Crossing the Rubicon: Monthly Update #2
An update on our progress in December and looking forward at 2021
Happy New Year from the Rubicon team! We are very optimistic about 2021, and hold the feeling, like many others, that the 2020s could be another Roaring Twenties with massive increases in growth and prosperity around the world! Now, let’s get into our update.
Testnet Progress
Our contracts on the Kovan test network continue to serve as a great dress rehearsal for the launch of the Rubicon Protocol. Our team made great progress stress testing our exchange contract, which will continue to be optimized up until launch. If you have not yet had the chance, check out our app, as well as last month’s update which walks you through the steps to begin testing Rubicon while it is on a test network.
We also successfully implemented the two major functions we mentioned in last month’s newsletter!
Our History view gives you the ability to see your trading history without having to go back to your wallet. This is very useful to have on hand, especially if you are using a mobile wallet or hardware wallet, where you would have to view your trading history on a separate device from the one you are trading on (which would be ridiculous, right?).
History Preview:
Here you can see every transaction your wallet has made on Rubicon, with a link to Etherscan for more details on the transaction. As always, if this view is missing something you would want to see in your trading history, let us know!
Our Portfolio view shows you a chart that tracks your entire wallet portfolio performance daily, weekly, yearly, etc, just like you have in your brokerage account:
Our goal is to create elegant but simple portfolio tracking features, so right below this chart you have a nice table to show your entire portfolio:
All your holdings, all in one place. You can see the current value of each position, or you can see its relative weight in your portfolio. At Rubicon, we believe it’s not just about the trading, but also presentation and experience. In addition to core trading functionality, we want to give users simple but useful tools when checking their portfolios. And with our History and Portfolio features, we think Rubicon can be a superior trading venue in DeFi.
Year of the 0x
In the Chinese Zodiac, 2021 is the year of the Ox. Oxen have great physical strength, but they are marked by their conservatism and patience, achieving their goals through consistent effort.
Every Ethereum address starts with 0x, so the resemblance is almost too easy to point out. Whether you are experienced in the world of Ethereum or you only know about crypto because of recent price action, know that 2021 will be a very important year for the largest crypto platform. Ethereum has big plans and a high ceiling, and with the right amount of patience and effort, we think Ethereum can start to achieve some of its longer-term goals this year.
Perhaps the single biggest question from Ethereum critics lies in its scalability issues. Given the recent crypto bull market and network congestion, a simple trade can cost upwards of $100 of ether in gas fees. There’s no question that this is bad and needs to be fixed, and we are lucky that some of the brightest minds in the entire crypto space are dedicating their time to solving these problems.
One solution in particular that we at Rubicon think will completely change the way Ethereum is used in 2021 is layer 2. Layer 2 is a group of scaling solutions that involve shifting transactions off of the main Ethereum chain while still allowing these transactions to settle on the main chain. These solutions promise greater throughput and cheaper transaction fees, which are both essential for building consumer-facing financial applications and bringing decentralized finance into the forefront.
We cannot make any sort of announcement or commitment yet, but Rubicon is closely monitoring the layer 2 development progress from many different teams to see what would best suit our scaling needs. We are very excited to see that some of these implementations could only be a few months away!
Between layer 2 and Ethereum 2.0, the ambition of Ethereum could not be much higher for the year 2021. Like an Ox, we hope that the network can achieve its goals so the decentralized financial revolution can blossom further.
Rubicon Launch
We are excited to announce that Rubicon is very close to a launch-ready product. We are now in the stage of development where we are seeking reviews of our code from third-party entities. We are continuing to run tests internally but as of now, all Solidity tests are passing!
We do not yet want to set a hard launch date but know that we have a date in mind that is only a few weeks away. We will let you know as soon as we make this decision! If you want to keep up with us as we go into launch, follow us on Twitter, check out our blog where our team members can go more in-depth on the problems Rubicon hopes to solve, join our Discord server 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 in our Github. You can also reach us at contact@rubicon.finance.
Special thanks to our friend Thomas who was an incredible host for the Rubicon team during our December hackathon! Thank you for being patient with us while we run around your house yelling about the future of finance.
Alea iacta est