YapBay MVP on Celo is Ready
March and April have been tremendous months of progress for YapBay. I must say, I am super energized about where this project can go now.
In March, I made 291 commits for LocalSolana. In April, I reached 366 for YapBay. But, most importantly, the code actually builds, lint checks pass — and it actually works!
In fact, you can see the MVP in action right now at app.yapbay.com.
Solana in March
During March, the focus was on building the MVP on Solana under the LocalSolana brand. I made great progress, with a full Solana program deployed to devnet, a pricing server, a listener, a partial API and a partial frontend.
I got all of this done during a pretty intense 28-day sprint as part of the Solana Eternal hackathon. Sadly, the judges have no interest in what I’m building. With that said, the suspension of disbelief that I engaged in during the 28-day sprint was deeply helpful for my motivation and results. I got a lot done!
Here are my update videos from the hackathon:
Celo in April
In April, I was accepted into Celo Proof of Ship and managed to finish the MVP with mere hours to spare before the deadline. I made it into the top 20 projects of the cohort so stay tuned for more on this on X @YapBay_ and in the Telegram group!
I also applied for a Prezenti grant for YapBay. By early to mid-May we should have a decision on that.
I feel like YapBay is going to have the best philosophical alignment with Celo of all the chains I am considering building on right now. So I really hope there is a fit here.
Here are some videos I made for Celo Proof of Ship:
KarmaGAP
I’m committed to transparency and open-source for YapBay, and so I’ve made several updates to our KarmaGAP profile, including closing out a bunch of milestones, adding a demo video and adding all the YapBay repos. I’m committed to keeping KarmaGAP updated right alongside this website.
Sui
The contracts for YapBay in Move are done and ready to be deployed on Sui. However, I will probably miss the deadline for Sui Overflow and, in general, I’m just not seeing many signs of interest or alignment with Sui.
Bitso Accelerator
I also applied to the Bitso Accelerator. Fingers crossed. They seem to have a sense of developing world use cases for Web3.
Gitcoin Grants 23 (GG23)
Sadly I took down YapBay v1 right as I was applying to GG23 and was not accepted because they couldn’t find the frontend. I have my eye out to participate in GG24 though. If YapBay can make it on public goods funding, we may be able to keep fees to zero for the foreseeable future.
MVP Testers Sought!
Want to test the YapBay MVP? DM me your email address on Telegram @georgedonnelly. I could really use your feedback and input as the future direction of the project is determined. Today’s MVP testers will be in line for any paid opportunities I will have in the future.
Going Forward
I just updated the roadmap again and I would love your feedback on that. Feel free to join our YapBay Telegram community and share your thoughts on what our priorities should be.
Fingers crossed that Celo L2 will work out and one or more grants or other funding sources will come through soon. With funding, I can keep working on this full time and perhaps even expand the team.
If Celo funding comes through, I will de-prioritize Solana (in addition to Sui), and focus 100% on getting YapBay feature-complete on Celo per the KarmaGAP milestones.
I’ll be posting again soon with more information on participating in the MVP testing, including tutorial videos.
You can also follow @YapBay_ on X for updates as they happen, including new dev screenshots and up-to-the-minute news.