2021 in Review: From a bounty side project to a successful Web3 startup
2021 has been an incredible year for KYVE. This past year, we introduced the solution to the world, collaborated with great partners, and iterated a lot to have today a fully functioning protocol in testnet. It is time to rewind and celebrate our success together!
What is KYVE today?
KYVE is a next-generation protocol that enables data providers to store and reliably verify their data streams seamlessly. Once data is stored, it can easily be retrieved using KYVE’s query interface. KYVE’s validation and Arweave’s immutability, combined, guarantee data integrity towards downstream users.
Today, the protocol includes four main features:
Uploading
Uploaders fetch data from a source and perform computational work before storing it on Arweave.
Validating
Validators determine the integrity of the data and have the ability to vote on the slashing of an uploader’s stake if terms are not respected.
Funding
Funding gives access to the data. The benefit of this funding-based system is that indexers can now restrict access to our data based on which accounts are funding.
Delegating
Users can delegate their $KYVE tokens and earn rewards from the protocol without running nodes.
Today we are proud to have released nine active pools with Avalanche, Moonriver, Cosmos, Celo, Solana, Evmos EVM, Evmos Tindermint, Near, and Aurora.
The Community
The main marketing objective of 2021 was to increase KYVE’s brand awareness and social media presence. Today we are super proud to have a strong community of more than 27,000 members. Our main channels, Twitter, Discord, and Telegram, have had an average monthly growth of 84%!
We achieved this growth by:
Educating the community
We worked closely with our integration partners and launched co-marketing initiatives to educate both communities around KYVE. We launched a #WeAreKYVE campaign on Twitter and answered some burning questions from a question from the audience. We also implemented a new website with a fresh brand identity and improved explanations.
Participating in events and podcasts
The team attended two major crypto events, ethCC in Paris and Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon, and evangelized the importance of making data trustless and how KYVE is helping. Fabian and John, KYVE’s founders, also participated in two podcasts, Permaweb Pioneers and Journal du Coin.
Launching an Ambassador Program
Finally, we launched the Ambassador Program. We received more than 250 applications in less than two weeks and are honored to have more than 30 KYVERS from different world regions. Since the program started, the ambassadors have shown us nothing but love and support, and we are thankful!
What comes next?
The much-anticipated, incentivized testnet will be launched in the upcoming weeks with cool features such as an explorer feature and new integrations with blockchain projects.
We are also looking to increase our presence in crypto events by attending and sponsoring them. Our presence is already confirmed at ethDenver, so reach out if you are around.
As we enter 2022 with many projects to tackle, new features to implement, and important milestones to achieve, such as mainnet launch, the team is more determined than ever to make KYVE a success. 2022 will be a defining year for KYVE, and we are looking forward to it with the support of our fantastic community.
We are continuously hiring to achieve our mission to make data trustless and to become the default tool for data indexing, collecting, and validation, so if you want to join the adventure, contact us!
