In celebration of the Year of the Dragon, ArcBlock has updated its 2024 roadmap. 🐉 This updated Roadmap details and gives more of a glimpse of our development direction and how it will evolve and grow in 2024.
What is a roadmap?#
Beginning in 2018, ArcBlock has consistently announced its product plans and roadmap. We’ve iteratively updated them based on the situation and feedback in our subsequent developments.
Looking back at our groundbreaking development over the years, ArcBlock has steadily achieved most of its planned goals in accordance with our overall established direction. In addition, we have also implemented many important and reasonable technologies that were not included in the original plan (such as DID and Large Language Models, LLM). Constrastingly, we’ve decisively cut or restructured some projects that did not meet market expectations (such as Forge SDK and Tokenswap V1). Our updated 2024 roadmap serves as an outline for our most recent developments, and we will continue to plan and adjust our expected goals in a reasonable and timely manner, as we have done consistently for over 5 years.
More recently, we’ve released a five-year span of forecasts and strategies that ArcBlock plans to implement. This strategy and plan from a higher perspective.
2024 Roadmap#
Our 2024 goals include:
- Announce upcoming strategic partnerships throughout 2024
- Maintain platform stability, performance, and security.
- Increase the quantity and quality of basic applications in Blocklet.
- Develop a “Builders Community” to help builders achieve more success.
- Invest and delegate time for high-ranked applications deployed on the ArcBlock platform, all while developing "Blockbuster" applications.
- Promote revenue growth, and share substantial tangible returns with ecological partners.
From 2018-2023, ArcBlock’s main focus was solely fixated on technology and completing our platform. Education, Partnerships, and Marketing are all of main focus in 2024. ArcBlock will continue to double down on our investments in products and technology, while also placing more of an emphasis on the promotion, education, and application of our products and technology. Value of revenue, customers, and the entire ecosystem are also of extreme importance.
In addition to the content covered in the roadmap, we also have some information about developing partners and innovative items in the "stealth mode" that will be announced at the appropriate time to give everyone some surprises. We are confident that these partnerships will take ArcBlock’s name and product utilization to the very next level.
Note: There is usually a one-month gap between our team's "quarter" and the "calendar quarter". For example, our Q1 does not end until the end of April. This is to make it easier for us to deal with holidays such as Christmas, New Year, and Chinese New Year, which may affect our task scheduling.
Q1 2024: ArcBlock’s Lead Products Will Officially “Graduate” #
Q1 2024 will kick off with a bang. ArcBlock is excited to finally "graduate" and formally launch our lead products. This period marks the transition of our products from the testing phase to official status. These products have been in beta for a long time and we are excited to finally see them formally launch. ArcBlock’s approach to product development has always been methodical, as we’ve adopted a rigorous product version numbering method. You may have noticed products bearing version numbers in the 0.x format, signifying their beta stages. Many of these products have already undergone multiple iterations and tests of product services. We will finally release these products officially. As each product is officially launched, ArcBlock plans to implement targeted marketing strategies that align with the product’s unique direction.
Several crucial elements of our Blocklet framework will also officially be released in Q1. Among these, the official launch of our "Resource Blocklets" and "Composite Blocklets" are some of the most influential. Having publicly tested these features for more than half a year, they hold significant meaning toward the developmental role in democratizing the Builder ecosystem. This will allow for a broader audience to directly experience and appreciate the unique strengths of our developments over the years and how they can individually be implement.
Our flagship product in the field of AI/LLM, AIGNE, is also excitingly set for release. AIGNE will significantly lower the barrier to become a Builder and have an important impact on the entire ArcBlock ecosystem. Positioned at the forefront of the era of Large Language Models (LLM) and AI applications, AIGNE will enable us to become an influential player in the era of LLM and the AI application explosion, more importantly, it is a gateway for a wider range of individuals to demonstrate their capabilities and actively participate to build on the platform. AIGNE will play a significant role in the growth and explosion of our ecosystem, all while enhancing the value of our ecosystem for customers and stakeholders alike, continually aligning with our strategic focus for 2024.
Q2 2024: ArcBlock Ecosystem Build Up with Emphasis on Marketing & Education#
We will begin a new, innovative form of education, marketing, and ecosystem build-up based on our own platform and products in Q2. In the past, the industry has been using traditional methods for training, and marketing, which fundamentally does not benefit the development of blockchain itself. We are attempting to adopt a new mechanism, similar to "mining" we call "Brain Mining". This term, similar to using Bitcoin's Proof of Work (PoW) helps build the ecosystem together with us. This includes training, marketing, promotion, content creation, and more product development. (Another fun fact: The term "Brain Mining" actually originated from our knowledge sharing system before we officially became ArcBlock. We found this concept was very suitable for the construction of our ecosystem.)
More recently, we've also updated our website and started Bugs Bounty Program in our community, which are all in preparation for this stage. We will use a series of innovative activities to enable everyone to build the ecosystem with us, assume their respective roles, and jointly build and develop to achieve long-term results on the platform. Whether you are a developer, technical expert, content creator, or marketing specialist, this is your place to participate.
During this process, we will not only leverage the characteristics and advantages of blockchain technology, but also harness the power of DID (Decentralized Identifiers) and Verifiable Credentials. We will apply these Decentralized Identity and Verifiable Credentials to specific scenarios such as our partners' qualifications, training, and certifications. This will allow everyone to personally and directly experience the advantages brought by ArcBlock's technological innovation while engaging in education, marketing, and ecosystem development.
NOTE: We also expect to announce some exciting new partnerships this quarter, some of which are very future-oriented product and tech partnerships. Currently, the details of these partnerships are under development, and we will announce them at the appropriate time.
Q3 2024: Launch of a Global Builders Hackathon#
Starting in Q3, we plan to hold a new type of Global Hackathon which will span over a month. Its purpose is to expand the reach from the previous quarter's education, marketing, and ecosystem building efforts, while validating the practical capabilities of the ArcBlock platform in cross-domain application and service development, most developments will happen and progress through the hackathon.
In ArcBlock’s view, traditional short-term hackathons are often just marketing activities while very few can grow into real teams and harder to form products. Since our establishment, ArcBlock has been paying attention to many types of hackathons. We've organized multiple events on our own, and have even send team members to participate in various industry hackathons. ArcBlock founder, Robert Mao, has participated in multiple international hackathon events and won first place several times during the early stages of his entrepreneurship. ArcBlock's deep understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of this form of activity is crucial to identify and course correct to be more efficient moving forward. ArcBlock provides unprecedented collaboration platform for builders, and blockchain that creates an environment for trust establishment and revenue distribution. We’re very confident and extremely excited for you to witness a completely new form of a Global Builders Hackathon.
Our goal is to hold a global hackathon in Q3, and we anticipate over 100 project ideas will be born during this event. We also anticipate at least 10 outstanding industry setting projects eventually becoming practical applications and running on the ArcBlock platform. Based on this event, we may standardize this approach as a long-term ecosystem promotion project in the future.
Q4 2024: Scaling ArcBlock with our Builders Conference#
We plan to bring back our Developer Conference in Q4! As it was named “Developer Conference” in the past, we plan to rename this conference ArcBlock’s “Builders Conference”. With the comprehensive development of AI and the ArcBlock platform, software and services will no longer be exclusive to developers, and more people will become qualified builders, giving everyone an equal opportunity to create the next unicorn company.
We will temporarily name this conference as "ABC" - ArcBlock Builders Conference.
ArcBlock organized two online developer conferences in 2020 and 2021, accumulating more experience with what we wanted to see and the direction we wanted these conferences to be rooted in. In 2022 and 2023, we analyzed the existing issues of the past two developer conferences and adopted a method of smaller-scale independent support, small-scale workshops, and project incubation. We believe that it's time for it to return in 2024. We may adopt a combination of online (and offline) methods, with the goal of enabling as many creators as possible to participate and build on the ArcBlock ecosystem together. The time and location of this 2024 Conference will be announced in Q3.
Invite the Community to Band Together#
Our roadmap this year is dynamic. What better way to participate than helping us make changes together? We highly value opinions and suggestions from our community, as we’re constantly listening to and considering changes and updates from various community members. This community includes the ArcBlock Developer Community and the end-user community. We hope to gather valuable opinions from various different perspectives this year and the years to come. We believe that only through close collaboration and feedback from the community can we continuously improve and optimize our products and services. Therefore, we will carefully listen to the suggestions of the community and make appropriate adjustments based on these suggestions and market changes. We are very excited for the year to come! One thing is certain: The ArcBlock platform, our partnerships, and our products will set industry standards for years to come. That, we can promise.