Sometime last year when I just joined LeoFinance, I read and heard about ProjectBlank. It's interesting how they talked about it like it was a secret project that is getting worked on by the LEO team. Being a noob in the community, I thought it was something new until Khal mentioned they have been on it for 18 months or so at that time.
TM described it as the "Twitter on the Blockchain" and there were talks about a new token [BLANK] and LEO holders will benefit from the airdrop. There were also teasers on the AMA/podcasts about LeoLegends too. They are NFTs that can be minted using LEO tokens they said. They are upgradable, will have cross-breeding feature and such. It was exciting to hear about it then.
The dev works went on behind the scenes and then on the 4th of August 2022, LeoThreads was unveiled.
Release of LeoThreads Open Beta
LeoThreads was released as a microblogging feature on the LeoFinance UI. They said it's a test feature to see how it goes, get feedback and find any bugs while they build the standalone UI for it.
It was a cool feature and a welcoming change, first being short-form which makes it easy to read and engage. Second, it was not limited to finance, crypto and money. It was open to any subject. Threads as a tab on the UI went on for around 6 months or so.
The closed alpha for the new LeoThreads platform occurred sometime in January where only a few selected Lions were able to test it out. The excitement grew as we anticipated for it to come out. The LeoFinance team is building the "everything app" they said.
ProjectBlank is none other than LeoFinance.
On the 14th of February, ProjectBlank or the LeoThreads Open Alpha was unveiled and rolled out on https://alpha.leofinance.io where the homepage was centered heavily on Threads or microblogging. Memes, threadcasts, threadstorms (threadsrun), link and photo sharing, polls and what else.
Finally, after 2 years of work, it was out for everyone to use. Of course being on alpha stage, there were glitches, bugs and fixes that needed to be done. Still, the excitement was strong. Communities around Hive collaborated, initiatives were introduced (i.e. Author of the Week etc). The monthly active users in the frontend doubled!
On the 1st of May, the new LeoFinance UI came out with LeoThreads on the forefront. Whilst the full features are yet to become available, users have obviously increased and the number of threads created are growing day by day. The zealy campaign may have something to do with it but it's good to see that ProjectBlank (LeoFinance) is buzzing and thriving! The collaboration amongst the communities is making it even better.
It going to be interesting to see how things will go from here but I believe the LEO team continues to work behind the scenes, building the infra into what they aim to be - the "everything app" here on the blockchain.
If you are not yet on threads or LeoThreads, I invite you to check it out. Just go to https://leofinance.io/threads and thread away.
Lead image created on canva. 08052023/10:05ph