The first half of 2024 is finished, and we’d like to provide a brief overview of all the great things that were achieved in the first half of the year and what's in store for the remainder. This will include past highlights and cover what's planned for the next six months in terms of engineering, business development, community, etc. So, let's dive into the past, present and the next six months of exciting developments for Oasis and our community.

Oasis 2024: First Half

Brand Refresh and AI focus

AI has been growing in adoption, quickly becoming one of the most prominent sub-sectors of Web3. From its inception, Oasis has been built with the future privacy needs of AI and personal data in mind. With AI growing by leaps and bounds, we are excited to make this a focus point for the network in 2024. There have been developments such as the upcoming release of Runtime Offchain Logic (ROFL), an AI-exclusive BD division, dedicated AI grants to builders, attendance at prominent AI conferences, onboarding the founder of Ocean Protocol Trent McConaghy as a strategic advisor, and some exciting collaborations to be announced. Building upon these initiatives into the second half of the year, Oasis is set to be a primary player within crypto x AI.

ETHDam, Marketing, and Events

Beyond rebranding efforts, our team has significantly ramped up our conference presence and community initiatives. For instance, Oasis was a Flagship Sponsor of ETHDam this year, garnering considerable exposure to the privacy-focused and developer-orientated part of the Web3 community, establishing our position as the leading privacy protocol in the space. Over the weekend of this event, Oasis was plastered across every screen in Amsterdam Central Station, giving in excess of 700,000 sets of eyes to our messaging and brand refresh.

During ETHDam, there were many main stage talks, a highly successful hackathon with the Build Natively on Sapphire bounty, and prime positioning of our booth, where many great connections were made. The first day of ETHDam also saw the launch of the Oasis branding refresh, which gave our website, branding, marketing plans, and more a fresh look. The ROFL development was also announced.

Finally, our recent collaboration with Revolut and their Learn and Earn Program, we are happy to share that since the beginning of the program, almost 1 million users have completed at least one Learn and Earn lesson, with the majority being new participants. Out of the projects listed, Oasis was one of the most popular projects, allowing participants to earn and hold a considerable amount of ROSE rewards.

Partnerships and Business Development

The first half of 2024 has already seen a diverse group of ecosystem launches. illumineX is a cross-chain confidential exchange platform launched in 2024, with their exciting V2 product due to launch this summer, perfectly demonstrating how our privacy technology can enable better user experiences. Another launch was Pontus-X, the first third-party custom ParaTime to be built on Oasis by deltaDAO. It will offer an enterprise solution for corporate clients such as Airbus and Exaion, the French division of EDFenergy, integrating EU-regulated e-money EUROe tokens to meet the regulatory requirements for compliant privacy in data and AI.

Next is Predictoor, built by Ocean Protocol, which is an AI-based prediction dApp built natively on Sapphire. Predictions are one of the most essential things we rely on every day, from weather predictions to traffic predictions and also one of the key aspects of financial markets, will a certain stock/coin/currency go up or down in value? There is value in predictions, and in order to be able to monetize that value in a decentralized and trustless way, onchain privacy for private storage and private computing is essential. That is why Sapphire is such a perfect fit for Predictor, with monthly volumes approaching $1B in value.

With the popularity of meme coins on the rise, we were excited to see the community get behind the launch of the first meme coin on Sapphire, Rosy. Rosy is a lovable bulldog who currently has a deflationary staking mechanic deployed but will also have more utility built into the project, such as a Tamagotchi-style game looking to utilize AI, as the project progresses.

We are also pleased to announce that Oasis has officially joined the Decentralized Confidential Compute (DeCC) initiative, aligning us with a consortium of respected blockchain entities committed to advancing confidential and verifiable computation. The DeCC, similar in purpose to the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePin), brings together industry leaders to foster a secure and private computational environment across decentralized networks. In the graphic below, you can see even more incredible partnerships; some are grant recipients, and some are community projects that have collaborated with Oasis in 2024:
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Beyond this list, many new exciting partnerships are in the works, and plenty will be announced throughout the rest of the year. So, with that brief recap of our year out of the way, let us move on to the initiatives we will be focusing on for the rest of 2024.

Oasis 2024: Second Half

User Experience

With recent partnerships and the continued growth and adoption of the network, we've made great progress in improving our developer documentation, tooling, and libraries. We will make it far easier for the next wave of developers to begin building on Oasis. While decreasing friction for developers is incredibly important for the future adoption of the network, it is only one piece of the puzzle. It is clear that significant improvements are also needed for our users on the UX side.

Based on observations and the feedback received from the community, we have deemed the following three initiatives o be priorities across the organization. We aim to abstract away wallet complexities, such as moving from a CEX to the Oasis Consensus layer (ROSE Wallet), and then require users to bridge again to the Oasis Sapphire network (Metamask wallet).

This can be a complicated process for new users, which is more challenging than what users are accustomed to when interacting with other prominent blockchain networks. We plan to eliminate this main user friction in the following ways:

1. CEX integration of Sapphire: Direct deposits and withdrawals between the Oasis Sapphire Network and prominent centralized exchanges are perhaps the most impactful way to solve user onboarding friction moving forward. In doing so, most users would no longer need to interact with the consensus layer and ROSE Wallet. These CEX integrations will also pave the way for Oasis Sapphire dApps to have their tokens listed on exchanges, further enhancing their reach and potential user base.
   
   This is a clear next step on the path to mass adoption and will be a priority for our BD team. Some integrations are already in the final steps of contract negotiation.
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2. ‍Oasis built dApp and/or Metamask Snap to ease CEX —> Sapphire transfers: We are currently exploring two options to give our users currently holding ROSE on a CEX as an alternative method to onboard to Sapphire, without having to use the consensus layer ROSE Wallet. The first option is an easy-to-use dApp that you connect your Metamask to; this can then generate an oasis1 address, which you input to a CEX to withdraw to. The dApp would then automatically route your ROSE straight from the CEX to Sapphire without a user having to touch the Rose Wallet.
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   The second option under consideration is a Metamask Snap. While offering similar utility, this can also have more complex features integrated, allowing encrypted transactions to be handled directly within Metamask and more. We’ll be carefully evaluating the implementation and user experience of both and decide on the best course of action to ensure we bring the best solution to our community.

3. Interactive onboarding page on our website: This will serve as a one-stop shop for users looking for any guidance in handling their ROSE and using the ecosystem. Users follow a series of questions to identify the step or stage they next need to complete. Users will then be guided through these steps in a clear and precise manner, accompanied by short videos for those who prefer more of a visual aid. As CEX integrations come, the guide will be updated to ensure users can easily follow the right path for them.

Liquid Staking

By offering liquid staking, we will further enhance the abstraction of the consensus layer away from our users. Once live, even those who wish to stake in the network will be able to do so directly through a Sapphire smart contract. Ecosystem users will never have to leave the Oasis Sapphire Network or download an additional wallet, even if they wish to participate in staking and securing the Oasis Consensus.

Liquid staking will also open up a myriad of options across the ecosystem, improving the user experience and expanding the potential use cases. This is now available on testnet through our ecosystem partner, Accumulated Finance, with the mainnet release over the coming months.

Mobile Wallet

We will also release the long-awaited mobile ROSE Wallet. With the mobile wallet, we will give additional options to our mobile-first users, who prefer to perform operations on the consensus layer natively for storage, staking, and Paratime transfers.

Miscellaneous

There are some things outside a project’s direct ability to influence, but many things do fall under a project’s control to improve user experience. Having listened to feedback, we’ll be adding the below (amongst other developments that are still TBA):

• Easily visible staking rewards on the explorer and wallet
• Improvements to documentation and guides
• V2 release of the website with several upgrades and additional pages
• A new cohort of Sentinels through our ambassador program to strengthen the ranks
• A more open and engaged dialogue with senior team members through Town Hals, blogs, and AMAs
• More community and ecosystem-centric events

After incredible progress in the first half of 2024, the work is far from over. The Oasis team has received some great feedback from the community in the areas that still need improvement, which has guided us to create ever more ambitious goals, including technical advancements to improve UX, new use cases, new BD initiatives, and an expanded team, which will help realize the mission of creating a trustless, decentralized, privacy-preserving computation platform for the next generation of applications.