August 2022

As the crypto markets slowly stabilizes, the Cyber Republic and Elastos ecosystem is still moving forwards and making progress galore.

The DeFi sector is a major development within Elastos, and the CR is continuing to work on bootstrapping liquidity and increasing the accessibility for the Elastos Smart Contract Chain (ESC). The CR Grant Program has granted yet another exciting proposal that involves the popular Bunny Punk NFT team creating ESC’s first NFT cross-chain bridge. Speed and streamlining is also important in Web3. To this end, the original Elastos DID sidechain is being closed down and the fast and secure EID chain now stands in its place.

Following up on Kairon Labs’ AMA last month, there are updates from our market maker. These center on their impact on promoting and marketing the ELA coin, which in turn helps bolster the overall ecosystem.

On the 31st August many Elastos contributors joined together in a Twitter Spaces discussion, celebrating Elastos’ 5th year anniversary with lots of exciting updates. Between DeFi, NFT’s and exchanges, Elastos’ vibrant environment is getting stronger and more intertwined with wider technology and our own developing innovations (Hive, Carrier, DIDs, etc.) in efforts to accommodate global Web 3 needs.

Finally, an important analysis report was delivered to the CR Council by TLGG. As a result, a task force was set up to consider how Elastos can best fulfill the recommendations found in the report.

Biweekly Council Meetings

Minutes for the Biweekly Council Meetings are available on the CR blog. In the third Biweekly Meeting of this term our Council discussed:

  • AMAs from CRC members and the
  • Business Continuity Plan

The fourth Biweekly Meeting agenda consisted of:

  • Vitrim suggestion
  • About the future plan of ELAB program
  • Silver Starter Project
  • Listing ESC on SaitaPro

Proposals in the public spotlight

Proposal #64 – CR Grant Program (E-lab)

The CR Grant Program has funded another project for the Cyber Republic community. The essence of the initial E-lab proposal was to give voice to the people for proposals that didn’t pass through CRC’s voting process. Through this program there have been a number of initiatives that have helped grow the ecosystem. For example, Elastos’ unique hardware solution for navigating Web3, Elabox, gained its funding through the CR Grant Program in April 2022.

This past month, popular community contributors, Bunny Punk, created a suggestion to build an ESC NFT cross-chain bridge. In August, the community approved funding and the bridge is under construction right now. Ultimately, the Bunny Punk team wants to attract many more users onto the ESC chain to create, trade and utilize NFTs on Elastos. The goal is to attract NFTs from all blockchains (EVM and non-EVM) and bridge them to ESC. The bridge is called Bunny Hop and the team can use the 10,000 ELA to make it happen.

Proposal #80 – Contract Kairon Labs to Perform Market Making Services

Proposal #80 was born out of necessity – to fulfill the services previously promised by GSR with regard to market making. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, CR was not able to continue the relationship with GSR. The Elation Studios team put their ears back to the ground and continued to look for ELA market making options. After discussions with various suitors, Elation was convinced that Kairon Labs would be a perfect fit for CR.

In July, Kairon Labs, Elation Studios, and Zach from the Elastos Info Team, joined an AMA and discussed this productive partnership. Kairon Labs explained their intimate working relationship with CR and explicitly mentioned that their services are always accessible to projects within the ecosystem. Another selling point for Kairon Labs was the extensive network they provide to all their partners. CR and Elastos will be able to tap into these various connections in the future to create more value for the network.

Kairon Labs provided a public update on the progress made by ELA on various exchanges. In August, ELA experienced a lot of buy pressure and the price appreciated almost 100%. There was substantial liquidity provided by Kairon Labs that closed spreads and efficiently aligned prices across exchanges. Looking at the exchange Coinbase in particular, Kairon Labs reported an organic increase in volume during August. For more info about the ELA trading numbers, please read the Kairon Labs Elastos Report here.

Lots of updates have come to light since the successful listing of ELA on Coinbase. Kairon Labs and Elation Studios have approached two western exchanges about a potential ELA listing in the future to boost liquidity and accessibility for the coin.

Proposal #85 Archive and Close DID Sidechain

Elastos developer, Bocheng Zhang, created a proposal to replace the existing DID sidechain with the new “EID Sidechain”. The old DID sidechain goes offline sometime during the month of October.

There are a couple of reasons for closing the DID sidechain. First of all, the EID sidechain has shorter confirmation times and supports new features such as customized ID and credential transactions. The second reason for shutting down the DID side chain is the lack of usage. Continuing to use the DID chain would not only incur additional operational expenses, but also provide no practical benefits.

Fundamentally, EID is much faster than DID because it uses the DPoS consensus vs DID using AuxPOW. Technically speaking, the transactions for mining a new block on the DID sidechain is packeted on the Elastos Mainchain (whose blocks are merge-mined by BTC miners). However, blocks on Elastos Side Chain/EID are not packeted or recorded on the mainchain which therefore permits more speed and efficiency for EID.

Once the DID side chain officially goes offline, all the DIDs will be migrated to the EID sidechain. Most of the assets on the DID sidechain have already been transferred to the Elastos mainchain (<1000 ELA remain on the DID chain).

Elastos 5-Year Anniversary AMA

Elacity

Elacity is utilizing most of the Elastos technology in their virtual NFT marketplace. Sash from Elacity enthusiastically provided an update on his emerging project. With just Carrier 2.0 left to incorporate, Proposal 79 offers a reward for Elacity if it can successfully incorporate all of Elastos’ infrastructure into its data exchange. Elacity is a Web3 Cloud project celebrating their 1st year anniversary shortly.

Currently, Elacity has a product that’s the “Opensea of Elastos”. Each member of this project can use DIDs to secure and control their own individual datasets using their seed-encrypted wallets. Verifiable credentials will be coming out shortly on Elacity whereby verifying social credentials (Twitter, Telegram, Discord, etc.) can provide more trust and credibility across the platform.

Elacity is on the verge of using Hive as opposed to Pinata or IPFS in order to better protect and secure NFT files. The last piece of the Elastos tech stack for Elacity to integrate is Carrier 2.0. Implementation of Carrier 2.0 is planned by the end of the year.

Of enormous excitement for Elacity is the appointment of a new advisor, Dr. Zeng Wang, a Digital Rights Management (DRM) expert. Dr Wang will be helping the introduction of Web3 approaches to renting data, subscription models and advertisements. These constitute just a few of the potential use-cases of DRM in Web3. Elacity aims to build a video sharing platform in the future in order to utilize DRM to the fullest. As a first-mover in this arena the team are excited for the potential synergies between Web3 + Media.

Elation Studios

Elation Studios recently held an exploratory Business Development meeting with Elastos contacts to explore connections across Kairon Labs network. Further to this are the multiple announcements made Fakhul during the Elastos 5-year AMA…

Following the delivery of the TLGG Elastos Organizational Change Analysis, and after a lot of discussions, Fakhul from Elation Studios was recommended to lead the BD, PR, Marketing and Sales operational efforts to increase visibility and trust of the Elastos network. Fakhul has promptly composed a CRC proposal to address the concerns outlined in the TLGG report and prepare Elastos for significant growth opportunities.

Additionally, Elations Studios will be submitting a proposal to CRC in order to list the ELA coin on the Gate.io exchange. Elation Studios convinced Gate.io to list all three ELA tokens on their exchange. These three coins/tokens are ELA on mainchain, ELA on ESC and the ERC-20 (Ethereum) versions of ELA. There is no need for Elastos/CR users to bridge ELA unnecessarily and new users can send the token to all chains supported from Gate. This significantly eases accessing the ELA ecosystem.

Essentials

Essentials Wallet is looking to surmount two problems they have identified as holding back the success of their product. Firstly, many people from outside Elastos believe that the wallet is just for the Elastos community. Secondly, the Essentials team doesn’t currently have an economic model in place to independently support development of the wallet.

Ben, Essentials team lead, explained the need for revenue generation for the wallet. This income is to allow continued improvements and expansion of the services provided. They want to add a convenient way to swap tokens/coins for a small commission on each trade. This is a common revenue model for wallets and gives users a simple and quick way to make trades directly from the beautiful UX that Essentials delivers.

For user growth the Essentials team would like to remove the Elastos name and change the logo. Ben wants Essentials to be the wallet for everyone. Each user would enjoy the fruits of utilizing Elastos technology i.e. Hive Vault and DID, while being able to explore the wider Web3 and crypto world. Another future feature is wallet customization. A widget empowered homepage lets you access your favorite and commonly used dApps quickly and safely.

By adding more customization to a UI and UX that is several orders more attractive and easy to use than the competition, Essentials aims to enjoy a greater market share in Web3 wallet space. Getting an Elastos DID for free is surely reason enough to try Essentials today!

Essentials 3.0 is targeted for release in the next month or two.

Developer Portal

Ryan from Glide, as an Elastos technical expert, has taken on the task of improving the developer portal. Enhancing this project-facing “Welcome to Elastos” aspect of the smart web journey is a worthwhile endeavor. Once shepherded towards Elastos’ tech stack, it is imperative to provide clear and enticing information, tutorials and guidance for prospective builders in Elastos Web3.

Conclusion

Elastos has come to an exciting point in its fledgling 5 year history. CRC has proven its consensus mechanism for accepting and executing proposals. These proposals infuse the Elastos ecosystem for the better. The Council has also done a great job, even recognizing its limitations by introducing E-lab, a referendum-style approach for community funding proposals. These mechanisms will likely continue to mature over time.

Elacity has utilized Elastos technology to make their NFT Marketplace the best in class. It’s very promising to see Hive and Carrier implemented on their Web3 dApp, allowing for more decentralization and ownership of assets for users.

Elation Studios has contributed lots to Elastos and CR since joining the Council last year. Establishing CR as a legal entity is imperative for establishing partnerships with other businesses. They’ve also successfully partnered CR with Kairon Labs, giving ELA lots of exposure and liquidity across multiple exchanges. With Fakhul from Elation Studios leading the way with a new BD, PR and Marketing Growth Team, there are many more opportunities for Elastos’ expansion in the future.

The super user-friendly and adaptable Essentials wallet is expanding its horizon with a new economic model. Web3 spans multiple blockchains and ecosystems across the cryptosphere – Essentials will serve it all. With a new business plan in place, Essentials is preparing to add new users and bring more attention to the Elastos community.

Elastos’ Founder Rong Chen’s vision for a data-ownership peer-to-peer Web3 platform is slowly but surely becoming a reality. Contributors from all over the globe are coming together and implementing Elastos’ unique technologies.

Gone are the days of centralized entities controlling the trillions of dollars worth of information on the internet. Now users can control what they read, create and own on Web3, with Elastos.