A Year in Review - 2023
Alex Stoicescu
Jan 17, 2024
6 min.
We bid farewell to an extraordinary 2023 and now set our sights on making 2024 a year of unprecedented growth!
The past year marked a period of massive change for us. Our agile-first approach strengthened our position as leaders in the payments and invoicing sector. We extend a massive thank you to our community and our partners for their unwavering support and valuable feedback. ❤️
Let’s have a look at our accomplishments in 2023 by the news and numbers.
Q1
The first quarter of 2023 brought a swift reorganization of the Request Network foundation, starting with the team and ending with the Discord server. David, senior blockchain engineer and the last of the previous team, was joined by Francisco, protocol lead, to spearhead the upcoming changes for the protocol. While we have yet to reinvent ourselves completely, we considered the then-current crypto landscape and looked ahead to what a thriving Request Network ecosystem looks like.
⚒️ TransferableReceivable NFTs were introduced. This innovation allows payment requests created via Request Network to be transferred so that the holder of the NFT becomes the payee of the payment request. This unlocks a new range of possible applications, notably web3-native invoice financing and factoring (shoutout to Huma Finance).
⚒️Add Stakeholder to Payment Request was an important milestone as it allowed the sharing of encrypted payment requests with new stakeholders after the request was created. This new functionality enabled web3-native income-backed credit and risk assessment use cases.
⛓️ Official support for TombChain was introduced.
💰 A grant was provided to Copra Finance to develop a protocol that allows individuals and organizations to collateralize their on-chain future income as an NFT and to borrow against it.
🌐 The Request Network team attended two essential events in the Ethereum ecosystem: ETHDenver and ETHPorto.
Q2
The necessary changes previously mentioned involved bringing aboard fresh energy to lead less technical efforts. So, the second quarter of 2023 saw the team expand its roster to four people, introducing Alexandru P., marketing & branding lead, and Alex Stoicescu, communications & community manager. A growing number of team members also meant that David and Francisco could shift priorities, and as a result, a protocol documentation revamp process was started. A much-needed refresh of the grant program was also finalized.
⚒️ CodeSandBox examples were added to the documentation page. These examples allow builders to tinker with the Request Network protocol without leaving the browser or setting up a local test environment.
💰 Two grants were provided following the new grants process: welcome FLock.io and BSOS to the Request Network ecosystem! FLock is building an AI-powered on-chain credit scoring solution, while BSOS deals with blockchain’s impact on the supply chain by offering its own flavor of invoice factoring.
🌐 Attended two events as we were still setting up our events strategy & process for 2023 and beyond. We partnered with Encode Club and Gnosis for an online hackathon and attended a Berlin web3 event.
Q3
By the end of the second quarter of 2023, it was painfully evident that we needed more developers in the team to pursue both technical development debt and the introduction of new features. Enter Neil, our latest recruit, as a blockchain engineer. Sprints were introduced. Strategies and processes were still being tweaked to ensure maximum efficiency with a team of five and to pave the way for a larger team in 2024. As a result, this third quarter of last year was packed.
⚒️ More crucial documentation updates! The tech team added two new Overviews (SDK, Request Node, Private Request using Encryption), a Quickstart section with multiple guides, a visual representation of the lifecycle of a Request, an installation page with links to all Request Network NPM packages, and a list of all chains the protocol supports.
⚒️ A lovely surprise - the Request Network SDK was upgraded to be compatible with Node 18 thanks to the contribution from a Github user, OjusWizard!
⚒️ The ERC20TransferableReceivable contract was deployed on ETH Mainnet, Goerli testnet, and Polygon. This upgrade allows a builder or platform to subsidize the gas fees when minting an ERC20TransferableReceivable NFT. It also includes many gas optimizations.
⚒️ Engineering task tracking was migrated from DeWord and Asana to GitHub Projects, getting the protocol close to a live, transparent roadmap. With new filtering options like status and sprint tracking, managing and tracking engineering tasks has never been easier.
⛓️ Official support for Mantle and Mantle testnet was introduced.
💰 A grant was issued to Joba Network, a company committed to creating the infrastructure needed to enable the future of work.
🌐 Following the creation of our events and business development strategies, the team set out to source builders for the Request Network ecosystem through conferences and hackathons. As such, Francisco Pinto, Alexandru P., and Alex Stoicescu took turns attending ETHBarcelona, ETHcc, ETHWarsaw, and Token2049 to boost awareness and establish ourselves as a developer-friendly community and protocol.
Q4
In the last quarter of the year, part of the team focused on following up on leads from Q3 events, looking to foster additional growth within the Request Network ecosystem. Another part of the team eagerly prepared for a much-needed refresh of the Request Network brand. Overall, this last part of 2023 was about ensuring that the first quarter of 2024 will be legendary, with multiple grant recipients, upgrades to the protocol, and team growth announcements.
✨ The new Request Network website and branding were released after multiple workshops and a few months of gathering data and feedback from the team, partners, investors, and ecosystem builders.
⚒️ The AddStakeholder web component came as exciting news for anyone interested in accessing Requests created in the Request Finance application, as it could be helpful in risk assessment and credit scoring or for an end-user to view their requests on a different platform.
⚒️ Even more documentation updates! The SDK Package Reference was added, as it was the most requested improvement from previous hackathons. Moreover, an FAQ with the most popular questions (14 so far) the engineering team received made its way to the documentation section.
⚒️ Legacy indexing removal - the Request Finance team helped to drastically reduce complexity in the Request Network SDK by removing the legacy indexing in the Request Node in favor of using The Graph indexing. This was also a critical first step towards future refactorings that should make the SDK more modular, allowing users to include only the required features
⚒️ Thanks to the Request Finance engineering team, five new deployments were added, and two existing deployments of our payments subgraph were migrated to TheGraph Arbitrum-based decentralized network.
⚒️ Another Request Network and Request Finance joint effort win - Request Node 0.30.0 release! This release includes a breaking change: the engineering teams removed the confirmedTransaction store and made the Request Node query the storage-subgraph each time it wanted to get a confirmed transaction.
⛓️ Official support for zkSync Era, CORE, and Sepolia was introduced. Since the Goerli chain is expected to cease operation in early 2024, please migrate any testing activities to Sepolia.
🎧 Hosted four X spaces to showcase our ecosystem builders and how they affect Request Network.
🌐 The Request Network team divided their efforts into conquering as many builder-focused events as possible: ETHRome, ETHKualaLumpur, ETHHongKong, HongKongFintechWeek, and DevConnect Istanbul.
Token burns
Protocol usage
Looking ahead
With the conclusion of 2023, we are charged with renewed energy to surpass limits in 2024 and beyond. Our unwavering dedication persists in empowering ecosystem builders, expanding our community, and shaping the future landscape of crypto-centric financial services.
We’d like to thank our excellent partners, supporters, and community for the continued support, and we look forward to 2024 🔥
Catch us on the Request Network Discord.
