[Grant Proposal] trader.xyz

[nikita]

What category best describes your grant request?

1. 0x orderbook
2. 0x protocol feature development‌

Grant amount requested (grants will be awarded in $ZRX tokens)

1M $ZRX (0xEVE note: grant would be split between $ZRX and $MATIC as the app will be multi-chain)

Point of contact information (email, twitter, discord, telegram, etc.)

‌@usetrader on twitter

Team background (or applicant if there is no team)

Core team is comprised of two former 0x core team members (Patryk Adas - former Matcha lead designer, and John Johnson - former Matcha lead engineer)

Project background (if existing project)

‌Trader.xyz is a dapp that provides a user-focused trading experience with the goal of becoming the flagship, 0x-powered application for discovering and trading NFTs

Description of work to be funded (and how funds will be used)

‌Funds will be used to quickly ramp up development and design capabilities to add features, grow the user base, and drive volume

Budget breakdown (prefer some mapping to timeline, milestones, or desired outcomes)

Operations: marketing, artwork, general admin, expenses, taxes, etc.
Talent: 2-3 full-time, US-based developers + 1 designer + contractors-for-hire
Potential milestone payment increments:

1. Integration of 0x v3 (property-based orders)
2. Open marketplace (in addition to OTC)
3. Multichain (Polygon initially, and any L2 chains in the future)
4. Documentation and quickstart

Benefit to 0x ecosystem (prefer quantifiable)

‌1. Become the gold standard for exchanging NFTs with 0x protocol
2. Enable 0xDAO to build organic development capabilities
3. Improve protocol documentation and developer resources
4. Add OSS API protocol features (https://twitter.com/johnjohnson/status/1437062546628952067)

Risk/Reward factors (not required but will help us assess and score)

Risks include competition, mindshare, flywheel of liquidity, etc.‌ We believe our product and team have the potential to mitigate these risks and bring to market several features and capabilities that will be market-leading.

Additional info (anything else you think is important for us to consider)

Our team has a track record of delivering high quality projects, and In order for us to continue our work, we need capital and support. We prefer not to go the venture capital route and instead work directly with the 0xDAO for the best synergies and to align value with 0x. We proved out an initial brand, design, and engineering concept via OTC orders, and it is already the highest quality OTC swap on the market. We would like to work with 0xDAO directly to make sure 0x has a foothold in the NFT market as it continues to evolve and develop. We want to do what Matcha did for DEX ERC20 trading.

---

Additional info from 0xEVE

The 0xEVE team has been actively seeking out projects that will expand protocol relevance in the NFT space. In our opinion, this project presents a compelling opportunity to drive both near- and long-term impact on protocol adoption and ecosystem value capture. We are eager to work with the trader.xyz team to realize their vision and deliver results for ZRX stakeholders. While the amount requested is large, we believe the risk/reward potential is extremely favorable.

After our initial evaluation of the grant application and several discussions with the trader team, we present our scoring of the opportunity below. Please note that we are currently exploring options for structuring the payments, should the grant be approved.

Call to Action

Please add to the discussion and/or ask your questions in the thread below. A snapshot vote to gauge community sentiment for bringing this proposal to an on-chain vote will be posted within the next ten (10) days. If approved, the grant will be disbursed from the community treasury in accordance with the terms in the final proposal (TBD).

[mintcloud]

Such a good fit for a Treasury grant, as highlighted in the score obtained.

People behind this are absolute superstar, based on real (even pre-COVID!) life experience.

Personally, before kicking off the operations for the votes, I think the community would greatly appreciate getting from more details about the project and milestones, directly from the team itself!
The details shared in the application are great btw, was mostly curious to know whether those milestones are “potential” or the actual plan.

[JoaoCampos89]

Checking the app, it is really a good nice UI with good initial features. However, proposal is not clear about where this amount of 1M in $ZRX and Polygon will impact the protocol or 0xDAO value, there are no funds reimbursement depending on goals, like user acquisition or volume metrics. What is the current metrics that the app already reached? The final proposal will have this information?

It looks the DAO is being used to fund in entiry a project and not get participation, the app will be open source? For these kind of funding to bring the “gold of NFT”, I would expect at least NFT protocol integration on version v4 with advanced additional features that are currently available on OpenSea (Dutch and English Auctions) but not on 0x V3. What means “Enable 0xDAO to build organic development capabilities”? this is not clear. There is plans to launch a token to power this application in the future? if yes, how much the DAO will get? In my opinion, a 1/10 of the current funding should be more than acceptable for what is shown publicly on the current proposal.

[patryk]

Thank you for wrapping up the proposal, Nikita! We’ve really enjoyed the process so far and your help

@mintcloud

Such a good fit for a Treasury grant, as highlighted in the score obtained. People behind this are absolute superstar, based on real (even pre-COVID!) life experience.

Thank you!

Personally, before kicking off the operations for the votes, I think the community would greatly appreciate getting from more details about the project and milestones, directly from the team itself!

Of course! We have split our development into three parts: core product (Trader.xyz), brand and marketing content, developer’s tooling.

Core product

Trading experience consists of three stages: discovery, settlement, and management. We want to start with a clear incentive to create orders, and once we have enough traction, expand the product into discovery and eventually portfolio management. The biggest opportunity right now lies in the way the trade is executed - more flexibility to your order and no fees puts us in a very advantageous market position across the chains.

We’ve expanded more on the roadmap in the blogpost here:
https://medium.com/traderxyz/welcome-trader-trade-with-friends-8d4698d1a600

Brand and marketing content

Trust is extremely important in this space. We want to establish it by providing educational material about NFTs space and Trader’s position in it. We want to show the mechanics of smart contracts in an approachable way and explain why it’s the safest and best way to swap your tokens.

To do so, we want to hire Mateusz Turbiński and Piotr Wojtczak. We’ve worked together before on numerous occasions (3+ years) and I am very confident that we will be able to deliver very quality content that not only attracts attention to Trader but also establishes the position of 0x as an industry leader.

Dev tooling

We will provide a simple API for effortless token swaps and a robust NFT indexer.

@JoaoCampos89

Checking the app, it is really a good nice UI with good initial features.

Thank you, Joao! Happy you like it

Proposal is not clear about where this amount of 1M in $ZRX and Polygon will impact the protocol or 0xDAO value

Developing a consumer product has lots of advantages for both the protocol and the DAO. Beyond the growth of the volume itself, Trader should allow 0x to create tighter feedback loops between user demand and development efforts. It serves as an example of what’s possible to build on top of the protocol and attracts new developers into the ecosystem. For example: https://twitter.com/mehranhydary/status/1435235160275001348

We hope that we will be able to collaborate closely with the 0xDAO team, so Trader can be used as a role model for decentralized efforts to foster creativity and development in the ecosystem.

It looks the DAO is being used to fund in entiry a project and not get participation, the app will be open source?

The application and brand will be closed source. Tooling and all the proprietary developer-facing materials will be open source.

What is the current metrics that the app already reached? The final proposal will have this information?

We’re working on setting up Dune Analytics. We will have it ready this week.

I would expect at least NFT protocol integration on version v4 with advanced additional features that are currently available on OpenSea (Dutch and English Auctions) but not on 0x V3

Fair assumption! I think one of the great benefits of building a consumer product is that it lets us verify the real demand and build things people want. Even though Dutch and English auctions seem great, we have not yet seen a big consumer demand in this area. It does not mean we will not consider it, I just think it is not essential for now and there are much bigger opportunities to seize with the resources we have.

What means “Enable 0xDAO to build organic development capabilities” this is not clear

This relationship can inspire more developers to engage with 0xDAO - especially in the context of NFTs and novel trading capabilities that are currently underserved.

In my opinion, a 1/10 of the current funding should be more than acceptable for what is shown publicly on the current proposal.

The opportunity cost for experienced builders in this space is very big. We want to make sure that we can commit to this project for the longer term. Assuming that we want to scale the team to 5-6 people, 1MM would provide us unbothered focus for approx. 12 months, during which we can prove that Trader works and attracts volume. We are working with 0xEVE team to explore options for structuring the payments and milestones.

There is plans to launch a token to power this application in the future? if yes, how much the DAO will get?

We do not know yet. We want to work closely with DAO to define future partnership opportunities.

Thank you for your comments! I would be happy to expand on anything that’s unclear, so we make sure that everyone’s on the same page.

[cryptohydrate]

Good morning,

CryptoHydrate here, I tested 0x staking eons ago and met Patryk at 0xpo.

I have tested the trader.xyz platform in its beta state and found some features that I appreciate, such as the numbering of the token in the UI to help ensure the correct one is selected. I also shared some feedback on my OpenSea experience and what I’d like to see from the new platform.

As an experienced NFT curator, collector and trader I like the direction of the roadmap and believe the team has the coding and audit experience to fulfill this safely and securely.

I support the decision for this grant and will be providing marketing and content support for the platform as an enthusiastic community member. Example, a bundle from Kaija who I mentor through Hydrate Labs: https://twitter.com/ArtKaija/status/1433916314662342657?s=20

Good luck and I will vote yes. I hope to see a small chunk of the budget go to:

1. Collecting art from early adopters of the platform for a Trader.xyz vault to benefit both trader.xyz and 0x
2. Marketing expenses to be used to network with galleries to have NFT exhibitions and fund hosting of auctions / physical events where users can buy directly from 0x trader on-site via QR codes.

Good luck, you have my support.

-Drew (CryptoHydrate)

[PirosB3]

Hi guys!

So happy to see this proposal here. I was curious why you are considering doing the work on 0x V3 (that contains protocol fees which may complicate the UI)? Would it be rather better to update 0x V4 orders to handle NFTs? Could this be something that can be added to the scope of this grant?

[PirosB3]

@cryptohydrate

Collecting art from early adopters of the platform for a Trader.xyz vault to benefit both trader.xyz and 0x

How would you imagine collecting art could benefit value to 0x?

[johnrj]

Hi all,

I’m a contributing engineer on Trader.xyz and wanted to just share my thoughts around the grant proposal:

There has been a clear paradigm shift with regard to NFTs. I’ve been privileged to closely watch the long arc of NFT influence grow throughout the crypto community year by year, month by month. I’ve personally collected CryptoKitties and Gods Unchained cards since the early days, probably like a lot of you. Admittedly, early on I was hesitant to invest time and effort into NFT dApps, with DeFi having a larger TAM and the NFT ecosystem being extremely nascent. However, as of late, it’s clear that a rubicon has been crossed and the NFT ecosystem can no longer be ignored.

NFTs have won a strong foothold in both crypto culture and pop culture alike. Celebrities own Punks and Bored Apes as social status. Retail users have grokked NFTs orders of magnitude faster than DeFi. Art enthusiasts and crypto enthusiasts both admire generative NFT art, with Fidenzas commanding more worth than some historic pieces of physical fine art hanging in museums. Digital artists are now empowered to create and publish, earning a living with NFTs. It’s a brave new world, and the landscape is much different than a year or two ago, which means it is time for 0x to reevaluate the NFT ecosystem.

With the new public boom of NFTs, it’s time to launch a focused effort with the 0x protocol around NFTs, regaining mindshare and market share in the NFT market. The 0x v2 and v3 protocol contain some of the most optimized, efficient, and advanced functionality for NFTs in the smart contract world. From creating any type of auction, to P2P bundles, to property-based orders, we’ve just scratched the surface on applying the 0x protocol to these nascent and emerging NFT markets. Due to timing the 0x protocol never hit an inflection point with NFTs, and is currently idling waiting for a team to unlock its potential.

Currently there is no flagship NFT application for 0x. That must change. Having a flagship application for a protocol is extremely important, almost a necessity in crypto. Flagship applications encourage developers to join in and build alongside, providing confidence they won’t hit a dead end half-way through their product development cycle. Flagship applications encourage users to support the protocol, as it is generally their primary way of interacting with the protocol! It’s a beautiful flywheel that has shown up in crypto time and time again. Matcha served as a case-study and flagship example of what can be done with the 0x API, which then set off a cambrian explosion of 0x API integrations and usage. I think the same playbook can be executed for the 0x protocol and NFTs – it just takes one top-tier consumer facing app to tip the scale.

We need a feature-rich NFT exchange to showcase the 0x protocol’s NFT capabilities that both users and developers can learn from. Strategically with regard to competition, many other popular protocols are starting to build out NFT trading functionality (Sushiswap, Rarible v2, Zora, Foundation, etc – the list is getting quite extensive), however none possess the capabilities that 0x v2/v3 have. It’d be a strategic error to cede mindshare and market share to these newcomers, especially when there is a well-audited, well-documented and lindy protocol that satisfies the needs of users and developers today – 0x. And that’s where Trader comes in.

Trader wants to be that flagship 0x NFT app. With Patryk – one of the most experienced crypto designers in the space – leading the Trader product, this is an extremely rare opportunity for 0x to support the development of this application and align interests with Trader. As a ZRX holder and 0x supporter and contributor myself, we need to bet – and bet big – on Trader, as it is the one viable shot we have at winning the NFT protocols race.

Trader.xyz prefers going the grant route so there is a strong alignment between 0x community and Trader. With a DAO funded, milestone-based approach (unlike a VC funded approach) we can make sure that Trader makes decisions that are best for the protocol and the 0x community, like open-sourcing developer tooling, sharing better libraries, and making the roadmap accessible to the community.

While some may balk at the grant price tag, I’d actually argue it’s an incredible deal for the DAO and 0x community. I have been watching these forums closely since day one and I can confidently say: Trader is single-handedly the best +ev bet the DAO will make to date. We need the DAO to bet on Trader, as it may be one of our only shots at becoming a category leader. We cannot and should not do this half-way. Trader.xyz needs resources and the commitment of the 0x DAO so that it can go full throttle and live up to its true potential.

My message to the 0x DAO and ZRX holders: Fund ambitious projects, and think strategically. We can’t be sitting on these funds forever, the opportunity cost is too high. The DAO is being handed an opportunity completely teed up – strong brand, strong team, strong market tailwinds, strong roadmap, strong MVP live in production today – it doesn’t get better than this. The grant request price is firm, as Trader.xyz needs to know we have the full support of the community, both financially and socially in order to commit. Real product development is both financially and resource intensive; Design, marketing, illustrations, animations, frontend developers, backend engineers, community management, testing, usability studies, legal fees for DAO incorporation – it adds up quickly. It’s much more than writing and pushing code. To me this proposal embodies why the 0x DAO was created – to fund ambitious projects that strengthen the 0x protocol flywheel while keeping incentives aligned.

The 0x core has built an amazing protocol. Let Trader handle the NFT side of the house and work alongside the core team and the community to make 0x the de-facto NFT trading protocol.

John

[PirosB3]

@johnrj

The 0x v2 and v3 protocol contain some of the most optimized, efficient, and advanced functionality for NFTs in the smart contract world. From creating any type of auction, to P2P bundles, to property-based orders, we’ve just scratched the surface on applying the 0x protocol to these nascent and emerging NFT markets. Due to timing the 0x protocol never hit an inflection point with NFTs, and is currently idling waiting for a team to unlock its potential.

Would Trader be willing to port the V2 NFT capability (ERCs 721, 1155) to our new 0x V4 order formats? If this was the case, then the grant itself would not only cover the Trader product, but it would also cover a protocol upgrade that would essentially allow anyone in the world to use 0x V4 NFT functionality. Since 0x V4 orders are more gas efficient, and since they are the most recent order format, using the latest version of the protocol for NFT trading would be more “bullish” for 0x.

[johnrj]

I think for the sake of this grant we’re focused on v2 and v3; However, if we can get resources to work on porting v3 to v4, trader.xyz would switch over immediately.

Thinking even longer term, I think there’s also a world where you can post NFT orders to 0x API SRA one day. That’d be really cool

[Miyp]

Great proposal… Please do add the integration and innovation into 0x ecosystem part with regards to NFT in v2

[hamzahkhan]

This looks great - the Polygon team and community will support and benefit from this collaboration a lot.
Looking forward to seeing this materialize.

[JoaoCampos89]

I really like a lot of all answers to support the grant, but would to know if you guys on final proposal will give more numeric insights about the grant results and proposed staggered funding, and depending on that results the grant is continued.

As example:

Like Q1 we plan to have property orders which will get at least 1000 users or volume Y generated on ZRX protocol, this gives us better judgement how allocation will give in return for the protocol. Basically on each feature we can measure as Dao what feature impacts more on results.

@johnrj

Trader.xyz prefers going the grant route so there is a strong alignment between 0x community and Trader. With a DAO funded, milestone-based approach (unlike a VC funded approach) we can make sure that Trader makes decisions that are best for the protocol and the 0x community, like open-sourcing developer tooling, sharing better libraries, and making the roadmap accessible to the community.

These milestones will be available on final proposal?

I maintain my position of grant to big till I get more numeric insights on this.

[nikita]

Thanks everyone for the comments, questions, and suggestions! Additional details regarding the roadmap, milestones and payment structure will be added in the next few days. The plan is to incorporate those new details into the snapshot poll, which we hope to post NLT Friday or Saturday.

[patryk]

Thank you for all the comments! As announced earlier, happy to share additional details around the roadmap, milestones, and payment structures.

Trader.xyz Roadmap

We categorize the Trader Roadmap into three distinct parts:

• Trader.xyz product
• Developer tooling
• Open-source product(s)

Please note that this roadmap is subject to change. We want to include the community as we develop features, so based on community input and market conditions, the roadmap can and will adjust. Trader.xyz wants to be able to quickly capitalize on compelling market trends and integrate the latest NFT protocols as needed or desired.

Trader will also work closely with the core 0x team to facilitate any upgrades or integrate new features. Trader exists to showcase the power of the 0x protocol and will act in the best interest of the 0x protocol and community.

Trader.xyz Product

More OTC Options (1-2 months)

We want Trader to be a go-to destination for token swaps with friends. Best user experience, from any token to any token over the hyperlink. To do so, we still need to support NFT to NFT and ERC20 to ERC20.

NFT to NFT

Enable easy to use swapping of any NFT(s), to any NFT(s). Select your token, provide an address of your counter-party and conveniently select its token or paste a token contract.

ERC20 to ERC20

Direct integration of 0x API, simple OTC swap

Bid/Offer system

Inbox for offers directly baked into Trader

Counter-offer system

Multichain support (1 month)

Trader will support three chains in the upcoming months:

• Ethereum
• Polygon
• Avalanche

Marketplace (3-4 months)

Order page

NFT listing page will include the following

• Price floors
• Provide more comfort around verified smart contracts
• Link to a family
• History/past owners
• View counts
• Trading history
• Tech details
• Artist bio
• Rarity
• Other insights the community deems valuable

Collection Page

• Customization options for communities - the easiest way to launch your token (Shopify)
• Focus on price floors
• Rarity.tool’s like features
• Search, filtering, standard features you’d expect from an exchange.

Discovery page

• Your front page of NFT world
• Simple aggregated view of price floors
• Losers / Gainers / Most discussed
• Work with communities on cross-marketing and projects section (learn more - exclusive for Trader?)*

Growth-based features (2-3 months)

Trader page

• Your own shareable profile that lists all your trades, profits and collections. Good for influencers and trading collectives. Track realized profits over time, etc.
• Integrate Twitter OAuth to verify accounts, integrate web2<>web3

Leaderboards / Contests

• Make the trading experience more social. We have a lot of ideas to share here!

Better drops experience

• One feature request we keep getting is a better way to do “NFT drops”. We want to explore the UX around this and leverage different auction types via 0x v3 to experiment with best use cases.

Real-time trading with peers

• Put your items on sale in real-time, confirm to trade, similarly to WoW / Runescape

Short/Long NFTs

• With Rari’s Fuse permissionless liquidity pools that support lending and borrowing, users can now fractionalize an NFT and provide ways to go long or short against a particular NFT. We would like to integrate a best-of-class way to easily “long” an NFT (e.g. go long on a CryptoPunk or short on a Bored Ape!)

Developer Tooling

One of our primary goals building out trader.xyz is to build, dogfood, and distribute open-source developer tooling for using the 0x protocol with NFTs. To us, this is one of the core value props of the trader.xyz grant (in addition to a flagship customer-facing application).

Right now, setting up an NFT exchange with 0x is challenging, and there is a lot of legwork involved with encoding asset bundles, munging data, and persisting and maintaining trades in an orderbook. It makes it hard to ‘quickly’ integrate the 0x protocol. We want to make it as easy as ‘npm install 0x-nft-sdk’ and with a few function calls be able to swap – similar to how the 0x API streamlined ERC20 exchange. For example, New entrants into DeFi should be able to quickly start an NFT exchange at a hackathon without having to understand the underlying contracts.

While we intend to keep the proprietary parts of Trader.xyz closed-source (e.g. components and UI-specific brand and design), we intend to open-source everything else – the underlying frameworks we’ve built and best practices for interfacing with the 0x protocols via JavaScript.

In short, we plan to offer:

• A simplified JavaScript SDK
• React hooks library out-of-the-box ready to swap NFTs.
• An open-orderbook API anyone can access and post to, so developers don’t have to run their own orderbook backend

Our main goal is for a hackathon participant to be up and running with NFT trading via 0x in less than 30 minutes, so developers can focus on the unique part of their application.

If we do our job right, we expect to see more developer interest and friendly competition to trader.xyz, but as long as developers are using the 0x protocol and strengthening the 0x flywheel, we are happy. We welcome any competition as long as they are using the 0x protocol

Open-source Products

In addition to developer tooling, there is a huge demand for some core infrastructure for NFTs. Specifically, we want to focus on building and productionizing an open-source NFT indexer.

NFT Indexer

Right now, most NFT products depend on OpenSea’s API to pull metadata and order data. We see this as an existential threat, as do many NFT platform developers. If OpenSea were to close off their API, many NFT products would cease to function correctly.

Trader.xyz is building an NFT indexer which combines on-chain sales and transfers with off-chain metadata lookups. This NFT indexer is currently in development. Towards the end of development, this will be open-sourced and offered as a hosted solution for free to the NFT community.

The NFT indexer will have the same API as OpenSea, so developers will only have to change the root url to point to the new Trader NFT indexer instead of the OpenSea API and everything should Just Work.

We believe there is a strategic and synergistic integration between an NFT indexer web2 API and our open-orderbook API down the road.

With this NFT indexer, the community can pull-request and contribute new ways to index NFTs easily, and we expect it to become a shared community good across the NFT space if successful. Currently no one is approaching the problem this way and we believe we have the chance to be a first-mover and establish mindshare with the community. Eventually this can even be rolled up into the 0x API if successful. We believe this product will help trader.xyz and 0x establish mindshare and thought-leadership by doing the right thing for the community.

Budget Request

Trader.xyz is requesting 1MM USD (split between MATIC and ZRX tokens) to be streamed to the developer wallet over a 12 month duration. All fund usage will be on-chain and transparent.

At any point in the product development process, the grant stream can be paused or cancelled if the Trader.xyz team is deemed to be not providing satisfactory results by the 0xDAO and/or 0x community.

Budget breakdown

Over one year we would like to allocate the following estimates:

Engineering:

• $350k - 2-3 full-stack engineers @ 100-150k USD wrapper rate
• $50k - Solidity contracting budget for extending 0x V3, broker smart contracts.
• $100k for one year of technical OpEx budget
  • Alchemy, web2 servers through Google Cloud, Twillio services, etc

Design:

• $250k - 2 designers @ 100-150k USD wrap rate
• $100k for two part time illustrators @ $50k each wrap rate

Marketing

• $50k - Content writing, educational materials about 0x NFT capabilities and trader.xyz
• $50k - Sponsorships, community incentives (e.g. trading competition), hackathon prizes.

Finance/Legal

• $50k for legal services and budget for part-time finance consultation.

[nikita]

The snapshot poll to move this forward to a vote will be live in 15 minutes and will be open for 5 days.
Voting is free!

https://snapshot.org/#/0xgov.eth/proposal/Qmcf2C3KmQ1W1XBGownLWsA8yX9hpzY6peLUGKNJnPzN9y

[Brianmorgan]

I am favor of this. I swapped 50 nfts on trader.xyz for $8 worth of WETH to move my NFTs to my metamask with trezor. Great product. The chaching noise is addicting.

[patryk]

Hey everyone!
It’s been two months since Trader received a grant from 0x and we’re happy with the progress we’ve done!

1. We’ve released Swap SDK!
   https://twitter.com/usetrader/status/1455207100888584200
   It has seen lots of organic demand - developers find value in an easy-to-use library to interact with 0x smart contracts. We’ve seen very positive reactions both on our Discord and on Twitter. We had participated in Tally community call and it was a great success with a very tangible promise of integration of our technology. We are in talks with the PatyDAO and Phantom too
   

   

2. We’ve identified a few growth opportunities and dissatisfaction from the current NFT infrastructure offering. The aggregated, better marketplace seems like a common need - users want to have custom NFT project pages on their own terms. OpenSea’s offering seems too limiting, users want more flexible fee systems and a place to grow their community. All areas, from NFT, drops, through display pages to community fostering, seem like an under-explored space we want to expand into.
   

   
   
   
   

Our biggest challenge remains the legal structure around the treasury. We had a few discussions with lawyers recommended to us by friends and investors interested in Trader - none of them has seen fruition yet, as the price volatility and money streaming seem to create new legislative challenges. We will continue to explore this, as it’s currently the biggest limiting factor in expanding our team and operations. We have found great candidates to help with marketing design and community management. Despite big interest from the investors, we’ve decided to stall the additional funding to make sure we’re fully aligned with 0x’s mission.

In the next two months, we need to solve these legal challenges and make sure we can expand our team. We plan to continue perfecting SDK developer experience and finish OTC trading features available for consumers. We are hopeful to start implementing some of the marketplace designs and release them through exclusive collaborations with NFT projects - stay tuned!

Happy new year everyone!

[mintcloud]

Thanks for the update @patryk
Looking forward to your next releases, please do keep us updated.

I have a couple of questions on the last part

@patryk

we’ve decided to stall the additional funding to make sure we’re fully aligned with 0x’s mission.

In the next two months, we need to solve these legal challenges and make sure we can expand our team.

I suspect this is related to the fact you are receiving funds from the Treasury in a streamed fashion, and there’s no legal entity attached to the 0x Treasury. FYI the fact that you’re not withdrawing funds from the Sablier stream doesn’t mean that the stream stops. Do let us know if you would rather pause it (it’ll require a governance vote).
What’s the best way to contact you in case we have legal connections that could be useful to you? DM in your Twitter account would work?