Summary Recap of Project Status

• The foundation of HydraDX, the Omnipool AMM, was first needed to be completed before the team can shift their attention to more interesting & rich features.
• The list of features mentioned in the blog post was brainstormed on an ongoing basis internally based on market observations and research.
• The issue at the moment is that with a limited funding runway, it is hard to progress in obtaining 3rd-party audits (which are mandatory) while still having funds for further development
• Deployment of POL continues as planned based on the Q1 deployment plan (currently ~$6.5M in POL)
• A new feature (OTC Trader) will be launched to allow the Protocol and whales to swap large amounts of tokens trustlessly and natively; Protocol will use it for obtaining native stablecoins and iBTC
• Currently, two-way XCM cross-chain channels opened with: Interlay, Phala, Acala, Astar. Status of potential upcoming channels:
  • Statemint (in progress) - once opened, native USDT can flow into HydraDX
  • Centrifuge (in governance discussion)
  • Moonbeam (request sent; more work required to integrate with Moonbase Alpha)
  • Bifrost (discussion stage in HDX governance)

Upcoming Initiatives

• Both initiative should go live in the proposal stage in the next week or so

Audit Collaboration

• Current issue: Audits are expensive and hard to come by for the entire DOT ecosystem at the moment given most cases are one-off/time basis
• The proposal will be to leverage the help of the Polkadot treasury to set up a security audit collaboration sponsorship for parachains (focused initially on DeFi and Privacy related use cases)
• This will help improve the process for parachains to obtain audits for ongoing updates and improve the predictability of the workflow for audit firms; especially given the expected increase in demand in the upcoming 12-18 months.

POL & Liquidity Incentives

• Current issue: Due to the infancy of the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem and more established ecosystems having taken an initial first mover advantage, interest and participation for DeFi within the Polkadot ecosystem remains limited
• HydraDX along with Interlay is spearheading an initiative along with other parachains to leverage the help of the Polkadot treasury to create an incentive / DeFi ecosystem program similar to those of Avalanche Rush and Polygon to help spark wider adoption
• At the moment, initial discussions for incentive schemes have revolved around two general buckets - 1) POL incentives such as Treasury LP and liquid staking derivatives and 2) liquidity mining incentives

Further detail into features mentioned in the post

• AMMs and DEXs are cool but not enough to win over the longer term
• All the proposed features in the post are aimed to improve capital efficiency and/or improve pricing of trades and/or toxic flow