In this week’s update, we dive in to some exiting new updates we’ve made to our team and our app! Read on to learn more about what we’ve been busy creating.

Beta signups

We’ve received over 1,075 Beta signups! If you haven’t already, get early access to the app by signing up here. We’ve also released the app to the next 30 iPhone Beta testers.

Creator Portal

If you want to get your own project on Boost, submit your idea here! It takes less than a minute to fill out the project form. Here’s one actual project already shown on the Beta testnet version of Boost:

Stainless Steel Wallet invented by Joris van den Brekel

This project aims to create a steel seed wallet that uses braille to reduce manufacturing cost. Braille is an especially clever solution because it doesn’t require someone to have stamps of every letter. The wallet could even be hidden outside — even where it is exposed to the elements — since stainless steel is rust resistant. This is the perfect example of the type of project we want to support on Boost.

We’ve Hired Another Developer

We’re excited to have extra full-time development help from Fernando Camargo from AE.studio as we prepare our beta for public launch!

Fernando has over 15 years of experience working on projects for large companies and startups all around the world such as Samsung, Nokia, Ask.com, VW, Getty Images, Garnier and Havaianas. He specializes in front-end development and loves creating beautiful and intuitive user experiences. We’re also pretty impressed that Fernando got his start in web development after he taught himself how to code by digging through temporary files from an old and offline computer! You can check out his LinkedIn here.

As we’re trying to put the finishing touches on our app and make everything beautiful and easy to use we think Fernando’s front-end expertise will really come in handy. Additionally, we’re happy to welcome Fernando as our first Android user to the team and will have him be taking point on making any android-specific UI changes going forward.

Updated Team Section

Our additional advisor Devin Smith and developer Fernando Camargo are now shown on our website! Check out the updated team section here.

In case you missed last week’s update, Devin is the CTO of AE.studio and writes a regular blog on his personal coding projects here. You can also check out his personal website, as well as his bio in the team section of the Elix website.

Development

In this week’s build (scheduled to be submitted tomorrow), we’ve made a variety of improvements and added several new features. We’ve given the chats a much sleeker look (one of us liked the trollbox, but we listen to the people), we updated the design for contacts and added in the ability to update and remove them, we’ve refactored the code for saving favorites to allow for better data syncing across pages, added in the ability to have multiple project images in a carousel (with animations), and made some other minor UI changes across the app.

When Android? We’re going to have Fernando, our in house android user, doing some more testing and small fixes to our Android build before we release the beta soon.

Token P

As we come closer to public launch, we’ve been thinking a lot about Token P and how to deliver the most value to our core brand, ELIX.

Token P is an experimental rewards token we designed to allow staking ELIX to receive a reward. Over the past few months, we’ve built out a preliminary version of Token P, which includes automated tests. Token P was originally designed as a way to reduce the circulating supply of ELIX, while providing an incentives mechanism for borrowers and lenders. This first version was created to be mined with one smart contract. Such a smart contract gradually mines Token P based upon the state of various loans on the platform. We’ve built our several possible mining models, including our most recent version that uses a hyperbolic mining model. There are a few things we’ve realized about Token P and how it fits into the crowdfunding and lending ecosystem.

As we’ve begun testing our platform with creators and users, we realize that in order to deliver the best product we will need to have the flexibility to adapt our software to the needs of our users. Limiting the mining of a currency based on one smart contract — when our platform has multiple features — is less advantageous than building multiple incentives models. These models could be multiple smart contracts that reward creators, lenders, borrowers, backers or even users for referrals. Most importantly, having a single lending contract where Token P is mined restricts our ability to update our lending platform as our ecosystem grows.

For these reasons, we have developed a lending contract that is independent of Token P that will give us both the flexibility to add Token P to our ecosystem at a time when it will bring the most value to our users and the ability to better version our lending contracts as the need arises. Although creating a new currency now could provide additional tokens for development (which isn’t necessary at this time), we don’t want to risk de-valuing our ELIX by introducing another currency at such an early stage that doesn’t have immediate in-app utility and would restrict our ability to make future improvements because we are locked into a single smart contract that mines Token P.

We think Token P could be be even more powerful and valuable to ELIX holders if it was introduced after we have a sufficiently developed ecosystem that has a clear need for another token and more data to inform which incentives models would be most effective. The engineering work we did earlier in the year on Token P combined with the information we gain about how users are actually using the platform will allow for cleverer and more customized smart contracts that will be more beneficial to our users. This will also allow us to devote 100% of our expanded team’s energy right now to strengthening our core brand of ELIX instead of dividing our time by launching a new cryptocurrency.

A brief note: if you are a member of our community (and a very early adopter) waiting to receive support for tokens on NovaExchange and are on the list to receive tokens, you will receive ELIX within one month. We are closing future requests since it has been 8 months, and we believe providing community members with ELIX is generous and a good way to keep them interested (if you’re new to ELIX, don’t worry about this last bit!).

Another thing to note is that the crowdfunding platform does achieve the goal of reducing the circulating supply already, since ELIX stays locked in a smart contract during campaign durations. This is important because if enough people are using the platform, less ELIX will be circulating and prices will increase.

Design

Jane & Rosello have started designing the web interface for viewing Boost projects. This section of the website will show information about current projects on Boost. This should also help make the website more engaging, since it will have fresh content whenever a new project is added. Stay tuned for previews of this new section! Jane & Rosello are also working on other design surprises that we’ll reveal in the near future.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s round of updates! Be sure to sign up to get early access to the Beta on our homepage as well as connect via social media on Reddit, Twitter, Discord, and Telegram. We also have new Facebook and Instagram pages, and a newsletter you can sign up for at the bottom of our website. If you’re looking to create your own project, sign up to be an Early Creator here. Stay tuned and subscribe for exciting updates!