# IOP Community Report 2020.01.14

Dear IOP Community and @everyone else interested,

If you have followed our New Years’ wishes then you probably already know that in the last 6 months the IOP project achieved several great things that are major milestones not only for us but we think also good for the crypto scene. You can check out our latest Development Report here: https://iop.global/2019/12/31/development-report-2019/

This development report is not all that I would like to share with you.

We're only two weeks into 2020, and already we feel more optimistic than ever. The IOP project only announces facts after they materialized as we try to stay away from the "speculation and artificial hype" that so many other project abuses. However, we do also want to inform you of our progress and vision of the future. It is within this delicate balance, that we do our best to inform you about our progress and future. So without further ado, I'll share the fundamental developments that happened in the last weeks. This should give you a clearer perspective of how we are doing and what is coming next.

## From theory to reality, becoming useful

1. We have created an internal testnet and a decentralized devnet for the public. From now on, any developer can freely build their apps and integrate their services. They can make full use of our Stack and contribute to the wider IOP ecosystem with new features, optimizations, and bug-fixes.

If companies want to create new business opportunities and they need a more custom or hands-on collaboration approach, they can contact IOP (https://iop.global/contact-us/). Given we find the resources and an agreement, the core team may help and make specific additions and adjustments to the IOP Stack in a way, that the companies’ app-specific requirements are met and their business ideas can fly.

2. Development went faster than expected; have you ever heard of that in an IT project - especially crypto?

That means we have already DIDs running in our internal testnet. It is still rough and edgy - but hey, if you like to use our stuff, once again: download the latest release, check it out and send us your git pull requests and help us making the IOP Stack even faster much better. You can fire up your own local testnet to get a glimpse of what's to come.

Developers can check out our GitHub Repository - Internet-of-People/morpheus-ts: The Morpheus Identity Management System and give us valuable feedback and hopefully pull requests: https://github.com/Internet-of-People/morpheus-ts

## Creating real-world value

1. The Mexico University of Nayarit - somehow a delicate and special topic for itself. Months passed by, and how is the status today? Well, finally, starting from this week, our partners are giving first courses in the blockchain. Our agreement states, that they will test and program and develop their ideas with our IOP Stack (e.g. Hydra Blockchain). This is exciting stuff and just the beginning. Hopefully next Semester they will be able with our IOP Stack to start enrolling them on the chain and make use of the Hydra blockchain for storing information like diplomas and creating DIDs.

2. Mexico’s Institute of Elections - here I can't go much into detail, But the LatAm Delegates are in direct negotiations with the Institute and it looks like that we help them develop a governmental election backed on the blockchain. The difficulty here is to prove, that everybody has voted. The other challenge is to let them vote just one time. And we need to be mindful that you cannot see which party (to avoid repression and guarantee freedom of choice). We are confident though that this is a real-world usage where IOP is number one on the crypto space - we have the ability to the undoable and we work to get this ready in a foreseeable time.

3. Business Application - we have partnered with Vendible.org. They provide a payment gateway with fiat and wallets from privacy focussed coins like Pivx to fiat money. The interesting part here is, that they are going to use IOP's DIDs for all their customers, that went successfully through a KYC process. Their MVP runs on Woocommerce shop, Joomla CMS Plugin is in the making and others are following (like Shopware, Magento, you name it). Bringing crypto payments to 65% of the businesses, that are not Amazon & Co - but small or medium-sized businesses is especially something that makes me proud.

4. Last but not least: With Vendible we have the first business being build with the help of the IOP Stack, and in this business is not only a company but a whole chain of service providers involved - from a bank & trust to a KYC provider and many more.

5. We are also in talking to another huge corporation being very interested in our solution, that understands the advantage of using an open sourced standardized DID system that is already working (soon), may it be for their tracking of packages or to set up their boxes for the customers and become a KYC themself.

6. Another top 100 crypto project just reached out to us we're currently talking to them to explore the options for them from a fork to collaboration.

Let me use this example to tell our position to every other project, government, institution or business interested in our DID system and the IOP Stack:

Of course, you can fork us, go ahead - we even encourage you, as long as you send back your modifications to us and follow the law and good practices.

But my advice would be to connect to the IOP Ventures Company, and create an agreement with us about collaboration - we can help to enhance and to build the IOP Stack in a way, that it accomplishes and suits your needs; by this, we and you can focus on what we are best, build synergies and don't waste time and money.

## Project becomes mature and is moving ahead

To conclude, I like to send a message to the community: You can clearly see, that IOP is evolving from survival mode during the crypto winter and having a start-up mentality, to an accelerating Open Source business and a Decentralized Organization. Things are getting real, we are not dreaming anymore, we are building stuff that the world wants. And I am not talking about some crypto kitties here or online casino games - I am talking about student enrollments, diplomas claiming and their verification, government elections on blockchain, giving online shop users a DID (which will later come in handy for cashback services, etc) or maybe just some companies putting their customers and business processes on (our) blockchain.

This is what we were doing, and this is our focus for the coming year 2020.

Assuming, that most of our community members have already bought Hydras to create value for the network and did set up a delegate or do cold staking with dividends by supporting their favorite delegates, we are considering to offer tokens to a broader public.

In this process, we still have to verify how we do this best and distribute the tokens as wide into small pockets as possible to create a grassroots movement and still complying with SEC (USA) law to stay utility token. 

This is another long ongoing process for quarter 1 in 2020. But, and here the good news for all our internal members that are already on board: To reflect the latest developments, we raised the base minimum price of the Hydra token from two cents to three. The dutch auction price channel is narrowed down to 3-6 cents. 

New investors and people entering now, and not last year, because now the project seems less risky. Let them reward their wise and early adopter decision with a bargain price, but they enter slightly higher than those, that went with us from the beginning through the hard times of the crypto winter.

We want to thank you, HODlers for never losing trust in us, standing with us since old times. Your trust is being honored and paid back.

Having achieved so much, and being in such a good position, we collectively decided to rise the dutch auction minimmal price by one cent from two to three cents. So from now on you cannot get Hydras anywhere cheaper than three cents.

As I said in the New Year Announcement: 2019 was the year of many hard tests and the year of assay - 2020 will be the year of harvesting our seeds and efforts. So let's start this one with a significant rise of the minimum bottom Hydra price available to contributors 

\o/