Desmos 2023 Roadmap
As we have seen in our 2022 Yearly Review, last year our team accomplished a lot of things that have now made it possible to start building on top of Desmos very easily: our mainnet now has all the features to support most types of social networks, and thanks to our TypeScript library developers can start integrating Desmos features within their products in matter of minutes. However, we are not stopping here: we want to make it even easier to build the next generation of social networks on top of our protocol. Curious how? Let’s explore all what’s coming next to Desmos!
New on-chain features 🧑💻
Even though our current Desmos Core supports a lot of features, we have realized that it might be hard for Web3 applications to onboard users. This is mainly because most Web2 users do not know what a crypto wallet is, what tokens are, and how they can acquire them to pay for transaction fees while performing operations (e.g. posting content).
For this reason, we have thought about two new on-chain features that will allow to onboard users more easily.
Developers-provisioned fees 💰
The main important feature we will focus on developing are developers-provisioned fees. Thanks to this system developers will be able to pay for fees on behalf of their users.
This will make it extremely easier to onboard Web2 users as they will not need to get or buy any DSM in order to start posting. It will also allow to provide a user experience that is very similar to a Web2 application but with all the advantages of Web3.
Developers will then be able to decide how to make users pay: they can charge a subscription or introduce a custom tokenomics system within their application to ensure they do not operate at a loss.
Easier on-chain account creation 👤
Another feature we will focus on is the simplification of on-chain account creation.
In order to perform any on-chain action (ie. a transaction) you need to have an on-chain account. Currently this account is created only when someone sends you some tokens or grants you a fee allowance. Even though these cover most cases, they are not enough to cover all of them.
Inside Desmos, you should get an on-chain account even when you are allowed to post within a subspace. This, combined with the above developers-provisioned fees, will make sure that each time a user is allowed to use a Desmos-based application they can start doing that without having any DSM in their wallet. Once again, a step further towards a simplification of users onboarding overall.
Educational programs 📚
One thing we have realized is that the Web3 developers ecosystem is small, very small. Even though the numbers are constantly increasing, there are very few developers interested in this world compared to the number of developers interested in Web2 technologies.
This is nothing strange: Web2 has been around for decades, while Web3 is quite new and it’s still a very hostile environment to develop in due to all the user experience challenges there are.
Also, one thing that is missing is education. If you search online for Web2 developing tutorials and courses you can find thousands of them. But for Web3 there is almost nothing. For this reason, at Desmos we have decided to start two new educational programs that will run during 2023.
Desmos Academy 🧑🏫
The first program is called Desmos Academy and will be something very similar to the Cosmos Academy that has run last year. During this program we will be providing a free course to get started developing applications on top of Desmos.
We will cover everything from the basics of how a blockchain works to the UX challenges you might run into and how you can solve them.
The idea is to allow any Web2 developer that’s interested to approach this world to do this step-by-step, understanding everything they need to know to build a production-ready application.
The Academy will run completely online and will have limited seats to ensure that each participant has enough support throughout the program.
If you are interested, make sure to follow us on various social networks to know when you will be able to enroll.
Desmos Universities Program 🎓
The second educational program we will be rolling out is called Desmos Universities Program. This will be aimed at creating meaningful partnerships with Italian, European and Hong Kong universities in order to get in touch with the next generation of developers and spark their interest in Web3 development.
We will collaborate in the form of in-person and on-line teaching, final year projets or thesis, and research papers.
Based on our experience, we strongly believe that students have a huge potential if they get the chance to develop it. At the same time, we have seen that not all Universities have been able to stay up-to-date with the latest Web3 technologies. For these reasons, we will focus on helping interested institutions to provide their students with the latest education about this world to make sure they are not lost once they finish their studies.
Closing remarks
As you can see, 2023 will be another exiting year for Desmos and its ecosystem. We are extremely curious to see what new applications will be built by new developers joining our adventure of reshaping social media.
As always, if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask them inside our Discord server. And if you want to know more about Desmos and stay updated, please follow:
