It's been about 10 weeks since I last posted on Steemit in mid-January documenting my work on icnhodler.com. I could post more frequently but the reality is it would just act as a distraction from development work. Now that it's April and Q1 2018 is behind us, I figure I might as well start doing quarterly reports and get in to some kind of rhythm. Quarterly reports will commit me to 4 posts per year which will give me a chance to highlight what has been done in the last quarter and what I'm planning on doing in the quarter ahead. It's a distraction from development I think I can put up with 4 times per year.
Q1 Summary
In Q1, the crypto market in dollar terms collapsed. Those of us that have been around long enough can take comfort in knowing that the market has always bounced back eventually. As a developer, I secretly enjoy the market getting frustrated, downbeat and pessimistic about the future of crypto. It's in these times where the most sober discussions, debates and work happens among people who actually care about delivering something of value (beyond pure profit).
New features / site updates
Here's a list of the major updates made to icnhodler.com in Q1 2018:
- Applied historically accurate USD values to all deposits
- Added a monthly deposits view
- Added an AUM tracker for all DAAs (including live total AUM)
- Added treemap charts detailing asset performance and weighting for all DAAs
- Added an indirect holdings calculator where you can calulcate how much crypto you hold indirectly by holding ICN
- Added option to exclude parity funds from all calculations / valuations
Traffic
Right now, interest in ICN Hodler will be dependent upon interest in Iconomi, DAAs and the ICN token. However, I feel that in time, ICN Hodler can introduce people to Iconomi, DAAs and the ICN token. In Q1, here's the Analytics numbers:
- 6,148 users
- 25,978 sessions
- 21.5% returning visitors
- 78.58% bounce rate
On Jan 7th I launched the deposits feature where people could see how much crypto was flowing in / out of Iconomi's platform addresses. This was posted to reddit by other community members in a few different crypto subreddits and the net result was a huge spike in traffic. That day alone accounts for almost 1/3 of Q1's user numbers.
To date I haven't done much SEO work on the site nor promoted it apart from the odd tweet and status update on Iconomi's RocketChat. This won't change for the forseeable future as my focus is on developing new features above marketing what's already in place. I do however plan on doing some basic SEO in Q2 such as creating a sitemap and adding proper titles / descriptions / meta info to all pages. This means that when links are shared in social media, any preview that's generated will be more relevant / appropriate / help users understand and anticipate what it is they may be clicking on.
Plans for Q2
Keep in mind this is a hobby project for me so I can't guarantee anything or commit a fixed number of hours to it - I just work on it when I have time so that could mean several weeks of no development hence the reason why I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver (ideas are not a problem for me, hours in the day are). Having said that, there are 3 main areas / features I want to attack in Q2 and that I'm confident I can deliver on (in no particular order):
Refactor after API release
We should see Iconomi release the first version of their API in Q2. That should allow me to completely refactor all existing functions which currently reference anything from the Iconomi site. The net result will be a more efficient system. It probably won't result in much of a change on the front end, but behind the scenes things will hopefully become more manageable and efficient. Right now in computing terms, getting data is slow, expensive and complex because I don't have an API to access all the info I want. An API will also act as a single point of failure and make troubleshooting easier.
DAA growth -v- Bitcoin & ETH
While fiat may still be king for a lot of people, there are people who only measure gains in BTC & ETH. This makes complete sense in my opinion given that you can't currently buy DAAs with fiat, you can *only* buy them with BTC / ETH. Measuring DAA growth against BTC & ETH growth is therefore essential and I'll do my best to make this happen in Q2. Longer term, DAAs will have their own 'profile' page with various sub-pages / features accessible. They are ultimately Iconomi's USP so it's important they're showcased from all angles and compared both against fiat / crypto and against one another.
Collaborative Documentation
In Q2, I plan on creating a wiki-style section on ICN Hodler which will enable collaborative updating of pages. There'll be several pages created initially by me describing what ICN is, what CCP is, what DAAs are etc and anyone will be able to edit these pages. The pages will be available in github and will be in markdown format. Anyone will be able to edit them in the browser and submit a pull request for review. I'll then approve or comment on them as appropriate and once approved they'll automatically go live on the site. I'll also be opening up github issues so people can submit ideas / give feedback / list bug reports on the site. This will also act as a way for people to see what's in the pipeline (in terms of features) for ICN Hodler as I'll be trying to manage and document the project through github.
