In this article, I’ll first give you a brief rundown of what PWN was up to during May. Then, we’ll have a look at how that ties into what we’ve been up to in June (spoiler alert: It was a huge month).
First things first: You may have noticed that there’s no May monthly digest. That’s because I kept postponing it until suddenly it was the end of June. Given the breakneck speed of our development team’s work, half of the stuff that I was prepared to write for May’s digest is no longer fully up to date (a happy problem to have!).
No more POAP access keys will be dropped (but if you have one, don’t get rid of it!)
One of the first things I wanted to mention in May’s digest is to talk about how we dropped more POAP keys to individuals on our waitlist and how that brings the total number of people with access to the alpha platform to new all-time highs. However, our developments have changed how this process works – I’ll explain this more in a bit.
The bottom line: If you’re a PWN POAP access key holder, make sure that you hold onto your POAP because you’ll be able to have more fun with it down the road. If you didn’t get a PWN POAP, then don’t worry – simply stay active in the community; there are more rewards coming your way.
We PWNed events in May
During the Ethereum meetup in Pilsen, I had the pleasure of talking about getting started in DeFi. Meanwhile, Josef kept very busy with events in May: He took part in SpaghettETH in Milan, BlockSplit, and NFTBerlin (check out his talk on mortgages for cryptonatives).
Each of these events helped us fuel up for the even bigger ones that were coming up next in June (more on those below).
We Twitter Spaced with Kleros
I was joined by Kleros’ Guangmian Kung and Federico Ast from Kleros for an hour-long Twitter Spaces session, during which we talked about undercollateralized loans, decentralized identity, universal basic income in DeFi, and more. You can read an awesome summary of the session for the complete picture.
In May, testing the app was the name of the game
If you’re unaware of the developments around PWN in the past 30 days or so, consider this to be your final hint at what’s coming (!). Let’s just say that our main goal in May was to ensure a top-notch experience for anyone using the lending platform.
June events
We represented PWN during UTXO in Prague
Both Josef and I had several presentations during the awesome UTXO conference organized by (and for) the Czech crypto community. UTXO was unprecedented in more than just one way: In addition to being the largest Czech crypto conference, it also hosted Bitcoiners, Ethereans, and supporters of all other ecosystems under the same roof – without a single disagreement throughout the whole weekend! After such an experience, one must ask if crypto tribalism is really just a myth perpetuated by a small group of (very loud) people on Twitter.
We announced [redacted] during ETHPrague
Just one week after UTXO, we attended (and some of us even helped co-organize *wink wink*) the ETHPrague hackathon. It was by far the most amazing hackathon I’ve ever attended.
We spent a lot of time and effort preparing our booth and a wide selection of merch for this conference (another round of kudos to Petra and the marketing team), and our efforts 100% paid off.
Why spend so much energy on a conference, you might ask? The main reason is this: We used this opportunity to announce that we’re officially launching the PWN platform to the public.
You’ve heard right, PWN is now live! Read the full article here.
PWN entered a public beta mode
The highlight of June’s digest is, without a doubt, the transition of PWN from closed alpha (gated by the POAP access key) to open beta.
The beta platform comes with many upgrades, not only to the UI but also to the underlying PWN protocol. We’ve massively optimized the flow of getting a loan so that getting set up takes much less time and gas. A lot now happens off-chain, so you don’t need to spend gas until you’re certain that you’ll get a loan.
To further address the question of gas and to serve an even wider customer base, we’ve also deployed the protocol to Polygon. What remains the same is that you can still get a loan with any DeFi compatible asset, such as ERC-20 tokens, or the ERC-1155 and ERC-721 NFT standards. In other words, you can get a sweet loan using your BAYC or a CryptoPunk as collateral, but as usual (and especially with the Polygon deployment), you can also get a loan using some of your more exotic assets (e.g. your gaming NFTs!).
There’s no time like the present: Check out the beta platform right now!
As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback on what we’ve built. If you have any thoughts, questions, or need help getting set up, make sure you head over to our Twitter and talk to us! We’ll be more than happy to chat with you.
That’s it from me at this time. I promise that I’ll stick to the deadline with the next monthly digest installment. :)
Have a wonderful July, everyone!
Steve