Testnet Soft-Launch Announcement

by Dfinance team

It’s here! We are excited to announce a soft launch of the dfinance testnet. The testnet will enable developers to utilize their skills for creation of financial instruments in a form of proof of concepts, that will be reviewed and rated by the community, with the best ones having a chance for gaining the required support by Wings Stiftung for becoming a real product.

The soft-launch also serves as an ample opportunity for us to gather constructive feedback from the developers, and help improve on dfinance towards the next version.

What is the testnet all about?

As the main goal of dfinance is to enable people with financial background  to quickly and securely create DeFi instruments, without prior technical knowledge, we envision the  testnet as the starting point of our journey. While we are actively progressing  on making DeFi instruments creation possible without coding,the testnet will enable developers to quickly develop novel DeFi products that challenge the status quo in the DeFi space, and provide new investment and speculation opportunities. This will also help us test the existing components and gather much needed feedback about the dfinance network, resulting in a significantly better mainnet.

Main problems solved

The development of new DeFi products is a complex endeavor that challenges many developers. While working on such products, developers and product teams have to take into account multiple variables:

  • Accessing real world information, such as a financial assets’ value, different events results, or non-financial data such as the current weather
  • Being able to to create markets representing physical goods, such as sneakers shoes
  • Supporting multiple blockchains, by enabling to create a product that supports Ethereum based assets, while allowing to pay for them with Bitcoin
  • Enabling liquidity providers to provide liquidity for launched DeFi instruments by allowing them to loan different assets and gain ongoing interest as a result

Unfortunately the current tools in the blockchain ecosystem do not allow easy and secure  development of such products, making it a complex task despite all the innovative features that are constantly being developed in the field.

Testnet overview

Foreseeing these challenges, we have embarked on a journey to create a platform that will solve these issues and enable quick development and launch of financial instruments, thus allowing creators to focus on creating value rather than spending time solving technical issues.

The testnet is designed with emphasis on rapid development start, enabling a quick transition from the initial idea to working code. While still in early stages, it already provides the following capabilities:

  • Smart contracts support via Move, developed by Facebook’s Libra
  • PegZone with Ethereum ETH and ERC20 tokens support out of box
  • Oracles mechanism secured by PoA (Proof-Of-Authority) validators
  • Consensus based on Cosmos Proof-of-Stake algorithm

As a developer, you can now code your own DeFi instruments via the powerful Mvir/Move coding language.

How do I start?

In order to enable you to quickly dive in, we advise starting with our documentation section. The following resources will provide you with an enjoyable development experience:

  • Documentation - testnet components information, including examples
  • Move IDE - VSCode plugin with syntax highlighting and built-in compiler functional, supporting out of box development of smart contracts in Mvir/Move coding language
  • Community Portal - ask questions and get answers from leading community members, or become one yourself
  • Wallet - enables you to send and receive testnet tokens, and to interact with the Ethereum blockchain, including exchanging  ERC20 value back and forth
  • Explorer - allows  live monitoring of the dfinance network operations

Just go to “Getting Started” and try it yourself!

What can I do on the testnet?

The dfinance protocol is oriented at enabling you to quickly and securely create your own DeFi instrument. For that you will need some financial background theory, such as what are futures contracts,  structured products, options, short or long trades and more. Fortunately, you can acquire this knowledge online easily. Once you've gained enough information, you’ll find dfinance as a perfect match to your ideas for some of the following products:

Futures

Dfinance will enable developers to create various types of futures that can be adapted to real world use cases; These futures  will be based on primitives provided as part of the testnet:

  • Forward futures - enable to bind actual goods and commodities to on-chain settlements
  • Cash futures - do not require actual goods or commodities, but rather allow mainly speculation

Options

You will be able to create, and tailor for real world use cases, the following types of options (also based on existing primitives):

  • Call options - allows trustless acquisition of assets at pre-agreed prices
  • Put options - allows trustless selling of assets at specific prices

Structured products

This kind of products will allow significant freedom and creativity, enabling your imagination to go wild in search of profitable market positions. Dfinance will take care of the “heavy lifting”, while preserving the inherent security of created instruments

The types of structured products that will be supported are:

  • Principal protected - ensuring that invested principal has a limited downside (usually 95% protection), at the cost of smaller yield
  • Custom sized - allows exchanging some principal protection in exchange for higher yields
  • Non-principal protected - does not provide any principal protection while giving highest yields

What’s next

This testnet features the first public release of dfinance protocol. We will continue to monitor the testnet and release new functionalities and features in the future versions. Stay tuned to our roadmap for 2020 and subscribe!

Disclaimer: by using the dfinance testnet, you agree to have a complete understanding of risks associated with the use of untested technology, and that the testnet  is provided on an “as is” basis, without any kind of warranties. In no event should the Wings Stiftung have any liability whatsoever for any kind of loss, expense or damage, resulting from the use of the testnet.

We recommend using the testnet only for proof of concept prototyping of DeFi products. Note that we are unable to guarantee that products created with the testnet will remain compatible with upcoming mainnet.