Dear community members, here are the latest updates from COSS.IO :

KYC and FIAT progress update

FIAT 60 days trading promo

Addressing of recent outages

Allocation of DEV time on other matters is restricted

Company stance on wash trading

Hiring updates — 1 on-boarding DevOps, 3 contractors coming in

An announcement about the testing group

Community announcements

News about trading promos, ICOS, and possible new coin listings

COSS party reminder

Other news

KYC and FIAT progress update

Finally, more progress updates on KYC and FIAT that the community has been asking for!

We are ready to push KYC to test. As stated before, KYC has to be ready before FIAT, so the plan is to have KYC up and running a few days before FIAT to allow our KYC department some lead time to approve applications.

We are on track for KYC and FIAT trading to be online by the end of April.

The first currency pairs that we would start trading in are: USD/BTC, USD/ETH, USD/LTC, and USD/COSS. EUR and GBP will follow soon with deposits and withdrawals through credit cards.

There will be a specific URL that users have to use to link your COSS account with the custodian provider. This URL serves as a unique identifier code that links your COSS account with the custodian account to allow for deposits and withdrawal of FIAT currency.

KYC documents will ALSO have to be submitted separately to the custodian provider. This is because of different operating jurisdictions and procedures which cannot be avoided.

A detailed user guide on how to do USD deposits and withdrawals will be posted soon.

The fees are as follows:

Take note that these are the starting limits and will be subject to changes as we proceed.

FIAT deposit promo

To kickstart FIAT trading, we will have a 60 days deposit promo!

Everyone that makes a successful deposit (minimum 1000USD) for the first 60 days will have an additional 10 USD credited to your account.

If you refer anyone that also makes a successful deposit, then you would also get 10 USD, provided you are KYC approved.

Recent Outages on the exchange.

We are aware of the recent outages on the site. We sincerely apologize for that. Due to the architecture of the engine, we had to restart it several times, and this has resulted in the site being down. Which brings us to the next point:

Allocation of DEV time on other matters

UI, KYC, and FIAT. We hear the community loud and clear. We do not want to miss this deadline. Our developers are working hard on these features, and there are multiple tasks in the queue for each of these features.

Other tasks, like wrong deposits, implementing a maintenance page, are, to the public’s eyes, small and trivial tasks. But these tasks, no matter how trivial, do add up, and that takes away valuable DEV time, which we cannot spare.

Therefore, we have chosen to fully concentrate on UI, KYC, and FIAT until they are done. Rest assured we will turn our attention to all other tasks as soon as possible, and we seek your understanding on this.

Wash Trading

We are aware of the alleged wash trading activities going on in the COSS promo, and several members of the community have come forward with allegations that there has been consistent trading between several people in an attempt to manipulate their place in the rankings. We will be investigating further into these allegations despite our focus right now on UI, KYC, and FIAT.

Because of these investigations, we will only announce the results of the COSS promo next week.

We have, however, drawn the lucky draw numbers. To clarify: ONLY ranking numbers have been drawn; it does NOT specify any particular person.

Hiring Updates

We are onboarding 1 DevOps engineer, and Mong is in the process of signing an agreement for 3 contractors based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to get started on the backend developments.

Testing Group Announcement

We are looking to expand and improve the testing group that is currently helping us in testing the new UI, KYC, and FIAT features. If you would like to become a tester, please prepare your CVs highlighting your skillsets.

Current testers will also have to go through this process, as a formal NDA (non-disclosure agreement) form will be released soon (with the ability to upload your CVs), and all current and future testers will have to sign it or be removed from our testing group.

The reason for this NDA form is to formalize the testing group and have a means of tracking the contribution given by each tester. Mong and the dev team will be actively tracking relevant and constructive contributions per tester, and the current plan is to reward active testers on a quarterly basis.

We are looking to have approximately 20 individuals in our testing group. Non-active testers will be taken out, and new ones will be recruited.

Community Announcements

There have been calls for COSS as a company to provide more transparency. There is a difference between “nice to know” and “need to know.” We are working on projects behind the scenes that we cannot, and will not, disclose until the appropriate time draws near. We, as a business, have to remain competitive and that means knowing what news to disclose or withhold.

Murphy’s law is also something that the community needs to understand; that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. We have been accused of not being able to manage community expectations. Therefore, we, as a company, have decided to refrain from giving specific dates for any current projects we are working on, and instead settle for giving timelines.

COSS was first launched in April 2017. Ever since then, we have grown our community, to what it is today. We have always taken a more laid-back approach towards our community, and we have always stuck by our rule: Be nice or be gone.

And it has generally worked, in that regard. There have been some outstanding examples of contribution from members of our community who have come forward to volunteer as our moderators, and people have even made calculators, videos, and articles for us.

However, based on feedback and general support from staff, moderators, and some members of the community, we have decided to take a slightly different stance towards the conversation between us and the community.

We welcome constructive feedback. But we will not entertain individuals who behave in an immature manner. Our admins will actively monitor and adjust our rules in the community channels to make sure that we progressively change the level of discourse to a more mature and constructive one.

That is not to say that we are aiming to kill all the ‘fun.’ But some members of our community have consistently taken things too far, in the name of ‘fun,’ and we do not appreciate that.

We understand that COSS itself as an organization, have made mistakes. And we know that members of the community get upset at us. But there are better ways to communicate than behaving disrespectfully, and we challenge the community to rise to become a more mature community.

To highlight an example of community contribution, we would like to mention Miss Journet, aka HarleyQuouine. She has been kind enough to voluntarily translate our Medium article to French for members of our French community. Merci beaucoup Miss Journet!

On the subject of translation, we have also gotten an offer of translation in German. We sincerely appreciate these offers, and we will consider them when the time is right. As we have mentioned before, we have other more pressing priorities to settle for now.

Trading Promos, ICOs, New coin listings

We would like to remind the community of the ongoing trading promo/ICO:

Bittwatt ICO:

FidentiaX Trading Promo:

We would like to thank everyone for participating in the COSS promo. The volume went up to 10 million on COSS pairs and we couldn’t have done without all of you.

There will be more upcoming promos, so do stay tuned.

There are multiple token listings in the coming weeks; we will not reveal them for now.

We have shortlisted some popular coins with exciting use cases that we are reaching out for listing. To sweeten the deal, we are offering to waive all listing fees and ask them to provide us with a Singapore based legal opinion.

Starting early May, the first 100% exclusive ICO will be launched ONLY on COSS. The legal documents are being reviewed now, and we will reveal more when the time is right.

COSS party reminder

Do remember to RSVP for the COSS party this June. The sign-up URL is https://goo.gl/forms/3oyEwDS8OGAQvSb13

We hope to see you there!

Other News

There will be a Facebook live AMA (ask me anything) with Rune and the CEO of FDX on the 23rd of April, 7 PM, Singapore time. Do drop by and find out more about FDX.

Rune was also present at the launch of a new home for ACCESS at the Science Park, which was organized by Npower + longHash. ACCESS, of which COSS is a corporate member, promotes and fosters an open dialogue between regulators, businesses, and the larger society in Singapore.

Here are some pictures of that event:

Rune will be participating today ( 6.30 PM Singapore time ) in a panel at The Blockchain Hub’s soft opening at Suntec Tower 2. The topic of the panel will be a discussion on the current framework and regulations in Singapore.

Rune will also be speaking at a blockchain event in Taipei, Taiwan on May 21st and 22nd, and also be speaking at another event hosted by Singapore Fintech Association in Singapore, on May 23rd.