…in fact so much has happened that this year we’ve broken the annual wrap up down by month. Let’s jump in:

🔗January

Building on the release of v2 of the network, the team started the year with a focus on network stability and capacity, releasing updates to all node types (Stargates, Gateways, and Hosts) and rolling out updates to enable the monitoring of metrics such as node latency.

We started to accelerate the release cycle for the network, and began posting releasing information to the community in the Discord #releases channel. January, like most months, saw releases every week covering services including Stargate, Gateway, Host, CDN, CLI, Bridge, Explorer, Index, Wallet, and the XE Blockchain, to mention a few.

We also open-sourced the XE Wallet: https://github.com/edge/wallet

At the end of the month, the number of v2 nodes reached 100 for the first time, as community nodes continued their migration from v1.

🔗February

February saw continued growth of the network and the near-completion of legacy stake migrations from v1, with the new v2 stakes locking in over 5% of the total XE supply.

The project continued to deliver regular updates across each of its apps, most notably updating Wallet with the ability to create stakes.

We also open-sourced the XE Explorer: https://github.com/edge/explorer

Towards the end of the month the Earnings oracle was launched, which automatically calculates XE earnings for all contributing nodes each day, and pays them to node operators’ wallets. Over 150,000 XE was paid via the Oracle for January and February earnings.

🔗March

The network continued to grow, reaching 180 nodes. As well as cultivating growth, the project released a significant network enhancement in the ability to handle rolling updates, allowing network nodes to be gradually updated rather than updating all at once. This provided a great additional layer of overall stability.

The ability to synchronise active nodes and their work data was added to Index, providing much more insight into continuous network operations and capacity as well as node distribution across the globe. Explorer was updated to use some of this data, allowing contributors to view recent availability statistics for their nodes.

CDN capabilities were added to Host nodes, enabling them to start processing image assets and serve them through the network.

🔗April

Stargate and Gateway gained the ability to collect Host and CDN metrics, allowing them to be collected by the Earnings oracle and Index.

We also added Index APIs to provide graph data based on these metrics. This in turn enabled the addition of graphs to Explorer and Wallet, visualising node activity across the whole network and enabling contributors to see their nodes’ availability, the number of (CDN) requests handled, and the amount of data being processed.

The iOS Mobile Wallet was released, allowing contributors to access and exchange their XE and EDGE tokens directly from their phone, as well as USDC and Ether. You can access the app here: https://ed.ge/app

An NFT partnership was announced with Mudas Capital, a DAO with the objective of merging venture investing with storytelling and narrative, linked to Fundação Mudas, a Brazilian non-profit that is supporting the long-term conservation and restoration of the country’s rainforests and other biomes.

🔗May

Migration of customers to v2 of the network began, increasing the traffic to, and work done by, v2 nodes.

Stargate, Gateway, and Host continued to receive updates, and the project started to expand the Stargate and Gateway layers with additional nodes, increasing overall capacity in support of growing network usage.

Work began on the Edge Account portal, focusing initially on the core account system and Edge Server functionality. This proved to be a substantial undertaking, with work continuing through the next 5-6 months. With other apps functionally stable - CLI, Index, Wallet et al fully integrated with the network infrastructure at this stage - the core team was able to start focusing on making network services more readily available to customers.

🔗June

The XE blockchain enjoyed its first birthday on the 04th June, and with staked XE approaching 10% of the total supply, we ran a competition rewarding the wallet with the greatest amount of new stakes with a 25,000 XE bonus.

The network remained stable while Stargate, Gateway, and Host received stability and performance updates. Benchmarking and analytics showed excellent real-world results for network performance and customers using the network.

🔗July

The network’s resilience was challenged when a heatwave knocked the data centres of two Edge partners offline. The network remained online throughout.

Development on the underlying platforms for Edge Servers completed, with API connectivity and KVM integration put in place to allow for the seamless launching and control of servers within the network.

Edge Servers were launched in 26 locations around the world in preparation for the deployment of Edge DNS. Edge DNS provides a super fast domain name system free of charge to existing Edge customers. It’s an Edge service providing a decentralised platform running on top of another Edge service in Edge Servers!

Work continued on the Edge Account portal.

🔗August

The core team updated Stargate to improve decentralisation and the distribution of infrastructure-related traffic. Instead of relying on the Index for stake information, Stargates would now synchronise directly with the blockchain and maintain stake indexes internally. As well as improving stake lookup performance, this allowed Stargates to operate independently and with minimal interruption in the event of any blockchain outage or other network disruption, enhancing their resilience.

We also updated Stargate and Gateway with additional metrics for CDN deployments, ahead of upcoming CDN integration into Edge Account. This enabled real-time tracking of network usage, which we use to provide monitoring capability and ensure fair and accurate billing. Gateway also received other performance improvements with better handling of slow requests.

The network continued to grow, reaching a stable average of 200 Host nodes online at any given time.

The Edge Account portal launched in mid-August, providing access to Edge Servers for the first time. Service consumption is paid for with XE, integrating natively with the blockchain. The portal also launched with the ability to purchase XE directly using fiat currencies, providing a simple way for customers to get started with network services.

The legacy stake migration window was closed at the end of the month, signifying completion of the changeover from the v1 network to v2.

🔗September

DNS integration for the Edge Account portal launched. This enables customers to add their domain records to the Edge network and make use of BGP capabilities, enabling faster resolution of both DNS queries and requests to their network assets. Better yet, DNS is free for accounts using any other service available in the Edge Account portal.

We added more capacity to Edge Servers while network capacity and traffic both continued to grow.

🔗October

Edge Content Delivery launched in the Account portal. This enables customers to easily deploy decentralised asset delivery for their websites and apps, utilising the full speed of the network and the processing capabilities of Hosts.

We open-sourced more of the project’s repositories for Hacktoberfest, including the Edge Account portal itself: https://github.com/edge/account

This allows users to run the account system locally, and even white-label it to provide their own cloud offering to customers using Edge infrastructure.

Additional customers were migrated to Edge Accounts, further increasing usage of the network. At this juncture, with the Edge Account system stable, we expanded our focus again and released updates for many of our apps, including CLI, Explorer, and the network apps.

Toward the end of the month live chat support was added to the Edge Account portal. This makes it easier for customers to receive help from the Edge support team regarding any account issues. A paid subscription was also made available for priority support, billed daily in XE in the same way as any other service.

🔗November

The core team kicked off November by releasing Index v2. This project was a ground-up rewrite to improve performance, maintainability, and scalability for the growing network. It takes advantage of new libraries and capabilities developed through the year to massively accelerate blockchain synchronisation, and offers substantially faster APIs that immediately boosted performance in CLI, Explorer, and Wallet.

VNC support was added to the Edge Account portal, enabling access to Edge Servers without leaving the browser. We also released updates to Stargate and other apps in anticipation of further network expansion.

We started work building the Open Governance system, including not only new client and API development, but also major updates to the blockchain protocol.

🔗December

The Governance interface for Edge launched, allowing all XE holders to create proposals to help guide future development and decision-making. XE holders can also comment and vote on proposals. All governance events are on-chain, ensuring that voting outcomes are recorded permanently.

The Governance system as a whole is a significant step towards being able to function effectively as a DAO, and we’re excited to see the community become more involved with the direction of the project.

You can see the first governance proposal here: https://governance.edge.network/proposal/2ebeb0a8ba19586d03ce9b11c0061d34ad7e7a1497fa288fc445d1c22c367b18

🔗What’s in store for 2023

The founders of Edge have been busy detailing their vision for the future of the network. Building on open governance and the move to a full DAO, it’s a bold and exciting positioning for the project. Our vision document will be posted in the next couple of days, and you can expect a handful of governance proposals to follow.

🔗Finally, a thank you

Edge is the world’s first edge network, and it remains at the cutting edge of developments in cloud computing. It’s an in-production, green alternative to the likes of AWS and Google cloud.

A huge thank you to the whole Edge community 🙏. Your ongoing support means a huge amount to the core team, and your involvement is central to the future success of the project. Thank you for being part of the project’s journey.

There’s a lot in store for 2023 👀

In the meantime here’s to a fantastic New Year ❤️