Relayer Report #16–0x Instant, Ecosystem Acceleration Program, and MyCrypto Interview
The latest updates from the 0x ecosystem: 12/18/18
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Relayer Report will be on break for the new year. The next issue will be released mid-January.
I’d like to introduce a new relayer, Bit2Me that is based in Madrid. Bit2Me got its start in 2014 by connecting Bitcoin with thousands of ATMs in Spain, letting anyone easily convert Bitcoin into cash. They’ll be fully launching soon, but here’s a sneak peek at their sleek interface:
I also saw that Proof of Work, the inspiration for Relayer Report, started implementing brief bios for each project. I thought this was a great idea, so going to start doing that here (h/t Eric Meltzer). We also have an updated logo made by our amazing designers Ben and Chris.
This was a particularly crazy couple of weeks for 0x. We released 0x Instant: with a few lines of code, you can seamlessly add crypto purchasing to any app or website (Forbes coverage here). We unveiled our Ecosystem Acceleration Program, which will be awarding $1 million per year to high-quality teams to grow the 0x ecosystem (application here). Our Ecosystem Development Lead Clay released “22 Ideas to Explore with 0x”, which digs into the plethora of possible use cases for our protocol. And finally, former 0x relayer DDEX is moving to the Hydro protocol, with a response to this news from Will here.
Integrating Instant
So far Instant has been integrated into NFT marketplaces (Emoon), dApps (Augur), price feeds (CoinGecko), and wallets (Coinbase Wallet, Balance, MyCrypto) — for a sample walkthrough, check out our ecosystem engineer Jacob’s walkthrough. I sat down with Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto to interview her about MyCrypto’s Instant integration experience.
R: How was your integration experience with Instant? What were the pain points and tricky implementation details?
T: The experience was overall very positive. It could not have been easier to add the script and get it working. As far as pain points, the modal-only design necessitated a hacky solution to bring it inline — the 0x team was nice enough to facilitate this by adding a classname. The other tricky part was handling the content security policy ramifications, with their external fonts and analytics.
R: How does Instant fit into your long-term strategy?
T: We strive to provide our users with easy ways to interact with the blockchain and core protocols and platforms on the blockchain and we want to do so via a unified experience. Including a way to easily swap Ether for tokens has proven to be a valuable feature for our users, and adding a decentralized option alongside ShapeShift only adds value. This is only the first iteration of the integration and we hope to make the entire experience more unified and simpler over the coming months. Eventually, we plan to support many tools and ways of using the blockchain, so the variety is very helpful.
R: Where is wallet tech going? What improvements need to happen in the space to increase user adoption?
T: We need to vastly simplify just about everything in the blockchain / cryptocurrency ecosystem. Right now it’s so difficult for a new user to enter the space as it is filled with entirely new concepts and systems that they haven’t experienced before. Education is important, but creating easy-to-use products that reduce the amount of overhead for a user is equally important. 0x Instant is a perfect example of a system that takes a fairly traditional financial concept (trading), decentralizes it, and removes the complexity typically found within both centralized and decentralized financial tools.
R: How do you think the benefits of self-custody can better be communicated to the average user?
T: Unfortunately, I think one way people truly learn about the importance of self-custody is when the companies controlling their data or funds royally screw up. When we hear about another exchange hack or data breach we instantly understand the risks trusting a third-party with funds or information. We can obviously do better at communicating the value of decentralized systems proactively, but the fear or loss experienced when a company is breached is [un]fortunately highly effective.
Art on the Blockchain
One of the coolest parts for me working with the projects building on top of 0x is that there are quite a few verticals and industries being tackled since the protocol is so flexible. Blockchain-based art startups have been using 0x to facilitate the exchange of goods — this includes Pixura, the team behind SuperRare, a digital art auction, Magik Gallery, a platform for AR content creators to sell their art directly, and Maecenas, a marketplace for selling shares of real art.
Maecenas’ strategy is to tokenize real-world art and sell fractional ownership to as many people as possible. They made headlines in September when they sold a 31.5% stake of Andy Warhol’s piece “14 Electric Chairs” to 100 participants, raising $1.7 million in total. They will be selling a tokenized Picasso during the first quarter of 2019, selling ERC-20 tokens that represent a fraction of a unique ERC-721 (similar to our 0x ETHSF winner, Fungible Non-Fungible Tokens that I covered in RR #12).
Pixura, the parent company of SuperRare, lets anyone set up an NFT marketplace with ease. SuperRare, developed by the Pixura team, is a platform to sell rare digital art.
https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/982689890621108224/
SuperRare published a post recently about “Auditable Social Metrics,” with the SuperRare team looking into how to measure the value of NFTs in different ways. Engagement data on the blockchain is also much more public and transparent than the status quo of opaque models like the big tech companies today. Currently, users can like and view different art on SuperRare, with this data eventually becoming much more robust and filterable (ex. View likes and views from Ethereum accounts with >5 transactions.)
Prediction market relayer Veil and SuperRare are working on a collaboration that will track the top 100 most valuable art pieces on SuperRare. Veil markets will then be used for people to bet on the price of each asset — crossovers everywhere.
Ecosystem
LedgerDex (Matt):
LedgerDex is an open order book relayer that allows wallet-to-wallet trading of Ethereum-based token as well as next generation token management.
The LedgerDex team attended the ETHSingapore conference
We have decided to stop serving U.S. users. U.S. IP addresses are now blocked from accessing our web app. Customer from other countries can still use our platform as usual
UI improvements and better error handling for setting token allowance
Instex (Tim):
Instex is a Ukranian open order book relayer with the goal of letting anyone trade digital assets with as little hassle as possible.
Our relayer is live on Kovan and Mainnet — https://app.instex.io/ — feel free to test it
Working on integration with other open orderbook relayers
Radar Relay (Whitney):
Radar Relay is an open order book relayer made by an international team based in Colorado.
Added Kovan tokens specifically for testing integrations with 0x Instant
New variable order expiration times through the UI for limit orders from 5 minutes to 9 months
With the next update the app will be available in Spanish
Veil (Paul):
Veil is a non-custodial trading platform for blockchain-based derivatives and prediction markets.
Open sourced two libraries: Veil.js (Typescript library for interacting with Veil’s API) and Veil’s smart contracts (Veil Ether and Veil Virtual Augur Shares). Announced the libraries in this blog post
Added support for Ethereum hash rate derivatives, ETH-settled scalar markets that let users trade on Ethereum’s future hash rate. We plan to experiment with more hash rate derivatives in the future as hedging products for miners
Upgraded Veil’s frontend to version 2 of 0x.js, which allows us to use Ethereum’s new signTypedData method (on new versions of Metamask)
Lake Trade (Rishabh):
Lake Trade is a Canadian open order book relayer that will eventually support AI-driven portfolio management.
Updating our API specification
Productizing our non-custodial AI-driven portfolio manager
Continued backtesting and benchmarking crypto markets
Ambo (Jai):
Ambo is a mobile-focused wallet and relayer that will eventually allow for in-app donations and payments.
We are looking into gas abstraction and new technologies that will help ease a ‘normal person’ into cryptos
If you missed it, we published a Medium post describing Ambo
Feel free to reach out to jack@ambo.io if you are interested in chatting
Links
Enabling Universal Market Access (UMA Blog):
UMA is a new crypto derivatives platform that believes “any oracle on a public blockchain can be bribed.” As such, they want to build a provably honest oracle where the cost of corruption is greater than the amount of profit to be made, Though scant on the details, UMA plans to open source their GitHub and release a second whitepaper in the near future.
Coinbase continues to explore support for new digital assets (Coinbase Blog):
Coinbase is looking to add a host of new assets to list, including the tokens of companies like Aragon, MakerDAO, EOS, Augur, and Ripple. For the ecosystem as a whole, the fact that such a compliance and regulation first company like Coinbase is listing more assets is a positive sign.
Uniswap — A Unique Exchange (Cyrus Younessi):
Uniswap is a new decentralized exchange that received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation. It is entirely on-chain, does not have a token, and takes no fees. As opposed to a traditional limit order book like 0x, Uniswap has automated market makers that follow the “Constant Product Market Maker Model.” In this model, the AMM can always provide liquidity no matter the order size, but the competitive price of large orders suffers as a result.
Augur Drama (Nick Tomaino):
In the Augur market “Which party will control the House after the 2018 U.S. mid-term election?”, the date the poll expires is 12/10/18. While Democrats won the house, they do not officially take over officially until January 3rd. Nick Tomaino recaps the debate on Twitter.
Fun Stuff
An interesting look into how the Bernie Madoff fraud changed the finance industry. Groups like Blackstone, for example, tripled its hedge fund investments because they chose to not invest in Madoff’s fund, winning switching customers as a result.
RiotCats: CryptoKitties with an edge.
The Tetris World Championship 2018 Final Round: 16 year old underdog vs 7 time world champ.
Much love,
Rahul
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