This weeks Medium will have a slightly different format than the previous ones as Ron has passed over the pen to Rune for this weeks update.

Dear all. I haven't been so visible on social media or in the medium updates lately, but believe me when I say that we have been working a lot behind the scenes. On top of that we have attended multiple conferences, connected with many potential partners and also active been seeking to increase our headcount here at the office.

The large group of Devs that are focusing on COSS 2.0 has started their work. There are still multiple work permits pending before more of them will be able to work from our Singapore office, but many of them will also be working remotely out of India. In addition to that we have increased our Malaysia team from 3 to 4 this week and we also have additional 2 devs starting in Singapore this week. One of them starting already tomorrow and the 2nd one starting on the 6th. The team is growing, but so are the challenges. We are not only working towards COSS 2.0 but also towards a more or less complete roadmap for the entire 2019.

The current teams are fully focused on multiple tasks these days.

API’s has shown to be a bigger challenge than expected as the current engine wont be able to coop with no limit API’s , so we need a solid monitoring and control tool in place before we can release the API’s, but rest assure it will come. We know you dont like to hear it, but timelines are hard to define especially when testing shows that more work need to be done.

Along with API’s (most likely before API release) we are looking to open for institutional/corporate accounts. The flow and procedures are at the final stage and parts of the team are working on the implementation and deployment. This will be a milestone for us as we have had many requests regarding this.

With Institutional accounts we will also introduce a new trading fee structure to cater for accounts with much higher trading volume. The highest trading fees will still be 0,2% but we will introduce different fees from Order Maker to Order Taker with the highest levels being at ZERO fee for order makers (have in mind that the limits will change from the current fee structure) To have lower fees for order makers is a known intensive to attract traders to an exchange.

When speaking of attracting more traders to the platform we are also finalizing a promotion soon to be introduced where we will reward new traders for opening account, getting KYC approved and to exercise their first trade. In total 2,5M COSS tokens has been set aside for this promotion.

Right around the corner is a vague term, but that is where we are with credit card payments. Most are done and completed and we are just awaiting the final testing and deployment also here.

Other topics that are keeping the devs working these days are the many node issues which most often is a result of coins forking or updating their system. Some of them are more complicated than others, but we have set a priority list and we are fixing them one by one. On top of node issues we also have several switches to mainnet for some known previous erc20 tokens. A switch from erc20 to a mainnet doesn't sound like a big issue, but there is a lot of work behind it as the systems are very often unknown as it is brand new tech. New nodes need to be set up in order to run the wallets etc. This is a big challenge, but we are hoping to eliminate some of these issues a bit down the road as we progress with our new wallet system.

For those of you waiting for more trading promo’s and listing of new tokens, the wait is soon over. We are currently in the process of finalizing several new listings with trading promos.

Marketing: We will add some more visibility out there and to start with we will run some banner add campaigns on coinmarketcap.

It is a tough market out there these days and I assume we are all waiting for the bear to go back to sleep and let the bull take its turn. The market has been strange so far in 2018. We all expected and knew based on previous years that January till March normally is a bear run, but normally a correction starts in April going into May-June, but this year it didn't happen. We are now in August and although we saw some correction on BTC when once again passing the 8K mark it didn't really start any avalanche and actually corrected itself downwards again to the current rate around 7,5K

ALT’s has been bleeding and the market has been blood-red, and the COSS token hasn't been spared. Although with the FSA more depending on volume than on price, we are hoping that with more visibility, more news, fixing of many pending issues that we once again can see a volume increase on our exchange. We are here to stay, we are not sprinting, but we are in the race and the race is a marathon for sure. Hang in there as the rollerCOSSter continues its ride into the future.

Do remember to check out COSS t-shirts and other products at: https://www.decentralgear.com/

Stay tuned for more updates from us here in Singapore.