Letter to PRV Holders (June 2020)

ning · 2 July 2020 18:07

To PRV holders:

In June, Incognito enabled privacy for more people than it ever has. We also laid important groundwork for continued growth. Development milestones many months in the making were materialized, and the first examples of new possibilities went live.

Incognito mode for DeFi launched with pKyber, bringing combined liquidity of more than $10M, and unlocking privacy for any DeFi app. Incognito mode for any blockchain launched with Portal v.2, with the very first trustless bridge to Bitcoin and Binance.

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Incognito is first and foremost about privacy, and we build for people who need it. So this month, let’s take a look at usage.

Monthly shield volume: $2.16M

Incognito embraces the diversity of the crypto sphere, and is built to offer privacy for a multitude of different coins. To shield a coin is to choose privacy. Shield volume remains our most important metric; independent of noise, it singularly demonstrates utility.

$2.16M of crypto in 87 different currencies entered the Incognito ecosystem in June. Our total shield volume to date is $7.53M. Here’s how utility has grown since the mainnet launch in Nov 2019.

Incognito DEX volume

The singular privacy-focused alternative for users of crypto, pDEX presents a way to enter and inhabit the crypto economy while maintaining our shared right to privacy. The crypto movement is powered by people. pDEX is designed to protect them.

We set a goal to reach $500,000 monthly volume last month (+30% month-on-month growth). We ended up exceeding that considerably, clocking in at $1.2M in trading volume in May. In June, we kept up the trend, reaching $1.5M in trading volume.

This month, we also pushed live Incognito mode for DeFi. With pKyber, our combined liquidity pools now total more than $10M, and users now have broadened access to multiple ERC20 pairs. With pUniswap on the way, we remain focused on our goal of building out a robust alternative, a privacy parallel to the public crypto world.

June highlights

Incognito is designed to deliver blockchain-agnostic, product-agnostic, currency-agnostic privacy – for all users and holders of crypto. We strongly believe in diversity and freedom of choice; users should not have to abandon their preferred ecosystem in order to have privacy.

Decentralized interoperability

pEthereum
We launched the first trustless bridge to Ethereum in Nov 2019. Today, Incognito delivers privacy for not just ETH and ERC20 currencies, but also Ethereum dApps.

A strong layer-1 core

If Incognito is to be a privacy hub for the space, a strong foundation is needed. Here is the work being done on the chain level, and what we have achieved this month.

Adaptable consensus
This month, we successfully completed the necessary tests, and are on track to deploy our multi-view solution for pBFT protocol on the mainnet in July. This view change protocol aims to embed a fully-fledged consensus that offers both consistency and liveness.

Community creativity and activity

In June, we held the inaugural Builder Rewards program. While putting together the submissions, we were floored by the number of useful, rock solid products built by the community over just a few months. Thank you to both builders and users for helping to build out the Incognito ecosystem. You guys make the community-driven vision real.

@raz built a website for our current and future community, a streamlined snapshot of what Incognito is all about. He also built a very useful Node watcher, for all our validators to easily keep an eye on their Nodes.

@inccry continued to further improve on the awesome network explorer, in what is shaping up to be the coinmarketcap and etherscan of crypto’s privacy sphere. He also completed the PoC of a much needed web pDEX.

@josh_hamon built Nito, a telegram notification bot for Node statuses. Josh is steadily pushing updates, most recently push notifications. Nito is now happily serving over 100 Nodes.

@mesquka started it all. Our very first community builder, his ecosystem toolkit helped our first node operators ease into the validator experience, helped our first PRV users gain more insight into their holdings, and laid the foundation for more builders to follow.

@joe_moffett’s swag is cool, and Joe is generous and inspired. His designs bring the community together, and provide both levity and lightheartedness to a sphere that sometimes takes itself too seriously.

@altair built Incognito its first faucet. It works seamlessly and has proven very helpful especially to community builders, who rely on its services to power their development.

July development

In July, the core dev team will utilize current solutions and build new programs and products to fortify the pDEX and improve the trading experience. On Layer 1, it’s business as usual: continually improved scalability, privacy, and interoperability.

Here are some highlights.

Generate strong utility

Increase pDEX liquidity pools by 900K
Improved experience for liquidity providers

Build a strong layer-2 core

100% bugs fixed and Node device issues resolved
App continued: Pool v.2 and a better Node experience

Build a strong layer-1 core

Cross-pair trading on pDEX
Improve Node performance and sync times
Integrate Privacy v.2 with portal

R&D

2nd phase of the new smart contract interaction flow
Trustless bridge with Ethereum bond contract
Dynamic committee size and dynamic sharding