OPENFORMAT Progress Update April 24

I spoke to a VC in January and said we were going “heads down for a few months.”

“I wish we could go heads down for a few months” he immediately said. I could tell he both respected what we were doing and was slightly envious that we could take some time to shut ourselves away. Think. Learn. And build.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

The last 6 months has felt to me a bit like those few moments when you’re in a plane. You’ve taken off and then you enter the clouds. Things get a bit bumpy and you can’t see anything, before you come out into the blue skies above. I wouldn’t say we’re in blue sky territory (!), but things are becoming clearer…I can say with absolute certainty that we needed this time to go heads down and we’re much further forwards because of it.

So what have we actually been doing? At a high level:

• We’ve doubled down on game mechanics as our beachhead and will be delivering “Reward and Compete” as our first product to market this month

• We have validated the first parts of the micro-transaction based model (Earn and Spend) and have scoped our Minimal Viable Model

• We have a GTM strategy which includes technical integrations with strategic partners, the first of whom is Buildship

• We are redesigning our launchpad to significantly improve the developer experience

• We’ve launched our API

• We’ve put live a new landing page and completely new documentation

• We’ve started a YouTube channel for tutorials and demos

• We’ve got a new home in Bristol

• We’re growing, with two new people joining us in the next 2 weeks - hi George and Dom!

• We raised money (including from Ada Ventures) and have started to build an incredible list of angel investors and advisors

Technology
To zoom in on a few points in a bit more detail. Firstly, in terms of technology. While we’ve been making good progress when it comes to the API, the updated launchpad and documentation - all now live - we’ve also had quite a bit of work to do around chains these past few months.

We successfully deployed to 2 new chains - Aurora and Solana. We attempted to do the same with Hedera for a specific music project, but this took longer than anticipated and based on our priorities and resources we had to make the decision to stop working on it. This was a hard call. We got six weeks in and had to down tools on this specific chain because too much was out of our control.

Over the coming weeks we will be deploying OPENFORMAT to 5 of the most advanced and popular layer 2 blockchains, then running tests to benchmark for cost, data availability and transaction speed.

Additionally, Ethereum’s DenCun upgrade has just been completed. This is significant to us, as Coindesk put it: Dencun will make L2 transactions super cheap — nearly costless, to the point that almost all activity on Ethereum will switch to these networks. There may even be projects or protocols that will incentivize use by eating the gas payments users usually have to bear (it’d be cheaper than paying for marketing!).

Model
Free to Play (F2P) - It’s a gaming model. You’ll see it in Fortnite, Candy Crush and many others. We believe that this model works not just for games but for any type of application. It’s a mixture of micro transactions, rewards, progression, competition and points. 

Eugene and Andy ran an experiment (called Rewardle) to test part of the model. Specifically, this was testing the ability for end users to earn and spend ‘credits’ (tokens) in an application and for the user to own those tokens, giving them portability to use them across different applications. This experiment helped us use our own technology as well as test the first stage of our model which we have now proven. Dan and I recorded a video discussing this experiment and what the results mean for us going forward, you can check it out here.

Our vision is that builders will be able to earn a sustainable living and quickly implement their ideas using OPENFORMAT through easy access to the tools they need to implement F2P models in their applications. We’ll go into the problems this solves and the bigger vision for this in a separate post. But for now the main thing to share is that we are now much clearer on the path to get to where we want to be. And we are confident this is possible in a way that we couldn’t be even 3 months ago.

GTM
We’re working on our first technical integration partnership with no code platform, Buildship. Dan used Buildship and OPENFORMAT to build a fitness dapp - case study here. We learnt a lot from this and are big fans of what Buildship is doing. We have a competition with Buildship going live in May with templates and nodes being created right now for their community of builders.

In addition, Roster is using OPENFORMAT for their curriculum and broader education vision. We’re getting together in the next couple of weeks for a hack in Bristol!

And, I became co-chair of BIMA’s web3 council. I’m really excited about this as an opportunity to have honest conversations about web3 with agencies and brands around the UK. Plus it helps a lot that my co-chair is awesome and we’re very aligned in how we think about web3 technologies, hi, Tom! Check out the latest from our council here.

Our new home

Over the past year we’ve spent our time camping out in Simpleweb’s old offices, meeting in cafes or meeting in our virtual Gather space. 4 weeks ago we moved in to a new space right in the centre of Bristol, in the UK. It needs a bit of love and attention but it is already making such a difference to how we’re working together.

What’s coming

Chain integrations, our Buildship competition, an evolved narrative, pitching to VCs, v1 of the F2P model being tested, a POC with a large esports brand going live…to name a few things. 🚀

Join our community

• Join our Telegram group, The Format, for relevant news and conversations.

• Check out our latest website

• Join our Discord for product updates

• Subscribe to our YouTube for tutorials and demos

Thanks for reading to the bottom. Please reach out with questions, reflections, thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

With ❤️ from OPENFORMAT

Prompt (generated using DALL-E 3): “A symbolic abstract painting that captures the concept of 'blue sky territory' for a company, representing clarity and constructive development. The image features a dominant, expansive blue sky, blended with light white clouds, symbolizing clear thinking and optimism. The lower part of the painting transitions into architectural structures being constructed, illustrated by rising geometric shapes in shades of gray and silver, embodying the building and shaping of ideas. This abstract composition conveys a sense of progress and forward movement in a visionary space.”