How a ConsenSys Grant blessed our Alice journey
A summary of our ConsenSys Grants journey.
Our journey into the ConsenSys Grants program started in ETHBerlin upon being referred to Dani Osorio and Scott Moore from the ConsenSys Grants team. A few conversations and e-mails later found us talking to a few members in the ConsenSys Network to evaluate our tech. We had the privilege of talking to Michael Godsey of Infura and then went into a final interview with the ConsenSys Grants team. Overall was super anticipatory but the absolute icing on the cake was going to Devcon V in Japan. 👇📸😁
Grants announcement at DevCon 5
Why was this the icing on the cake? Unbeknownst to us this is where the reveal of the ConsenSys grantees was unveiled and we were rubbing shoulders with some of our most respected peers in the Ethereum ecosystem!
How do we think we got in?
We’ve been hard at work on Alice since May 2019. Almost a year now!
Always at the helm of our vision is how can we bring more mobile apps and users into the Ethereum ecosystem. This is for us a super crucial pain point for the ecosystem because more users are on mobile platforms. We believe our unique solution, and how we’ve cleverly engineered Alice to be as open to developers and users as possible, is what got us in. Apparently Mr. Lubin really liked the “Mobile App Store for Ethereum” vision.
TLDR;
Below we will state the milestones we were chasing with Alice, that thanks to the ConsenSys Grant we were able to smash
Our Journey
Upon receiving the grant we had these tasks to complete. These are goals we’ve been working super hard at completing but because we’ve been bootstrapping Alice. It’s been hard balancing external work and Alice at the same time. ConsenSys allowed us unaltered, complete focus on these visions. We set forth with Functional and Aspirational Milestones.
Functional Milestones
1. Get Alice on the Apple App store
Due to organizational and legal costs we were struggling to get Alice on the App Store. This was our most important milestone to date as people were skeptical. ConsenSys Grants helped us get there, Alice is available on the App Store! Check it out https://apps.apple.com/au/app/alice-browser/id1472818028
2. Have at least 2 functioning mini dapps using Alice’s SDK on launch in the App Store.
We have built out 4 mini apps in Alice, 1 is fully functional however the next 3 are still in development. If you’re looking to build games and mini apps in Alice give us a shout. We’ve got some fun apps to build :) Think “Tinder for Cryptokitties” kind of fun 😻
3. Add a full featured user’s wallet so that he can manage his digital assets across multiple accounts
To be able to utilize some of the most crucial features that blockchains offer we’ve listed out these features in high priority.
Via public addresses and ENS usernames: -
- A user can send and receive ETH and ERC-20s.
- A user can view the details of his NFTs.
- A user can send and receive NFTs.
- A user can view the prices of his assets in multiple country’s currencies.
- A user can switch his addresses derived from his mnemonic phrase.
We were able to complete all these features and for the mainnet and test networks!
Aspirational Milestones
1. Create a fully functional Android application, which would be on par with the iOS application
We have had resounding success getting our Android app to where it is at the moment. It is not on par but definitely on the way to being completed this year!
2. Acquire 1000+ weekly active users
A key result of this Aspirational Milestone was listed as “A good tweet from Vitalik”. We are still hunting these aspirations and are determined to get there. Along the way we’ve picked up a few dedicated fans of the Alice app.
3. Add multiple blockchain support.
This was one of our biggest aspirational achievements. We are now able to support multiple blockchain transactions because of our integrations with Trust Wallet’s WalletCore. At the moment we support Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Binance’s blockchain.
How ConsenSys Grant helped us reach these goals
To keep Alice ticking we’re bootstrapping the company and product. So when we’re not hustling, we’re building and when we’re not building, we’re BUIDLing. So any opportunity for us to gain some funds and fully focus on the product is a win! The ConsenSys Grant was a big win! We not only got awesome connections, great publicity, validity, and advice from the ConsenSys Network throughout the process but we were able to take a break from external hustles to focus full time on development and build a marketing team to help get the product out there.
So far the support and feedback on Alice has been incredible. We haven’t done any marketing and are super excited for this next marketing push as we rebrand and do an official launch campaign for the Wallet.
If we were to do it differently we would have definitely used more of the ConsenSys Network to get more feedback and eyes on the product but we definitely feel like we haven’t utilised this opportunity yet. We’re super excited to launch it into a network such as ConsenSys’.
Our contribution — let’s get Ethereum into mobile
Our contribution is helping to get the Ethereum network into mobile. We have created a boilerplate for Ethereum dapps that want to build out a mobile app that utilizes the Ethereum blockchain and has it’s own wallet. We also fully support all networks, mainnet, rinkeby, ropsten, kovan, goerli, and custom RPCs for EVM compatible chains. It’s a mobile developer’s dream!
We’ve been extremely blessed to have received this opportunity through ConsenSys Grants our journey has just started but we are extremely excited for this year as we will now start to push Alice into the Ether!
Huge thank you to the entire ConsenSys Grants team and for ConsenSys support throughout our journey in Ethereum!
Forward Ever! ❤️
