In the first half of 2022, Manta Network prioritized three pillars: product development, brand awareness/growth, and team expansion. Those pillars are significant for Manta Network to successfully launch on-chain privacy first on Calamari Network (Manta Network’s canary net on Kusama), followed by the launch on Manta. From January to June 2022, Manta Network focused on successfully and efficiently executing those priorities. Key highlights include:
- Product Development — continuous releases of Dolphin Testnet, which enables private on-chain transacting.
- Brand Awareness & Growth — much stronger presence at conferences and events, with marked growth in community engagement.
- Team Expansion & Fundraising— Hiring some of the best talent in the space to contribute to our mission.
This article details all of the accomplishments and efforts that Manta Network achieved across these three pillars throughout the first half of 2022.
Product Development
Dolphin Testnet v1
Six months from the launch of the Dolphin Testnet v1 in December, we reached a total of 60,000+ transactions and 6,000 unique wallet addresses. We also collected ~500 feedback responses from our Testnet feedback form, where the user rating for v1 was 4.5 out of 5.
Dolphin Testnet v2
The results from the feedback were crucial for our continued development, and in May 2022, we released the second version of the Dolphin Testnet. Dolphin v2 enabled product features that give users back their right to privacy in a faster, more secure way; the updates include shielded, fully reusable addresses, faster hash processes, more compliance functionality, and an optimized user interface.
Within a month, we received ~150,000 transactions, the Manta Signer was downloaded 20,000 times, and the team released new versions of the manta signer and the Dolphin dApp, bringing faster ZKP generation speed and 2x faster synchronization time for users creating a new account. You can follow our forum for the latest product updates.
Manta/Calamari Network Community
Calamari XCM
Additionally, the first half of 2022 saw Polkadot completing one of its most anticipated milestones: releasing the “cross-consensus” messaging format XCM and becoming a fully interoperable multi-chain ecosystem.
This brought us one step closer to bringing private payments across parachain assets and we successfully deployed XCM on Testnet with Moonbeam’s Testnet, Moonbase Alpha, in April! Our XCM integrations continued between Calamari and Karura Network, Moonriver, and Khala Network, where we proposed a referendum to open the bi-directional HRMP channel. The team is working to bring more integrations with other projects, so stay tuned for more announcements in our forum.
Calamari Collators Program
The team continued to work asynchronously on different aspects; while half of the core engineering team focused on the Testnet, the other brought the decentralized world closer to the community by launching the Community Collator Program for Calamari. The purpose of Calamari’s community collator program is to secure the network and contribute to its decentralization of it. The community collator program started with ten collators in Q1, and we closed Q2 with twenty collators; operating in ten different countries. We will increase this number by another fifteen collators throughout the 3rd quarter of this year. You can learn more from our documentation if you’re interested in joining.
OpenZL
Lastly, on the development side, the team started working on OpenZL. This open-source library helps practitioners (especially in Web3 space) to develop and deploy secure, high-performance zero-knowledge proof code in production. You can learn more by visiting the OpenZL repository on GitHub.
Try out Dolphin Testnet V2 (incentivized)
We invite you to try the Dolphin Testnet v2, which is incentivized, and also includes a feedback form. Dolphin v1 was not incentivized; the purpose of v1 was to collect as much feedback from the core community as possible. The team collected 500 responses from which thousands of pieces of feedback were used to create Dolphin v2.
With Dolphin v2, we want to open the Testnet to a broader community to receive feedback from new users and demonstrate privacy on Polkadot/Kusama to people who may not have heard about Manta or Calamari in the past.
To try the Dolphin Testnet V2, follow the guides below in the written and video format produced by core contributors at Manta and Calamari Network.
- Dolphin V2 Testnet Release Furthers Web3 Privacy Preservation, Optimization and Compliance
- Manta Network Testnet V2: Walkthrough
To qualify for our airdrop, try out the incentivized Testnet and follow us on social media.
Brand Awareness & Growth
In-Person events/conferences
ETHDenver
The team had the chance to meet with the web3 ecosystem in person this year by attending major crypto conferences. The first major event of the year we attended was ETHDenver, where we organized the first in-person panel discussion with Binance live. Thought leaders from Manta, Binance, Polychain Capital, Moonbeam Network, and Polkadot discussed Programming Privacy into Web3.
ETHAmsterdam, DevConnect, and AmsterDOT
The team was united in Amsterdam to learn, connect, share and build with the community! ETHAmsterdam, DevConnect, and AmsterDOT were organized in a decentralized manner and brought together the entire Web3 ecosystem!
DCentral
At DCentral, Co-Founder Kenny Li gave a keynote on privacy and how “The privacy problem isn’t solved yet…. Blockchain is immutable. It’s not like you can just click delete.”
Polkadot Hackathon Global Series: North America
Manta Network core contributors Shumo Chu and Brandon Gomes were mentoring and judging throughout the hackathon for the $270.000 hackathon projects sponsored by Polkadot. Find more details here.
NFT NYC
Whilst the community was gathered for NFT NYC; Manta co-hosted with Arpa Official, Kucoin, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Phala Network, and RMRK, the Exclusive NFT Penthouse Social @ NFT NYC.
Lastly, we had a huge presence at Polkadot Decoded 2022. The core team at Manta Network presented in Berlin, New York, and Hangzhou simultaneously for Polkadot Decoded 2022, Polkadot’s largest annual conference, and sponsored side events. Learn more by visiting our Polkadot Decoded 2022 overview here.
Zero-Knowledge Challenges
Manta collaborated with other projects to push forward initiatives such as ZPrize, where Manta Network was the prize architect for one of the challenges and Polkadot was the prize sponsor. The team also organized the ZK Summit Hacking Challenge. These initiatives focused on promoting the advancement of zero-knowledge technologies in the Polkadot Ecosystem.
Ecosystem Fund
In Q1, Manta Network, Acala, and seven other Polkadot parachain teams partnered to launch the $250 million aUSD Ecosystem Fund to support early-stage startups building applications with strong stablecoin use cases on any Polkadot or Kusama parachain.
Community Growth
Our community has been an unstoppable force this year. With their help, we managed to wrap up the first half of this year with an organic community growth in our Discord and Telegram channels and, as previously mentioned, building up our technical community through the Collator Program!
We’re proud to say that we have reached ~30,000 telegram members and ~40,000 members in our discord; lately, we’ve also started using the forum, which we plan to use mainly for technical and governance discussions.
We look forward to meeting you in-person/online at the upcoming conferences and online events. To find more information about our presence, find us on our Website, Discord, Telegram, LinkedIn.
Team Expansion & Fundraising
Manta went through exceptional growth, from twenty core contributors in 2021 (seventeen on the engineering side and three on business operations) to a team of 32, comprising of twenty four engineers and eight core contributors on the business and operational side.
Fundraising Updates
On the fundraising side, Manta Network announced that Binance Labs, the venture capital and innovation incubator of Binance, made a strategic investment in Manta Network, the Web3 privacy protocol designed to privatize crypto assets!
Looking forward to Q3/Q4
With all these accomplishments checked off during the first half of 2022, we are excited to continue our progress rate for the second half. Our priorities will continue to be our main three pillars; product development, brand awareness, and team expansion.
On the product side, once Dolphin is ready for launch, we will shift it to the Mainnet on Calamari and Manta Network. Dolphin Testnet’s private transacting service will be known as MariPay on Calamari, and MantaPay on Manta. Along with the launch, we will continue with bringing more integrations for privacy through XCM–the unique cross-chain communication feature of Polkadot and Kusama, enabling interoperability and composability for layer-one projects.
Doing this will begin the roll-out of privacy for many other parachain assets, including $DOT and $KSM.
About Manta Network
Manta Network is committed to building a better Web3 world through privacy protection. Manta’s product design starts from first principles and provides end-to-end privacy protection for blockchain users through leading cryptography architectures such as zkSNARK. While ensuring privacy, Manta offers interoperability, convenience, high performance, and auditability, allowing users to conduct private transfers and transactions between any parallel chain of assets. Manta’s vision is to provide more convenient privacy protection services for the entire blockchain world.
Manta’s founding team is made up of several cryptocurrency veterans, professors, and academics with experience from Harvard University, MIT, and Algorand. Manta’s investors include Polychain, ParaFi, Binance Labs, Multicoin, CoinFund, Alameda, DeFiance, and Hypersphere. Manta is also an official Web3 Foundation grant recipient, a member of the Substrate Builder Program, and a member of Berkeley Blockchain Accelerator.
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