It’s been quite a year for INC4! It has been full of delivering new projects, solving challenges, and partnering with some awesome products in the space. So now is the high time to look back at some of the highlights from 2022: new products we’ve launched, developments the team has worked on, and recap the wonderful events we were a part of. Moreover, our proudly-Ukrainian team continues to stand strong to help our fellow Ukrainians, and keeps bringing the blockchain and Web3 future closer.
The INC4 portfolio: our projects are marching on
We bet that by now, you must have heard that “bear markets are for building,” and we cannot agree more! Hiro, a Web3 developer toolkit, polled blockchain developers and found that more than half of those surveyed (55%) are more motivated to work on Web3 now than before.
Our development team has doubled this year to bring you even more exciting and useful decentralized solutions!
PembRock
2022 marks the year we launched PembRock Finance, the first leveraged yield farming application on the NEAR protocol. Only a year ago, the project got initial funding by winning a $75,000 grant from the NEAR protocol ecosystem and successfully completed a round of IDOs in May-June. Today, the app empowers users to earn great returns on their crypto via automated lending, farming with up to 3x leverage, or staking their PEM assets.
We have great trust in the opportunities of the ‘bankless’ state and the decentralized finance projects, and PembRock became one of the leading DeFi projects in the ecosystem very soon. The team of developers worked non-stop to deliver an awesome platform to all DeFi-admirers — the ecosystem saw PembRock’s launch in the testnet environment in June, and the official mainnet release followed in July. What’s more, just two months after the mainnet launch, PembRock reached a breakthrough TVL of $6 million! Our team also set live the PembRock DAO that enables PembRockers to take ownership of the project’s future and get rewarded for doing that.
We’re extremely proud to have embedded PembRock into the DeFi world and to continue building partnerships with other promising projects, such as Ref Finance, Sweatcoin, MetaWeb Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, and many more.
While PembRock gains momentum, we are introducing new coin pairings and opportunities for lenders and farmers. Want to know more about the project’s roadmap for 2023 and the next steps? All information is available here: https://pembrock.finance/#roadmap
Open Forest Protocol
We love a project with ambition! The Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is on a mission to speed up forestry and conservation efforts. We became a dedicated blockchain development team for the OFP last year and were tasked with bringing their MRV solution to the NEAR blockchain. The technical and product teams worked hard to produce complex, succinct, and user-friendly interfaces that would satisfy the needs for MRV in forestry, conservation, and carbon economies.
In July 2022 the product was ready, and we successfully released the first version of the Open Forest Dashboard and the Forrester app on the mainnet.
The OFP comprises a web application for downloading field data, a blockchain-based framework for validating environmental data, and the resultant open-source database from which climate solutions may be built. Currently, we are working on delivering new features such as Collateral Area, OFP Wallet, Validation Dashboard, and Explorer.
AirDAO
For the past few years, INC4 has gladly operated as a dedicated technical team for AirDAO (ex-Ambrosus Ecosystem), with more than 17 of our specialists involved in the project. This year brought many changes to the fully-integrated L1 blockchain — we contributed to the product’s rebranding by developing a new website from scratch and revamping existing products.
AirDAO is an ecosystem of innovative, user-friendly dApps accessible through a single dashboard. To make this happen, our development pros designed and released the AirDAO Bridge, which enables the bridging of tokens between the AirDAO and Ethereum/Binance Smart Chain. These changes reduced the transaction price for the ETH network from over $100 to about $10, with room for further reductions.
The network upgrade also required a modified version of OpenEthereum to operate the staking service, the AirDAO Bridge and Firepot Finance features. Moreover, we upgraded the app’s explorer with the new and fully operable front-end, where synchronization of the backend with the network takes place within a 5 to 7-hour slot.
The team also adapted the Uniswap contracts to enable the Swap feature.
Spaceport
Spaceport is INC4’s one of the most recent projects. Its goal is to give cryptocurrency newcomers a simple and natural entry point into all the finest prospects provided by the Web3 space.
The Spaceport Docking Station is a cutting-edge custodial on-ramp and off-ramp for the worldwide market of institutional investors seeking exposure to the NEAR Ecosystem and retail users seeking access.
Users may link their bank account, credit card, or debit card, convert their fiat money into cryptocurrency, and then actively trade or swap among the NEP-141 tokens available on NEAR, Aurora, or Octopus Network.
So, how does our development journey look today? To fully execute the proposal, our initial intention was to build a small web app that could interface with blockchain directly. However, after thorough research, we recognized that this approach would be less safe from the perspective of data transfer. Therefore, to ensure maximum security and prevent any unintentional loss of a user’s account, we decided to include a server component in our application. This component allows for quick connection and disengagement with the platform while maintaining optimum security.
Bolstering Ukraine defense efforts
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the crypto world has united in helping Ukrainians stand up to their enemy. Crypto donations are fast, verified, far-reaching, and accepted by many global charities, becoming a powerful source of support for many.
The Crypto Fund of Ukraine was established as a result of the Ukrainian government allowing cryptocurrency donations at the beginning of the year in an effort to increase donor inclusion. The community has already raised more than $60 million thanks to the initiative. Moreover, several cryptocurrency fundraising organizations have resorted to cutting-edge crypto tools like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to generate money for the country’s military and humanitarian efforts.
The INC4 team did not stand aside. In March 2022, we donated the profit from our Minerall.io multicoin mining pool to the https://savelife.in.ua/en/ charity and launched a fundraiser to help rebuild one of the hospitals in Mykolaiv, which has been damaged by Russian shelling. Later, we extended this initiative to 20+ hospitals by supplying them with the required medicine. Overall, we donated more than 15 million UAH for this cause throughout 2022.
Events to remember
We traveled a lot! Our CEO, Igor Stadnyk, has visited over 15 crypto conferences this year. ETH Denver, NearCon 2022, Binance Blockchain Week, ETH Dubai, Mainnet 2022, and Consensus 2022 were among the most memorable events. NearCon became a big highlight, as it brought ten team members to Lisbon, where we finally met our NEAR partners in person, networked at the INC4 booth, and sponsored the food truck serving Ukrainian specialties.
Overall, it is exciting to see the crypto community expanding fast as more talented developers, artists, and entrepreneurs enter the space to create unique, decentralized products.
