CWC Newsletter #38 (August 3, 2020)
By Taylor Ryker, Analyst
Before I begin, please check out these news outlets for the past weekly updates and announcements in the EOS and EOSIO space: EOS Nation's Hot Sauce, EOSWriter's Twitter Week in Review, Crypto Peter's Moran Post, EOS Go's What Happened This Week on EOSIO, and Hodl EOS's EOSIO Update.
Secondly, Crypto Weekly Research will be on hiatus until early October 2020. The folks at CoolWave Capital are planning to regroup and refocus their energies and commitments to close out the 2020 year. But rest assured, we are still very supportive of EOS and EOSIO.
Not Relying on Block.one, Funding By Other Leaders in the EOSIO Community
This research post highlights the growing financial support for EOS and EOSIO dApps, developers, and community members that falls outside the purview of Block.one. Over the course of the past year, many critics and skeptics have charged Block.one for not doing enough financially or as leaders.
Although Block.one has been investing in dApps and other blockchain companies, developing the EOSIO software, and participating in EOS governance, many in the community expect more. However by not relying on Block.one, others have step forward to provide financial support and leadership like eosfinex and Bitfinex, Newdex, LiquidApps, WAX Labs, Telos Worker Proposal System, Everipedia, EOS Worker Proposal System, and DACs.
Several months ago, there was a community discussion on Twitter concerning Block.one's venture capital and funding arm. Community members voiced their concerns such as funding going to non-EOSIO companies, no clear roadmap on how these investments will interact with the EOSIO ecosystem, or the abandonment of the EOS token holder. Bottom line, these community members wanted to see additional funding to be allocated to community EOSIO development.
Previously, the main source of funding came from Block.one's investments in the EOSIO ecosystem or top-68 Block Producers' daily pay for securing the network.
However, there are other sources of funds in the EOSIO community. With the growing concerns of Block.one not doing enough, the circumstances have prompted others to step forward and take a more leadership role.
Community Support for EOS Mainnet and EOSIO
1) eosfinex and Bitfinex
eosfinex and Bitfinex are exchanges in the crypto industry. Bitfinex, one of the largest in the world, is re-deploying their decentralized exchange, eosfinex, in the coming weeks. They recently released their Vision Statement, which detailed how they would actively and financially support EOS and EOSIO communities:
"eosfinex and Bitfinex are committed to building on the EOS blockchain, driving developer engagement with EOSIO, and supporting the most innovative projects in the space. To that end, eosfinex will launch a collection of initiatives that aim to support developers, top EOS projects, and the wider community.
[eosfinex] will do this with a developer sponsorship program, focused on uniting the EOS community by pairing developers and projects together in order to create a path to completion for key ecosystem projects; an accelerator-like program featuring an industry-first revenue share for project owners, allowing the projects behind tokens to earn a share of trading fees that they can reinvest back into the development of their work or community; and an affiliate program that grants all EOS community members the opportunity to fund their work and grow their networks.
With the burgeoning popularity and increasing network resource costs associated with using the EOS mainnet, support for staking on behalf of users will also become an essential feature for the progress of the EOS community. As eosfinex moves to mainnet, [they] will support the community by staking on behalf of users for network resources, guaranteeing reliable access to trade even during periods of increased demand."
To see a major crypto exchange show their financial commitment to the EOS community is a positive sign. Their potential to add large amounts of liquidity into the token circulation will help bring in more financial support for dApps and developers.
2) Newdex's Newdex Seed and Newdex Lab
Newdex, a somewhat decentralized exchange on the EOS mainnet, recently announced the creation of a DeFi special development fund "Newdex Seed." The purpose of Newdex Seed is to financially support the incubation of DeFi dApps on the EOS mainnet.
According to the press release, "Newdex Seed will provide 3,000-10,000 EOS (~$8,000-$26,000 USD) as initial start-up funds for each project that has passed the application [in exchange for a] certain proportion of the project's coins (or use a certain proportion of the project's earnings to buy back and burn Newdex tokens (NDX)."
On July 16, 2020, Newdex announced their first investment in DeFis Network, which is "a decentralized financial network that integrates a series of DeFi protocols." On July 20, 2020, Newdex also announced their investment in Defibox, a "professional one-stop DeFi application platform on EOS." The project will launch on July 21, 2020 and the mining will start on July 24, 2020 with the goal of "becoming the DeFi application platform widely used by EOS users." Currently, Defibox has two services in crypto swaps and a stablecoin.
Running concurrently with Newdex Seed, Newdex will soon also launch a fundraising platform "Newdex Lab," which will provide fundraising services for EOS blockchain developers and Newdex Seed recipients. Newdex Seed and Newdex Lab are welcomed additions to supporting the further growth of the EOS DeFi space, which still trails the robust development of DeFi dApps on Ethereum.
3) LiquidApps' DAPP Network Grants Program
Earlier this past Spring 2020, LiquidApps announced the DAPP Network Grants Program. The DAPP Network is a middleware, blockchain agnostic technology that allows developers to use cost-effective resources to build out their dApps. Primarily focused on the EOSIO ecosystem, developers can use any of the EOSIO-based blockchains to create scalable dApps.
The DAPP Network Grants Program incentivizes developers to showcase the DAPP Network by using its services to build products and dApps. Their latest bounty asked for a solution to the Reddit Scaling Competition by highlighting the strengths of the DAPP Network. In addition to their bounties for vRAM System Usage, LiquidOracles Usage, LiquidAccounts Usage, and LiquidScheduler Usage, there are currently two other prominent bounties.
The DAPP Network is asking for any developer(s) to create a bridge between Chainlink and LiquidOracles. Chainlink is a popular Oracles service on Ethereum. The bounty ask "developers to create a solution that enables a subscription to Chainlink's data feeds using LiquidOracles, allowing DAPP Network users to utilize them from any DAPP Network enabled blockchain, and you could win up to 350,000 DAPP tokens."
The second most recent bounty concerns LiquidRandomness. The objective is to "create a solution that allows for a verifiable randomness functionality which can be used across the DAPP Network, by utilizing LiquidHarmony's extensive oracle logic together with multiple DAPP Service Providers, and stand to win up to 300,000 DAPP tokens."
The DAPP Network allows for a more scalable EOSIO ecosystem, and once these bounties are resolved, we can hope to see more tools deployed to spur more development in this space.
4) Everipedia's IQ Fund
Everipedia is a decentralized "Wikipedia" on the EOS mainnet. It is different from Wikipedia because it compensates writers and editors with IQ tokens, and Everipedia allows any person to have their own encyclopedia page. Everipedia's IQ token also powers PredIQT, a prediction market platform similar to Augur.
The folks at Everipedia recently announced their on-going IQ Fund that financially helps EOS developers who create DeFi products to spur DeFi adoption on EOS: "Last year, we announced that we are putting in 500 million IQ into the Everipedia Fund to create bounties, grants, and investments into Everipedia ecosystem projects that use the IQ token.
Today, we want to reiterate that we are actively looking at teams or individuals who wish to build DeFi primitives using the IQ tokens (as well as other tokens) on the EOS mainnet...We are going to use the IQ Fund as not just an investment platform, but a 'DeFi Incubator for EOS Projects.'"
DeFi is a growing space in the larger crypto ecosystem, and DeFi on EOS is still in nascent industry. Everipedia's commitment to help build out DeFi EOS, like Newdex and eosfinex, will only make this space stronger.
5) WAX and WAX Labs
A few months ago, WAX announced, according to them, the "biggest worker proposal fund in the history of Blockchain." Armed with over 75 million WAX tokens worth about $4-5 million USD, WAX's worker proposal fund called WAX Labs is designed to help grow the WAX ecosystem.
According to WAX, "WAX Labs incentivizes developers to build new projects on WAX, work on community needs, patches, and upgrades. In exchange for their time and effort contributing to the development of WAX, these developers will be eligible to receive WAX tokens from the WAX Labs fund, which will provide support for WAX development efforts for many years to come."
WAX Labs provides benefits for developers, community members, and the WAX organization. With the largest marketplaces for NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and other digital collectibles, WAX is becoming the leader in digital goods. WAX Labs will only help to promote more of the worldwide asset exchange with new dApps and products.
6) Telos Worker Proposal System
Telos, an EOSIO sisterchain of the EOS mainnet and a leader in governance in the ecosystem, has a Worker Proposal System (WPS) that supports new developers, dApps, and operators in the Telos space. With Telos 2.0 WPS, funds are distributed through a milestone payment schedule to worthy candidates who propose ideas, projects, and developments through the WPS. Community members vote in their favorite proposals and the winning ones are funded. If you are interested in submitting a WPS, check out this friendly guide.
7) EOS Worker Proposal System
Seeing the success of the Telos WPS, folks on the EOS mainnet have also explored the possibility of deploying an EOS WPS. However, there was some pushback by Brendan Blumer and others in the community of having an EOS WPS. Those who were supportive of the WPS pointed to the fact that there needs to be more financial support of EOS developers.
EOS Nation led the development and execution of the EOS WPS. There was initially a successful voting-in of the first phase of the WPS by EOS Block Producers but the subsequent deployment was delayed due to concerns and some issues. Currently, the WPS is on an indefinite hold, and hopefully there will be more action in resurrecting the WPS in the future.
8) Self-funding via DACs like Vigor
Vigor is a loan platform on the EOS mainnet. It is becoming to be one of the hot EOS DeFi dApps due to increase community support. Their story is unique because the folks behind Vigor did not issue an ICO or token sale.
Through the creation of a decentralized autonomous company (DAC), the developers at Vigor were able to create a community-led effort in financially supporting the project. Leveraging the technology from eosDAC, Vigor has been able to bootstrap the development and launch of their loan platform. With a lack of liquidity and large funders, Vigor is a testament that DAC dApps can be created through community efforts and funding.
Conclusion: Funding and Leadership
By not relying on Block.one for everything, it is a refreshing picture to see others step up. From the list above, it is becoming clearer that there are groups and companies that are beginning to take a more leadership role while supporting financially the build-out of the EOS mainnet and EOSIO ecosystem.
Disclaimer: KJ Kingsley is not a financial advisor and holds the digital tokens or cryptocurrencies represented in the content above. This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this post constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by myself to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the author’s employers.