Planning the next chapter for the Melon protocol

We are Avantgarde and we are committed to leveraging the Melon protocol to decentralise the world of asset management. Founded by key players behind the Melon protocol, Avantgarde Finance Ltd promises to facilitate on-chain asset management through better user experiences and further protocol developments.

The Melon protocol was uniquely built and designed with an intimate knowledge of the existing infrastructure underpinning today’s asset management industry. The Melon vision was to transform the asset management industry as we know it by providing the entire value chain functionality in smart-contracts and this is what the former Melonport team delivered in February 2019. Melon enables investors and fund managers to invest in or set up investment funds in a way that is inexpensive, transparent and secure. We believe the protocol will be an industry game changer!

Avantgarde has been set up to continue the Melon story. A number of companies have tried to build a decentralised on-chain asset management infrastructure since we set out in 2017. One by one, though, they have vanished. Some have blamed this on the technology’s limitations, others have pivoted business models and the remaining players have compromised the “De” in “DeFi”. Melon tackled every problem head on and found innovative solutions until it became the first and only such infrastructure on the Ethereum main-net. Furthermore, the team delivered its roadmap on time and with a relatively modest budget. For that, I’m incredibly proud of the team and even more excited for what’s to come as we set out the next chapter.

Avantgarde is the second company to make a proposal to the Melon Council. The first, Ash Finance, is now live on the Kovan test-net, with more than 950 participants signed up for beta testing. In our proposal, we suggested taking on the lead developer role of the Melon protocol, with a series of protocol improvements, exciting new features, continued DeFi integrations and a community building role, in return for MLN tokens. We’ve suggested that the majority of the funding for this 3 year development phase should come from alternative sources, while locking up the majority of MLN tokens over a period of up to five years. If successful, we’d be removing excess supply of MLN tokens (helping to align stakeholder incentives) while enabling a stable environment for the Melon ecosystem.

Our priorities

Over the next 18 months are key priorities are to:

Improve the user experience for asset managers, investors and developers using the Melon protocol

Strengthen and grow the Melon community

Prototype the first fully regulated and compliant on-chain collective investment vehicle

We’ll be using this page to share information about what we’re working on, any upcoming events, collaborations and other news.

We’d also love to hear from you! In particular,