We are very excited to announce that our Mainnet Beta will be the first official release of Republic Protocol, launching in the last week of September 2018. It marks a significant step towards our long term goal to bring traditional financial tools to the decentralized ecosystem.

On Mainnet, users will be able to trade ERC20s, Ether, and Bitcoin. The process outlined below details how the launch will operate.

Mainnet Beta Release Date

Mainnet Beta will launch in the last week of September, 2018.

The first few weeks will be the stabilization period. During this stabilization period, Darknodes will only be operated by the Republic Protocol team. This serves two purposes:

It provides one last opportunity for the software to be battle-tested to ensure its security and stability on Mainnet, as well as An opportunity for RenEx to approve the first KYC applications for traders.

After this initial stabilization period, public participation to run Darknodes will begin. No applications are required to run a Darknode on Mainnet Beta — the only requirement is the bonding of 100,000 REN. The Republic Protocol team will continue to run 24 Darknodes on Mainnet Beta, guaranteeing that at least one complete pod of Darknodes is always available.

During Mainnet Beta the Darknode CLI (the tool used for deploying Darknode machines), and the Darknode Operator UI (the website used for registering Darknodes and withdrawing rewards), will monitor the total volume moving through Republic Protocol and calculate the expected rewards based on the number of currently registered Darknodes. These tools will discourage deployment of Darknodes unless sufficient volume is available to ensure that Darknode rewards are reasonable compared to operating costs. This serves two purposes:

It protects the public from losing money to machine operation costs during the early life of Republic Protocol as liquidity grows, and Reduces the likelihood of a “mass-deregistration” of Darknodes (which can cause degraded performance).

For more information about the Darknodes in regard to the Mainnet Beta launch and their limitations during the Beta read here:

https://medium.com/republicprotocol/darknode-rollout-plan-d8b1829135b9

Once the Republic Protocol team is confident that Mainnet Beta is operating smoothly, and that there is sufficient liquidity growing to support a large number of profitable Darknodes, the team will remove all limitations from the tools and Mainnet will move out of Beta (no contract changes, redeployments, or Darknode updates are expected at that time). All time frames are subject to the Republic Protocol team being confident that the protocol is secure and stable. Our top priorities are:

Security of funds for both traders and Darknode operators (the team will not preemptively push forward in the name of speed if we cannot be confident about this security). Stability of the protocol, so that the trading experience is the best that it can be to encourage adoption and growth of liquidity.

The next releases planned post-Mainnet are the ‘Pequod’ and ‘Argo’ releases. Both releases will introduce new order types, network upgrades, and settlement upgrades which will increase security, privacy, and performance for everyone using the protocol. We will share more details about the releases of our protocol in later updates.

KYC Considerations and Implementation

KYC is a necessary feature of RenEx. The reasons behind this decision are:

Proactivity with regard to compliance is a mature and necessary component for success in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Our partners, and the vast majority of OTC desks, can only trade with compliant liquidity pools and traders. To not comply with industry standards would lock out a significant user base and source of liquidity. Diligent KYC procedures mitigate the chance of malicious trader activity — which translates to increased the security and rewards for Darknode Operators and traders.

Every trader on RenEx must complete KYC in order to utilize the exchange. The KYC application process will be integrated within RenEx and available at launch

Please note, KYC is necessary for trading on RenEx. Other 3rd party dark pools built on Republic Protocol are free to make their own decisions regarding KYC/AML, and are not required to implement KYC into their offerings.

Trading Pairs

While all listing decisions will remain at the team’s discretion, the main criteria for adding digital assets to RenEx are OTC demand and liquidity. Upon Mainnet Beta Launch the following pairs will be available to trade:

Governance

Initially, the Republic Protocol team will maintain governance over the protocol. This includes (a) which dark pools are admitted into the protocol, and (b) the upgrading of the protocol to improve and support new features. Darknodes are configured to automatically update themselves to the latest version of the protocol, and the Republic Protocol team will put every effort into ensuring that upgrades are transparent and backward compatible.

The justification for doing this is:

To ensure that the mechanisms for decentralized control of the protocol are safe, efficient, and accurately represent the interests of all stakeholders involved. To observe the different decentralized governance models that are currently underway in other projects so that the chosen model for Republic Protocol is not one that is completely untested. To allow the team to quickly adapt to changes during its early life and ultimately ensure the protocol becomes the best possible dark pool for zero-knowledge trading of assets.

We thank everyone for supporting the project so far and are excited for all those that join us as we mark a significant milestone for the project. There are many more exciting developments to come and much to look forward to over the coming months.

Stay tuned for the upcoming announcement for when Mainnet Beta is released at the end of September!

— Loong Wang, CTO, Republic Protocol

About Ren

Ren is an ecosystem for unstoppable privacy. Transfer tokens in zero-knowledge, trustlessly swap between blockchains and trade on a dark pool.

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