STORE Community Update - August 2023

As the Labor Day Weekend arrives, signaling the traditional end of summer in the U.S., we're thrilled to share the progress we've made on STORE over the past few months. Our dedicated team has been tirelessly working on various projects to bring STORE to life, and we’re excited that September will bring a public unveiling of sorts, both through CoinTelegraph’s Pitch Room, as well as other initiatives. Among the many tasks the team at STORE has been tackling, key focuses have including honing the details on pricing and resource consumption for the cloud VM, developing easy-to-use front-end applications for our users, and updating our public-facing materials for future presentations. Let’s dive in a bit further!

Engineering

One of the main focuses of the team recently has been the latest iteration of the Store Cloud VM, with additional functionality such as NFT asset views, as well as a holistic upgrade to our billing and pricing structures. Recently, the Engineering team has made significant strides in refining the pricing structure for our permanent storage solution, which serves as the initial entry point preceding the expansion to other services. Our primary focus has centered on evaluating the cost associated with maintaining assets on the protocol over the long term. This endeavor has led us to delve into the minutiae of storage and pricing, enabling us to precisely account for billing down to the granularity of a single byte of data. In addition to the algorithm itself, we're also carefully considering how this data is encoded into our APIs and how it contributes to the formulation of comprehensive P&L statements. With the finalization of this model, we'll be able to apply it, with minor adjustments, to various other resource types, including compute services.

Throughout August, our efforts also included devising a pricing strategy for the consumption or "viewing" of these stored assets. We're delighted to share that, following experimentation with diverse approaches, we've successfully crafted a viable model that's ready for implementation. This breakthrough addresses the intricacies of the "bandwidth problem," allowing us to incorporate these recent accomplishments into our upcoming demo. The team is confident that our approach stands favorably against established players such as Filecoin and Arweave. We're eagerly anticipating the demo to showcase the strides we've made.

In parallel to the aforementioned pricing modeling, our team has already designed and launched a user-friendly front-end application featuring an intuitive UI for purchasing additional asset views. This extension aligns seamlessly with the NFT capabilities currently integrated into Store Explorer. The straightforward process empowers users to fund supplementary views of their NFT assets, cultivating a self-sustaining ecosystem. This innovation not only diversifies the revenue streams for the protocol but also positions us at the forefront alongside industry counterparts like Arweave and Filecoin.

Elsewhere in Engineering, as our team looks ahead to the upcoming miner onboarding process, we are diligently preparing the necessary tools and processes for Auctions. These Store Auctions play a pivotal role in aligning the demand for mining slots within the protocol with the inflation-based reward incentives set by the network. Successful bidders in these auctions not only secure the network but also earn rewards for their contributions. Our next steps involve the seamless integration of auctions into the network through our API suite, followed by rigorous testing of auction scenarios using simulations.

Another essential milestone on our project journey is the ongoing development of the new STORE Registration portal. This user-friendly platform is designed to be a comprehensive destination for those interested in acquiring $STORE tokens for the first time. This enhanced functionality not only expedites the onboarding of new users but also ensures full compliance with all relevant regulations and laws. Beyond token acquisition, users will also gain the ability to stake their tokens, opening avenues to earn rewards in return.

Simultaneously, our Engineering team is making substantial progress on the latest iteration of the Store Oracle APIs. Building off of our initial release, the team has been actively introducing new endpoints, optimizing database tables for improved performance, and expanding our API capabilities to mirror the features of our front-end tools. These enhancements encompass new resource types and the introduction of the concept of Views (as explained above). In preparation for upcoming phases, the team is also working on integrating the requisite metadata fields into the APIs for Store Auctions, paving the way for seamless functionality.

Operations

Starting with Store Governance, our design team has been making impressive strides in developing the necessary front-end tools to implement BFT ID (Byzantine Fault Tolerant ID). This ID system forms the foundation of our one-entity, one-vote governance model. The application will encompass features like assessing miner applicants, participating in approval votes, and information sharing.

Additionally, we've embarked on the foundational work for an identity graph-inspired model, which will serve as the basis for "STORE ID." This unique identifier will grant users access to all STORE products and web services. Stored securely alongside the user's wallet contents, the Store ID will seamlessly integrate into the STORE ecosystem via API, serving as the central point for interactions with products like Powered By, Explorer, Oracle, and others.

A result of all the hard work mentioned above is an opportunity to unveil our project to a wider group with help from our friends at CoinTelegraph via their Pitch Room project, a collaboration that brings together investors and projects like ours to elevate innovating new ideas. Over the past few weeks, the team has been busy both updating existing materials such as our pitch deck, and creating new materials to share in the Pitch Room, including a one-pager summary and a recently completed technical demo. We recorded with CoinTelegraph during the last week of August and look forward to the program being published in the latter part of September. While we can't share the recording just yet, it will become public when aired on their site and we look forward to the feedback. This unveiling marks a significant milestone for the project and the timing was strategic as we’ll also be publishing our State of STORE address at this time as we seek to build momentum for future fundraising rounds.

Wrap-up

As always, we thank the community for your continued support.

We encourage you to learn more by reading the STORE deck: https://docsend.com/view/hqcw598kjqt62azz

If you have questions, please send them to team@storecloud.org