Welcome to the second of our quarterly status reports. We publish these high-level updates every quarter to help keep our community across development progress.
Written By
Joseph Denne
• 1 min read
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Welcome to the second of our quarterly status reports (the first can be seen here). We publish these high-level updates every quarter to help keep our community across development progress. The status reports are in addition to our regular roadmap updates, release notes and in-depth articles.
Q1 2018 has been huge for us. From the closing of the Crowdsale in January, to the high pace of development in our network and web services (1,012 commits since January 01st 💪), we’ve been flat out delivering against the plan that we presented at the end of last year. We’ve grown the team, fleshed out our marketing plans, put new operational structures in place, launched the DADI token on several exchanges, agreed exciting partnerships and kicked off the rollout of our mainnet.
The run up to the DADI Crowdsale was extraordinary by any measure. We found ourselves growing exponentially through early January, despite our limited marketing budgets and refusal to engage in crypto gimmicks like airdrops and bounties. We went into the sale period with a 42,000-strong group on Telegram and 200,000 registered users at dadi.cloud.
Of course anything this large was bound to attract detractors and scammers, and so it was. We’ve written about the worst of this here.
None of that hurt the sale however: we sold out pretty much immediately. And the best thing? We had participants from 123 countries, perfectly reflecting our ambition for the network and the promise of our technology:
The full story
We’ve written a whole bunch about the sale and our experiences. You can read the full story across a series of sequential articles in Medium:
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For a broad look at the detail of the technology of DADI, check out the interview with the team in the 21Cryptos February Edition.
The DADI network
Over the last few months, the core network node apps have rapidly matured significantly. Our network engineering team retooled the proof-of-concept prototype, which was built primarily on NodeJS, in favour of a Golang codebase. This has delivered a host of performance improvements at this layer in our stack — better memory management, faster launch and a 5x average speed increase on request fulfilment. It also provides a more favourable utility sharing structure in the repositories.
Towards the end of the quarter the team increased its focus on build and deployment, targeting cross-platform compiling, repository management, and network-wide synchronization of app manifests. This is crucial in managing the distribution of client applications as we scale the number of connected Hosts from tens to the thousands, and beyond.
Of course the network would be nothing without solid interfaces — something we’ve previously spoken about at length. We’ve grown our UX & Design team, refreshed DADI.cloud (more below!) and are in the final stages of building the UI for the node on-boarding process. Expect to see more of this in the coming days.
Testnet status
We introduced the DADI testnet in January, built on a custom Stargate, Gateway and a whole bunch of Raspberry Pis in our employees’ homes (74 cores across three continents).
We’ve been thrashing it with live traffic for five months now and it’s holding up really well. In a typical 24hr period it’s been handling ~816k requests (3.84/sec), with an average response time of 350ms.
The intention is for our testnet to be available alongside the mainnet, a switchable setting that allows for ad-hoc development and testing in a fee-free environment ahead of project deployment to the mainnet.
Mainnet development
Build out of the Mainnet backbone is underway with a handful of partners, leveraging debt capacity at key points of connectivity to provide a launch network with enough capacity and reach to prove the platform at scale.
DADI’s amorphous network is perfectly setup to leverage debt capacity. There is no single point reliance on individual nodes, and resource utilization scales within configurable parameters. If you have capacity in your network or an underutilized installed device set, DADI can provide an effective route to monetization.
Of course the bulk of the network will be built with computational power contributed by individuals.
Web services
DADI Track
DADI Track — the real-time, streaming data layer in our web services stack — was released to private alpha.
DADI Track is an event tracking server that records user activity using either a tracking pixel built into a website, via a client-side JavaScript library or via an API interface. Track then broadcasts received events to any connected clients.
It is deliberately lightweight. It is not intended to be a long term data storage solution or as a replacement for existing tracking tools such as Google Analytics or the wider DADI platform; rather it is designed to facilitate real-time data dashboarding and piping.
DADI Queue v2.2.0 moved to live. DADI Queue provides a lightweight asynchronous task queue with simple task routing and throttling. You can read a great write up here.
DADI CDN 2.0 was released, bringing a plethora of new functionality to the service, including plugin support, JavaScript transformation, simplified URL paths for assets, WebP support and support for any type of asset.
We’re particularly excited about plugins — modular pieces of user-defined logic with the power to extend the functionality of the core application. They’re analogous to API hooks and Web events, as they allow scripts at a project level to change the normal course of a request with custom behavior.
While all of our web services are conceived as standalone apps, designed to answer the requirements of clearly defined tasks, they are all components of a wider vision that envisages digital products as a collection of microservices that work in concert together.
To this end, DADI Publish now has support for DADI CDN built in. This allows Publish to load images from the same source that API uploads to, removing a step (and improving the performance) in the process of retrieving those assets for display in the Publish interface.
DADI Store moved to Alpha, with the first end-to-end build released to a subset of our testnet. DADI Store utilizes IPFS to facilitate decentralized storage at Host level, with entry points handled at Gateway level and a private chain at Stargate level that is used to secure assets.
Full details on the Alpha of DADI Store will be released in the coming weeks.
DADI Identity
DADI Identity moved to Alpha. Identity provides a CRM layer to help you better manage and improve relationships with your users. Records can be created from the point of first contact, either added manually, imported from a CSV file or created automatically through its API.
DADI Identity is designed to work in tandem with other products, both from DADI and third parties. For example, you might use DADI Track to programmatically send events to Identity to augment a user’s record with browsing or purchasing behaviour within your online properties.
Identity includes hooks and triggers to perform a variety of automated tasks in response to user actions. As one of our engineers puts it, “DADI Identity is the IFTTT (If This, Then That) of CRM tools”.
DADI.cloud update
We’re retooling our site at https://dadi.cloud to provide a comprehensive, one-stop shop for our technology. Our other sites in dadi.tech and forum.dadi.tech are being closed, and their content rolled into the new site.
Here’s a window into the future: a sneak preview of the new DADI site — complete with specially commissioned artwork from Daniel Savage.
The refresh is the first step towards a fully transactional site, to be launched on the back of mainnet go live and enabling the direct purchase of web services from a full-fledged marketplace.
We expect to be moving the refreshed dadi.cloud to live in the coming weeks. Note that it will be hosted on the DADI network.
Look out for more exchange announcements in the coming months.
Operations
Recruitment
We’ve grown! DADI is now 25 strong, with new hires in Engineering, Design and Community management since the close of the Crowdsale.
We still have a bunch of open positions to fill and always interested in hearing from talented people, so if you’re looking for a challenge at the cutting edge, check out our open positions and drop us a line.
A note on market conditions
You will doubtless be aware of the adjustment in the cryptocurrency market in February and March. Our Crowdsale ran with ETH at $1,172.56 — right at the start of bear market, which has seen prices drop by as much as 65%. This has obviously seriously impacted the funds available to the project, however we have taken the necessary steps to address this, whilst preserving the core of our aggressive delivery schedule.
Token value relative to USD has also been impacted significantly, but this has no bearing on the utility of the token in the network.
On the roadmap for Q2
DADI.cloud launch
Mainnet launch!
First web service available on demand
New partnership announcements
+lots, lots more
Finally, a thank you
Being at the forefront of a step change in our industry is extremely exciting. There’ll be no let up in our drive and ambition — our roadmaps are jam packed with deliveries for the rest of the year! (Including the launch of our mainnet.)
The support of the community means a huge amount to us all. Thank you for being part of our journey.
Happy Easter.
Written by Joseph Denne. Joseph is the Founder & CEO of DADI.
