Ergo community made a lot in 2019:
- Very stressful but successful mainnet launch
- A lot of updates for Ergo protocol reference client to improve its stability and enhance functionality.
- Wallets: Magnum, CoinBarn (coming to ChromeStore, binaries available), UI panel in the node
- First applications, in form of command-line scripts, so not for regular users yet: a tool for crowdfunding campaigns, Ergo Notary, Ergo Oracle.
- Few Ergo improvement proposals, already implemented!
- Few tools to build applications, such as ErgoAppKit, ErgoTool, Kiosk.
- A lot of contracts proposed on the forum, such as interest-free loan contract, zero-coupon bond scheme (the Yield protocol), auction and so on. It seems Ergo is very suitable for decentralized finance, even more, for simple and self-sovereign interacting peer-to-peer financial contracts!
- First crowdfunding campaign (https://www.ergoforum.org/t/simple-crowdfunding/70) and mixing (https://www.ergoforum.org/t/lets-play-with-ergomix/108) done!
- Few new research papers published or presented, namely "Multi-stage UTXO contracts", "On Contractual Money", "Bypassing Non-Outsourceable Proof-of-Work Schemes Using Collateralized Smart Contracts", (see documents).
, not to say about progress in social aspects of ecosystem development (establishing Dev Fund Board, Ergo Foundation, first grants given, and so on).
So we are showing possibilities of Ergo, not just talking about them. However, most of demonstrations are not for a regular user yet.
With that in mind, Ergo Foundation would like to propose the following development plan for 2020:
- UI for crowdfunding
- Implementation of ErgoMix, the first non-interactive mixing scheme utilizing Ergo's support for complex cryptographic protocols, and UI for it (for desktop and mobiles, at least Android). More mixing schemes to be developed in 2021.
- Implementation of decentralized exchange (DEX) based on atomic swaps, contracts are described in the smart contract language whitepaper.
- Ring, threshold and composite signatures support in the node. Ergo Development Fund members are already co-singing spendings using threshold signatures preserving zero-knowledge, now the time to bring such exciting possibilities to the mass adoption.
- New smart contract development stack with possibility of writing contracts in a subset of Scala language along and support for formal verification.
- Ledger or Trezor support.
Please note that this plan is minimum and very realistic. For example, the new smart contract development stack with formal verification is mostly done already.
Ergo Foundation is trying to maximize broader participation in ecosystem growth. Howeever, the ecosystem is still in the process of bootstrapping. So core developers will start or lead development where needed. Foundation is willing to provide grants to achieve the goals to increase external participation. The Foundation also accepts donations to increase its possibilities towards implementing the roadmap.
With this minimum set of tools we will be ready to have more in 2021: mutual credit systems, p2p loan contracts, bonds, algorithmic stablecoins etc. However, this things could be implemented right now, so please join the ecosystem and build for it! Also, in 2021 we can get the "Universal dApp Interface & Package Standard" (https://www.ergoforum.org/t/universal-dapp-interface-package-standard/153) implemented, which could be a real game-changer in the dApp industry!
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