Hello everyone, I bring good news: the pre-alpha version of AKASHA will be launched in October!

When the time comes, the invites will be delivered to your inbox and will include installation details which should make the entire setup process a breeze. However, if you encounter any problems, feel free to join our Discord - we are friendly people :)

During the first rollout, we plan to test the basic core features such as creating an identity, following a person, publishing an entry, commenting, bookmarking, voting, following a tag, creating a tag and so on.

Depending on our findings in the next few weeks we will test the rest of the functionality in anticipation of the public alpha release.

One step at a time.

You can find bellow an overview of the direction we are foreseeing in the near future as a tentative, high-level, loosey-goosey roadmap for the main network launch, with the mention that things will most likely evolve depending on our findings.

This is a marathon, not a sprint

Stage 0 (October 2016)

Invitations gradually sent to ~4500 users

Invitation based access for the early alpha subscribers using an Ethereum test chain.

Main goals

Test the dapp on the major operating systems

Observe the smart contracts and dapp components interaction

Identify potential flaws in the system design

Fix major bugs & issues uncovered before the public alpha

Stage 1 (Q4 2016)

Public alpha release

Debut with brainstorming challenge for ideas and features in the next releases.

Main goals

Signal that AKASHA is a community-driven project

Tap into the collective intelligence of the community

Collect and incorporate feedback from the users

Token economy challenge launched for proposals that would creatively reward participants on AKASHA

Stage 2 (TBD)

Core smart contracts breakathon

Open source the smart contracts powering AKASHA, followed by breakathon event with prizes for anyone able to exploit or break the smart contracts. Breakathon will be extended to the token contracts proposed in the next stage. Actively experiment with solutions for displaying content published inside the dapp in normal Web 2.0 browsers.

Main goals

Smart contracts crowdsourced vulnerability/exploit tests

Fix/improve the smart contracts depending on the feedback

Round 2: try to break the fixed/improved smart contracts

R&D for Web 2.0 static content gateways

Stage 3 (TBD)

Tokens, tests & integration experiments

Token research taking a more proeminent role (Filecoin, Raiden, BTC relay, ETH appcoins interoperability) combined with identity and experiments on an interactive Web 2.0 version (Metamask/Light Wallets/uPort). Analyze and A/B test the most interesting token proposals to see how it affects the health of the ecosystem and behaviour of users.

Main goals

Understand what problems we should strive to solve with a token

Test the most interesting ideas bubbling from the collective intelligence of the community

Learn if a token is indeed needed and beneficial in the ecosystem

R&D for Web 2.0 interactive version

Stage 4 (TBD)

Development roadmap proposal

Propose development roadmap for 2017 with votes counting as feedback on feature prioritization.

Main goals

Community-driven development roadmap proposal

Focus attention and resources on most wanted features

Testing Web 2.0 interactive version

Fine tuning for main network launch

Stage 5 (TBD)

AKASHA v 1.0

Many variables in the equation as it all depends on the findings and lessons learned during the previous stages. If everything goes according to plan, the AKASHA contracts will be deployed on the main net, hopefully with a working Web 2.0 version for ease of access for people not interested in running their own ETH and IPFS node.

Main goals

Using the security and synergy of the ethereum main network ecosystem

Enabling "real value" token transfers between readers and content creators

Web 2.0 main net version deployed, preferably interactive

Publish experiment-driven white paper documenting our findings

Open the dapp to the world at large

Again, this short roadmap is tentative and should be taken as such. We want to involve the community as much as possible in this project and we are open to adjusting the various stages listed above (and not only) to accomodate unforeseen events or strong feedback in areas that are not covered yet.

More details will follow in the next couple of weeks once we start sending the invites!

Closing notes

In the first release(s) the dapp might showcase unstable behavior and occasional bugs. This is the tradeoff for being among the first people to experiment a standalone dapp bundling bleeding edge technologies such as Ethereum and IPFS - there is no way around it since both are still in their very early days.

There are many moving parts involved in making this happen and there will be things that are expected to manifest unexpected behaviour. When something like this happens, please take a deep breath and remember that we want to iron out these bugs as much as you do.

Help us to help you by opening an issue or by getting in touch with us on Discord!.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

See you soon. On AKASHA!