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The Scope of the Ergo Foundation#

The primary focus of the Ergo Platform is to provide an efficient and secure way to implement financial contracts, which is the most widely used application of blockchain technology. This focus is recognized and supported by the Ergo Foundation.

The Ergo Foundation is committed to organic and non-breaking development of the Ergo Platform protocol. The Foundation ensures that protocol changes are approved not only by miners - who express their will directly on the blockchain - but also by users and projects building on top of Ergo.

The Ergo Foundation is committed to maximizing the number of valuable ecosystem developments accomplished in open-source with the least permissive license possible.

The Foundation is also dedicated to helping with building trustless environments, smart contracts and payment frameworks for the public with privacy in mind. The Foundation believes that the Treasury should be distributed mainly to the community, including freelancers, hackers, experts and enthusiasts.

The Ergo Foundations Future

Please see this page for more information on the long-term goals of The Foundation.

Infrastructure#

  • Support for protocol research, development of the reference client, alternative clients (if needed), libraries, and developer tooling.
  • Improving market access by getting Ergo on centralised exchanges, hardware wallets, bridges, or other means.

Education#

  • Creating materials to educate developers and users directly or funding their creation through third parties from within the community.

Relationship to Marketing#

The Foundation aims to promote the adoption of Ergo. While its operations in this area are conservative, it does fund a select few roles in linear marketing for areas not currently met by the community.

The current paid roles within marketing consist of

  • Editorial & Events Manager,
  • Youtube Manager,
  • Editor,
  • Writers (via paid bounties),
  • Chinese Marketing Manager,
  • Branding Advisor.

Their efforts ensure ample information is available about ongoing developments on Ergo via blog posts and social media, as well as the promoting and operating of various marketing events, such as Ergo Summit and ErgoHack.

Over the past 23 years, network effects have accounted for approximately 70% of the value creation in tech, and this figure is likely higher for a third-generation grassroots blockchain. While the EF strives to lay the foundations and help ignite community marketing and, subsequently, compounding growth, beyond this, the marketing and promotion of Ergo rest principally on the shoulders of the community. (Get Involved!)

The EF does not commonly pay for influencers or ad campaigns and does its best to restrict frivolous spending, which is deemed not cost-effective (i.e. airdrops, giveaways).

The marketing department highlights projects building in the ecosystem. However, these initiatives do not constitute an endorsement from the Ergo Foundation. The Foundation will always use best practices to vet projects and ensure that there is no risk for potential users. Still, in the early stages of development, it is often unknowable if anything of substance will ultimately be produced.

Relationship to Development#

Relationships between the Foundation and development only exist when there is a demand not met by the community, and this role is diminishing over time. Some EF members also have developer positions, and while their development activities are not part of their foundation involvement, they are listed here for transparency.

  • Kushti manages any bounties relating to the reference client repository and keeps a watch over sigma-rust development and any other high-level development and research not covered below. He has not taken a wage for his work since July 2021.
  • Morphic manages any JVM-related developers (Wallet devs, Scala devs, etc.) and the sigmastate-interpreter.
  • Mohammad Hasan Samadani (mhs_sam) manages a team of graduates and PhD students who have produced Ergo Raffle, ErgoWell, Minotaur-wallet, and Rosen Bridge.
  • Fleet-sdk is managed by Alison Robson (anon_br)

With the rest being covered by volunteers, bounties & grants

Code Audits#

The Ergo Foundation does not review or endorse any code specifically. Code reviews are sometimes performed by Ergo Foundation members (due to their expertise in this area), but this does not constitute an endorsement, and users should be aware of their assumptions when interacting with experimental DeFi protocols. (See - Know Your Assumptions)

Exchange Listings#

The Ergo Foundation, as a legal entity, is primarily responsible for liaising with centralized exchanges. Ergo has been listed on several exchanges, including three Tier 1 exchanges (KuCoin, gate.io, Huobi). A tier 1 exchange is defined as an exchange that appears in the top 10 of exchange ranking sites such as defillama.com/cexs.

Exchange discussions and details are typically confidential due to Non-Disclosure Agreements ('NDA'). However, we can share some general insights:

  • Listings are usually expensive.
  • Exchanges generally do not buy liquidity or any of the native tokens or coins on the open market. Instead, a third-party Market Maker ('MM') is used, which has access to an API with a preallocated amount of ERG and USDT to create a liquid market. The MM can only buy/sell and lacks the credentials to withdraw assets.
  • The Ergo Foundation has approached all major exchanges, and none have been rejected due to high costs.

If you're wondering why certain coins are listed and Ergo is not, it could be due to several reasons:

  • They are a native asset on an already integrated chain (i.e., ERC20, Cosmos, etc.), which requires less effort to add and maintain.
  • They may have venture-capitalist funding and connections, which can be leveraged for early listings.
  • They may have a smaller public distribution than ERG and can negotiate with exchanges for a percentage of their total supply.
  • They may be less complex than Ergo, with no native asset support, no need to worry about UTXO dust, etc.
  • They may be older than Ergo and were listed during the last bear market.
  • Even though they are a unique Layer-1, they may only have a wrapped asset (i.e., on BSC) listed.

For updates on our exchange listing efforts, you can follow our Weekly AMAs.

The Ergo Foundation is committed to expanding Ergo's presence on exchanges. However, certain factors such as low volume or market cap can affect our eligibility for listing on some platforms. This is not due to a lack of effort or resources, but rather the nature of the crypto market and the specific requirements of different exchanges.

We are also exploring the possibility of listing as wrapped tokens on exchanges, which could reduce barriers for high-quality tier 2/3 exchanges and help build up our access and volume. We are actively pursuing discussions with a global on-ramp to increase access for US users.

While Ergo's fundamentals are strong, the decision to list a coin often comes down to factors such as profitability and ease of integration for the exchange. However, we believe that as Ergo's DeFi ecosystem matures and volume builds up, more exchanges will recognize its value and list it.

In the meantime, we continue to prioritize development and community engagement over artificially inflating volume or engaging in questionable practices. We believe this approach will lead to sustainable growth and long-term success for Ergo.

The Ergo Foundations Future

Please see this page for more information on the long-term goals of The Foundation.