Switcheo announces Q2 2019 development roadmap with April atomic swaps

Switcheo Exchange, a Singapore-based decentralized exchange that is currently hosting markets on the NEO and Ethereum blockchains, has made its development plans public for the second quarter of 2019 and beyond. Switcheo CEO and co-founder Ivan Poon made the announcement, along with a look back at the goals that the development team accomplished in the first quarter of the year.

Switcheo CCO and co-founder Jack Yeu also held an AMA session on April 4th, 2019 in the public Telegram channel of “dbcrypto,” a Youtube personality and cryptocurrency researcher. The AMA followed CEO Ivan Poon’s interview with NEO News Today on March 30th, 2019, celebrating its first anniversary on the NEO blockchain’s MainNet.

Cross-Chain Trading

Switcheo has announced that its “Atomic Swap” feature will enter private beta on April 16th, 2019. If the beta goes smoothly, Switcheo aims to list its first cross-chain offering, a SWTH/ETH market pairing, sometime in the third week of April.

EOS Blockchain

EOS trading is expected to be added to Switcheo Exchange in the quarter, with an “estimated beta date” of the last week of April 2019.

Switcheo Chain

Switcheo has been pushing forward with development of its previously announced independent blockchain, Switcheo Chain. As previously reported by NEO News Today, Switcheo’s upcoming “DEX Chain” is expected to use public validators who stake its SWTH tokens. These validator nodes are necessary to operate a truly decentralized cross-chain exchange without the possibility of front-running orders.

Switcheo has announced that the project is “adjusting [their] token model slightly,” which is claimed to “increase utility for the existing token” beyond the reduction of trading fees. More details are forthcoming “over the next weeks” about these changes.

Switcheo Chain is planned to use a delegated Proof of Stake consensus model on Tendermint. It is designed to work with simple, trustless smart contracts to enable deposits and withdrawals. An MVP is tentatively scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2019.

Additional Blockchain

Switcheo plans to add another unnamed blockchain in Q2 2019. Development work “has begun” on integration, and an announcement is to follow at a later date.

However, the blockchain is not QTUM, a previously announced blockchain that has been placed on “indefinite hold” by Switcheo due to “a lack of activity” within its ecosystem. Switcheo does not rule out adding QTUM support through a smart contract gateway after its independent Switcheo Chain is operational.

Interface and dAPI

Details of the Switcheo Exchange user interface continue to be under development. The team has also taken a look at the proposed dApp provider interface, and will be suggesting changes and improvements to achieve “fully seamless interoperability.” Switcheo also intends to support recently launched NEO wallets.

Quality of Life

Other improvements Switcheo plans to integrate into its existing product in Q2 include:

• Distribution of GAS for traders’ NEO held in the Switcheo contract
• Dust-to-SWTH trading for small token balances
• Full ERC-20 support for Switcheo’s OTC platform

Switcheo also plans to increase the open-source percentage of its codebase and accept public contributions for certain aspects of the exchange. The team specifically mentions its switcheo-js library, the front-end web client, and bots for market making and 3rd-party trading.

Other Possibilities in Q2

Switcheo’s fiat gateway partners have met legal and engineering difficulties that have pushed back Switcheo’s fiat offerings into the second quarter of 2019 or beyond. For their part, Switcheo claims to have “already completed active development since December” of 2018.

Switcheo has also been considering the possibility of offering Initial Exchange Offerings through its platform and is “on the lookout for strong projects which fulfil our criteria” before acting.

Switcheo’s full development roadmap and announcement can be viewed at the following link:https://medium.com/switcheo/switcheo-q2-2019-roadmap-8daeb395a0c1