Many of you have been keen for updates over the last few weeks whilst we have been beavering away at latest version of the Melon Portal…

Today, we are very excited to unveil the new v0.1.0 release on the Kovan Ethereum testnet!

It’s still a very EARLY release, so expect bugs, bugs and more bugs. We are sharing this early version with our community so we can garner your feedback and iterate upon it. Any feedback given is hugely appreciated!

This new release allows you to:

1: Create a fund (in ERC20 format) and invest upon it’s creation. For this version, you can only invest in your fund once. 2: Trade using the first Melon Universe Module which is now live with 5 ERC20 assets (ETH, BTC, MLN, EUR and REP). Trades history is visible on kovan.etherscan.io. 3: Monitor prices of these assets using the first data feed module brought to you by Cryptocompare and Oraclize using native proofs 4: Calculate fund/share prices as well as NAV in real time (assuming for this version zero management and performance fees) 5: Redeem and annihilate shares in your fund at any time (using redeem) 6: Trade on our exchange against our liquidity provider, which tracks real prices and provides continuous bids and asks (liquidity) at current market prices 7. Generate a real, stored track record on Kovan secured by the integrity of Kovan’s authorities

Implications — A Real track-record!

Since Kovan uses a proof of authority consensus algorithm, it’s security proposition is as strong as the integrity of its ten authorities. Comparing this to the 5 mining pools in bitcoin that currently control 55.1% — we can see that Kovan has in fact a very strong security proposition.

This strong security proposition of the Kovan network is combined with an oracle system using native proofs— think of it as CryptoCompare digitally approving/signing over the integrity of the data that is intended to be delivered to the blockchain, and Oraclize taking the data and verifying the signature on the blockchain! This means that manipulation of data on its journey from the data source to the blockchain becomes virtually impossible (assuming the same cryptographic properties hold that make your Ethereum private key secure).

Fund management is currently restricted to allow trading only against our liquidity provider — so assuming the liquidity provider provides bids and asks according to current market price - an assumption that can be trivially verified for past bids and asks. For this version, users can only “take” orders from the liquidity provider. We arrive at the conclusion that even though we’re using no real value yet — your track-record is already very real.

Are you tempted to try it out?

We hope so! We dearly value any feedback on this new release. so if you’d like to learn how to use it, keep reading. If you’d like to TRY IT RIGHT NOW, then head on over to the portal and give it a go! If you are in a rush — why not watch our newly released short demo video (with some audaciously funky music, courtesy of Kerala Dust)!

The Future Will Be Decentralised!

How it works:

It’s quite simple really! Once you have read and accepted the terms of use, the first thing to do is check that you are connected to the Kovan Ethereum testnet and fully synced. This could be on Parity, MetaMask, Ethereum Wallet etc. You will need some Kovan test Ether to get going — if you don’t have any, just ask on our Melon Gitter channel or the Parity Gitter channel and a member of our team or their’s will send you some ASAP. You will require a Github account to use Gitter, but if you haven’t got one already, now is as good a time as any! Also by having a Github account, it will be much easier for us to utilise your valuable feedback!

Once you’re good to go — give your fund a name and proceed to scroll down the list of modules. For the moment (in this release), there is only one of each module, so there is nothing you have to do except click “Create New Portfolio”.

Once you do this, you will have to wait a few blocks for your fund to be deployed to the blockchain. You will receive a new alert once this is done and a new tab will appear in the top right of the screen called “My Fund”.

Amazing! You just setup your own fund, how easy was that?

Before you can trade in your fund, you need to fund it with some initial capital. This is where your Kovan test Ether come in handy! Go to “My Fund” and invest in your own portfolio. Metamask will prompt you three times for your authorization to

(i) deposit the Kovan test Ether you wish to invest

(ii) approve their spending by your newly created fund and finally

(iii) create your shares.

You will receive a notification when the shares are successfully created, and a new tab “Manage” will appear.

If you scroll down on this page, you will see the testnet order book (Melon’s liquidity provider) making markets in the Melon Universe asset pairs, pretty cool eh?. Select the asset pair you would like to trade, select the order you wish to fill on the order book by clicking it and set your desired volume and execute your trade by clicking the Buy (or Sell) button. Watch out Warren Buffet! Prices are directly set by the liquidity provider, according to real market prices, in an attempt to prevent market manipulation.

You can always go back to “My Fund” and scroll down to see your fund’s AUM, share price and holdings at any time.

Also, note the “Ranking” button at the top right of the window and at any point. you can click on the ranking to see how you are faring compared to other funds out there on the testnet!

If you are accessing the portal with your mobile, or if you don’t have access to Metamask, Parity or Mist, we didn’t forget you! You can click the ‘As visitor’ button in the top right corner of the page; you will be able to see the list of ranked portfolio and explore them.

Finally, we value our users and community tremendously, and if you have feedback we would absolutely love to hear it! Please file a issue on Github and we will work our way through them as soon as possible. We’ve even placed a handy “Feedback” button at the bottom of the page to make it super easy.

Our community is our biggest asset, and we look forward to hearing from you all!