For Cere, 2021 was a momentous year by any measure. The Network achieved several milestones within the past year — as we met our funding goals led by Republic, took strategic funding from Polygon, launched the $Cere token, and began moving into the consumer space. Cere also received a Web3 Foundation grant to further develop a turn-key private/permissioned blockchain network for enterprise use.

Last month, Cere successfully listed its Cere token on Huobi, Kucoin, FMFW (formerly bitcoin.com), and several smaller exchanges. NFT development is proceeding apace as well (see the Cere Freeport GitHub repo). Ultimately, Cere Network will serve as a bridge for enterprises seeking to embrace decentralized data via NFTs. With a solid foundation in place, Cere Network is rapidly moving forward to deliver on its innovative technology.

In 2022, Cere Network will ramp up the integration of the DDC with several of our current partners(including those listed in our recap article). Cere aims to have these partners provide its network participants with an abundance of value-added options, including asset fractionalization capabilities, turn-key microservices, and user-identity aggregation.

While nearly all our partners fulfill a critical strategic need, they promote blockchain interoperability as a defining core feature.

“Two things that I’ve always wished existed were an easy way to securely share customer data between multiple apps/partners, and the ability to track each unique customer journey so that it can be shared with on-demand business intelligence experts. This would enable businesses to better understand their customers. Cere Network platform addresses these problems and beyond.” — Fred Jin, Founder & CEO of Cere Network

A Foundation for Trustless Data Transfer

Cere Network’s Decentralized Data Cloud (DDC) serves to unlock a full range of use cases that transfer data along with blockchain-based value transfers. A prime example of this is Cere’s Freeport, which is built on top of its DDC. Aside from providing NFT owners with a secure, decentralized NFT storage vault, it also serves as an all-in-one NFT solution suite.

With Freeport, NFT creators can create new products and experiences that can be mapped to individual NFT’s. Furthermore, this capability enables brands and enterprises to successfully access valuable secondary markets using NFT’s.

When combined with existing Cere SaaS tools and services, these features also allow businesses to take full control of their customer data. And do so in a highly secure, privacy-preserving, and customer-focused manner.

In all, Freeport ushers in a new era of digital content and e-commerce that can be built on top of NFT’s with Cere DDC, and it is only the beginning of many exciting Cere innovation announcements soon to come.

“If Freeport is the future, Cere will become the gateway to mass adoption of NFTs. I firmly believe that both will be critically important to the infrastructure of the NFT space for years to come” — Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon

2022 High-Level Roadmap

After a highly successful year, the Cere Network team has even more ambitious plans for next year. In addition to launching its mainnet, Cere Network plans to aggressively court the NFT market in the following months.

The following high-level roadmap reveals Cere’s development plans for late 2021 through mid-2022.

Protocols and Platform

• Post-Listing Activity: After Cere finalized the IDO on Polkastarter, it listed the $Cere token on Huobi, Kucoin, FMFW.io, and other exchanges. At present, Cere is ramping up its operations and teams to focus on hiring, community and developer outreach, ecosystem development, mainnet stabilization, and supporting application integrations. (Q4, 2021).
• CERE ERC20 Staking: Cere will be offering $CERE (ERC20) staking possibilities to $CERE token holders who desire to increase their holdings via its strategic exchanges and partners. (Q4, 2021).
• Mainnet Phase 1: Alpha Mainnet. Cere is working with a limited number of Extended Developer Program participants, community members, investors, Infrastructure and Exchange Partners to ramp up its operational participants. This includes participants who run validation nodes, data nodes, nominating/delegating (staking), and governance, as they’re all responsible for producing a sustainable network roll-out. (Q4, 2021).

In addition, Cere has deployed wallets, network explorers, DDC smart contracts, DDC client libraries, the DDC web console, an encryption service, and other data tools to support apps-building on top of Cere’s DDC. (Q4, 2021).

• Mainnet Phase 2: Mainnet Beta: Cere mainnet will be fully open for staking. The Network will also be sufficiently decentralized, with most validation nodes and nominators owned and operated by community participants, such as EDP developers, investors, exchanges, and strategic infrastructure partners. The Cere DDC storage network will be similarly decentralized among community operators, with automated incentives and verification in place. And a DDC engine specialized for persistent and incentivized storage of transferable NFT assets will also be released. (Q1, 2022)
• Parachain Crowdloan/Auction: The Kusama parachain auction will provide Cere with an additional proving ground for its future parachain. It will also serve as an efficient way for Cere to distribute tokens to community members who remain loyal supporters of the Cere project. (Q1, 2022).
• Open Data Marketplace Release: Cere’s ODM will help businesses provide data access to data experts, obtain data insights, and receive business intelligence. (Q3, 2022).

NFT-Related Releases

• Freeport Announcement: Cere will announce that it has partnered with Polygon to produce “Freeport”, the first secure digital asset vault and tool suite for NFTs. Freeport makes decentralized NFT asset security and trustless NFT asset transfers accessible for developers and consumers. (Q4, 2021).
• NFT-experience Platform Announcement: There will be the launch of the next-generation NFT experience platform that is a joint venture with another top blockchain ecosystem. This platform will not only push the envelope for digital content on NFT’s, but it will also offer turn-key solutions for enterprises seeking to launch products via NFTs. (Q4, 2021).
• Freeport Case Studies Published: The Cere team will publish a data-driven case studies report on NFT success stories relating to Freeport. (Q1, 2022).
• New NFT royalty standards via smart contract policies will be released as part of Freeport (Github). (Q4, 2021)

Ecosystem

Cere recently hired a number of proven ecosystem builders to drive Cere adoption and innovation among developers, businesses, and investors, via:

• Community ecosystem referral program (grant, tips, rewards)
• Cere Extended Developer Program integrating with an ecosystem grant program
• Community Task Groups (Governance, Marketing, and more)
• Cere Hackathons (one per quarter starting Q1 2022)
• Cere ecosystem fund & projects

“Cere is building the next-generation data ecosystem. I see similarities with the early days of building Salesforce. With the team using our proven V2MOM model, I believe in their strategy and execution.” — Rajani Ramanthan, Ex COO of Salesforce

Of course, our roadmap is liable to change based on our priorities and circumstances. Nonetheless, the timetable presented above provides Cere Network participants with a reasonable idea of our core priorities for the next six months.

In addition to the efforts listed above, Cere will be actively recruiting developers for its Extended Development Program (join the Discord here). As we finalize the technical aspects of our network, network users will see us place greater emphasis on product marketing and brand awareness. In all, the Cere Network community can expect 2022 to be its biggest year yet!