2) UPTRENND PORTAL

First, we would like to mention that we could not be more thankful to both Uptrennd and Opacity for being the first two startups to ever pilot the XIO system. It took a leap of faith to trust in the original iteration of XIO and have learned an endless amount of insight from their participation. On February 15th, we will close the 1UP portal and begin returning all staked XIO + the interest earned to date. Here are a few of our biggest takeaways from the world’s first XIO Portal:

There is a Demand and Market for Staking

Before we began building an entire decentralized platform, we first needed to test the hypothesis: Would people actually be willing to let go and lock up their tokens for a long period of time? Is there an actually demand and desire to support early stage startups? The results were an overwhelming yes.

In just a few weeks, over 1 Million XIO tokens were staked into the Uptrennd Portal.

We need a Standard for Staking Rewards

Being one of the first startups in XIO, we gave Uptrennd full control of how they structured their reward. After talking and brainstorming with Jeff (founder of Uptrennd), he and his team decided to offer a 5% monthly reward relative to the USD value of the XIO and 1UP tokens.

While this system can and did work, we have since realized we need a standard reward system that all startups use to distribute tokens. In doing so, we can automate smart contracts and remove ourselves (XIO Foundation) from the decision making process. From now on, all staking rewards will be searchable and viewed with a standardized interest rate.

Citizens Want Automation and a Visual Dashboard

The first phase of XIO has been a very manual process that required a lot of trust in the system. Citizens would not only need to follow a clear list of instructions, but the system lacked clear indicators that their participation of the staking process had been completed successfully. We heard this feedback loud and clear; and are excited to automate this into a trustless system with Phase 2.0.

In Phase 2.0, there will be a visual dashboard of where your tokens are, how much you have in the Portals, how much you can withdraw, and what other Portals can you participate in. Pretty. Cool.