First Published on @IOSG Medium on May 6, 2020

Welcome to our bi-weekly newsletter date from 22nd April to 6th May.

(1/4) We believe the security measures of smart contract wallets will be the cornerstone of its development. The design of UX is one of the critical factors for winning users in the early stage of the product, and the future development of a smart contract wallet depends on its interaction with Dapp and Defi. At present, Dapps are built on the web framework which passes the web defects to Dapps. In the future, we need a new blockchain developing framework to build real blockchain applications and the wallet will become a user agent in the framework. A safe and easy-to-use user agent built on the blockchain framework is the main factor for any wallets to maintain its competitive advantage.

(2/4) We observe the current STO ecosystem from the following perspectives:

From a business perspective, issuance, trading, and custody are the three main dimensions of security token life cycle. Most technology companies carry out issuance through cooperation with licensed investment banks / law firms / exchanges and other institutions. Issuance and trading are the most important parts in the STO ecosystem.

1. From a technical perspective, we can classify different projects according to whether they based on public chains or alliance-based chains (private chains); whether they adopt open source security token standards or adopt private security token standards.

2. We are witnessing the transformation of traditional licensed institutions such as Openfinance, Tzero, sharespost.

3. We are witnessing the transformation of traditional licensed institutions such as Openfinance, Tzero, sharespost.

On the one hand, in the digital securities issuance platform, the development of security tokens issuance protocol is the focus of competition among different platforms. Polymath (ST-20, recently changed to ERC1400), Harbor (R-token), Securitize (DS Protocol), Swarm (SRC20), Ethereum related standard and later Magic Circle became the main forces driving the continuous evolution of security tokens issuance standards. We think currently Ethereum related standard occupy the main position, such as: ERC1400, ERC1404, ERC1410 and other agreements.

On the other hand, a compliant secondary trading platform is the basis for increasing the liquidity of digital securities. The current leading projects include: tZERO, OpenFinance Network, Archax, AirSwap, Templum, Securrency, etc.

(3/4) As one of DeFi’s most important infrastructures, oracles provides real-world data. Decentralized digital asset mortgage loans, decentralized digital asset derivatives, stablecoins, DEX and other DeFi products and services all need real-world price or other information to complete the product’s logical loop. We sorted several oracle machines (Chainlink, Nest, Band, Tellor and MakerDAO oracle), comparing their data acquisition methods, number of data sources, platform adoption, and token economy.

(4/4) On April 29, UMA distributed 2 million UMA on Uniswap: the UMA tokens were deposited into a Uniswap pool together with 2550 Ether. Compared with the ICO and IEO, apparently this Initial Uniswap Listing methodology is way more transparent and cheap. Usually, projects will be required to set aside tokens serving the need for market-making besides expensive listing fees in IEO. Initial Uniswap Listing may become an alternative as it intends to serve similar needs e.g. price discovery, marketing, and community building with more users entering DeFi market.

Geneva-based startup Taurus Group raises over €10 million to expand blockchain infrastructure for digital assets: Swiss fintech startup Taurus Group has raised over €10 million in funding, led by a strategic investment from Arab Bank with participation from Foundation Tezos and other investors. The company’s co-founders, who have backgrounds in banking, asset management, and cybersecurity, remain majority shareholders. Read more.

Dragonfly Capital launched Oracles.club: it can provide real-time data comparison of specific trading pairs. Oracles.club listed pros and cons of the most used oracles: Maker, Compound, Coinbase, Chainlink, Uniswap and dfusion. Find out more.

Keep and tBTC Launches: more than 40 industry-leading partners are already supporting this week’s launch of both the Keep network and tBTC, the open-source project that allows people to use Bitcoin safely in Ethereum DeFi apps. As liquidity and confidence in the system build, on June 8th anyone will be able to join tBTC’s signers in the KEEP stakedrop, earning fees and powering the burgeoning Bitcoin/Ethereum bridge. Read more.

MetaClan starts to recruit members: With a focus on leveraging play-to-earn mechanics, MetaClan is a crypto-native eSports clan built to drive forwards the future of gaming. Anyone can join MetaClan with as little as 25 DAI, so long as they are passionate about (or at least interested in) gaming. Read more.

BitMex restricted to Japanese users: This will mean a user who is a Japan resident registering on the BitMEX platform for the first time will be unable to trade and any existing registered customers who are Japan residents will not be able to place orders that would open a new position or increase an existing open position. Open positions will otherwise not be affected and will continue in accordance with the terms of the relevant contract. Read more.

Lien has launched FairSwap white paper and designed for avoiding front-running problem: Lien has incorporated the idea of Frequent Batch Auction, a mechanism often proposed as a solution to the front-running problem in the stock market, into the Lien Protocol. While this implementation could lead to slightly higher gas prices compared to Uniswap, the DEX is designed to make front-running extremely difficult. Read more.

Telegram (Infrastructure)

The operating system from telegram: TON OS will be launched on Apple, according to the Russian media RBC. TON OS is an open-source infrastructure that allows developers and users to use TON blockchain. Read more.

NEAR Protocol (Public Chain)

NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0: A16z is leading a $21.6 million funding round for the NEAR Protocol project (a round which just closed in the middle of US COVID-19 lockdown) and the project has announced its mainnet launch during the ready layer one conference. Read more.

MakerDAO (Infrastructure)

Maker Foundation announced the next phase of its board of directors. The new board will provide appropriate oversight of strategic and financial direction for the Foundation. Directors will also regularly review the progress of the Foundation’s leadership in achieving strategic objectives and, when necessary, approve adjustments. Additionally, the board may seek advisors and visionaries with expertise in operating open-source projects and implementing/operating financial inclusion programs. No Foundation board member has any special or unique oversight of MakerDAO, the Maker Protocol, or the Maker Community. Read more.

Founded in 2017, IOSG Ventures is a research-driven venture capital focusing on Open Finance, Web 3.0, and cross-chain industry. We have over 50 investments and been actively involved in various developer & DAO communities. We invest in top teams with innovative ideas, operational excellence, and a robust community.

If you would like IOSG Venture to consider your project, please send a summary of your project along with a pitch deck and/or white paper to hello@iosg.vc

Follow us on Twitter.

First Published on @IOSG Medium on May 6, 2020

Welcome to our bi-weekly newsletter date from 22nd April to 6th May.

(1/4) We believe the security measures of smart contract wallets will be the cornerstone of its development. The design of UX is one of the critical factors for winning users in the early stage of the product, and the future development of a smart contract wallet depends on its interaction with Dapp and Defi. At present, Dapps are built on the web framework which passes the web defects to Dapps. In the future, we need a new blockchain developing framework to build real blockchain applications and the wallet will become a user agent in the framework. A safe and easy-to-use user agent built on the blockchain framework is the main factor for any wallets to maintain its competitive advantage.

(2/4) We observe the current STO ecosystem from the following perspectives:

From a business perspective, issuance, trading, and custody are the three main dimensions of security token life cycle. Most technology companies carry out issuance through cooperation with licensed investment banks / law firms / exchanges and other institutions. Issuance and trading are the most important parts in the STO ecosystem.

1. From a technical perspective, we can classify different projects according to whether they based on public chains or alliance-based chains (private chains); whether they adopt open source security token standards or adopt private security token standards.

2. We are witnessing the transformation of traditional licensed institutions such as Openfinance, Tzero, sharespost.

3. We are witnessing the transformation of traditional licensed institutions such as Openfinance, Tzero, sharespost.

On the one hand, in the digital securities issuance platform, the development of security tokens issuance protocol is the focus of competition among different platforms. Polymath (ST-20, recently changed to ERC1400), Harbor (R-token), Securitize (DS Protocol), Swarm (SRC20), Ethereum related standard and later Magic Circle became the main forces driving the continuous evolution of security tokens issuance standards. We think currently Ethereum related standard occupy the main position, such as: ERC1400, ERC1404, ERC1410 and other agreements.

On the other hand, a compliant secondary trading platform is the basis for increasing the liquidity of digital securities. The current leading projects include: tZERO, OpenFinance Network, Archax, AirSwap, Templum, Securrency, etc.

(3/4) As one of DeFi’s most important infrastructures, oracles provides real-world data. Decentralized digital asset mortgage loans, decentralized digital asset derivatives, stablecoins, DEX and other DeFi products and services all need real-world price or other information to complete the product’s logical loop. We sorted several oracle machines (Chainlink, Nest, Band, Tellor and MakerDAO oracle), comparing their data acquisition methods, number of data sources, platform adoption, and token economy.

(4/4) On April 29, UMA distributed 2 million UMA on Uniswap: the UMA tokens were deposited into a Uniswap pool together with 2550 Ether. Compared with the ICO and IEO, apparently this Initial Uniswap Listing methodology is way more transparent and cheap. Usually, projects will be required to set aside tokens serving the need for market-making besides expensive listing fees in IEO. Initial Uniswap Listing may become an alternative as it intends to serve similar needs e.g. price discovery, marketing, and community building with more users entering DeFi market.

Geneva-based startup Taurus Group raises over €10 million to expand blockchain infrastructure for digital assets: Swiss fintech startup Taurus Group has raised over €10 million in funding, led by a strategic investment from Arab Bank with participation from Foundation Tezos and other investors. The company’s co-founders, who have backgrounds in banking, asset management, and cybersecurity, remain majority shareholders. Read more.

Dragonfly Capital launched Oracles.club: it can provide real-time data comparison of specific trading pairs. Oracles.club listed pros and cons of the most used oracles: Maker, Compound, Coinbase, Chainlink, Uniswap and dfusion. Find out more.

Keep and tBTC Launches: more than 40 industry-leading partners are already supporting this week’s launch of both the Keep network and tBTC, the open-source project that allows people to use Bitcoin safely in Ethereum DeFi apps. As liquidity and confidence in the system build, on June 8th anyone will be able to join tBTC’s signers in the KEEP stakedrop, earning fees and powering the burgeoning Bitcoin/Ethereum bridge. Read more.

MetaClan starts to recruit members: With a focus on leveraging play-to-earn mechanics, MetaClan is a crypto-native eSports clan built to drive forwards the future of gaming. Anyone can join MetaClan with as little as 25 DAI, so long as they are passionate about (or at least interested in) gaming. Read more.

BitMex restricted to Japanese users: This will mean a user who is a Japan resident registering on the BitMEX platform for the first time will be unable to trade and any existing registered customers who are Japan residents will not be able to place orders that would open a new position or increase an existing open position. Open positions will otherwise not be affected and will continue in accordance with the terms of the relevant contract. Read more.

Lien has launched FairSwap white paper and designed for avoiding front-running problem: Lien has incorporated the idea of Frequent Batch Auction, a mechanism often proposed as a solution to the front-running problem in the stock market, into the Lien Protocol. While this implementation could lead to slightly higher gas prices compared to Uniswap, the DEX is designed to make front-running extremely difficult. Read more.

Telegram (Infrastructure)

The operating system from telegram: TON OS will be launched on Apple, according to the Russian media RBC. TON OS is an open-source infrastructure that allows developers and users to use TON blockchain. Read more.

NEAR Protocol (Public Chain)

NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0: A16z is leading a $21.6 million funding round for the NEAR Protocol project (a round which just closed in the middle of US COVID-19 lockdown) and the project has announced its mainnet launch during the ready layer one conference. Read more.

MakerDAO (Infrastructure)

Maker Foundation announced the next phase of its board of directors. The new board will provide appropriate oversight of strategic and financial direction for the Foundation. Directors will also regularly review the progress of the Foundation’s leadership in achieving strategic objectives and, when necessary, approve adjustments. Additionally, the board may seek advisors and visionaries with expertise in operating open-source projects and implementing/operating financial inclusion programs. No Foundation board member has any special or unique oversight of MakerDAO, the Maker Protocol, or the Maker Community. Read more.

Founded in 2017, IOSG Ventures is a research-driven venture capital focusing on Open Finance, Web 3.0, and cross-chain industry. We have over 50 investments and been actively involved in various developer & DAO communities. We invest in top teams with innovative ideas, operational excellence, and a robust community.

If you would like IOSG Venture to consider your project, please send a summary of your project along with a pitch deck and/or white paper to hello@iosg.vc

Follow us on Twitter.