Vision Update 2019.09.06

1. Apollo attends Futurist Blockchain Conference in Toronto, Canada

The Apollo team connected with blockchain projects and members of the media. The team also spoke with Apollonauts who attended the Conference.

2. Apollo Community Treasure Hunt launched

As part of Apollo’s Community Initiative, the team launched an intricate treasure hunt that challenges participants to use wit and wisdom to hunt for clues in an effort to discover each of the twelve words of an Apollo passphrase.

This passphrase is key to unlocking an Apollo wallet containing the prize APLs inside. The first participant to arrange all 12 words of the passphrase correctly and move the coins to their wallet wins the prize.

3. Apollo Africa enters biggest phase of the National Currency Initiative

After months of preparation, Apollo Africa has commenced its broader Africa initiative as dialog with a number of African nations are now underway. Expanding on what they have learned and accomplished in Zimbabwe and Swaziland, Apollo Africa, alongside political decision-makers, will present Apollo’s technology as a solution to strengthen national financial infrastructures.

4. YouTube marketing campaign expanded

As a result of the Apollo Foundation’s YouTube campaign, over 20 videos have been published in five languages, totaling hundreds of thousands of views. The Apollo Foundation recognizes the importance of gaining the admiration of well-respected influencers in the crypto space. Because of this, the Apollo Foundation has allocated more resources to strengthen the results from this campaign.

5. Apollo Foundation hires three new team members

The Apollo operations team is growing to fill gaps, enhance production, and significantly increase deliverables. These team members will be announced over the coming weeks, following their integration.

6. Apollo listed on Sistemkoin

Integration with Sistemkoin is complete and Apollo trading is now live. Sistemkoin is just the beginning of Apollo’s success in Turkey. By hosting with Sistemkoin, Turkish citizens can now purchase Apollo quickly and effectively using regional banks.

7. New exchanges confirmed, announcements coming

Following a break from exchange listings to focus on blockchain core refactoring, the Apollo Foundation is shifting focus back to expanding its exchange options. With the final stages of negotiations coming to a close with several larger exchanges, the Foundation looks forward to public announcements rolling out in short order.

8. DEX functionality milestones completed

The Apollo Decentralized Exchange (Apollo DEX) is partially deployed on mainnet with functionality blocks that have been tested.

Functionality accomplishments:

- order placement

- order cancellation

- ETH/PAX deposits and withdrawals

- order book and order graph

- ETH node

The development team has finished the one-to-one “Matcher” algorithm that automatically matches sell and buy orders before closing them. Apollo Smart Contracts have also been updated to meet the requirements of Atomic Swap at every stage. Additionally, a new service has been developed to maintain the correct gas fees that are associated with the ETH mainnet.

9. Status update from DEX development team

The QA team is currently testing the “Matcher” algorithm, gas fees, as well as conducting performance and regression testing. At the same time, the core dev team is working on transaction validation logic. Transaction validation logic is important because it prevents double-spending issues, missing transactions, duplicate opened orders, and incorrectly matched orders. These are among the last requirements to launch full DEX functionality.

10. Apollo Sharding and code optimization

Over the last few weeks, the Apollo development team has been preparing a release to improve node stabilization, as well as to strengthen the stability of sharding, and to strengthen the Apollo blockchain as a whole.

The release includes:

- memory leaks fixes

- updating version of Jetty

- updating of system libraries weld, jdbi3, resteasy, and swagger

- creation of node health check API

- removing static code of Peersclass and getting true CDI service

11. Thoughts from Director of Business Development, Steve McCullah

This quarter has been one of the most pivotal in Apollo’s history. During this period, the future direction of Apollo has been established and the building blocks have been set. As the decision-makers of the Apollo Foundation, we have no choice but to look to the future of where this industry is headed and to take strategic steps to ensure Apollo’s long-term success.

We have always made decisions based on the long-term outcome and this was no different. After much deliberation and under the advice from industry experts, we have made significant changes to the previous direction. We believe these changes, although extensive, could give us an incredible advantage over our competitors for years to come.

These core changes include:

- moving Apollo to DAG consensus

- the complete rebranding of Apollo

- new whitepaper and tech paper

- a major focus on academic partnerships

- a stronger push in Africa

- a higher emphasis on wallet usability

- a primary concentration on the three biggest blockchain use cases (tokenization, decentralized applications, and file storage)

- expanding our team to increase marketing capability

- strategic exchange listings