2021: Qredo's Year in 10 Milestones

2021 was the year when the rubber hit the road for Qredo, with big partnerships and product launches catalyzing a year of epic growth.

Some of our successes were shared with the burgeoning crypto market: Over the last year, bitcoin has cemented its status as a macro asset, institutions and corporates have waded deeper into crypto, and decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have transformed crypto into Web3 — a vision that has found support in the uppermost political echelons, as shown in the recent congressional hearing on digital assets.

Other wins have come in spite of the broader ecosystem. Crypto infrastructure is now heaving under the weight of its newfound popularity, and the cracks have become impossible to ignore: Layer 1 fees have hit all-time highs on mounting congestion, crypto heists have grown in number, and liquidity has became even more siloed as more independent blockchains have entered the fray. Not to mention the ongoing struggle for compliance as crypto firms attempt to fall in line with increasingly stringent regulation.

All of this has stoked demand for Qredo, and we are now throwing coal into the engine and running full steam ahead to solve the biggest problems of the digital asset ecosystem with our radical blockchain infrastructure.

To celebrate the journey so far, here are 10 standout milestones that we've passed along the way.

1. Qredo Wallets 👛

Qredo's flagship crypto wallets launched in May, bringing the institutional-grade security and granular governance control of decentralized MPC to everyone.

The list of supported assets grew longer with more ERC-20 tokens added in November, and we set an industry-leading standard for institutional custody by reducing fees to zero.

As of December, there are roughly 50,000 Qredo Wallets holding a range of different assets.

Managing funds and governance permissions in Qredo Wallet

$11M Seed Raise 💰

Qredo closed an $11 million seed funding round in May, marking another moment of validation for our vision and further strengthening our financial reserves.  The round was led by the biggest names in crypto — including G1 , Gumi Cryptos, Maven 11, Spartan Group — and boosted by a stellar group of strategic builders including Celsius, Deribit, Wintermute, CMS Holdings, and Kronos Research.

3. Community Expansion 🌏

Qredonians are growing in number. They have flocked to Telegram and Twitter from all over the world, and we have rallied them through the Qreed — distributing 30,000 QRDO as rewards for spreading the word on social media in seven different languages.

One of the fastest-growing markets is Asia. We've translated Qredo's message for the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese communities, and will soon be  expanding further globally — building out our presence particularly in Latin America.

4. $35M Qredo Token Sale 💸

July's sold out token sale raised more than $18 million  in less than two hours, and topped out at $35 million on strong demand from investors including Nexo, Coinbase, Figment and LedgerPrime.

Since then, we've been working tirelessly to open up new markets. QRDO is now accessible to more buyers than ever on a dozen different centralized and decentralized exchanges. More are in the pipeline, including a Tier 1 platform.

In 2022, ecosystem tokens will be slowly vesting to the community. These won't be entering into the circulating supply directly, but will be issued sparingly to reward teams building cool products on Qredo. As this happens, we'll also be introducing new inflation-busting mechanisms — matching the 10.1% APY Auto-Staking program with more token rewards to put QRDO at the heart of the Network. The first of these is the validator token buyback scheme, which you can expect more news on soon!

5.  Hex Trust and X-Margin 🤝

Qredo welcomed its first licensed custodian to the Network in October with Hong Kong-based Hex Trust. Together, we will soon be offering the unique ability to access a growing number of services on Qredo Network — including access to DeFi and exchanges — without needing to move funds from regulated custody. In the same month, we also announced our partnership with X-Margin to offer secure credit for institutional digital asset trading.

Stay tuned, because we'll soon be launching brand new integrations with two top derivatives exchanges.

6. 2X Team Growth 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦  

The Qredo team has more than doubled over the last year; growing from an intrepid band of 45 in January, to a powerful tribe of over 100 specialists spread across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Key hires include  former Binance and Huobi executive Josh Goodbody, who joined Qredo in June to spearhead the token launch, and trading ops veteran Phil Langfelder, who brings a bulging rolodex from 20 years of working with Credit Suisse and DeutscheBank. More recently, security veteran Asen Taskov has joined Qredo as CISO.

We're still hiring across sales, marketing and engineering, and have an open and supportive company culture, driven by our core values of authenticity, diversity, and continued innovation. So please get in touch if you’re interested in joining the team, or know someone good!

7. MetaMask Institutional Integration 🦊

In October, we announced our monumental partnership with MetaMask Institutional, sparking a rush of interest from eligible funds.

The pilot scheme has since taken off, and the first 20 organizations are now accessing DeFi through our integration. Very soon, we will be moving the scheme out of beta and introducing support for all EVM-compatible chains.

The MetaMask integration in action

Managing custodial policies to access DeFi

8. Bitcoinization in El Salvador 🇸🇻

The mega month of October continued with the announcement of Qredo's partnership with  Banco Hipotecario and other top crypto innovators to power Bitcoinization in El Salvador.

We  kicked off proceedings with the Bankathon in El Salvador in November, and are now getting ready to begin working on the MVP. At the same time, we are having conversations at the highest levels of the local community with a view to rolling out Qredo's decentralized infrastructure across LatAm.

The Bitcoin Bankathon with Banco Hipotecario, API3, TESOBE, RSK & Tropykus

9. Qredo Labs 🧪

Innovation unit Qredo Labs officially launched In November, and is now focused on bringing Qredo V2 to life by focusing on five key areas: homomorphic encryption, transaction ordering optimization, distributed consensus mechanisms, and state transition management.

Qredo Lab's first product — Liquidity Hub — was briefly launched in open beta in August, and is currently being fitted with a matching engine to create a fully-fledged trading platform. Expect to hear more about this in the new year.

10. Travel Rule Solution ✈️📇

October's guidance from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) increased the burden of compliance on crypto firms, many of which are already struggling to adapt.

Fortunately, Qredo's Travel Rule solution is almost ready to hit the big time. We are now inviting candidates to participate in the Pilot Scheme and experience a secure, private, decentralized solution for Travel Rule compliance.

Receiving Travel Rule transaction data on Qredo

As we move into 2022, our ears are to the floor and we can hear the approaching stampede. Make no mistake, the institutional herd is coming, and we will be ready to accommodate them!

To this end, the coming year will not only bring foundational changes to the Network — including validator recruitment and the transition to DAO governance — but also strategic add-ons to ease the entry of big players; including click-to-cover insurance, Python libraries for easy integration, and dark pools for anonymous trading.

For now, I'd like to thank all of you Qredonians for your unrivaled  support and dedication this year, and invite you to stay up-to-date in the coming year by following us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Happy New Year!

— Anthony

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