OmiseGO primed for 2018! A breakdown of what we know.

I have been very focused on OMG for a while now and jotting down the interesting bits in wordpad whenever I read an article, listened to a podcast, watched talks/meetups and found something worth noting. I managed to clean it up a bit and format it for reddit the best I could after getting all the new information from the Town Hall Q&A last night. As talking about each point would make this 30 times longer to go through I tried to simplify it but there is much more information to OMG than just this and if you haven't looked into it yet I think you should.

Omise/Omisego origins and involvement in Plasma Development

Omise is a payment processing company started in 2013 and is now making the move to the blockchain
Omise's entire existing userbase will be supported by Omisego
Omise has over 50,000 merchants and over 420 million customers.
Featured on cover of Forbes Thailand in October 2016 as "Fintech Rockstars"
Omise awarded the Digital startup of the year award in 2017 by Thailands Prime Minister
Thailand ministry of finance intergrated Omise Facepay technology
Blockchain lab created in 2015
Involved in Plasma development before its public announcement
Merchant volume of over $30 Billion from only what we know about
First to run Plasma and will provide scaleability to Ethereum
Wallet/SDK is open source and white label allowing any business or financial entity to use the network without a formal partnership (Anyone from a local bakery to Paypal and Visa could use the network simultaneously)
Staking rewards for validating transactions paid out in your choice of coin *May be limited choices
Dex that will provide crosschain transfers to any coins and provide cash in/out services
Currently working with many people on the development of plasma/omg including Joseph Poon, Vitalik, David Knott (Now an OMG Dev), Karl Floersch and more
Plasma to allow 1 million TPS from the start and theoretically scale to billions
Wallet release in Q1 with "conglomerate" integration within a month of release
Staking available in Q2
DEX TBA (See town hall info below)

Advisors

Thomas Greco (Special Advisor) Advisor to the Interchain Foundation developing Cosmos Network, the Web3 Foundation developing Polkadot, and has previously served as an advisor to the Ethereum Foundation.

Vitalik Buterin (Proof-of-Stake Research: Scalability, Safety, Privacy and also Involved in development of Plasma) Founder of Ethereum

Joseph Poon (OmiseGO Principal Author and also Involved in development of Plasma) Lightning Network Co-Author

Karl Floersch (Proof-of-Stake Research: Cryptoeconomics, AI Ethics, Implementation and also Involved in development of Plasma) Casper (Ethereum) Researcher

Roger Ver (Decentralization Advisor, Human Rights Advocate) CEO of bitcoin.com, First Major Backer of Earliest Crypto Startups

Dr. Gavin Woods (Consensus Technology Research, Development and Utilization) Co-Founder of Ethereum, Founder of Parity & Polkadot

Jae Kwon (Proof-of-Stake Research - BFT Consensus, Speed, Interoperability) Creator of Tendermint, and Cosmos Network

Vlad Zamfir (Proof-of-Stake Research: Economic Security, Consensus Protocols, Correct-by-Construction Protocols) Casper (Ethereum) Research Lead

Martin Becze (Scalability research: eWASM, VM’s, microkernels) eWASM (Ethereum Web Assembly) creator

Julian Zawistowski (Decentralised Economics Enthusiast) Founder of Golem

Ayako Miyaguchi (Regulatory Relations, Financial Inclusion, Crypto Social Impact) Former MD Kraken Japan, Founder of Japan Blockchain Association, Board member of Japan Fintech Association

Pandia Jiang (Community Relations, Crypto-Business Advisor) Founder of LinkTime

Ash Han (Distributed Economy, A combination of Crypto, Finance, and Technology) CEO of Finector, Co-founder of Cosmos, Angel Backer and Blockchain Evangelist

Prof. David Lee Kuo Chuen (Financial Inclusion, Microfinance) Professor of Quantitative Finance, Singapore University of Social Sciences

Lots of ties to big players in the financial and business industry since Omise started years back but for Omisego specfically it would be including but not limited to investments and partnerships from

MUFG Mitsubishi United Financial Group (2.4 trillion in total assets and invested into Omisego under subsidary Krungsri aka Bank of Ayudhya)
True Money (processes >4 billion usd across 6 countries)
SBMC (2nd largest bank in Japan)
Credit Saison (Third largest credit card company in Japan)
Ascend Capital (owns AliPay)
McDonalds Thailand
SBI Holdings
SMDV
Toppan Printing
Golden Gate Ventures
East Ventures
500 Startups
More unknown partnerships due to NDA's
Have met with Greylock (owners of Coinbase and more, more information currently undisclosed) *No official word of partnership
Jun has stated on twitter they are ~"Building relations / connecting 15 different financial institutions across 4 regions and more than 1000+ dev contributors involved"

More recent information from the "Town Hall Q&A 0x1" hosted Jan 30th on YouTube

Sdk open beta end of February
Talking with banks, merchants, hardware partners under NDA (Also mentioned in crowdsale document)
Vitalik, Joseph Poon, David Knott, Karl Floersch completed MVP (minimum viable plasma) during a short retreat late last year
DEX internal release milestone completed with blockchain running
DEX design complete starting to build on blockchain
Next milestone is internal testnet deploying nodes and connecting Plasma/omg nodes to ETH testnet
Plasma possible "much earlier" than first expected (most likely due to MVP breakthroughs)
Plasma final revision will be the same framework as MVP with additional features added as time goes on
SDK and Licensing open source under Apache 2.0 no fees to start building on the Omisego/plasma network
Working with strategic partners to issue FIAT backed tokens and cash in/out points(atms?).
Website redesign coming with an added community hub
Transactions nearly instantaneous on plasma, block time yet to be determined
Staking will be open and fair to everyone, they are taking measures against whales controlling the network
Omisego Advisor Ayako Miyaguchi will be the Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation effective Feb. 1st