CTO Development Update - March 22nd 2022

Happy Tuesday, everyone! MasterJedi here and it’s time for another development update. The team has been doing some amazing work, and we are blowing through critical milestones on our way to our first public release with the launch of our NFTs next month.

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Major Milestones

First Web2 Alpha Build Deployed

I’m also very excited to announce that last week, the team deployed our first Alpha build of the Lunar platform! This means we’ve successfully gotten past the “Works on My Machine” phase and have our database, APIs, Plexus, and Blazor apps automatically deploying into Azure.

Alpha builds are deployed to an internal-facing environment that is a clone of what we will deploy to during the public Beta. Over the next couple weeks, we will continue to connect up the Plexus to our new ERC-721 contracts for the Lunar NFTs, and finish up our minting process.

Speaking of which, Spaceman just showed me the screens for that today, and they are *chef’s kiss*. Maybe we’ll give you a sneak peek soon. 😉

First Automated Web3 Contract Deployed

I’m VERY proud to share that the team has also completed our first automated Web3 build AND deployed a basic contract to the BSC TestNet for the first time via Azure DevOps. That’s significant because 99% of the blockchain automated build process documentation uses GitHub Actions, which is similar to Azure DevOps Pipelines, but not the same. So we had to blaze some new trails to make that happen. 

Once we get a moment to breathe we’ll be publishing a blog post on how that works, so that others can benefit from our efforts.

First Front-End Pass Delivered

Next up, the front-end development firm we hired to take our design and cut it into an amazing, scalable, upgradeable, Bootstrap 5 design has delivered our first screens! We’re super excited to start pulling this HTML apart like a freshly-baked loaf of bread, and getting the different elements into our reusable Blazor components.

Here’s a warm, buttery taste of what that currently looks like in the browser. Note that this is not the final version. There are still improvements to be made.

I just want to reiterate, this screenshot does not mean our work is finished. We still have to wire everything up to real data, which will take time.

GitHub Progress Reporting

As promised earlier this month, we’re giving everyone more insights into our release schedule through GitHub. The first project we’re reporting on is our upcoming NFT release, and you can check out the status of that project at https://github.com/lunardefi/LunarNFT. We’re currently about 45% of the way through our tasks to finish the Alpha phase of the project, and moving very quickly. You can see those tasks here.

Make sure you check out our updated Rules of the Road as well… we’re asking everyone to refrain from posting new Issues. It helps the team stay focused on the aggressive ship schedule ahead.

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NFT Progress

The NFT platform continues to move forward, and we’re very excited with our progress. This week we have some really neat milestones that we’ll cross, and we’ll share those with you when they happen.

Ship Schedule Update

After taking a look at how the different components are coming together, the leadership team and I decided that we want to allocate more time for security reviews and testing in the rollout schedule. We’re also looking at what NFT marketplaces we’ll be listing with for secondary trading, which takes time to review and test.

We also want to make sure we have enough time to get each crystal exactly right, and get the highest-quality renders possible.

We wanted to only add about a week to schedule, but with Tax Day in the US getting in the way, we had to push it out a little farther. That said, here is the updated schedule:

NFT Launch Schedule on BSC

April 19th at 12:00 PM EST: NFT Whitelist Presale Mint - 2000 NFTs 

April 20th: 6:00 PM EST: Public Mint - 2000 NFTs + Presale Leftovers

April 25th 4:44 PM EST: Lunar Crystal NFT Reveal

‍Deadline confidence level: 95%

You’re going to hear me say this every time, so get used to it: we will not ship a single thing until we’re ready. This is not a “crypto project”, this is a company composed of experts that have decades of experience shipping software. If you’re worried this thing is not going to ship, do some yoga or something and chill out, because we’ve been shipping things for weeks now. You just can’t see them yet.

Your NFT Is The Key

With the updated schedule locked in, we’re pleased to announce even more utility for your Lunar Crystal NFT: it will be your key to unlocking the Lunar Beta when it goes live later in Q2. As we roll out the Beta, we’ll unlock access to the platform in different stages based on the highest rarity NFT you possess. We’ll give you more details on how that works as we get closer to the Beta, but we can’t wait for all you Lunar Crystal NFT holders to be the first to get your hands on the bits very soon.

Wrapping It All Up

Just want to reiterate how proud I am of the team blasting through our punchlist. I know being on the outside looking in is hard sometimes, but we’re laying the groundwork for the next decade of development on this platform. In the beginning, you have to go slow to go fast.

I’d love to stay and chat folks, but this code isn’t going to write itself! Hope you all have a fantastic week, check out our GitHub, and keep an eye on our socials for more updates.

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To Infinity, and Beyond!

MasterJedi & The Lunar Team

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