Metronome’s Launch: A look back and a look forward

The team that launched Metronome is incredibly proud to have breathed life into a fully functional and autonomous entity that will continue on indefinitely independently of the original team’s, or any other human’s intervention. Members of the community have the ability to add enhancements due to the open source nature of Metronome. Since Metronome’s launch, the team has been hard at work adding new features to the ecosystem and engaging in community building activities. We wanted to take a moment to update the community on what we’ve been doing since launch and what lies ahead.

A Successful, Historic Launch

Metronome launched as an autonomous product and ecosystem, outside of the control and influence of its authors. It didn’t break and it wasn’t hacked. It is a fully functional cryptocurrency that had no security issues at launch–the ETH from the Initial Supply Auction remains stored in the autonomous ecosystem. Put simply, it works.

Metronome’s functionality and the autonomous nature of its ecosystem mark a change in how we think about cryptocurrencies and money. Metronome, as a working and fully functional cryptocurrency, is evidence that money can be fully self-governing, reliable with a codified supply, and portable between different blockchains to offer each user maximum control over their own money.

This isn’t all Metronome did differently.

All of the proceeds from auction sales stay in the Metronome ecosystem–none of which goes to the authors, or a foundation or otherwise. Instead, there was a one-time retention of MET by the authors before the Initial Supply Auction. Furthermore, the Metronome team locked up its author’s retention with a system of autonomous TokenLocker smart contracts that make the author’s retention available over a three year time period. These funds cannot be accessed before they are scheduled to be unlocked, and that unlock schedule is dictated by the logic in the TokenLockers themselves–which are available for public review on GitHub.

Due to the meticulous auditing (four external and independent auditors, no less) that the team insisted on and the encouragement from the wider community to build only the best, we all successfully launched this new cryptocurrency. The team was even criticized for this attention to detail every now and then — but the multiple postponements in the interest of even more audits were necessary to ensure a working, autonomous cryptocurrency. The Metronome launch was a historic moment, and its importance cannot be overstated. The entirety of Metronome’s launch was a resounding success.

We all made history–a complex set of smart contracts automatically facilitating the purchase and sale of MET and ETH–innovation in this industry continues to evolve at an incredible pace.

Post-Initial Supply Auction Wrap Up

The Initial Supply Auction (ISA) marked the successful launch of Metronome. The team compiled some of the data about that auction and the ecosystem that we found most interesting:

Initial Supply Auction

• Duration: 6 days, 23 hours, 40 minutes
• Final purchase price: 0.0028 ETH ($1.27)
• The price per MET doubled almost immediately following the auction, price largely remains close to 0.0052 ETH ($2.10)
• Total number of purchases: 2,797
• Number of unique addresses that participated: 1,443
• Number of holders increased to 2,000 following the auction close, and well over 3,100 at the time of writing
• Average purchase amount: 2,860.21 MET ($3,632.47)
• Total ISA proceeds: 26,502.21 ETH ($12.1 Million)

Post Initial Supply Auction

• First 25 basis points sent to Autonomous Converter after ISA: 66.2555 ETH ($26,971.30)
• Post ISA, several smaller or decentralized exchanges elected to support Metronome.
• Exchanges, wallets, and pricing apps from around the world have expressed unsolicited interest in listing the MET token.
• Number of Autonomous Converter Transactions since it went live: 8,004 (at time of writing)
• Average transfer amount: 1,395.01 MET
• Daily average number of transfers: 219

METs popularity is growing. Community members recognize the utility of Metronome and are excited by its use cases.

Critical Reflection on the Initial Supply Auction

The team recognizes a few things that could have been done better in regards to the user experience in the Initial Supply Auction. While there were no security issues and the contracts behave securely and as expected, there are things that hindsight teaches us.

Without sugarcoating it, Metronome’s Initial Supply Auction took place during one of the deepest dips of an already stubborn bear market for cryptocurrencies as a whole in 2018–but particularly for ETH. We suspect this did a few things: (1) purchasers seemed hesitant to purchase new cryptocurrencies with their ETH, which they may have purchased at a higher price than what it was worth during the auction and because of this (2) many purchasers chose to wait too long for the price to descend a bit lower than many expected — a “reverse-FOMO” effect.

Were the team to launch Metronome again with the added benefit of hindsight, we may have chosen to do a few things to address the above and make the purchaser experience better. One thing that can’t really be helped is timing. Second, due to the long nature of the auction itself, we recognize that more automation, such as limit orders in the wallet or on the website, would have benefited many purchasers and potentially increased the number of auction participants.

None of this, however, changes the fact that the functionality of Metronome on a technical level works as designed, its Initial Supply Auction operated as intended, and that all users still had the same access to the auction opportunities. We can’t code the market or influence when purchasers choose to purchase, nor did we set out to do that.

We would note that following the initial descending price auction the Daily Supply Lots have been excellent, in conjunction with the Autonomous Converter Contract, in mirroring and continually discovering market price.

Additionally, we recognize that this post-Initial Supply Auction reflection took a bit longer than many hoped and we are streamlining our content pipeline to make sure the community gets updates more promptly.

But we are not here to dwell on the past.

Following the blur that was the launch of MET and its subsequent first weeks, the Metronome team has been working non-stop and the ecosystem is shifting from “launch-mode” to expand the ecosystem based on Metronome’s utility and functionality. Now is the time to expand and explore.

Enhancements to the Wallet and Explorer

Metronome authors were pleased to launch the Metronome Wallet at the time of the Metronome ecosystem launch. It allowed the entire community, not just those with a knowledge of using APIs, to engage with the entire ecosystem including the auction and converter contracts–while allowing a convenient place to store both MET and ETH.

In fact, the Metronome Wallet and Explorer have become so popular that their developers needed to increase the backend capacity and nodes to accommodate calls and user demand. Feedback and feature requests came in as quickly as the updated versions of the wallets were released.

Updates and enhancements to the Metronome Explorer are making it easier to use and more insightful–not to mention far faster than previous iterations of the wallet. The Explorer developers will continue to take the helpful feedback from the community and turn it into a better experience for the users.

Targeting New Cross-Chain Interoperability

In addition to continuing to refine and build out the Metronome Wallet and Metronome Explorer, Metronome developers are working to write a technical document for the code-savvy members of the community describing how cross-chain portability works. While all of the code for Metronome has been publicly available on our GitHub repository for some time now, the developers wanted to give the community a bit of color and deeper explanation of how the cross-chain system works.

This document will be published and shared with the community once it is ready. It is a laborious task as it is important to check the text against the code multiple times to ensure correctness and absence of unintentional innuendo. The fact is, while code is code, describing code introduces more nuance than just looking at the code itself.

It is important to note that Metronome is already interoperable with other blockchains. It has both import and export capabilities now, with different blockchains as targets for additional interoperability.

If you think of Metronome like a boxcar and target blockchains like rails, the boxcar is complete — it has sturdy wheels and a well-built frame. The rails are already-built tracks. There is nothing preventing the boxcar from riding on those rails–no further development of the boxcar’s or rails’ structures is needed. Instead, a switch just needs to be flipped to allow the boxcar to move to another rail. In the same way, Metronome’s import and export need no further development–it only needs targets and a switch.

The team expects interoperability with Ethereum Classic soon.

Continual Planning of More Community Engagement and Content

Metronome has a large, diverse, and engaged community. This is not by chance. It is the product of strong, community-made ties and engagement. To celebrate this, the team is building out more content (like the above mentioned technical document and this post you’re currently reading) and, importantly, more community building resources and engagement opportunities.

Soon, the team will publish resources on Metronome.io that can assist in the creation of your own local Metronome meetup, or online community. Think of it as a community creation kit–a meetup in a box.

The team is also in the process of finalizing a few meetups in the coming months, one in Chicago, one in Seattle, one in Las Vegas, and one in Oslo. The team is also exploring other cities, in addition to attending and sponsoring hackathons. Once dates and venues are confirmed, we will announce them to the community. We relish the chance to meet other community members face to face!

In the interim, the team plans on doing more AMAs and webinars to give community members more opportunities to talk with the team, if they cannot make the planned meetups, talks, and conferences. Speaking of conferences, we have no intention of slowing down our attendance of the most influential conferences in the cryptocurrency space–keep an eye out for us at the next one some team members will attend, the Voice of Blockchain in Chicago. See you there!

Finally, the team is working to revamp the Metronome website to include the resources mentioned above, update the timeline for the team’s goals, and make a better post-launch experience for the community as a whole.

Encouraging Community Driven Efforts

Ultimately, Metronome belongs to the community, not the authors. We chose to develop and launch a working, autonomous, and self-governing cryptocurrency so that the community could be the ones to define it. While the team is, and intends on staying, active in the community, they are simply just part of the community like any other member. The team has no more influence than others over the code base, or even the definition of Metronome–it is community-defined and driven.

This focus on community-driven definition and development is why we are providing resources to help community members strengthen the community on their own, and why all of the code has been made public on GitHub. We highly encourage developers and other community members to work on greater chain-compatibility with us, to build Metronome-enabled applications with us, to create and attend meetups, and help spread the word. The Metronome authors specifically built Metronome to function without a foundation so that the community could continue growing Metronome without dependency on a small group or company.

Know a chain that you would like to see Metronome contracts deployed on and that you feel could enhance the ecosystem? Head over to GitHub, fork the repository, and start building it out — the Metronome team certainly is. Do you and your friends want to start a meetup in your area for Metronome? Start it up and help widen Metronome’s network effect, and let the team know about it, if we’re in the area we may stop by! Do you freelance for cryptocurrency or own a business? Consider accepting MET as a payment method.

We are all equally able to help strengthen and continue to define Metronome, the question is if you are ready to help those efforts.

Conclusion:

Metronome’s historic launch avoided the pitfalls usually associated with launching an autonomous ecosystem. It had no security breaches, it didn’t break Ethereum, and it just works. The Initial Supply Auction passed the torch from the developers to the community and transformed the team into an equal member of the community. The community of users grows daily, and the team that launched Metronome, just like any other community member can, is working to continue building out the enhancements and extras that make Metronome even that much more special. Additionally, the team is focused on generating more content and useful materials to help the community continue growing.

We’ll likely be at your next favorite conference, and if not, you can catch team members at one of the upcoming meetups currently being planned, or the soon-to-happen AMAs.

To contribute to the discussion, join Metronome’s Telegram. For the latest news be sure to follow Metronome on Twitter.

More to come,

The Metronome Team

Update: Updates to the website and wallet are an ongoing effort. The Metronome Explorer is currently discontinued in favor of already existing blockchain explorers.