XY/XYO/COIN 2019-Q4 Update
A single point is not a trend, but it can be the start of one. My goal is to provide an update every quarter, and make this a trend.
If you are a shareholder, token holder, developer, customer, or someone who finds what we are doing interesting, then this update is for you.
I have broken this announcement down into the subsections described in my previous announcement, specifically XY — The Persistent Company, and COIN, as well as two new developments: The XYO Foundation and COIN Boss.
XY — The Persistent Company
XY — The Persistent Company serves as the official “umbrella” company for XYO, COIN, and other XY Projects. Under XY, we continue to make changes at the company, both structurally and with personnel.
Structurally, we are in the process of forming the official XYO Foundation, which will be a non-profit that governs the XYO Protocol and manages the open source efforts around XYO (see below for details).
COIN continues to be a big focus of growth for us, and we have continued to grow the product and the user base. (see below for details)
With the completion of XYO 3.0 SDKs (now available on GitHub, Maven, NPMJS, and Cocoa Pods), XY now intends to pursue a commercial project using XYO’s established technology. We are preparing several project pages to help assess which of the projects has the best viability and most interest. These pages are available for you to comment on at https://xy.company/projects.
As far as personnel goes:
Scott Scheper has stepped down from COIN and is transitioning to being a member of the XYO Foundation where he is exploring opportunities involving XYO.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Scott for all his contributions to XY, XYO, and COIN. He has helped establish a core global XYO community, and continues to promote XYO’s technology and potential. I wish him luck in his next venture, whether it remains internal with XY, or is a new external journey.
Carter Harrison has transitioned into starting his own venture (vay.studio) that is expected to make use of the XYO Network and Protocol. He continues to work at our office every day and is a key member of the XYO Foundation. He has led the development of most of the key protocol libraries and will continue to bring insight to future XYO development projects.
Let us not forget that he is still only 18 years old! I am a very big fan and will be an ongoing advisor to Carter for his efforts and look forward to his involvement in the XYO Foundation.
Jordan Trouw, who has been a key member of the XYO effort over the last two years as well an internal and remote member with XY’s earlier projects and activities, is also pursuing her own entrepreneurial dreams (fringes.app). Similar to Carter’s venture, it is expected that she will make use of the XYO Protocol and technology.
She also will continue to work out of the XY/XYO office and contribute to the XYO effort while working on her own project. I am also an advisor for her start-up, and she will be a member of the XYO Foundation.
Everyone else: The rest of our team continues to work endless hours on all these efforts. I could not be happier with the XY team.
XYO Foundation
As mentioned above, we have officially formed the XYO Foundation.
The XYO Foundation Mission:
“Facilitate and promote the use and continued development of the XYO Protocol, brand, tools, and documentation”
Similar to the growth of a child, the community surrounding XYO has fluctuated and matured over the past two years. The technology that drives XYO has been improving, and it’s time to bring that technology to developers, companies, and consumers around the world in a continually nurtured way.
The XYO Foundation will function off donations, but we are not able to do that until the foundation is officially tax exempt. Once that is completed, we will add a donations page (Crypto and Fiat), to help fund the company. Until then, XY — The Persistent Company will continue to support the day-to-day needs of the XYO Foundation.
The XYO Foundation shepherds the XYO Brand, the XYOracleNetwork GitHub Organization, and the individuals who champion the XYO protocol and technology.
The XYO.NETWORK domain is now the official home of the XYO Foundation. You can still find the COIN app and related projects at COINAPP.CO, and XY — The Persistent Company at XY.COMPANY.
Looking back at the last quarter, we’ve had both bumpy roads, as well as fantastic XYO technology developments.
Good
The 3.0 XYO SDKs for both iOS and Android are very stable and ready for developers to begin using in their projects. Additionally, the 3.0 version of the NodeJs Archivist and Diviner are also very stable. The “Data Ocean” live net has now been running for months with nearly no downtime and with very good performance.
XYO Explore is the new implementation of a visual dashboard and representation of the current XYO Network and Data Ocean. I would like to thank Carter Harrison for all the work that he has put into that code base. Further work will be done to gather the various XYO SDKs into just 3 SDKs for each platform (CORE, BLE, and XYO).
Bad
With a greater focus on high quality apps and experiences for our customers, the XYO App 3.0 has taken longer to get where I want it to be. This is why it is still in beta.
We halted development of the app when we realized that the core functionality was shaky (it was using the various SDKs directly), and we switched our focus to building and stabilizing the XYO SDKs (sdk-xyo-android and sdk-xyo-swift). In fact, both were used at the World Crypto Con Hack-a-Thon in Las Vegas during the last week of October.
Our next step is to wrap these new, stable SDKs into a Dart Plug-in and replace the current XYO stack in the XYO Apps with the new SDK. The slipped schedule marks this update as negative, but in many ways, the new and more stable SDKs will improve customer experience, and ultimately become a positive in the upcoming quarters.
COIN
Over the last quarter, COIN has been rapidly growing both in installs and features.
The COIN Mission:
“Facilitate easy and safe onboarding to crypto currency concepts.”
You may have noticed that many of COIN’s new features mimic concepts in the blockchain and crypto worlds. This is no accident. For example, Geo-claiming feature introduces people to the concept of staking.
We are also excited to share that COIN is now sending aggregate data to the XYO Data Ocean, which will be bound to the cumulative data set via an IPFS hash-based bound witness.
This method with IPFS allows us to create a permanent ledger of the data collected with COIN, since the today’s amount of incoming data would overwhelm the current XYO infrastructure.
As with the XYO Foundation, COIN has seen some struggles and achievements.
Good
The COIN team has continually listened to community feedback and analyzed app data, resulting in numerous new features and improvements. They have also been developing something we call COIN Boss (see below) which is a huge part of the future of COIN’s growth.
Additionally, we have overcome a recent stall in user acquisition with a new marketing approach, described below.
Bad
The user acquisition for COIN had stalled in recent weeks. Since the advent of my new marketing responsibilities and role as President for COIN, my team and I have transitioned our marketing approach towards direct app installs. As a result, we have been able to improve our user acquisition rates by 10x. This approach is not only more cost effective, but also is more scalable.
COIN Boss
There has been a lot of demand for further enhancements for Geodropping and user created content in COIN. To this end, we will be introducing COIN Boss in the near future.
If you are interested in getting an early peek at what COIN Boss offers, please signup at https://coinapp.co/boss/
There are many aspects of COIN Boss that we have not made final decisions on yet and we will be launching it in stages, but I would like to share some of our current thoughts and plans with you. None of the following is set in stone, and we are looking for feedback from the community to help us form the best solution.
The main goal of COIN Boss is to allow people to partake in being curators of the COIN experience. This includes both user generated content (UGC) such as quests and in app items and sponsorship opportunities.
The simplest of these are enhanced and sponsored geodrops. People are already using geodrops for advertising and making their own experiences.
In the coming months we will experiment with a lot of these types of features to see which ones make sense to be part of COIN Boss.
Once again, thank you for your ongoing support — all of these projects are extremely dear to me. To see the community growth, evolution, and backing for what started as an early technological dream of mine is incredible. The team and I work very long hours and have risked nearly everything to make this a reality.
I know that it can sometimes feel like things at XY are taking too long. I look forward to more updates like this one in the future.
So far, it has been a long path with many ups and downs. Regardless, I will “never give up, never surrender”…
– Arie Trouw
CEO/Founder of XY/XYO, and President of COIN
P.S. Make sure you follow me
on twitter : @arietrouw
and on Medium:@arietrouw
to get the latest updates about XY/XYO/COIN
