Zenbase

All through February, I've still been having difficulties moving the project forward. A big part of that has been deciding what exactly forward is 😅

There are a lot of things that I could see this being used for:

• Peer to Peer gaming,
• Decentralized applications,
• Comment systems on static websites,
• Anywhere that you would want persistence but not necessarily a whole database server

Of course these are all wildly different fields. It's hard to nail down where to start looking for users.

Throughout my 'lack of direction', I've still managed to get some new stars and testers trickle in. There seems to be a constant influx of people in the GunDB looking for a persistent backup solution. I've gotten some feedback of things I need to fix (https://github.com/Fluffy9/Zenbase/issues). I think this is good. Mark made mention that "I've found that evidence of people complaining means you've hit a jackpot". I think there's truth to that. I should probably be more active in the Sia community as well. There are probably people there looking for something more database-like.

It's been about 3 months since I 'finished' this project. I know that because the next round of Gitcoin Grants is coming around and I don't feel like I've really made any grant worthy accomplishments! I haven't made any commits in the past 3 months... Not that I had anything I felt needed to be fixed (still waiting on the same Skynet features to be released). I guess continuing to watch and support people using Zenbase might be the best course of action for now

What I’ve Tried

My December/January goals were split between trying to build:

1. A UI for easy database management
2. Working on the re-pinning service.

For this, I came up with the concept of Zenbase Cloud. Basically, an umbrella for the collection of Zenbase management services.

I wanted to take the path that’d be quickest to market. I had previously been in contact with the owner of https://saasify.sh and thought that it’d be a great platform to build on top of for the re-pinning service. I’d run my own Skynet portal and put that behind Saasify’s API. I got a good start on the UI for that.

For easy database management, I wanted to build on top of one of the many internal tool products. https://retool.com was my first choice. I also got a good start on the UI for this as well

I Hit Roadblocks on Both of These Goals

TLDR: Features I need aren't yet available and other annoying compatibility issues

For the re-pinning service + Saasify I needed a way to track usage of the Skynet portal I set up to charge for it. I’ve been in contact with the team behind it. Monetization of portals is in the works, but it won’t be until mid-February when the account system is live (what I need at a minimum), and it’d be another month or so after that before monetization is fully ready.

For the easy database management tool, I had a hard time getting Zenbase to load in Retool’s sandboxed environment. The first issue at least being that the 6 necessary scripts aren’t being loaded in order. Alternatively, I could execute server-side scripts to manipulate Zenbase data… but the Skynet library doesn’t yet support anything but browser Javascript. I asked and have not been given a definite timeframe on that.

Honestly, I could try some experimental stuff and shoehorn it, but it may just be better to wait. The features I need may soon be available or I may come up with a better angle for attacking these.

Working in the Kernel/Gitcoin Program

I really like the talks. The speakers in the program have been great. There’s a ton of big brains among the attendees. I feel like it’s a really prestigious program, but I have been a bit lost in the whole thing. I think I’m behind. I couldn’t figure out how to join the Slack group to submit my work. It’s spread out over a bunch of different platforms (their website, notion, slack, figma, airmeet) which I’ve never used before even though I know they are popular. It seems like a lot of people are getting it but I’m just not one of those people 🤷‍♀‍

How I’m feeling

I’m having a really hard time with this building in public thing. Although I’ve been putting in the work, I haven’t had a breakthrough in a while that constitutes progress in my mind (aka completed feature). So that leads to me not writing anything. I feel like a lot of other people in my circle are making progress on their projects where I haven’t been. That also makes me feel behind.

I think I need to reassess my plans. I feel like the best choice development wise is to sit and wait. Maybe in the mean time, my next steps should be generating awareness of the project. Perhaps that could be starting a blog or something.

I'm not doing the best job in the world, but I'll keep trying 🤷‍♀️

I've wanted to build an open source project and an open startup for a while now. I like using and reading those kinds of things so I wanted to do it myself. I've gotten a good head start with Zenbase. I've gotten stars on the repo and support from both Sia community members and Gun community members.

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Revenue

Last month my revenue for this project came from building it in a hackathon.

By chance, until the 17th this month, Gitcoin is doing a matching round on their grants. Great timing. Every dollar donated gets matched for a multiplied effect

https://gitcoin.co/grants/1629/zenbase

So far I've only gotten a friend of mine to donate.

Revenue is the best form of validation.

• Earning revenue as early as possible validates that it's something that people find valuable enough to pay for.

• Donations even more so, because people are investing in the future development of the product vs just getting access to it.

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Building in Public

I've never been that great at marketing so building in public is a great learning experience.

• Having a tight feedback loop with people in your target audience is essential to building a product people will actually use.

• Building a community around your project is huge for having launches that are more than just crickets. A lot of the top projects on places like ProductHunt get to the top because they could rally their community to upvote

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Goals for this week

Overall, I think I'm going in the right direction.

I've gotten a roadmap planned out. Both to provide me with some direction, and I'm posting it in public to provide some accountability to whoever eventually does donate.

The MVP of the basic database functions seems to work well. The proof of concept works and that's awesome. People can already use the library as is. My main goal is to improve usability. I think this is something huge that people get lost on, especially in the blockchain community. The technology is incredible and innovative but no one will ever use it because it's usability sucks.

I'll have to go more in-depth on that later this week.