Letter to PRV Holders (August 2020)

To PRV holders:

Incognito is 10 months old today. It’s not perfect. The ride is bumpy. The sat nav is buggy. But we’re luckier than most, because we know where we want to go – privacy over price, utility over speculation.

View PRV Holder Presentation August 2020 >
Review development progress >
Get PRV >

We’re getting there faster than we hoped. August has been a good month for both growth and development, beating July’s all-time highs and setting exciting new norms. Here’s a breakdown.

Monthly shielded volume: $5.4M

10 months ago, we launched a network on the premise that privacy is bigger than singular privacy coins. Today, 88 cryptocurrencies have gone Incognito.

In August, Incognito shielded over $5.4M of crypto, an all-time high, and a new number to beat. Our total shielded volume to date is $17.9M. Here’s a snapshot of the last 10 months.

Screen Shot 2020-09-01 at 4.44.21 PM

10 months ago, we decided that people shouldn’t just be able to hold crypto privately, they should have privacy for everything they do. Incognito is now the only network to enable anonymous trading, investing, staking, and transacting.

Monthly trading volume: $3.1M

pDEX is the world’s first privacy-protecting, cross-chain, cross-platform, decentralized crypto exchange. It’s a bit of a mouthful, really. This month, we deployed cross-pair functionality and integrated Uniswap.

Trading volume clocked in at $3.1M this month, +90% from July’s volume of $1.6M. Our total trading volume to date is $9.2M.

Here’s a broader look.

Screen Shot 2020-09-01 at 4.50.01 PM

pDEX is the only crypto exchange to offer privacy by default. But there’s still a great deal to be done to make it the world’s default crypto exchange – so the world can have privacy by default. Liquidity is key, and so is accessibility.

Monthly pDEX liquidity: +$3M (+$1.6B from Uniswap)

This month, pDEX pools are $3M more liquid, for a total of $8.4M. Kyber contributes $8.3M, and the recent Uniswap integration adds $1.6B (not a typo).

With Uniswap and Kyber integrations, pDEX now has massive liquidity ($1.62B). However, both external trading and cross-chain fees have presented an issue, and being Ethereum based, these integrations provide no support for major currencies like BTC and XMR. We’ll have to step in to close that gap, and will continue to work towards more liquidity for our native pools, and a better trading experience.

Screen Shot 2020-09-01 at 4.50.37 PM

Here are some other significant developments.

August development

Development continued on layer 1 to ensure safety, adaptability and sustainability, and layer 2 to deliver more utility.

Privacy

Privacy v2 will deliver MLSAG ring signature, confidential assets, decreased transaction sizes, and increased transaction throughput. Privacy v.2 for pDEX is currently being tested, including cross-pair functionality. An internal audit is currently being performed.

Read more about Privacy v2 >

Interoperability

The trustless Incognito-Ethereum bridge is what enables us to shield Ethereum-based currencies and applications like Uniswap and Kyber. The new smart contract interaction flow will more sustainably maintain this bridge while still ensuring security. Final tests are ongoing.

Read more about the smart contract interaction flow >

We also performed an internal audit on Portal. Portal is essential in building a trustless way for networks without smart contract languages to connect with Incognito. Final tests are ongoing.

Read more about Portal testing >

Consensus

Dynamic committee size and dynamic sharding is going swimmingly. The long-awaited unstake feature and reassignment rule have been successfully implemented, unlocking two essential milestones needed to safely release the network. We will also deploy the multi-view solution for PBFT-v1 for all nodes on the network this week, which will allow all nodes to sync at least 4 times faster.

Read more about dynamic committee size and sharding >

Utility

We sped up the app, and deployed pUniswap and cross-pair trading this month. We also added the community-requested bulletin board – a feature that’s proved immeasurably useful for a rapidly developing project.

Read more about app v.3 >

Community development

The core team can’t do everything, and shouldn’t do everything. So we’re grateful to see that as Incognito’s users grow, so does its builder community. The following projects are helmed by creative community developers with active user bases.

@josh_hamon’s telegram bot Nito is all grown up. Validators now get push notifications that include not just their node statuses, but also PRV earned.

@inccry rolled out a light theme for the beautiful Network Explorer and superhumanly productive as always, is currently working on compatibility with cross-pair trading.

@raz’s Node Watcher continues to help our growing community keep an eye on important metrics: active shards, block heights, epochs, and of course, node statuses.

@isyyyy’s WIC desktop wallet is the newest addition to the builder family. This CLI tool allows you to add and import accounts, show balances and histories, and create and send privacy coins.

@bruno’s Incognito calculator is built for those of you that like to tinker. It allows validators to adjust different parameters to estimate potential earnings and network share.

@incsmile has continued work on the pApp platform, leading by example with the very first pApp - a multisig wallet, complete with its own user manual.

@taind has upgraded the UI/UX of his web wallet, with passcode functionality and key management. Users can now send and receive inside the Incognito network, with trading functionality coming next month.

September development

September is a month of important milestones especially on the chain layer, but also one of routine. Keeping at the hard stuff, iterating, improving on the basics.

Generate strong utility

Grow users and trading activity
Launch pUniswap

Build a strong layer-2 core

Expand features and improve app performance
Improve bug resolution and response time
Increase community stickiness

Build a strong layer-1 core

Introduce view key to protect transaction amounts
Implement building blocks for confidential assets
Deploy new smart contract flow on mainnet
QC for smart contract upgrade and dynamic committee size
QC for Privacy v.2 and Portal v.3

R&D

Deliver new staking flow for QC
Finalize specs for slashing feature

Prepare deployment of BFT2
Implement Portal v.3 with more options for collateralization

PRV Holders Monthly Call

This month, in addition to what’s been done, we’ll also be discussing what to do going forward.

When: Friday, 4 September 2020
Time: 3pm UTC | 10pm VN | 11am NYC | 8am LA
Where: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81819763575
Livestream: YouTube

We want to hear from you. How can we increase awareness of Incognito? How can we organize the DAO more effectively? What, in your opinion, does the network need the most? Join the discussion, and post your questions in advance here.

Speak then, and see you around at we.incognito.org.

The Incognito Core Team

19 Likes

Thanks a lot for the update. Really great to see how far we have come the last months. Like you said a bit bumpy but I do see improvement daily. Looking forward to see how far we can push the project the next month.

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