Launch of Auctus Labs

Auctus is pushing towards platform decentralization by collaborating with other projects

After releasing the alpha version of its platform on Ethereum Rinkeby test network, Auctus is launching Auctus Labs with the aim of replacing centralized components with decentralized ones, in an attempt to fully decentralize the Auctus Platform. The main essence of this initiative is to #buidl together.

The lab will work on integrating components of other projects building on the Ethereum network, into the Auctus Platform. Initially, Aragon, Ethfinex, Ripio Credit Network, Request.Network, 0x project, Melonport, Amadeus and Bluzelle.

Our developers will be working closely with the mentioned teams, testing new releases whenever new updates become available. The prototypes will be available on public GitHub and the lab is open to other projects that want to collaborate. We’ll create one branch per development group and the discussions will be made publically on Github itself. We’ll integrate platforms at alpha or beta stage, to help each other to test and validate prototypes before going to Ethereum main network. The initial list of projects include some partners and teams we have already been in touch with and found a synergy to establish a working collaboration.

Our vision is to create a platform that is run, as much as possible, by the community, for the community. By replacing centralized components with decentralized ones, we are empowering the community. How are we going to do it? Multidisciplinary squads!

We’ll be creating Lab Squads composed of Auctus’ devs, testers, devops, UX/UI designers and, ideally, a representative of the project we are integrating with. This way, we’ll have needed knowledge in-house, thus shortening the time needed, (by our core squads,) to integrate features.

Development Groups

Melonport Integration Diagram

Asset Management & Trading

Since September 2017 we have been following the progress made by the 0x team and the adoption of the 0x Protocol for decentralized exchanges of Ethereum-based tokens. We have previously announced our intention of integrating the protocol with our platform. Since then, we have been discussing with other projects and relayers that are also building with the protocol. We will start working on integrating the Melon protocol for asset management and start to use the 0x protocol indirectly, integrating with Amadeus Relay and Ethfinex.

Ethfinex Integration Architecture

Request Integration Platform

Payments & Asset Lending

At the beginning of 2018 we have entered a partnership with Ripio Credit Network (RCN) to integrate our platforms and enable retirement savers to lend their assets via the RCN platform. We have also established synergies to integrate with Request Network for recurring and continuous payments, to facilitate Auctus’ users to make their monthly deposits. RCN and Request Network also announced their partnership at the beginning of February 2018.

Database

Bluzelle is creating a decentralized database that will allow Ethereum Dapps to interact with the database through a gateway. We both concluded that a collaboration makes sense, since we need a reliable database and are currently using a traditional/centralized solution. We believe our developers and our community would be really excited about switching to a decentralized solution.

Governance

Ultimately, we aspire to organize even our operations in a transparent and decentralized way, from decision making to accounting. Auctus intends to use Aragon’s platform to achieve this goal. We will create an Aragon instance for Auctus and we’ll keep close touch with their team, regarding feedback and bug fixing.

Source: wiki.aragon.one

Aragon’s instances have different kinds of functionalities, we will therefore determine an adoption roadmap for each functionality, in order to progress in a sustainable way. Especially in Aragon’s case we won’t have a Github branch, as it’s the only case that an integration is not involved.

Why not integrate since the beginning?

Centralized and consolidated components vs. decentralized and promising solutions

The Auctus Platform’s architecture overview, as described on our Technical Paper, is initially composed mainly by off-chain centralized components, which we will be developing using vendor-specific solutions such as SQL Server database and MongoDB, powering a microservices environment. The only on-chain modules correspond to Auctus’ specific smart contracts on the Ethereum network.

Why not start developing a fully decentralized platform right from the start?

We believe that a big part of new protocols and tools being created on blockchain technology, especially on the Ethereum Network, have huge potential of solving development problems, problems we will face along Auctus’ roadmap. These new tools will be aligned with our objective of being as decentralized and community-driven as possible. However, they are still at an early stage and need to be stabilized before being considered mature enough for a mission-critical production environment.

Thus, we believe that our modular architecture created under the premises of being easily adaptive and connectable, along with the agile development mindset, allow our core squad to build the first Auctus Platform versions powered by already stable components and go-live on main network. Meanwhile our Lab squads create alternative branches of the Auctus Platform, in order to integrate and validate new decentralized components.

That’s where the agile methodology and lean development come into play.

Development methodology

We believe that due to the aforementioned innovative (and sometimes immature) characteristics of the components and technologies being built on blockchain ecosystems, the use of a test-driven, incremental and adaptive approach is mandatory when developing the Auctus Platform.

Considering this, the SCRUM framework, the most used agile method in software development, is a key tool for our team to guarantee the delivery schedule and that we’ll be delivering the most valuable features as early as possible to our users.

Adding the use of SCRUM, which is time-boxed and value-driven, with our team being divided into multidisciplinary and self-organized squads, we leverage our capacity of delivering short-term (usually 2–4 weeks) increments that can be alpha or beta tested without creating an instability on our working product.

Next Steps

We welcome our community and other projects to take part in our development and join this lab initiative. Our platform is already designed with a marketplace that welcomes developers to create and offer apps, plugins and robos that connect to our APIs. With Auctus Labs we are going a step further, onboarding developers on an earlier stage, so we can #BUIDL together and strengthen the ecosystem, developing applicable solutions to the network.