Hey Carbonians!
We have a huge few weeks coming up, with the Carbon Beta release scheduled to drop on Wednesday, March 31st. We wanted to put out a quick article with important information and dates for you all.
It’s important to remember that it’s a beta. Betas are for testing, improving and ironing out any bugs in readiness for a full public launch. With this in mind, we will be restricting signups according to the following schedule:
Week 1: Wednesday March 31 to Wednesday April 7:
Beta will be usable only by those who have already created their account with MetaMask (go to app.crbn.io to do that, quickly!). Signups to new accounts will not be possible at all during this week.
Week 2: Wednesday April 7 to Wednesday April 14:
Beta will be open to all MetaMask users. They will be able to create a new account via MetaMask during this week.
Week 3 onwards (tentative):
Beta will be open to all, and we may have additional signup options (non-MetaMask) available. We may place a limit on the number of signups in total, as we monitor the performance of the platform, from a technical standpoint. For example we may limit signups to 25,000 users, make sure everything looks ready to grow more, and then increase the limit, and so forth. Keep in mind this is still during beta stage.
The reason we want to stagger the access is to monitor exactly how the system responds to each number of users, and also keep an eye on the habits and usage patterns of the users (not individual, just collectively). The point of all this monitoring is to ensure we can scale up sufficiently after beta, and take on a sudden spike of a lot of new users with no problems. We are planning for success, and that requires a conservative approach in the beta stage.
All beta content and points, badges and other app usage will remain after the beta testing period ends.
So, basically, if you sign up at app.crbn.io right now with MetaMask (or if you have already), you can use Carbon from March 31, and start earning points, no problems.
Additional signup options:
You may be wondering what other signup options there will be, other than MetaMask. Well, we will be allowing users to connect to Carbon via 3 other authorisation options - Twitter, Facebook and Google. So, that covers a massive share of all users and allows a very simple signup process that takes just seconds. If you don’t use those services or don’t want to, you can use the MetaMask option, it’s totally up to you. Keep in mind that if you want to earn CRBN rewards or access some of the crypto features, you will need to use the MetaMask option. Down the track we will also be including a traditional email/password option (and you would be able to move your account onto that system at the time). The reason we are allowing quick signups via other platforms is quite obvious. We want everyone to move to Carbon, quickly and easily.
The very first beta release will be lacking a few features that will be coming very soon. Reposting posts, commenting on other user’s comment, and a few other little things are going to be added as we progress along the beta. We will be constantly expanding the platform, but we have to start somewhere right?
About those NFTs:
You may be aware Carbon will include an NFT gallery. Originally we intended for that feature to be a nice simple way to show off the NFTs you have in your wallet. Just pull them in and display them for everyone to see (and upvote etc). Well, we can do better :) Without giving away any specific details (coming later) we are excited to announce that Carbon will be expanding its NFT feature to allow creation and trading of NFTs, all within the Carbon platform, fully integrated with the existing points, rewards, leaderboards and CRBN balance system. We can’t say any more just yet, but you don’t want to miss this! Whether or not NFT hype is here for the long haul is yet to be seen, but they sure are popular right now so we are prioritising this feature.
Some more news:
We’ve hired more devs to handle the new features. We only use local devs, and they are mostly working on-site. We will continue to grow our team as required. Myself (Daniel) and Rob have designed and built the bulk of the Carbon platform to date because we want to ensure our vision becomes a reality.
We have countless new features we want to include in Carbon. Carbon has tremendous potential to bring everyone together into an environment that is enjoyable, productive and rewarding.
That’s all for now! Please share this update everywhere :)
Daniel & Rob
Carbon
crbn.io
