Product Roadmap: What’s On Tap For Umbrella Network In 2021
As we begin to wind down the first quarter of 2021, a question is sure to form among those watching from the sidelines: now what?
The Umbrella Network team is fresh off of a successful IDO that raised $250,000 from our community of supporters and got our UMB token listed on UniSwap, MXC, and Gate.io in the process. With the IDO behind us, Umbrella’s primary objective quickly turns back to our main mission of product development.
The story for the rest of the year is a bit like an actor rehearsing before opening night. In our case, we need to build a stage (get our private testnet up and running), then we need to rehearse (opening up the public testnet), then finally presenting a finished show by launching on the Ethereum mainnet. Additional goals for this year include our plans to launch on other blockchains including Binance Smart Chain, Huobi ECO Chain, as well as several EVM-compatible parachains on Polkadot. And finally, given our commitment to being a community owned decentralized oracle, we will start our shift to a decentralized governance by the second half of 2021 including a transition to a Delegated Proof of Stake system with our validators.
Our full and updated roadmap for the remainder of 2021 is out, so let’s get into it now.
March 3, 2021: Private testnet integration
Private testnets are useful for testing Ethereum-based dApps without having to actually expose them to the real Ethereum network and use real ETH to test them. They let you pre-generate or mine your own ETH on a private chain, so they’re completely practical and cost-effective for development purposes.
Our private testnet will be a space for working with close partners to improve Umbrella product and its onboarding process before the larger public gains access to it. This is an invite-only situation, a place for our developers to run their own closed experiments before opening things up on the public testnet, our next milestone of note.
March 15, 2021: Launch the public testnet
Public testnets let DeFi communities test their platform in a production-like environment before deploying it to the mainnet. This is the rehearsal where the community can gain familiarity with the project before it opens up to the mainnet and calls for genuine digital assets.
We will open our platform up to the public in the middle of March, so we can expect a surge of new users in this environment, putting our system through its paces. We’re bound to encounter some technical hiccups or other issues at this point, but that’s why we’re on testnet.
April 2021: Launch on Binance Smart Chain and Huobi ECO Chain
Binance Smart Chain is a high-speed parallel blockchain that supports smart contracts, Ethereum virtual machines, and cross-blockchain transfers. It has a dual-blockchain architecture — users can build dApps and manage their assets on one chain while using the other for quick trades.
Huobi’s ECO Chain (sometimes called Heco) is the company’s response to Binance Smart Chain. It’s a full Defi ecosystem complete with wallets, assets, and a ranked list of applications. It’s a decentralized, cost-efficient public chain that lets Ethereum developers get started easily with smart contracts.
Umbrella’s integration with these platforms will allow us to rapidly scale the number of people we can serve while they transact across different blockchains in a secure and trustless fashion.
June 2021: Ethereum mainnet launch
This is our figurative showtime, raising the curtain on the primary public production blockchain for Ethereum. To launch on the mainnet is to formally open the doors to everyone and let them use what we’ve created. This is a major milestone and we’re excited to be on target for a June mainnet launch.
July 2021: Launch our decentralized governance
As a community-owned decentralized oracle on a DPoS system, this is something we have planned since the beginning. This is a mode of governance based on regulating new power relationships between the overall system and the actors (the users) that constitute it.
Decentralized governance lets community members vote and determine how a platform should operate. When we launch this functionality, our users will be able to vote on validators and participate in various governance functions. That way our oracle isn’t governed by platform owners, and is instead driven by community efforts.
September 2021: Integrate with Moonbeam, Plasm, and Edgeware Polkadot
Moonbeam, Plasm, and Edgeware are EVM-compatible parachains on Polkadot. There are some subtle differences between them, but at the end of the day, their key identifier is the ability to run Ethereum virtual machines in a Polkadot environment. We’ll run on these parachains to gain the benefits of Polkadot, like lower transaction costs and higher transaction throughput. Ultimately we’ll achieve interoperability, the ability to move compatible value across otherwise siloed blockchains.
September 2021: Launch delegated proof of stake (DPoS) consensus
Delegated proof of stake (DPoS) is considered a more efficient and democratic version of its proof of stake predecessor. DPoS-based blockchains see stakeholders outsource their work to a third party, voting for delegates that will secure the network on their behalf. Voting power is proportional to the number of coins each user holds.
There you have it, our plans for going from a closed-off testing environment to fully functioning and accessible oracle. The particular timeline as described above may flex and change as the realities of the year unfold, but this is certainly the direction we’re heading for the rest of 2021, which is to: 1) focus on our core product development, going from testnet to launch on Ethereum mainnet; 2) expand our integration into other chains including BSC, Heco and Polkadot; and 3) begin our transition towards a fully decentralized, community-owned oracle.
Stay tuned as we will have upcoming news and announcements on further details around product development and enhancements.
We look forward to seeing you on opening night.
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