New Books, Overseas Outreach, and Tech Upgrades
Phoebe from the Liker Land team initiated the monthly LikeCoin Community call, which occurs on the first Monday of every month. This particular call is the second to last of the year, and she expressed excitement about sharing updates on LikeCoin and Liker Land. The main agenda focused on the LikeCoin migration plan, following the passage of The Proposal a few weeks prior. kin and other active community members were expected to discuss follow-up action items. Phoebe provided an overview of recent developments at Liker Land before passing the microphone to kin, William, and possibly Rick, to elaborate on their contributions to the migration plan.
As one of the most active developers on LikeCoin, Liker Land has several reference data points. Efforts have been concentrated on increasing transaction volume to validate the product’s market fit. Last month, 25 new books were published. An offline event in the UK marked the first attempt to engage an overseas audience, yielding generally positive feedback and contributing to sales volume. The event was valuable for understanding the preferences and needs of overseas readers, and provided opportunities to connect with international community members.
Liker Land’s affiliate network continues to grow, helping to maintain a positive monthly growth rate in sales volume. The consistent growth is encouraging, and there is hope to sustain this momentum through the end of the year.
The increase in touchpoints with new followers and existing community members has also led to organic growth in social media channels. This growth is partly driven by paid advertisements aimed at expanding the top of the traffic funnel, which has shown some progress.
There are also two significant product updates worth mentioning. First, a search feature was finally introduced on LikeCoin. This feature allows users to search for names and authors within the bookstore. With a database nearing 300 listed books, the search function enhances user experience by making it easier to find specific titles, even before advanced categorization and curation features are implemented.
And secondly, the newly deployed tagging section is now visible, showcasing the types of campaigns currently being run. In addition, several featured books, deemed to be of interest, are highlighted. At present, these tags and features are manually created by Liker Land. However, as the library expands, there are plans to introduce automation to this process. These two new features enhance the user experience for frequent visitors, making it easier to discover current focuses and interests. That concludes the update from Liker Land. The next person will discuss the migration progress, plans, and upcoming steps.
Migration Plan of LikeCoin to Optimism
The Tech SubDAO has been actively working on the upgrade proposal since its approval. Community discussions led to the identification of two primary executors for the upgrade: Like Land and Oursky. The upgrade process has been meticulously divided into six or seven prioritized parts, with timelines established and responsibilities allocated between Oursky and Liker Land. The total estimated cost is approximately $140,000 USD. There is hope to possibly reduce this amount by optimizing efficiencies or trimming some modules.
Currently, about half of the budget is available in the form of USDC, acquired from selling some Numbers tokens a few months ago. It is suggested to utilize the USDC in the multisig wallet to initiate the migration to avoid putting sales pressure on LikeCoin. Using LikeCoin from the Community pool to pay the programmers could lead to high sales pressure on the token itself. Therefore, the initial phase of the migration will be funded by USDC, and a proposal to use this budget will be raised for community approval. Although this budget is only half of the required amount, efforts will be made to find additional income sources or to optimize the workload.
William presented the detailed migration plan. The upgrade has been broken down into multiple components, focusing on tasks for Oursky and Liker Land. Column A in the spreadsheet lists the tasks, with bold session titles and normal text subtitles. The second column indicates the total man-hours required for each session. The main workload includes migrating tokens, NFTs, and ISCN into JSON objects on IPFS, and developing a UI for the migration. Users will be able to transfer their tokens, NFTs, and EVM addresses into a Liker ID. API workload involves supporting NFT queries on EVM, as the system will be running on Optimism, which presents challenges compared to the current LikeCoin chain.
Plans include migrating Liker ID API to support EVM addresses and potentially supporting Liker ID on ENS, which would be beneficial across various EVM-compatible chains like Ethereum. The like.co web UI, primarily used for Liker ID registration and settings management, will also be migrated, along with the LIKE pay widget.
Additional tasks involve supporting Liker Land and similar use cases in migrating NFT classes and managing user interactions with the new Optimism chain. This includes providing a new flow for purchasing NFTs like eBooks. For creators, new UI elements will be developed for minting and migrating NFTs, managing permissions, and editing ISCN and NFT attributes.
Operational overhead includes setting up a testnet, communication tasks, and developing minor utility tools like Web UI for batch sending NFTs and LIKEs. An app to replace the current Civic Liker node will be implemented to facilitate staking of LIKE. The total effort required is estimated to be around 200-300 man-days, and the details will be shared in a spreadsheet link on Discord.
The next step involves raising a signaling proposal regarding the finalized cost breakdown, enabling the team to proceed with the execution phase.
Support is needed for GitCoin Round 22
Attention is drawn to the ongoing GitCoin Round for Liker Land, with three days remaining. Grant support from this round would be beneficial, but more importantly, it has provided exposure to the Web3 audience. As of today, there are 96 contributors in this round. Those with an Ethereum wallet, specifically on the Arbitrum network, are encouraged to support. For any difficulties in obtaining tokens from the Arbitrum network, assistance is available. A link will be sent in the chat for support, and contributions, regardless of the amount, are appreciated. GitCoin will match the donated amounts from the matching pool. Participation in GitCoin 22 dApps and Apps is highlighted, with only two days left.
This concludes the update, and a thank you is extended to all participants, with a reminder of the final call of the year next month.