ArcBlock 2020 year in review was a transitional year for the Blockchain industry. In this article, ArcBlock CEO Robert Mao takes a look back at some of the challenges, opportunities, and showcases an optimistic view of what's to come in 2021.

ArcBlock CEO, Robert Mao - "A Year of Progress"

Whether it's me or the ArcBlock team, 2020 has been a tough year, while also being a year of growth and love. I believe that one day in the future, when we look back we will all realize that we accomplished a lot - both personally and professionally.

Similar to many of our friends and customers, ArcBlock was deeply impacted by the epidemic and saw the overall industry take a downward trajectory as many businesses and individuals began to realize the full extent of the virus.

So for ArcBlock 2020 was a time to reflect, learn from our mistakes and return to our beginning by rediscovering ourselves and focusing ourselves on our mission to make decentralization a reality. We are removing past mistakes, focusing our strengths and delivering products to our customers that they need, want and can use.

2021 is no longer about unrealistic expectations, but rather embracing who we are and what we want to do in order to make ArcBlock a success. If you go back and look at the last year, you can see that despite the impact of the pandemic the ArcBlock team remained strong, reslilient and focused on building, improving and delivering our products.

"One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."

Product Releases

ABT Node

• In July, ArcBlock officially released ABT Node RC1
• In September. ArcBlock ofAficially released ABT Node 1.0 for production DApps and use cases
• In October. ArcBlock released an improved version of ABT Node that included various feature enhancements
• In December, ABT Node 1.1 was released with several new innovations and Blocket updates

ABT Wallet

• March saw ArcBlock release ABT Wallet 2.5 improving on their industry-leading decentralized wallet and reimagining how users could control their data on the decentralized web.

NFT

• ArcBlock's Devcon in June included a wide range of NFTs including tickets, certificates and more.

Token Swap

• In January ArcBlock released it's official Token Swap Service.

DevCon

• In June, ArcBlock announced it's first official Developer Conference to be held live over a 48-hour period in June.
• ArcBlock Devcon 2020 Day 1 Recap
• ArcBlock Devcon 2020 Day 2 Recap
• On June 28, ArcBlock held a week long Hackathon that included unique NFTs, leading developer teams and more

Experiences

• In February, ArcBlock released a live demo experience "Try Identity Now" that enabled anyone to experience decentralized identity, blockchain and DApps in a few simple steps.

Partnerships

• In Aprile, ArcBlock joins the Covid 19 Initiative
• In June, ArcBlock officially announed a new partnership with the WTiA
• In November, Poulsat and ArcBlock officially announced a new strategic partnership to bring Decentralized Identity, Blockchain and tokenization to Africa.
• In December，ArcBlock joined the internationally recognized decentralized identity organization MyData Global.

Milestones

• In October, ArcBlock celebrated it's three-year anniversary

2021 and Beyond

As ArcBlock continues to grow as a company and become more public with it's product releases, ArcBlock will no longer be announcing it's internal product roadmap. As a product company, the focus will remain entirely on the DApps Platform and customers with every action going forward focused on bettering the ArcBlock experience.

Some notable things to be aware of for the first and second quarters of 2021 include:

• To improve the ArcBlock experience going forward, we will initiate and complete a complete reverse Token Swap operation returning to the free ERC20 state. In doing so, we will be able to improve the ArcBlock platform and experience for our developers and customers by removing much of our technical debt;
• We will introduce a new ABT asset chain based on the Ethereum Optimistic Rollup mechanism, and sunset our previous Forge-based native asset chain approach. In doing so, we will enable uro users to gain the benefits of both Ethereum and the high-performance native chain;
• Lastly, we will host our next DevCon 2 Developers Conference in June, when we'll partner with more developer partners to show the future of decentralization, DApps and more.

While 2020 has been challenging, it has also created many new opportunities for ArcBlock. While "the pessimist is often right, the optimist is often successful". In the unprecedented dilemmas and challenges of 2020, we have chosen to be optimistic and are excited to share everything we've been working on.