first months of 2019. In short, we aim at offering low exchange fees while using the liquidity to perform the cryptocurrency conversion of our payment solution at no additional costs. Therefore, this will lead to a win-win situation for both our community and the other products thanks to the various synergies it will create.
We will provide additional details about the exchange in the next weeks but we can already emphasize that our goal is not to create the next Binance or HitBTC. This market is already very competitive and well addressed and we do not think creating an exchange with hundreds of assets would have any added value. Our goal is more to create an x-cash and main crypto-based exchange with a limited number of assets that respond to the highest standard of compliance and that operates in Europe.
x-payment: crypto payments made easy and affordable (to be launched in December 2018)
Our third product, x-payment, reuses the concepts we initially described in our whitepaper by tackling on the long-term two major problems that are currently not well addressed:
- easiness of use and integration: users currently have to connect (remotely or not) to the blockchain to perform payments. This is not satisfactory for 90% of the current users and 99% of the remaining users in the potential growth market. We are tackling this issue by removing the technical part and offering the possibility to make crypto transfers/payments similar to traditional bank transfers
- fees: currently a crypto to fiat (and even to crypto) conversion often involves more commission than traditional payment systems. Our goal is to create the infrastructure and network to progressively lower these fees down to the point where crypto (and eventually fiat) payments will cost a fraction of what they used to. As previously mentioned, the x-bank will play a major role in this friction reduction but the access to a wide liquidity of vanilla and derivatives products will be one of the key drivers as well
This month, this will materialize in the release of x-payment communities which some of you have already tried during the open beta. The x-bank will also incorporate x-payment and you will be able to transfer x-cash (and soon other cryptocurrencies in a very similar way as you are making bank transfers). Finally, we will offer the possibility to other Discord communities to incorporate x-payment, allowing them to also generate revenues through the (very low) fees charged. The integration of x-payment in other communities will be the first of many steps that will lead to the wide adoption of x-cash and x-network in general.
x-blockchain: plug-and-play blockchains and services (to be launched in January 2019)
Our last product is a logical conclusion to the pasts months of intense work and significant knowledge increase. We are now running 13 different blockchains on our servers with tokens deployed on most platforms. We have built a significant connection in the cryptocurrency space with dozens of exchanges, coin tracking sites, and other PR agencies. We have a real expertise in designing tokens to fit the legal requirements they are intended to meet and we can create public or private blockchain to answer the needs of corporates.
We think our first x-blockchain product will be simple but disruptive. In brief, we will be launching in January a platform to create ERC20 tokens without coding skills in a matter of minutes from conception to deployment. Our key advantage will be again on the pricing side where this will start at 99€ (VAT excl.). We have already designed the templates of the contracts and fully automated the back end generation process. We are incredibly excited to launch this service as we firmly believe this will be a key part in our short-term development.
Conclusion: 4 products, countless synergies
To conclude, this rebranding is more about adding features to our ecosystem than following a new path. Despite the negative cryptocurrency market environment, we will stick (more or less) to the initial milestones we have set while adding new components in the network. Our capacity to deliver on time the innovative flexprivacy© feature is our best proof-of-commitment and proof-of-capacity to execute this project.
Our key point is the synergies that these products will generate. The x-payment solution will have access to a wider and ‘free’ liquidity from the x-bank exchange allowing to further reduce down the costs. Our x-blockchain services are benefiting from the technical expertise and infrastructure gained from the other products and will also be a first live use case of the x-payment merchants’ gateway in January. The payments made on the back of x-payment communities will use the x-bank infrastructure allowing instant execution at no marginal costs. What is more interesting is that despite the significant reduction of margins, these businesses will still be profitable because of our low-cost structure. We have a feeling that these synergies will fulfill their full potential on the back of the x-cash development, keeping in sight the long-term goal of making the market capitalization grow to allow further investments and meet investors’ expectation.
To conclude from a more philosophical and pragmatical perspective, our project is more than ever about accomplishing the long-held promise of costs and friction reduction thanks to blockchain technology. If you have the talent, creativity, skills, and risk-tolerance that such a journey requires, you are more than welcome to join us.
Many thanks,
Guilhem
