So We Announced Migration… Now What Happens?

Go behind the scenes of the Dexioprotocol migration to the Polygon Chain

Hello Dexonians! It’s been about six weeks since we announced our intent to migrate

So what have we been up to?!

Well, migrating chains is not a quick plug-and-play exercise, especially when you’ve already built the games and the token utility on one chain. Let’s discuss what development is taking place in preparation for the migration.

Smart Contract Audits: Why are they important and what is the process?

Let’s start with the most basic question… What is a Smart Contract?

Smart Contracts define the rules of engagement for interacting with tokens, NFT marketplaces, decentralized exchanges, or really any transaction between two or more participants on the blockchain. Using an example that our community may be familiar with: when you execute a swap on PancakeSwap, several smart contracts execute in order to complete that transaction. First, you’re interacting with the Dexioprotocol (DEXI) smart contract. That contract governs things like transaction tax percent and which wallet that tax should be sent to. When you execute the swap, the smart contract is checked to identify how much DEXI should be sent to your wallet and how much deducted and sent to the burn wallet. The PancakeSwap router also has a smart contract, which calculates the output amount of the token you’re swapping for based on your inputs, slippage likely required, the path needed to swap (assuming you’re not swapping against the liquidity pool established), and also the amount to be charged for their market maker fee. All of this happens based on the rules of the smart contract and without any intermediary. This example is very much simplified, but demonstrates there is a great deal of logic happening on the backend that may not be visible to front-end users. The smart contracts are published on their respective blockchain explorers (BscScan, Polygonscan, etc).

So what is a Smart Contract audit and why are we investing so much time into mulitple audits?

Well, let’s summarize that with a quick picture from Google News…

The unfortunate truth of the digital world is it attracts those that look to exploit and steal funds. Smart contract security is continuously improving, but so are the skills of the hackers. Placing the utmost importance in the smart contract audits is to the benefit of the community, no matter how long it takes.

According to Chainalysis, the level of cryptocurrency theft reached $3.2B in 2021, +516% vs 2020. In 2021, 49% of all crypto hacks were attributable to code exploits and flash loan attacks. According to Immunefi, there were almost 150 hacks recorded in 2021 (123 in 2020). Thus, close to 70 projects were compromised due to vulnerabilities or mistakes in smart contracts. In DeFi, 69% of all hacks were attributable to vulnerabilities in smart contracts. As a result of hacks, projects also experience reputational collapse and sharp price drops.

[Source]

A smart contract audit helps ensure no inadvertent mistakes were made in developing the code (setting something to = instead of <=), checks the code against standard and known vulnerabilities, attempts to hack/exploit the contract, and involves multiple manual or automated calls on the contract to make sure the output matches expectation. Essentially, the audit makes sure best practices are put into place but also tries to “break” the contract to find its vulnerabilities. These tests run on the Testnet explorers of the chains so the contract can execute from start to finish to demonstrate performance and not rely solely just on a review of the code itself.

The process involves an open dialogue between the third-party auditors and our internal developers. We know what we want to the code to do and not do. The auditor will continue to poke holes in the logic to make sure our intent is implemented as desired without any known vulnerabilities. Dexioprotocol has elected to have more than one auditor look at the contracts. Why? Different companies have different experience, methods of practice, and it never hurts to have multiple eyes on something so critical. The auditors will provide a final report when ready that outlines their independent views on vulnerability severity, generally grouped by: Critical, Major, Medium, Low, and Informational. Most contract creators publish their audit reports on their website and/or on the blockchain explorers. Make sure you review these audit reports as part of the “DYOR” process before investing heavily into any project.

We are nearing the end of our smart contract audit process. There are multiple contracts we’re working through, including the new token, marketplace, staking, migration, etc. Once the team and our auditors feel confident about the security of the contracts, we can move onto the public pre-sale and ultimate launch on Polygon. This is not a step we take lightly.

Besides Audits, What Else Have We Been Up To?

Excellent question. A LOT!

NFT Marketplaces

The two NFT marketplaces from Dexioprotocol, DexiMarketplace and DXG GameEmporium, are being merged into one user-friendly site with enhanced functionality from the originals. The new master marketplace (name coming soon) will have two sides to it: the Game Hub and the Creator Hub. Users can easily connect to the site with their single Auth0 account (new to the Creator Hub) to buy and sell assets.

The User Interface (UI) of the site is incredibly improved as well with an advanced filter function added. Want to sort oldest to newest? Done. How about only showing those NFTs currently for sale? Easy peasy. Want to only see swords and not armor on the Game Hub? Just a button click away.

Migration Swap

Finally, them migration swap will also be the sole servicer for DEXI/DXG migration to the Polygon Chain.

Repeating that again: the swap will also be the sole servicer for DEXI/DXG migration to the Polygon Chain! Use only official links, beware of strange DMs pretending our “support,” and always be cautious and careful.

https://migration.dexioprotocol.com

Smart contract audits come first! New features soon after!

Hunter

The five-city beta of DexiHunter in May went fabulous and the beta hunters provided great feedback to the development team on UI improvements and other upgrades that could make the app more entertaining than than it already was. New to the upgraded DexiHunter is an in-app wallet, ideal for anyone downloading the app that is not a crypto veteran. A huge barrier to entry in crypto gaming adoption is the number of steps it takes to download a wallet, remember your seed phrase, find a CEX to purchase tokens, send them to your other wallet, swap for the currency, etc. etc. etc. That’s a lot of steps. Building an in-app solution significantly lowers the entry barrier allowing users to begin finding, capturing, and requesting their blockchain assets immediately in-app.

The social function of DexiHunter is also exiting development. Chat with your friends and fellow Hunters, find new friends to go hunting with, or brag up your Bitcoin bounty find. Dexioprotocol’s mission is to make blockchain mainstream and the social feature is another step in making it a mainstay. Finally, the UI has had an amazing overhaul thanks to the beta testers’ feedback. The new UI should be more intuitive and user-friendly, further breaking down the barriers to making blockchain gaming fun!

Games

DexiKnights, DexiDragons, and DexiCarnival have kept the game development team very busy. Besides all the backend connections that have needed to be re-tooled for the Polygon Chain migration, the games themselves have made tremendous strides.

The latest update for DexiKnights will be available at or near the migration go-live date. The backend team has worked on a solution to migrate your NFT weapons and battlepasses, while the game development team has been making enhancements to your gaming experience. Upgrade your PVP style by equipping new Sashimonos (collectible cosmetic flags attaching to your character) and adding a player banner to show off during the PVP face-off. The PVP arenas have been altered to make them smaller and more optimized by removing some of the meshes. Watch out though! Traps have been added to the arenas to keep you on your toes. Look out for swinging axe traps, vines that will snare you in-place momentarily, spikes emerging from the floor, and some pesky Tiki men shooting flames at you.

DexiDragons and DexiCarnival will be in beta soon! In Dragons, the team is working now to get the backend connected to the NFT marketplace and will exit its alpha stage. After a brief internal beta with our Dexio team and special participants, the public beta will be pushed out to the app stores. Carnival will follow shortly after that. Just like a traditional hometown carnival, enjoy games like skee ball, air hockey, plinko, and more. The game will originally be single-player, with multi-player functionality coming later.

So, what have we been working on since announcing the intent to migrate? Everything! Not everything that is essential to making the migration as secure as possible is necessarily a public activity. We will soon be exiting the smart contract audit stage and moving to full migration stage. We’ll choose and announce which decentralized exchange (DEX) best meets the needs of our community. We’re also looking at cross-chain bridge options to make it even easier for you to continue to swap BNB for DEXI, if you so choose, and looking at potential fiat on/off ramp solutions.

Keep up with us on Discord, Telegram, and Twitter, keep your seedphrase safe, and get ready for migration!

About Dexioprotocol

Our vision is a world in which blockchain technology is mainstream and vastly more people are connected by it.

We are advancing this ambition by creating a suite of gaming applications that allow our users to play our games with or without a digital wallet. By providing people with incredibly fun and interactive games, we can introduce digital assets and other applications within our ecosystem that allow our users to step comfortably into blockchain technology. In addition to that, we are creating sustainable and long-term revenue streams that support the business of Dexioprotocol as well as fund investment in the development of our blockchain based ecosystem.

We are here to stay and we mean to ensure that Dexioprotocol has a realistic, viable, and visionary approach to the advancement of the blockchain revolution.