Electra- A Year End Review (Almost)

Allow me to preface this by saying I’m invested in Electra. ECA wasn’t my first crypto but it’s by far and away become my favorite. With this bias in mind — let’s dive in.

When I think about Electra I’m not sure where to begin, it’s been both a triumphant year and one filled with growing pains. Coming off the January alt-coin bull run Electra hit a new all-time high and experienced rapid community growth. Almost immediately following this ECA began to experience problems with its exchanges. The two main culprits being CoinsMarkets, and CoinHouse. The era of CoinsMarkets was infamous at best — for roughly two months the exchange was down with a large swath of Electra investors unable to withdraw their funds, in the end, it was only after a great deal of harassment and the threat of a legal campaign that ECA funds were released. Many other coins weren’t so lucky.

Credit need be given where credit is due, the release of Electra funds would almost certainly have not happened without the determination of the community and core team. Numerous challenges arose during this time, with Electra’s main exchange down liquidity became a problem, and numerous people falsely blamed the Electra core team for CoinsMarket’s mishaps.

During the ordeal, hands weren’t idle. Over the course of January and February newer, more stable exchanges were added — CryptoBridge, CoinFalcon, and FatBTC to be precise. Looking back now all of the original ECA exchanges have been thankfully phased out. Gone are the days of CoinsMarkets, CoinHouse, and CoinsContol.

Electra weathered the storm — but this difficult period would foreshadow a rocky year to come.

Quarter 1 was a mixed bag for Electra. A new website had been built, a white paper had been successfully written and released on time, a community with thousands of members across numerous platforms had formed, and with a trio of new exchanges, a sense of stability and investor confidence had been restored. Electra even had its own “pizza day” in February. (Shout out Dean)

Unfortunately, the second major release of Quarter 1, the desktop wallet had been delayed.

After battling with faulty exchanges and grappling with an up and down Quarter 1 morale wasn’t crushed, but it was low. Electra needed a win.

That win was Cryptopia.

Cryptopia, Cryptopia, Cryptopia — a crucial stepping stone. A small but well-respected exchange. More important than the liquidity it offered and the stability it provided was the legitimacy it gave to the project. Getting listed on Cryptopia was a shout that said, “We’re Electra, and we’re here to stay.”

Cryptopia was a great start to Quarter 2, but it was far from smooth sailing as ECA experienced more growing pains. The desktop wallet was eventually released in mid-April following a second delay. The wallet was sleek, aesthetic, more user-friendly, one of a kind, and best of all…purple. It was another win, albeit a delayed one.
Or so it was thought — unfortunately, a bug had gone undetected and it resulted in the loss of approximately 150 million ECA across a handful of users.

To the rescue came Electra’s own Satoshi, “E01”, the anonymous founder of ECA. Using funds from the premine he reimbursed the affected users their lost funds in full. The Electra community got a “one-up” of sorts, but E01 warned it would be the first and last of its kind, such a bailout would not happen again.

So the wheels of progress turned, even if at times painfully so.

By now ECA had developed a style. It was purple and brash and bonded by a scrappy community that wasn’t afraid to show who they were. Newcomers were always welcome and would often be tipped ECA upon joining our Discord. Friendly mods and an open mind were a constant.

The community was ECA’s seemingly infallible strength, some may say this is an exaggeration — I say it’s the truth. It was a community that had been forged through the fire of hardships and had come out alive on the other side.

I know this sounds dramatic, but trust me, two exit scams in the form of CoinsMarkets and CoinHouse were downright painful, but in the end, we all bonded through mutual hardships.

A testament to the strength of community could be seen in the polls and on twitter — there was seldom an exchange vote that Electra didn’t win, and every twitter crypto personality could expect to inundated by Electra members requesting reviews and interviews. It was grassroots marketing at its finest, and it was working.

Over the course of April, May, and June Electra representative were interviewed and reviewed by a slew of crypto YouTube personalities and Electra even had representation at multiple cryptocurrency and blockchain conventions around the world.

In April you could have found ECA at the Italian Fin-tech Forum.

In May you might have seen ECA at the Bitcoin & Blockchain Forum Seminar in Sydney Australia or the Cryptocurrency Blockchain Legal Event in the Netherlands.

In June if you were back in Australia you might have seen ECA at work in the Bitcoin & Blockchain fair in Melbourne.

ECA also became a sponsor for the Rails Girls Summer of Code, a worldwide program aimed at helping girls and nonbinary people into the world of programming. A mass adoption campaign was eventually well underway and manic marketing ensued. A slew of new partnerships covering things from ATM’s, to merchant partners, and to expanding social platforms began to be rolled out. (SocialSend, UniFox, CryptoEmporium, Mesh Stick Tea)

The marketing was top notch in Quarter 2, but unfortunately, chronic delays still plagued ECA.

A hard fork that had been planned for May ultimately needed more time to be completed, and with it, development for a host of other projects got held up as well. Things such as the mobile wallet and atomic swaps would have to be postponed until later.

Enter Quarter 3 -

The months of July, August, and September were long. You see, opposing forces were at work. While the mass adoption campaign continued and yielded more partnerships and platforms -

(Air Coins, Investa, General Bytes, Linda Wallet integration, Tour de’ Crypto sponsorship)

All major structural projects were frozen until a crucial hard fork could be implemented. A hard fork that would alter the PoS percent and function, enhance security, cut block-times, and lay down the functionality for atomic swaps.

Mass adoption pushed forward and a paralyzing fork pushed back.

However, there were two particular bright spots for Quarter 3; one was the addition of Electra to the exchange CoinBene, further increasing reliable exchange diversity, and the second was a decision to form an Electra Foundation based in the Netherlands. It would manage community funds, have set rules and guidelines, be managed by board members and have community representation. Perhaps most importantly, it would be a legally binding entity — further legitimizing the project.

-

And now here we are in the early days of Quarter 4. A first half of the fork was finally executed in early October. A second phase will be needed to implement atomic swaps. But the docket contains much more than that:

• Atomic Swaps
• Masternodes
• Mobile Wallets
• Electra Pay
• Social Pay (functioning but not polished)
• Finishing the Electra Foundation (nearly done)
• Releasing an updated website
• Releasing an updated White Paper

The obvious question asks, can it all be done?

Can a project that has had numerous delays outperform its past and deliver before the new year?

I won’t lie, I have cautious optimism. In the wake of a 10-month bear market, I’ve watched the Electra community grow into a living, breathing, self-governing organism. I’ve made friends. I’ve watched the community donate thousands to charity (disaster relief funds for Japan) — I’ve listened in on engineering calls and I’ve debated on Discord. The future is in Electra’s own hands — In 2019 we may look back and feel accomplished at having completed one of the most aggressive roadmaps ever created.

All without a CEO

All Without an ICO

Entirely run by volunteers, and bound by the firmest community there ever was.

I sincerely hope so.

Whenever the first properly coordinated ECA meet-up happens, consider the first round on me.

• Trippy