[Completed] Aepp Store: Fast & Easy Aepp Discovery

Application Status

Status: Completed on the 09.09.2021, submitted on the 07.06.2021, approved on the 28.06.2021.
Last updated: 22.06.2021
Submited by pseudozach, [email protected]
Team: pseudozach
Approved Budget (in h):
Used Budget (in h):
Planned Delivery:

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Open Source Development
Community Growth

Application Title

Aepp Store

Applicant

Hello from one builder to all!

Value Application

App discovery will become easier and usage metrics will increase for all aeternity apps. Aeternity blockchain adoption is expected to increase across the board. Builders will have more users, users will have easier access to tools and apps that are available. App discovery issue will be solved for our community.
An additional benefit will be for certain tools that don’t have direct revenue. Aepp Store will include a way for users to upvote the apps that are listed by sending small tips. These tips will be automatically shared with the builders with a smart contract that verifies they are in fact the cryptographically proven builders of the app.

Definition of Terms

Aepp Store is a reddit-like app directory for apps that are built on Aeternity blockchain.
Anyone can submit their app to the Aepp Store and system will automatically validate that they control the keys that are used for deploying the smart contract of the app being submitted. This is important to confirm revenue sharing goes to the actual owners of an aepp.
Aepp Store will enable easier access, discovery to apps, incentivize more builders, showcase the power of the community around Aeternity and overall increase adoption by surfacing/highlighting the most valuable apps. New community members can visit this website to start discovering and using Aeternity as it should be instead of getting lost in forum posts.

Status Quo

There are many forum posts by enthusiastic community members that are put together with lists of apps/wallets etc. These are very helpful and surely provide great benefit to the community but it would be much better to have a one stop “dapp store” that provides an up-to-date view of the ecosystem and awesome apps that are available to us as users!

Required Work

Milestone-1:

  • Sophia contract to hold all the data for the app store entries, key validation logic and automated revenue sharing.
    Development, testing, deploying on testnet and once stable to mainnet.

Milestone-2:

  • Web UI to interact with the smart contract
    Improving as per community feedback, optimization, precaching to improve UX.
    Deploying the website to production and maintenance.

Milestone-3:

  • Once smart contract and web app is ready, we’ll integrate this into superhero

Estimate

M1: 50 hours. Approx 2 weeks after grant approval. Target Release v0.1
M2: 50 hours. Approx 2 weeks after M1 completion. Release v1.0
M3: 50 hours

Known Limitations

It will take some time for aepp builders to submit their sites and users to discover/utilize the site to its full potential, which is the case for all types of user-facing websites.
But technically, the Aepp Store will do what it promises to do from day 1.

Outlook

We’ll create social media accounts, posts and publish forum posts to announce the website. Reach out to app builders to encourage them to post their projects. We’ll also publish easy to follow video guides.

Publishment

All project code will be MIT open sourced and pushed to github.

Maintainance

Project and website will be maintained with bug fixes and improved as per user feedback for at least one year after publishing it.

4 Likes

Is that what you’re talking about?

2 Likes

@pseudozach Great proposal! I think it might be a really good idea to have this running on Superhero, what do the others think? Also would the mechanism for receiving the rewards work similar to the tips on Superhero?

1 Like

Hi @pseudozach,

when I understand right you want to create a ranked directory of aeternity apps for discovery where people upvote certain applications by tipping them.

I am not 100% sure if that works like you expect it. I generally like the idea to introduce an approach to maintain a list of aepps via help of the community but I don’t think that tipping will work for this scenario.

What I am thinking about in this proposal is following:

  • another mechanism to incentivize the community to help maintaining the directory (maybe a custom token that is being airdropped and could be used to stake and thus increase visibility of an app)
    • top apps could also get additional tokens each week/month via inflation based on the amount of tokens staked (though that could also be misused)
  • verified contributors (cc @Vikram) for listing their apps (though that might also be an overkill)
  • store metadata about the applications outside of the smart contract (e.g. IPFS or somewhere else chosen by the app maintainer who should also be able to update the metadata)

But in any case I would be happy to have this idea more thought through and getting more opinions about it before actually tackling it.

I also like the very simple approach but I just think that people wouldn’t tip the apps. I might be wrong with that assumption :smiley:

If we do that it would be cool to have that integrated into superhero.com.

@Baixin.chain it would be kind of similar to that overview but app developers would be able to submit and list their applications by providing it to the smart contract. At least this is what I understood.

2 Likes

it think it would/should work very similar but the tips would directly be sent to the app maintainers without the need for oracles when I understand it correctly

1 Like

this looks great for a static website!
But if you read the grant proposal you can see all data will be kept on chain (uncensorable/permissionless) and there’s also revenue sharing which is a new source of income and incentive for app builders.

1 Like

Thanks for the great/detailed feedback!
The nice thing about this is that it doesn’t require large amount of tips, if users don’t tip large amounts then apps with small amount of tips will rise up and who knows even some app owners can consider tipping themselves as part of their marketing budget. But of course, this is a very tiny part of the app/idea.

Making some data modifiable is an excellent suggestion but I still it can be done onchain as long as contract verify the account making the change is the owner of the contract/app that’s being updated.

To be honest, I’m still looking into superhero integration but if foundation/community supports this, I can deliver this as a separate web app first and see how it goes and then look into integrating to superhero can be a new milestone.

4 Likes

I’m definitely open to integration with superhero. I think once the project is deployed as a standalone website and all the functionality is there, superhero integration can be the social catalyst to incentivize usage. I can update the proposal to make it milestone 3.

Looking forward to hear from foundation and community as well on how they view this. If they prefer the core functionality to go into superhero or have a separate site that hooks into superhero as well.

2 Likes

just do it

1 Like

I can’t seem to be able to edit the post. This is just to announce that a Milestone-3 has been added as per community and AF feedback.
Once smart contract and web app is ready, we’ll integrate this into superhero ! :slight_smile: :rocket:

2 Likes

@pseudozach Your application is approved by AF Board.

3 Likes

Week-1 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Completed formalities with application procedure.
  • Setup dev environment and planned for Software Architecture
  • Prepared scaffold for Web GUI - in order to guide sophia contract/web app parameter choices. Screenshot attached.

Next Steps

  • Continue working on sophia contract including the data structures and basic logic.
  • Brainstorm potential ways to ensure Aepp owner verification
  • Deploy initial version with dummy values and attach to local sample app.

Thanks,

1 Like

Week-2 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Sophia Contract version 1 is ready
  • GUI and Contract interaction work is in progress.
  • Repository created and initial version code is pushed to github

Next Steps

  • Continue working on Web App to trigger contract calls from GUI
  • Start testing initial version of the sophia contract.

Thanks,

2 Likes

Week-3 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Sophia Contract testing ongoing.
  • GUI and Contract interaction ongoing.
  • Updates will be pushed to github

Next Steps

  • Continue Web App integration (M2)
  • Pending initial grant funds release by AF

Thanks,

1 Like

Week-4 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Sophia Contract stable (M1 completed).
  • GUI improvements and Contract interaction ongoing (M2).

Next Steps

  • Pending initial grant funds release by AF

Thanks,

4 Likes

Week-5 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Web App public preview deployed: https://aeppstore.vercel.app
  • Add aepp functionality is available, upvote functionality development is ongoing.

Next Steps

  • Complete Web App integration (M2)
  • Start superhero integration, analyze current superhero architecture, prepare integration plan. (M3)

Thanks,

2 Likes

Week-6 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Web App public preview updated, multiple sites added, testing done.
  • Upvote functionality completed. This concludes M2!
  • Superhero-ui forked.

Next Steps

  • Superhero codebase analysis ongoing, start integrating aeppstore to superhero (M3)

Thanks,

4 Likes

That’s great! , come on

2 Likes

Week-7 Update Status Report

Completed

  • Web App stable. No issues reported.
  • Superhero-ui functional integration completed, aeppstore code branch pushed to github.

Next Steps

  • Need to rewrite aeppstore components as per superhero-ui visual guidelines and UX.
  • Complete aepps section integration to superhero and follow up with Pull Request to the main repo.

Thanks,

4 Likes

Week-8 Update Status Report

Completed

Next Steps

  • Project completed! :confetti_ball:
  • Follow up with the PR and any support/maintenance requests and feedback as needed.

Thanks,

2 Likes