Ecosystem Update - July 2024
Alex Stoicescu
Aug 14, 2024
4 min.
Greetings, Request Network community!
Welcome to the Request Network ecosystem update for July 2024.
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 and TalentLayer (future-of-work platforms), BSOS (supply chain financing), Copra Finance (lending and borrowing), FLock (machine-learning credit scoring), intrXn (payments and invoicing) 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.
Tech update
Deployed Request Invoicing V2
We deployed a new version of our Web3 invoicing template. These are the most important changes:
Builders can now enable support for currencies of their choice, whereas before, they had to use whatever currency was hard-coded
The dashboard no longer crashes if you try to open an unsupported invoice (invoices not created according to our format)
Added support for smaller screens (mobile devices, tablets, etc.)
A new video detailing the integration of this template was uploaded to our docs - check it out here.
Anyone interested in the entire change log for V2, here you go:
Fixed Responsiveness
Fixed the Loading Skeleton beneath the table
Fixed the Status column to update after payment
Fixed when the table doesn't refresh when switching wallet accounts
Allow Issued and Due date in the past
Improve Request creation timeout error
Clicking outside dropdowns now closes them
Migrate from currency map to Currency Manager
Document the Environment Variables in the Readme
Eliminate unneeded dependencies in the web components
Add fallback when trying to render an unsupported invoice
IPFS Incident Resolved
In June, we could not get an accurate transaction count due to an incident involving our IPFS network. To the end users, this incident manifested as an excessively long time to create requests.
This incident has now been resolved. The root cause was that a new IPFS node in our network was created by copying an existing node rather than initializing it from scratch. As a result, the two nodes shared the same IPFS ID which caused confusion and ultimately prevented transferring files between the two nodes. After de-conflicting the IPFS IDs, we confirmed that no files were lost.
Request Receipts (aka. “Pay before Persist”)
In July, we finally merged the “Pay before Persist” feature, first mentioned in our April Ecosystem Update, and it’s available in the Request Network SDK as of version 0.48.0. Key benefits of this feature include:
Payment before Request creation. This allows the request to be a receipt and shortens the critical path for apps to take payments
Flexible persistence from a backend or frontend. The request can be persisted in parallel from an intermediate backend or frontend
Highlights from July
Data Ownership Blog Post
Since we wrote an article about our vision and values, why not detail what each of these values means to us? In July, we tackled the concept of data ownership, which gives individuals control over their data, a fundamental principle of Web3. Financial data is more sensitive than general data, requiring specific ownership frameworks to ensure privacy and security.
Find out more about data ownership in DeFi from the article we wrote.
ETHcc and EDCON 2024
After a short hiatus, part of our team members attended two events in July: ETHcc, which moved to Brussels for the 2024 edition (and committed to Cannes in 2025!), and EDCON, held in Tokyo for the first time.
ETHcc has been a whirlwind of events, with around 500 side events hosted by various blockchain and digital assets industry players. We had only three team members on the ground for ETHcc, so we had to carefully choose our battles - here are a couple of snaps from the events we attended:
After around a week of recuperating from the Brussels madness (to be read as a week of following up with contacts made during the conference), we boarded planes with Tokyo as our destination - EDCON 2024 is awaiting!
EDCON is a traveling Ethereum non-profit event, heavily focused on the development side of things. For 2024, they chose Tokyo as their home and, following in the footsteps of ETHcc, announced that from 2025 onwards, Tokyo will remain their permanent headquarters. We were excited to discover the local builder communities and connect with new projects and blockchain enthusiasts from that part of the world. Here are a couple of snaps from EDCON:
REQ Token Burn
We performed a token burn worth $1,730.5, with 19,121 REQ tokens sent to the burn address.
This brings the total number of tokens burned to 407,925, according to the community-run dashboard.
Protocol Usage in July
The above visual illustrates Request Network transactions (e.g., invoice creation, approval, and/or rejection).
And here it is! July was the first month in Request Network history when we broke the 15,000 transaction barrier! This new record also means that over the course of July, we had a whopping 22537 individual transactions.
Note: a batched transaction can contain multiple individual transactions (such as in the case of a company’s payroll process). The token burn occurs once per batch transaction.
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 Request Network and build an open-source, seamless, and interoperable financial ecosystem.
We’re building a network that connects businesses worldwide, giving them ways to do business at the speed of the internet.
Be a part of tomorrow’s financial revolution.
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