Wei to the Future

Published on: Nov 05, 2021

Nov 05, 2021

Introduction

As discussed in the previous article, Novon is contributing to the blockchain world in the form of research and development. So the question arises about what has Novon been up to since it started? What products has Novon been working on and what was the idea behind Novon's first product?

From the start, Novon has been a big believer of the concept of “different chains for different types of products”. Which we can also refer to as “blockchain agnosticism”. We were very impressed by the idea of layer 2 technologies working on Ethereum. So we decided to feed into our curiosity and work on the second layer of the Ethereum blockchain.

Ideation

Idea

We explored layer 2 to look for areas of improvement. During this time, we first started to replicate Polygon. Soon, we realized that there were a lot of L2 solutions available so why not provide a generalized decentralized bridge for it. The idea was to develop a product that would allow cross-chain resource sharing and data transferring across the layer 2 blockchains.

This had many use cases and plenty of area for scaling up as well. We thought of it as the perfect candidate for Novon’s first product. 

The first thought was to provide a platform for universal meta liquidity without minting new tokens on "B" chain if you lock your tokens on "A" chain. Rather, utilize the tokens that are already circulating in that blockchain/layer 2 scaling solution. 

Production

Production

So, Novon's first product was named Meshwei. This name came from the words “Mesh” as in the mesh topology, and “wei” as a multi-meaning word for path(way) and ether(wei). Through Meshwei, we were providing a path to transfer data and assets between any L2 blockchains without a third party in between.

The team started actively working on product development. We were very excited about this product since this was Novon's first product, and naturally, we had very high hopes. We dove head-first into the project without any market research and documentation (Yeah we did that).

We could visualize what the project would look like and quickly started working on the design elements. During this time, we found a competitor that was doing similar work. We weren’t too worried though because we had expected that. And there was a lot of area for improvement that we decided to target through Meshwei.

After defining the USP, we jotted down the key attributes and the problem Meshwei would solve. We unraveled in our minds about v1 as well as what v2 would look like for this product.

Soon, the social media profiles of Meshwei were set up and the development started. But that’s where everything started diverging from our initial plans.

Fall

Fall

Just as the development started, we found more competitors who were doing similar work that we had planned for Meshwei. These projects were very well known, with high-quality work, and wonderfully established communities. We were a little worried now since our USP “cross-chain meta liquidity” could no longer be called a USP.

Some competitors we came to know about were ChainSwap, Connext, Hop Protocol, Biconomony, and O3 Swap

Dilemma

Dilemma

At this point, we had two paths that we could take; continue with the project and accept the fact that Meshwei, with our utmost diligence, could only secure 20%, maybe 25% of the market share. These stats were not exactly satisfying.

The second option was to completely drop the whole idea from scratch. Which was not sitting well with us either because we had invested so much effort, time, and resources into this project. If we chose this path, that would set us back at least a month with all our efforts down the drain.

Decision

Decision

We had grown attached to Meshwei. But keeping in mind the pros and cons, we decided to drop the project. Continuing the work would have been a gamble where the odds were not in our favor. It was a tough decision but the right one as well.

Not only that, continuing the project would have been against one of our core values that is “Elastic Mindset”. To keep an open mind and with readiness to make tough calls is what Novon is all about. We deal in research that is based on facts and that's exactly what we did here. The fact was that this project did not have the future we were expecting and dropping would have cost us less than carrying on.

Rebound

Rebound

We may have dropped the idea of Meshwei but we did not fail. We learned exponentially in these couple of months. We developed the mindset needed in terms of research, ideation, market analysis, business as well as development. We gained the experience needed to start a new project and the necessary steps to follow before starting and during the development of the product.

We rose from the setback and continued doing what we were passionate about; research and contribution to blockchain technology. The idea of exploring new areas of blockchain and working on them spiked our excitement again.

Conclusion

Conclusion

These few months of working on Meshwei were extremely valuable to us. We took a chance and even though it didn’t quite work out the way we had planned, we got an experience worth more. 

Now the team of Novon is working in (not limited to) multiple fields in blockchain including Ethereum 2.0, DeFi, Zero Knowledge, geth, and much more. 

We are continuously generating new ideas and our work on them will be shared in due time. Through all the ups and downs, one thing remains constant for us; moving forward and achieving new milestones every day. 

Also read Novon; A beginning without an End

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