It’s been a productive couple of months for me since my last update. I went to Rare Evo and met a couple people for the first time ever, that’s always a pleasure! Mehen development is in full swing, and my Catalyst Fund 9 proposal, ADA Bounties was closed out and completed!
We had an extremely slow July and August. Part of that was due to a weird Cardano node issue I ran into. I hadn’t ever seen it before, and others in the community were a little stumped. I believe it ultimately came down to an issue with my topology, but I just couldn’t quite figure out why there was an issue.
I ended up changing my Block Producer to use Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication. I locked it down to only connect to my relays. Once I did that, blocks started flowing again, and my missed slots dropped over 80%! That was a nice suprise to say the least! So, we are now rolling again.
To my delegators, I am sorry for my pool missing blocks (I think we missed 3 or 4 total). I always try to make sure things are up to date and running smoothly, unfortunately, I ran into this issue and it took me a little time to fix it, (at least my pool is running more efficiently than before).
Now that things are rolling once again, I’ve made the mission donations through epoch 439.
Rare Evo turned out to be a great event for myself and the rest of the Mehen team. I got to meet a number of our team members that I never met before (that is one thing I love the most about these conferences). The week before heading out to Rare Evo, I was cranking away at getting a PreProd demo of the Mehen user app ready. I even stayed up late into Thursday morning to wrap it up. I wanted the community to get their hands on it to make it real. I think the demo ended up making a big difference in how we were looked at by everyone we talked to.
Admittedly, there were some CSS issues that bothered me about the demo, but that’s just me. Overall, the demo was greeted with a lot of enthusiasm. The 4 or 5 interviews we had during the weekend helped fan the flames of that enthusiasm as well.
I can’t prove this, but I think our time at Rare Evo cemented community support for our Catalyst Fund 10 Mehen proposal. We still have a lot of work to do, but that was definitely validation for our path.
I’ve been putting in an average of about 30 hours a week into Mehen since Rare Evo. That’s on top of my day job, teaching Krav, and, of course, spending time with my family. The app on the surface isn’t complicated, but once we get into the KYC, AML, Bank linking and transactions, Wallet interactions, Cardano chain interactions, things do start to get a bit complicated.
If you are wondering where we are with the app, here is the latest status:
I’m pretty happy with where we are, but I will be crazy busy this weekend as we push towards another demo on PreProd in late October.
In July, I submitted the close out report for ADA Bounties and it was accepted in August! That was a lot of work as well, and I still have a number of tickets I want to get to that will add to the user experience, however, Mehen is taking priority.
If you have a Catalyst Fund 10 project, please consider using ADA Bounties to get help with the little things you might need done. Maybe you need different phones to be used to test your app, ADA Bounties can help you find those people. Maybe you need translations, proof-reading, graphics, videos, help with social media, or something else. ADA Bounties can still help you find someone to accomplish those tasks. You don’t have to do everything yourself, there’s a huge community out there for you! Let ADA Bounties find your “next”!
As always, I pass a huge thank you to all of my delegators. Without you, none of this would be happening. I started my pool as a way into the Cardano communit, and a lot of great things have happened since then.
The summer was great, but I’m really looking forward to the fourth quarter of 2023. Getting Mehen to Mainnet is my number one goal for the end of year. The rest of the team feels the same way. We will need all hands on deck for it, but I’m positive we can get there! Stay tuned!
Please contact us if you have questions or if you would like additional information regarding the 4WARD pool.