May 2023 In Review

The month of May marked a huge milestone for Subsocial, as we finalized our User Experience solutions, allowing applications built on Subsocial to offer their users a UX similar to what we know from Web2. Along with this were updates to Grill.chat, the launch of FrenTube, and some marketing and community activities, so let’s dive in.

Grill.chat Feature Expansion

We kicked off the month by adding two new features to Grill.chat! First, we added the ability to see the metadata of any message, or to get a link directly to that message, allowing you to easily share messages with your friends. Next, we added the ability to search for specific rooms and communities. Since then, we have been working to finalize the integration process for easily implementing Grill into other applications.

For our partners building OpenComm integrations, we have created a preliminary moderation solution to allow them to control what content is shown in their applications.

You Too Can Use A UX Like Web2

May 9th saw what has perhaps been our most important update in the history of Subsocial, as we released our Off-Chain Signer technology. We encourage you to read the full Twitter thread or blog post, but in short, this tech enables the use of Subsocial with an email and password — no tokens or wallet required. Or, if you prefer to still use your wallet for more decentralization, you can at least remove the constant transaction confirmation pop-ups.

PolkaVerse and Grill.chat both make use of the Off-Chain Signer, and showcase how Subsocial’s UX is so smooth, even your grandma can use it.

Zealy Growth Campaign

The next day, we launched our new growth campaign on Zealy, where a total of 50,000 SUB tokens are up for grabs for the first sprint. We will likely do more sprints into the future, in partnership with PolkaPals, so stay tuned.

Powering Grill.chat With Crust’s W3Buckets

May 16th saw the release of an article detailing Grill.chat’s integration with Crust, as it uses their new Crust Cloud platform to store messages from Grill.chat inside a W3Bucket.

As social platforms naturally produce a lot of data, it has been crucial for us to partner with the best storage provider in the ecosystem, and we look forward to working with them further!

Our OpenComm Proposal

We published a proposal for the Kusama treasury to fund continued development of our Open Communication layer, to increase transparency and information flow in the ecosystem. It has since failed after being NAY’d by several large accounts, although the vast majority of recent treasury proposals have also suffered the same fate, and generated quite a lot of governance drama.

Polkadot OpenGov is scheduled to launch soon, and we will likely adjust our proposal and re-submit it on Polkadot.

An Interview With KryptosChain

Content Lead & Community Manager Yung Beef was interviewed by KryptosChain, where they discussed Subsocial, various applications powered by Subsocial, governance concerns, and more. Check it out on KryptosChain’s YouTube channel.

The FrenTube Launch

Following a closed alpha, FrenTube launched to the public on May 23rd, becoming the first decentralized video hosting and streaming platform in the Polkadot ecosystem! The dapp already features a few videos from The Kusamarian for your viewing pleasure.

We are thrilled to continue supporting the FrenTube team as they build in the Subsocial ecosystem and help grow the network.

Polkadot Community Call

In a rare occurrence, we were invited to the monthly Polkadot Community Call for the second month in a row, due to how bullish the Off-Chain Signer is! The Twitter space was recorded, and you can hear Yung Beef talk about our recent developments starting at 42:15.

Zeitgeist & Polkadot Study Integrate OpenComm

Rounding out a big month, our friends over at Zeitgeist used our Grill.chat iframe to easily add a trollbox to their predictions markets application. In the future, we may see individual chats for each prediction market, automatically created as new markets form!

Polkadot Study also integrated a Grill.chat window, allowing students to chat and get help directly on the website, instead of having to visit another platform.

We have more big news coming soon, and some exciting developments planned for the next few months, so follow our blog here on PolkaVerse, follow us on Twitter, join our Discord server, and chat on-chain with Grill.chat!