Ferrum Network’s First Code Review

Hello Ferrum Network Community,

One question we often get is — why does your GitHub have no content? Relatedly, we are often asked whether our code base is open source. These are legitimate questions, and we wanted to address them head on in this article.

In conjunction with this article, we are releasing the code review performed by the third-party code reviewer, In Code We Trust. Before we get going, we want to give Jerry and his team a BIG shout out for helping us out, and for offering great advice on how we can improve.

The Context

First, some context is important. It’s helpful to remember that Ferrum Network is a fin tech start-up in fund raising mode and development mode. We are not trying to pretend otherwise. The reality is we currently have limited resources to compete with the big players in crypto. Moreover, we have one primary source of value: our technology.

It is also important to recognize that we have not simply built another ERC-20 network. Ferrum Network is a unique network built from the ground up with a specific use case in mind — fast, inexpensive decentralized transactions of any digital asset. And while we have come a long way in terms of building the network, we are not quite ready to release the Ferrum Network codebases as open source, but will do so when we are ready.

We believe the most important thing we can do right now is build great products on top of the network and acquire loyal users. This is why we have been laser focused on building world-class decentralized financial products — specifically a cross-chain decentralized wallet, cross-chain DEX, Sub Zero Wallet app for mobile cold storage, and the Kudi Exchange, Nigeria’s first crypto-to-fiat exchange powered by Ferrum Network — and then acquiring users for those products.

That being said, transparency remains one of our core values. So until our products are launched and the network is ready, we will be doing numerous code reviews from third-party providers and releasing those reviews publicly to show our community that the technology is legitimate. However, it is critical to emphasize that Ferrum Network will still be open source — anyone will be able to build on top of Ferrum Network after main net launch. But for the time being, we hope the community will be satisfied with these code reviews and our product demos.

The Key Findings of the Code Review

Now onto the review, the full version of which can be found here. For the non-technically minded amongst us, we want to break down the key findings of the review. Notably, the report found that:

Based on the review of source code text files and installation/runtime test of the executable code our conclusion is that the project is in an early working alpha stage;
The code reflects a high development skill level;
We have not encountered any issues in executing the Ferrum node, and the run-time behavior is stable (exceeding expectations at this point in development);
The installation package available has provided a smooth experience; and
The development has clearly focused on providing a functional working system.
Other notable aspects include reference to the improvements we have made to the IOTA consensus mechanism. Namely, with respect to the Ferrum Network node, they found that “IOTA consensus with ETH compatible signing, hash and addresses. Addresses can be re-used without compromising keys (as opposed to IOTA)”. We understand that Ferrum’s relation to IOTA is an area of concern for many in the community, and we will fully address those questions in a subsequent article, but we thought it was worthwhile to point out here.

Another notable aspect is the report’s reference to our fiat gateway that utilizes the Ripple API, and “is built to connect Ferrum node with the external world via the API Gateway.” We believe that the implementation of XRP as means to enable a fiat gateway is a significant value proposition for us, and felt it was important to highlight here.

What We Learned and Improvements Going Forward

Not only did the team at In Code We Trust do a thorough assessment of the tech, but they were also kind enough to make high-level recommendations for how we can improve. We appreciate these recommendations and take them seriously.

Among many important recommendations, they recommended that the “development milestones need to align with the whitepaper and include a proper 3rd party test.” We could not agree more. Security is paramount to Ferrum Network. For this reason, we want to iterate that will not go live with our main net until security issues have been identified by third parties and satisfactorily resolved. We look forward to working with the team at In Code We Trust and other reputable companies as we address those security needs going forward.

Conclusion

We hope you found this article and the code review helpful. If anyone has any questions, you can find us on our Telegram channel. Please stay tuned for more code reviews and other important information to be released soon, including a huge announcement regarding our Nigerian fiat gateway, the Kudi Exchange! Thank you again for your support of Ferrum Network. Until next time.

Very truly yours,

Ian Screenshot 2019-04-24 at 18.24.09.png