One year ago today, the Stakenet (XSN) blockchain was born, opening a whole new world of possibilities in the blockchain space. This past year has seen many exciting developments for the project, and what better time to look back on these achievements than on the first birthday of Stakenet. During 2018, our developer team built a strong foundation for the project and released ground-breaking blockchain technology (TPoS, Lightning Swaps).

Q1 2018

Following a coin swap, the Stakenet blockchain was born on 5th March 2018 with a fair launch as block rewards started from block #20000. XSN Masternode implementation also occurred in March and as the project has developed, Masternodes have become a critical feature of the eco-system: adding a self-governing, service-providing layer to the network as well as supporting Stakenet’s vision and mission statement by performing network-related functions.

The innovative Trustless Proof of Stake (TPoS) technology was also released. TPoS is a Stakenet invention that allows every XSN holder to securely stake coins from cold storage without the need of a trusted or voted authority. Crypto holders currently use offline storage, such as Ledger or Xeeda, to hold their coins, however, TPoS transforms these cold storage devices into profit-generating devices (TPoS integration on Ledger is currently underway).

Q2 2018

The Stakenet team saw significant expansion in Q2 2018, including the hiring of marketing and community team members as well as specialists from various fields to work on developing our XSN Hardware division and investigating the potential of integrating biometric data on the blockchain. We also recruited Frank Amato, former JPMorgan Executive Director, to advise on the development of Stakenet dx and assist in building a pro-trader interface.

Stakenet.io was released, replacing the old project website, to provide a more professional, detailed and smarter website featuring more information regarding the Stakenet ecosystem, a dedicated XSN currency page, interactive roadmap, and home for the XSN Cloud application. Soon after the new website release, XSN Cloud was released, featuring blockchain services designed to grant a better and easier user experience for XSN users, thus helping with adoption. XSN Cloud is a centralized application featuring Staking-as-a-Service (wallets that automatically stake coins in a pool), Masternodes-as-a-Service (a trustless Masternode hosting solution), and Masternode monitoring services, among other upcoming features.

Q3 2018

Our developer team recognizes the huge potential and importance of Lightning Network and decentralization on the blockchain industry, and Q3 saw the project implement various technologies to build the foundation to develop revolutionary technology on Lightning Network.

In August 2018, Stakenet implemented a Lightning Network update to allow the project to continue Lightning developments. This was an exciting time for the project as the potential of Stakenet working on the development of Lightning Network was realized.

Following the Lightning Network update, Stakenet completed Lightning Network Cross-Chain Atomic Swaps and provided a public walkthrough guide explaining how to execute the swaps. These are the trustless swaps of cryptocurrencies between different blockchains using Lightning Network. The community was invited to participate, and we saw over 100 community members complete decentralized Mainnet Lightning Swaps from LTC to XSN. Lightning Swaps empower the Stakenet blockchain to trade XSN, BTC, LTC and all Lightning compatible coins instantly with unlimited trades per second. These swaps were the beginning of Stakenet Lightning DEX and a huge achievement for the project.

Two other important updates occurred in Q3; the successful implementation of a SegWit update and the update of XSN to BTC 0.16.1 codebase.

Q4 2018

Masternodes are a crucial element to the Stakenet ecosystem, being utilized to run services and DApps on the Stakenet blockchain, however, we recognize that Masternode set-up is currently not user-friendly to those without technical expertise. To make Masternodes accessible to all and grow the Stakenet Masternode network, we released Masternodes-as-a-Service on XSN Cloud, a service that allows users to have an XSN Masternode up and running in a few simple steps, with fees paid in XSN.

Our developer team saw a huge achievement during this quarter through a collaboration with Litecoin Foundation to assist in the maintenance, debugging, and hardening of ltcd. X9 Developers, the developer team behind Stakenet, are leading the way with Lightning Network developments as we currently prepare to showcase one-click Lightning Swaps. We look forward to exploring the potential to work with Litecoin Foundation and other projects on Lightning Network technologies in 2019.

In December, we ran a marketing campaign titled ’12 Days of XSN’ across Twitter, Facebook and Reddit to celebrate the holiday season. The campaign included the giveaway of XSN coins, a Ledger device and Xeeda device among other prizes. The campaign was a success for the project, most notably resulting in us achieving over 1M impressions on Twitter for the month and over 36K visits to our official Twitter.

Q1 2019

The first birthday of Stakenet falls in Q1 2019, however, we have already achieved various milestones in the first couple of months of 2019.

To begin the year, we released our interactive roadmap, detailing our key developments and vision for the year ahead. Our 2019 roadmap primarily focuses on two main development areas titled ‘MERLIN’ and ‘VIPER’. MERLIN covers the technology behind Stakenet DEX, cross-chain interoperability, and cross-chain staking. VIPER covers the XSN unique blockchain powered-hardware product development. Check out the roadmap here.

XSN is now supported on Ledger Nano S, Blue and Ledger Live (only 24 projects are currently supported on Ledger Live), and our developer team is currently working on integrating cold-storage staking utilizing TPoS for Ledger. TPoS will turn the cold-storage device into a profit-generating device, allowing users to stake directly from their Ledger. Trezor also merged support for XSN in their official GitHub, increasing the storage options for XSN.

The highly anticipated XSN multi-currency light wallet is set for release in 2019 and we were excited to release preview design images showcasing a first look at the wallet. These preview designs can be seen below. To learn more about the multi-currency wallet check out our dedicated article.

The team is working hard on exchange listings this year and we were pleased to announce that XSN will be listed on both ABCC Exchange and Folex in March 2019. Now that we are nearing the release of some of our core products, we are working hard to deliver new exchanges for our users and will have updates on this over the next month.

Looking back, the past year has been very exciting for the project and we have achieved many breakthroughs and developments to be proud of. 2019 will be a memorable year for the project as we focus on ground-breaking technology in the blockchain space. Join our Discord to be part of the community, and follow us on Twitter to keep up-to-date with all our latest news and updates.