This month, we are going to present a few protocol improvements which makes the Purple Protocol even more decentralized than it was before. This is done by actually simplifying the protocol layer and moving some things up to the application layer.

Removing the treasury

Since the start, the idea was that Purple will have a sustainable economical model for further protocol or ecosystem development in the long-term. The plan was to tax miner fees for a certain, possibly fluctuating percentage, indefinitely.

While this does solve the long-term sustainability problem, it introduces a degree of centralization at the protocol layer, which is highly undesired. We have decided to remove this part of the protocol because of this reason and instead focus on alternative ways to sustain the project in the long-term, at the application layer.

The idea is to keep the protocol layer totally decentralized, instead of making it ambiguous for everyone involved.

Alternative Long-term Sustainability Model

The way in which the project will sustain itself in the long-run then is in mainly two ways. The first way is through donations, of course.

The second way is by providing value for the future users of the Purple Protocol by deploying a decentralized exchange dapp at the application layer which will serve as the main way to exchange different assets that are listed in Purple’s ledger. The profits of which, will be used to further sustain the development of the protocol and the ecosystem.

We shall name this project “PurpleDEX” for the time being.

Legal Structure

It is also important to present the legal structure under which all of this will be held together. Even though there is no legal structure at this point, in the future it will look something like this:

The Purple Foundation , a non-profit organization, will be responsible for the development of the core protocol.

, a non-profit organization, will be responsible for the development of the core protocol. Purple Gmbh, will be a separate, centralized entity that will be effectively separate from the foundation.

Core Protocol Development Status

For most of the time I have been writing the core protocol code mostly by myself, mostly because of my geographical situation and the experimental nature of the protocol coupled with complete lack of funds available.

With all that being said, I have to announce that since last month, I have onboarded 2 more core developers which have started helping me with the core protocol code. This might not seem like much but it allows me to focus on other things as well.

I have received comments from non-technical people saying that from outside, the project looks like it is “low-effort”. And they are right, it does look low-effort. But this is because I have been focusing 99% of my attention on the actual development and engineering process of the core protocol and doing it right.

But this seems to slowly change as the core code matures and more people begin to learn about the Purple Protocol.

Testnet status

Each month we are progressing more and more but there is still to go. There might be delays on the release of the testnet, but this is only because we want the code to be in a relatively mature state when we do so, and this requires effort and precision.

But the future looks bright, and we are persevering towards it.

Help speed up this process

Any financial help will be greatly appreciated and will help towards speeding up the development and the release of the protocol. We need funds to sustain the community infrastructure, testing infrastructure and supporting core developers.

If you wish to help us, thank you! Check out the donations page for more information on how to do this.

Summary

This month’s update has been all about the future transition of the project to its mature state, its future legal structure and how simplifying the core protocol makes it even more decentralized than it would have been previously.

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