Zap October Update 2020
By: Zap Protocol Official
Tags: Etherum, Smart Contracts, Bonding Curves, Eth, Blockchain

The Bonding Curve Revolution

Our latest article is out! You can read it now by using the following link: https://bit.ly/3kHqx3c

Zap Protocol coined the term ‘bonding curve’ and taken the concept from idea to a protocol which now allows for the most dynamic use-cases possible with this technology. In addition to improving our front-end user interface, we are creating more educational content to help the community understand and use the technology.

First Zap Protocol Live AMA Recap

Zap Protocols CTO Eric Manganaro answered community questions live on October 16th. You can watch the full AMA here:

Below is the transcription of some select Q&As:

Q: When will the new UI/UX be Released?

A: Interestingly enough, I work with the UX/UI daily. I have a daily 10am stand up where I work with the engineers, front and back end, in order to basically iterate over any scrum format where we have a two-week sprint and I have set up a quality assurance team to quickly iterate back and forth between that and the developers. I think that in order to stop us from having the same problems we had from the first one — “Okay, here’s version one. Here’s version two.” — I think that the best way to do it and to bring in what’s going on in the community is such that we open up an ambassador program, much like google did where I can send out an invitation link and work with the users that are going to give quality feedback, we can see what is going on with our current code base, and quickly get to the place where we have all the features that are inside of version one but much easier to use. And that’s the biggest issue.The Zap Protocol has actually a very rich protocol and what we need to do is deploy it correctly.

Q: How will the New Platform differ from the current one?

A: The easiest way for me to say that is right now the ergonomics, the color scheme, the theme, and the overall dappness of it. The intuitive interface. I can just say right now that the feature I am helping deliver on is being able to abstract just the idea of the bonding curve and I think that if we come into…we came into tech playing video games and using interfaces for so long that what we’re trying to do is take the features and abstract on them so it’s much easier to use. I know for a fact the bonding curve element is extremely useful from a backend perspective but the user interface just needs to be abstracted so it can be used. I am working on a bonding curve tool at the moment to allow the actual curve to be displayed and the user can sell their data on that curve easily and try to bring it to 2020 in terms of UI/UX.

Q: How many developers currently work on the project? What’s the size of the Zap team?

A: Nearly 20 members right now. We have contributors from all around the world. Mainly the reason I’m now just coming online is that I wanted to protect my own privacy but definitely, as we work, I’m protecting the privacy of the new developers coming through, because many of these people are students and interns who are not necessarily responsible for development but the ongoing research into oracles. We want to protect everyone from bad actors, doxxing, until we actually get consent from those engineers about entering in on the media limelight, as it were. I’m available in chat usually and you can find me on telegram [and discord] at my handle ‘superposition.’ The project is decentralized and these team members do contribute. The Synapse Foundation in Zug, Switzerland does oversee the continued development and maintenance of this project.

Q: Will the new UI allow those with little programming knowledge/skills to create an Oracle, i.e. will it feature low code modules which can reference data sources?

A: Now that is something that was super important for me coming in and that is the overall theme of what I am trying to say is abstraction. So yes I do want people with no or very little coding to be able to create a module. There are simple ways and very technical ways that we can consume data through Zap. I have many features in mind to make that possible. I want to get from zero, meaning the feature rich version of Zap we have now, to being fully expressed and deployed well and then add those modules next and I think that they will be in the form of widgets that can be stored on your website. You know there is a lot of talk about “I am going to tokenize myself” or “I want to tokenize my service” and really what that comes down to is it’s something to make easier for the user to make, such as a paywall, and accept Zap for that.

Q: Why is the public GitHub so inactive?

A: Like I said previously, before I can actually start having people be exposed to the outside world the Zap project version 2 UI is private, and I’ve set it private in order to protect the engineers working inside of it and as we get to a level of maturity I will be able to transition out of that so you can see the actual heartbeat. My goal is to make the Zap community so large that this private repository of people that I will be able to cultivate until others feel comfortable about coming and stepping out. And we have a constant GitHub feed of pull requests coming in known features and I think we are getting to a place where we have more and more developers coming in the door and as that comes down we will be able to see the other tools be refreshed. I think that there’s a lot of repositories on the actual github that you’ll see transform. I think the public github is inactive but private is not. I know that it is pretty important for us to upgrade those numbers and I think that really what it comes down to is resource management and being able to put the people that we have on board and focus on the user interface so that we can bring out the other projects that we have to full-steam and we can break those teams out.

Q: How will I be able to embed the bond and unbond tool into my website so users can buy my token using Zap?

A: Fairly easy actually, there was a lot of great work done by web3 for us and read directly from the ethereum blockchain. I think that on a more technical level we can make it easy to actually inject web3 into the session where it is embedded as a widget. Version 1 has a widget that we have a video up on how one would post it and I am working on upgrading that widget so it is more extensible and visually up to date.

Q: Can we talk about wrapping? Like divi going on the chain

A: I think what we are going to be doing is create the user interface so that we can build pretty much any app that we want and DIVI going on that is a part of that and I see that as the timeline. I’m putting all of my focus directly into making sure that we have the tools to connect all of those services, DIVI being one of them.

Q: Will there be a mobile friendly app?

A: Part of my quality assurance testing is making sure that the app is available not just on desktop friendly but I think that we can even go as far as saying mobile first design, because I think that many crypto users are on their phone when they’re doing it, new wallets for IOS and Android allow that to happen. I think that a reactive website is what we’re developing and I personally go through it you know anytime we want to make a new component. We are including a light and dark theme to the repository and how that looks on small, medium, and desktop sized screens. So, yes, to answer will there be a mobile friendly app.

Q: So how easy will it be for non-coding end users (such as artists) to use ZAP to tokenize their art and sell it in that way?

A: My question is, “How easy is it for non-coding end users to make a website?” I think that’s a better question. And if you answer that, then I think that we are making tools for people to make money using Zap. I mean anything that is an open source tool, engineers make websites for people all the time so I mean non-coding end users…I think that’s the curve, no pun intended, you know the learning curve for that is difficult but that’s why I believe in widgets because we want to be able to take that low code knowledge and then have something that you can literally past an HTML thing at the bottom of your Wix site. So I think that has a lot to do with it.

Branding Updates Continue

If you haven’t already noticed, we are well underway with updating our branding. As previously mentioned, these changes have been occurring in parallel with the UI 2.0 development so that everything is updated and ready to go upon release.

You can always reach the team or keep up to date with Zap Protocol by following these official outlets.

Official Outlets

Website: Zap.org

Twitter: @ZapProtocol

Discord: discord.gg/pvHzemX

Telegram: t.me/ZapOracles

Reddit: r/ZapProtocol

Facebook: @ZapProtocol

Instagram: @ZapProtocol

Medium: The Zap Project

LinkedIn: Zap

GitHub: The Zap Project