I'm finally here able to write this blog post after four months of non-stop learning and building with some of the most talented and humble people in the web3 space 🫡
Last October InterplanetaryFonts project was selected to be part of the 11-week BUIDL Accelerator by Encode Club & Women Build Web3, right after the amazing experience at ETHOnline 2022.
Together with other 16 innovative projects in web3 we planned and committed to a very tight development roadmap, plus attended several workshops and community calls created to support engineers through the entire lifecycle in web3.
We applied to the accelerator motivated by the successful outcome of the ETHGlobal hackathon, but also excited to have a couple more team members joining from the WBW3 community.
Development Roadmap
Before the start of the accelerator, we were asked to draft a roadmap of milestones and deliverables that we wanted to accomplish over those 11 weeks. This was already a great exercise for our team, to understand our capacity and set a direction for what we wanted to build first.
InterplanetaryFonts wants to be the first decentralized NFT marketplace and collaboration platform for creators and collectors of fonts. The scope is quite big and the extent of the platform has several layers of complexity. What was put together for the hackathon was certainly disrupting in the idea, but we didn't have a chance to deep dive into the details of it.
That's why we decided to start with the technical documentation, reviewing what we had put together during the hackathon, and analysing the logic behind the smart contracts we needed to build. The platform sits on two pillars: marketplace and collaboration.
For the first one, we reached out to Superfluid team (which is always amazingly responsive and helpful 🙌) and set the ground for the enhancement we wanted to improve in our backend. For the second, we agreed on implementing Lens protocol, the actual foundation of what we envision as a fonts-social platform. We freshly created an account for the project and all team members on Lens a month back (thank you Nader 🫶) and we're pretty excited about the potential of this protocol 🌿 (be our fren here: interplanetaryfonts.lens).
We left for last what we call the "font engine", the mechanism that will allow users to mint custom fonts. Thanks to WBW3 feedback we realized we were putting too much on our plate and decided to concentrate on building the solid base of the app first. Setting a development roadmap has certainly taught us how to organize as a team and even if we ran into some technical obstacles on the way we were able to stay on track by focusing on our goals.
Workshops & Web3 Community
Every week the accelerator offered a workshop that inspired us and opened new doors for personal and professional growth. From marketing strategies to design, to fundraising how-to and product market fit. We found the accelerator engaging and empowering in the way it allowed us to interact directly with leading investors and entrepreneurs in the space.
Additionally, the organizers helped us reach out across participants and projects to have at least one "social match" each week (thanks Alex for the coordination 🙏). An opportunity to share experiences, tips and technical discussions with other builders. Hearing from other teams helped us overcome common challenges and create a sense of community which we are sure will continue strong also outside the accelerator.
One example is the exciting opportunity we had to shill about our project during the very first Rally space, an open-source alternative to Twitter Space for web3 communities built during the accelerator as well (shout out to Naomi and Timotej for the amazing work they are doing LetsRally 📣📣📣
InterplanetaryFonts Project
We are committed to continuing to build the first web3 platform for font creators and collectors, looking forward to deploying our first version in spring 2023. We learned a lot from this experience and we welcome feedback that can help us learn and build further in the web3 space.
Demo app: https://interplanetaryfonts.xyz/
Team: Ceci, Lalo, JP, Miguel, Mercy, Canna
Pitch Finale:
Feel free to reach out with feedback and suggestion via Discord, email, or other socials.
Follow us:
Twitter @IPFonts
LinkedIn @interplanetaryfonts
Instagram @interplanetaryfonts
Farcaster @ipfonts
Discord server: https://discord.gg/rv9pxS8V3Y