[Announcement]Xeno roadmap progress

Dear Xeno Community,

The Xeno team is happy to announce that it has released its Xeno Substrate Testnet repository on Github!

This release is the first step in Xeno’s journey towards achieving a cross-chain NFT creation application and NFT marketplace. The repository contains the first testnet version of the Substrate-based Xeno NFT Hub. The project explains how to deploy the test network and outlines the ongoing steps before the Xeno NFT Hub mainnet is ready for launch.

This outline maps out several key advancements and development items that are being worked on by the Xeno team for testnest advancement:

Staking and Block Rewards

Xeno NFT Hub will implement a normal bonded staking mechanism following the pattern of other parachain networks. However, Xeno is implementing the following changes:

• A 21 day cool-down period for unbonding, rather than the 28 day period.
• An emission curve implementation for a fixed supply. XNO is a fixed supply asset which means that staking rewards will not increase the total supply but rather will distribute an allocated tranche of tokens over an extended schedule.
• Treasury, Staking, and Application Rewards will all have independent emission logic. This means that the rewards pool for these three will have their own unique rules for the rate of release. The Staking allocation will be released as a constant block reward over time, the Treasury allocation will be released based on Governance vote, and the Application rewards will be released according to the recorded active usage on the marketplace by Creators, Sellers, and Buyers.

Governance

Following in the footsteps of the Kusama and Polkadot networks, Xeno governance will initially use the Sudo Module, giving the development team elevated permissions. However, once the mainnet implementation launches and the network becomes stable, we will phase in the Collective, Treasury, and Democracy modules for a more decentralized network and protocol upgrading process.

Generalized NFT Support

Xeno NFT Hub is creating an extensible and generalized NFT layer that supports various popular NFT standards such as the Ethereum standards ERC721, ERC1155, and Tezos FA2 NFT

Along with this support, Xeno is creating a generalized Metadata schema specification for a JSON-based Metadata structure similar to TZIP-21. Our goal is to create a metadata standard that will serve as the de facto protocol for NFT metadata compatibility and integration across different blockchains.

Off-Chain Interaction

Xeno NFT Hub is tracking many parts of the Xeno Market application state in an off-chain manner for speed and efficiency. This Off-Chain Interaction will bridge the gap between the marketplace application and blockchain settlement layer giving both the security of blockchain and the speed of off-chain operations.

Parachain Integration

This is the first version of the Xeno NFT Hub testnet which runs as a single node or as an independent blockchain. The next version will adopt a live network codebase by integrating with the Substrate Parachain Implementation to get ready for cross-chain operations with the wider ecosystem.

Xeno is also happy to announce other areas of ongoing progress. We have reprioritized some of our roadmap goals to capitalize on recent trends in the fast-paced NFT industry. This reprioritization includes small adjustments to the roadmap along with a few new development additions and improvements mentioned here:

• Xeno’s current Ethereum based marketplace has undergone a huge revamp which will be released next week. This new release includes a far better user experience, new branding, a new look (including dark mode), and localization into 8 languages. This new version will pave the way for several more updated features (Xeno Partners Program, Partner Collections, creator royalty tracking and royalty claiming, the Xeno Vault for extended NFT content, extended user profiles, and more…)
• June was previously expected to bring the Xeno Open Beta. After the roadmap adjustments, the Xeno team has decided to push this back to a future date. Currently, we are undergoing extensive Alpha testing and are expected to enter Closed Beta very soon. Once we feel that everything is ready, Open Beta testing will commence, so please stay tuned for an announcement on this!
• The Xeno team is working hard to find quality partners to bring into the ecosystem. This path has brought several new avenues of potential. To help advance this, we have gone to great effort to start building bridges between the physical and digital worlds by releasing the Xeno Gallery and the upcoming Xeno Cube. Xeno Gallery is a physical exhibit and installment where artists with exclusive Xeno NFT content can be shown to the world in an offline space. Xeno Gallery has already displayed its first exhibit and plans to feature more artists in the near future. Xeno Cube is an AR/VR metaverse space where users will be able to explore the Xeno ecosystem and market, as well as hang out with others from the Xeno community in a persisted virtual space.

We will continue to provide more information on Xeno Cube developments, Xeno Gallery launches, testnet progress, and Xeno Market updates as they come, so please continue watching our official channels!

The Xeno Team