Vol 1, Issue 2. 10 May 2019
UCreator — Nick Jenkinson
A month is a long time. There are often triumphs, failures and a catalog of in between. This month the U Network community feels like they have experienced all three. Project lead Yi Lu took part in the first of a planned series of monthly AMA’s with the community, the UBuild project developed by Trevor (Dr T) has gone live, minor updates to Upbet have rolled through, some marketing has begun with Ken You reaching out to Twitter influencers to offer their reviews and opinions of U Network and an ever elusive ‘new exchange’ was confirmed. Failures, on the other hand, are perceived by the beholder. Some in the community have vented their frustrations on Telegram regarding the lack of price movement and others on the slowness of U Network Dapp development. Everyone’s opinion, from my point of view, is valued regardless if positive or negative. I don’t know what is going on in people’s lives for example to be able to support or criticize accordingly, but what I do know is that U Network and our community will only reach goals together.
In this issue of UNews, we have an in-depth interview with UBuild builder Trevor (Dr T) about his creation and plans for the platform, we will recap the AMA and marketing efforts by Ken, discuss what has changed in Upbet and other news that has come out of the U Network camp as well as the U Network community channels.
Lets dive in…
Why Build UBuild? That was the question…
For those who have visited any of U Network’s socials: Telegram, Discord, Reddit or Twitter, chances are you have had a discussion or at least seen Trevor (AKA Dr T). Outside of the core team, Trevor is probably the most visible member of the U Network community: always there to lend an opinion, offer his insights and answer the questions of new people finding out about the U Network project. UNews had the opportunity to connect with Trevor this month, find out more about his background and discuss UBuild, his creation for the U Network community.
Trevor, can you tell us about your background and how you first found out about U Network?
I have a Bachelor of Sciences in International Business and Master in Business Administration in Operations from the University of California system. I also have 10 years experience in eCommerce, online sales & marketing, web development and project leadership.
I found out about U Network on Reddit through a “Shill me a good alt” themed post. I started reading and liked what I saw.
Can you explain what the genesis moment for UBuild was, when did you recognize this was something the U Network community needed?
I’d say the genesis moment was when I created a Google sheet to attempt to see what active U Network community members had in regards to our pool of talents. The sheet still exists on Telegram. We can see a couple familiar names on the sheet. Yet, a Google sheet draws little attention. Its boring, ugly and hates mobile users.
The catalyst to the decision to better understand our community’s human resources was when we, as a community, first began to explore working together. It was an exploration to develop an explainer video. Members began stepping up to the idea. Some had video animation skills; others had self-produced music. I realized we had passionate and talented people in our community, but I had no idea what skills they had or what we could accomplish together unless we caught them at just the right time on the chat before the endless wave of chats pushed the discussion “out of view”. We needed something that would allow us to connect and combine our skills and talents more easily and in a more static manner.
Why did you decide to create and develop UBuild rather than using other existing platforms that are available? How long did it take to develop from concept to reality? What was the U Network team involvement if any?
There are many great solutions for project management; most are paid though. I needed a platform that could allow for idea voting, basic project management, assembly of teams and database of available users and their skills. I also needed all of that plus the ability to eventually integrate UUU into the platform. I can think of a couple that come close (other than the UUU token integration, of course) but all of them required log-in to view and all of them were charged at a per-user cost. I could have patched together multiple free solutions, but in my experience, the protocol necessary to get such a patch-job of resources to work well together can only be done if you are paying the people that have to deal with that protocol. In short: If its overly complicated, people won’t do it unless you pay them.
I began playing with the idea in November 2018. I had a bare-bones alpha version running by December, but I was not satisfied with the framework. The next 3 months was focused on developing the current beta version. As much as I would have loved to pump in 40+ hour weeks into UBuild and roll it out in a couple of weeks, it was a much slower process than I would have liked juggling my job, my family and UBuild. But it was a passion project so working on it didn’t feel like work.
Regarding team involvement, Ken You provided feedback along the way from conception to alpha to beta. However UBuild was always intended to be ran by the community and for the community and therefore to-date is 100% community developed. This may change however as UBuild’s needs grow.
You focused a lot of effort on marketing and promoting UBuild prior to launch, what has been the feedback and uptake from the community been like since launch on 12 April? Has it been what you expected?
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The promotional campaign served its purpose in raising initial awareness resulting in just under 500,000 impressions and over 750 engagements in English-based markets. Pieces of the same campaign were re-distributed via Chinese marketing channels, though I do not have the metrics for that.
Thus far, uptake has been slightly less than expected, but close enough for me to call it a success. I was expecting 20 registrations and UBuild currently has 15 members. Therefore UBuild promotional campaign produced nearly a 2% conversion rate, which I am quite pleased with.
These are not staggeringly large numbers, I know. The key aspect of UBuild’s launch was the establishment of the asset itself within the U Network ecosystem. With the asset and its style guide established, refinements to the system and additional promotions become less of a time investment. Paid promotion or incentivizing registration / activity are obvious ways to drive growth. We may cross that bridge in a later collaboration with U Network, but for now we simply established the asset and began learning how the user base interacted with the site.
The community now has a hub for activity, a means of searching for those to work with, the beginnings of community self-governance (which differs from blockchain governance).
There are a few ideas on UBuild currently, one that springs to mind is Telegram protocol. As a Telegram admin, you have a fairly relaxed mentality and are very inclusive of others, their opinions and viewpoints, however often find yourself criticized for offering your point of view from the same people. How can UBuild be used to develop protocol for admins to navigate this tricky job?
I would say that that particular Idea on UBuild is less about establishing the protocol itself, but more about getting an idea and discussion going on the matter. In my mind, there are generally two successful styles of running a community: Corporate run or community run.
With “community run” you see much more natural conversations with clear personalities among the members, admins and core team. This can seem welcoming or it can come off as unprofessional; the judgement is each individual’s to make.
In “corporate run” you sacrifice personality for professionalism, which has its pros and cons. Basic questions are answered in a more robotic fashion while more in depth discussions still occur.
Both have their attractive aspects, for me personally. If I was new and going to invest, I would want to see professionalism. If I was new and wanted to get involved, I would want to see the personality. But this is just my perspective. Investors obviously want to see that a project has its “ducks in a row”. But many of our potential investors will also become users. Its an interesting “grey area” worth a discussion. In creation of the “Protocol for Admins” Idea on Ubuild I wanted to gauge the community’s view on the matter; to allow the community to decide or at least be heard.
As for criticism towards community admins, I welcome it. Its good to know how others perceive you. Negative reviewers are always more vocal than positive reviewers and that helps to speed improvement. But at the end of the day, I’m just another member enjoying our community. I enjoy chatting with everyone, making jokes with GIFs, and helping newcomers understand what U Network does. Sometimes its good to be reminded that new interests that may not understand my sarcasm or humor may perceive my responses as unprofessional. Its something I try to keep in mind.
A UBuild project that yourself and I are both active members of is that of Upbet Cross-promotion. How do you see this project as going? Why are you a member of it and what solutions/benefits do you think it will provide in driving market to Upbet and more brand awareness of UUU?
U Network wisely chose to sub-brand their Upbet platform such that “U Network” itself was not the key branding. This allows for greater willingness to participate in the cross promotion you mentioned.
There are two general trains of thought in the cryptosphere, I find: 1) My coin is the best coin and will destroy all competitors or 2) My coin will be successful as part of a larger coalition of projects. I believe that in this early age of crypto development there is far more strength in joining a coalition of projects that compliment each other’s strengths while bolstering each other’s weaknesses. A start-up that tries to be everything to everyone is almost destined to fail. You must pick an industry, pick a niche within it and define the demographics you seek to acquire within that niche. By staying focused and staying lean a start-up is far more likely to become sustainable. So I guess that’s just a long winded way to say “strength in numbers”.
So what does all that have to do with the cross promotion concept? Well, in the same way as ChongDong brings blockchain educators, learners and activists together to then build with U Network’s one-click token deployments tools to then offer social and bug bounties through UGot, Upbet allows for promotion of any project, though not necessarily on U Network’s platform. The way I see it, every asset added to U Network’s ecosystem plays a role in bringing talent, assets and interest to U Network and its partners.
Upbet’s sub branding will allow to draw new interest to UUU from completely unrelated or unknown projects. A mutual benefit can be found between projects even if they are initially unaware of one another.
Where can you see UBuild heading in the next 6 months? Do you believe it will still be relevant? Have you got plans to further develop the platform? Do you think at some point the U Network team will approach you to integrate U Tokens into UBuild or take UBuild from a community project to official team project?
Within the next 6 months I would like to see a UUU use case integrated into UBuild. This could come in the form of the original UCommunity upvote mechanism concept, project task bounties, crowdfunding or social bounties via UGot for project launches. Blockchain integration to a website is unfortunately outside my sphere of knowledge, but that’s exactly what UBuild is for: I have an idea, yet I lack the skills or resources to do it myself. So I will use my own creation to fuel its further expansion by finding passionate individuals that would like to work with me on the project – just like any other project on UBuild itself.
What UBuild ultimately becomes is up to the community. I believe it will still be relevant as it operates as a useful showcase of aggregated community ideas as opposed to the sporadic and eventually “lost” ideas that receive great engagement on a chat feed, but then slip into the past as the chat rolls on.
The U Network team has already approached me for UUU use cases. Discussions on sharing resources to further develop UBuild are underway.
UBuild will always remain a community project. It is an asset for U Network, certainly. That is why it was developed, but it is controlled by the community itself. This is not to say the U Network team is excluded. Far from it. Their influence, skills and ideas are very much welcomed – along with all other community members. UBuild, along with UNews, UNetworkHive and more community assets to come, represent the establishment of community authority and autonomy. This concept is at the very heart of the U Network project – User Generated Content; redistribution of rewards and influence appropriately; ownership of the content one creates; ensuring everything that rises to the top is of high quality.
Ask Yi Anything
As advised by UNews last month, Yi Lu hosted the first Ask Me Anything (AMA) session in the U Network subreddit on 18 April.
The AMA ran for nearly 3 hours and ran up 50 comments. Some of the responses are very detailed and a great asset to the community as a point of reference. Find the whole transcript of the AMA at reddit.com/r/UNetwork or click here.
Upbet Updates
There have been many updates and achievements to discuss regarding Upbet since last month. Firstly, over 400M UUU are being staked on Upbet currently, in which all contributing users are enjoying a 20% annualized reward rate. There have been multiple updates to improve the User Experience and User Interface as well as discussions on governance and sustainability.
UX and UI updates
A controversial ‘slider’ bar was added to the product. The primary issue is that it defaults to 10% of available UUU in your account. After much discussion in Discord, it appears that the team are going to roll back this feature or add a confirmation screen.
The requested countdown timer to next reward claim has been added to much delight of users. It allows for an infinitely easier way to keep track of when a user’s next rewards are available to claim
A ‘recommended’ market now appears on the account page also. I am not sure how I feel about this. U Network Twitter advises that you have chance to be put in this sweet spot by creating a market. What hasn’t been explained is parameters of getting this chance. Is it random or are popular markets promoted?
Ethereum swap directly to U Network token feature added, allowing easier on-boarding of new users.
Improved layout for mobile and desktop. One criticism of Upbet was that it was looking dated. There have been multiple updates to it in the past month, as of writing, we now see Yes/No Vote totals, comments total, Vote time remaining, Title, Intro to Rules and who created the market. I don’t fully understand the reason behind removing the date the market was created but leaving the time stamp? Overall though the layout is improving.
Governance and Sustainability
The have been multiple discussions had on Discord regarding how to appeal a decision in Upbet. Members Dr T, tennisnick1 and Cat Russell have been vocal with their opinions of the initial draft appeal process that would involve 3 parties: Claimee, Community Super Representatives and Upbet Team Member.
At present the appeal process is still a work in progress in order to get the balance right. More information on this will come in due course.
Sustainability has also started to be discussed in Discord regarding Upbet. The platform has grown at great rate and as such the rewards have grown also. As Yi Lu has mentioned, daily rewards have grown from 40K UUU per day to over 200K per day. This issue is only set to become more of a problem as Upbet develops, more accounts are created and markets are made.
There are a number of community members that have been offering feedback to Yi Lu and team regarding their proposal to adjust the reward mechanism. If you would like to have a read of the proposal you can find it in the U Network Discord in the topic Upbet General.
Marketing
During April Ken started to reach out and actively seek out Twitter influencers to help spread the message about U Network, Upbet and UBuild. Thanks to these efforts and support from the community, Cryptopig did an in-depth analysis of the project on April 23. If you are interested in what they said, you can find the the video below. U Network is focused on between approx 1:00 and 8:00.
As part of these initial marketing steps, Sid from Luv Crypto reached out to Ken to take part in an interview and they touch on many aspects regarding U Network. Well worth the read and you can find that here.
New Exchange — Let go, Goko!
It finally went live, a new exchange and to a new wave of criticism by some of the U Network community. Was it Binance? No. Was it Bittrex or Kucoin? No. Was it Yobit? No. What we received was an unknown entity in Goko.com, a new exchange founded by Node Capital and as advised by Ken Goko.com’s focus will primarily be in the Asian market; a new exchange that has plenty of room for growth.
Goko is not what the wider community was hoping for or expecting. After the announcement there was mass criticism on Telegram by many members. So why Goko and will it benefit UUU holders? From what I can tell and what we have been advised, the listing was free for both the USDT and BTC market pairs so I see no problems from that point of view. There has also been a in-depth interview between Yi Lu and Goko exchange published on Jinse.com — the #1 blockchain media company in China — find that here. Ken has also advised that Goko.com bought 50 Million UUU tokens so they could do their own promotion to encourage new users to Goko in addition to support the U Network listing through WeChat, poster promotion and user referral. So U Network has been listed on a new exchange, has had marketing support, and the exchange has actively seeked new users to grow. The exchange itself looks neat and appears to be similar in layout to Huobi which provides a good user experience.
Overall, though not what exactly the community may have wanted or hoped for, it is still a move forward as U Network is in-front of a potentially new audience. Goko could be the next big exchange and may be the catalyst that propels U Network to new heights. Only time will tell if this is the case. In the meantime, lets go Goko!
Community Development
A breathe of fresh air hit the U Network Telegram group on 1 May when Jude Zambarakji joined the chat and asked about the white paper. Telegram admins Deadwelsh, Trevor and Ken all assisted Jude in answering his questions and was a healthy discussion about the project.
Other News
- U Network announced its strategic partnership with IRISnet. The two projects will jointly conduct research on cross-chain content asset interaction.
- U Network co-founder Peter was invited to attend Vechain Summit 2019 in San Francisco which may lead to new exciting partnership announcements ahead.
- U Network was officially added to Bihu. Bihu is an outstanding blockchain Chinese content community. In addition to quality articles, it has a great community atmosphere, which will be beneficial to U Network (UUU)’s Chinese community building.
- The U Network 3rd Party Dapp — ChongDong, published its first book “From 0 to 1, Study Blockchain Comprehensively”. Note it is in Chinese and if this is not a barrier to your learning, you can purchase by following this link.
If you want to find out more about U Network, also see below:
Follow on Twitter, Reddit and Medium to keep informed
Join the discussions on Telegram, Discord and WeChat — WeChat ID: UGC-Network.
Discover the code at Github and the vision at the Website
Play and Win at Upbet and add value to the community at UBuild.
I am community member of U Network and follow their official channels. All opinions in this piece are my own and may not reflect that of U Network.
If you want to follow me, I am active on Twitter @tennisnick1 and @UNewsHQ. You can also find me on the U Network official Telegram and Discord channels with the tennisnick1 handle.
