What a great 15 months we have had! We launched our private business-focused blockchain platform Jupiter, created a cross-pollination verification program for private blockchains, we’ve seen our first customers, Mercury was airdropped to thousands of early Waves and Darcrus adopters and added to Bittrex, Tidex and Upbit, we successfully ran a 50,000 MER treasure hunt, Steven has resigned from his day job and now works full-time at Sigwo Technologies, and Mercury became the most used Waves token.

Darcrus

If you have been with us since the early days, you know Darcrus had a simple ICO, which was hosted on Bittrex according to all applicable laws at that time. The Darcrus ICO’s function was to pay for software development of a layer on top of an existing blockchain. After running tests on Nxt, we became aware that this approach was economically unsustainable. We needed our own blockchain for this development. At this time, we commissioned the creators of Nxt to build our team a specific blockchain. Jupiter was born in February 2017. Using Jupiter as their software platform for blockchain applications, Sigwo Technologies would use 10% of the net profits to buy back and burn Darcrus for the eventual exhaustion of all Darcrus from the market. We had two successful burns in May and September.

In October, Darcrus was delisted from Bittrex because of our buyback and burn program. It had a severe effect on liquidity in the market, but the Darcrus team wanted to stay true to the spirit of the project’s charter.

Yet as you all know, the cryptocurrency landscape has changed, immensely, since this time. Here in the United States, the SEC is the regulatory body for securities. This federal government agency is responsible for protecting investors, maintaining fair and orderly securities markets and facilitating capital formation. In the past few months they have increasingly broadened their view of what they consider a ‘security’. The buyback and burn program has the potential to increase the value of the token with profit from the company by holding it.

Another point is that tokens are now heavily reviewed and scrutinized for their utility. With Darcrus having zero utility, this is the second issue. We have looked into options for a use case but those ideas were also not viable in today’s and the future regulatory landscape. These reasons mean Darcrus can no longer exist in its current form. Please, continue reading the entire post.

Mercury

For our cross-pollination function, we chose the Waves platform for the capability of paying for transactions with a token. This simplifies the entire ecosystem for tokens. We eventually left Nxt and did not choose Ethereum for this reason.

A few weeks ago we were approached by a large node owner on Waves. He and other node owners demanded us to raise the amount of Mercury used as a minimum fee. We raised the Mercury fee from 0.00000001 to 0.0001 MER and thought this would be sufficient. We were wrong. A few days later we were demanded to raise the minimum fee again for the cross-pollination of Jupiter block hashes to Waves. We did as we are only guaranteed to have the Mercury transactions confirmed on Waves as long as the largest nodes accept them. Now, Mercury transaction fees are 0.1 MER and we assumed this function of our project was safe. We were wrong again.

This was quite unexpected. In our opinion this is one of the most important features Waves has in favor over Ethereum. This sparked a discussion amongst our team about the viability and future of our project. Should we stay chained to a blockchain as a simple token or should we build and maintain our own blockchain?

Future

We have discussed a lot, made lists of pros and cons, discarded some options because they would simply hit Darcrus holders that have already been with us for a long time, too much and came to the following short list:

Issue a new token on Waves, swap MER and DAR 1:1 ratio. Build our own public blockchain, swap MER and DAR at 1:1 ratio.

Some thoughts, tasks and ideas for the proposals:

For proposal #1:

We would issue a brand new Waves token. Both Darcrus and Mercury token holders will swap in to the new, full utility token at a 1:1 ratio.

Bittrex and Tidex would be notified of the new token ID and given ample time to update their systems. The timeframes would be exchange-driven and our team would incur the cost of swapping and updating their systems, as they charge for any project.

The swap mechanism would be off-exchange only. This is to get holders to withdraw and swap their tokens, as there are still substantial amounts of Darcrus on Bittrex and Mercury on Cryptopia. Depositing to Bittrex and Tidex would be reopened on their schedule. We will continue pursuing other exchanges for additional listings of the new unified token.

The new token would have a completely new identity, logo and name to prevent confusion on the Waves DEX. We will move away from Darcrus and Mercury branding.

At the moment, the node owners and/or Waves development team haven’t reached a consensus yet about the asset fees. Even if they decide they will continue accepting [the new token] as fee, no one can guarantee whether this will still be the same in a few months. In this case, we would need to change the transaction fee in our scripts from [new token] to Waves, [the new token] will lose one of its use cases and usage of our future products by the public will be harder as now both [the new token] and Waves will be needed.

For proposal #2:

We would build our own public blockchain (specifics withheld at this time). This is not a trivial task and costs time. Until the launch of the new blockchain, Mercury would stay as it is (plus or minus transaction fees), but for Darcrus this would mean that it will temporally become a “dead” token. It still can be traded on Waves DEX, but we are not able to do buyback and burns. Both Darcrus and Mercury token holders will swap in to the new, full utility coin at a 1:1 ratio.

Bittrex and Tidex would need to be notified for updating to the new coin’s blockchain and our team would incur the cost of updating their systems, as they charge for any project.

The swap mechanism would be off-exchange only. This is to get holders to withdraw and swap their tokens, as there are still substantial amounts of Darcrus on Bittrex and Mercury on Cryptopia. Depositing to Bittrex and Tidex would be reopened on their schedule. We will continue pursuing other exchanges for additional listings of the new coin. Having bitcoin-compatible functions, listings may be become easier.

The new coin and blockchain would have a completely new identity, logo and name; we will move away from Darcrus and Mercury branding.

We would have the liberty of developing the blockchain to suit our needs and optimize its use and capabilities for our products; we would no longer be dependent anymore on another development team and any changes of directions they may take that are unfavorable for the token and/or our products.

We would have more toolsets to use for expanding the footprint (i.e. exchange integration, hardware wallets, payment networks, etc).

Supporting a blockchain is work and this work can be rewarded on the blockchain protocol in the way of staking and masternodes. By running full nodes for staking and masternodes, you are providing a service of security for our blockchain. Accordingly, Proof of Stake block rewards are distributed to the nodes/addresses that participate in securing the blockchain.

Masternodes provide important functions for blockchains which are not limited to anonymous transactions and instant send technology. The masternodes would complete timestamping of the block hashes of our Jupiter blockchain and decentralize this task.

We would have the ability to fund community projects and vote on protocol changes or upgrades via masternodes.

The end of swapping :). Besides all the additional work for us that’s involved with a swap, we truly understand that these swaps have an impact on the community. Having our own blockchain would mean we won’t have to go through another swap ever again.

Do not think we are trying to bash or be unappreciative to Nxt or Waves, we are not. In the end, we simply must look at what is the best for our project and the future we will build.

We have created a feedback form for you to let us know your thoughts and ideas. We value your input and want to make the best decision for the livelihood of our project and the community. We are available in Discord and Telegram for discussions, questions and ideas you are missing. Please, first take a few minutes to leave your feedback via the form so we can keep track of all the given input. The form is available here.

In the meantime, we are finishing some code housekeeping, and are preparing documentation, how-to’s and videos so we can release the long awaited beta version of the Gravity code. Expect an update in the next 30 days or so.

Find us online

If you haven’t connected with us through social media yet, be sure to like and follow so you can stay up to date with the latest Darcrus, Mercury, and Sigwo Technologies news.

Facebook www.facebook.com/darcrus

Twitter www.twitter.com/darcrus | www.twitter.com/mercurytoken

Discord https://discordapp.com/invite/K7z9DMv

Telegram https://t.me/darcrus

Github https://github.com/sigwotechnologies