Welcome to the 7th issue of Dean's Letter!
This past week our team had the opportunity to sit down with Tony, co-founder of Underdog Protocol, to delve into the teams remarkable journey through Grizzlython, their decision to choose Solana, and the driving forces behind building Underdog (+ alpha).
Enjoy this exclusive interview from Underdog Protocol + more! Here's the 7th issue of Dean's Letter:
What's Hot 🔥
Tales From Solana Grizzlython 🐻 - Underdog Protocol Q&A
Solana Network-at-a-glance 📊 - Solana Fees are up 6.84%
The Grape Vine 🍇 (Solana News) - Neon EVM White Paper, Dialect and Tensor Trade Partnership, and more
Dean's List DAO updates🦍 - Wonderverse Platform Feedback [paid opportunity]
Tales From Solana Grizzlython 🐻 - Underdog Protocol Q&A
What is Underdog Protocol?
We’re Underdog Protocol - we enable startups and developers to seamlessly integrate NFTs into any product or workflow to capture user insights via our API. Our vision is to create enable a data rich blockchain by enabling connectedness between users and their favorite experiences. We’re trusted by teams like Solana Mobile, Metaplex, Superteam, Parcl, Dispatch Forums, and more with their NFT infrastructure. We’ve worked on Solana Mobile’s SAGA Genesis Token and won Solana Global Hackathon, Grizzlython, as Grand Champions.
What was your motivation — Why did you decide to build Underdog Protocol?
We’ve always wanted to bring important data on-chain in order to create hyper-personalized experiences for users. Giving them power holistically. We are able to create user centric experiences that we never have before. If NFTs were able to accelerate growth for creators, why not social use cases like data ownership, governance, etc? We believe we can contribute to that journey of web3
What was your experience like participating in the Grizzlython?
It was business as usual. We were improving on top of our learnings from launching the beta version zero during Sandstorm. We were building out Underdog Core - we were lucky enough to have some customers like Parcl, Superteam, Solana Mobile that we felt okay submitting the newest version of our API. It was really nice to be named Grand Champions as a reaffirmation of our hard work but was a great way to learn that we’re really onto something and we need to 1000x from where we are now, I LOVED Grizzlython.
Why did you choose Solana?
For Kevin - it’s always been about seperating the service + data layer. Solana allows for this to happens flawlessly based on its architecture and at scale because of its table stakes advantages over other L1s. Also his manager is Bartosh - super early Solana employee. For myself, I gave my mom Phantom late 2021, told her to swap, send, and mint using USDC - she did it. I knew this was the future of products. Once we both were in - the community and innovation is what has kept us around.
What struggles have you faced while building Underdog Protocol?
Building user facing products in web3 is really hard .. nobody is going through the hoops of web3 unless the economic upside is high (But thats not what you want) Getting people to build on Underdog can be hard - we learned we need examples / use cases to give inspiration. It’s pushed us to think about what we can build with UP.
What have you learned during your journey building Underdog Protocol?
Onboarding and first experience is super important specifically crypto. It’s a confusing experience from the start, poor design, doesn’t help. Do alot of customer research and always be learning. We pivoted twice until we got here because we stayed connected our users. Version continuously. Don’t be scared that it’s not perfect, get it into the world, get feedback, iterate!
Do you have any advice for aspiring builders on Solana?
Learn a lot about everything. Your job as a founder should be to learn and build. Everyone is very open to collaboration. If you want to get anything done - have a plan on how to work together and highlight the business value.
Got any alpha?
Compression API is live - we’re covering costs for 10K+ drops. We are launching our builders program and Possibly launching a compression hackathon , stay tuned for either one. Either big prizes or bounties for everyone.
Final Thoughts
Deans List helped us think about our UX for developers to get to their a-ha moment faster BUT also for no-coders. They were very collaborative but straight forward about how to improve our product and messaging. Candidly, they highlighted things we overlooked but we’re so key to having UP click for users. Dean is a leader. He gets it. Super helpful and knowledge. Solana and Underdog is better because of him We think Underdog will be key to the future of web3 experiences. Every company in web3 or that wants to be in web3 will use Underdog but even better Solana
Solana Network-at-a-glance📊
The Grape Vine 🍇
Neon EVM, an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) on Solana, released an updated White Paper:
Discover how Neon EVM bridges the gap between Ethereum and Solana, unlocking unparalleled transactional capabilities.
neonevm.org/Neon_EVM_White…
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News on the NFTFi ecosystem on Solana:
Jump Firedancer, A Solana node client created by Jump, explained in ~2 minutes:
Dialect, a Web3 messaging app, teamed up with Tensor Trade to allow trades via messages:
We teamed up with @tensor_hq to bring you a first-of-its kind social trading experience — powered by smart messages
Bid Negotiate
Traderight in chat
This is what crypto should feel like. Update Dialect & LFG
Dean's List DAO's Top Ledger dashboard features the DAOs GDP per capita, population, and other important metrics:
Amazing team to work with. Visionary
Check out the DAO dashboard they've made for @deanslistDAO
analytics.topledger.xyz/deanlist/publi…
Dean's List DAO was announced as one of the winners of the Deep DAO onboarding bounty in the Aragon DAO global hackathon:
A BIG thank you to all the Dean's List contributors who helped win this one!
Dean's List Updates🦍
Join Dean's List DAO to qualify for this opportunity
As part of our efforts to automate our processes and improve the experience of our community, we have been ideating & experimenting with various tools. One such tool, that we have shortlisted for further due diligence, is Wonderverse.
Essentially, this is a workflow management application for Web3 communities sitting neatly between Web2 and Web3.
To drive the process forward, we need the help of our community to provide feedback on the platform, and hence have designed a special bounty for this purpose. This bounty is worth $100 and will be paid out for qualifying feedback providers on xray-2nd-hackathon to those individuals who:
Sign up on Wonderverse here using their Discord ID - https: app.wonderverse.xyz invite taPNtfoCp6UUaA
Make their profile on the platform
Paste the feedback that they submitted on xray-2nd-hackathon to Wonderverse as well in the section titled Bounties - https: app.wonderverse.xyz organization deanslistdao boards?task=89581766911722313&entity=bounty
Complete this feedback form - https: forms.gle 75rrSXuDq8Ss9KDP9
This is a great opportunity to earn a minimum of 23% over and above what you will make off the X-Ray feedback session so don't miss out and in the process help your DAO understand how we can all do things (even) better.
LFG!!!
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