Dear Hydra Community, This update is humbly given with gratitude and respect for what we've experienced together. I’m excited to share our proposal for the project "HydraGon", a major new release that builds on top of everything Hydra. This L1 Consensus proposal comes in the form of an holistic design, born from a collective experience of events, all part of our shared journey over the past 5 years. Among these 5 years, 3 were spent working closely with developers, community members, and multiple partners, extracting valuable feedback. This journey has been one of learning. Each challenge, each piece of feedback from everyone involved, has brought us here. This new proposal isn't just a result of hard work, but of every experience we've had along the way, along with a deep study and a better understanding of the environment and the rapidly advancing technology in and outside of Hydra. It incorporates knowledge gathered from more than 20 different L1 and L2 projects, extensive analysis of DeFi, historical economic data spanning 8+ years, countless backtests, as well as hundreds of hours of blockchain contextual study, research, reverse-engineering, and analysis of the industry. That said, we should take a moment to celebrate as I am confident that what you are about to see is the biggest proposal iterated within our community. At its core, this proposal aims to propel the Hydra protocol to a new domain, tackle most of its current weaknesses, and try to push the boundaries of what is possible in the blockchain space. It showcases our unique take on Layer 1 technology, fusing the finest technical applications with our proprietary design and ideas which address key challenges in blockchain. It also includes an innovative approach in blockchain economics, which is intricate yet still adheres to the original vision introduced in 2018. I will not get into details in this post, but instead invite you to explore it further. Check out our whitepaper for a deeper understanding of the design, and the presentation that we created for a more digestable introduction: Presentation link -> click here / Desktop Recommended/ Whitepaper link -> click here [A bit of background] Active work on the design started in early 2022 and has already advanced to a stage where the concept, for the most part, has been validated and the unique architecture has been invented. Due to the high-impact potential, there has been a small but extremely powerful engineering/r&d work-group working on the implementation of the MVP for nearly a year now with a significant progress made on the execution. This is also an affirmation on our communication strategy, where we prefer to adhere to event-driven communication, opposed to idea-driven speculation. The proposal comes as a confirmation to an event that implies a very high probability for a final execution with a high degree of confidence that the technology, despite pioneering, can be iterated according to the proposal. Moving forward with the proposal, there will be an on-chain vote which will ensure a more transparent framework for governance. Hydra Improvement Proposal 1 (HIP-1) Proposed on: 16 May 2023 Voting start date: 23 May 2023 Voting end date: 2 June 2023 Snapshot time: 23 May 2023, first block after 12:00 UTC Threshold for approval: 65% The Voting Process: Each wallet will be credited a voting weight equal to their HYDRA balance at the moment of the snapshot. Once the voting period begins, community members will be able to cast their votes by sending a micro-transaction from their wallet to the voting addresses. The amount is irrelevant and can be e.g. 0.1 HYDRA. There are two addresses specific to this vote, one for YEA (yes) and one for NAY (no). If you approve the proposal, you will need to send your microtransaction to the first address. If you reject it, then to the second address.