Crossing the Rubicon: April Development Update
What did the Rubicon team do this month? Pools, bug fixes, layer 2 planning, and more!
April showers bring May flowers, and we are teed up for another explosive summer in the DeFi universe. This time Rubicon will get to play a role!
Before we get into our updates make sure to get on our launch waitlist on our website. Users on the waitlist will get early access when we launch. Secure your spot today!
Rubicon Pools Development
Our main development focus in April was completing and testing the smart contracts for Rubicon Pools. We are very happy with our progress there and are excited to continue optimizing this system. We designed Pools to completely transform the order book exchange. Market-making will no longer be an opportunity that is kept from the common man, and anyone can deposit their assets into Pools to start winning spreads just like professional market makers.
With a system as complex as Pools, security will always be our number one priority. We went to great lengths to ensure that user funds will not be at risk. In fact, the majority of our time developing Pools was spent designing its security parameters. Part of this process was looking at all the possible attack vectors in our contracts, and working to find a security parameter that would mitigate that specific risk. We had to put ourselves in the shoes of bad actors to see how they would try to exploit this system. Sometimes it helps to pretend to be evil when writing smart contracts; you have to be prepared for anything in Ethereum’s dark forest.
If you want to read more about Pools, check out our newly updated Docs page for the contracts. There you will find both a high-level description of Pools as well as a breakdown of each function and what it does. We highly recommend you read through our docs to learn more about the Rubicon protocol!
Squishing Bugs
Another focus for our team during April was improving our current web app. You can use our app on layer 1 of the Kovan test network now! Before porting our app to Optimism’s Kovan deployment there were a few bugs and improvements we wanted to make. With the most critical bugs fixed, our team will now focus on getting our web app to be compatible with Kovan Optimism, which will be the dress rehearsal for Optimism mainnet.
Once we are on this layer 2 testnet, our team will hold a trading competition on our testnet app, with stablecoin prizes for the top traders. We will publish more details on this trading competition soon, so lookout for an announcement post on our Twitter.
Layer 2 Landscape
We are super excited to soon give users a taste of the layer 2 experience on Ethereum. We think it will be the greatest catalyst for innovation in the network’s short history. With high transaction costs finally removed as an obstacle, people can build anything on Ethereum without being worried about a limited computational environment. As you probably know by now, we believe that this innovation will allow order books to become the dominant method of exchange. But this is only the beginning in terms of layer 2 development.
We are very excited for Optimism to be our first home on Ethereum layer 2. We admire their team’s progress and commitment to scaling Ethereum. We are also closely monitoring other scaling solutions within the space, and will keep everyone updated on any future integrations and plans!
Rubicon Team
We are excited that soon we will finally get to show the world what we have been building. The best way to keep up with us is on social media. To stay updated before launch, follow us on Twitter, check out our blog, join our Discord server, and Telegram where you can keep up with our team day-to-day. And if you are inclined to check out the Rubicon protocol yourself, you can review all of our contracts on our Github. You can also reach us at contact@rubicon.finance. Special thanks to our new friends Peter and Otavio for helping us with the web application!
Alea iacta est.