Ecosystem Update - July 2023
Alex Stoicescu
Aug 12, 2023
5 min.
Greetings, Request Network community!
Welcome to the Request Network ecosystem update for July 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 project: Huma Finance (lending and borrowing), Joba Network (future-of-work hiring platform), BSOS (suppy 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
In July we finished updating the Quickstart in the Request Network Docs by:
Embedding CodeSandBoxes in the docs, no need to open a different tab
Adding the Pay a Request section. You can view a quick video demonstration of how this works right here.
We also deployed the ERC20TransferableReceivable v0.2.0 on ETH Mainnet, Goerli, 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.
Last but not least, we deployed the ERC20FeeProxy, ERC20Proxy, EthereumFeeProxy, and EthereumProxy payment contracts on Mantle and Mantle Testnet. We’re still working on getting the payment subgraphs deployed, but once they are, it will be possible to request payments on Mantle.
Major News and Announcements
Joba Network grant
Our latest grant, worth $35k, goes to Joba Network, a company that’s committed to create the infrastructure needed to enable the future of work. Their belief that the future of work lies in fostering collaboration between humans, tech, and organizations strongly resonates with our values at Request Network, on top of a platform that’s simplifying managing payment for freelancers and other workers.
The Joba Network story began in late 2016, with their founder Marisa McKnight as an early CEX employee. Through multiple experiences in later years, including meeting co-founder Toby Gu, Marisa recognized the need for irregular-income people to access the same traditional financial services as regular-income, contract-employed folks. With a fully distributed team of people who have worked for companies such as Blackrock, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, Joba Network is creating a new standard for hiring and productivity in Web3. This is one of the first building blocks to the reputation layer of Request Network – sign up right now with the invite code REQUEST and try out the platform!
Copra Finance – live beta
Back in February, we have announced that a grant of $12k was approved for Copra Finance, a protocol allowing users on Request Network to borrow against future invoices/income, using NFTs. This represents a new use case for on-chain income based financing for the Request Network protocol, where borrowers will create new invoices on our protocol and borrow against them using newly minted NFTs.
At this particular moment, Copra Finance is onboarding the first group of borrowers as part of their beta launch. If you have an outstanding invoice or scheduled payroll on Request Network, you can go to Copra’s website right now to get a loan backed by future income and be part of this exclusive first group of users.
ETHcc
The Request Network team couldn’t have missed the opportunity to attend the biggest web3 event in Europe – EthCC, hosted in Paris for the last time until 2025 (the organizers are moving the event in Brussels for next year, as Paris will be the host of the Summer Olympics). Unlike the previous conference we attended in July (ETHBarcelona), our goal for EthCC was to meet as many potential ecosystem builders as possible, all while facilitating the first IRL meet between 2 current Request Network teammates – Alex Stoicescu and Francisco Pinto.
Having had close to 50 meetings in around 3 days, Alex and Francisco still had time to meet up with Huma Finance, one of the first ecosystem builders of ours – as their product is now live and their collaboration with another ecosystem builder (BSOS) is now public, we’re eager to start placing the first building blocks for a community of builders and developers as well as associated events.
ETHBarcelona
Request Network was one of the hackathon sponsors for ETHBarcelona 2023, held in, you guessed it, Barcelona, during 4-7 July. Our challenge was to build the best payment application using our protocol, with the main prize of $3000 going to Team PromptHunt – check out their winning project on DevFolio. The hackathon itself boasted well over 200 hackers spread out in multiple rooms, over 3 sunny days. Thanks to all the sponsors involved, the total prize pool exceeded $100k, making this a very successful hackathon from both a hacker’s and an organizer’s point of view.
As for the conference, more than 1200 humans converged together to learn, build, collaborate and share best practices. One of the highlights was the boxing ring used to hold debates – hopefully it’ll make a reappearance for next year’s conference! Other than that, the Request Network team, represented by Alex Stoicescu, had a great time talking to so many hackers and builders, all within a very relaxed and quirky atmosphere.
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 ecosystem of financial applications.
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!
