In Q3 we continued to execute our strategy of focusing on core technology development, aiming at the completion of the exchange system and the start of testing, including payment services, in Q4. The public offering allowed us to secure funds to start our planned team expansion, with several world-class professionals joining our company, a process we aim to complete in Q1 of 2019. Fabian Wahle’s Legal and Compliance team continues to move forward with all our complex requirements, the outstanding achievement of Q3 being successfully conducting the first registered security token offering in Europe.

Overview

The third quarter saw the successful completion of our ICO. This naturally coincided with the largest expansion of our company since its inception.

Between July and September, seven new team members joined Nash, expanding four different company divisions — an increase in staff of over 40%. Nash closed Q3 with a total of 23 internal team members and approximately the same number of external consultants.

Major development goals have been met in all of our software divisions:

The fundamental exchange and accounts interface is complete.

The distributed matching engine architecture is finalized.

Our integration infrastructure for NEO, Ethereum, fiat and Nash Exchange token (NEX) staking is also finalized.

More details follow below.

Exchange Frontend

Two new engineers have joined our Exchange Frontend team. They join the existing team of three senior engineers overseen by Ethan Fast. Both have strong academic backgrounds in computer science as well as significant industry experience: one has worked for over six years building interactive web interfaces in a number of fields and the other has helped develop a variety of payment platforms, both for cryptocurrency and traditional financial services.

The Frontend team made significant progress in the quarter, meeting several development goals. The simplified exchange interface was completed. This is a special UI designed by our experts on the basis of user interviews and feedback. It should be accessible to anyone. Also completed was the funds management interface for viewing digital assets, transactions and Nash staking dividends. Finally, the key management protocol was completed, which will allow users to access wallet funds across independent devices in a simple and secure fashion.

A number of other frontend features started development in Q3. The advanced exchange interface will offer professional traders all the tools they are accustomed to. The Nash Extension cross-chain update began this quarter, which will allow key management and interaction across multiple blockchains, such as NEO, Ethereum and Bitcoin. Q3 also saw the start of work on our mobile exchange interface, which will meet the same UX/UI standards as the web-based platform.

Exchange Backend

Our Backend team has expanded with the addition of two Elixir specialists. They join an all-star team of four developers led by Luciano Engel. The off-chain matching engine is written in Elixir, a functional programming language designed to build scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant applications. Not only will this guarantee that the system can run without downtime, but it also perfectly suits the distributed (and eventually decentralized) architecture of our matching engine.

Elixir is not a language most companies call on their engineers to use — but, like other functional languages, it attracts skilled and original programmers. We’re delighted to benefit from the exceptional talents of individuals who enjoy working in functional languages. They are exactly the kind of programmers Nash is looking to hire.

Each of our new Elixir engineers has over a decade of industry experience, including three or four years programming in the Elixir language, and both have worked on an impressive variety of projects, from the safety-critical environment of car braking systems to marketing automation and blockchain, and from renewable energy to social media and software consulting.

The Backend team has now finalized the system architecture and developed the majority of its components. Our new Elixir engineers will be fine-tuning the matching engine, exchange APIs and settlement layer. They are ensuring that communication between these components delivers the performance promised in our whitepaper. At the same time, they are improving the maintainability of these features.

During Q4, the Backend team aims to finish developing all system components and to test them rigorously before mainnet deployment.

Blockchain and Fiat Integration

One senior blockchain engineer and one blockchain architect have joined Thomas Saunders’s team, which is responsible for connecting Nash to the assets we let you trade. This involves incorporating blockchain components into our system with maximum security, availability and efficiency. It also involves working with our fiat integration partners to define the processes and protocols that will allow Nash users to on - and offboard fiat currency.

Our senior blockchain engineer has over twenty years’ industry experience in a vast array of areas, from software development, system architecture, cloud infrastructure and operating systems to mobile apps, scalable and distributed applications and — of course — blockchain. As CTO of several companies, our senior engineer has many years of experience leading teams in building scalable systems with a variety of programming languages, stacks and frameworks. Our new blockchain architect has over five years’ experience in a wide range of disciplines, including frontend development and security, and has also contributed to diverse open-source projects in areas such as mobile security and music intelligence.

The Integrations team met several major development goals this quarter. Exchange contracts for NEO and Ethereum were finalized, along with the API for fiat integration and the Nash Exchange token staking contract.

During Q4, the Integrations team will be working on a number of additional goals:

Finishing integration between the matching engine and exchange contracts;

Finishing integration between the Nash Exchange staking contract and the frontend;

Implementing the payment service API;

On-boarding fiat integration partners;

Adding support for additional smart contract–capable chains.

Marketing and Communications

Our Marketing and Communications team, led by Carla Paiva, has recently welcomed a dedicated copywriter and editor. Besides collaborating with the team on marketing initiatives, our copywriter will be establishing the voice of the Nash brand and ensuring that all our communications make the right impact and meet the highest standards of clarity and expression. In addition to several years’ professional experience in translation and technical copywriting, our writer has an impressive academic background in the humanities and brings yet another diverse perspective to the Nash team.

The Marketing team has been working on a variety of initiatives both to consolidate our existing investor relationships and to access non-tech-savvy people. We have partners with expertise in different markets who are helping us develop a more global strategy. Besides engaging with traditional print and broadcast media, we are currently building a totally redesigned website that will showcase all of Nash’s features. We have also established a series of slogans and product taglines that will appear soon on our various platforms. These include the new Nash company motto:

Trust yourselves.