It’s been a while since the latest update on product planning!
One thing is for sure, the team has been doing reps working towards upcoming releases and they’re crushing it. Every week @iurimatias@andre@guylouis and I get together to take pulse, see where we are at and plan next steps.
We’ll start sharing a weekly update here for anyone else to keep up.
Weekly update dd May 18
Progress highlights
Desktop team is analyzing, testing, getting packages in order and understanding threading (performance win!) using Nim + Qt; react-native-desktop path is still worked on in parallel
Notifications and Keycard integration (both Android) are key for the upcoming Mobile release. Please take Nightly for a spin to see the latest on this, report issues and keep an out for Keycard PR’s
Mobile team is looking ahead at a fixes release 1.4.1. Kind request to the Core team: please check these 9 unassigned issues to see if there’s anything you can pick up outside of feature work Zenhub | Productivity Management for Software Teams
Starterpack, Referrals and image sending are still scoped for release 1.5. Exploring if we can upgrade the sharing experience with compressed keys, group chat links and QR code saving and sharing
Keycard is getting ready for it’s integration with Status release on Android, with support of @yenda. Release cut is planned for end of this week.
Keycard team is now looking into Layer2 solutions for payment network
Organizational
Taking baby steps in transitioning to a decentralized model; We’ll start with increasing transparency on the latest in product development by sharing these takeaways on Discuss
Keycard integration is heading down the home stretch with 2 outstanding issues
Keycard team is also finalizing their contract with LeapDAO to design a layer 2 solution for Status Pay and are looking to create a release ready version of the redeem dapp
While Andre is enjoying a well-deserved vacation status not too many Core updates beyond upcoming releases. Keycard is coming. And who knows what else might drop from the sky
Governance is awaiting while Desktop is finding its ground. For now there is the proposal to move feature requests to Discuss: Status.app
Keycard integration on Android is close to finished. Launch expected in week 25 There’s a lot of progress on desktop, both using react-native desktop and status-nim Core team resolved one blocker for release. This was a crash on Android 9 due to ‘inline require’ applied to all translation files Images have been merged! Introduction will be in release 1.5, such that messages received on the, at that time older, version 1.4 can handle handling images appropriately Notifications on iOS are top of mind with an ongoing post on Discuss Status.app Metrics are very much in line with low tide in terms of comms. No major changes. Acquisition, retention and active use are still all areas of opportunity
Please note that there is now a Feature request category. The category has a list of subcategories and tags that correspond with high level projects in our project planning tools. We’ll slowly work to organize features in this category. This allows us to better manage incoming requests as well as allow voting for and discussion of new features.
Keycard Android integration has no more blockers, ready for release next week Tue/Wed
Keycard team is aligning on understanding optimistic rollups for Status Pay, working with LeapDAO. L2 Kick-off workshop is planned for Friday in Status calendar and open to participation
To remove bus factor Core team is rotating people working on Keycard, next individual TBD. Main prio Keycard reset
Release of 1.4 has been moved to June 22nd. A little bummed out, but such is life. Integrating Keycard is a major step to help people keep their funds safe at a reasonable price (€29). It’s also a stepping stone to offer exciting features in the works, such as Keycard Pay and onboarding through Keycard redeem. To bring awareness to this work we rely on news outlets and have to accommodate their schedule
This news came in Tuesday afternoon so was not discussed on Monday
Collaboration with Keycard team and LeapDao has started to design the architecture for Keycard Pay. Next to optimistic rollups, eyes are on zk rollups, and a hybrid combination with state channels
Desktop is far along with their MVP work on Chat and Wallet. Next 1-2 weeks will focus on bugfixes and getting UI designs right.
Desktop has a working version (dmg) on mac; Windows works as well, but needs notarization (certificate)
Keycard sold 53 Keycard since Tuesday night. Getting orders and site views daily
Core will focus on acquisition and retention features; Prioritized features for Keycard paused. Key management issues addressed separately
StatusPay design has been discussed in strategy call. Focus is on delivering in the next 3-5 months, which likely means using optimistic rollups. Maturity of technology and teamsize are relevant factors
Desktop has a dmg on Discuss for testing purposes. Will focus on Chat feature parity and releasing sooner rather than later. Planning release roughly every Friday, all alpha and for testing purposes.
For Core QA is testing 1.4.1 improvements release. 1.5 is on track, but needs follow up on mentions as this required a different approach than followed in the last PR. For 1.6, rework is needed to find a solution for large publishers to promote Status while retaining privacy
This is still tbd, but ideally we want to deploy our own rollup. We might have to take some tradeoffs to have something ready in the coming 3-5 months, and this is what we’re evaluating now, as well as which existing open source implementation we should rather base our efforts on e.g. optimism, arbitrum, nutberry
Keycard and Status Pay updates similar to Townhall share. Cards underway, better insight when people start receiving them
Many different design challenges for Status Pay (e.g. validator incentivization, finality). The team can use input from Layer 2-versed core contributors
Release 1.4.1 is in store review, will follow 1.x for improvement versioning going forward (https://semver.org/).
Emojis, Mentions and Audio sounds are all in progress as are Notifications on iOS and Referral program, backend services deployed to staging today
Need to start focus on anti-spam mechanisms post release 1.6. Start collating existing ideas to effectively discuss
Desktop has a range of updates implemented, most significantly syncing devices is almost ready as is a Windows build
Stimbus project will have more updates tomorrow. Shim seems to be working to send messages/receive signals
Please keep in mind when reading the roadmap that dates are indicative and used for product development. Generally speaking additional days to weeks are required to ensure quality and prepare communication based on final implementation.
Release 1.5 has hit a delay due to competing resource demands; the team is working hard to make a release cut for thorough testing as soon as Emoji reactions PR’s have been tested and merged
Remaining focus has been on metrics and referral program
Waku implementation in Status Mobile will be owned by Vac
There will be a roadmap planning workshop next week, see this Discuss post by @andre
Desktop has a bunch of new features implemented for chat parity (stickers support, notifications, receiving images, etc. Packaging on Windows is done!) Also working on Emoji reactions, going by the latest spec although the PR is still open
Stimbus is currently used on Desktop; use on Status Mobile (status-react integration) would be a good parallel step, looked into
Roadmap: this time around a spreadsheet view that looks at prioritization as input for a roadmapping workshop. Work in progress, still adding features that have come up in Feature request category, Github and Feature request form (no longer used)
“Don’t forget to drink water and get sun. You’re basically a house plant with anxiety.”
Enjoy your week everyone
No updates on Keycard, Desktop and Stimbus as Guy-Louis and Iuri are both out. For those who missed it though, Desktop alpha is now also available on Windows: Status.app
Core Mobile had a roadmapping workshop today. Those who couldn’t attend can still vote here till ca. 8am CET Upgrade your browser version
Next steps for the coming two weeks are a review by the Core team, functional specs, in collaboration with Marketing, and implementation specs
Emojis have proven to be a challenge for v1.5 release. Turns out propagating reactions through a gossip network is not easy . Status-go implementation is making progress and we’re counting on the front-end updates to be relatively straightforward after that
Referral program is planned to release right after and is technically on it’s feet and in QA testing. Contract edits are in progress to support partnerships (other projects onboarding their audience to their dapp and token through the referral program)
See how we’re doing on retention below and on https://redash.status.im. We had relatively good retention last week Monday, with ca. 30% still using the app on day 7. Numbers did go down by more than half after that, but it’s promising to see there is movement
1.5 had been submitted, reviewed and approved. Ready to publish
Gas cost is a barrier for the referral program. Cost per acquisition is 50 times higher.
Looking for ways to lower cost through contract changes, and more conservative roll-out to experiment with impact on retention first
Now that delete multi account is possible, next step for Keycard integration will be to move an existing Status account to Keycard. Pending design and implementation resources
Status Pay is running smart contract wallet on a Nutberry L2 instance. Next steps are to document, compare and work on consensus design and gas economics
Correction on daily cohort retention metric, see below. No relative difference, absolute has gone down as the calculation now only includes everyone who was a peer for the first time, sticking around for subsequent days
Projects that came out of roadmap planning workshop are kicking off this week. Check out the Status calendar and see where you’d like to be involved
I know you all get a lot of requests come at you these days. This is not necessarily a new thing and I know you’re used to it. Still I’d like to point out some priorities to make it easier for you to decline and focus. Yes, also when the request comes from me.
For anyone else, hopefully this highlevel view informs you of what the Core Mobile and Desktop team are working on and why some requests are not immediately acted on.
Previously planned and in progress feature development
Mentions
Group chat invites
Notifications on iOS
Referral program
Desktop iteration work
Stimbus
Retention feature development
Some teams are pivoting from the original epics that came out of the product planning workshop. This is reasonable and up to the team who has weight all the pro, cons and concerns since. In some cases ideas have been (in)validated, are being validated, or teams should plan to.
It’s ok to pivot. Fortunately we’re still learning every day. Through feedback in the app and conversations with people in the Ethereum community here. Thank you @jonathan.
If something new comes up that carries you away from 1 and 2, please share here or ping @andre, @iurimatias or myself so we can discuss how to manage risk of not delivering. If you’re asked to work on xyz, and it is too much a distraction for you to work on 1, 2. Say no, ask why, raise the issue here.
We’re in dynamic times. None of us has a crystal ball. Things change.
About the top 5 features
All kick-off calls have happened. Please note that you are expected to self-organize. If you were involved in a kick-off call for one of the top 5 features, please make sure you have updated the respective Github issue by Tuesday addressing these points:
Next steps (who will do what)
Communication plan (where will you discuss, how often, please keep calls in Status calendar for others to join)
Draft implementation spec by Wednesday next week feasible? (yes/no, if not, what is blocking)
Release 1.5 was shipped last week. Reception has been good! Seeing growth, not least thanks to support from key figures on Twitter. Not seeing a clear impact on retention yet, we’ll likely need to give this a bit more time. If anything there seems to be a minor drop in retention, likely related to reaching a broader audience
Referral program will go out in phases: Start use with advertisers and influencers in 1.6, roll out 1:1 referral invites in 1.7; Launched in coordination with DefiPulse
Retention features that came out of roadmap planning workshop have kicked off; any output as well as features in progress (Notifications iOS, Mentions, and Group chat invite links) will come out when ready
Desktop has a few tasks left to reach chat feature parity
Stimbus is temporarily on a slow burn while some people are out. A next step is to integrate nim-waku
Desktop team is experimenting with O2 (Optimized Optimistic Rollup), will align with Keycard team
For Keycard integration in Status, it’s clear that the top feature to implement is moving an existing multiaccount to Keycard
Other work by the Keycard team includes various business development calls and work on a Devcon Improvement Proposal
From the Marketing side data shows high traffic peaks that don’t seem to translate to installs; Conversion and retention both need attention
1.6 was published last Monday, and publicly announced this Monday. Reason for this was to allow for time to test pass-through of referral urls of the referral program
Part of the referral program is essentially an install attribution framework. Unfortunately, we could only fully test the implementation of this framework if install through Play Store was possible
Release 1.6 was announced and published on the App store when we were confident that the framework works as designed
Tuesday release 1.6.1 was submitted for review. Available on Play store and App store now. This release includes a mitigation against spam that started appearing in public chats on Sunday
Release 1.7 is planned as a feature release, in contrast to 1:1 invites of the referral program as was communicated earlier. Reason being that high and variable gas prices have thrown planning for the program of course. Independent from release 1.7, 1:1 invites through the referral program will be limited available, for experimentation only
Progress for the feature release (1.7) is very much in motion. In scope at this time are local contact names, mentions, push notifications on iOS, and group chat invite links.
Desktop team is starting it’s last mile for a wider ‘use-at-your-own-risk’ Beta release
Keycard team is making progress with an L2 solution build on Optimism; We’re monitoring how to best support speed of development of this effort
A collaboration has started with Snapshot to run Waku to relay voting signatures and thereby make the dapp more trustless. This can eventually be extended by a contract to submit merkle roots for on chain voting. It’s a case study
Core team has all features scoped for release 1.7 merged. As especially Notifications, Mentions and local nicknames depend on each other they are now tested as an orchestra in nightly
Prime focus has been and will be on spam prevention. Scoped work for the next 2 weeks is a stepping stone to community chats and will experiment with setting rules for a public chat such as ‘ENS name only’, to require an ENS name in order to write to the chat. Other work includes local notifications and profile images/display names
Desktop is now looking at Wallet parity as chat features like stickers rely on wallet use. In terms of basic features, everything works and Desktop is ready for Beta. Looking to speed up notarization, which particularly for Windows might be a lengthy process
Whether and how to include a browser in a future release is still under discussion
Stimbus is moving along; integration with react is taking time. More API’s have been added in the meantime as well as a test suite and Nim sequal cipher to ease migration from status-go
Looking for feedback on extensions https://discuss.status.im/t/extensions-plugins-for-desktop-mobile/1960
L2 development had a first shared iteration with Iuri and Rramos working on this for 80% of their time in the coming weeks. Exploring an O2 solution while waiting on Optimism documentation to become available
Gas-less polling for governance; 3esmit is investigating connecting a dapp to Waku as well as a mailserver to host voting receipts
Security is looking to move to a incident response platform and discussing requirements and timeline for a public campaign on hackerone. Aside from audit plans for ongoing projects
Marketing is looking to roll out a pilot of the referrals program with ambassadors. Also, aside from comms plans for ongoing projects
As you can see, there are a lot of puzzle pieces being worked on in parallel. By rough estimate, the updates capture 60% of the work. If you want to know if something is being worked on, please start a discussion here or in #status on Status
It totally is annoying @York. Please know that developing a space for communities to live spam free has Status’ focus. For work in progress, you might want to check Communities currently in Alpha.
Desktop team is analyzing, testing, getting packages in order and understanding threading (performance win!) using Nim + Qt; react-native-desktop path is still worked on in parallel
Notifications and Keycard integration (both Android) are key for the upcoming Mobile release. Please take Nightly for a spin to see the latest on this, report issues and keep an 
out for Keycard PR’s
Mobile team is looking ahead at a fixes release 1.4.1. Kind request to the Core team: please check these 9 unassigned issues to see if there’s anything you can pick up outside of feature work Zenhub | Productivity Management for Software Teams
Starterpack, Referrals and image sending are still scoped for release 1.5. Exploring if we can upgrade the sharing experience with compressed keys, group chat links and QR code saving and sharing
Keycard is getting ready for it’s integration with Status release on Android, with support of @yenda. Release cut is planned for end of this week.
Keycard team is now looking into Layer2 solutions for payment network
Keycard integration on Android is close to finished. Launch expected in week 25
There’s a lot of progress on desktop, both using react-native desktop and status-nim
Images have been merged! Introduction will be in release 1.5, such that messages received on the, at that time older, version 1.4 can handle handling images appropriately
Metrics are very much in line with low tide in terms of comms. No major changes. Acquisition, retention and active use are still all areas of opportunity
Feature requests
Weekly update
news came in Tuesday afternoon so was not discussed on Monday
. Status-go implementation is making progress and we’re counting on the front-end updates to be relatively straightforward after that
