What has GAT Network been doing?
Sometimes people in the community like to ask for updates on what a project has been doing, and sometimes the development is not as transparent as other times depending on the visibility of the features and highlights.
Recently some people in the GAT Network community have asked for an update, so we’d like to summarise some of the more recent efforts made by the team in this article.
Let’s start with the most “visible” elements, the development. Even though much of the development has been on elements less exposed to the end user experience, or that maybe were not highlighted as much to the community.
An important step in the project has been with the key integration of one of the new chains that we support, and an important partnership with IOTA — this is of course the Shimmer network. For this integration the whole multi-chain infrastructure has been rebuilt to increase security without back-end jobs. Another key driver for this added security was the high profile hacks last year on crypto cross-chain bridges. This now means that MintedVodka bridges do not rely on any additional back-end jobs and is completely in the hands of users and their wallets.
Another key innovation has been the complete overhaul of the minting process in the background of MintedVodka, this eliminated the small file size restriction of minting, and opens the opportunity to offer greater minting sizes in future. There was also some critical bug-fixing required to work around some limitations of MetaMask and how temporary files were handled.
There have been numerous other fixes, improvements, and additional features worked on to keep the MintedVodka platform up to date and working optimally whilst also bringing new features to users. Some of these include wrapper fixes, UI restructuring, a new landing page including promotional profiles, user and creator profiles and settings, updates to video NFT display, wallet connection improvements, integrated customisable link shorteners, new chain integration (eg OKC), asset/deals refresh buttons, etc etc.
There are other new features under development that we will present in a future article, but you can be sure that the team is not sitting still, and are continuing to innovate in the technical front. These include white-labelling, and layered minting, but software/game minting (including GameAce) is also still a technology where we have some unreleased development.
Once we move on from the development side of the project and look towards the company development towards the community, we can see some other areas that have received some focus. One particular highlight was the rebranding, with new mascot and logo for MintedVodka sourced out from a talented artist and with the mascot name being chosen with the community. These new elements were quickly rolled out to the website and integrated into our communications.
Much of the focus has switched from Telegram towards Twitter as this is where the NFT community is mostly active. AMAs and social chats are carried out now via Twitter Spaces and we have enjoyed a number of chats, including with partners such as the Telos chain and IOTA, along with frequent attendance and engagement on other Spaces events on the platform. We have also run a number of events and contests with artists in this space, both alone and with partnerships.
We also announced an exciting partnership with Soonaverse where MintedVodka will be providing the Shimmer and L2 NFT services on the platform.
Community engagement is also critical, we have our social media manager continuing to engage with the wider NFT community on Twitter, and in addition to previously mentioned events, we also publish a series of articles called “Crypto Made Easy” to raise awareness and share knowledge on some key aspects of the crypto environment.
Whilst all of this is happening, we have of course also been working on sustained business development. There are significant costs in keeping the MintedVodka platform running as we are monitoring and tracking millions of NFTs on all supported chains at all times — this adds up to a significant infrastructure cost, but enables all of the innovate features that we offer; including full multi-chain wallet overviews, and up to date NFT statuses for viewing, listing, and sales. During the bear market all projects have had to tighten their belts and investment in projects has all but vanished, so the team continues to run with the minimum number of people involved — with Roman focused on back-end development, Wit focused on front-end development and business development, Anne handling back-office operations, Phil working on front-end development and producing articles and graphics, Pete providing services in business development, articles, videos, and representing the company at events, and Vanessa as the social media manager. It is a lot of work for a small team.
We have continues to maintain our visibility with investors and other opportunities for liquidity — some of the planned investment has been put on hold until the next bull market and we have seen many larger companies and projects fall during the current bear market. We continue to review our project to ensure that the existing funds will continue to support the marketplace into the future — whilst also continuing to develop and provide new functionalities. This does also mean that we have been unable to bring in new team members, and some of the previous road-map was too ambitious for the current market conditions — although this has not prevented us from innovating in other ways.
We are also looking towards additional incubation programs and other opportunities that are present in the crypto community, but we are also being cautious not to fall victim to predatory investors who are looking to take advantage of project in the bear market with low investment for significant stakes.
Other business development has included attending high profile events such as NFT.NYC 2022, and the upcoming NFT Paris 2023, if you’ll be in Paris and you’ve read this far, then feel free to reach out to meet up!
Some less visible, but equally important aspects of the project include legal research, including regulatory research and providing advice/opinions on potential future regulation in the crypto industry in the EU. All of this in addition to back office services including bookkeeping and financial administration, financial planning, preparing financial statements and tax declarations, etc etc.
Suffice to say, the team have been exceptionally busy, and work is continuing into 2023 with ongoing efforts, development, and exciting new features!
