OPENFORMAT Progress Update November 23
Do you know what we do yet? 🥹
Hi friends, advisors, investors,
It’s been a while since we last put out an update; there’s so much going on that finding the time to share has been tricky.
The headlines:
We’ve started our early access programme for developers
We’ve reached v1.0 of the SDK
We’ve started fund raising for a £2m seed round
We’ve focused our proposition and route to market
Product
Early Access has tentatively begun; we’re seeding very carefully. Initially we’re aiming at React developers that are either Web3, or Web2 devs curious about Web3. The kind of devs that are creative, love playing with new things and then vocalising their findings intelligently, good and bad.
Right now, anyone can go to the OPENFORMAT GitHub repo and explore the SDK and documentation - but - if you want to play proper, you will need a key that gives full access to our Launchpad web application.
Launchpad is currently invite only with keys available from us directly or other developers who have access. If you want a key - head over to our Discord and persuade someone to part with one ;)
The Launchpad application itself is essentially a gamified admin area for developers to manage their OPENFORMAT eco-system. It allows them to easily create eco-systems of multiple applications, reward tokens and badges.
Of course we’ve gamified the Launchpad with missions, XP, and rewards in the form of our $oft and loads of collectible badges for achievements. It's an example of taking a simple system (admin) and wrapping it in a gamified set of rules to reward and encourage usage. We'll be open-sourcing a version of this wrapper as a replacement for our Get Started template very soon.
We’re very excited to be shipping product, and can’t wait for feedback, suggestions and criticism from the dev community. Hopefully we’ll be sharing our roadmap by the next update as we start to bring in more developers to work on the core.
Investment
We opened our round on the 1st November and what a couple of weeks it has been. Our strategy has been to split our raise in two, raise £500k now with Angels and raise the remainder (£1.5m) early next year with VCs. Our terms for the initial £500k are set and we’re confident we’ve found a balance that meets the interests of everyone involved. We also received our EIS Advance Assurance last night (21st Nov).
Huge thanks to everyone who has either already committed to this round, introduced us to people or just given us feedback on our pitch deck. We’re so grateful for all of the love and support ♥️.
Marketing
We have a tag line, more than a tag line, a belief system. You know sometimes when something is just staring you in the face and you can’t see it? Like when you look in the fridge and can’t see the mayo literally right at the end of your nose? That.
Everything is a Game
Expect at least one post coming on what this means; whether you’re playing Twitter/X, levelling up at work, learning a language, or managed to get the kids to football on time on Saturday morning.
Like every startup, ever, we’ve agonised over the pithiest way to explain what we’re up to and here we are:
OPENFORMAT is a toolkit for developers to rapidly build decentralised gamified applications for the next generation of super fans.
In a startup, understanding who you are targeting isn’t as obvious as you might initially think. Here at OPENFORMAT it’s multi level:
Developers
Brands/Organisations
Fans
We’re enabling things that new types of fans want, that brands will pay for and the developers will implement…
We don’t have the resources currently to go for all of these at once; and clearly we need to ensure we have a strong foundational product… We know developers best, the team here have all been successfully involved with digital product development for at least the last 15 years. Developers also happen to be the gatekeepers to implementing solutions. So we’re starting with developers. React developers to be exact right now.
We’ve set some basic KPI’s that we’ve all tattooed onto our wrists:
# Developers
# Transactions
That’s it. There are many many “PI’s” but these right now are where we’re at.
Not too much else to say here except partnerships, partnerships, partnerships. Wallet providers, digital agencies, chains - we want you.
Tech Change Log
Lastly no update email would be complete (🤔) without a change log from the dev team; which for the non technical is literally the most recent view of what is happening under the hood. We’ll be breaking this out into a regular update just for developers (and any interested parties) asap. Or you can head over to GitHub and take a look directly.
@openformat/sdk
1.2.1
Patch Changes
Updated
Subgraph URL for Polygon Mumbai to improve stability and performance - #143
You can now reward multiple badges in the Reward Mechanism - #148
ActivityType is now passed as a parameter into all functions in the RewardsFacet contract
Updated the aurora testnet StarFactory and ConstellationFactory smart contract addresses
1.2.0
Minor Changes
Added
new ConstellationFactory and StarFactory ABIs
new Constellation Class for interacting with Constellations
Updated
Updates RewardsFacet ABI to interact with latest Reward functionality
Updates ERC721LazyDrop and ERC721LazyMint ABIs to handle new endTimestamp in claim conditions
Renames and updates starFactoryContracts and constellationFactoryContracts mappings
Updates subgraph mappings to latest endpoints
Fixed
Correctly map Chains.foundry in chain helpers
Patch Changes
Updated
Refactor getContract function to not use subgraph - #136
Thanks
Wow you made it to the bottom, you’re a super fan 🌞. See you next time.
Big love ♥️, Mark and the team 🌞