In June’s development update we shared our product roadmap for Q3/Q4 2022 which outlined our plans for a new non-custodial swap architecture and additional features to be included in the next update (v3) to NFT Protocol.

Development has progressed swiftly in the last month since that update and we are excited to share that progress with you.

NFT Protocol Development

Development of v3 of NFT Protocol was completed last week and the contract has been deployed to Ropsten testnet where it is now being tested.

The features we were able to incorporate into v3 include:

• Non-Custodial Swaps

  • These swaps do not require the assets involved to be transferred to the protocol to be held in escrow as is currently the case with v2 of NFT Protocol. Creating a non-custodial swap will require paying gas for one or more token approval transactions and for submitting a makeSwap call to the protocol (the gas fee for making this call will be notably less than would be required for transferring the assets to the protocol as in v2).

• Adjustable ETH/MATIC Price

  • Swap makers will be able to adjust the ETH/MATIC price on the TAKE side of the swap via a single transaction rather than via two transactions for cancelling and recreating the swap as in v2.

• Swap Expiration

  • Users will be able to specify a block height at which their swap will expire. This is the safest and most reliable way to implement swap expiration in a decentralized system and the applications team will implement a tool for converting a given date and time to an estimated block height.

Because our single contract is now at its size capacity, adding further features would require layering in an additional contract which is something we plan to tackle in Q4 this year. Ropsten testnet testing of the v3 contract is going well so far and we are looking to schedule an audit for the v3 contract in early August and meet our Q3 release target for v3.

NFT.org DEX Development

With v3 of NFT Protocol now live on Ropsten testnet, the applications team is beginning to focus on making the adjustments and additions to the UI/UX required to accommodate the new features in v3.

Prior to v3’s completion, however, the applications team continued its work on the following features:

• Social Media Bot

  • The bot has been live on Twitter, Telegram and Discord for almost two months now. It’s mostly been operating wonderfully, though it has had a small bit of unexpected downtime which has required some additional analysis, review and debugging.

• Push Notifications

  • We have built a system which uses browser notifications for notifying users of NFT.org events pertaining to their address(es). Users can opt-in to this system when first connecting their wallets to the DEX. Notifications for events that took place while the browser was closed are delivered next time the browser is opened. The system is working well on most devices and in most browsers, though we are still working on debugging a small number of what appear to be edge cases.

• External Data

  • An OpenSea API key has been obtained and we are using it to draw data from OpenSea to be displayed on the NFT DETAILS page and on the forthcoming COLLECTION page. The NFT DETAILS page will display a graph and list detailing the NFT’s price history on OpenSea. The COLLECTION page will display data from OpenSea such as floor price, holder count, average price, etc. As we accrue similar data on NFT.org over time, the data displayed will grow to be aggregated data. Testing shows that drawing too much of this data can slow page load times considerably, so we are going to adjust the parameters such that the page draws only the last week’s or month’s worth of data by default.

Hiring

We hired a new backend engineer who we began onboarding to the project on July 18. This engineer is tasked with working specifically on NFTnode which will allow Tilo to focus more of his time and energy on developing the protocol and its coming vertical integration with the Blockparty platform.

Marketing

We’ve been speaking with a global marketing firm with extensive experience marketing crypto and NFT projects to develop a strategy and establish a budget for their assistance in marketing NFT Protocol and the NFT.org DEX.

Although we hope to have them begin implementing the strategy we settle upon as soon as possible, the development of this relationship is also well-timed to coincide with the launch of v3 at the end of Q3.

Something this firm may be able to help us with in addition to their marketing services is with further developing our $NFT tokenomics and with showcasing some rather unique and novel swaps on the NFT.org DEX.

We are also seeking third-party consultation for a “competitive landscape” analysis. What we want is an objective analysis from a third-party on the safety, security and features of NFT Protocol relative to comparable protocols in the NFT space. This analysis will be allow us to demonstrate effectively what advantages NFT Protocol has relative to other protocols in the space and become an essential component of our marketing strategy moving forward.

Conclusion

The latter half of 2022 is looking to be quite exciting here at NFT Protocol. The v3 update to the protocol will bring a number of new features that will expand the appeal and utility of the protocol and the NFT.org DEX. We’ve expanded our team such that we’ll be able to move through our product roadmap more quickly and effectively. We are working with a global marketing firm and other third-party consultants to assemble a strategy for building a user base and value proposition as we move out of beta and towards the v3 release at the end of Q3.

Thank you for your ongoing support and we are looking forward to sharing our next development update with you in August!