As mentioned in our last community update, the first half of 2019 has been both critical and exciting for the OAX technology team. Following the January launch of our platform on the Rinkeby testnet, the team, led by technology director Wayland Chan, has been working tirelessly over the past six months to refine and further develop it.

From what we’re told by the team, this latest version will include new elements and be a significant improvement to the January one. It is with this goal in mind that we began unveiling the results of this work in June. Those of you who have been following our social media channels will know that earlier this month our core team had an in-depth meeting with Enuma Technologies, our development partner, to catch up on the project’s progress. For details of that meeting, you can refer to our blog post.

Another important milestone we reached over the past month regarding our development progress is the release of a paper setting out the specification for the Layer 2 solution protocol. As the paper, at over 70 pages, is by no means an easy read, we prepared a brief summary for a general audience here.

As promised in our blog, with our project gaining more momentum, over the next few months we will be updating you more regularly on progress. Those of you interested in the technical details can also check out the Enuma blog, which is another channel to get more insight into our technology. The latest post, published in June, takes a deep dive into how their technology can help boost security across the OAX platform.

Engaging the Community

While our technology team works on the source code release, the rest of the OAX team continues to work on other ways to promote decentralization and digital asset trading to the wider community. Earlier this month we ran the second part of our take on Professor Syren Johnstone’s research paper about how the secondary crypto market can be regulated. The paper itself is part of a series funded by OAX Foundation to look at the current state and future direction of crypto regulations.

At the same time, we have also kept up our work updating the community and sharing our own views on the latest industry developments. Topics that we’ve touched on in our blog this month ranged from the application of digital assets to areas such as traditional finance (JPM Coin) and the stimulation of local economies (Belfast Coin), to the new guidance paper on digital assets issued by the Financial Action Task Force. Our latest post was an in-depth discussion of Libra, Facebook’s planned new coin.

Continuing our work promoting the wider role of FinTech in society, Paul Li, our General Counsel, appeared on a panel at the 2019 Conference of In-House Lawyers organized by the Law Society of Hong Kong. This is the second time Paul has been asked to speak at the event: this time around he was promoting the importance of open and diverse workplaces — something our General Manager, Amanda Liu, has also spoken about several times.

Last but not least, we also took part in the celebration of the second anniversary of the Fintech Association of Hong Kong, an organization that has worked tirelessly to bring companies and people in this community together. With Amanda, Paul and Winnie Mak (our Corporate Finance Director) having joined various sub committees, we can expect OAX to work more closely with the Association and its other members to help bring digital asset trading to the mainstream.