Holo Network: 780+ HoloPorts Strong

Holo Network Update #1

TL;DR

There are now more than 780 HoloPorts registered on the network in more than 57 countries. The Quickstart registration process worked well for the majority of our Alpha testers, but our immediate focus after shipping was making the process seamless for all HoloPort owners. The release we deployed late last week included multiple changes focused on registration, reliability, and UX improvements. Next up: HP Admin and a test version of the HoloFuel application.

Highlights

HoloPorts Shipped & Registered

Haven’t Received Your HoloPort?

Why a Forum?

Nano Update

What’s Next?

HoloPorts Shipped & Registered

In the last few days of 2019 we began shipping HoloPorts — and we’ve continued shipping, with new batches going out at least weekly. Depending on their destination country, it can take between 2–14 days to arrive in country and make their way through customs. As of yesterday there are now 780+ HoloPorts registered on the Holo network, with representation in 57 countries around the world.

In the first few weeks after shipping, the majority of our new hosts were able to register their HoloPorts with few or no problems. Since this was our first full-scale test of HoloPorts connecting to the network, there were inevitably dozens of people who had challenges of various sorts. The majority of these challenges involved hiccups with completing the registration process. Last week we deployed a new HoloPort OS release that fixed those challenges and we now expect nearly all new HoloPorts to be registered fairly easily. There were about 12 unique changes in this release that were focused on registration, reliability, and UX improvements.

Success for HoloPort hosts at this moment means they have reached the HP Admin login screen. It may look unspectacular, but it’s incredible how much engineering is behind this simple event. In the face of the internet’s paradigm of centralization, our developers have created a plug-and-play process to onboard a globally distributed collection of home devices into a cohesive network of hosts that will soon offer an on-ramp to the P2P internet. We think it’s a huge step.

We’re waiting to open the HP Admin until the majority of the hosts who have received their ports have made it through the registration process successfully, and our team can provide support to everyone during this next early wave of testing.

Haven’t Received your HoloPort?

We’re shipping HoloPorts and HoloPorts+ weekly as soon as hosts confirm their address and order details. Please note that some shipments are being delayed for customs and duties. If you contact us, we can support resolution of a wide variety of issues and can help quickly if additional documentation is needed. If you have received an invite to the Holo Forum but do not have your shipping information, or if you have any other question or concern about receiving your HoloPort, please contact our helpdesk by sending an email to help@holo.host.

Why a Holo Forum?

We launched the Holo Forum in tandem with the shipment of HoloPorts. Only HoloPort owners have received invites to the Forum at this point. The Holo Forum is for hosts to find help from team members and chat with other hosts about their experiences, tips, and support.

There is also a growing knowledge base with the most up-to-date Setup Guides and FAQs that can help with any and all details related to Alpha testing.

Outside of the Forum we also have an email support ticketing system for shipping issues and deeper challenges that might require our devs’ assistance. In short, we think building a fully distributed, cloud hosting network will necessitate also creating an incredible community. This is a first step at that, and we’re looking forward to making it better with you.

Nano Update

Though we don’t yet have a clear ship data for Nanos, the good news is that we’ve moved the Nanos up in our priority list after the latest release. We’ve gained much more clarity about how we want to proceed with completing the OS and QA processes with Nanos. This was aided by both the shipping and registration of HoloPorts as well as the organizational shifts we’ve been making recently (more on that below). Plus, we are also are clearer on other Indiegogo commitments in just the last few weeks, as a result of But before we solidify our plans, we’ll be reaching out to get your individual input. For all you Nano owners and Alpha testers, look for a survey in your email inbox soon.

What’s Next?

As you may have heard, over the past several weeks we’ve been in the process of a significant organizational reset. The primary goal of this reset is to pull the entire organization into a deeper focus on agile development, operational practices, and new information flows. This reorientation puts us in a better place for being responsive to the most important and immediate needs of all our communities, including HOT holders, HoloPort hosts, app entrepreneurs, and Holochain developers. As we settle into the deeper alignment this will provide, we’re going to deliver to all those communities faster and in more iterative chunks.

Recently we’ve been syncing our planning cycles across development, communications, marketing, customer support, and developer support. During each of our regular release cycles we’ll be listening to all of our communities and asking: “what’s the next most important thing we can work on?” It is a work in progress but we’re seeing big improvements in both the large and small ways of how we get the stuff done. This shift is important for making Holo a great, customer-driven organization.

Both because we’ve heard from our community they want one, and also because it integrates and supports well all of the above, we’re working on an updated roadmap. We’re hoping this will also create a space supportive of the types of questions, conversations, and perspectival sharing that we want to be doing with all of you. There are also many channels where you can jump in and start giving us more input into what we should be working on, including Twitter, the Holo Forum, and the Holochain Forum. Our next regular AMA broadcast on YouTube will be announced soon. We love direct emails to info@holo.host as well. We can only listen if you speak (or write), so please reach out. This has to be a mutual exchange for us to improve.

Thanks, as always, is never quite enough — but please know that our appreciation is very real.

— The Holo team