It’s often said that time in crypto seems longer than elsewhere due to the rapid pace of development in the space. To appreciate this you only have to consider that just eight weeks ago we launched our native staking app.

Since that time many new members have joined the Paribus community and we’ve maintained our breakneck rate of development switching our focus back onto the MVP and beyond. We’ve even had the pleasure of receiving praise and encouragement directly from the founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson himself.

Early into 2022, we released our updated roadmap which included some noteworthy changes, such as the addition of meta-offerings, which we’ll cover in more detail later in the week. We also noticed a growing depth of interest within the Paribus community to share our vision for the future of decentralized finance, so we started to give more details about the background of the project and how it came to be.

As Deniz, our CEO explained, “Our name was inspired from a quote from Alfred Marshall, a 19th-century economist. The quote goes “…a complex question, studying one bit at a time, and at last combining his partial solutions into a more or less complete solution of the whole riddle. In breaking it up, he segregates those disturbing causes, whose wanderings happen to be inconvenient, for the time in a pound called Ceteris Paribus.” That phrase “ceteris paribus” is Latin for “all other things being equal.” We believe that it is important to have a strong name that connects our users to have an intuition about what type of company we are. We’re adding together the pieces of what makes a truly superior borrowing and lending platform, one step at a time, and will continue adding as we iterate and grow.”

Next, we gave more details about why PBX started life as an ERC-20 token and our plans to migrate fully to a Cardano Native Token (CNT) over the coming months. As the weeks went by and congestion on Cardano increased, especially with the launch of Sundae Swap, it became clear to everyone why we’d chosen the route we had and that it was the right one.

We’ve also continued to hold our regular Telegram Town Hall AMAs along with our bi-weekly development updates, expanding them to include additional information where relevant. Readers have been able to track the progress of the development team as they finalize parts of the MVP and then watch them progress through our internal quality assurance (QA) testing regime.

What’s especially interesting to note are the areas related to NFT collateralization that although not scheduled to be part of the MVP are nevertheless progressing at a rapid pace through the development process. This should ensure that we hit the ground running with the MVP and are ready to quickly onboard further iterations as we move through the weeks and months following its launch.

Adaptability and community are the key drivers to the success of Paribus and we’ve shown this time and again from the creation of our native staking app, planning rewards for PBX holders when the MVP goes live, and most recently the development of the Paribus Ambassador Program. We’re proud to be building not just a DeFi protocol, but a loyal and supportive community as well.

For decentralization to work, it relies upon not just effective technology but also an engaged community. This has been our focus since the inception of Paribus and it’s an aspect we covered in some depth when discussing our future plans for the project to become a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).

As Simon, our CTO explained, “Many times we’ve discussed governance and the possibilities of becoming a DAO in a responsible manner. This will take a lot of time and thought to make it work successfully. While this is many years off, we have this as a long-term goal.”

Nothing operates in complete isolation from the rest of the world and the tumultuous events that we’ve seen so far in 2022 have demonstrated the need for decentralized structures and systems. From the US proposing crypto-hostile legislation to Canada freezing protestor’s assets, we’ve seen the freedoms we often take for granted threatened and restricted without any fair judicial process. Whatever each person’s view of these events, we’ve witnessed this being the catalyst for rapid growth in the adoption of cryptocurrency and self custody wallets.

In addition whilst many countries continue to fight the problems of inflation of their fiat currency we’ve continued along our path of deflation. Last month’s burn brought our total amount of PBX permanently removed from circulation climb to over 130 million. Whilst no project has any control over the world events currently dragging the markets down we continue to act in the best interests of PBX holders both in terms of our platform development and also our monetary policy.

All of this has not gone unnoticed amongst the cryptocurrency community in large and Charles Hoskinson in particular. As Charles recently said, “This is why projects like Paribus, which lets individuals get the most out of their assets by using their NFTs as collateral to gain access to capital, are so important. The Paribus project will bring a lot of value to the Cardano ecosystem by allowing NFT holders to turn their NFTs into interoperable assets capable of being used on any blockchain.”

Whilst the markets continue to battle the uncertainty of inflation, geopolitical instability, and civil unrest we remain firmly focused on our MVP and committed to bringing it to market as quickly and securely as possible. Amidst all of this turbulence one thing remains certain, the future of blockchain technology and our place within it.