It's been exactly 1 year since the Project Blank interface went live on the Hive Blockchain.
if you go back to what that interface looked like and compare it to what INLEO looks like today, you'll see just how far we've come.
We set out to build "The Everything App" from scratch and honestly, this has been the biggest undertaking of my entire life and definitely the most challenging thing the LEO Ecosystem has ever tackled.
Some mistakes have been made along the way but many successes have been had as well. We've seen growth on all fronts and doing all of this while being in the longest, most treacherous bear market in history the past 2-3 years.
Project Blank Then vs. INLEO Now
When we initially released project blank, there were nearly no features. We only had Threads and then we slowly added each feature from scratch.
Articles came next and hundreds of features followed.
With each feature came new challenges.
I believe one of the missteps of our approach is that we rapidly added features while building up a mountain of technical debt. We tried to add too much technology to Project Blank too quickly.
This lead to a number of issues and while we've spent tons of time squashing bugs, we haven't yet cleared all of the technical debt.
However, looking at Project Blank when it launched and looking at the INLEO UI today, you can see why we took the approach that we did.
INLEO is the most feature-rich Web3 UI on the planet. I have yet to see anything that comes even close to the feature-set that we offer and the value proposition of earning LEO + HIVE while being engaged in both short-form and long-form content.
Premium offers a layer of value capture. The new Dashboard page is driving in record levels of HIVE POWER delegations.
From a fundamental front, we are doing incredibly well.
The opportunity to succeed is massive.
Technical Debt
That being said, the result of introducing so much technology in a span of just 12 months is that the mountain of technical debt continued to stack up behind us.
I saw this coming, I knew it was there. We fixed bugs as we went but we still focused primarily on new features. The reason for this approach was simple:
- Roll out new features as fast as humanely possible
- Pick up the pieces and fix what's broken as we go
In short - do it f*cking live.
That approach allows us to innovate faster than any other Web3 project I've seen in the landscape but it also builds a great deal of technical debt.
Today, the INLEO UI has the core feature set that I believe we need to drive in more users, more engagement and build a profitable ecosystem: one that captures more value than it spends to run (INLEO Premium / the drive to 1,000 Premium Subscribers).
This feature-set is live but the technical debt remains.
What Are We Going to Do About it?
The Technical Debt is the core focus right now. I am very happy with the feature-set on INLEO and we are still developing some large-scale features like LeoAI that will launch in 2024.
That being said, it is time to clean up this technical debt and focus on creating a user experience that is:
- Scalable
- Stable
- Enjoyable
- Fun
- Bug-Free
April
In April, I shifted the dev team's focus to solely fix bugs. We are now entirely focused on the mountain of technical debt that has built up.
In the month of March, we fixed 36 bugs on the UI.
In the month of April, we've fixed 31 bugs on the UI (and counting, since we have some pending issues to close before the month officially ends). By the end of April, I think we'll have ~40 bugs fixed.
Some bugs are small. Some bugs are large. Sometimes we spend an entire week fixing a massive infrastructure issue.
If you understand how car mechanics work: they essentially remove parts of the car to identify damage. As they work on a car, they may find 12 more things broken after taking off the bumper.
This causes it to be:
- More expensive
- More time consuming
This is very similar to fixing this mountain of technical debt. We are intently focused on getting the outstanding bugs to 0 and once we get to this place, I believe you'll find INLEO to be an experience that is:
- Scalable
- Stable
- Enjoyable
- Fun
- Bug-Free
The current outstanding technical debt is 34 bugs. Like I said, we may uncover more as we go (likely will) but I am quite confident that by May 31st, this entire list of tech debt will be cleared.
This means that INLEO will be in a radically new place. Almost a new beginning.
The UI will be fast and smooth. I am so excited for a bug-free experience and I know many of you are as well.
Once (and only once) the technical debt is at 0, we will begin to integrate new features. We've got tons of features in the pipeline but now that the UI has matured, we don't need to take this "Break Everything, Do It Live" approach all of the time.
Instead, we'll focus on integrating a handful of features. Testing in Labs and then rolling out to production once the bugs are fixed.
This will allow us to stay in front of the rolling ball down a hill that is technical debt. My goal for the Devs is to:
- Clear all outstanding tech debt before May 31st
- Start rolling out new features again
- As we roll out features, stay on top of technical debt so it doesn't get out of hand again
Then Vs. Now, Continued
I hope you see how this approach defines the INLEO Ecosystem. We are always trying to innovate forward. That means breaking some things and likely pissing some people off.
We've added some new dev team members in the past few months and our team is bigger and more capable than ever. I am so proud of what we've achieved the past 12 months and I am incredibly excited to steward the next 12 months of development.
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