The Big Bang:
In late 2019, at Xord we started XLabs, our in-house R&D circle. At that time the primary focus of Xord was a service-based startup in the blockchain space. So in order to facilitate the research in an efficient manner without the complexities of organizational structure, Xord created a new brand; Novon. You can read more about the initial days of Novon and its functions in this article.
As we move on, we tried different experiments on a product as well. Read more about our journey and learnings while working on this product.
Settlement:
As the dust finally settled, rather than working on the external expectations, we worked on what we are passionate about, and that was R&D.
We as a team curated these three topics for our R&D in Novon:
- Ethereum client
- Zero-knowledge protocol
- MEV execution and strategies
The reason for choosing these 3 areas of R&D was that they involved low-level architecture of the blockchain infrastructure. And in order to build a scalable ecosystem, you need a scalable infrastructure.
Execution:
One of the major hurdles that we faced was the lack of talent in the region from which we operate as an organization. Because no one had ever thought about an R&D organization before, there were very few people who were intrinsically motivated for this kind of mission.
It took us more than 3 months to build the team and identify our values as well.
BlockUnblock:
We conducted our first local event known as BlockUnblock: R&D Meetup. The event was a success as many people got exposure to the leading problems in the industries and how they can contribute as well.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs:
Choosing ZKPs was a tough decision as it required a different kind of mindset and execution plan. So in the last quarter, we developed our understanding and built a strong knowledge base which includes the following major publications.
- Strong homomorphic encryption
- Explaining QAPs
- ZKPs a general understanding
- Low-level working of ZK-SNARKs
More publications can be read on the website.
Ethereum:
As the development of Ethereum 2.0 clients has been going on for the last couple of years, we don’t want to start all over again. Instead, we narrowed down our focus on Lodestar. We implemented a remote signer feature as specified in EIP:3030. Our PR was merged and as of now, the code is live in the client as well.
Read more about the journey of our open-source contribution.
MEV:
We haven’t talked about MEV much. The reason is we recently started its execution and as of now, our goals are yet to be achieved.
Future:
Xord experimented with an R&D circle and gave us the freedom of executing anything even when it wasn’t making any sense. And in the meantime, Xord evolved too as an organization consisting of separate companies with independent teams and visions as well.
Read more about the renewed focus of Xord.
So as a whole organization, we firmly believe to merge the brands of Novon and Xord into one, as now we have a much clearer vision and goals to achieve.
We won’t be operating under the brand of Novon, and the social accounts of Novon will be halted after this post.
To stay up-to-date with our latest work, follow Xord on Twitter and LinkedIn.
