Note: This article is reprinted from the official blog of Oasis. The content is a summary of the Oasis ecosystem in the first half of 2024, shared with everyone who is still paying attention to and supporting the construction of the decentralized privacy ecosystem.
Original link: https://oasisprotocol.org/blog/the-past-present-and-future
Oasis has had a great first half of 2024, but what new developments will there be in the second half?
As the first half of 2024 comes to an end, we wanted to give the community a brief update on all the great and exciting achievements that have been made in the first half of this year, as well as what new plans are in the second half of the year. We will review some of the past highlights and introduce plans for the next six months in terms of engineering, business development, community initiatives, etc. At the same time, we also value the community's valuable feedback on how to improve the Oasis user experience (UX) and developer experience (DevX), so we will introduce the steps taken to achieve these improvements.
Let’s dive into the exciting developments for Oasis and its community over the past, present, and next six months. First, here’s a quick overview of what we’ve accomplished so far this year.
Oasis 2024: First Half of the Year
Rebranding and AI Focus
In 2024, AI is rapidly evolving and has become one of the most important areas in Web3. From the outset, Oasis was built with the privacy needs of the future AI and personal data industries in mind. As the AI industry matures, we are excited to make it one of the key focuses of the network in 2024. We have already made many developments, such as the upcoming release of Runtime Offchain Logic (ROFL), a business development department specifically for AI, dedicated AI-related grants for developers, participation in prestigious AI conferences, hiring Ocean Protocol founder Trent McConaghy as a strategic advisor, launching a new AI-focused website brand, and announcing some exciting partnerships. The advancement of these initiatives will ensure that we attract a lot of attention in the Web2 and Web3 fields in the second half of 2024.
ETHDam, general marketing and events
In addition to our new AI initiatives and rebranding, our team has significantly increased conference participation and community initiatives. We are extremely excited to be a flagship sponsor of this year's ETHDam, which provides tremendous exposure to the privacy-focused and developer segments of the Web3 community, establishing our position as the leading privacy protocol in the space. Over the weekend, Oasis’ message and brand appeared on every screen in Amsterdam Central Station, with over 700,000 impressions, and the entire station was covered in Oasis blue both inside and out.
During ETHDam, we gave multiple main stage talks, a very successful hackathon, and made many important connections at our booth - many of which are still developing.
The first day of ETHDam was also the launch day of the Oasis rebrand, with a revamped website, branding, marketing plan, and more, as well as the announcement of the development of ROFL.
Conferences are an important part of building market presence, inviting developers, founders, decision makers, marketers, etc. to share the passion for Web3. We will continue to attend some exciting conferences in the second half of this year.
Additionally, our latest collaboration with Revolut and their Learn & Earn program has shown encouraging results, with nearly 1 million users having completed at least one Learn & Earn course since the program began, with the majority being new participants. Oasis is one of the most popular programs to participate in, with participants able to earn and hold large amounts of ROSE rewards.
Stay tuned for more initiatives from our events and marketing teams in the second half of 2024 and beyond.
Partnerships and Business Development
The first half of 2024 has already seen a diverse ecosystem launch. illumineX, a cross-chain privacy exchange platform, was launched in February 2024, and their highly anticipated V2 product will be released this summer, perfectly demonstrating how our privacy technology can go beyond our local ecosystem. Another launch project is Pontus-X, the first third-party custom ParaTime built on Oasis by deltaDAO. It will provide solutions for corporate customers such as Airbus and Exaion, integrating EU-regulated electronic currency EUROe tokens to meet regulatory requirements for data and AI compliance privacy.
Next up is Predictoor, developed by Ocean Protocol, an AI-based prediction dApp native to Sapphire that has been receiving a lot of attention for its smart privacy features. Predictions are one of the most important things in our daily lives, from weather forecasts, traffic forecasts to key aspects of financial markets, predicting whether a certain stock/currency will rise or fall. To monetize these values in a decentralized and trustless way, on-chain privacy is essential for private storage and private computation. This is why Sapphire is such a perfect fit for Predictoor, with monthly trading volumes approaching $1 billion. As our collaboration with Ocean deepens, expect more Ocean products to leverage Sapphire’s privacy features.
As memecoins rise in popularity, we are excited to see the community support and launch the first memecoin on Sapphire, Rosy. Rosy is a cute bulldog that currently has a deflationary staking mechanism, but will add more utility as the project progresses, such as a Tamagotchi game that utilizes AI.
We are also excited to announce that Oasis has officially joined the Decentralized Confidential Computing (DeCC) initiative, bringing us together with respected blockchain entities committed to advancing confidential and verifiable computing. DeCC’s goals are similar to the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePin), bringing together industry leaders to promote secure and private computing environments in decentralized networks. We have been committed to enhancing privacy and security in the blockchain and Web3 space beyond the Oasis ecosystem through our strengths.
Below you can see some of the incredible partnerships Oasis has worked with in 2024, some are grant recipients and some are community projects that Oasis has worked with.
In addition to the list of partners mentioned above, we have many exciting new collaborations underway in the second half of 2024, which will be announced throughout the rest of the year.
After briefly reviewing our achievements this year, let’s take a look at the initiatives and projects we will be focusing on for the remainder of 2024.
Oasis plans for the second half of 2024
User Experience
With recent partnerships and the continued growth and popularity of the network, we have also received some feedback on reducing friction between developers and dApp users in the ecosystem. This has driven significant progress in improving our developer documentation, tools and libraries, which will make it easier for the next wave of developers to build applications on our network. While reducing developer friction is critical to the future of mass adoption of the network, it’s only part of the story. Clearly, major improvements in user experience (UX) are also required.
Based on our observations and community feedback, we believe the following three initiatives are priorities for the entire organization. Our goal is to simplify wallet complexity, such as transferring from a CEX (centralized exchange) to the Oasis consensus layer (ROSE Wallet), and then users need to bridge to the Oasis Sapphire network (Metamask Wallet) again. These processes can be complex for new users, even more challenging than users encounter when interacting with other well-known blockchain networks. We plan to eliminate these major user frictions by:
Sapphire’s CEX Integration: Enabling direct deposits and withdrawals between the Oasis Sapphire network and major centralized exchanges is likely the most effective way for us to resolve user onboarding friction. By doing so, most users will no longer need to interact with the consensus layer and ROSE Wallet. These CEX integrations will also pave the way for token listings for the Oasis Sapphire dApp, further enhancing its influence and potential user base.
Oasis built dApp and/or Metamask Snap to simplify CEX to Sapphire transfers: We are currently exploring two options to provide users with alternative ways to hold ROSE on CEX to Sapphire without using the consensus layer ROSE Wallet. The first option is an easy to use dApp where users can connect their Metamask wallet and then generate an oasis1 address that users can enter into CEX for withdrawals. The dApp will automatically route ROSE from CEX directly to Sapphire without the user having to touch the ROSE Wallet.
Interactive onboarding page on our website: This is a centralized platform for users to get guidance on any aspect of handling ROSE and using the ecosystem. Users will go through a series of questions to determine the next steps they need to complete, and will then be given clear and unambiguous guidance.
Liquid pledge
By providing a high level of liquid staking, we will further enhance the abstraction of the consensus layer from users. Even those who wish to stake on the network will be able to do so directly through the Sapphire smart contracts. This way, ecosystem users will never have to leave the Oasis Sapphire Network or download an additional wallet, even if they wish to participate in staking and securing the Oasis consensus layer.
Liquid staking will also bring a ton of choice to the ecosystem, improving the user experience and expanding potential use cases. This feature is now available on testnet through our ecosystem partner Accumulated Finance and will be released on mainnet in the coming months.
Business Development
You may have noticed that we've had a flurry of announcements and partnerships on the business development side recently; May brought in six new partners. This has enabled us to not only diversify our focus, but also reach out more broadly and efficiently handle incoming inquiries as our BD team has expanded.
We also now have a division focused on AI, as AI will undoubtedly be a vital component of global technological advancement in the coming years, and we plan to be an integral part of it. We will also continue to focus on account abstraction, key management, chain abstraction, cross-chain privacy, DeFi, and everything else related. In addition, we will be looking to integrate another bridge that will expand the OPL value proposition and help us connect and empower more dApps and ecosystems in Web3.
Team expansion
To ensure we have the resources to accomplish these exciting next steps, we have already added members to our team. We have added several new BD members, a project manager, marketing manager, event manager, UX expert, and two community moderators. We have also partnered with several PR and key opinion leader (KOL) agencies to complement the excellent skills of our team.
Mobile Wallets
We will also release the long-awaited mobile ROSE Wallet. Through the mobile wallet, we will provide additional operation options for mobile users who prefer native storage, staking, and ParaTime transfers on the consensus layer.
General and quality of life improvements
We will be adding the following (and other as-yet-unannounced developments):
Visible staking rewards in the explorer and wallet
Improved documentation and guidance
V2 release of the site, including multiple upgrades and additional pages
Introducing a new batch of Sentinels to strengthen the team through our Ambassador Program
Active cooperation with T1 PR company
More open and positive conversations with senior team members through Town Hall events, blogs, and AMAs
More community and ecosystem-focused events
After making incredible progress in the first half of 2024, the work is far from over. We’ve received some great feedback from the community on areas that still need improvement, which has guided us to set some ambitious goals, including technical advancements to improve the user experience, new use cases, new business development initiatives, and an expanded team that will help us achieve our mission of bringing decentralized privacy and self-sovereignty to the Web3 and AI industries.
We sincerely thank you for taking this journey with us and supporting us every step of the way, and we look forward to further connecting with the community as we navigate this exciting journey of Web3 together.
