Ecosystem update - August 2023
Alex Stoicescu
Sep 10, 2023
4 min.
Greetings, Request Network community!
Welcome to the Request Network ecosystem update for August 2023.
The Ecosystem Update focuses on protocol usage and our vision to build an ecosystem of decentralized apps for payment requests. Here, you will find our ecosystem updates, major news and announcements, and anything else that interests the community.
The current ecosystem built around the Request Network protocol includes the following builders: Huma Finance (lending and borrowing), Joba Network (future-of-work hiring platform), BSOS (supply chain financing), Copra Finance (lending and borrowing), FLock (machine-learning credit scoring) and Request Finance (invoicing and payroll).
If you’re interested in what we are building together with the previously mentioned companies and want to share your vision with us, don’t hesitate to apply to our grants program.
Ecosystem Update
Documentation updates
The feedback we have received so far from the hackers of the hackathons we sponsored has proven to be invaluable. The traffic our documentation page saw in August was a record for the protocol. Our developer team added a couple of new pages that should prove extremely useful to someone who just started researching Request Network and plans to integrate with the protocol.
The most important addition to the documentation is a visual representation of the lifecycle of a Request (e.g., an invoice). You can view it below or access the page here.
We also added another Quickstart guide, focused on helping developers use Request Network in Node.js environments without access to a web3 wallet. View the new guide here.
Another update in our docs is related to the Installation page, which now includes links to all of our NPM packages.
Last but not least, the most crucial feedback from hackers was a need for an overview of which chains Request Networks supports. You can go to our Githuband check out the smart contracts there, but it’s time-consuming and not very user-friendly. As shown below, you can now easily view this information from a dedicated page in the documentation section. Check it out here.
Major News and Announcements
ETHWarsaw
At the end of the month, part of the Request Network team went to the beautiful city of Warsaw to attend and sponsor the ETHWarsaw conference and hackathon. During the first two days of the event, we interacted with hundreds of people interested in what Request Network is all about and if there are any synergies to explore between their projects and our protocol (spoiler: there are quite a few!). On top of the amazing discussions we had at the booth, our protocol lead, Francisco Pinto, delivered a talk on the main stage of the event (recording available soon) titled “Crafting tomorrow’s finance” while the two Alex manned the booth and distributed swag in the form of t-shirts, stickers, and webcam covers 💗
The hackathon was one of the most successful ones we’ve attended (yet), with 10 amazing, working submissions for our bounty of “Best use of Request Network”. You can view all the submissions we’ve had on Devpost. Our first prize was won by Team Split3, who built a working web3 version of the popular Splitwise app, enabling crypto nomads, hackers, and anyone interested in this tech to split their costs with their friends or traveling companions quickly. The second prize was snatched by Team Proof of Picture, who delivered a solution to fight fake photos as a marketplace where publications can ask for images and people submit images that get verified as non-AI-generated with novel C2PA technology.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this fantastic event! Here’s to the next one 🍻
New hire
Welcome Neil Duffy to the team as a blockchain engineer! Neil started as an electrical engineer for various companies before trying out the academic environment, which promptly got him down the web3 software engineering rabbit hole. His first gig in the blockchain industry was for SmartKx, where Neil was hired as a web3 developer and quickly became the lead developer. He has since moved on to Rocket Lawyer, as a lead software engineer tasked to bring web3 tech to legal payments and agreements. Have we mentioned he was teaching students and kids the fundamentals of coding in his spare time?
His development stack includes expertise in Solidity, bash scripting, web apps (JS, HTML, CSS, etc.), Docker, Google Cloud Platform, CI/CD and virtualization, and AWS and Firebase.
ABOUT REQUEST NETWORK
The Request Network Foundation’s mission is to re-invent accounting and finance by creating a decentralized network of interoperable apps that promotes transparency and real-time reporting.
We inspire and educate developers, partners, and authorities to use the Request Network and build an ecosystem of financial applications together that is open source, seamless and interoperable.
We’re building a network that connects businesses worldwide, giving them ways to do business at the speed of the internet. Come and be a part of tomorrow’s financial revolution!
