On December 30, 2017, the most famous tweet of Jun Hasegawa (CEO and co-founder of OmiseGO) was registered. In this quote, he stated that 2018 would be OMG’s rock year. Today, almost one year later, I’m going to evaluate if that statement was true.

YES.

Why? Because they were building. Building stuff everyone wants. Learning from the best. Not giving in to fear. Not giving in to personal attacks and death threats. Not running away from critical investors. Not being distracted by idiots and jerks.

And let’s not forget. For a developer, that’s the only thing that counts. And that will keep him motivated. Building shit, keep building, keep learning, and keep reinventing himself, till you get the shit you want. Whether that product enters the market yesterday, today or in 2 years from now.

For impatient investors, try to answer the following questions.

Were you expecting the team to build a network that is so ambitious and life-changing that it would be finished by yesterday?

Were you expecting major companies like Amazon, Apple, Rakuten, and Huawei to have it integrated while half of its employees didn’t even know what a blockchain is?

Were you expecting major announcements while half of those big companies were at the stage of writing their first ‘hello world’ smart contract on Ethereum?

Were you expecting an announcement from Apple because there was an Apple sticker on Jun’s skateboard?

Were some of your hopes and dreams slightly influenced by the bullish character of the 2017 bull run?

Were you expecting to be rich by now, after 1 to 1,5 year of investing in this project?

Were you whining like an old lady while sitting in a chair every single day because your favorite project was not going fast enough?

Were you impressed by the IQ of some of the people working on this emerging tech while you were waiting in your chair?

Were you investing more on every single dip while you knew we were in a bear market?

Did you invest too much in a startup that exists for less than 2 years now?

Would you be complaining so much now if the token were worth $300?

For investors that cannot separate a depressing bear market from a team that is continuously making progress and continuously improving communication with the community during this bear market, I have this one lesson: grow up. Or simply get out. Nobody asked you to invest. Oh, and by the way, you don’t care too much about the team and about the vision. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be complaining now. You would either be building (as a contributor), or you’d be patient (as an investor). For those who are building and those who are patient, let’s move on.

W hat happened behind the scenes?

People that invested a lot of money in this project want tangible results, which is understandable. However, in the world of software, there is always the large period of bringing out that first, well-thought MVP that brings us suddenly from no tangible results to a lot of tangible results: a minimal viable product (MVP). In case of OmiseGO: an external mainnet. As long as this isn’t available, every single line of code the team is writing is worth zero. Every single conversation the business executives are having with potential partners is worth zero. Every update or communication the team is doing with the community is worth zero. At least to investors.

Now, as a computer scientist myself, let me tell you the golden rule that every single developer will confirm: The cost to solve problems increases exponentially as the software moves forward in the software development lifecycle. So let’s not rush into things and give the team the time they need to do it right.

As long as the OMG Network is not up and running, it’s hard to expect tangible results. Therefore, let me sum up some work that is visible from behind the scenes.

Company Growth

Parent company Omise has 100 employees registered on LinkedIn (a lot of them working for OmiseGO) while it was only 70 six months ago. A very large number of employees are not even showing up on LinkedIn because they rather keep it confidential (which is not weird given the bearish market where personal attacks and threats are a common thing).

(a lot of them working for OmiseGO) while it was only 70 six months ago. A very large number of employees are not even showing up on LinkedIn because they rather keep it confidential (which is not weird given the bearish market where personal attacks and threats are a common thing). Omise has 18 job openings on its job portal (https://omise.breezy.hr/) in Tokyo, Bangkok, and Singapore. 12 openings for OmiseGO, 6 openings for GO.Exchange. Plans to make the teams grow are clearly not reducing.

Codebase

Research

Kelvin Fichter, Joseph Poon and several colleagues and friends from other blockchain startups have been in conference calls for Plasma for more than 1000 minutes to research the best possible designs for Plasma, and to make Plasma as secure, fast and user-friendly as possible. Let me remind everyone that the first, very simple construction of Plasma by David Knott was written in January 2018, less than 12 months ago. Look how far we are now and how many people are engaged with Plasma already.

OmiseGO supports Center for Blockchain Research at Stanford.

There have been developer workshops around Plasma and the e-Wallet. Even before the network is up-and-running, the team is making sure there are sufficient ongoing efforts to prepare implementations to speed up the processes when the network is finally live.

Education

OmiseGO is putting a lot of efforts in education. A brilliant knowledge base for Plasma (learnplasma.org) is a great example.

Community Communication

Since November 2018, OmiseGO seriously improved community communication by introducing weekly AMA’s, a detailed OMG Network Tracker and a very well documented state of the OMG ecosystem. I’ve hardly seen more efforts to communicate closely with the community from any other project in the space. In only one year, hundreds of community questions were being answered formally by the team. They clearly have other things to do (trying to meet deadlines for impatient community members!), but they do it anyway. That’s the good spirit, and we should be thankful.

Various members of the OMG Network community are working together with community manager u/nebali to lay the foundation for the OMG Network, which will be fully open source and community-led. A decent knowledge base, a starter’s guide, a community website to onboard new contributors, tools for developers, and improved communication channels are a first step the community is currently working on, together with the team. Oh, but you didn’t notice that? Right.

Ongoing Relationships

Ethereum, Status, Hoard, MarkerDAO, Electrify.Asia, Mass Vehicle Ledger, HubrisOne, ShinhanCard, Global Brain, Stanford University, and probably a good number of partners that rather not reveal anything before the time is right (which is pretty understandable in these bear market conditions). No, it isn’t so weird after all that potential partners don’t want to reveal anything if their name is dragged through the mud like some of these previous names on Reddit.

It shouldn’t be mentioned that the profound relationships Omise is building with their retail customers isn’t a bad thing either, even when they are no ‘direct customers’ on the OMG Network yet. (Yet!)

Plasma Dog

Although visually there might not be a lot to see, the Plasma Dog game really showcased the endless possibilities that the OMG Network is giving us. There is not a lot to see, no. Can we at least appreciate the effort the team is putting into showing the community some progress? Patients.

Support to the Ecosystem

OmiseGO is supporting the entire Ethereum ecosystem by sponsoring a lot of events, co-hosting the Neutrino workspaces to enable cooperation between teams, and so on. Although this might not look tangible or useful by the traditional investor, this is so important for everyone involved in the space, OMG included.

Conclusion

Now, I hope I could convince you the team is really making great progress. Don’t let me come out here and post this again when the market drops another 20% or you weren’t able to stake in Q1 2019 (cause I can assure you, that won’t happen). Give it time. Have some respect for the team, have some respect for the entire community, and be patient. You know this kind of emerging technology will not be built in one day.

If you still think OmiseGO wasn’t fully committed to make progress and deliver a network, scroll to the following list of updates from the past 1,5 years:

I hope you’re all still with me 3–5 years from now.

Cheers!