Hermez Network is happy to share the product roadmap for the upcoming months of development.
The mission of Hermez is to contribute to Ethereum scalability from the perspective of decentralisation, efficiency and inclusion to promote self-sovereignty and freedom for individuals.
This is reflected in the roadmap and in the efforts to contribute and grow the Ethereum community, and is guiding the research and development efforts of the team.
The new features, modules and versions are structured into phases related to specific functional objectives:
Phase 1: Decentralised Protocol for L2 Token Transfers
The first phase has the objective of providing full support to the Hermez node for the announced features:
- Multi coordinator network support - Q2 2021
This milestone consists of enabling the tools and documentation for everyone interested in setting up a Hermez node and participating in the permissionless Proof-of-Donation auction, the consensus protocol to enable the Hermez Network decentralisation.
- Atomic transactions full support - Q2 2021
Atomic transactions are already supported by Hermez smart contracts and circuits but this feature will also be implemented in the open-sourced Hermez node.
Phase 2: Network Promotion and Smart Transactions Support
In parallel to phase 1, there is a line of work related to promoting and enabling use cases that increase the awareness and utility of the network:
- Promotional airdrops and user rewards - Started in Q2
This milestone aims to create awareness in the community about the network and the future user rewards model embedded in the Proof-of-Donation consensus protocol.
- Token swaps discovery from the Hermez wallet - Q3 2021
The Hermez wallet will soon offer token swaps in L2, connecting user swap requests with onboarded exchange offers and executing these swaps as Hermez atomic transactions.
- Enhancements in transactions - Q4 2021
New transaction types and formats will be introduced to better support a wide range of payment scenarios. These improvements will be introduced consistently and with the aim of being completed by the end of 2021.
Phase 3: Ecosystem Growth
The team will continue working on extending our ecosystem of partners to develop the use and awareness of the network. Additionally, specific technical efforts will be done to support this:
- Third-party wallet integrations - Q2-Q3 2021
Providing the tools and technical support for third-party wallets to support Hermez Network.
- Native app & mobile SDK - Q2-Q3 2021
Hermez has been working hard on the development of a native app that will be released soon, as well as a mobile SDK that will be developed to support future integrations.
- Massive migrations enhancement - Q3-Q4 2021
Massive migrations is a new model proposed by the Hermez network to increase L2 interoperability. This solution has already been implemented into the network's smart contracts and circuits, but the implementation of the receivers of massive migrations will also be completed to improve, document and communicate it to extend the Hermez ecosystem.
Phase 4: Support for New Financial Infrastructure
This phase provides a big step forward in functionality for Hermez:
- Instant finality for payments in the decentralised model - Q4 2021
Hermez protocol considers a transaction finalised when it’s mined in Ethereum. In order to provide a better experience and support for payments use cases, a new protocol and an extension of the Hermez node will be developed to support instant finality for payments.
This will work by abstracting the latency that the Ethereum network and introducing the Hermez decentralised model by design to transaction settlements.
- Iden3 identity native integration - Q1-Q2 2022
The iden3 self-sovereign identity with privacy, which was the Hermez team’s original project, will be progressively introduced as an open platform and will be combined with Hermez to enable new use cases for the decentralised finance environment.
- Enhanced user onboarding - Q1 2022
Combined with the iden3 identity, important improvements will be made to the user onboarding process and overall experience of managing assets and credentials.
- NFT support - during 2022
NFT assets will be supported in Hermez and integrated with a decentralised identity profile, from where users will be able to manage their NFT portfolio.
Phase 5: Privacy and Composability
The Hermez team is currently working on research and development to increase functionality in the next version of the decentralised network.
The zero-knowledge cryptographic primitives currently used by Hermez are the most efficient in terms of cost per transaction for the combination of a decentralised protocol and the best possible finality times.
These new features will require a major change in the zero-knowledge cryptographic primitives that the Hermez zk-rollup is using. However, the progressive improvements towards Ethereum 2.0 will enable more throughput and better cost for our strategy to offer a secure and robust service:
- Private transactions support - during 2022
A new version of the Hermez network will provide privacy to user transactions, fitting in the model of the private credentials for the iden3 identity protocol.
- Composability / EVM emulation - during 2022
The Hermez team is also researching to bring a new version of the network that will support composability as close to the current Ethereum EVM as possible. As research efforts for these updates advance, more details about the objectives and the timeframes will be made available to the Hermez community.
Product Map Summary
As you have read above, our commitment to decentralisation is crystal clear. With this target in mind, we will work hard to deliver optimal solutions empowering communities and individuals.
It will be an exciting journey, and we are looking forward to walking it with you.
DISCLAIMER: This post is a description of the next future Hermez team efforts to bring new functionality to the network. It cannot be understood as a binding commitment because most of the activities refer to research in new technologies and there might be variations from this plan to the actual deliveries, both in scope and estimated dates.
Do you have any questions? Join the AMA!
Our team will be hosting an AMA session on our Telegram group on Thursday, 3rd of June. The exact time is yet to be set, we'll announce it in the coming days.
If you have any questions about the roadmap or the future developments of the Hermez Network, make sure to send them over on Telegram adding "AMA" somewhere in your message.
We'll compile them until next Wednesday, and the team will answer them during the AMA session. We have a pot of 100 HEZ to reward the most interesting questions, split at the discretion of our developer team. Make sure you send yours ;)
In the meantime, you can join our Telegram group. We’ll announce more details about the AMA session on Twitter and Discord.
