2018 is a memorable year in the crypto history. It marks the 10th year anniversary of the birth of bitcoin and sees the most turbulent market following the great crypto crash early this year. TOP Network made its debut in August after a year of development under the stealth mode. The market struggles but we’re well prepared. We has taken the plunge and made remarkable breakthroughs in four months. It’s time to look back at the highlights in technical development, community management, partnerships, events and team building we’ve accomplished in 2018. In 2019, we will definitely achieve more — to launch our Mainnet and provide more Dapps on the blockchain. Thanks for all the support from our community members. TOP wish you a new year loaded with full happiness!
What we have accomplished in 2018
Technical development: Stick to roadmap and achieve more
- In October, we officially launched our Testnet which has more than 7000 TPS. It not only verifies our technical innocation but is a significant milestone towards the blueprint of building a high-performance public blockchain for real-world business of any size or volume. Such a big stride also implies we’re more confident to release our Mainnet in Q2, 2019.
- We released our English whitepaper in September, in which we elaborate the key technologies, token economies and the mechanism of the whole TOP ecosystem. Feel free to view our whitepaper at https://www.topnetwork.org/whitepaper and send any feedback to us.
- We officially announced the launch of TOP Network Testnet on Oct. 16 at Stanford University.
- We implemented decentralized web chat in November, and will provide more cloud communication services on the blockchain.
- We completed the development of the first version of three Dapps including a decentralized lottery, decentralized red packet, and decentralized business card in December, and we will release more Dapps on the TOP ecosystem.
Community: From zero to 10k
- In August, we created TOP Network Official Telegram group. The number of members grew rapidly to 3900 in the first week, and is approaching 10,000 at the end of December, with the average number of messages every day between 600 and 800. Along with the surge in Telegram group, TOP’s other social media platforms have also achieved a large organic growth. The followers on Twitter reached more than 7,500, and 3,600 on Facebook. More notably, we created our Discord group in December, a geek community where all of our developers have joined in for technical discussions.
- The impressive organic growth is due to the creative community activities we’ve rolled out. We created a bounty bot in September and launched a series of bounty programs including Testnet bounty, Bitcointalk bounty, Thanksgiving bounty, weekly quiz, sticker competition, referral campaign, holiday wonderland and so on.
- To engage more community members to be part of the TOP team, we launched our Global Ambassador Program in October. We’ve received nearly 100 applications until now and several applicants are now serving as ambassadors in their local communities. The program is still live and we keep seeking for those who are passionate about blockchain and want to act as our local voice.
- We fired up our first AMA on Nov. 28 and the second one followed up on Dec. 19. Our CEO Steve Wei answered questions from the Telegram group members, deepening their understanding of TOP Network.
- We unveiled TOP Network mascot Toppie, the adorable giraffe with T-shaped ears saying hi in our Telegram group every day, in November. We released our first version of stickers based on Toppie emojis and updated a new version within a month. We also brought out TOP Network Community Sticker Design Competition in December, to spark the creativity and hear the voice from our communities.
Events: Meet TOP team around the globe
- TOP team kicked off the world tour at a meetup hosted by NEO Global Capital (NGC) in Boston in September. As one of the industry leaders in the crypto field, Steve introduced the project to top-notch venture capitals and blockchain enthusiasts.
- TOP CEO Steve and CMO Noah attended Consensus Singapore in September. We appreciate the opportunity to catch up with early investors including NGC, LD Capital, Danhua Capital (DHVC). TOP also met and built close relationships with major cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance, Bibox and Kucoin.
- TOP Network delivered a speech at Huobi meetup at Stanford University on Oct. 11, focusing on recent technical development of TOP team and crypto trends around the globe.
- TOP Network officially launched the Testnet at Stanford University on Oct. 16, which is a significant milestone on our roadmap. We celebrated this crucial accomplishment with over 120 attendees including investors, corporate executives, media and blockchain enthusiasts. TOP’s advisors, Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, and Mark Greene, former CEO of FICO, came to congratulate and shared their insights about the blockchain industry with the attendees. Our CEO Steve shared his entrepreneurial experience and addressed the pain points of the communication industry that TOP aims to solve.
- Invited by our strategic partner Ontology, TOP Network attended the Ontology local meetups in San Francisco on Oct. 30 and Seattle on Nov. 1, speaking to more than 120 blockchain enthusiasts and developers in those tech-driven cities.
- TOP Network attended White Paper Journal Club on Dec. 13 hosted by ABC Blockchain Community, a highly technical blockchain group started by Google engineers in Silicon Valley. TOP CTO Taylor and CMO Noah discussed layer 2 solutions and technical innovations of TOP Network with engineers from tech giants and top-notch crypto projects including Google, Facebook and Huobi.
Partnerships: Boom despite the winter
- TOP Network Closed $6 million series A round early September from prestigious investors including Fenbushi Capital, Danhua Capital (DHVC), NEO Global Capital, LD Capital, Roots Capital, Jubilee, Vancoin, Alphacoin, Origin Capital, Starwin Capital, etc. Before that, TOP closed a $2 million seed round funding from institutional investors including Daocin Capital, Tsinghua Entrepreneur and Executive Club Fund, Dream Chaser Capital and individual investors like Hikvision co-founder Hongjia Gong and Alibaba co-founder Yongming Wu.
- TOP Network announced a strategic partnership with Ontology, renowned public chain provider, in September, aiming to create next-generation communication network on the blockchain. In addition to technical support, Ontology’s venture capital firm Ontology Global Capital (OGC) has announced a strategic investment in TOP Network.
TOP Network keeps raising funds from top-notch venture capitals despite the bear market. We have gained millions of strategic investment from Consensus Lab, United States Corp, O1ex, Alumni Ventures Group, Elysium, Rockaway Blockchain, etc. O1ex announced additional investment in December.
Team: Keep getting bigger and stronger
- TOP Network unveiled advisory board in October consisting of prominent industry leaders including Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom, CEO Mark Greene, Former FICO , Roger Lim, founding partner of NGC, and Kevin Hsu founder of BlockVC. With the expertise from our advisory board, TOP Network will better leverage the resources in technical development, community management and marketing, and team up to achieve more.
- TOP team keeps expanding with members specializing in technical development, community management, marketing and product design. Our team members have a background from top universities in China and the U.S. like Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Yale University, Northwestern University and University of California San Diego, and have years of experience in tech companies like Baidu and Alibaba. Meanwhile, we’re hiring more talents. Please feel free to contact us if you believe you’re a good fit!
What to expect in 2019
- We will achieve the biggest landmark in our whitepaper — to launch Mainnet of TOP Network and TOP Chain in Q2, 2019.
- We will soon release BitVPN, world’s first decentralized VPN on the blockchain.
- We will offer more decentralized communications services including the updated version of decentralized VPN, TOP Messaging service, TOP IoT, etc.
- More Dapps will come out on our Mainnet.
- Three communication apps Dingtone, CoverMe and SkyVPN and their 50 million users will be migrated onto TOP Network soon. TOP Network will have the largest user base on the blockchain in 2019.
- We will put more efforts into technical community development and roll out more events both online and offline like hackathons, meetups, AMAs, etc. TOP team is expected to meet the community members around the globe in the U.S., China, Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Germany, Czech Republic and more.
You can find TOP Network on:
Email Contact: contact@topnetwork.org
Official Website: http://www.topnetwork.org
Telegram: https://t.me/topnetwork_top
Twitter: https://twitter.com/topnetwork_top
Medium: https://medium.com/@topnetwork
Steemit: https://steemit.com/@topnetwork-top
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/topnetwork_top
About TOP Network
TOP Network is a decentralized open communication network providing cloud communication services such as messaging, calling, video, VPN, CDN, IoT data sharing and more. Enabled by blockchain 4.0 technology, TOP Network is secure, low cost and unstoppable.
TOP is also a high-performance public blockchain platform designed for enabling real-world business on blockchain. With its three-layered ledgers, two-layered sharding, instant transaction, and zero transaction fees, TOP can process any volume and any size of real-world business on blockchain.
TOP Network originated from the common underlying network layer of three communication apps built by the TOP team in the past. These three apps will be moved to TOP Network immediately after TOP is launched. With over 50 million users combined, they will bring a huge volume of transactions to the TOP ecosystem. Particularly, TOP will become a proven public blockchain platform that can handle millions of DAU and hundred thousands of TPS.
TOP was founded by Steve and his colleagues in late 2017. Steve is a successful serial entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest employees of WebEx. After WebEx, he founded a successful video conferencing software company which was acquired by Huawei in 2010.
With a world-class team of over 100 developers, we are building TOP Network to become the public network infrastructure layer for all apps.
We have closed $8 million early investment from prestigious institutional investors and individual billionaire investors, including DHVC, Fenbushi Capital, NEO Global Capital, LD Capital and more.