April 2023 In Review
April was an extremely large month for the Subsocial ecosystem, as we rolled out our most critically acclaimed app yet, Grill.chat, which showcases our innovative UX solutions made possible by our Energy and (upcoming) Off-Chain Signer solutions.
As the first use case of our new Open Communications technology, Grill.chat lets users chat on-chain without needing tokens or a wallet. As a result, you can even use it from your phone! Sub.ID followed shortly after by integrating OpenComm to enable discussions around supported tokens, and we have many partnerships in the ecosystem lined up for more of these integrations.
April also saw some community activities and other events, so let’s dive in.
Grill.chat
Premiering on April 6th, Grill.chat certainly brought some heat to the ecosystem! By enabling anyone to easily access and use it from anywhere, without needing tokens or a wallet, we have broken down many of the barriers that previously existed for onboarding new users to Web3. Grill.chat is so simple that even your grandma could use it, and she wouldn’t even know that it’s running on a blockchain! In fact, it’s so easy to onboard, that you could even end up talking to yourself, and no one will have a clue.
We quickly iterated and shipped more features throughout the month, such as replacing the hard-to-read public addresses with random animal names, making it much easier to reference others in the chat, and frankly, creating a much more fun environment. Shortly afterwards, we added replies, allowing you to right click or double tap on desktop, and hold on mobile, to reply to someone’s message. Since then, we’ve been working on some back-end stuff to allow users to easily create their own chat rooms.
On-chain chat served as the first use case of our OpenComm technology, with Grill.chat being the first application to utilize it. Sub.ID has also joined the ranks, which we will look at next.
Sub.ID Updates
Support was added for even more chains, including Statemint, Polkadot’s first parachain, along with many links to governance platforms and notable applications for many chains.
As previously mentioned, Sub.ID became the second dapp to make use of our OpenComm technology, by adding a pop-up window with chat communities for all chains supported on Sub.ID. It also served to showcase our iframe that was created for easy integrations, allowing other applications to add in-app chats in an hour or less! Multiple teams will be making use of this, so Sub.ID won’t be alone for long.
Upgrading Our Runtime
On April 8th, Subsocial’s runtime was upgraded to version 22 following our migration from Kusama to Polkadot. With this upgrade, we rolled back the call filters (which prevented any transactions from happening during the migration), and enabled the energy system and token claims. The energy station is once again open, as well as the energy bot in our Discord.
How Was The Parachain Migration?
We got together with members of the KILT and Zeitgeist teams for a Twitter space to discuss why our teams decided to migrate from Kusama to Polkadot, and what unique challenges the task presented. It was an insightful discussion, and definitely highlighted how you can really build custom blockchains using Substrate, as all three of our projects had different problems during the migration process. It looks like there is no one size fits all!
An Update On The Spacers NFTs
April 11th saw the an update on our blog about the status of the Spacers NFT mint. At the time, we were still waiting on some of the RMRK team’s Ethereum Improvement Proposals to be passed, allowing them to finally achieve their multi-resource and equippable NFTs on EVM chains. Since then, all of these EIPs have passed, and the RMRK team is now in the testing phase for the Spacers!
Polkadot Insider AMA
Our Content Lead & Community Manager Yung Beef was invited to a Twitter space with Polkadot Insider to discuss Subsocial’s latest developments, and ended up leaking some alpha about the off-chain signer.
Encode Hackathon
Subsocial has been participating in the current Encode Hackathon, and our DevEx Manager Tushar Ojha gave a workshop presentation titled “Creating Decentralized Social Experiences” on April 18th.
Polkadot Community Call
Yung Beef attended April’s Polkadot Community Call to discuss the recent bullish events in the Subsocial ecosystem, especially the release of our OpenComm tech and the launch of Grill.chat. You can hear all about it starting at 29:30!
Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the Subsocial ecosystem! We will be releasing the Off-Chain Signer shortly, allowing for a user experience as smooth as Web2. This year has already been treating us well, and we are enthusiastic about what our future holds. We’ll see you on-chain!