Global R&D: May 2023 Edition
Fun community demos, including one on a new ICP Ordinals marketplace, the next steps of the ETH Integration, and new SNS DAO launches in the pipeline. Get the highlights here.
Your feedback matters
The new Developer Feedback Board has had great response from the ICP developer community since its recent launch. R&D teams at DFINITY have taken the influx of feedback seriously, having already completed 18 smaller requests, including WASM optimization, compression improvements, and candid syntax highlighting in VS code.
Larger requests such as increasing WASM limits, introducing an in-network system to manage cycles, and implementing a system solution for an is_controller guard are on the top priority list with a clear plan of action. A design for a cycles ledger is already in progress; work has begun to raise the WASM limit from 2MB to 100MB; and an is_controller guard is near completion for both Motoko and Rust.
We want to continue to improve the developer experience, so keep the feedback coming either on the Developer Feedback Board or GitHub.
Community Demos
It’s always great to see new and interesting project from the ICP ecosystem. This month Mora, a peer-to-peer Web3 branding tool for super creators made their debut on on Global R&D. Mora consist of many planets that users create. Within each planet, users can create content, store data, as well as install payment and subscription models. All planets their data are fully decentralized, meaning they are on-chain and owned by the those who created them. Create you own planet on Mora:
Also new to the ecosystem, is the Bioniq Marketplace. This NFT marketplace targets the Bitcoin community, hosting the Ordinals collection on the Internet Computer with a bitcoin wallet. This wallet allows users to trade in bitcoin or ckBTC.
People started inscribing Ordinals on the Bitcoin network in January of this year and it’s been gaining massive traction since then. At the time of this presentation, the Ordinal dashboard displayed almost $180 million in volume, 350k in trades, and nearly 100k unique users. The Bioniq project aims to tap into this hype by making Bitcoin better with the capabilities of the Internet Computer, which enables a fast, inexpensive and easy way to trade BTC NFTs.
Bitcoin Miami
Now that ckBTC is fully launched, it’s time to show it to the world, especially to Bitcoiners who are looking for a fast, cheap and secure way to transact with their bitcoin. What better place to spread the word than the Bitcoin Miami conference, which attracted around 15,000 Bitcoin enthusiasts this year from all over the world. A small ICP team was sent to the event to promote ckBTC by giving away satoshis to those willing to create an OpenChat account.
What did we learn from this guerrilla marketing operation? That Bitcoiners are looking for scalable solutions to use their bitcoin, and that they have a strong appreciation for decentralization and dapps running 100% on-chain. The team worked together with top crypto influencers such as Bitboy and Blockchain Boy and to reach a broader audience with the main message that the Internet Computer has the capabilities to extend Bitcoin.
ckBTC in action
After the ckBTC launch, various projects in the ICP ecosystem put ckBTC in action by introducing fun engaging promotion campaigns. From trading rewards, to treasure hunts and writing competitions, there was a way for everyone to get their hand on some ckBTC.
Each of the campaigns helped the projects prioritize feature development as well as drive user engagement. Overall, the campaigns were seen as a success, resulting in a steady increase in user growth as well as 35k in ckBTC transactions and airdrops to 5k wallets. Some takeaways to improve include projects working harder to retain users after the promotion period and better planning of technical releases to avoid disrupting marketing efforts and momentum.
More SNS DAO coming!
June is going to be a hot month for SNS launches. Three ecosystem projects are preparing to decentralize their apps by the end of the month. Which DAO do you want to be a part of?
Hot or Not: A web3 TikTok with a cool twist. Users can stake tokens and vote on the trending potential of short video by selecting “Hot” or “Not” to rate the content. This dapp currently has 72,000 users and a healthy roadmap that involves releasing new features such as native mobile apps for Android and iOS, location segregation of content, and GameFi elements.
Kinic: The world’s first web3 search engine is ready to decentralize. This project has an ambitious roadmap that includes building a ZKML powered search engine, adding more blockchains and decentralized storage networks in the Kinic indexing process (i.e. IPFS and Arweave), and exploring on-chain large language models for advance web3 search queries. Kinic currently has 5000 monthly active users.
EMC: The first project to bring AI the Internet Computer. Using canisters as a ledger, consensus and economic model, EMC is positioning itself as an AI focused Layer-2. The testnet was recently launched on May 10th of this year with participation from 100 nodes across 20 countries. The project has raised $600k in presale for SNS and attracted over 42k listeners holding 4 AMAs on Twitter. Post SNS, the project team has a roadmap to launch ecosystem rewards, a computing power marketplace and an AI app focused dapp store.
Are you SNS ready?
Turning your dapp over to an SNS DAO successfully is not just a technical process of coding and submitting proposals to the NNS. It’s also about credibility and making sure the the community has a clear understanding of what they are funding and supporting. Being transparent about the tokenomics of the SNS DAO, providing a roadmap and documentation on the technical architecture of the dapp as well as testing technical features are all good steps to prepare for an SNS launch.
Consult the SNS Readiness Checklist for guidance.
ETH Integration: Status update
DFINITY R&D teams and members of the ecosystem are pressing forward to enhance the Ethereum with Internet Computer capabilities such as unlimited scaling, oracle-less Web2, web serving, and low fixed costs. Phase 0, which enables chain-key signing and HTTPS outcalls is already complete. Phase 1 is being built now to allow ETH API calls by accessing Web-2 based API providers through HTTPS outcalls. This phase also includes designing and building ckETH and ckERC-20 tokens to minimize fees, guarantee long-term maintenance and give more security to ETH through then NNS DAO governance.
Get the open-source Phase 1 code
Finally phase 2 will revolve around native ETH integration, which will enable smart contracts on both networks to interact with each other and create opportunities for a wide range of use cases like swapping ERC-20 tokens or trading ETH NFTs on the Internet Computer without wrapping.
About the project: www.internetcomputer.org/ethereum-integration
Your feedback is welcome
How can we make Global R&D better? Give us feedback and let us know which topics you would like to see presented in the coming sessions.
