Indorse CV Visualizer

In this product update, I am going to talk about the directions that the Indorse team is going to take with regards to the product development, both in the short term and the long term. I will outline our goals for this quarter and the high level vision for the next year or so.

TL;DR

Although, earlier we were planning for a Mainnet release within 9 months to 12 months, we have broken it into modular components and accelerated the timeline. Here’s the new timeline

End Nov 2017/ Beginning Dec 2017 — first release on the mainnet, a CV visualizer, main profile page. Target — Crypto community

first release on the mainnet, a CV visualizer, main profile page. Target — Crypto community End Jan 2017/ Beginning Feb 2018 — second release on the mainnet, changes according to the feedback, creative use cases. Target — wider community beyond crypto space

second release on the mainnet, changes according to the feedback, creative use cases. Target — wider community beyond crypto space Mid 2018 — third release, validation of skills, incentivising for skills validation. Target — wider community

Reasoning and thought process

As many of you already know, we currently have an invite-only alpha, and we have tested it out with our advisors and the first batch of developers. We’re still iterating on the layout and flows based on initial usage and are progressively increasing the number of users.

We did a lot of ideation, some brainstorming, and our product manager Harsh organized these into some final ideas. Personally, my entire focus is to deliver a product within 2 months. So the entire discussion was around this timeline such that we could deliver a fully functioning product, which can stand on it’s own, and then we can start getting actual users on the platform. According to the Lean product development principles, if you’re building car, your intermediate releases or products shouldn’t be two wheels and then a chassis. You can start by building a skateboard, then progress slowly towards a fully functioning bike, a motorycle and then the car. For us, the aim of the last two weeks was to find our skateboard — something minimal that people can start using, which is decentralized and which adds some value to the users. Something that has the least hurdles for the users to on-board and which has the highest chances of “activation”.

Stages of a MVP

Our promise with Indorse is to build a decentralized network for professionals, and we didn’t want to deviate from that promise. But just creating a clone of existing networks like LinkedIn on the blockchain stack also doesn’t really make much sense. Hence we thought from first principles and decided to build an actual decentralized professional social network by addressing some shortcomings of the existing networks, one by one. The first step to any network obviously is a profile page, a place where you can show-off your skills, your achievements, your background, essentially, how awesome you are!

So, what we have decided is that the first version of Indorse is going to be a simple DAPP, where you can go and create your own profile, and showcase your awesome self to the world! We’ve been working hard over the last few weeks to clearly define our near term goals that align with our long term vision of being the decentralized professional network of the future. We want to begin by focusing on the most fundamental unit of any network: the individual. In the upcoming quarter, we want make it possible for anyone to publish their professional profile on the blockchain easily. We’re working on innovative visualizations that represent an individual’s professional career and acquired skills.

What I see happening with this is a platform which serves as a validation of your skillset specific to blockchain projects. Our first target market obviously, is going to be the Bitcoin and blockchain community. We are going to work on an angle such that having a profile on Indorse would be essential for anyone doing an ICO or a blockchain project.

Long term, our idea is to keep on building on this. The gist of Indorse, the validated profiles and the Anonymous Indorsement Protocol (AIP) will take a while and lot more testing from the users to actually be implemented. Some of the parameters from the algorithm need to stand the actual test of user adoption and feedback. There are also some aspects such as the ZKPs for anonymous voting, which will take time to implement and be perfected along with the scalability considerations. Hence I think that releasing the CV Visualizer while out blockchain team keeps working on the protocol layer, will be the best approach for us to continue to serve the best interest of the token holders and start gaining traction as a product. Our ultimate goal of building a reputation system on the blockchain is definitely a hard problem, since we are trying to quantify the skills and achievements of a human being in an algorithm, and assign a score to it, all in a decentralized manner. Having such mini-products and releases will fuel user adoption and spark more interest towards Indorse. We will keep you updated on a regular basis through our social media channels and the periodic dev updates.

Current positions we are looking for: UX/UI, Node,js, React, Ethereum Smart Contract Developers. Please feel free to drop us a mail at info@indorse.io should you be interested or would be aware of anyone who should be a good fit for us.

Have questions? Join the Indorse Slack here: https://slack.indorse.io