Neon Exchange (NEX), a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange has published its “People and Technology” quarterly report for Q3. The report follows the platform’s token sale event that was held on September 3rd, which offered the first registered security token offering by a European company. It’s claimed that the funds raised during the event will be used to fuel the platform’s personnel growth and operational expansion, a process which is due to conclude in Q1 2019.

The NEX team added seven new employees to four different company divisions, representing an increase in staff of 40%, bringing its total personnel count to 23 employees and roughly the same amount of external consultants.

Two new engineers joined the NEX front-end team, joining three others who are supervised by CTO and co-founder Ethan Fast. It’s claimed that both engineers have “strong academic backgrounds in computer science as well as significant industry experience” with hands-on execution building interactive web interfaces and a variety of payment platforms.

The NEX backend personnel also expanded with two Elixir specialists joining the team. The new team members, who are led by co-founder Luciano Engel, will work with four others to maintain the NEX off-chain matching engine. Elixir is a functional programming language used to create distributed and fault-tolerant applications. Each back-end engineer is claimed to have worked on an impressive portfolio of projects from “car breaking systems to marketing automation and blockchain, and from renewable energy to social media and software consulting” according to the report.

One senior blockchain engineer and another blockchain architect also joined Thomas Saunders’ team. Saunders leads the development of blockchain components to facilitate the trade of virtual assets on the platform. Additionally, Saunders is also working with the platform’s integration partners to allow the on and off-boarding of fiat currency. The senior engineer is claimed to have over 20 years of industry experience in application development, while the blockchain architect has contributed to various open source projects in mobile security and music intelligence.

Finally, an addition was made to NEX’s marketing and communications team led by Carla Paiva. A new copywriter and editor was assigned to help NEX with its marketing initiatives and to establish the “voice of the NEX brand.” The new copywriter has years worth of experience in technical projects and an “impressive” academic background.

NEX is currently hiring for other positions. A full list of jobs can be found here.

NEX Development Milestones

The back-end team finalized NEX’s system architecture and claims to have developed the “majority of its components.” In the future, new engineers will be optimizing the NEX matching engine as well as its settlement layer. These optimizations are planned to ensure that the platform can deliver on the objectives outlined in the NEX whitepaper whilst making the platform easier to maintain. The platform will reportedly undergo a thorough testing before it launches to the public as “the backend team aims to finish developing all system components and to test them rigorously before mainnet deployment.”

Some considerable work was also made on the NEX front-end, specifically on its simplified exchange interface. When released, the boutique UI will reflect the feedback the team gained from user interviews and feedback, with an emphasis on ease of use. The funds management interface was also completed for viewing digital assets, transactions and dividends, as well as the key management protocol for accessing funds across different devices.

Other front-end features were planned in Q3 and are presently under development. The team will work on the advanced exchange interface, which is a suite of tools for professional traders; as well as the NEX extension cross-chain update for the management of assets across different blockchains (for instance NEO, Ethereum, and Bitcoin). NEX’s mobile exchange interface also started in Q3, which will reportedly “meet the same UX/UI standards as the web-based platform.”

The team’s marketing department also worked at consolidating the exchange’s investor relationships and extending its reach to people who are unfamiliar with trading cryptocurrency. With the aid of the platform’s partners, NEX will pursue a global outreach strategy, engaging with print and broadcast media to share its story. A new, redesigned website is also being developed that will feature NEX’s new company motto: “Trust yourselves.” The tagline is due to appear soon in various forms of media.

Lastly, the team announced its goals for Q4.

  • Finishing integration between the matching engine and exchange contracts;
  • Finishing integration between the NEX staking contract and the frontend;
  • Implementing the payment service API;
  • On-boarding fiat integration partners;
  • Adding support for additional smart contract–capable chains.

For more information about Neon Exchange visit one of the links below.