Connect Financial Community Update
General Development & Roadmap Update
Over the last few weeks we have continued to expand our full time staff, welcoming another two full-stack engineers as well as dedicated DevOps developers to the Connect Financial team. As expected they are busy drinking from the firehose and getting up to speed with the systems.
Our team is currently working on a couple of different fronts. The bulk of the team is focused on hardening and testing the initial release, and of course identifying and resolving a number of unforeseen edge cases and making sure that the customer experience is as smooth as possible. It’s necessarily slow, painstaking work that is absolutely required.
At the same time, we are continuing to look to the future and build out and develop the full suite of capabilities. Later in this update we’ll take a closer look at the X-Finance product that will be released post launch.
Roadmap update
It has been a while since we looked at the development roadmap, and since the topic is a perennial favorite with the community, it’s worthwhile to share an updated view.
You’ll note that there are some changes to the ordering of some of the features. In some cases we’ve reduced the scope of some features or targeted them for a future release, and in other examples, we’ve added functionality.
For example, while working with our partners, we’ve identified the ability to add some great features like concurrent virtual and physical cards and sophisticated spending controls far earlier than we expected (that’s what happens when you work with great partners!).
While roadmaps are useful in showing the general direction of where we are headed, it’s important to remember that our development plans will continue to respond to the reality of the moment. We are continually reprioritizing our focus based on macro trends, delivery speed, and what our target customers are looking for. We all know that crypto is incredibly fast moving and fluid, and we endeavor to mirror this fluidity in our business and technical delivery.
X-Finance
If you recall the last update, I introduced you to the X-Finance product. If you missed it, here’s a quick refresher.
X-Finance allows Connect Financial members to participate in curated strategies that aim to return a competitive yield on committed assets. While the concept of ‘Earn’ products is not a new one, we think that the transparency, variety and flexibility of the X-Finance strategies will be warmly welcomed by the market, giving an alternative to the ‘black-box’ model that has landed some of our competitors in hot water.
The first part of X-Finance is the strategy selector.
There will be four main strategy types in the initial launch:
- Lend to the Connect Financial credit pools in return for a dynamic APR based on customer usage.
- Enter Delta Neutral strategies by borrowing against committed collateral and taking advantage of price appreciation (or depreciation!) of a basket of assets.
- Stake assets in a shared pool to help validate a network
- Enter curated DeFi smart contracts and participate in LPs, farming and staking strategies.
Once you have selected a strategy, you can learn more about it and deposit or withdraw funds through the Strategy Overview.
I have already mentioned that the foundation of X-Finance is transparency. We will curate a number of different strategies that will give options for all levels of risk tolerance, but whatever strategy you choose, you’ll be able to clearly understand the flow of funds, involved counter-parties and risks.
I’m excited to keep you updated about X-Finance. The team and I think that this product will grow to be the perfect balance between DeFi and centralized Earn offers.
As always we appreciate our community and taking the journey with us here at Connect.
