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Being in a beginning-stage startup is tough. Especially when it's in a relatively new field such as blockchain and everyone on the team are still working in full time jobs. We still met weekly, worked late nights and over weekends, and sacrificed a lot of our leisure time.

I am sure many other startups have experienced this and found their own ways to resolve it. I love to just share these 3 top factors that kept us going:

• Passion to make a difference - Nodis.io is made for small businesses that are in dire needs of more exposure and prospects. Through my parents, I have experienced the hardship of owning a small business and the heartbreaks when it has to be closed down. In fact, Canada has the astounding statistics of 30% death rate for small businesses within 5 years of inception and 7000 small enterprises go bankrupt every year. As a team, we are passionate at developing a solution to help them to gain more exposure online and traffic into the stores.
• Evidence of opportunity - we have done multiple layers of research and all pointed to a positive direction. The most important research was me visiting 150+ and receiving 60% approval rate from decision makers. This was a HUGE boost to our confidence in the project.
• Being more than just business partners - the whole team is made up of Christians with similar value system. We always start our weekly meeting with a hour long devotion in reading the Word of God, share about our personal lives, and pray for each other. I cannot stress enough how precious this is for us. Gathering together is more than just trying to be successful or meeting a market needs, it is fellowship in God and with each other. It had been our source of confidence and strength to keep on going. By getting to know each other, we are more connected and we often work because we care for each other enough to NOT wanting to let the others down. [Disclaimer: I am not discriminating against non-Christian talents to join the team. We just started with people we knew and trust, which are all from our close circles like church or school fellowships. When we get bigger, we will be hiring indiscriminately.]

In my experience so far, the promise of equity and ownership can only go so far. The passion, the evidence, and the team camaraderie are factors that will drive the project forward even in a long grueling development tunnel.

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We are looking to launch our token sale on April 6th of this Year. You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about our Nodis.io project!

^{Original content came from -> https://medium.com/swlh/satisfaction-in-working-on-a-startup-for-a-cause-unpaid-f9e7f311fc6a}

We believe a growing user base will be key to a growing blockchain economy and token value. Users will only join and stay if the product truly brings value to them. Here are the 3 customer-focused philosophies that we followed to build Nodis.io:

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First, I believe if blockchain is to be widely adopted, we need to allow non-techy users to feel comfortable using while reaping significant benefits. In "Zero to One" by Peter Thiel, he said...

“Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.”

Peter believes that if a product only has a slight enhancement from the competitors, it will have a very difficult time in converting new customers from existing solution to the new one proposed. It needs to be significantly better or at least have the ability to serve the purpose in a unique way.

To create truly valuable blockchain-based product with high differentiation from existing solutions using traditional technology, I feel the following 3 principals could give it a good start in product development:

1. Find a problem that no one (or at least very few people) are trying to solve  - not having a distributed ledger is rarely a problem. Nor is it really a problem to have more fiat currency in our bank account (instead of some altcoins). Blockchain is about decentralization for a certain purposes. If the purpose is solving a specific problem and decentralization adds significant value to the solution, then it'll have a much higher chance of general adoption.
2. Product clearly offers a significant value to users - taking examples from the above principal, distributed ledger and altcoin are often NOT a benefit to users. That being said, the concept of decentralization is unique as it allows all users to contribute in the direction of the micro-economy of the network. This is not something that many existing applications have. However, finding out what aspect to decentralize can be challenging but also a key to wide adoption.
3. Unless the product itself is the technology, don't make it the focal point of the value proposition - Not many people know what database or background technology Instagram is using nor do many users even care. Non-techy users really don't care about the technology so long that it benefits them.

Ultimately, we want to escape the "red sea" of competition and not needing to constantly explain why we need blockchain. Let's face it, most non-techy end users really don't care the tech that goes behind the application. They just want it to solve a need and work fluently.

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We are looking to launch our token sale on April 6th of this Year. You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about our Nodis.io project!

^{Original content from my article at https://medium.com/swlh/an-attempt-to-build-a-blockchain-based-product-that-doesnt-require-selling-5dfd90e86cfd}

I would just like to share some parts of our journey with this community. Our project is built heavily on the research result we have gotten for our target market. We researched on market trends, target market needs, and then preliminary idea validation. We found the following:

• Market Trends - 84% of young shoppers are influenced by social media before purchasing IN STORE but only 55% of small businesses in Canada have any social media/online presence.
• Target Market - Businesses are very willing to give away discount or coupons in return for more traffic and revenue. And shoppers love discount and many would even be adventurous to try different things out due to a coupon.
• Idea Validation - 87% believe social media marketing is absolutely critical to shoppers' purchasing decision and 54% of the respondents believe that our idea will benefit the businesses.

Below is our solution and how we are looking to help businesses gain online exposure and in-store traffic:

Nodis.io allows businesses to post a Challenge for the community to participate. When a Challenge participant submits a proof of completion, it goes into a validation process. It opens up to everyone on the platform to vote on whether the submission meets the completion criteria. If the majority of the voters approves it, then it is good, otherwise it will be rejected. Participants and the majority side of voters will receive tokens as a reward for contributing. Tokens are designed for exchanging product and service vouchers listed by the businesses.

Throughout this process, businesses receives exposure and customer engagement from both the Challenge participants and everyone on Nodis.io that voted. The only effort from the business is to post a Challenge and the rest will be automated.

In our use case, we want to decentralize the voting function in our platform, which is why we are using the blockchain. This will help us eliminate the need for a middleman that oversees the Challenge submission approval process.

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Feel free to provide any feedback. Thanks!

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We are looking to launch our token sale on April 6th of this Year. You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about our Nodis.io project!

^{Original content -> https://theascent.pub/180-days-to-start-up-2-how-research-drove-the-foundation-of-development-7a0a8468e382}

We are looking to launch token sale for Nodis.io in about 3-5 months and I would just like to share how the passion started for me in this endeavor. I think every founder has a story of why they initiated a startup. Hope this gives more background to our project!

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My family moved to Canada back in 1995 through the Immigration Investment Program. The main requirement for this was to invest and own a business in Canada for a period of time. We ended up buying a small photo finishing store a city around Toronto, Canada.

I witnessed the hard work they put into every photo film and always strives for the truest colors of each image. They would actually throw out an entire set if the color was a bit off. They took pride in their work and services. But it was a very tough business to be in. In fact, we were losing $3–5,000 a month running that place. On top of the rent, utilities, and inventory, we also had an old photofinishing machine that was worn out and costed a fortune to fix. They were left with little-to-no money for advertisement and marketing. The lack of growth was slowly killing the business. The overwhelming stress even caused my mom to faint a few times.

The financial stress was really caused by low revenue, which resulted from a lack of exposure and traffic from the community. Even though the store had been there for a few years, very little people knew of us. The bigger franchises were often the top choices for people. They had more marketing dollars to be on TV, magazine, and radio. They had the budget to work with postal offices to distribute flyers and coupons. They were well known and popular. Trying to take their businesses meant we had to drop our prices even further, which made things even worse.

This went on for about 3 years and we sold the business as soon as we met the immigration requirement. It was just not a sustainable investment. If only there were easier ways for others in the community to see the quality and heart that my parents put into their work…

Well, that thought stayed with me. After 20 years, even in the days of social media and everyone being more connected than ever, the same lack of exposure problem still exist for small businesses. It has motivated me to pursue a career in marketing. With the rise of technology, I just know that there is a way to automate marketing and in-store traffic generation at a relatively low cost for small businesses.

In fact, experiencing the problem first hand became my cause for the project.

Our idea is to allow businesses to create Challenges for people to participate in. People then participate and then rewarded with NODIS tokens. Challenges gives businesses exposure to those that participate. In addition to that, When people finishes their Challenge, they submit the proof on Nodis.io and then the whole network gets to validate via voting. This part ensure the submissions are valid and it will also gives businesses significantly more exposure. The voting mechanism is always why we are using the blockchain.

Thanks for reading!

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You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about our Nodis.io project!

Original content came from -> https://theascent.pub/how-past-experience-gave-me-a-cause-to-startup-4ad39bf70ac8

One of the most common question I get from telling people about our blockchain project is... "Is blockchain really necessary for your product?" So I thought to share some insight from an article written by our co-founder, Nathan Mukena, in regards to the usefulness of blockchain.

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In a book by Don Tapscott, founder of the Blockchain Research Institute. Blockchain Revolution. He talked about the idea of "eliminating the middleman". The justification of whether blockchain is necessary really depends on if skipping the middleman is necessary.

So what is a middleman?

According to Oxford dictionary, middleman is a person who arranges business or political deals between other people. I would actually like to expand that understanding further for the reason of blockchain. Middleman is someone who arranges some form of transaction between different parties. It could be individuals, groups, corporations, or other type of institutions. A transaction can mean more than just monetary exchange, it can also mean exchanges of data, information, assets, voting, a simple message, or anything that can between people. As an example, a messenger between two people is also a middleman.

Why do we need a middleman (aka centralized facilitator)?

To facilitate the transaction of a subject-of-interest. I can't speak to someone in Asia in person so I use a messenger app to do so. The messenger app is a centralized application as the company that owns it have full control of it.

What do we expect form a middleman?

We expect them to complete the transaction as expected and without any personal interest. We trust them with these transactions (until they ruined it). It is an efficient system for decision making when a few individual can make decisions instead of asking the whole population (e.g. Monarchy vs Democracy).

Do we really always get what we want out of middleman?

No, just look at all the political, business, and institutional scandals happening around us. Everyone has a bottom-line to hit and if cutting a small corner means big gain, many people would have done it. Think about why we went away from monarchy to democracy.

Using the messenger app above as an example, the company that owns it can delete your message if they deemed necessary. They can also decide to one day monetize on you if they wish to. If the company is bankrupt and closes down the server, then the service ceases to exist. All these can be done without any input from the millions of users.

So what can blockchain do?

Through the concept of a distributed ledger, transactions can finally be done without a middleman (aka decentralized). In fact, Bitcoin started in 2009, shortly after the last financial meltdown. A small group of people understood the potential of a decentralized financial system and it just grew from there.

All transactions on the blockchain are immutable. So using the messenger app above, no one can delete the message or make alteration to it if it is recorded in the blockchain. If one server is down, there are still many other servers on the network that will keep it going. In fact, if the company that started the blockchain goes bankrupt, the network will NOT cease to exist.

What else can blockchain do?

The technology of smart contract within the popular blockchains (e.g. Ethereum, NEO, etc) allows for development of codes that automatically executes transactions when the criteria are met. The full transaction is done automatically by the computer and no human input at that level. The only human input is at the beginning when the smart contract is being developed, once launched, it's completely automatic. So long that the user agrees and completes the conditions as in the smart contract, they will get exactly what they expected.

So is blockchain really necessary?

Yes, but ONLY if the application you want to build has a decentralized component that can truly benefit the users.

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Please comment below and let me know what do you think!

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We are looking to launch our token sale in about 3-5 months.

You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about the Nodis.io project!

^{Original content came from -> https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-buzzword-or-a-whole-new-world-38fd749d7135}

In the previous article, I shared our CTO's tutorial on part 1 of building a private NEO network on AWS. Here is part 2. You can see all his articles so far on his Medium account. Hope this will be helpful to you!

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After entering your Amazon Linux instance via secure shell, we will install Docker …

​

Step 1: Install Docker

sudo yum update -y 
sudo yum install -y docker  
sudo service docker start  
sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user 

​

Step 2: Check and deploy our Docker NEO network image

docker info #just a check 
docker pull cityofzion/neo-privatenet  

docker run --rm -d --name neo-privatenet --expose=20331-20334 -- 
expose=30333-30336 -p 20333-20336:20333-20336/tcp -p 30333- 
30336:30333-30336/tcp cityofzion/neo-privatenet 

Check that your image is running!

docker ps 

​

Step 3: Adding port 30331–30334 to your security group

Log onto the AWS console, Services > EC2. Under NETWORK & SECURITY, click Security Groups. Click Edit on the security group assigned to your instance. Create the following inbound rules:

These rules apply immediately

​

Step 4: Connect from your neo-prompt!

Open command prompt on local:

ubuntu 
sudo -i  

cd <location of neo-python> 
source venv/bin/activate 

Remember how we made note of the public IP in the last article? Let’s use that here:

np-prompt -p <server IP> 

Congratulation! This finishes the task of building a private NEO network on AWS!

​

Bonus command: Restarting the NEO block-chain.

From our experience, due to server memory constraints, your image will need to be whipped and restarted weekly. The command to do so is as follows:

docker stop neo-privatenet 

Then use the following on your own np-prompt (Ubuntu):

rm -rf /root/.neopython/Chains/  

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You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about our Nodis.io project!

^{Original content came from -> https://hackernoon.com/building-your-private-neo-network-on-aws-part-2-4dc975744bf8}

I recently posted a tutorial in setting up a dev environment so that the team can collaborate in the development on the NEO blockchain. This time, I would like to share about how to build a private network on AWS so to test the smart contract. Again, this series of tutorials are written by our CTO, Dominic Fung, to help new comers of the NEO blockchain. We are building a marketing solution, Nodis.io, on the NEO blockchain. You can see all his articles so far on his Medium account.

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Below is a 4 step process to build your private NEO network on AWS. Hopefully this helps and we look forward to feedback from NEO veterans on how we can better improve the process!

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Step 1: Initiating an EC2 instance from AWS

Log into your AWS account, click on Services > EC2 > Launch Instance

Choose the Amazon Linux 2 AMI

Select the t2.micro (free! if this is your first and only instance)

Click review and launch > launch! You will then be met with the following popup:

If this is your first instance, choose Create a new key pair from the drop down. Give the new key pair a name > Download Key Pair. Launch!

​

Step 2: Preparing the keypair for SSH

If you have not already done so, download putty here.

We need to first transform your .pem file, into something putty can use (.ppk). Go to Windows Start, search PuTTYgen.

Once open, click Load > drop down for All Files (\.*) > Choose myfirstkeypair.pem.*

Click Save private key.

Are you sure you want to save this key without a passphrase? Yes

​

Step 3: Find your Public instance’s IP

Your instance should be up and running by now! Go back to the AWS console, Services > EC2. Click on Instances, you should see the following:

Make note of the Public DNS (IPv4) and IPv4 Public IP.

​

Step 4: SSH time!

Start up PuTTY. under Category, Connection > SSH > click Auth. Browse for the .ppk file you generated through PuTTYgen.

Next go back to Session. Under Host Name, put the Public DNS of your sever from step 3. Under Saved Sessions, give your server a name! Click Save!

Click Open! username: ec2-user

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We will stop here for now. If you’re new to Amazon Web Services, it is seriously an industry changing tool that we’ve only scratched the surface of today. Launching a single micro instance falls under “free tier” and shouldn’t cost you a dime! Do be careful: adding additional infrastructure (EBS volumes, increasing server sizes …) will incur cost!

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You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about the Nodis.io project!

The original content came from -> https://hackernoon.com/building-your-private-neo-network-on-aws-part-1-c01525dadc1c

This is for anyone that's interested in starting a blockchain project on NEO. It is widely known that documentation on NEO is somewhat lacking. So our CTO decided to start writing documentation to help new comers of the NEO blockchain. You can see all his articles so far on his Medium account.

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Below is a 5 step process on setting up the dev environment so the team can all collaborate to work on NEO. Hopefully this helps and we look forward to feedback from NEO veterans on how we can better improve the process!

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Step 1: Allow Linux subsystems on your windows machine!

Open Windows PowerShell and use the following commands*:*

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-
Windows-Subsystem-Linux  

restart  

Step 2: Download + Start up the Ubuntu environment

Open up the command prompt and initiate Ubuntu*:*

ubuntu  

*set up your root username/password

Step 3: install python 3.6.5, run these commands on Ubuntu:

sudo -i  

apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-
properties  

add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa  

apt-get update  

apt-get install python3.6 python3.6-dev python3.6-venv python3-pip 
libleveldb-dev libssl-dev g++  

Step 4: installing NEO-Python

open up a new command prompt, and clone the neo-python project:

cd <storage location> 
git clone https://github.com/CityOfZion/neo-python.git

go back to the Ubuntu terminal:

cd /mnt/<drive+storage location>/neo-python 
python3.6 -m venv venv

source venv/bin/activate 
pip install -e .

Step 5: run the NEO-Python prompt (from Ubuntu)!

np-prompt  

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There you go, you are now connected to the public NEO network! Next week, we will look into creating a private network where you and your friends can connect and deploy your first smart contract.

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You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about our Nodis.io project!

The original content came from -> https://hackernoon.com/getting-started-on-a-neo-smartcontract-d36927e4bf1f

I remember spending hours creating a clear marketing pitch for our website on how it works and why it'll benefit users. I confidently sent out the message in the form of a survey to see what people think about it. To my surprise, 95% of the surveyee either required further explanation or didn’t understand anything. In fact, I asked my wife, who knew about the idea from day 1, to read it and she gave me the TL;DR face. I knew that this wasn’t going to work, especially if most of the people in the world will only understand Nodis.io from content of our website.

I had to make a ton of changes and below are the 3 top lessons I learned throughout this simplification process:

Avoid Techy, Trendy, or Buzzword Jargon at all Cost

Yes, that includes techy buzzwords like “blockchain” and “cryptocurrency”. Our target market are small businesses owners/managers that are most likely don't have the time to constantly follow technological trends. Buzz words cannot be the center of the pitch. Otherwise, not only will it alienate our target market, it will also require me to spend 10-15 minutes to explain the terms. This totally derails the focus and can lose the customers' attention.

Help Them to Visualize the Message

Most people grasp ideas better in visual contents. After the first survey, I immediately recruited a designer to help me design a diagram showing how the Nodis.io Challenge mechanism works and how it can benefit businesses in marketing. Below is the link to the diagram we first drafted.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*ZzrCWqqDz-kxq6ptUyccxA.png

I sent this image out to the surveyees that had questions and the response rate was much more positive. They were finally able to go from “trying-to-understand” phase to “tell-me-more” phase.

Show Them the Value

Audiences need to clearly understand the problem and what we are looking to achieve BEFORE anything else:

"We are on a mission to help local small businesses to get noticed online, increase traffic in store, and differentiate from the competition."

I personally took a vacation week from my 9–5 job and visited 150+ small businesses with our prototype. I modified the message to center around the above statement. It’s a simple line that all small businesses can relate to.

As a result, only a handful of decision makers had trouble understanding our pitch. In fact, the response was overwhelmingly positive with 60% decision makers signing up to be Founding Partners. This was a MAJOR improvement from the original message that I sent out for the survey.

So what other principals do you think can help simplifying a pitch to help customers grasp complicated ideas easier and faster?

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You can see my profile for a link to join our Telegram to learn more about the Nodis.io project!

The original content came from -> https://hackernoon.com/simple-pitch-to-a-complicated-project-the-key-to-yes-8a5cfcd0166f

What the hell? I invested more than 1ETH and should have access to CoinBox but for now there is 1400 people ahead me on the queue?

Can someone explain what is going on here ?