Zippie Monthly Update — August 2018
August is now over and we’ve been working hard on all fronts, from product development to branding, partnerships to recruitment. To get the low down on life at Zippie, read on.
Product news
In regards to our product development, the Alpha 3 release, which came out earlier in August, introduced improvements such as better iOS support and more wallet features. The first batch of Zippie cards are also ready at the warehouse. Before shipping, however, we want make sure that all card-related bits and pieces are in place and working flawlessly. We’re also happy to announce that the Zippie wallet will have receive functionality in the next release. This means that users can receive ERC20 tokens from wallets other than Zippie wallets. We’re also pleased to announce that we didn’t have any major issues in the first security audit run, but we do need to finalise card functionality and improve documentation before jumping to Phase 2 of the audit. For more details on this, please check our monthly product update.
Marketing news
As mentioned in our previous monthly update, we now have a new brand identity to work with courtesy of Entrecasa. These are the folks behind the brands of multiple blockchain companies, such as Decentraland and Zeppelin OS. August was very much a month of focusing on the first P of the traditional 4 Ps marketing mix: the product. This meant applying this brand direction to everything Zippie, making sure our product looks and feels as nice as possible and is coherent with the new visual look of our project. This new look will be fully revealed in the coming months, but you can get a sneak peek below. We believe that how the product looks and feels is crucial for the marketability of Zippie. Simply put, we want the users of the Zippie OS to be as excited about it as we are. After all, if you like the way a product looks and feels, you’re more likely to share it with your friends — a key requirement in reaching viral growth in the consumer market.
In addition to the work being done on applying the brand and making everything look nice and consistent, we are currently focusing our marketing efforts towards the service side of our platform. This means connecting with dapp projects and learning how to serve them better. One way of doing this is building functionalities like a “Login with Zippie” button to help gain and onboard users faster and easier than with any other tool on the market. We believe that this part of building awareness is just as important as getting recognition amongst the public. Needless to say, we’ll focus on the general public once the product is at a stage that supports these efforts. The nature of Zippie as a platform is two-sided: While we want to grow the user base of our platform, we also want to maximize the utility of our product to these users by having the best possible array of dapps and marketplace partners available on the platform.
Partnerships news
On the partnership front, we’ve been busy spreading the word amongst dapps. The positive response we’ve been receiving has continued and the first dapps are currently testing how the integration with the Zippie OS works. On top of this, we’ve also been busy travelling to meet potential dapp partners face-to-face. This has meant trips to Vancouver, the Bay Area, New York and Finland. These meetings have confirmed that our solution really interests not just dapps, but other industry players as well as more traditional companies. Finally, now that we have our video editing team up to speed, we’ll once again start publishing regular interviews with interesting people in the industry.
Team news
On the team front, we’re thrilled to have QA Lead Ru Cindrea joining us. Her job will be to ensure that our product is of the highest quality and properly tested, while building a testing culture within the project. Ru has honed her expertise and QA project experience in world-class, stock-listed tech companies , so we’re excited to have her on board.
We’re now also looking for backend developer to help develop APIs, which developers and services can tap into to utilize the Zippie platform. This talented team player will work on the backend and test implementation for services. So, if you’ve got a wealth of experience in server-side API, npm, nodejs, AWS, Web3 and Solidity, and want to help bring blockchain to the masses, ping us at hello@zippie.org or message one of the admins at our Telegram.
That’s it for August. As you can see, the project has been moving forward on all fronts and we’re excited to see what September brings. If you can’t wait for the next monthly update, be sure to follow our progress via our Telegram channel and join our community on Twitter, Reddit and YouTube.
