First things first.. Thank you!
Everybody that has used Hallar is probably familiar with the platform that started as “Lisk Discovery” in 2019. Our goal was to showcase all known projects built for the Lisk ecosystem hit a major milestone in May 2021 when we passed the 20,000 unique visitors mark. 🎉 We would like to thank every visitor that kept the platform engaged over the past years. Our biggest gratitude goes to Alepop, Bioly, Lisk USA, Splatters, Hirish, Slasheks, GDT, Samuray and Liskpro.com. Each donator helped us keep a stable development process through the years. Thank you!
A new chapter
Hallar was a platform that enabled users to learn about the applications that were built with the Lisk SDK. Our primary differentiator from other project directories was that we included the tools that enabled the growth of the lisk developer community. Any project that helped the Lisk community should be able to find a space on Hallar!
In August 2021, Lisk started the development of a concept called interoperability. In essence, interoperability translates to the permissionless communication between blockchain applications within the Lisk ecosystem.
A proper analogy when talking about Lisk & the interoperability is a simple tree. Since the beginning of the lisk blockchain (the tree), developers have built tools (leaves) but never had the ability to connect a blockchain (tree branch) built with the Lisk SDK. With the arrival of interoperability, Lisk becomes a tree that grows tree branches exponentially since each developed application holds its own community with an own set of developer tools and subbranches.
Capturing the new growth trajectory will be tremendously hard but a challenge that we embrace!
Targeting the forest
One of the reasons for Hallar’s name change in 2020 is our idea to create a synergy between blockchain technologies and their communities. A technology, for example Algorand, has an own set of unique set of characteristics but still shares the same underlying mission where we want to see more decentralisation in the world.
Hallar can enhance more decentralisation in our world by using our platform as place where the flow of ideas can manifest themselves cross-community. A place where one proof of concept written with Lisk technology can evolve to become compatible with any technology via the collaboration between communities. The possibilities are endless!
Hallar’s new chapter will enhance any voice that is contributing towards the growth of web 3.0
Updates 🗞
There were a lot of changes on the Hallar platform but let us first walk through the offline things that changed.
Our first partnership
We’ll not spoil the surprise but its worth mentioning that we have spend a lot of our efforts on a partnership that will showcase how the platform will evolve in the near future.
Team growth
A lot has happened in October 2021. One of the proudest developments was that our team grew from 1 to 4 developers. We’d like to welcome
, Daren & Jaimy!Start It @ KBC
We already announced this amazing opportunity in a previous article.
is helping us improve our business with feedback moments, awesome mentorships, workshops and a lot of perks, On top of all the benefits, we also receive a workplace for 1 year at the KBC building, near the train station of Leuven!Platform changes 🚧 🏗
At first glance, not much has changed when we take a look at the pages on hallar.io. That is because everything happened in the background!
Deprecation of console.hallar.io
One of the biggest concerns that we and our users shared is that there were 2 applications: https://hallar.io (public) and https://console.hallar.io (authenticated). Maintenance, code sharing between components and positioning new features became a nightmare so the decision was made to join both applications in one platform.
Code Quality
Hallar has been in development since 2019 where most of the time code was written as a hobby. You could say that the codebase lacked maturity since it was more of an experiment. A complete rewrite was needed to prepare the platform to run at scale and allow us to build and extend features a lot faster.
Typescript
Similar to the reasoning behind “code quality”, we dedicated a large portion of our efforts to add Typescript, a strongly typed programming language on top of Javascript.
Integration of Lisk Core 3.x
August 2021 was a month where the interoperability started but also a month where Lisk released the newly improved Lisk Core. Our infrastructure relied on specific mechanisms that were deprecated and resulted in a large refactoring on how users were creating campaigns with Lisk accounts.
Complete Data structure Overhaul
Due to the Lisk consensus changes and our mission to tackle the entire web 3.0 landscape, we wanted to make our data structure scalable and future proof. A lot of code refactoring, endpoint changes in our microservice architecture contributed to almost an entire overhaul of our backend services.
Next.JS
Our mission since the beginning was to make projects that use Hallar discoverable. Next.js gives you the best developer experience with all the features you need for production: hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, route pre-fetching, and more.
Scalable infrastructure
Previous versions of Hallar were using IT infrastructure that was easy to maintain. A lot of awesome features on roadmap required us to switch to an event driven architecture that will help us scale much faster.
CI/CD
A lot of efforts were made to create a sustainable and fast paced deliverables. Our development process now includes a testing environment and continuous feedback to our developers and product owner.
Design System
Hallar wants to scale fast in our capabilities. A journey has started to define how our client interfaces will identify as the Hallar brand. A blogpost in the near future will guide you through the steps that we have implemented!
Next Steps
A brief overview of what to expect in the near future.
Discovery
Hallar’s mission from day 1 is to give you the tooling to discover and learn about new projects. Discovery with stay at the heart of Hallar and will heavily grow towards an all inclusive landscape of web 3.0.
Exploration
What if you discovered a project that fits your interest but uses new technical concepts? We’ll help you understand every single aspect that surrounds a project by focusing on education and understanding the informational needs of our users.
Opportunities
A lot awaited feature for Hallar is a delegate marketplace. We are keeping our promise on this marketplace but moved the feature a bit lower on the priority schedule. We’ll be presenting a bunch of features where project owners are able to present the opportunities that they offer users and community members.
And.. The rest is secret!
Our roadmap for 2022 contains a lot of cool features that we won’t talk about in details. Follow our medium channel for our engineering blogs that will talk about our cool features!
Are you passionate about engineering & the web 3.0 landscape? Consider joining us in our mission. Contact us via careers@hallar.io and we’ll grab a coffee in Leuven / Mechelen, Belgium! View our applications on angel.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hallar_io
Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/hallar
