Recap from OST LIVE with Best of Alpha III — Using OST API’s and Wallet Features

From having an idea to creating a real business, OST Best of Alpha III participants walked us through their projects and how they built a token economy based on OST blockchain technology. Each of these projects successfully integrated OST API’s and wallet features as part of the Alpha III challenge. It’s exciting to see users around the world implement a branded token economy with real uses cases. Here are 5 projects that we interviewed!

FUTURED
Based in Minneapolis Minnesota, Tyler Lastovich is the creator of FUTURED, an intellectual magazine free of spam and low-quality content. Tyler is a computer engineer and has spent most of his background and work experience in supercomputing. Tyler is implementing a token economy on a large content creation platform that allows users to deeply engage their niche by using blockchain based quality filters. The goal is to limit spam and garbage comments that builds up cruft in the internet. This project hopes to keep users more engaged and posting meaningful content on the internet. FUTURED itself is a magazine publication that discusses up and coming tech topics in the fields of biology and holographics.

Based in Minneapolis Minnesota, Tyler Lastovich is the creator of FUTURED, an intellectual magazine free of spam and low-quality content. Tyler is a computer engineer and has spent most of his background and work experience in supercomputing. Tyler is implementing a token economy on a large content creation platform that allows users to deeply engage their niche by using blockchain based quality filters. The goal is to limit spam and garbage comments that builds up cruft in the internet. This project hopes to keep users more engaged and posting meaningful content on the internet. FUTURED itself is a magazine publication that discusses up and coming tech topics in the fields of biology and holographics.

Tyler implemented a GraphQL server that wraps all of the OST API’s, using all of the features that the API provides. FUTURED uses OST’s API calls for user to user, user to company, and company to user actions, making a viable economy that allows for sharing of tokens between the company airdropping to users and the users being able to spend, earn, and cash out the tokens. Tyler’s use of OST started with defining the economy actions. Tyler says

“That’s pretty amazing to have a whole blockchain where you don’t really have to think about the hard core implementation, you can actually just think about the economics of it and just go from there”

As it’s a real company, Tyler will be working on FUTURED full time. Tyler and his team are currently defining how users can engage much more deeply and provide publishing tools that allow users to write in depth articles.

Really Simple Store

Based in Austin Texas, Drew Thomas is the creator of Really Simple Store, a simple e-commerce without the complication of Shopify or squarespace. Drew saw the opportunity to add a token economy for stores to be able to sell each others products. This allows a small time maker to appear in another user’s store very simply, bringing exposure to a new audience that the maker could not have otherwise reached. Essentially, other sellers can sell your products in exchange for tokens. Drew first got involved during OST’s Alpha II challenge and refined his proof of concept for Really Simple Store during the Alpha III challenge.

“It was a great opportunity to start from something that I thought was just testing OST on Alpha, to something that can turn into a real business that can drive some revenue”

Drew found it very easy to implement OST’s API’s and describes it as a plug and play process, saying

“you look at what you want to do, you plug it into your code, and it works.”

Drew will continue to work hard on making Really Simple Store a viable e-commerce platform.

Surwei

Based in Northern Portugal, Tiago Alves is the creator of Surwei, a platform that lets companies and researchers collect more responses to their surveys by rewarding respondents with Surwei tokens. The tokens can then be used to purchase items, exchange tokens, and create other surveys. The main objective is to make it easier to receive product validation as it is difficult to obtain responses for a questionnaire. As a new participant to the Alpha challenges, Tiago found it very easy to implement wallet features.

“One of the best things is you get a sense of immediate feedback, because when you’re implementing, you can see things happening and you can check it on OST”

Tiago and his team are currently working on completing a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), ensuring the platform is functional and the website is accessible. Next steps for Surwei will be implementing features for the questionnaires, exporting data, data analysis, and rewards.

Firmament

Based in Germany, Stefan Lange-Hegermann is the creator of Firmament. Stefan works as a product lead and needed a way to reward employees for good work, so he built Firmament, a Slack chatbot that allows businesses and its employees to incentivize their co-workers with little token rewards. Initially built on a database, Stefan decided moved the project onto the OST blockchain as it adds value to the tokens. Firmament can be integrated into Slack channels for tipping other users.

Stefan is currently working on integrating Firmament into other Slack channels. For Alpha II, Stefan built the a javascript SDK as there was no SDK at the time. Everything that Stefan needed is now available with the Alpha III challenge and the OST API. Stefan now uses full wallet features for Firmament. Next steps for Firmament include refining payment, legal, and forming it into a product before release.

Employees Loyalty Program

Based in Russia, Alex is the creator of Employees Loyalty Program. Alex needed a way to reward service engineers for completing work specific work orders, so he created a loyalty program that incentivizes employees with Branded Tokens for performing certain actions. The rewards that the employees receive can be used to purchase other services such as food service or paying for parking. Next steps for Employees Loyalty Program will be a mobile application and implementing the program with a local business.

JoyPass, KARPARC, and kidtoken were unable to make this interview, but you can check them out in our Best of Alpha III post. Be sure to subscribe to OST LIVE on YouTube so you can join us on the streams. Lastly, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, TuneIn, Spotify or on anywhere you listen to podcasts.

About OST

OST blockchain infrastructure empowers new economies. OST is a public blockchain platform designed for the needs of businesses with millions of users. Launch your own Branded Tokens with OST technology and turn your business into a dynamic ecosystem. OST is built on the OpenST Protocol, a framework for building highly scalable blockchain token economies. OST has offices in Berlin, New York, Hong Kong, and Pune. For more information, please visit: https://ost.com.