Despite a challenging 2023, Everscale is set to reach new heights. This article will highlight the critical milestones for network development this year.
Protocol
Several long-awaited innovations are expected to launch in 2024. After many experiments, the protocol development team, including specialists from EverX and Broxus, has decided to take a course toward ensuring the fast finality of the network, which is a cornerstone of all further development.
Fast Finality
This movement includes technical research and the testing of several technologies, including Reliable External Message Protocol (REMP), Soft Majority Fault Tolerant (SMFT) consensus, Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG), and several other approaches.
The first one, REMP, was released in January 2024 after months of thorough testing on the testnet. It has shown some promising results but the team will continue to monitor its performance.
The next one, the well-known SMFT, has been implemented on the protocol level, yet it still needs some crucial pieces required for the full-scale launch, including a new elector. SMFT has been switched on in shadow mode on the mainnet to help the research group collect the required data and test its performance. The new elector is expected to arrive in Q4, opening the door for the most significant network upgrade since moving to Rust nodes from C++ ones.
Several other fast finality approaches, including DAG (known thanks to such blockchains as Aptos, IOTA, and Hedera), are being actively researched by engineers and may be introduced to optimize the network's speed.
Connectivity
As announced by Broxus founder Sergey Shashev and described in a paper prepared by Alexander Alexeev, one of Everscale's primary objectives is to offer protocol-level connectivity with other networks. The concept of bridgeless Mesh networks is expected to arrive at the testnet in Q2 and be released on the mainnet by the end of the year.
Mesh network technology is crucial for ensuring proper connectivity between public and private networks, especially the ones built using TVM technology. Given the rising popularity of CBDCs and regulated stablecoins, such networks are expected to boom shortly.
Versatility
Currency Collections is one of the features that have been known since the original publication of the Everscale whitepaper yet haven’t been implemented. In 2024, we plan to change this: C/Cs are expected to come as early as Q2. For those who are not familiar with the concept, C/Cs allow you to use not one but several native coins within one network. The research team is now addressing some questions to make it possible to implement this feature in the mainnet.
Another concept that will open new doors for decentralized applications on Everscale is the implementation of zero-knowledge primitives in the blockchain core. It will allow apps to build genuinely secure user flows already in Q2 2024.
Programmability
In 2024, we plan to expand the set of bindings for Nekoton, a light and robust SDK for network interactions. Although nascent as a wallet core, Nekoton has become a powerful engine for building Everscale-powered applications. The first binding for Java is expected to arrive in Q2.
Moreover, the network will offer shared on-chain libraries for smart contract developers, which will help them optimize the code base and make it more efficient and secure. Such library cells are scheduled for the end of the year.
Ecosystem
The Everscale ecosystem will achieve several crucial milestones this year. We will highlight only the most important ones, yet we expect many minor updates and new projects.
Octus Bridge introduced the fully functional Solana bridge in Q1. This bridge will allow projects and users to transfer data and tokens from and to Solana seamlessly and has opened a new charter of non-EVM blockchains connected with Octus. Moreover, the bridge received a fresh update to its transfer interface in the same quarter, making it easier and more convenient to use.
Closer to the end of the year, we are expecting two crucial updates from the Bridge team that will introduce a new economic model for the BRIDGE token and add support for the native Bitcoin.
Next, in Q1, a fully revamped Protolend will see first light. It will offer essential functionality for lending and borrowing on Everscale. Additionally, the second version is being developed in parallel. In Q2, it will offer cross-chain liquidation mechanisms and serve as an excellent liquidity protocol not only for Everscale but also for all other networks connected to Octus Bridge.
Moreover, in Q2, the FlatQube team plans to release the cross-chain swaps mechanism, which will be helpful not only for ordinary users but also for advanced DeFi protocols, like Protolend. In addition, Clustex, another Broxus product, will be released on Everscale, offering a different approach to on-chain DEXes.
Later, in Q3, we can’t wait to see the release of SparX. This renowned Web3 wallet will combine the advantages of EVER Wallet with all the latest in wallet technology, making it ideal for new community members while keeping it compatible with EVER Wallet’s in-page provider.
Another Q3 release is the public launch of StableTek, a CBDC and stablecoin management package offered by Broxus to large corporations and governments. This solution will offer anyone willing to develop their stablecoin project on Everscale an industrial-grade functionality and compliance with the best market practices.
Last but not least, at the end of this year, Everscale will become closer to the offline world with the launch of the NFC cards and terminals project, which will be disclosed later down the road.
Community
2023 was, without ambiguity, a challenging year for the Everscale community. However, the marketing team has managed to restructure the social media channels, build a new design language, and polish the community activation mechanics.
In 2024, we plan to keep on and leverage our well-performing mechanics to keep the community alive and grow it even further.
We will highlight a few fundamental approaches employed throughout the year without going into too much detail.
Let’s start with Everscale Quests, a fully on-chain game mechanism that introduces newcomers to the ecosystem and its essential products. Everscale is an open framework, so any project on Everscale willing to introduce itself can offer certain benefits to quest participants. We expect Everscale Quests to arrive in early Q2. Before that, we will continue leveraging the well-tested Zealy quests and make them even more exciting and entertaining.
Next, we will run several community activation mechanisms in partnership with significant ecosystem projects. The marketing team is currently focused on building the communication and activation plan and will disclose it step-by-step.
In Q3, we aim to restructure the developer activation program to make it more transparent and attractive. Our ambition is to increase the number of active projects and users in the network.
This is all in addition to the day-to-day content management that keeps the community informed about the important events happening in Everscale.
Partnerships & Liquidity
Everscale business developers have not been sitting still. Hundreds of negotiations are happening simultaneously behind the scenes, with the aim of promoting Everscale as an ideal solution for real businesses.
Although we can only disclose the specific partnerships once they have happened due to NDAs, we can give you a sneak peek of what will happen this year.
The first thing worth mentioning is making Everscale more accessible for ordinary people by introducing easy-to-use on- and off-ramp solutions. As you can see, our partnership with Simplex was renewed, and many other providers are also upcoming. We aim not only to offer EVER but also to make it possible to buy and sell TIP3 tokens with bank cards, opening a new door for ecosystem projects.
Consequently, we expect to see the first CEX listings of TIP3 tokens this year. We are currently negotiating with several exchanges to create such a window of opportunities and make Everscale even more attractive for new and existing products.
In Q2, we aim to finalize the Korean incident resolution and swap all of the old WEVER tokens. This will help us relaunch in Korea and reactivate the market. Paired with the scheduled stop of emission in Q3, it shall give a new boost for the tokenomics of the network.
Last but not least, one of this year's key objectives is to attract liquidity providers to make EVER and network tokens more liquid and available in the open market. This will help us make the Everscale ecosystem suitable for investors and protocols. Currently, the business development team is helping to negotiate the liquidity for two upcoming projects: Protolend and a new perpetual exchange to be released in Q3.
This roadmap is just the tip of the iceberg, with many new developments and activities to come this year outside it. However, even the announced milestones will allow the network to regain its power and become one of the most popular protocols of 2024.
