On Febuary 15th, XIO will transition into Phase 2.0 of building a decentralized and automated staking application. On this date, Phase 1.0 portals will be closed and front-end Private Beta testing will begin. No actions are required for Citizens staked into the Uptrennd Portal as all tokens + interest will automatically be sent back to XID wallets. All development will be led by Xord, XIO’s top dev agency and partner.
If you have any amount of staked XIO in the 1UP Portal, you will be sent back your XIO tokens before February 19th (along with the 1UP interest you have earned). If you would like to participate in the Private Beta Testing, please fill out this application form. The remainder of this article will expand on:
- Phase 2.0: What is Phase 2.0 and what was our motivation for moving forward with this development?
- Uptrennd Portal: What were the results of the Uptrennd Portal and what should 1UP participants expect moving forward?
- Dapp Beta Testing: What does it mean to be a Private Beta Tester and what should you expect in terms of responsibilities/rewards?
1) Phase 2.0
Paul Graham, the Co-founder of Y Combinator has a famous article titled: Do Things that Don’t Scale.
While many people may believe Silicon Valley companies are expected to focus on exponential growth from Day 1, the premise of this article touches on the value of creating solutions and systems that take time, energy, and effort to expand. One of example he uses is from AirBnb, the now unicorn tech company:
“Marketplaces are so hard to get rolling that you should expect to take heroic measures at first. In Airbnb’s case, these consisted of going door to door in New York, recruiting new users and helping existing ones improve their listings. When I remember the Airbnbs during YC, I picture them with rolly bags, because when they showed up for tuesday dinners they’d always just flown back from somewhere.”
SCALING XIO
Similar to AirBnb, XIO is also building a marketplace. On one side you have the Users and individuals looking to stake early-stage startups. On the other side, you have startups and crypto projects looking to attain the needed community, growth, and capital to succeed.
Although the long-term vision of XIO has always been a completely decentralized, automated, and simplified DeFi application; it was extremely important to launch in a very manual and labor intensive manner. Since the launch in December, we have been able to gain valuable inisght and feedback from over 50 startups and 1000 Citizens to clarify our value proposition and build a solution people actually want to use.
A few weeks ago, we gave a sneek peek of the XIO Dapp and received overwhelming support and excitement. With something physical to show potential startups, most of the feedback we have received since then has been: “When can we expect the Dapp to be ready?“
It has become clear over the last few weeks of manual distributions and demand for the Dapp that we needed to focus our energy on development. We believe we are ready to scale.
Phase 2.0 is the transition from a centralized/manual staking system to the decentralized and automated staking platform. On February 15th we will be closing active portals and inviting Citizens to join us in the development of the Dapp.
2) UPTRENND PORTAL
First, we would like to mention that we could not be more thankful to both Uptrennd and Opacity for being the first two startups to ever pilot the XIO system. It took a leap of faith to trust in the original iteration of XIO and have learned an endless amount of insight from their participation. On February 15th, we will close the 1UP portal and begin returning all staked XIO + the interest earned to date. Here are a few of our biggest takeaways from the world’s first XIO Portal:
There is a Demand and Market for Staking
Before we began building an entire decentralized platform, we first needed to test the hypothesis: Would people actually be willing to let go and lock up their tokens for a long period of time? Is there an actually demand and desire to support early stage startups? The results were an overwhelming yes.
In just a few weeks, over 1 Million XIO tokens were staked into the Uptrennd Portal.
We need a Standard for Staking Rewards
Being one of the first startups in XIO, we gave Uptrennd full control of how they structured their reward. After talking and brainstorming with Jeff (founder of Uptrennd), he and his team decided to offer a 5% monthly reward relative to the USD value of the XIO and 1UP tokens.
While this system can and did work, we have since realized we need a standard reward system that all startups use to distribute tokens. In doing so, we can automate smart contracts and remove ourselves (XIO Foundation) from the decision making process. From now on, all staking rewards will be searchable and viewed with a standardized interest rate.
Citizens Want Automation and a Visual Dashboard
The first phase of XIO has been a very manual process that required a lot of trust in the system. Citizens would not only need to follow a clear list of instructions, but the system lacked clear indicators that their participation of the staking process had been completed successfully. We heard this feedback loud and clear; and are excited to automate this into a trustless system with Phase 2.0.
In Phase 2.0, there will be a visual dashboard of where your tokens are, how much you have in the Portals, how much you can withdraw, and what other Portals can you participate in. Pretty. Cool.
3) Private Beta Testing
Although we have been trying to share the future vision with graphs, metaphors, and article; we believe the little glimpse of the Dapp finally made it feel “real” to many Citizens. We are excited to take this a step further and invite 12 selected Citizens into Private Beta Testing.
If you would like to apply to be an XIO Dapp Private Beta Tester, you can expect to:
- Participate in weekly discussions on Telegram/Slack through public and private messages
- Participate in a one time call with an XIO Foundation team member
- Provide neccessary feedback and information from Dapp experience
- Receive 2500 XIO for acceptance and successful completion of the Beta testing