Satisfying Web3 Users Can Be Challenging But Spheron Protocol Knows The Secret
In Web3, developers and founders that are worth their salt know that when codes are written and projects are launched for public use, the weight of their job responsibility goes up by some notches. This happens because users of their products and the market are dynamic; always looking to test what the third generation of internet is capable of.
To keep up with the constant change, firms in the ecosystem would have to ship new versions of their applications to either fix bugs which hinder performance or create new features. It is a tasking responsibility which must be done, but that is not the only difficult part of building projects in Web3 and sustaining it.
Being able to identify and create what satisfies users in Web3 could be difficult for many projects but not Spheron Protocol – a project which facilitates a fast and economical solution to deploying and hosting decentralised applications on any decentralised cloud network in three streamlined steps of connecting repository, configuring settings and decentralising applications.
Spheron realises that many of its users are expressive and a critical factor in serving them in a satiating manner is to listen. The flip side of this strategy is to create a product and market to potential users. Whichever is more effective is debatable, but for Spheron, listening to users before making new features has helped to facilitate “growth in terms of increasing the users base” says Co-founder, Prashant Maurya who has also played a major role in the creation of Aqua, its new web app.
Some major features that come with Aqua, Spheron says, is its improved loader experience and fast deployment on the Arweave chain from 4.06 minutes to upload 71 files to 20 seconds. Since the launch of the first version of Aqua in April this year, the Spheron team has been busy, following it with six updates.
Every version of Spheron is learning for us…, Maurya says. “Most of the time, depending on the community feedback we decide to launch some features.”
In a chat with Arweave News, Maurya reveals how Spheron tries to help developers work with ease by providing solutions to challenges in infrastructure through Aqua. He also talks about Aqua’s features, their use cases and how they could change the game in Web3.
Arweave News: From version one to two and now three, looking at Spheron’s progression, how would you describe efforts to upgrade its application and what lessons would you say it learned from the first version and that it keeps applying each time it works on and releases a new update?
Maurya: We are building in the consumer space where our demand comes from the business, startup founders and non-developers who want to leverage the power of decentralisation. Every version release of Spheron is learning for us because most of the time depending on the community feedback we decide to launch some features. On every feature release we have seen growth in terms of increasing the user base. Recent global CDN acceleration boosted our growth in terms of domain attachments and now we are working to refine it more.
With the integration of Akash as a compute layer we are working to provide users with a ‘node as a service marketplace’ for users to build and compute payment with ease and manage services.
Arweave News: Still on the updates and the intensity and consistency with which you ship them. Are these features and upgrades a product of your interaction with users and what they want or it’s Spheron just building its application based on its initiative?
Maurya: We look at the activity of developers around the platform, and then we take the decision if we need a few more features or not. Also, sometimes we have to take the initiative to make developers’ lives easier. We are able to make these decisions sometimes because Mitrasish and I come from developer experience as well.
Arweave News: In the release note of version 3.0, Spheron said the features it added to the new dashboard are a product of feedback from users. Since you launched this version, what are users saying about it and what new things should they be expecting to see on the dashboard soon?
Maurya: Most of our users are kind of vocal on Twitter as well. The response is quite positive and good. The best part of the dashboard is very simple to use. We have also found due to lack of walkthrough around the product sometimes, developers face certain challenges; where to go to fix certain problems. With the integration of walkthrough it will be resolved. Second major thing we are bringing is analytics for users.
Arweave News: You created a feature that allows developers to import projects from repositories to Spheron. To appreciate how important this feature is, could you briefly paint a picture of the difficulty developers used to have while getting projects to your platform and unique ways this feature solves the challenge and changes things?
Maurya: I believe everyone loves simplicity, and at Spheron we believe in the same. Allowing repository import removes the pain of manually doing it. Our aim is to save as much time as possible for developers so that developers can focus on working on business requirements and we can help developers to take care of Infrastructure needs with bare minimum involvement. After integration of this feature we have seen a good number of growth in terms of attaching projects on the platform.
Arweave News: On the roles and permission aspect of the update, Spheron created different categories of authorisations according to roles. What was not stated in your announcement brief is why you created the feature and what problems it solves. What are the use cases of the roles and permission feature?
Maurya: The biggest challenge today in the Infrastructure space is how to onboard team members on the deployment side without sharing your private keys. We solved that problem but imagine for a moment if your team member leaves the team, how are you going to remove the member from the organisation?
Roles in our system basically help to solve this problem.
Arweave News: The NFT gate, according to Spheron, is to allow only whitelisted users to access the platform. Spheron, in its announcement brief said it aims to give early adopters access. So the question is: Why give preference to early adopters. What is the logic behind the decision to restrict access to people who are coming late to adopting the Aqua?
Maurya: Now the platform is open for everyone. But the initial intention was to close it because we wanted to test our system in a closed environment, not in an open environment. There were a couple of vulnerabilities in the system that got fixed during this environment. Also, we wanted to incentivise our very early adopters who had been supporting us for a long time.
Arweave News: On the Spheron Clan Africa and Clan India project, Spheron said it aims to spread awareness of Web3, blockchain and Open Source tech. Could you please give us more insight?
Maurya: Yes, that is what we are working on: to spread the Web3 Infra Ethos not only the DEFI ethos. At the moment, the Spheron clan Indian project application is closed but the one for Africa is still very much open and ambassadors and advocates are needed. The community is awesome and we have received positive response from the global community towards the program.
Arweave News: Why did you select Africa and India? What is it about the continent and the countries that made you pick them? Why not Europe or North America or the Middle east?
Maurya: Well it is actually Asia and Africa and we are looking forward to taking the clan program to at least 15 African countries by August 2022. We are careful to deliver concrete value to all members of the clan program that will be onboarded hence we can’t afford to bring the whole world into the program.
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