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OST.com’s Alpha III developer challenge is half over, and things are going well for Really Simple Store’s token integration.

Here’s an update that answers specific questions from the OST team, including Really Simple Store’s progress. To keep up on all 200+ Alpha III entries, watch the #OSTa3 hashtag on Twitter:

Or check the OST.com subreddit:

Last thing before the questions… here’s the final video for Really Simple Store’s Alpha II submission, from the end of May:

Why did you decide to register for OST Alpha Phase III?

I’m interested in adding a real-world token economy to the Really Simple Store platform. I plan to launch it with OST on mainnet, and as such, I’ve done Alpha I and II in order to get a jump on integration and to start learning and making mistakes before I’m using real money.

I believe that OST KIT, built on the OpenST protocol, is the most straightforward and efficient way to add tokens to an existing business, so I’ve fully committed to the technology.

In addition, since I’ll need to fund the token economy with OST tokens, getting rewarded in OST for participating in the Alphas (for the privilege of early integration and free marketing) is a win-win.

I only hope Really Simple Store will eventually bring some attention back to the OST project in return!

What is the goal of your project/business’s use of blockchain?

Having a token that can be traded (trustlessly) outside of Really Simple Store’s own ecosystem is an essential part of making the token economy successful.

The idea of a free market of complimentary businesses and services that can tie into RSS (without an explicit partnership or permission) is the key; it gives the tokens a lot of potential value and creates a token ecosystem that can grow magnitudes larger than the RSS ecosystem.

The broad goal of the RSS project is to help makers generate more income doing what they love.

The specific goal here is to allow them to cross-sell each others’ products without giving up any fiat profit (like a commission).

Without tokens and token adoption by store owners, I can’t achieve that goal, so blockchain helps ensure our tokens have real world value, which will drive adoption and ultimately sales for everyone participating in the economy.

What is the current progress for your team’s OST Alpha Phase III development?

At this point, all of the wallet features are fully integrated into Really Simple Store’s own API and in the front end applications where the information is used. Here’s a screenshot:

Screenshot of transaction history list on the RSS settings page

In that way, I’m basically done. However, I want to create a powerful demo, and I still need to run a thousand transactions, so I’ll be playing and tweaking a lot in the remaining two weeks.

To better communicate the entire RSS token economy idea, I need to finish a lot of UI and UX details, related and unrelated to the wallet. One goal of my final demo is to show how simple the entire token economy and cross-selling process can be from start to finish. I specifically want to demonstrate that a “complex” token economy can be simplified into a simple and un-scary interface/experience.

By the end of next week, I hope to have everything done and working so that I can dedicate the remaining time to running transactions, writing blog posts, and the final video/demo.

For more specifics on this past week’s progress, I also wrote a separate Week 2 update: