How are People Using Pepo? Hint: Communities

Pepo Communities, UX awards — and hard-earned hoodies — at #ETHDenver2020

We are excited to see so many people joining Pepo Communities — in the new version of Pepo released at the Feb 14–16 ETHDenver #BUIDLathon — to make meaningful connections and share their passions.

OneMillionDevs — a ConsenSys project to encourage more developers to build on Ethereum — created its own Pepo community to swap “one in a million” ideas about what Ethereum makes possible.

Ethereum is a global community. Everyone has a voice and a story to share. The power of our community is in our perspectives, our journeys and our shared values

— Kames Cox-Geraghty, project lead, One Million Devs

Kames also made us blush with his praise for how Pepo’s UX makes his community’s conversation easy and fun.

The Likes are meaningful now. I am legitimately in love with posting 30 seconds videos and micro-tipping using an Ethereum side-chain. It’s smooth as butter.

— Kames Cox-Geraghty, project lead, One Million Devs

Users can also take advantage of other new Pepo features released for ETHDenver, such as camera upgrades that let video makers start, stop, cut and mix to make bite-sized videos. Users can also now send and receive Pepo Coins with QR codes as well as deploy webhooks to put Pepo videos on any website. We will keep #BUIDLING to improve the Pepo experience in response to the feedback and hacker energy you shared with us at ETHDenver.

We can’t claim that Pepo Communities was our idea; it was yours! Since launch late last year, the #1 most requested feature has been for better ways for people with the same passions to meet in Pepo. We’re seeing that the community craves real, authentic human connection and we’re striving to have Pepo be the place for those conversations.

We know crypto is about more than powerful technology. It’s also about the culture and empowering community that was once again evident in the Mile High City.

Pepo Communities have formed around the likes of health, food, art, job searches, podcasts and marketing advice. We saw MarketingDAO make use of its Pepo community to receive dozens of proposals in 30-second video pitches from crypto people and projects around the world, who are seeking grants to grow the Ethereum brand. Alex Masmej, who put out the request for proposals on Pepo, appreciated the extra engagement, noting “@thepepoapp exploding: people tipped me $10 worth today only.”

Pepo Usage Skyrockets Over the ETHDenver Weekend

We are humbled and encouraged by the warm embrace of Pepo by the Ethereum community over the ETH Denver Valentines Day weekend. In short, ETHDenver ❤️ Pepo:

• New Pepo signups grew by 20% in the week
• Most every major usage metric (e.g. new videos, replies, video plays) grew by 200% to 400% during the week
• >10,000 on-chain transactions
• >800,000 Pepo Coins changed hands

During ETH Denver Pepo also reached the #9 Dapp ranking worldwide, according to State of the Dapps.

It was amazing the way that Pepo gave the opportunity to everybody there to engage with other people that they probably would not have come across

Kelly LeValley Hunt said in a Pepo video.

And in case you want more proof that it is a small crypto world, a few days later, Kelly spied our very own Jason Goldberg and Ben Bollen in New York at the Token Taxonomy Initiative at Microsoft — thanks to a limited-edition Pepo hoodie that we debuted at ETHDenver. And Kelly recorded the encounter on Pepo.

The ETHDenver 2020 UX AWARDS

Jonathan Xu, while showing off his hard-earned hoodie at ETHDenver, pinpointed in a Pepo video the importance of beautiful UX bringing the community together. “We are able to be so engaging in the Ethereum environment because of cool UX and UI,” he said, adding that Pepo “entices people to really get inside the ecosystem, inside the crypto community and really go out there and have fun.”

Good user experience is crucial for crypto apps. That’s why we sponsored a series of UX awards at the ETHDenver hackathon.

With four years’ experience researching user needs, developing the tech and creating Pepo as a dapp that feels like an app, we were excited to share ideas around UX. We were blown away by the passion to #BUIDL at our workshop on the six essentials of great UX — use cases, users, relevance, empowerment, innovation and responsibility. We were incredibly impressed with the twenty five impressive teams that participated in our bounty even if not everyone could win.

We congratulate the ETH Denver 2002 UX awards winners:

1. COZ — which launched a social DAO — won the top prize of 3000 $DAI

A social network DAO for solving problems. Users post ideas to crowdsource solutions. Donors donate directly to the best solutions. Anyone anywhere can earn rewards for contributing to solutions. Watch the COZ YouTube demo.

2. LedgerLocker — earn interest on useful smart contracts — won runner-up prize of 2000 $DAI

2. WolfPack — practical uses of crypto to help homeless — won runner-up prize of 2000 $DAI

WolfPack is a token based gig economy that provides an accessible labor market, identification, work history, personalized wallet, wage theft protection, and financial empowerment to the homeless. By creating a connected relationship between the homeless population and the community in which they reside, Wolf Pack aims to solve a growing problem with a human centered design approach.

Plus, we 🙌 🙌 🙌 the team from @splunk, which came up with its own initiative and hacked a Pepo dashboard that displays top Pepo earners.

We admire the long hours ETHDenver hackers put in. In tribute to the intense labor (and creativity), we recommend as perhaps the most LOL Pepo video coming out of the event: Mark Pereira and crew burning the midnight oil.

Community & Conversations

Pepo is all about having a conversation (even in the pre-dawn hackathon hours). We welcome all feedback and ideas about how we can improve to make Pepo the best place for crypto conversations — and communities.

More than two dozen Pepo Communities have already launched on Pepo including #ETHDenver, #1MillionDevs, #PositiveBlockchain, #MarketingDAO, #RealHuman, #Badcrypto, #TheFledge.

Do you want to create your own Pepo Community to connect with people, not profiles, and to tap into the realness of your community? Contact us! Community creation is manual for now, and will be made self-service in future releases.

Download the latest version of Pepo. Pepo is available for download now in the Apple App Store and Google Playstore.