The past year has been amazing for AdEx and our community: we launched the Platform publicly, onboarded large advertisers and publishers, upgraded the ADX token to allow for incentivized staking - paving the way to a sustainable network security model, and expanded into the DeFi space!
\nToday we’re excited to share our vision for 2021!
\nThe technology that powers AdEx, the AdEx Protocol, is getting an upgrade to version 5, or simply V for the roman numeral. The Protocol has gone through many iterations in the past, starting from an escrow for direct ad deals, to a payment channel system empowering programmatic per-impression payments.
\nAdEx V is a technical overhaul of the underlying OUTPACE payment channel system that’s currently under development, enabling the following new features:
\nThis also paves the way to a long-requested feature: enabling the community to run public validators!
\nRight now, the AdEx Validator software is open-source and advertisers can run it to further secure their campaigns. But since most advertisers do not need that high level of assurance, they let AdEx automatically delegate other validators.
\nIn 2021, we’ll ship infrastructure and tools to enable any third party with sufficient know-how to run their own validator and plug it into the AdEx registry, therefore helping process micropayments on advertiser campaigns and earning fees. Each validator will have to have its own staking pool, along with a large stake from the operator themselves.
\nThis feature is estimated to arrive later in the year.
\nValidator fees (~7% of all AdEx advertising volume) will be used to buy back ADX and distribute it proportionally to stakers.
\nStaking pools will also have automatic compounding for your rewards, which means you will no longer need to re-stake all the time: this will save stakers a lot in gas fees!
\nThe current main staking pool, the Validator Tom pool, will be migrated over to the new staking pool architecture and will retain a similar APY, and will benefit from the new features!
\nWe’ll be making significant improvements to the withdraw fees of the AdEx Platform, as a result fees will be up to 3x lower.
\nTo achieve this, we are implementing an improvement to how the validators crunch data. This change will allow multiple ad campaigns to reuse the same payment channel. Furthermore, channels will stay open indefinitely unless challenged. This means that a single publisher withdrawal would cost a fraction of what it did, even if the publisher earned funds from multiple campaigns.
\nThere will be gas fee optimizations too for the staking portal, with the introduction of the new staking pools.
\nIf a payment channel becomes offline, all affected advertisers will be fully refunded for their stuck campaigns using the validator’s ADX stake - therefore, staking will also act as built-in insurance.
\nBesides the automated ADX buybacks (around 7% of all advertising volume on AdEx will be used to buy ADX and distribute it to stakers), we’ve got other token economics improvements planned as well.
\nThe new staking pools will also allow staking of the new BPT LP token (60-40 yUSD-ADX), combining validator staking with sustainable yield farming.
\nFinally, using ADX in the Platform is making a comeback! The exact details will be announced later once AdEx V is released!
\nWe have planned a number of exciting improvements that will elevate the AdEx advertising platform.
\nPerhaps the most powerful adtech feature that we’ll develop in 2021 is making AdEx interoperable with the vast world of adtech.
\nWe will be integrating AdEx with Prebid.js by implementing a bidder adapter. This means that any publisher that is currently using header bidding through Prebid.js will be able to seamlessly integrate AdEx.
\nWhile we still believe that display advertising has room to grow and has potential for disruption, the future largely lies in alternative, less intrusive ad formats, namely native ads. A recent example of this is Coinmarketcap removing all banner ads.
\nWe’ll be adding support for HTML5 creatives too, adding more flexibility to display advertising.
\nThis is not so much of a roadmap goal, but rather a statement: AdEx is already compatible with all of the privacy updates in the Apple ecosystem, Chrome, Firefox and others, as we do not use third-party cookies.
\nIn 2021, we will work to improve our contextual targeting (read more), which always was and will stay independent of cookies, making it unaffected by recent privacy updates and compatible with regulations such as the GDPR, CCPA, etc.
\nNote: this timeline is subject to change. While our roadmap is very ambitious, we are confident we will deliver on all of the important milestones. As we further narrow down our priorities throughout the year, we may shuffle around some of the minor features on the roadmap.
\nThe future is bright and we’re excited to be entering the fifth year of our development and growth, as well as, coincidently, the fifth iteration of our protocol!
\nWith the know-how and user base we’ve acquired in the last 4 years, we’re confident that 2021 is going to be the best year for us.
\nStay tuned for more updates!
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