Hello, amazing snakes!
We’re excited to bring you the January recap, highlighting our progress with the L1 Lottery mainnet and its Festival event. We’ll also share our recent development milestones and outline our plans for February.
Let’s start with the mainnet!
Lottery L1 Mainnet Launch
On January 15th, the long-awaited occasion unfolded — the L1 Lottery game officially launched on the Mina mainnet!
The entire Mina ecosystem rallied together, amplifying our message and helping us spread the word. To celebrate this milestone, we distributed 300 pre-paid Lottery tickets to our community through our strategic partners, ensuring everyone could join in on the game.
The launch was an astounding success! In the very first round alone, 183 players participated, purchasing a total of 344 Lottery tickets, with 106 of those acquired using gift codes.
Our team was continuously working on refining the Lottery experience by implementing crucial fixes and improvements to both the code and UI. Here’s what’s already been added:
- Progress Loader: Introduced a loader to visually indicate the progress of round processing.
- Mobile Fixes: Resolved issues with the claim function specifically for mobile users.
- Accelerated Purchases: Streamlined the process for purchasing tickets using gift codes.
- Backend Optimization: Resolved issues related to competitive transactions from the backend.
- Account Updates: Implemented a fix for managing account updates during various actions.
- Response Time Improvement: Collaborated with MINA and StakeTab to tackle long response times from the archive node.
Now, after 4 weeks of successful L1 Lottery operation, the stats are truly impressive:
Lottery Festival
To celebrate the mainnet launch of the L1 Lottery game, we hosted the ZkNoid Lottery Festival from January 27th to February 7th. This two-week extravaganza was packed with special events, competitions, AMA sessions, and a ton of Lottery gift code giveaways!
Here’s a glimpse into the festival:
- Meme Creation Contests: Two contests with a combined prize pool of 40 gift codes.
- Partner Days: Two days dedicated to giveaways, distributing nearly 300 access codes.
- Special AMAs: Two sessions on “Tech features of the L1 Lottery” and “NFT in Gaming”, each featuring a QA contest awarding 10 gift codes.
- Lottery Review Event: A creative challenge inviting community members to share their zkLottery experiences through video and text reviews, with prizes totaling 9 gift codes and 150 MINA.
- TileVille City Builder Day: A challenge where players showcased their city-building skills for a chance to win a share of 18 gift codes, 200 MINA, and 3 exclusive NFTs.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who engaged in the festival and to our amazing partners who made it all possible!
Development
In January, our team was laser-focused on refining the Lottery game, implementing critical enhancements, addressing remaining bugs, elevating the overall UX. Here’s an overview of what has been done:
Backend Improvements
- Blockchain data optimization: Reworked our blockchain data polling mechanism for improved efficiency and responsiveness.
- Cloud proving migration resolution: Fixed migration issues related to cloud proving.
- Action sorting fix: Applied an official fix to streamline actions sorting.
- Concurrent transaction solution: Addressed backend issues related to concurrent transactions.
Frontend Improvements
- Ticket update fixes: Resolved issues with ticket updates in the top section of the interface.
- Error monitoring: Integrated Sentry for proactive error tracking and monitoring, allowing us to swiftly address potential issues.
- Pre-counter: Introduced a pre-counter for instances when the first round has not yet started.
- Added CMS support to store/landing pages
Gift Code mechanics
- Gift code management: Fixed the deletion process for used gift codes.
- Batch processing implementation: Enabled batch processing for gift ticket purchases, allowing users to easily buy multiple tickets.
Reward Claim Improvements
- Duplicate prevention: Implemented measures to prevent duplicate claim requests.
- Batch processing for claims: Added batch processing capabilities for reward claims.
- Mobile claim fixes: Resolved issues with reward claims on mobile devices.
- New account claim fixes: Addressed claim issues specifically affecting new accounts.
UI/UX Design
- Implemented a progress bar for the generation of finished rounds winning numbers
- Designed and added a mobile version for the Lottery game
- Added warning popups and notifications to the Lottery page
- Created our first NFT collection with unique traits and images
- Designed and started implementing the ZkNoid NFT marketplace both for mobile and desktop devices
- Added an in-game chat system to all multiplayer games
- Other minor UI upgrades and fixes
Educational content
In January, we published 3 articles in the ZkNoid blog:
- Mina Action & Reducers Guide: Batch reducers. The fifth and final article in our MINA Actions & Reducers series where Mina developers can learn how to code using o1js’s batch reducers — an experimental solution to the limitation of account updates per reducer.
- How to Play the L1 Lottery Game — a visual guide for new Lottery players explaining how to play the game, use gift codes, and claim rewards.
- UI/UX Design: design challenges in web3. The first article in the series devoted to the specifics of web3 design. In this article, ZkNoid’s lead designer Mizori explains into the key differences in web2 and web3 design and gives tips for making effective UIs & UXs in decentralized spaces.
February Roadmap
Looking ahead, our team remains committed to supporting our Lottery community as we advance through our 2025 roadmap. Here’s what we have planned for February:
Meme Token Event
In collaboration with MinaNFT, we are working on a special event centered around the launch of two meme tokens on Mina. Community members will have the opportunity to choose their teams and purchase corresponding meme tokens for a chance to win fantastic prizes at the event’s conclusion.
More details on the meme token event will be dropping soon. Stay tuned!
ZkNoid NFT marketplace
We are making progress towards launching our NFT marketplace. This month, we aim to finalize its UI and backend side. With the launch of the marketplace, we will unveil our first NFT collection that is ready to go and waiting for its time to shine!
Submitting a new proposal to the Mina Navigators program
The ZkNoid team has exciting plans for 2025 and we can’t wait to share them with our community. Stay tuned, we will drop more details of our 2025 roadmap soon!
