The 5 year anniversary of LEO was on July 3rd, just 16 days ago. I've spent this time thinking about the past, present and future of our ecosystem. We've come such a long way since the day we launched on July 3rd, 2019. This ecosystem has been through so much, evolved in countless ways and has arrived to a place that many wouldn't have dreamt imaginable back in 2019.
Below is my vision for the LEO Ecosystem.
The LEO ecosystem has evolved quite a lot over the years. Started on July 3rd, 2019 as a community for crypto & finance creators; LEO has evolved to offer myriad products and services in the crypto space while growing its core KPI: Monthly Active Users.
- Create an incredible interface (INLEO) for community members to gather, engage and share ideas
- Cultivate our "1,000 true fans", scale monthly active users
- Relentlessly improve the usability, scalability and feature-set of INLEO
- Community is the customer: create adjacent, useful products that monetize the brand
- Autonomously redeploy product revenue into the LEO token economy and grow the market cap
Building a native interface that is owned and operated by the community and for the community is essential to the long-term vision of the LEO Token Economy. A core part of LEO is to monetize itself to create a sustainable and reliably growing ecosystem. In order to tokenize attention and reward users on the platform, we - the community - must own the platform.
This coincides with the vision of LEO: to democratize financial knowledge and access. By creating our own platform, attention is tokenized and it is also secured on the blockchain. As of July 2024, LEO remains as the only scalable microblogging platform that lives on a blockchain. Users own their digital identities and all of the content they create through their self-custodial private key that controls their account on INLEO.
The primary challenge for us throughout 2023 and into 2024 has been refining the core product (INLEO) while rapidly iterating new features. On May 1st, 2023 we launched the new interface which was long-dubbed "Project Blank". The interface was a barebones way for us to implement our new microblogging technology in a live environment so that we could kickstart feedback loops and iterations.
Feedback Loops and Iterations
Our modus operandi is feedback loops and iterations. We relentlessly push updates into the world and then allow our community to give us feedback so that we can improve what we've built and continue pushing forward at a rapid pace. I believe this is our superpower as a platform and what allows us to develop innovative technologies that have real product-market fit.
Creating an incredible interface for our community to gather, engage and share ideas is the core of INLEO. It brings us all together to a singular place where we can grow the community as a community.
Community is the Customer
INLEO is the flagship product of the LEO Token Economy. It not only brings us all together, but it also serves as one of the critical monetization opportunities for the LEO token. Premium has become the core focus in terms of a monetizable product.
We've modeled Premium after several successful premium subscription models in other industries. Amazon Prime is the prime example of how we are building INLEO Premium. If you are a user of Amazon at nearly any capacity, it makes financial and logical sense to be a Prime member. Why? They've built so much value into the prime product that it's simply illogical to not be a prime member if you are a user of the service. The shipping is faster and free - that is the core product - but then there are vertically stacked layers of value like video streaming, e-books, audible, music, etc. that are also baked into the value proposition.
INLEO Premium aims to have a similar effect. If you are a user of INLEO at any capacity, our goal is to make it illogical to not be a premium member. Increased social clout and rewards on the content you create are the core "shipping" value proposition that we have. Being Premium on INLEO means that you're gaining more reach on your content and with that greater reach, increased rewards. We are also able to use the reward pool loop of @leo.voter (our content curation account) to stack additional rewards for Premium users on the platform. This makes it financially feasible to earn more than the cost of being premium in addition to all of the features a Premium member already has access to.
Much like Amazon Prime's faster and free shipping model can grant more value to the average Amazon buyer than the monthly cost of Prime, being a heavy user of INLEO while also having Premium will essentially pay for itself through increased rewards. Then you have the vertically stacked features and additional layers of value that we have built and continue to add for Premiums. Examples of this are customization options, access to LEOAI (our LLM model), custom lists, bookmark folders and a growing list of other Premium-exclusive features.
As INLEO continues to innovate as an application and the LEO Ecosystem evolves, we'll continually add features to this stack.
What Premium Offers Now:
- Increased rewards from @leo.voter HIVE upvotes
- Increased HIVE POWER delegation APR to @leo.voter
- Verified Checkmark next to your username
- Priority in "For You" feeds
- Bookmark Folders
- Custom Lists
- Edit threads after you post them
- Add Bold, Italic and other "Markdown Styling" to your threads
- Publish longer threads
- Pinned threads
- Favorites menu
- Themes
What Premium Will Offer in the Future
- Blog post promotion in Thread feeds
- NFT profile picture (PFP)
- Access to LeoAI
- Discounted swap fees on LeoDex
- Discounted wrap fees on LeoBridges
- Content promotion credits
LeoDex
Launched in April 2024, LeoDex is a multi-chain DEX (Decentralized Exchange) interface. As of this writing, it is currently connected to Maya Protocol and also has our Hive Aggregation Technology (HAT) built-in. This allows swaps of any Maya assets and Hive-based assets. In the future, LeoDex will also tap in to Thorchain, ChainFlip and other cross-chain DEX protocols to aggregate swaps with superior pricing.
LeoDex falls under the category of "community is the customer: create adjacent, useful products that monetize the brand". There is a growing need for Decentralized Exchanges and LeoDex simply provides an easy-to-use interface that taps into these DEX economies. I have been a believer in DEXes and their growth for the past 3-5 years as my involvement in Thorchain as an investor and user has grown.
It is clear to me that centralized exchanges pose a massive threat to this industry and the players in it. Look no further than the Steem Hostile Takeover or the implosion of FTX as two massive examples of the pitfalls of centralized exchanges. I have spent a lot of time learning this space and in the trenches with ecosystems like Thorchain. It's time for the LEO token economy to align itself with DEXes. We've done this with Maya Protocol and in building the HAT, we've brought HIVE L1 swaps to the world of cross-chain DEXes as well.
As of this writing, HIVE's market cap is $136M and it trades roughly $30M - $80M per month on centralized exchanges. 90%+ of this volume flows through Binance.
If Binance were to delist HIVE, this would cause a massive upset. The ecosystem has grown largely reliant on this "one last exchange listing" as other CEXes have either delisted HIVE or gone out of business altogether. CEXes in the crypto space have been consolidating power for years now and the big players have eaten up all of this market share. Decentralized Exchanges offer superior security, self-custody, open access, faster L1 trades and (soon) better price execution.
Our goal with LeoDex is to capture at least 10% of the total monthly volume that HIVE is currently trading on CEXes. This would be roughly on the order of $3M - $8M per month in trading volume flowing through L1 DEXes, using LeoDex as the interface. This volume inherently flows through the LEO Token Economy thanks to the HAT we've built. This monetizes every single dollar of trading volume and allows the LEO Token Economy to capture value and re-deploy it into the LEO L1 DEX pool(s). More on this below.
We'll also seek to list other HIVE-based assets that normally wouldn't have access to L1 DEXes. HBD (Hive-Backed Dollar) is the Hive blockchain's Decentralized Stablecoin that has existed for 6+ years now. CEX listings have largely been consolidated to one single exchange that is not accessible to 90% of users. HBD trades roughly $3M per month on this single exchange. We believe LeoDex can capture a lion's share of this trading volume as it would essentially be the only other place to trade HBD with other assets. As other HIVE projects grow, there is a massive opportunity to connect them with L1 DEXes via HAT. SPS & DEC are two assets from the Splinterlands project that we have integrated and hope to capture a significant % of their monthly trading volume on HAT as well.
Product Revenue
Products like Premium and LeoDex generate sustainable revenue for the LEO Token Economy. In addition to the utilitarian features of the LEO token (staking for influence, rewards, discounted fees, etc.), there is a massive opportunity to capture value from the products we build as a community.
Premium costs 10 HBD ($10) per month per user. As of this writing, there are 184 premium members. This is $1,840 per month that continuously flows into the @leopool account. This account autonomously buys 50% LEO and (currently) 50% CACAO, then it pools the two assets on Maya Protocol as permanent liquidity. The end location of where LeoPool autonomous buys goes can change as the community decides where liquidity is most needed. Right now, having a deep LEO:CACAO pool is essential to scale the HAT (since all volume flows through this pool).
My goal for 2024 is to see 184 recurring Premiums each month turn into 1,000 recurring Premiums per month. This would be $10,000 per month flowing into the LEO Token Economy and permanently pooled in whichever Pool is most valuable to deepen liquidity (likely the LEO:CACAO pool for the forseeable future). To achieve this, we need to focus intently on the other aspects laid out in the plan above. Relentlessly refining the core product (INLEO) while adding vertically integrated value propositions (features) to the Premium product. It should be illogical to use INLEO and not be a Premium subscriber as well.
LeoDex generates revenue in two forms:
- Affiliate Fees
- Wrapping Fees
A 0.45% Affiliate Fee is applied to any swap, deposit or saver over $150 that originates from the LeoDex Interface. This can be for any pair and is paid to LeoDex by the Maya Protocol as CACAO tokens into our designated affiliate address. This address then autonomously uses 50% of the affiliate fees earned to buy LEO off the market. Then, it pairs it with the other 50% CACAO and permanently pools it. 100% of the affiliate fees earned add to the affiliate address's perma-pool position (a liquidity position that will never be removed and/or liquidated).
LeoDex is a brand new product and as of yet, has not earned anything to write home about in terms of affiliate fees (~500). Once the product is officially live and in the wild, we'll see how well it performs. Our goal is to create the best user experience across all Maya Protocol interfaces. Even though we are in early beta, some users have said we already achieved this. The hard part now is refining the experience to make it even better. Then we'll continue to roll out new features that further improve the usability, experience and access.
For context, the top 3 Maya Protocol interfaces are earning $35,000 per month in total Affiliate Fees right now. We believe we can break into this top 3 and earn a double digit % of the total affiliate fees generated across Maya by offering a superior user experience, a better value proposition, more features and better price execution. Research has also indicated to me that Streaming Swaps will be live within a month of this writing.
Streaming swaps were originally added to Thorchain and in the months that followed, volume increased more than ten-fold. I believe a similar event will take place on Maya when SS go live and we will position LeoDex to be one of the first interfaces that launches critical usability features for streaming swaps. The affiliate fees mentioned above could also increase ten-fold in the months that follow the SS release.
So in short, the plan to scale the LEO Ecosystem is to:
- Relentlessly refine the user experience and usefulness of the INLEO interface as a gathering place for our community
- Cultivate our "1,000 true fans" and also reach the 1,000 premium user mark in 2024
- Continue to create and refine adjacent, useful products that monetize the brand
- Autonomously redeploy product revenue into the LEO token economy and grow the market cap