It has been a busy month for the Opacity team. We are excited to share all we accomplished in January and where we plan to focus in the upcoming months. We have reached a point where we are able to properly compensate the team (after everyone sacrificed a majority or all of their salary in November & December) and we have even been able to make two new hires to the team (detailed below).

Development Update

January was a very eventful and productive month.

On January 4, the team was able to launch the core Opacity system which provided a 100% increase in file size upload limit to 250mb, as well as the monetization functionality that requires payment for uploads.

On January 24, we released the initial whitepaper that described the existing functionality, challenges we are facing, and future plans for important features.

On January 25, we released a minor usability update to add some helpful features and fix minor concerns.

The next priority has been researching options to overcome performance limitations in the tangle. This research has been focused on testing various technologies to determine the best option. The options have narrowed and research is still being conducted and evaluated. We have also been architecting a payment system to manage upfront payments for larger storage sizes.

Upcoming Areas of Focus

In the near term, Opacity will provide support for Metamask wallet payments. Just click the ‘Pay with Metamask’ button, open Metamask, and accept the payment. Profit.

Before the next monthly update, we should be ready to announce the outcome of our research to enable larger storage beyond single file uploads. We should also have made progress on the underlying structure to provide a subscription-like payment in which you will be able to choose a fixed amount of storage (such as 64GB), pay the OPQ price, and have full access to your files for the duration, such as 1 year. Additionally, we have already started the UI/UX layout for this capability.

Based on the outcome of the research above, a Tech AMA may be planned in February. We want this to be effective and useful, so it should coincide with information regarding any changes in technology as described above. Format TBD.

The most meaningful shift here is towards improving the user experience and providing core capabilities of the platform. We want to increase adoption by making our service easy to use and providing a larger amount of storage, as soon as possible. We won’t wait for other technology to catch up or allow it to hinder us, and we won’t spend months in a laboratory experiment. You expect more from us, and we expect it from ourselves. Stay tuned.

Personnel Update

We are excited to officially announce the full-time hiring of Jason Coppola (@funkydrummer1) and Connor H. (@ckh4_code) onto our team. Both have been very active members of the community from close to the inception of the project. We continue to believe our most passionate supporters make for excellent additions to the team, so we look forward to adding these two to our ranks. Jason will be leading much of the day-to-day operations, while Connor will continue to support our development team in a full-time capacity.

We also wanted to send along best wishes to Alex Firmani and Aaron Vasquez for all of their hard work. They have both left Opacity at this time to pursue other career endeavors.

Budget / Forecast Update

See below for a planned expense budget for the rest of 2019. This is obviously subject to change based on market conditions and our ongoing liquidity situation, but we feel comfortable with the following expense categories and amounts moving forward:

2019 Budget by Month (w/ January Actuals)

Most notably, the average monthly expense will increase in February and beyond, returning compensation to be more in-line with market rates. We also have outlined a few hires that we would like to make in the future in a more ideal market climate. These potential hires are not incorporated in the current budget, so our expense base could rise later in 2019, if market conditions and our own liquidity profile allow us to do so.

The Opacity team is still in the process of working through various plans to further monetize the business over the next few months. Towards the end of 1Q 2019, we will plan on sharing more details as we envision it having a significant impact on our ability to generate more neutral/positive cash flow (which will mitigate our relatively expense base shown above).

Token Supply Update

See below for our current funding breakdown in tokens:

Company Wallet & Supply Breakdown

SHL Update

There has been uncertainty since the Opacity fork regarding treatment of the Oyster Shell (SHL) token. While the team had every intention of working on a solution, it has become apparent that there is no way to replace this token without impact to the success of Opacity. Opacity never committed to completing a SHL fork, but made every effort to explore the option in order to help those that were harmed.

There are many reasons for this conclusion, as outlined below:

The SHL project was terminated by Bruno Block and his personal choice to exploit his Oyster PRL smart contract administrator privileges, then subsequent decisions to fire his team, not relist his tokens, and leave no roadmap for SHL holders. Oyster Protocol Inc. is ultimately the company responsible for compensation due to these decisions and Bruno Block remains the sole owner.

At exchange users request, Kucoin decided to relist SHL without coordinating completely with Opacity. At the time, the team was still exploring viable options for a replacement. Kucoin’s decision effectively ended the fork option since any buys and sells in the market at that time could not be ignored and might be used to exploit a future fork.

Without a clear use case, the team would risk increased regulatory scrutiny due to the history of Oyster/Bruno. The entire project could be halted if a fork went through without a clear use case and regulators decide that the team is selling a security without adhering to proper market regulations.

Finally, Bruno Block held millions of SHL tokens which could be used to jeopardize a new 1:1 token by selling them and manipulating the market.

Unfortunately, there is no path to a viable SHL alternative and Opacity will no longer pursue the option. Many on the team were significant holders of SHL and lost their investment, as well as time spent in developing the entire Oyster project, so the decision is mutually regrettable.

Summary

Thanks for reading through our (sizable) update this month. As always, we appreciate the support of every member of our community and look forward to accomplishing much more in February and March.