Greetings Octant community and the wider Golem ecosystem!
KauriHero here, co-founder and Project Lead of MASQ Network.
Here is an update on our progress, as there has been a lot of positive momentum behind the team since the last submission for Epoch 4!
MASQ applied to be included in Epoch 4 and made it through the submission process to the Snapshot Vote. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make the top 30 projects but had a great experience with getting involved and also learning from the very engaged Octant council team facilitating the platform!
It was quite humbling seeing such amazing and diverse public goods out there working alongside MASQ in the space.
We would be grateful to be considered in Epoch 5 as an eligible project once again.
Below is a detailed update on our progress across the MASQ web3 Browser app (our flagship product), the MASQ Core node software that powers everything, and our new browser Extension app we began developing which is a major milestone/focal point for our application for grant support.
I truly hope the Octant community can appreciate our tireless work building our public good technology with features not present in most, if any, other privacy tools. All in the mission to provide borderless and privatized browsing to the world through our open source MASQ Protocol.
A friendly reminder that we aren’t sitting in a pure concept stage or closed alpha!
We have our live products operating for free on testnet right now freeing digital users from restricted access like X across places like Russia, India, Turkey and more (active target audiences in our community), and offer numerous scaling and ecosystem integration aspects that are unique to MASQ that elevate other public goods and web3 as a whole.
Importantly we are chain-agnostic as well (currently supporting Ethereum and Polygon, soon another chain)
Short Term Update June & July 2024
- Octant grant received - NA, did not make it through Snapshot vote for Epoch 4
- Other grants received - None
Milestone - MASQ web3 Browser updates
The MASQ web3 browser is our flagship app for a wide audience of users desiring a web3-enabled browser with baked-in privacy by default.
We released 2 new versions in June and July, which included a Hop Count selector so users can adjust their browsing privacy and speed levels while browsing, and refined onboarding to be sub-1minute for a new user!
Most importantly we completed an overarching UI component of the control panel which is the core piece the Extension app is built around which is our next major app we aim to release publicly.
Public Benefits to Users:
- Users can quickly change their MASQ hop count so can increase speed, or increase privacy, providing options for users to adjust their browsing experience depending on their immediate needs.
- Onboarding a new user only takes 45-60 seconds (about 30% time reduction)
- All MASQ onboarding and settings are in a single UI component for cleaner interaction and more intuitive for user
- Social and Network widgets now sit on the main desktop Space for MASQ browser which showcase the activity stats and let users engage on X to participate in building brand awareness and expand our user base.
In-Progress → Country Selection feature
As with many privacy tools, the full desires of a user to browse without borders is complete when they can select the content they wish from the region they want!
This feature puts that front and centre, making MASQ equally competitive with traditional VPN and dVPN products out there now in web2 and web3.
Significant progress was made for the tech requirements:
- Populate all country codes so MASQ Core can efficient reference them based on user location
- Locally verify a Node’s geolocation by IP, and adding country-code into updated Gossip communication to the greater network. This ensures no personal information besides country code (eg UK, AU, BR etc) is shared with extended peers
- Architecture design is nearly completed in the way the country code is stored and looked-up in the routing engine which builds the routes across the mesh network locally from known peers in the Neighbourhood (area of the MASQ Network your Node is running).
Public Benefits to Users:
- users can choose what country they desire content from
- users can observe what countries are in range of them within the MASQ Network
Plans for Next Epoch
Browser Extension app
The launch of a MASQ browser Extension app will put MASQ right into the everyday browsers that users already are committed too. Upon initial release, a Chrome based Extension app will enable billions of users to access MASQ Network and give welcome brand awareness from the Chrome Web Store and wider audience.
Importantly, we completed the UI panel of the extension (and future mobile app) as a singular component in the Browser, so the bulk of design around UX and user flow is already finished.
Our team will continue consistent progress on this extension app through Q3.
Mainnet Launch Preparations
A well-awaited milestone by our community (and team of course!), our preparation for Mainnet continues with a few key elements being finalized to secure the best possible Go-To-Market impact. Two major business aspects in motion are integrating credit card onramp providers (for those users wanting a quick and easy way to purchase $MASQ tokens for using the network) and finalizing marketing funnels and strategic plan for launch.
There is an additional aspect of scoping the work for another chain to support, which will be a huge source of new user growth.
Continue Country Selection feature work
As described above, work continues on this feature - this is a critical feature to complete before Mainnet launch.
Karma GAP
We intend to proactively create our Karma GAP profile, and ensure we expand our updates across all areas for communities to track and encourage our resilient builders!
We hope you can look further into our exciting developments and go ahead and try our MASQ browser today!
It’s available for free in testnet Polygon Amoy - onboarding in under 60 seconds and test tokens magically appear in your testing wallet - no special setup needed!