Portal Wallet & Tocial share CKLabs updates during Nervos Town Hall
On October 29th, we held our second Town Hall all about CKLabs, Nervos’ first initiative designed to support passionate teams working on user-centric projects on Nervos.
Ben Morris, head of business development, shared the mission of CKLabs and why Nervos is an ideal blockchain for dApps and other layer 2 projects. He also shared the variety of ways Nervos supports projects during the four-month-long program, including providing funding, launch support, and communication channels so projects can talk to Nervos team members and gain access to other projects within the Nervos ecosystem.
As members of the first CKLabs cohort, Portal Wallet and Tocial shared new updates with attendees.
Portal Wallet
To kick off the project presentations, Frank Lou from the Lay2 team introduced Portal Wallet, its milestones, and plans for the future.
What is Portal Wallet?
Portal Wallet is the web wallet for Nervos CKB. Users can access the interface directly using a variety of existing crypto wallets, including imToken, MetaMask, and ABC Wallet.
With Portal Wallet, there’s no need for users to create CKB addresses, as they can use their Ethereum addresses to send or receive CKByte (CKB), the native token of the Nervos Network.
Crypto identities
The goal of Portal Wallet is to become the gateway for the average Internet user to the blockchain world. Every user will have a user-friendly crypto identity, which will enable them to use features they’re already familiar with, such as face and fingerprint recognition, to create and manage their crypto accounts.
Users will be also able to verify the ownership of their email accounts on-chain, which provides a way to restore assets in case they lose access to their devices or if they need to prove their identities in certain applications.
Major milestones
In August, the team launched the first mainnet version of Portal Wallet. In this version, users can send and receive CKB with their Ethereum addresses and even with their ENS (Ethereum Name Service) names. Because Portal Wallet supports the Nervos DAO, users can deposit their CKB more easily via their mobile phones and no longer need to run a full node. In the past two months, over 600 users have deposited more than 140 million CKB into the Nervos DAO via Portal Wallet.
Users can visit ckb.pw in any Ethereum environment to get started.
Increasing Nervos ecosystem adoption
Portal Wallet is committed to helping more users join the Nervos ecosystem, so the team provides support services that enable users to access CKB more easily. More than 1.8 million CKB have been swapped from both ETH (Ethereum) and USDT (Tether).
Portal Wallet is continuing to create more use cases for the everyday Internet user and break down the barriers between the crypto and internet worlds.
Future plans
Portal Wallet has been actively working on improving the user experience and delivering new features. Over the next two months, the Lay2 team plans on achieving two more milestones: UDT (User Defined Token) support and WebAuthn support.
Users will be able to send and receive UDTs and check their UDT balance in Portal Wallet. Support for UDTs will also bring stablecoins, which play an important role in blockchain and DeFi development, to CKB. Users will be able to transfer their ERC-20 tokens or TRC20-USDT tokens directly to Portal Wallet and get the mapped silvercoin PWSD on CKB. PWSD will enable users to buy or swap CKB or buy Starbucks coupons in the Lay2 shop.
By the end of the program, Portal Wallet will no longer run on dev browsers but run directly in web browsers, such as Chrome and Safari. To achieve this, Portal Wallet will need to implement WebAuthn support. Currently, users can create and use a CKB wallet using the fingerprint or face identification features available through their smartphones and laptops in the i1 demo. However, many improvements need to be made before it can go live on the mainnet.
How to get involved with Portal Wallet
On the developer side, the Lay2 team has created a powerful sdk called pw-sdk, which is a typescript sdk for CKB developers. In fact, Portal Wallet was built with pw-sdk. If you’re a developer and want to build a dApp for CKB which can run in MetaMask and other crypto wallets, pw-sdk will be the right foundation for your project.
It’s easy for the average user to get involved as well. Simple access Portal Wallet via your Ethereum browser by going to https://ckb.pw.
Tocial
Following Frank’s presentation, Spike from the Tocial team introduced the project, explained why Tocial is focused on the ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) space, and shared a demo of the platform.
What is Tocial?
Put simply, Tocial is a blockchain-based photo sharing platform. While developing the project, the Tocial team discovered some interesting trends in the blockchain and social space — namely the rise of ACG communities.
- The ACG community was growing very quickly in China and needed a social network that would fit its unique needs.
- The barriers to enter the blockchain space were too high for the general internet users.
- There was a lack of innovative blockchain product design.
- Compared to markets like Japan, the Chinese market is growing its monetization activities in the ACG sector considerably.
- There are already very successful social applications in China, such as Billbilli, Jimu, and ImToken.
The target audience for Tocial is not just a general blockchain user but someone who is already part of the ACG community.
After a month of development, the Tocial team decided to focus on three major areas when creating Tocial:
- Timelines. These are similar to the photo feeds in apps like Instagram. The difference is that Tocial has monetization features, which enables users to pay to unlock certain features or photos.
- Ranking system. There’s a ranking system which rewards users for donating and engaging with content. The more a user donates, the higher their ranking in the app.
- Chat. Point-to-point encryption enables users to send messages and donate CKB to unlock content safety.
The underlying technical system of Tocial is divided into two parts:
- Simple centralized wallet. The main coin is TAC (Tocial Application Coin), which users can use to “top up” or pay to unlock content.
- Decentralized dApp platform. Tocial is in the process of connecting to other wallets through OTC channels to make accessing and using Tocial more convenient. User activity mining through TPT (Tocial Platform Token), more on-chain services, and smart contracts including an NFT service.
Tocial on-chain service
With the help of CKLabs, Tocial is working on two on-chain services with Nervos.
- Social graph. Users can upload their contacts to the Nervos blockchain, so if they lose their ID, they can still retrieve the info.
- Photo hash. This gives creators a copyright hash record, so they have proof of their work.
Right now, the Tocial ecosystem operations are divided into four sections:
- Content offering. Tocial is working with several influencers within the ACG industry to create exclusive content for the platform.
- Activity operation. Cosplay competitions, cosplay recruiting, and more.
- Community. Tocial is working closely with Nervos and the Bitcoin Association.
- Cooperation. Tocial is also collaborating with CCTip from ABC Wallet and others.
During the presentation, Spike shared a demo of how users can access content within the platform and explained Tocial’s token model.
In order to help sustain the platform, Tocial is considering implementing memberships which will have access to exclusive content and events, such as offline meetups.
Q&A Session
After Frank and Spike’s presentations, Ben Waters, head of operations, hosted the live Q&A session with Jason from the Lay2 team and Spike on hand to answer the community’s questions.
We’re excited about the progress both the Lay2 and Tocial teams have made and look forward to sharing more developments with you in the near future.
Want more? Watch the full Town Hall.
Go to www.nervos.org/ck-labs to learn more about CKLabs or apply for the program.
Read part 1 and part 2 of our deep dive into Portal Wallet and pw-sdk.
Find out more about Tocial.
