The UTU Update — December 2021 / End of Year Recap — UTU
In 2021, we launched multiple products, forged many partnerships, grew the UTU team, and more!
Hello UTU Trust Guardians!
Welcome to the December 2021 / End of Year recap edition of the UTU Update!
2021 was a huge year for the UTU ecosystem, and in this update, we’re going to recap everything that went on in the past year.
You can view this update in video form below:
Let’s go!
Product Achievements
We had some major product launches this year!
First, we launched v1 of our Trust API to help bring a real-world model of human trust to any app where users have to make choices based on trust, or face any type of risk in their decision. This includes online platforms and marketplaces where users can find, buy, or book any services or products, such as ridesharing apps, local home services platforms, freelancing marketplaces, and more. And we’re integrating the Trust API with many clients as we speak!
Next, we launched our Creditworthiness API to help lenders more accurately assess the ability of borrowers to pay back their loans. This will help more people who lack traditional financial histories to acquire loans, and also facilitate undercollateralized loans in the traditional and decentralized finance fields.
We also released the MPESA Data Extractor, which helps Africa-based countries extract data from mobile money statements to inform creditworthiness.
We released the first milestone of our integration project with Ocean Protocol, showing UTU-powered signals for Ocean assets in our DeFi Portal.
And our testnet is coming soon, so stay tuned for more news about the launch!
Partnerships
We forged a ton of partnerships in 2021 to expand the UTU ecosystem.
First, we acquired a bunch of clients with whom to integrate our Trust and Creditworthiness APIs. These include Ocean Protocol, HYVE, Kephi Gallery, Big Data Protocol, Dreamr, DefiCliq, DeHR, CryptoCart, and Conscious Kenya.
We also partnered with many prominent Layer 1 protocols to deploy our API products and UTU Coin on their chains. These include Harmony, Oasis, Kardiachain, Meter, and LGCY.
Decentralized ID is going to be big, and UTU will be the trust layer on top of these protocols. So we’ve partnered with DID providers Hypermine, Numio, and PhoenixDAO.
We’re working with channel partners who will help us sell and market our products in other countries. These include Yellow Brick Road in Nigeria and InsightDriven Group in South Africa.
Last but not least, we’ve partnered with Curacel in insurance, Pngme for financial data, API3 for oracles, and Evoluzion Life for NFTs!
There will be many more big partnerships to come in 2022!
Ported UTU Coin to BSC and Listed on Pancakeswap
We heard you loud and clear about how you were sick of paying high ETH fees, so we worked with our partners at Meter and ported UTU Coin to BSC and listed on Pancakeswap.
You can port your UTU Coin back and forth between the ETH and BSC chains using Meter Passport.
Grew the UTU Team
We added some key members to our growing team!
First, cybersecurity and privacy legend David Holtzman joined our Board of Directors. He’s been invaluable in directing us through the early stages of our organization.
We also grew the marketing team, adding Head of Marketing Shiku Njathi and Community Manager Simon Gisler.
Our engineering team expanded as well, with Leah Njuguna joining as Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Sharon Ndubi joining as Senior Backend Engineer, Raphael Karanja as Senior Software Engineer, and Betty Njambi and Joyce Ndichu as full time junior engineers.
Conclusion
2021 was a big year, and we can’t wait to release testnet and other products and grow the UTU ecosystem in 2022!
Thanks so much for your support, Trust Guardians!
Originally published at https://utu.io on January 4, 2022.
