building in the open #4
zap.meme is a meme platform where you can create and share memes and emojis, and earn Bitcoin! We're currently competing in the PlebLabs Top Builder competition.
this is our weekly progress update post! we'll be outlining what we've been up to this week, what we plan for next week, general strategy and product roadmap stuff, and other random ideas!
Previous posts
This week
The plan
Last week we outlined the following plan for the week:
- Research how we'll implement NIP-30 and NIP-57.
- Plan and design UX changes based on outcome of research above.
- Fix wallet functionality.
- Make some improvement to our Nostr integrations scripts and import more memes! We wanna get over 25,000 memes on the app by next week.
- Make a start on adding NIP57 zaps.
What actually happened
- discovered NIP-25 emoji reactions!!!! This is honestly huge for us. We were super stoked when we found this NIP. We already vaguely knew about reactions, but when we read the NIP we realized it allows for custom emojis! This is fantastic because it means we don't need to ditch reactions from our app as we had planned last week. All we need to do is modify them slightly and they'll work in a fully Nostr compatible manner.
- Made improvements to scripts that we currently use to integrate with Nostr - allows us to more easily and effectively trawl Nostr for dank memes.
- Various bits of research and tinkering around integrating Nostr zaps (NIP-57), reactions (NIP-25) & reposts (NIP-30).
- Added tons of new memer profiles & memes (added about 13,0000 new memes)
- Added meme categories so all the new memes are easier to navigate.
- Upgrades to the meme card's UI in preparation for the new Nostr features.
- Various small layout tweaks and some bug fixes.
Meme cards:
Here's the direction our meme cards are going in! We're adding a bunch of Nostr related features :)
- Smiley face - the reaction button: last week we thought we'd be removing this, but to our great joy we discovered NIP-25 custom emoji reactions! So we're gunna keep our custom emoji reactions but modify how they work. We'll probably decouple zaps from reactions (currently to react you have to pay sats, we'll make it free), and broadcast the reactions over Nostr!
- Thumbs up - the like button: As well as having custom emoji reactions, we'll also have a more generic + (like) button with a count next to it showing the amount of likes an emoji has received. This will be fully compatible with Nostr.
- Thumbs down - the dislike button: Same as above but for negative like.
- Lightning - the zap button: As we mentioned in the first point above, we'll be decoupling zaps from reactions. So, we're gunna add a zap button so users can send zaps over Nostr.
- Up arrow - the repost button: so users can repost a meme to their Nostr feed.
And on the right:
- the expand button: so you can see the meme in it's original size. will open in a lightbox/modal.
- the share button: will trigger a browser share dialog so users can fire the meme to friends easily.
Meme categories:
After adding even more memes to the platform, we realized we really need categories... So we've added some! Right now our categorization algorithm is primitive, but we wanna look into setting up some ML models for more accurate results.
Site nav:
Site navigation is simplified, no longer displays top and latest links, now it's just memes or emojis.
We've temporarily removed the "Top" filter, instead we just have a latest feed. Main reason being that content wasn't fresh on the Top filter, whereas the latest filter has new memes coming in daily. We'll look at bringing back the top filter once our Nostr integrations are more complete. Once we have all that Nostr data we'll be able to assign memes a ranking based on zaps, reactions and reposts.
Next week
The plan for next week:
- Integrate zaps (NIP-57)
- Integrate reactions (NIP-25)
- Fix wallet functionality. (We wanted to do this last week, but delayed it in order to tie it in with our zaps integration)
We really wanna do some more marketing and user acquisition work, but we'll probably hold off on any big pushes on this front for a few weeks until the dust has settled a little around our UX & product roadmap changes.
Stats
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | ... | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total registered users | 34 | 83 | 103 | 110 | |
| Total memes uploaded | 8,323 | 8,491 | 8,599 | 21,792 |