LeoFinance, Reimagined in 2023

almost 2 years ago

2022 was an interesting year for LeoFinance. We experienced one of the hardest hitting bear markets not just in crypto but in the entire Technology / world economy landscape.

There are dozens of tech companies that are down over 90% - making them look like your most fringe alt coins. It's a radical downturn that has left both traditional and crypto companies clawing for dear life.

For LeoFinance, this is our second bear market. We've seen this play out before. We've seen the LEO token reach fractions of pennies and then hit $1 in the subsequent bull cycle.

While everyone has been feeling the pain, we are no stranger to it. That being said, the team is still bigger than it was at the height of the bull market. I always said that I was excited for the bear market because it meant being able to hire devs much more easily as most other projects shed weight to try and survive.

LeoFinance doesn't just survive, it thrives. Our new UI is making rapid progress toward release.

Project Blank

ICYMI, we announced toward the end of 2022 that Project Blank was on the verge of being released. We also announced some admissions of missteps throughout 2022.

We realized that the launch of tokens, airdrops, etc. was not the path forward for us. We realized that the path forward was in going back to our roots:

Focusing on the LEO token itself
Focusing on CUB and building a sustainable revenue model
Focusing on the Hive ecosystem and building bridges that drive massive value back to the ecosystem (bHIVE, bHBD, pHIVE, pHBD)

LEO as the Umbrella Company

LEO is the umbrella for everything. It always was built that way. 2 years ago, I wrote a post describing this idea for the first time and it got great responses from the community. That vision got murky throughout the launch of all these subprojects, but that vision has never been more true than it is today.

Project Blank is now LeoFinance. LeoFinance is now Project Blank.

Crypto Twitter on the Hive Blockchain

In a recent post, I described my renewed vision of LeoFinance - to build The Everything App on Hive.

Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter put a lot of things into perspective. It's time for Hive to step up to the plate against a major Web2 platform and see what it's made of.

LeoThreads has been in open alpha on https://leofinance.io/threads for several months now. Through these past several months, we've been able to make rapid iterations on our backend.

In fact, we rewrote the backend about 3 times to hit a scalable model for Threads. You may or may not have noticed that the usability and scalability of Threads today vs. Threads when it launched is orders of magnitude better.

LeoFinance, Reimagined in 2023

Going into 2023, our renewed focus on the LEO Token and https://leofinance.io is goin to be driven down to our roots.

We've got the new Project Blank UI (Now the new LeoFinance UI) in Closed Alpha. A few of us are testing it and getting it ready for Open Alpha release and shortly after that, we'll be fully replacing the current production UI.

This UI has 3 driving principles:

A zero explanation User Experience
A simple onboarding process
Everything app features

A zero explanation User Experience

One of the largest hurtles that we've discovered in building on Hive for the past 3-4 years has been the ability to onboard new users and teach them how to use LeoFinance/Hive.

It's always required lengthy explanations of "create a blog post, create an introduction post, tell people why they should follow you, try to get upvotes, here's 5 different private keys, don't lose your keys, if people don't upvote you right away, just keep making 500 word blog posts..."

Needless to say, there is a reason why Hive has not yet been widely adopted as a Web3 Social Media platform.

Enter Threads.

Threads are a clone of Twitter itself. The user experience is identical to twitter. Look at the screenshots in this post to see the current live open alpha view of the new LeoFinance UI.

One look at it and you know what this platform is about and how to use it. No explanation needed.

To us, this is a cornerstone in being able to onboard our target of 5,000 Monthly Active Users (MAUs) throughout 2023. The ability for any user to simply land on https://leofinance.io and immediately understand what it's about with 0 explanations and no landing pages.

You see it, you login, you ~~tweet~~ Thread, you earn, you get hooked.

A simple onboarding process

LeoFinance solved onboarding (for the most part, a few tweaks needed in the new UI) and that is Hive Lite Accounts.

We were the first to achieve a functional model for Hive Lite Accounts and that is in giving people the ability to sign up/in to Hive without using Private Keys.

Instead, their Private Keys get held in an encrypted database while their other social media logins (Twitter and Facebook) get used to unlock the encryption and login.

This simple onboarding process will be refined and deployed to the new LeoFinance UI and will have our new users signing up to Hive and signing in in less than 30 seconds.

It's truly amazing. Combine this with an easy User Experience (Twitter-ified LeoFinance) and we believe we have cracked the magic combination needed to onboard 5,000 MAUs in 2023.

Everything app features

If you've listened to Elon Musk describe his "everything app" vision, it will sound very familiar. He's basically describing a Web3, tokenized social media platform in many ways.

He talks about being able to send money to friends. He talks about creators earning money for content. He talks about data ownership.

All of these things are present on LeoFinance already + more. We have Web3 and Hive at our root infrastructure and this gives us some incredible abilities.

So while the UI looks like Twitter when you first land on it, the experience once you dig deeper is going to astonish new users.

They'll land on it and see that they can ~~tweet~~ thread and earn crypto.

Then they'll look to see where that earned crypto is going. "Oh wait, I have a wallet page on my Profile?"

"What's this little button to view 'On-Chain TX'... Oh wow, my content is posted to a blockchain and can't be removed?"

... and so on down the rabbit hole of Web3 they go.

The key here is that they don't have to go down the rabbit hole. The rabbit hole is optional. They can still use the platform and post Threads and earn Crypto without going down the whole rabbit hole on how everything works.

This optionality is vital. 95% of users don't care about how things work. They just want things to work.

Ready for 2023?

This is our focus in 2023.

Get the UI out into Open Alpha and then replace Production leofinance.io
Grow from 600 MAUs to 1,000 MAUs by end of Q1
Grow from 1,000 MAUs to 1,500 by end of Q2
Grow from 1,500 to 3,000 by end of Q3
Grow from 3,000 to 5,000 by end of Q4

The team has measurable goals. Our community has easy-to-track targets. The UI is a seamless user experience and has easy onboarding mechanics.

Let's get it 🥂

About LeoFinance

LeoFinance is a blockchain-based Web3 community that builds innovative applications on the Hive, BSC, ETH and Polygon blockchains. Our flagship application: LeoFinance.io allows users and creators to engage & share micro and long-form content on the blockchain while earning cryptocurrency rewards.

Our mission is to democratize financial knowledge and access with Web3.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FinanceLeo
Discord: https://discord.gg/E4jePHe
Whitepaper: https://whitepaper.leofinance.io

Our Hive Applications

Join Web3: https://leofinance.io/
Microblog on Hive: https://leofinance.io/threads
LeoMobile (IOS): https://testflight.apple.com/join/cskYPK1a
LeoMobile (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.leofi.mobile
Delegate HIVE POWER: Earn 16% APR, Paid Daily. Currently @ 2.8M HP
Hivestats: https://hivestats.io
LeoDex: https://leodex.io
LeoFi: https://leofi.io
BSC HBD (bHBD): https://wleo.io/hbd-bsc/
BSC HIVE (bHIVE): https://wleo.io/hive-bsc/
Earn 50%+ APR on HIVE/HBD: https://cubdefi.com/farms

Web3 & DeFi

Web3 is about more than social media. It encompasses a personal revolution in financial awareness and data ownership. We've merged the two with our Social Apps and our DeFi Apps:

CubFinance (BSC): https://cubdefi.com
PolyCUB (Polygon): https://polycub.com
Multi-Token Bridge (Bridge HIVE, HBD, LEO): https://wleo.io