Hi everyone,
Another exciting quarter has flown by! Traditionally, this is when we take some time to review our progress and look ahead to our next sprint forward. First, here’s a recap poster which summarizes what we’ve accomplished in this short three months!
- ⛓ EOS Integration — we integrated the EOS blockchain in partnership with Obolus, becoming the first EOS DEX with fair ⚖️ ️ on-chain order-matching!
- ⚛ EOS Atomic Swaps — we performed the world’s first EOS-NEO atomic swap!
- 💵 Fiat Gateway — we now support buying ETH & NEO without leaving our exchange!
- 🌐 Internationalization & Translations — we completed an integration with CrowdIn, and are now able to source our translations through community contributors for rapid updates. 16 of our 21 supported languages are 100% up-to-date with human-translated text. We’ll be giving a small token of appreciation to those who have been contributing significantly soon!
- ⚙️ Switcheo Account Advanced Features — we pushed out security features commonly found on CEXs (such as anti-phishing codes & IP address checks) and implemented advanced account controls (such as setting “Switcheo Gas” thresholds).
- ⏩ Interface Improvement & Optimization — we completed our UI refresh to give traders a more lively interface and improved the overall performance of trading frontend significantly.
- 💰 Wallet Integration Upgrades & Additions — we are implementing the new dApp Provider Interface NEP that will be rolled out in the next few days. With this, users can expect a more secure interface on NEO as well as more wallet integrations on NEO and EOS very soon. Here’s a preview using O3’s beta wallet:
- 🔥 We have had a record breaking 4.5 million tokens burnt in Q2 2019! 🚀
Please join me in congratulating the Switcheo engineering and operations team for consistently meeting our goals since day one, outperforming the majority of our peers by wide margins. Thank you for the hard work team!
For the next quarter, we intend to set realistic yet impressive goals, and continue to achieve them. While the next quarter’s list is slightly shorter due to the focus on our first item — Switcheo Chain — it is definitely not any less meaty.
Q3 2019
Switcheo Chain Beta
Most of our engineering time is now focused on Switcheo Chain! The launch of the beta has been pushed back slightly — but we hope to be able to share it soon so that our to-be-validators can begin testing. In addition, work on our custom block explorer for viewing side-chain transactions has also begun.
Referral Program
We are launching a referral program for Switcheo Exchange. There will be two phases — and the first phase (Switcheo Account only) has a target launch date of late July / early August. Stay tuned to find out how you can earn rewards and win prizes for sharing about Switcheo!
Order History Revamp
Power users rejoice! We’re revamping our order history page to better support heavy users of the exchange.
The revamp would include:
- Indication of open orders on order book and price chart
- Sorting of order history by price
- Filtering order history by date & side (buy / sell)
- Expand & collapse feature for the order history tab
- Cancel-All feature for current orders
- Other miscellaneous improvements and visual design tweaks to provide better clarity and smoother trading experience for power users & “manual” market makers
Ethereum V2 Contract
Upgrading of smart contracts can be a hassle, and that is why we have designed our contracts to be extendable. As the ecosystem grows however, it is sometimes inevitable to want to replace a contract completely.
One of our primary goals for working on a new smart contract is to achieve cheaper network fees by optimizing gas usage. Transaction costs have been ballooning to >$1 per trade as the Ethereum network edges close to maximum capacity. This has sometimes resulted in delayed settlement when gas prices spike quickly.
As part of our side-chain research, we have been working on strategies such as transaction batching and reducing data storage through use of Merkle trees. We are also taking the opportunity to inline some new contracts we have added such as Atomic Swaps and Deflationary Token Deposits, further reducing gas costs. Together, these can reduce network costs dramatically (up to ~5x).
These same strategies have already been in the works for our side-chain architecture — however, we intend to fast-track them onto our current infrastructure first. Using these gas-saving strategies, we hope to make our transaction costs a lot more competitive in the mid-term.
On top of that, the new contract will add more scalability by allowing multiple coordinators, also acting as a proof-of-concept for our upcoming multiple validator model.
Additionally, we will support more token transfer methods specs (such as ERC-223 & ERC-777), as well as have better support for tokens with demurrage and deflationary transfer schemes (such as Algorand, Digix Gold, HalfLife), giving us a wider range of tokens that can be deposited and traded safely.
We will also take the opportunity to upgrade our transaction signing to make use of structured data signing (ERC-712) specifications which will provide a similar signing experience as to what is coming for NEO.
Finally, we have been made aware that currently Switcheo coordinators are able to take slightly more user funds per transaction than expected by order makers. While coordinators do not trade against users, and abusing this is not economically viable due to the large number of transactions (and gas cost) required, we feel it does not represent the fully non-custodian trust model we promise. Therefore a new contract is the only way to remain truly trustless. We’ll release more details regarding this once the new contract is launched. Please note that no user tokens on Switcheo are at risk of being compromised!
New User Experience
We have been iterating on our Wallet Manager, and we feel there is still room for a little more improvement — especially for first time users. We want to keep highlighting the features of Switcheo Account, but also introduce the option of using 3rd-party wallets on a more equal footing. More importantly, we want to give a better introductory experience to new users who are curious in exploring how they can use such software or hardware wallets safely. Here’s an early preview of the new initial “login” screen:
Whitepaper V2
We are working on an updated whitepaper outlining all the features Switcheo Chain will have. The motivations behind this specialised trading blockchain and a more in-depth explanation of how it works will be revealed in this upcoming piece. We cannot wait to share all the benefits and possibilities that Switcheo Chain will unlock!
Backlog Items
We’ve not forgotten about the promised open-source bots — we’ll be releasing an extremely modular bot built specifically for Switcheo Exchange soon! It can be fully customized to various custom strategies and inventory configurations. We also have the next blockchain integration and convenience features in the pipeline.
Announcement of Announcement 🎉
We have kickstarted a major marketing & awareness endeavour which will be launched this quarter. More details will be revealed at a later date. Stay tuned for some exciting news!
As we move into a bullish market, the team is working as fast as they can to prepare the platform for the new users that is sure to come. For those who have recently joined our beloved community — welcome aboard! 🌕
For more information on Switcheo:
