The Subsocial Roadmap: Achievements of Today, Goals for Tomorrow

TL;DR: Token transfers are probably coming soon, along with Spacers and creator staking.

Every month we publish a monthly review post on our blog, but those are always focused on the past. Today, we want to give an update on some of our recent developments, and inform you on where Subsocial is headed in the coming months.

In this progress update, we will look at the three biggest developments of the last few months, and three important items for the future.

Recent Developments

Over the last year we have been working to build solutions to the user experience (UX) problems that plague Web3 applications, as well as figure out how Subsocial best fits into the Polkadot ecosystem. Rather than try to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, we believe that Subsocial needs to lean into its Web3 identity, in order to build and support applications and use cases that simply are not possible in Web2.

In the last few months, we have removed the final UX barrier, allowing anyone with an internet connection to seamlessly onboard to Subsocial, and we have determined an excellent role for Subsocial in the Polkadot ecosystem.

The Off-Chain Signer

In May, we released our Off-Chain Signer technology, solving the Web3 onboarding problem once and for all. With this tech, you can use supported applications like PolkaVerse and Grill.chat (which will be covered below) without a wallet or tokens, and there won’t be any constant transaction confirmation pop-ups! This is essentially a Web2 user experience. PolkaVerse supports the Off-Chain Signer as well, making it so easy, even your grandma can use it.

OpenComm

As part of our mission to enrich the Polkadot ecosystem, we created an Open Communication layer on top of Subsocial, which makes use of our Resource Discussions standard to enable the creation of on-chain discussions around any on-chain entity, such as governance proposals, accounts, NFTs, markets, etc.

By storing all of these important governance discussions on-chain, they will automatically be open and transparent, and any application can pull from, and write to, the on-chain database. This means that we can have 1,000 different applications, but still have unified discussions available to all, regardless of which platform someone uses. The best live example of OpenComm’s power is that you can access the same Zeitgeist chat from three different applications!

We will continue working in the future to further move the Polkadot ecosystem’s communication onto an open and transparent communication layer, allowing increased user engagement, improved information flow, and uniquely Web3 social features for all of your favorite applications.

Grill.chat

Launched at the beginning of April, Grill.chat stands as the first example of what is possible in an application powered by Subsocial and OpenComm. Grill.chat is an on-chain, anonymous chat application that lets you discuss many different topics. In fact, users will soon be able to create chats attached to any on-chain entity, powered by our Resource Discussion standard.

So far, we have seen huge traction on Grill.chat, with thousands of monthly visitors chatting about many different topics, and multiple integrations in the ecosystem, such as Sub.ID, Zeitgeist, and Polkadot Study. So far, these integrations have been powered by our Grill.chat iframe plugin, which lets you easily add a Grill.chat pop-up to your application with just three lines of code, but we are continuing to work on building solutions for more in-depth integrations directly into web pages.

The Future

Now that Subsocial is primed and ready for take off, what do we have planned in the coming months to give us an extra leg up in the next cycle?

Token Transfers

It’s been hinted at recently, but we are working with Moonbeam to open a channel between our two chains, with the goal being to have SUB tokens on Moonbeam. We don’t have an official date, as we still need to finalize a few important details, but we are actively working on progress in this area. Our tentative goal is sometime this summer for enabling token transfers.

Spacers

While all of the art was ready months ago, we had a choice to make. We could mint them on Kusama, which we knew would stop receiving support from the RMRK/Singular team, or we could wait, and mint them on Moonbeam. We chose the latter, with the long-term success of the project in mind.

There was a series of delays involving getting the RMRK tech on EVM, but the EVM version of the Singular marketplace has just launched, and we are working on the mint right now.

We would like to apologize to everyone for the long delay, but the Spacers are coming soon, in their full glory. Stay up to date on the collection by joining the SpacerDAO Discord server, where we will be sharing our cool Spacer vibes soon.

Creator Staking

The success of the Subsocial network depends in large part on the number of applications built on the network, and on content creators attracting users. With this in mind, we plan to develop creator staking, aimed to incentivize creators of applications and content. This new feature will allocate a percentage of on-chain inflation to reward teams for building apps, and content/community creators for growing the network’s user base.

Holders of SUB will be able to stake their tokens towards their favorite Subsocial applications or communities, and receive more SUB in return. Creators (of apps, content, and communities) will receive SUB based on how much SUB is staked to them. Token holders will receive the same amount of SUB regardless of where they stake to, which means that creator staking, for token holders, is an incentivized vote.

We will be developing this feature over the coming months, and look forward to releasing it for our community.

The Subsocial team would like to express our appreciation for all of our community members that are here with us, and for everyone using applications powered by Subsocial. We know that in some regards, the last year has been slow, but we have been working in the background to ensure the success of Subsocial in the coming years, and most of the pieces are now falling into place. The future looks bright!

To stay up to date on our latest news and announcements, follow us on PolkaVerse, Twitter, Telegram, or Discord, and don’t forget to come say Hi on Grill.chat!