Product milestones and adoption initiatives planned for Q2 & Q3

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Overview

The Oasis team is hard at work building new features for the Oasis Network and driving growth and adoption of the network as a whole. Here’s a quick a summary of what we’re focusing on for the coming quarters:

• An all new SDK that will standardize ParaTimes development, making it easy to build new ParaTimes and allows ParaTimes to communicate with one another.
• A new ParaTime built by the Oasis Protocol Foundation designed to give developers access to confidential smart contracts, and powerful new tools like a bridge with Ethereum.
• Support for IBC allowing easy communication with other networks using the protocol.
• A new suite of Oasis-first wallets that are both web based and easily accessed as a chrome extension.
• A host of new improvements and projects coming to the Oasis-Eth ParaTime like Uniswap v2 and more.
• The launch of Parcel as a ParaTime, bringing the 20+ projects developing with the API full onto the Oasis Network.
• New adoption initiatives like a $1.5M grants program, Private DEX and more.

Technology Roadmap

With the Cobalt Upgrade the Oasis Network has been upgraded with infrastructure necessary for growing the application and protocol ecosystem built on top of the network. In Q2 and Q3, the Oasis Protocol Foundation will dedicate resources to make the development process of high-level applications more accessible, expand interoperability between ParaTimes and with other networks, and further our core mission of enabling strong privacy and confidentiality features.

Oasis SDK

We are hard at work in preparing the initial version of the Oasis SDK which contains the following two major components:

• The ParaTime SDK sets some common standards across different ParaTimes on transaction, event and query formats, module, and storage state definitions. This will make it easier to build common functionality which will work across a wide array of ParaTimes based on the SDK. We are also developing the first Oasis Protocol Foundation ParaTime that will be based on the SDK and which is planned to host the Oasis-Ethereum bridge and the confidential smart contract execution environment.
• The Client SDK supports both the consensus layer and ParaTimes based on the SDK and enables one to build rich client applications without worrying about the low-level details. The initial versions of the SDK are already being used by grantees to build Oasis-first wallets (more on that below). The first supported languages are Go and TypeScript.

If you would like to know more about the technical details feel free to check out the Oasis SDK GitHub repository and the SDK 0.1 project board. While the repository does not yet have official documentation on the contribution process, the same inclusive governance process as for Oasis Core applies so any comments, ideas, proposals and other contributions are welcome!

Oasis Protocol Foundation ParaTime and Confidentiality

The Oasis Protocol Foundation ParaTime will be based on the new Oasis SDK and will be the home of new, high-level confidentiality features. While confidentiality is already supported in the core network implementation (i.e., Oasis Core), there is still work to be done to make it first-class and available to developers in a more high-level and friendly way.

This is why the Oasis Protocol Foundation ParaTime will execute inside the Intel SGX Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) when running on compute nodes. While initially it will not have the full set of confidentiality features enabled, using a TEE will bring a host of security benefits and allow running with a smaller node replication factor. It will also allow the node operators to become more familiar with operating an SGX-based compute node in practice.

The first module that the ParaTime will host will be the Oasis-Ethereum bridge. It will be followed by support for Wasm-based smart contracts, which will make a range of private and public use cases available to a wider set of developers.

ROSE will be the native token of the ParaTime. It will be used to pay for transaction gas fees and to reward node operators running the ParaTime. It will be possible to seamlessly transfer ROSE from the existing consensus layer accounts into the ParaTime and back again.

Interoperability Across ParaTimes and With External Networks

Interoperability is key in enabling access to the wider ecosystem. This is why we are focusing on three areas:

• Oasis-Ethereum Bridge will be one of the first ParaTime SDK modules. It will enable transfer of assets from ParaTimes to Ethereum and back. The implementation of the module and the witness functionality is nearing completion and undergoing an internal security review.
• Cross-ParaTime Communication will standardize a set of specifications for ParaTimes to talk to each other by exchanging arbitrary messages. A unique advantage of the ParaTime architecture is that ParaTimes can be aware of each other’s state roots in a trustworthy manner through the shared consensus layer. The messages themselves do not need to go through the consensus layer which makes the whole system more scalable. This feature will allow ParaTimes implementing different applications to exchange virtual assets and data.
• Support for IBC is also planned to be implemented as a ParaTime SDK module. It will allow communication with other networks which support the inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC). Some initial steps have already been taken to make sure that the state commitment schemes are compatible with ICS-23 implementations.

Oasis-first Wallets

Providing Oasis-first wallets was suggested multiple times by Oasis community members (#2, #19) and we are happy to announce that two Oasis-first wallets are in development:

• Oasis Web Wallet is a pure web wallet developed on top of our Client SDK by a ROSE Bloom grantee and a node operator, Tristan Fourier (@Esya). It will feature staking, Ledger support, interoperable key derivation (ADR 0008), multi-account support, multi-language support, staking rewards overview and much more. It will also allow us to also support all ParaTimes built on the Oasis SDK in the future. You can preview it at https://testnet.oasis-wallet.com/ and general availability is expected by end of May.
• Oasis Chrome Extension Wallet is a Chrome extension wallet developed on top of our Client SDK by a ROSE Bloom grantee and a node operator, Bit Cat (@wjdfx), famous for his excellent Oasis Scan block explorer. The extension wallet will enable users to fully management of their ROSE tokens (transfers, staking), ability to sign both consensus layer and ParaTime transactions within Oasis web applications (e.g. Oasis-Ethereum Bridge, DeFi applications). It will feature Ledger support, interoperable key derivation (ADR 0008), multi-account support, multi-language support and much more. It is expected to be available by end of May.

Network Adoption

We often talk about the technology we’re building to support the growth of the Oasis Network. In this section, we want to update you on other equally-important pieces of work that are impacting how developers adopt the technology and improvements coming to the Oasis Network.

Bringing ROSE to the Oasis-Eth ParaTime

Oasis-Eth ParaTime is on track to integrate with the ParaTime SDK to support ROSE tokens in the ParaTime in late Q2 or early Q3.

In addition to technical development work, there are also 5 decentralized exchanges (DEX) built or being built on Oasis-Eth ParaTime now, namely:

• Uniswap v1 migration (https://uniswap.oasiseth.org/swap, feature complete)
• Uniswap v2 migration (work in progress)
• Tulip Swap (https://tulipswap.io/, leveraging Uniswap v2 and SushiSwap, work in progress)
• Rosebud Finance (https://rosebud.finance/#/swap, leveraging SushiSwap, work in progress)
• DEX (name TBD, work in progress)

Besides the DEX, the Oasis-Eth ParaTime is expected to support partners such as yield aggregators, decentralized lending platforms and decentralized insurance platforms, etc. to build DeFi applications atop.

ParaTimes Standardization

Thanks to the ParaTime SDK, ParaTimes will soon be able to talk to each other. The Oasis-Eth ParaTime is already working to support the proposed standard and the new ParaTime by the Oasis Foundation will natively adopt it. Once the ParaTime communication layer is built, Dapps will be able to call contracts that live on either ParaTime: this doesn’t only remove trade-offs between development environments and main properties of the ParaTimes, but it also allows existing Dapps to port existing contracts to the Oasis-Eth ParaTime and add confidentiality only where it matters the most. By calling confidential smart contracts, existing Dapps will be able to progressively embed privacy into applications, without having to start from scratch.

Privacy Enabled DeFi

With the launch of the Oasis Protocol ParaTime, the Oasis Network will have developer friendly support for confidential smart contracts. This will enable the numerous DeFi partnerships already working on their integrations to more easily leverage the unique privacy properties of the Oasis Network. Our goal during the coming quarters is to not only build this ParaTime and it’s supporting technology, but also expand the pool of active DeFi projects on the Oasis Network.

Privacy-preserving DEX: DeFi applications have gained a lot of momentum in Ethereum over the past year. That said, it faces major problems (e.g. low through-put, high gas fees and front-running / MEV problems, etc.) that prevent DeFi from going mainstream via the Ethereum network. A private DEX using Oasis ParaTime with support for confidential compute is best positioned to solve those problems. The Oasis Foundation is collaborating with a DEX team to co-build a privacy-preserving DEX, which is expected to launch in Q3.

Parcel on the Oasis Network

The full transformation of Parcel in a ParaTime means that companies using Parcel today (over 20) and the new companies that come every day to integrate privacy in their flows will be able to write transactions onto the Oasis Network without having to deal with smart contracts.

$1.5 M in Ecosystem Grants

Because of the progress the team has made to make the Oasis Network ready and given the excellent performance of the upgrades, the Oasis community has voted to commit up to $1.5M in Grants to support the development of ideas that either improve the Oasis Network or leverage it to build new use cases. Apply here.

New Partnerships

Partnerships have been a critical part of the Oasis Network; from node operators to DeFi primitives and Dapps, the Oasis Network will continue to attract the newest and most popular players in Blockchain. We will constantly release updates on this subject, with a steady cadence of new announcements coming out each month.

Looking Forward

This roadmap is just the beginning. We have a lot more in store for the coming quarters, so please join our Telegram or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on the latest news and activities!

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